Fresh, Organic Peach Pie - Wow Your Mouth

Ever since I was young, I've associated August with fresh, juicy, mouth watering sweet peaches. When I was a kid growing up just outside of Manhattan, we used to stop by a roadside farm stand, Mrs. Ramsey's, where Mrs. Ramsey herself sold her home grown fruits and vegetables. As a kid, I thought she had hundreds of acres of land; as an adult, I realize she probably got all that produce from just a handful of urban acres.

OK, ready to make pie?

First, get your hands on organic peaches - the flavor is better than you can imagine. Next, wash them and dunk them in boiling water and let them cool. This will make peeling the skin much easier. Some folks like to leave the skin on, it does change the overall texture of the pie - for this one, I removed skins.

Next, remove the pit and slice the peach into even sectors - the slices should be uniform so that as it bakes, all the slices bake at the same rate.

I'm a bit of a purist, so I don't like to add too much sugar or spice to a pie made with succulent, fresh, ripe fruit. Once you've got your peaches sliced (about 2 cups worth or enough to fill whatever sized pie pan you have), put them in a large saute pan with 1/2 cup of organic cane sugar, 2 TBS of butter, 1 TBS. of fresh lemon juice, the zest of one lemon, and 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon. If you like exotic flavors, try a 1/4 tsp. of cardamom or nutmeg. To go really wild, give it a dash of white pepper.

Heat the mixture so that all the flavors have melded together and the sugar has melted and is starting to thicken.

From here you can either pour it into a pie crust (more on that in a moment) or make a crisp out of it by making a crumble for the top and baking in a buttered ramekin.

The peach pie shown above is made with Guisto's organic Baker's Choice flour. For my money, there is no better flour on the planet - unless you happen to have a grist mill on your organic wheat farm somewhere in the midwestern US.

I'll set you up with the perfect pie crust recipe in another post - but here's how to do the lattice top.

Roll out your dough, make sure it's cold and make sure your surface has enough flour so the dough won't stick (but don't over-flour your dough, it will be tough). Make sure the dough is a consistent thickness - not too thick and not too thin - though personal preference plays a role here.

Cut your dough into strips using a sharp knife. Then, take your longest strip and lay it across the pie just left (or right) of center. Take your next longest strip and put it cross-wise to the first strip, also just left (or right) of center. Take your next strip and continue to weave them together. If you start from the middle, it's much easier to weave it together without anything falling apart.

Once you have your pie lid on, sprinkle it evenly with sugar and pop it in the over - 425 degrees for about 10 minutes then 350 for about 30 minutes should do it. If the edge start to brown too fast, put aluminum foil around the perimeter before it burns to a crisp.

Let it cool completely or you'll burn your mouth and miss the mouthwatering flavor. Serve with a southern favorite sweet tea and you'll feel like you're on summer vacation in your mouth.

And, if you're looking for the finest organic baking ingredients at great prices with world class customer service, head over to shopOrganic.com and use coupon code BAKING4GEEKS to save 10% on your first order. Tell 'em I sent you!

Best Southern Style Biscuits Ever

Both sides of my family tree have deep Southern roots. I grew up not on southern cuisine, but on fairly upscale, sophisticated meals prepared in the tradition of Julia Child's American French cooking (my mother's culinary skills were impressive back in the day). But I'm pretty convinced that food preferences may well be genetic because as an adult, I discovered corn bread, grits and biscuits and felt like I'd found heaven.

I've been looking for a perfect biscuit recipe and I've finally come up with one that works really well for me. I hope it will work equally well for you - it's pretty easy to make, it's a great baking activity to involve your kids in, and it makes a delicious addition to breakfast or to soups for lunch or dinner.

Best Biscuits Ever
Preheat over to 425 degrees while you set up your ingredients

2 cups organic all purpose flour (I'm partial to Giusto's, but any high quality organic all purpose flour will work)
1 TBS aluminum-free baking powder (I use Rumford or Hain Featherweight)
1 tsp sea salt
2 TBS organic cane sugar
1/3 cup organic vegetable shortening (Spectrum's is non-hydrogenated, no trans fats)
1 cup organic milk (works great with fat free milk)

1. Preheat over to 425 degrees.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together in a large bowl.

3. Add shortening and cut in (I mix by hand by just rubbing the flour and shortening together). The result should be the texture of coarse meal.

4. Gradually stir in the milk (use a utensil, it's too goopy to do by hand).

5. Knead by hand about 10 times on a floured board then roll out to 1" thick.

6. Using biscuit (cookie) cutter, cut out and place on ungreased cookie sheet.

7. Take the dough scraps, gather into ball, re-roll until dough is used up and all biscuits are on the cookie sheet(s).

8. Bake 13-15 minutes until golden brown.

These are best served hot out of the oven, but you can store them for a day in a paper bag to preserve crisp outer crust or in a sealed container. They'll get a bit softer when they're sealed but they're still delicious.

Tips:
-Start your oven pre-heating after you've set up your ingredients. Making the biscuits takes about as long as a 425 preheat.

-Use buttermilk for more depth of flavor.

-If you don't have buttermilk on hand, try adding 1 TBS of lemon juice to your milk before adding to your flour mix. The biscuits will not rise quite as high but they will have a bit more flavor and they'll be just as fluffy.

-To measure the shortening, get a 1 cup (or larger) measuring cup, add 2/3 cup of cold water then measure your shortening into the cup so the water line goes up to 1 cup. It's easier to get your shortening out of cold water than out of a standard measuring cup.

-Serve with these choices:
Soften butter and whip together with honey or maple syrup to taste.
Soften butter, add honey and a pinch of cayenne to add some zip.
Apple butter or other fruit conserve.

Getting A RiZE Our Your Breads

If you're like me, you don't want to experiment with a bread when you've got an important 'deliverable' - you've promised to bring a bread to some sort of gathering and you don't really have time to bake it and discover you've got a brick on your hands.

I recently got a sample of Rapunzel's RiZE organic active dry yeast and decided to try it when I was just cooking for myself and a few close friends. We were cooking up some wonderful Indian food and decided that naan was a requirement. If you're not familiar with naan, it's a traditional flatbread and it's a wonderful side dish.

When I opened the packet, the smell of yeast was powerful. I was concerned that the naan, which is a simple yeast bread, would taste of yeast. Still, I mixed it in the mixer with it of sugar and salt as well as water, olive oil, yogurt, whole wheat flour and bread flour. I let the mixer do the hard work for about 8 minutes. As I was cleaning up a bit, I noticed the packet "use by" date was a couple of months earlier (I'd gotten the sample from a friend months ago and hadn't tried it). Naturally, I thought I was going to end up with really flat bread.

Still, I popped it in a proofing bowl and left it for an hour. I peeked at it at the 30 minute mark and it was rising nicely. After about an hour, it had doubled in size as was expected. I popped it out onto a floured board and kneaded it a bit. It had a great bounce, like you'd expect from a would-be great bread.

After rolling out the rounds and letting them rest, I popped then on a hot cast iron skillet and cooked them up. We served them almost immediately with our spicy chicken tikka masala and they were an instant hit. They were crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on this inside. Delicious slightly nutty flavor and just the perfect companion to our meal.

Frankly, I was surprised that I noticed such a big difference in yeasts. I've used a lot of different yeasts and never found one that performed so well and so consistently. Want to give it a try? I'm not sure where else you might find it, but you can find it at shopOrganic (along with some of my other favorite baking ingredients - but more on that another time).

Rapunzel's RiZE organic active dry yeast from shopOrganic

Organic Naan (Indian Flatbread)

I made a great organic chicken tikka masala the other night using a spice packet from Arora Creations at shopOrganic.com. (You can read more about that here). But a great Indian meal isn't complete in my book without naan. Naan is a traditional flatbread usually cooked in a tandor oven, not something most home bakers have. So, I whipped out my cast iron skillet, heated it up and made authentic enough naan to meet the approval of several hard core Indian food fans I invited over for the feast. OK, enough of the introduction, here's the recipe. From start to finish, all about 1.75 hours, 1 hour for letting to dough rise. This receipt makes about 8 large pieces of bread, but you can reduce by 1/2 or double easily. If you have a griddle or a larger surface, it will make the grilling of each individual bread a bit faster.

Setup
2 1/2 cups bread flour (my favorite is Giusto's Organic Unbleached Bakers Choice Flour)
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 package organic baking yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 cup water, room temperature
1/3 nonfat organic yogurt
1 tablespoon organic olive oil

Step 1
In a standing mixer, using the dough hook, mix the yeast, sugar, salt, whole wheat flour and regular flour briefly until blended. Set to low speed, add the water, yogurt and olive oil and mix for about 30 seconds. Mix on medium speed for about 6-8 minutes until the dough is shiny and well formed. You many need to add a bit of flour - look for the dough to clear the sides of the mixing bowl (but not the bottom, it won't form a ball). Scrape down the sides, as needed.

Step 2
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with tightly and let rise until double in bulk, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Step 3
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Use a knife to cut the dough into 8 equal portions. Roll each on the board to create a round ball. Roll into a 4 inch round and let rest 10 minutes. Roll each again into a 6 inch round.

Step 4
About 10 minutes before you're ready to start cooking the flatbread, start heating your skillet or griddle. It should be large and heavy, a cast iron skillet works well. Set heat to medium high heat.

Step 5
Take each round, one by one, hold and gently allow it to stretch out as you lay it in the hot pan. This will make the shape a bit irregular but will allow you to stretch out borders that may be thicker than the center. Allow the dough to heat for about 30 seconds or until you begin to see bubbling coming from underneath. Take a tong or spatula and flip over. Allow the dough to cook about 2 minutes (you can check to make sure it doesn't burn) then flip back over and finish the first side.

Step 6
Remove from griddle and allow to cool on a wire rack. If desired, you can rub with butter or ghee and season with sea salt or garlic, as desired.

Step 7
Wrap bread in a clean towel and serve with your favorite Indian dish. If you want, you can store in the fridge for a few days, re-heat in a 300 oven for about 10 minutes.

If you want to make in advance, you can make the dough and refrigerate for up to two days. Prepare dough through Step 2 then wrap tightly and store.

Naan is a delicious alternative to other kinds of breads and if you're enjoying Indian food at home, this is a great authentic addition to your meal.

The Zen of Baking Bread

There's something amazing about baking bread...not in the counter top bread machine, but in the manual method. Granted, I'm the first one to use the standing mixer to mix the flour, water and yeast, but watching the dough rise, smelling the yeast, forming the dough and watching it rise again is an act of creation that is hard to describe to non-bakers.

Yes, you can get scientific about the process and describe the formation of the gases which cause the dough to rise, etc. etc. (and we'll no doubt discuss that in upcoming posts) - but there's more than just the scientific aspect to bread making. There's the Zen of it.

You can easily overwork the dough but if you don't work it enough, the gluten doesn't get a chance to form the proper bonds. So, you have to learn through method and through 'feel' how to make good bread. How much kneading is enough? How much is too much? Most novice bread makers tend to work their poor dough to death yielding little flour bricks - I know because I used to be among those bakers.

Granted, commercial kitchens, even small retail bakeries may have a very different atmosphere - but to hear any great bread maker describe their bread making process sounds like a combination of awe and respect. Yes, non-bakers might find that lofty description a bit over the top, but serious bakers know exactly what I'm talking about. Baking, especially bread baking, is an act of creation at a very basic level.

And it is in the creative process that we discover both our abilities and our limitations - and realize that we can only control the outcome to a certain extent. Watching bread rise may not be action-packed, but it can quietly inspire you.

Bread is found in just about every culture on earth in one form or another. In this sometimes turbulent world we live in, it's good to know that bread is one thing we all do have in common. I'm all for bonding over bread, how about you?