Sub Rosa Bakery

Style: Bakery

My Rating: 5/5 stars

Website: http://www.subrosabakery.com/

Likes: Rustic feel, sturdy wooden boards and stoneware pottery used to plate items, best coffee I have ever had, wood fired oven

Dislikes: Someone stole the tips out of the jar when we were there

There is nothing better than starting a day off having breakfast with friends. When the breakfast turns out to be a wood fired pastry, the best gets an extreme upgrade.

Two of my fellow vacationing teacher friends gladly helped me cross this excursion off of my bucket list for this summer. We met at Sub Rosa Bakery for brunch, and were charmed by the calming rustic environment and earnest smell of baking bread floating around us.

I ordered the Manchego and Fig Croissant, a sweet treat with savory undertones. Although the pastry had a burnt looking quality to it, the soft and flaky croissant had a buttery taste that I haven’t had since I visited bakeries in New York. The taste is what matters to me.  In addition, I had an amazing cup of dark roasted coffee to compliment my breakfast. They have their own signature Sub Rosa blend, created by Lamplighter coffee down the street, which had nutty and chocolate undertones.

My friends also tried the Chilled Turnip and Dill Soup. The smooth soup had a clean finish with a soft dill taste, which was not overpowering. It was served in these adorable stoneware bowls on top of bread boards.

I was so impressed with our experience that I took two different pastries home with me under the assumption that I would give them to my husband who had been at work. They managed to stay intact until his arrival, but I definitely took a few bites once my husband began his snack. One was a Salami and Gruyere Croissant, savory with the addicting meat and cheese combination.  The other was the Pain au Chbuckocolat, filled with a deep and bitter chocolate. 

This was a most successful summer bucket list excursion, and I look forward to returning to this bakery soon. 

Semolina Bread

Growing up Long Island, New York, we always had a grocery store that baked semolina bread. You may ask me, Sara, what is semolina bread? Well, semolina is a type of flour made from hard wheat that is used by Italians to make pasta. In Italy, they make semolina bread in addition to pasta, which makes a distinct light-colored chewy bread.  My personal favorite attribute of semolina bread is that it sports sesame seeds adorned on its crust!

Now that I live in Virginia, it is rather difficult to find semolina bread, let alone semolina flour. I have a fabulous book with a ton of bread recipes in it, The Illustrated Step By Step to Baking, which had a recipe for it. Oh how I wished I could find semolina flour.

Then one day, I took a trip with a colleague of mine up into the Appalachian Mountains for the Green Valley Book Fair. On our way back, we stopped at an Amish grocery store called Yoder’s. Amongst the really cool things they had at Yoder’s was SEMOLINA FLOUR. I felt as though I struck a gold mine.

I loved making this bread because it was rather easy. I could make it using the stand up mixer, and it worked out marvelous. This means no kneading!

For non-New Yorkers who ever cross paths with Semolina, I suggest pairing it with pasta or making bruschetta with it. Or, my favorite, just lather on the butter and bite!

Semolina Bread Recipe

This recipe yields 1 boule

Ingredients

For the Starter

¼ tsp dried yeast

½ cup fine semolina, or semolina flour

Vegetable oil for greasing

For the Dough

1 tsp dried yeast

2 cups fine semolina, or semolina flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tsp fine salt

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 egg, beaten for glazing

Method

1. To make the starter, dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup warm water. Add the liquid to the semolina and stir until you have a loose, sloppy dough. Place the dough in a large bowl with lots of room for it to expand. Let it sit in a warm place for about 12 hours, or overnight.
   
2. After the starter has been fully created and let rest, make the dough by dissolving the yeast in ¾ cup of water. Put the risen starter, flour, and salt into a large bowl, or the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the liquid yeast mixture.
3.  Stir the ingredients together. If using a mixer, attach the bread hook and mix on medium speed for 5 -7 minutes (or until it comes together fully and makes a “thwaping” sound). Or, you could knead by hand for about 10 minutes. The finished dough should be smooth and elastic.
4. Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 ½ hours, or until doubled in size.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gently knock it back. Shape into your desire shape, place on a large baking sheet, and wrap with a clean kitchen towel. Let it rise until doubled in size, about 1 more hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Brush the bread with beaten egg and scatter the sesame seeds on top (I didn’t measure the seeds. Add however much you like).
8. Bake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until it is well risen and a light golden brown. Let it cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before serving.
   

Cheesy Garlic Butter Biscuits

Pinterest is riddled with recipes for a specific type of biscuit. Some refer to it as Red Lobster knock offs, or Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Others call them Cheesy Garlic Biscuits, or others have called them Better Than ___ Biscuits. Regardless of what they are called, they all end up with a little biscuit that is made with cheese and brushed with garlic butter goodness. Tonight I conquered this heavenly biscuits, both by baking them, and by eating more than I originally planned. 

The neatest thing about these biscuits was that they were so quick. Lately I have been so focused on baking breads and rolls that require yeast. There is kneading involved, and time is set aside for rising. If the temperature is not perfect, the dough will not rise. Basically, rolls and breads have the potential to be a huge pain. There were just three steps with these little bits of baked heaven:

1. Mix the ingredients together.
2. Form little balls and bake them.
3. Brush the biscuits with butter.

I can handle this.

When I bit into the first one as it was right out of the oven, the butter oozed from the bread and covered my mouth. As I chewed, the cheesy bread easily broke apart because it was so soft and tender. With each bite, I was little bit closer to gaining a full pound of buttery bread weight, but the taste was so indulgent that I just did not care. I am going to work out a lot tomorrow… and the next day… and probably a few after that, too.

I looked at a bunch of different recipes for these. I used my favorite aspects of one from Salt & Tumeric Blog, Cheesy Garlic Biscuits. I made a few changes, however. I had to add a few splashes of milk when I was mixing the dough so that the cheese would adhere to the flour. I also added more butter and took out and extra baking step at the end. I like my biscuits to be soft and buttery. However, if you are a crunchy bread fan, other recipes say that you can bake these in the oven for up to ten minutes more after the biscuits have been buttered. 

Recipe below yields 12 biscuits.

Ingredients

1 pack buttermilk biscuit mix (I used 1 ½ cups of Southern Living Complete Biscuit Mix, Formula L)
1 ½ cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup milk (plus more splashes if necessary)
3 tbsp. butter
2 tsp. oregano 
3/4 tsp. garlic salt

Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray cooking sheet with non-stick spray or use a silicone baking sheet.

2. Put biscuit mix, cheese and milk in a bowl and mix well to form a sticky dough.

3. Using spoon, drop lumps of dough onto cookie sheets 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes. 

4. In a bowl, melt butter and mix with oregano and garlic salt.

5. When the timer goes off, take them out and brush with butter mixture.

6. Serve immediately, and eat the most as you can because they will not be around long. 

Irish Soda Scones

Growing up in New York, I became enamored with St. Patrick’s Day. All of the parades, bagpipes, and Irish tap dancing was so exciting. As I got older, the Guinness and Bailey’s made this even more exciting. The one food that was always present through these memories was Irish Soda Bread.

This year was depressing in terms of shamrocks and leprechauns because I did not do anything for St. Patrick’s Day. I actually spent it at the Google Apps Teacher Conference in Charlottesville, VA and even forgot to wear green! I am sure my Great Grandmother Lillian from Limerick would be very disappointed in me.

This past weekend, I decided to make up for my missed holiday and I made some Irish Soda Scones. These are like the soda bread, except that they are denser and are in scone shapes. I also like that they are in six pieces, which saves me from eating half of the bead in one sitting. 

I do not make traditional Irish Soda Bread. I add much more sugar to make them sweeter. Traditional American Irish Soda Bread also calls for raisins and caraway seeds. I definitely add raisins. I used golden ones in this batch of scones simply because it was what I had. I used fennel seeds instead of caraway. They deliver a sweet and subtle licorice taste and are not as harsh.

I like to eat these scones for breakfast, cut in half with some butter and honey. They are also fabulous with a cup of coffee, and even better with Earl Grey tea.

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk
¼ cup raisins
1 tsp fennel

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and make sure a rack is in the center of the oven. 

2. Line a backing sheet with a silicone pad or parchment paper.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

4. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and slowly add the buttermilk, blending the flour using a circular motion and a wooden spoon. Feel free to add a splash more of buttermilk if it is needed for the crumbs to draw together. The dough should be moist, soft, and sticky.

5. Place the dough onto a floured surface and knead the dough gently into an 8 inch round.

6. Cut the circle lengthwise three times, creating six triangular pieces. 

7. Place the scones on the baking sheet and brush the tops with a little extra buttermilk and dust with flour.

8. Bake the scones for about 20 minutes. Test the scones by tapping the bottom because it should sound hollow. 

This recipe makes 6 large scones. 

Restaurant Style Artisan Bread

Those of you who follow recipes on Pinterest have most likely run into that recipe that you can make this fabulous artisan bread with just five ingredients. They always say that it is so easy that anyone could do it and that you don't have to knead it. They describe this bread as being hard and crusty on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. 

Let's just say I was so skeptical that this bread was all that because it sounds like an cheesy infomercial. I was always expecting the Sham-WOW! guy to come up on the website in a glittery pop up. Therefore, I really wanted to prove it wrong and say to myself that these people didn't know what they were talking about.

They did know what they were talking about because this bread was everything that they said it was. Who knew that things on the internet could actually be true?

The link to the bread that I made is located here at Frugal Living. Our bread came out crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. It was easy to make because I did not have to knead it. It tasted awesome.

One thing I was skeptical about was that it might not come out of the dutch oven because it wasn't greased. However, you place the dough in a scalding hot pot which sears the dough, thus making it crunchy too.

I suggest that if you like to make bread, or even if you have never made it and just want to, you should try it. This was awesome. 

Anadama Cornbread

From the amazing Christmas gift of last year, Brad and I have wanted to use a recipe to make an Anadama Cornbread. Now, you may ask, what is so special about this cornbread? Isn't it it just a bunch cornmeal, milk, sugar, and egg baked in a skillet? Not this special and delectable treat. Anadama is not a southern version cornbread. There is actually more flour than cornmeal. It's a 5:1 ratio! 

The finished Anadama Cornbread just out of the oven!

It is so different because it originates in New England. It is more of a Thanksgiving harvest bread as opposed to something tasty dipped in chili. It has a reasonable amount of molasses in the dough and no sugar. It is really good when it is served with pumpkin butter. I think that this fall we are going to make our own versions and add in a few awesome things... like pumpkin pie spice!

I love the color of this bread!

The trickiest part about making this bread, is that it does not want to rise well. We had to coax it. We turned the heat on to 80 degrees (which is difficult to handle when it is summer) and placed the bowl over the vent. We leave it in a bowl to rise for 2 hours. Then, we knocked it back, shaped it, and let it rise for ANOTHER TWO HOURS. What a pain.

At the beginning of the first two hour rising process

.... and after two hours, that's all we got!

The good news is that it was worth the four hours of rising and the ten minutes of constant kneading. If you ever had a chance for some, get a nice warm slice, spread with pumpkin butter and drink a hot cup of coffee.

A well-deserved dessert!