Baking with Yeast

This April, we're excited to release The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast by Baba Schwartz.

Many cooks would love to utilise the incredible properties of yeast, but lack a guide to inform and inspire them. The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast shows how simple baking with yeast can be, and how irresistible the results.

The book includes recipes for cakes, slices, pastries and buns. You can find two delicious sample recipes below.   


Kindli

This traditional cake comes from northwest Hungary. It is usually baked for festivals and other special occasions.
Makes four rolls, two with poppy seed and two with walnut filling.

15 g fresh or 1 heaped teaspoon dry yeast
50 g sugar
3 tablespoons warm water
140 g margarine
350 g plain flour
1 egg yolk
¼ cup orange juice
pinch of salt
apricot jam

Filling:

Nut Filling
1 egg white
100 g sugar
juice of ½ lemon
rind of ½ lemon
150 g ground walnuts or almonds
¼ Granny Smith apple, grated

Poppy Seed Filling
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
250 g freshly ground poppy seed
grated rind of ½ lemon
egg wash for glazing

Dissolve the yeast and a pinch of the sugar in the warm water and set aside to bubble for 5 minutes.

Work the margarine into the flour with your fingers until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the risen yeast, egg yolk, orange juice, the remaining sugar and salt, mixing by hand to form a dough. Knead, bringing the dough in from the sides of the bowl and pushing it into the middle with your knuckles. The dough should be firm but elastic. If it is too stiff, add a little more orange juice. Continue to knead for 5–6 minutes, then cover and set aside to rest for 30 minutes.

To make the nut filling, beat the egg white and sugar together, add the lemon juice and rind, then mix in the ground nuts and grated apple.

To make the poppy seed filling, put the water and sugar into a small saucepan and heat until the water dissolves. Add the poppy seed, stirring well, and simmer for a few minutes. Remove from the heat and add the lemon rind. If the mixture is too dense, add a little more water.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Divide the risen dough into four equal portions.

In turn, roll each portion out into a rectangle 35 x 45 cm. Spread a thin layer of the apricot jam over the entire surface. Using a metal spatula or knife, spread a 2–3 mm layer of filling over the layer of jam.

Roll up tightly and press the long side and both ends to seal and enclose the prepared filling. When all four portions of dough have been rolled out and filled, transfer them, seam-side down, to a baking sheet that has been lined with baking paper or well oiled.

Brush with beaten egg and set aside to rest for 10–15 minutes. Prick with a fork at 2.5 cm intervals on the diagonal to form a decorative pattern.

Bake for 30–35 minutes or until golden, rotating the baking sheets after 15 minutes to ensure even browning.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before cutting, on the diagonal, into 1.5–2 cm slices.

Jam Cornets (Hamentaschen or Oznei Haman)
 

These are special cakes baked for the Feast of Purim which commemorates Jewish Queen Esther’s saving of her people from destruction by the wicked Haman. In Hebrew, their name means ‘Haman’s ears’. It is traditional to give gifts to the poor and send trays of sweetmeats including these cakes to all one’s friends during the Feast of Purim.

5 g fresh or 1 level teaspoon dry yeast
pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons warm water
150 g margarine
250 g plain flour
100 g caster sugar
2 eggs
rind of ½ lemon

Filling
thick jam such as powidl
beaten egg white for glazing

To make the dough, dissolve the yeast and pinch of sugar in the warm water. Cover and set aside to bubble for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, work the margarine into the flour with your fingers until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the risen yeast, sugar, eggs and lemon rind, mixing well. Knead for 3–4 minutes, then set aside in a warm place to rise for 25–30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and roll it out to a thickness of 3 mm. Cut out circles with a large round cookie cutter. Put a generous spoonful of your preferred filling in the centre of each circle and roll into a cornet shape. Place each cornet on a paper-lined baking sheet.

Brush with the beaten egg white and set aside to rise for 20 minutes. Bake for 25–30 minutes or until golden brown, rotating the baking sheet after 15 minutes to ensure even browning.

The above recipes are just a taster of what you can find in the book. The picture below shows lots of other delicious goodies you can make:

And here's a picture of the results when our very own staff members made some of the recipes (boiled bagels and Kindli):

We can confidently say, if you love baking, you'll love this book! Available now from all good bookstores.

International Women's Day

In celebration of International Women’s Day on Monday 8 March, here are some of our most talented and inspirational female authors. We’re immensely proud to publish their work.

Catherine Deveny
Writer, comedian, serial pest and author of Free to a Good Home, Say When and It’s Not My Fault They Print Them.
www.catherinedeveny.com

Alice Pung
Writer, teacher, lawyer, mentor and author of Unpolished Gem and editor of Growing Up Asian in Australia.
www.alicepung.com

Kate Jennings
Writer, poet, essayist, and author of the newly released Trouble

Ariel Levy
Writer, feminist and author of Female Chauvinist Pigs
www.ariellevy.net

Rebecca Huntley
Writer, social researcher and author of Eating Between the Lines.

Anna Goldsworthy
Writer, pianist and author of Piano Lessons.
www.annagoldsworthy.com
 

Amanda Lohrey
Writer, essayist and author of Vertigo

Ann Blainey
Writer, historian and author of I am Melba.

Tanya Levin
Writer, social worker and author of People in Glass Houses.

Maude Barlow
Writer, activist and author of Blue Covenant.

Dorothy Porter
Poet, lyricist, librettist and author of The Bee Hut.

Of course, this is just a sample of some of our wonderful female authors, not an exhaustive list. Visit our website to discover more.

Guest Post: Author AJ Mackinnon on travel

I’m not sure I’ve worked out this whole travel thing actually. In my younger travelling days, I always chose to do things the good old-fashioned proper way. That is, I’d set myself the task of getting from one end of the world to the other without resorting to air-travel, or of seeing how far I could get a dilapidated wooden dinghy, pretending it was the Golden Hind or something similar. Despite the fact that this approach has led to a couple of books and an undeserved status of minor eccentric and explorer, I’ve never been really convinced that this was actually a good way to travel.

“I went through Laos,” I’d explain to some interested chap in a bar.
“Ah, Laos! Now there’s a marvellous country for you,” the chap would enthuse. “How about the Plain of Jars, eh? Astonishing, eh? Good for you!”
Tentatively I would admit that I hadn’t actually visited the Plain of Jars and there would be a stunned silence.
“But surely… I mean… the Plain of Jars? Are you SURE it was Laos you went through?”
And I would slowly gather that the whole point of visiting Laos in the first place is solely to see the Plain of Jars. Why else would you go? How could you have missed them?
In vain would I explain that they weren’t actually on my route, that if one drew a straight line from Vientiane on the Thai border to Mengla on the Chinese border, then the Plain of Jars were a bit off to one side of that line and so therefore not something I had time to swerve aside for, being too busy at the time finding out which sampan, train or explosives-truck was heading north in the next hour.

Conversations like these have left me feeling that for all the adventurous potential of my self-imposed travel rules, it’s not actually a very good way of seeing all that a country has to offer. It’s a bit like someone arriving in Port Adelaide, hopping on the first train to Alice, catching a Greyhound coach to Darwin and utterly failing to see the Flinders Ranges, Uluru or Kings Canyon on the way. Surely you took in the Barossa Valley? Nup. Katherine Gorge? Nup.
Darwin Mall?
Nup.
Straight to the shipping terminal and a tanker out of there… but it seems a nice enough place, Australia. Did I miss much?

So as I say, I’ve never been entirely confident about choosing to travel the hard way and thus devoting ninety percent of my time to arguments with truck-drivers. But now, I’ve just had the luxury of travelling for three months on Long Service Leave, of travelling as the rest of the world do – a cruise up the Norwegian fjords, a driving-tour down the entire west coast of the United States, a there-and-back-again expedition to Morocco, an idle plane-hopping ramble through Switzerland, Spain and Holland and much, much more – and I am equally doubtful about this type of travelling as well.

Don’t get me wrong. And please don’t think that I’m pretty bloody difficult to satisfy. The three months of travelling were packed with beauty, friendships old and new, extraordinary sights and old familiar favourites. But I have also felt such a fraud. I hated being asked by a chance-met stranger where I was off to next, knowing that the reply was something bland and all too easy – something along the lines of having a flight booked that afternoon from Marrakech to Oslo, or a hire-car waiting at Gatwick, or that I thought I might swing by Maine before jetting to London. I so wanted to be able to look into the distance with a steely look in my eye and mutter between pursed lips that I was due to meet a camel-salesman here an hour ago to organise the next leg down through Mali and that if he didn’t show up soon, it would have to be the old mule-train after all.

So I remain confused. Are faraway places and foreign lands to be dipped into at will, no more obstinate than a tray of milk-chocolates, as we hover over the Taj Mahals and the hazelnut swirls, dive in and sample, and then out again Business Class to the next succulent and foil-wrapped delight? Should the In-Flight magazine replace the compass and dodgy roadmap as our guide to exploring the world? Or should we re-kindle the romance of travel again by eschewing the conveniences of the world.

Romance? What a foolishly inappropriate word. The toughness of travel, the incorrigibility of travel, the sweaty-shirted, camel-dunged, loose-bowelled exasperation of travel, is more accurate perhaps. But then again, oh the wonders. The sudden hoopoe flying to hide in an orange tree against a wall. The haze and the seabirds shrouding the loom of the Rock of Gibraltar seen over the stern of a churning ferry. The darkening moors and the first fine spatter of rain and still four miles to walk before any chance of a fire and a beer or two with an old friend and much to talk about.
 
So hey ho, what to do? And it must be admitted that even in the tamest travel there is a feeling of intrepid resolve. Air travel might have become easier but there will always still be the immigration official who looks at your passport thirty seconds more than is absolutely necessary and has one wondering if someone has scribbled ‘Viva la Revolucion!’ across the title page while one’s back was turned. And there are still items on foreign menus that baffle and intimidate and result in an unexpected dose of fish-head soup. And if all else fails, one can thoroughly rely on New Yorkers to be breathtakingly rude at the drop of a hat and leave one feeling bristlingly indignant and alive for the next three days.

So long live travel, however it’s done - and cheers to the big wide world.
_______________

AJ Mackinnon is the author of The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow. His new book The Well at the World's End will be published in July 2010.

Interview with Robert Milliken, author of Mother of Rock

Robert Milliken is the author of Mother of Rock: The Lillian Roxon Story. Mother of Rock is the riveting true story of trailblazing Australian rock journalist Lillian Roxon.

Who was Lillian Roxon?

Lillian Roxon was a brilliant Australian journalist who took New York by storm in the 1960s and early 1970s. Her book Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia (1969) was the world’s first encyclopedia of rock music. It still stands as an unparalleled chronicle of the classic names in music and counterculture from that turbulent era. Lillian became a Dorothy Parker figure at Max’s Kansas City, the New York bar and nightclub where the stars of that time gathered. In New York today, she is still recalled as “the mother of rock and roll journalism”.

What drew you to writing about Lillian Roxon?

As a student in Australia, I was a fan of Lillian’s writing about America from New York (she was then a correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald). Whatever the subject – flower children, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Richard Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign – she brought it to life with a style that sprang from the page and bucked the rigid writing conventions back then by often putting herself in the story. Then she died tragically from an asthma attack in 1973, aged 41. Years later, I discovered Lillian’s family had lodged her papers with the Mitchell Library in Sydney. She was one of the last great letter writers. Her papers included her correspondence with a who’s who of art and culture in Australia and New York. With many of those figures still available to be interviewed, I decided there was a story to be told about a writer who, in many ways, defined an era.

Why is Lillian such an important Australian identity?

Lillian was one of the great Australian trailblazers. She came to Australia as a child with her Jewish family just before the second world war to escape Hitler and Mussolini. She was a rebellious teenager during the war years in Brisbane, then awash with American servicemen. In Sydney, she was a star figure in the Push, the group of bohemians who questioned the social and sexual mores of 1950s Australia. Donald Horne discovered her as a journalist. She started her working life on Weekend, a lively tabloid he edited for Sir Frank Packer. Lillian was his favourite writer. When she left for America in 1959 – stopping in Hawaii on the way to interview Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker – he begged her to stay, then offered her all sorts of job inducements to come back, to no avail. And in America, Lillian held on proudly to her Australian identity and accent. Here again, she defied convention: most Australians who moved to America then soon became de facto Americans. She was a great champion of Australian writers, artists and musicians who needed help in New York. On the Australian Ballet’s first big tour of America in 1971, she threw a party for the company at Max’s Kansas City. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were among her 250 guests.

Thirty-seven years after her death, Lillian’s story seems to keep growing in stature. A documentary, which my book inspired, is due to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July, before screening on SBS. It’s called Mother of Rock: the Life and Times of Lillian Roxon, produced by Robert de Young and directed by Paul Clarke.

And 40 years after the publication of the Rock Encyclopedia, some of the most influential figures in the music business in America still hail its unique contribution. Danny Goldberg, a former music journalist who knew Lillian (he covered the 1969 Woodstock festival for Billboard), and later record company President (Atlantic, Warner Brothers and Mercury), says Lillian had an elevated notion of rock and roll as culture that was ahead of its time. Goldberg, who now owns and operates Gold Village Entertainment, an artist management company, told me:

“Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia set the tone for writing about rock and roll for years, with ripple effects that endure to this day. Previously, there were two extremes: breathless fan magazine fluff, and often ponderous intellectual over-think. Lillian was able to bridge the gap and speak in the language of the millions of fans of rock and roll who emerged after the late 1960s. She understood brilliant and sexy were not contradictions, but went together in the best of rock and roll. She was able to express the perspectives of both a teenager and an adult in the same passage, uniquely reflecting the mixture of emotions that existed in rock music, in its fans and in herself.”

Of all the famous stories and anecdotes about Lillian, which is your favourite?

David Malouf told me the best one. He was a shy 18 year-old student from Brisbane visiting Sydney in 1953. Zell Rabin, a mutual friend (another brilliant young journalist, and Lillian’s great love) told David to look Lillian up. He went to her flat in Jamison Street, in the centre of Sydney, where Lillian was holding court with her Push crowd. She handed the nervous young man a book called Sexual Anomalies and Perversions by Magnus Hirschfeld, a 19th century German pioneer sexologist. Then she instructed him: “Read this book and put bits of paper in the places that excite you. We want to know everything about you.” It was a classic case of Lillian, the older, independent, fearless woman, setting out to shock. In later years, David Malouf and Lillian remained great friends.

Can you tell us a little bit about Lillian’s feud with Germaine Greer and her friendship with Linda Eastman (who later became Linda McCartney)?

Germaine was not yet a literary star when she visited New York for the first time in 1968. Mutual Push friends had put her in touch with Lillian, with whom she’d hoped to stay. But Lillian’s tiny Manhattan apartment was swamped with papers, as she rushed to meet her deadline on the Rock Encyclopedia. So she sent Germaine to the Broadway Central, which Germaine years later described to me as “a welfare hotel where people screamed and ran up and down stairs all night”. Germaine was not pleased. Lillian also introduced Germaine to the crowd at Max’s Kansas City. They had a terrible verbal fight there one night, and didn’t speak for a year. Although this was the start of women’s liberation, I think these two strong, brilliant, ambitious Australian women – both seeking to make their marks on the world – in some ways were rivals. And, let’s face it, Lillian had already lived the life of a liberated woman long before Germaine wrote the women’s lib bible, The Female Eunuch, two years after Lillian’s Rock Encyclopedia came out. Germaine nonetheless dedicated her book to Lillian. It was a backhanded dedication, for which Lillian never forgave her.

Lillian met Linda Eastman, then an aspiring photographer, in early 1966 when they were both discovering the New York rock scene. Lillian was a good 10 years older than Linda. She saw in her a talent worth nurturing in an industry dominated by men. The two women formed a close professional alliance with Danny Fields, a rock manager who also held considerable clout in the Max’s Kansas City scene. Lillian became Linda’s confidante, especially after Linda and Paul McCartney got together following their meeting at a Beatles press conference. When Linda married Paul, at the height of “Beatlemania”, she cut off contact with Lillian and her other New York rock friends. Lillian was heartbroken and furious, in equal measure. She got her revenge by writing an unflattering piece about the McCartneys (especially Paul) in her weekly column in the New York Sunday News, read by millions. The two women never met again before Lillian died in 1973.

Linda McCartney agreed to talk to me for the book 25 years later. Just before I arrived in London for the interview, the McCartneys’ office told me they’d had to re-schedule and were going away. I didn’t realise how ill from cancer Linda herself was at the time. She died before a later interview was possible. Her break with Lillian was tragic. I think she regretted it in her later years.

What is your favourite piece of writing by Lillian?

There are two, both in the Appendix of Mother of Rock. The first is an essay called “Will Success Spoil Lillian Roxon?” Lillian wrote it in 1970 for Quadrant, not then the archly conservative journal it is now. It’s a wonderful piece, in which she describes how she came to write the Rock Encyclopedia, but is more an incomparable snapshot of her New York world in the late 1960s.

The second favourite is “The Other Germaine Greer: A Manicured Hand on the Zipper”, from 1971, in Crawdaddy, the first magazine in America devoted to rock and roll criticism. It’s a racy, no-holds-barred take on Germaine and, I suspect, Lillian’s last word in their feud.

For further information on Mother of Rock: The Lillian Roxon Story by Robert Milliken, please visit the Black Inc. website.

Interview with Catherine Deveny

Catherine Deveny's latest book Free to a Good Home has just been released. The book collects the best of her television and opinion columns from the Age in 2009.

For readers who don’t know you, how would you describe yourself and what you do?

I am a serial pest and professional pain in the arse. I swing between stand up and sermon, cultural therapist to cultural terrorist. I come from a stand up background and write columns, do radio, knock up books, talk rubbish and swan round Melbourne flirting and glassing people. Mostly I feel like the little girl saying “The Emperor’s not wearing clothes.” Then flashing my undies.

I’m dyslexic, an atheist (no jokes about the dyslexic atheist wondering if there really was a dog, heard them all. Although I did find out I was dyslexic when I turned up to a toga party dressed as a goat) and the mother of three boys 6, 8 and 11. That’s their ages not their names. Living in an all male household does make me want to get a tee-shirt printed that just says WHERE HAVE YOU LOOKED?

What were some of your most controversial columns this year?

Chadstone (abattoir of souls). Two And A Half Men (the drink the date-rape drug is slipped into). Hey Hey It’s Saturday (it’s about time someone exhumed and resuscitated the festering corpse of Hey Hey. Something had to be done about the staggering deficit of blokey, cobbled up, camp-concert style content on television and the shortage of middle-aged white men with relevance deprivation on our screens. Daryl Somers is the host. Host as in organism that is invaded by a virus on which parasites thrive.) Marriage (Not married. Obviously because I haven’t found the right owner. Or the right dress.)

Which columns did you most enjoy writing this year and why?

The “You know you’re from Melbourne if…” columns. (Lanes full of people sitting on milk crates eating breakfast at 3pm seems normal. You think a massage with a happy ending means when you’re finished they give you a café latte and a Readings voucher. You’ve read The Slap and hate every character in it. But they remind you of your friends. And you would have slapped the kid too. When holding a dinner party, you know the point is to serve food no one has ever heard of, from a country people didn't know existed, bought from a little shop they'll never be able to find. The fact there’s a Chardonnay Crescent and a Champagne Road in Chirnside Park reinforces your suspicion Kath and Kim is a documentary. Your wife grows the hair under her arms but waxes her growler. Partner. Whatever. You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound. You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.)

Where do your ideas come from?

Probably from not working in an office and being incredibly socially promiscuous and a huge sticky beak. The best ideas I get are when I am hanging out with my kids, drunk, avoiding work or all of the above. See AUSTRALIA’S MOST BADLY BEHAVED MOTHERS Gallery of Shame for more details.

What’s the best show on TV right now?

Seriously good? The Wire, Nurse Jackie, Rockwiz or anything on GO! Seriously bad? Rock Of Love, Deal Or No Deal, anything on Channel Nine involving Sam Newman, Eddie McGuire or Livinia Nixon. Or anything with the words ‘Gone Wild’ on the end of the title.

If you had the power to cancel any show on TV right now, which one would you cancel?

What do you mean, “if I had the power?” Big Brother? Axed. Hey Hey? Boned. Macleod’s Daughters? Gone. One call from me baby, that’s all it takes. Or a word into Harry Connick Jr’s ear….

What’s the best thing about being Catherine Deveny?

The other day I did an interview and the first question is “Why are you such a bitch?” I wet my pants laughing! Because people find my writing voice is so noisy, bossy and rude people expect me to be an arsehole. So they are surprised that I’m friendly, aggressively helpful and inappropriately affectionate on first meetings but it does give me a licence to get away with murder at times. The best thing? Not scared of anything. Incredibly happy. I feel I have escaped from social convention and been released back into the wild.

Who should receive your book for Christmas this year?

Who will or who should? Who will is latte swilling lefties, house husbands, Crikey subscribers, Monthly readers, people who vote Green, old trade unionists, 16 year olds whose parents want them ‘fighting the good fight’, firebrands, blue stockings, metrosexuals and hippies who ride bikes with baby seats on the back.

Who should? Uptight white honkies, Christians, middle-aged middle-class white men suffering relevance deprivation, private school fans, women who change their name when they get married, shopping tour trolls and climate change skeptics. Why? To watch them recoil when they rip the wrapping paper off hoping to receive a John Howard biography, a new bible or something from Chadstone.

What books will you be reading this Christmas?

Anything with a centerfold of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or the Virgin Mary in it. That’s right. You heard. I’ll be chilling out over the festive season writing my one woman show for the 2010 atheist conference and the Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival; God Is Bullshit. That’s The Good News.