The loaf is stunning to look at-perfect for a potluck centerpiece-but also unfussy to divvy up. “It’s just so fun to peel one off and just shove it in your mouth or smear some jam on it.” And they bake and they stick together and then the glaze right over it while it’s still hot, it kind of trickles down between the layers,” Schiff says. “With the pull-apart, you cut these squares of dough and then line them up like a deck of cards. The sticky honey glaze that seeps through the crevices livens up the loaf more, balancing out the sourdough. After testing and retesting the recipe, it received the stamp of approval from her friend’s three-year-old daughter, who peeled layer after layer of the buttery enriched dough back, methodically working her way through the loaf. “It’s not on the menu but it’s just my little secret,” Schiff grins.īut one of the most special recipes Schiff developed for her cookbook is a honey-glazed pull-apart bread. It has an earthy quality that goes so well with a lot of fruits.”Įven her chocolate cake-the very same one I obsessively consumed during my evening at Gage & Tollner-has sourdough in it. “ offers this sort of tanginess or savory undertone that goes really well with salt and caramel and chocolate. “I’ll always have a salty element or a savory element because I think it makes things a little more compelling and sort of mouth-watering-it makes you want to go back for more,” Schiff explains. And like a mystical baking fairy of her Fort Greene brownstone, she was distributing her treats to neighbors.įor many, the idea of sourdough in sweets might seem unappealing, but Schiff is a magician with flavors, striking the perfect balance between tang and sugar. Instead, she was making sweet rolls with sourdough, cakes, pull-apart breads, cookies-anything she could dream up that still used the live ingredient but wasn’t another loaf of bread. The recipes that make up her upcoming cookbook, The Sweet Side of Sourdough, began coming together-despite the fact that Schiff wasn’t intentionally trying to write a recipe book. Like the worst that happens is it’s not delicious-and then you just don’t make it again or you learn from it.” “One of the things I love about being a chef is just the creativity the R&D process,” Schiff says. In her own words, that’s when she “overdosed on bread” and began turning her attention to new recipes. She was making loaf after loaf of bread, sharing the starter with those who inquired and also sought the joy of baking. Schiff went full steam ahead with the sourdough. That, and she wanted to keep the sourdough starter from Gage & Tollner alive for whenever the world would resume once more. It was only when Schiff realized she found calm while she was baking, as her hands were covered in flour, that she devoted herself to the craft at home. There were tears, lots of sleeping, phone calls to her mom, and doom scrolling. So when the pandemic first struck New York City, delaying Gage & Tollner’s grand re-opening once more, Schiff wasn’t exactly sure what to do. If I go to dinner at their house, I always bring something. “I love my community and the strangers at Gage & Tollner, I love my friends, I love my family. “I nurture everybody through food and baking-that’s how I take care of my friends and family, like a love language,” she explains. Although everything was delicious, it was her signature coconut lime cake, in tandem with a salty caramel chocolate cake, that left me speechless. During a balmy summer evening, I visited the newly reopened Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn-a 125-year-old restaurant where Schiff is the pastry chef. These are understood.Caroline Schiff changed my life, unbeknownst to her. From Hoppin' John to chicken and dumplings, these Southern food recipes deserve to be kept on the family table for generations to come.Disclaimer: For sanity's sake, we left out staples like buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, pimiento cheese, squash casserole, and potlikker greens. In almost every great memory we Southerners hold close, food was there. Even in the heart of Texas, This Mama and That Mama might live next door to each other, but they still argue over whether pepper-cream or red-eye gravy goes over it. Really, Southern cooking is as diverse as those who cook it.Take the chicken-fried steak, for example. Though there are some Southern dishes that every Georgian, Mississippian, and Tennessean alike should know, we like to give certain regions their "thing," whether it be gumbo to Louisiana or chicken-fried steak to Texas. They say that New Orleanians come out of the womb knowing how to make red beans and rice same goes for Kentuckians with burgoo.
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