Bones! Yummy, chewy, squishy cinnamony bready bones ...

With Halloween rapidly approaching, I decided to do a theme recipe. At first I considered something in black and orange. Or spider-shaped. Or ghost-like.

But, no, I decided to make bones. It's a simple idea. Make dough, tie ends in a knot, and you've got bones. They look sort of like the rawhides they sell for dogs.

That wasn't enough. I wanted some marrow in my bones. Oh, yeah, that's a lot more fun, isn't it? Who doesn't like a little surprise inside their bones, right?

I've been a little enamored with cane sugar lately, so that's what I used here. Plain old white sugar would be fine. If you don't happen to have almond flour around, chop or grind any nuts you like until you have a crumbly dry finely chopped product. Don't grind all the way until you have a paste, though.

Them Bones

2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 cups (9 ounces) all purpose flour
4 tablespoons cane sugar, divided
3/4 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup almond flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Combine the yeast, flour, and 3 tablespoons of sugar, and water in the bowl of your stand mixer. Knead with the dough hook until the dough becomes elastic.

Add the salt and butter and continue kneading until both are incorporated and you have a smooth, soft, elastic dough.

Cover with plastic wrap and set aside until doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine the almond flour, the remaining tablespoon of sugar, and the cinnamon. Stir to combine. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough. For ease of handling divide it in half. Roll half of the dough into a rectangle about 12 x 10 inches. Cut the dough into 4 strips, 3 inches wide by 10 inches long. Do the same with the second piece of dough.

Distribute the almond mixture lengthwise down the center of each strip of dough, stopping just short of the ends. Fold the dough over the almond mixture and seal the seam and the ends so you have a rope about 10 inches long.

Pick the rope up and squeeze it from one end to the other so the dough is firmly around the filling with no big air bubbles, and it's somewhat evenly thick from end to end. This will probably result in the rope lengthening a bit, to about 12 inches long. That's fine.

Tie a knot in each end of the rope and place the ropes on the prepared baking sheets. In theory they would all fit on one sheet, but you don't want them touching during the baking, so use a second sheet to give them plenty of space.

Cover the sheets with plastic wrap and set aside to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

Remove the plastic wrap and bake at 325 until the bones are a light golden brown, about 25 minutes.

Remove the bones from the baking sheet and let cool on a rack.

This has been submitting to Yeastspotting. If you like bread, check out their roundups every Friday. 

Come join the fun at the My Baking Addiction and GoodLife Eats Holiday Recipe Swap sponsored by Red Star Yeast.

Ruhlman's Twenty: French Onion Soup

I love it when one of my preconceived notions gets ground into dust. Just about every French onion soup I've ever eaten has been made with beef stock. Okay, some of the less-good ones started with bouillon cubes or canned stock. But it seems like there's always beef involved.

Okay, perhaps chicken. But that always seems wrong.

When I got Michael Ruhlman's book Ruhlman's Twenty, I was shocked to see that his French onion soup didn't start with beef stock. Not even chicken. Nope, only onions.

Not that long ago, I had no idea who Michael Ruhlman was. Later, I knew him as someone that other people talked about. Then I found out that he really knows what he's talking about. He's not a chef that's all flash and no substance.

So when he said that "traditional" French onion soup didn't start with beef stock, I didn't slam the book shut and say that he didn't know what he was talking about. Instead, I took the challenge and made the soup.

This isn't a quick recipe. The onions cook for a looooong time. But that's great on a chilly fall day when you want to warm the kitchen. Most of that onion-cooking time is hands-off while the liquid cooks away. At the beginning and end of cooking, you need to pay more attention to it, though.

The onions can be cooked ahead of time, and the soup can be finished very quickly on another day, if you prefer.

This looks like a lot of onions when you start, but they cook down to very little. When I started, my 5 1/2 quart Dutch oven was overfilled. When the onions were done cooking, there was less than a pint of onions left.


French Onion Soup
Adapted from Ruhlman's Twenty by Michael Ruhlman

1 tablespoon butter
7 or 8 large Spanish onions (7 to 8 pounds) thinly sliced
2 teaspoons kosher salt (more, to taste)
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
6-12 slices of baguette or similar bread
1/3 cup sherry
Red or white wine vinegar (optional)
Red wine (optional)

1/2 to 3/4 pound Gruyere or Emmenthaler cheese, grated

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the sliced onion, sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt, and cover the pot. Cook on medium heat until the onions have heated through and have started to steam.

Uncover the pot, turn the heat to low, and continue cooking until the onions have released their water, the water has evaporated and the onions are an amber brown color. Stir as needed to keep the onions from sticking.

In the middle of the cooking process, when the onions are swimming in liquid, you don't need much stirring. Once the liquid has disappeared and they are beginning to turn brown, you'll need to watch them carefully. This process can take 5 hours or more if you cook at a very low temperature. Add a few generous grinds of pepper.

Once the onions have cooked down, add 6 cups of water and raise the heat to high and bring the soup to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low.

Add the sherry and taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper, as needed.

If the soup is too sweet, add a little vinegar to balance it. If you want more depth of flavor, add a splash of red wine as well.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 degrees and place the bread slices in the oven to dry completely. You can do this ahead of time and leave the bread in the oven - it shouldn't burn at this low temperature.

To serve, ladle the soup into small oven-safe bowls. Top with one or two slices of bread, as needed, to cover the soup. Cover the bread with grated cheese.

Put the bowls under the broiler to melt the cheese and brown it a bit. Serve immediately.

Cinnamon-Spice and Everything Nice

When I peeked into my Fooducopia basket of "what to use next" and saw the bottle of cinnamon from Keres Spices, my first though was "Cinnamon Rolls!!!" That was quickly followed by "Apple PIE!!!" and then "Cinnamon Bread.!.!.!.!"

And then I took a breath and realized that all of those were way too ... expected. When I start with an ingredient that I want to feature in a recipe I'm creating, I like to find more interesting - and possibly unexpected - uses.

Sure, I could have made a nectarine pie with cinnamon, or I could have made apple-cinnamon sweet rolls, but I decided to skip the sweet and go savory instead. Yes, savory. Cinnamon is one of those spices that works in both sweet and savory dishes. Trust me.

And while we're talking about cinnamon, did you know there are two completely different spices sold as cinnamon? One is actually cassia, and then there's true cinnamon. Most bottles of cinnamon don't specify. Which is fine. Unless you're a spice nut, you can use them interchangeably, anyway. Just make sure you cinnamon (like any spice) is fresh. If it smells like vaguely cinnamony sawdust, it's time for a new bottle.

This recipe starts with a spice mix and I used it to cook some pork ... but this mix can be used on other things as well. Try a sprinkle on squash when you roast it!

Spiced Pork

1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 tablespoon sugar
2 pork chops
Flour, for dredging
Olive oil, for cooking

Combine the salt, allspice, cinnamon, chili powder, and sugar in a small bowl.

About 1/2 hour before you want to cook, take the pork out of the refrigerator and let it rest at room temperature.

Coat the pork chops generously with the spice mixture. Let them sit for a few minutes, and you'll see that coating will look damp instead of dry.

Meanwhile, put a skillet on medium-high heat and add about a tablespoon of oil. Heat the oil until it's not, but not smoking.

Coat the chops lightly with the flour, and shake off the excess. Place them in your heated pan and cook until nicely browned on one side, then flip and cook on the other. Continue cooking until the chops are cooked all the way through, but not overcooked and dry - cooking time will vary depending on how thick the chops are, and how hot you're cooking them. I had fairly thin chops and they were done at about the same time both sides were browned. If you have thick chops, consider finishing them in the oven to keep from over-browning the coating.

Let the chops rest for about 10 minutes before you slice or serve.

I served this with roasted acorn squash and a salad of fresh corn, roasted red pepper, zucchini, capers, and tomatoes.