Breads

This is the recipe my mother uses every year at Christmas time to make a cardamom scented sweetbread. To this day, every time I smell cardamom I think of my mom. It's a blast from the past, a household tradition, all because of a friendly neighbour from my childhood who shared this recipe with me. I of course gave it to my mom to make for me.

Nowadays she makes it in a bread machine, which handles the mixing, kneading and first rising steps. The dough can then be braided and baked as per the recipe. The traditional braiding step makes a beautiful loaf, but isn't necessary. You can form a traditional loaf by rolling it into a log and placing it in a lightly greased loaf pan before baking.

This addictive and highly flavoured flat bread really packs a punch with onion, garlic, rosemary and Parmesan cheese. Enjoy alongside a salad for lunch or serve it instead of garlic bread on your next pasta night.

The sweetness of summer berries is incredibly delicious stuffed into a simple sour cream biscuit. This easy-to-make biscuit dough comes together in a snap because you just need to stir sour cream and milk into the works instead of laboriously cutting butter into the dough. This is an easier method than traditional recipes.

Use whichever ripe berries catch your eye while browsing your local farmer’s market, u-pick, or your backyard, or use a mix of a few different kinds. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, even experiment with berries you’ve never heard of before, like haskap berries. Different berries have different levels of sweetness, so use your best judgment and adjust the amount of sugar to suit your taste buds.

Few things say “Good Morning” better than a batch of warm-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls! You can bake them with speedy baking powder, but an old-school yeast dough always has the best texture and flavour.

Foccacia is essentially a large slab of bread baked with lots of savoury Mediterranean flavours both in and out of the dough. Herbs, cheese, olives. Tasty.

This is the tastiest bread I have ever made. It’s also the easiest because the secret ingredient in all true bread is time. The key to an addictive loaf of rich, hearty goodness is non-laborious kneading; it’s an overnight rest for the living dough. With time, water and flour naturally form an elastic dough that rises with just a small amount of yeast. Here’s how to make your own Country Bread, full of rustic whole grain goodness, or a loaf of refined white City Bread.

These are my gold-standard biscuits. My secret? Frozen butter! It’s an old pastry chef’s trick that has served me well. Butter tastes great and when it’s frozen it becomes very easy to shred into the dough. After you try these a few times you’ll be able to bake them in under twenty minutes and clean up the mess too!