PARTY OF TWO virtual events! Book recommendations! Bread that you'll lust over!
Friends!
Party of Two is out in just a few days, which I can hardly believe! I got my gorgeous, sparkly, author copies last week and I love them very much! I am having a week full of virtual events for it next week, so please join me at any and all of them and help me pretend we're all in the same room together. The first is on Instagram live on launch day, Tuesday, June 23rd, at 8 pm Eastern/5pm Pacific, in conversation with the wonderful Austin Channing Brown, author of I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness! It'll be on my Instagram (@jasminepics), and will be the first time I've done an Instagram live, so please be nice to me if I have technical issues! Then on Wednesday, June 24th at 8 pm Eastern/7 pm Central/5 pm Pacific, I'll be doing an event hosted by Blue Willow Bookshop with Abbi Waxman, author of I Was Told It Would Get Easier, that'll be streamed from the Blue Willow Facebook page. Then on Thursday, June 25th, at 6 pm Eastern/3 pm Pacific, Loyalty Books will host a discussion with me and Farrah Rochon, author of the delightful The Boyfriend Project. On Friday, June 26th, at 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific, I'll be in conversation with Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, otherwise known as the Fug Girls, and authors of the upcoming The Heir Affair, sequel to The Royal We! That one is hosted by The Ripped Bodice, and you can stream it on their Facebook page here. And finally, on July 1, at 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific, I'll be in conversation with Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins, hosts of the lusty and joyful podcast Thirst Aid Kit, hosted by Books Are Magic. You can stream it on their Facebook page here. I'll be in a few other virtual events this summer, so watch this space for those details! And as a reminder, you can preorder Party of Two from any of the bookstores above, any of the fantastic Black owned bookstores listed here, or a signed copy of either the paperback or the hardback (they're both out on June 23rd!) or any of my other books through East Bay Booksellers.
Earlier this week on their Instagram, Amistad Books came up with this campaign to Black out bestseller lists, and it's been a joy to see all of the fantastic books people have discussed all week! I made a list on my Bookshop page of books I love from Black authors (and some books I haven't read yet but am purchasing/preordering/just bought and haven't had time to crack into), so if you need any more recommendations, go here! I keep adding to this list, so you can check it anytime for more updates and great books.
Okay guys, the bread. So a few weeks ago, the King Arthur Flour Instagram (honestly the best place to be for this entire pandemic so far), posted a picture of their Butterflake Herb Loaf, and I immediately knew I had to make it. And then I did make it, and it was as beautiful and also as delicious as it looked in their picture. Honestly I think you need to drop everything and see if there's any way you can make this right now, or at least, as soon as possible, I might have to start another batch as soon as I press send on this email. Recipe below, with some of my notes!
Butterflake Herb Loaf
Dough
1 cup (227 g) whole milk *
4 tablespoons (57 g) butter
3 tablespoons (35g) sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons instant yeast or dry active yeast (I used dry active)
4 to 4 1/2 cups (482 g to 510 g) all purpose flour
2 tablespoons (21g) potato flour or 1/3 cup (21g) dried potato flakes (optional)
Filling**
8 tablespoons (113 g or 1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated onion or chopped chives
1 glove garlic
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds or chopped fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon dried basil, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste
*I bought a bunch of dry milk powder at the very beginning of shelter in place, which was good because I desperately wanted to make this recipe but had no milk, so I used 1/3 cup dry milk powder and then water as the liquid and it was great.
** For the filling, I used about a teaspoon of finely chopped onion, a tablespoon of chopped chives, and three cloves of garlic, as well as the cayenne, and didn't use any of the seeds. Do what works for you here! Also the KAF recipe (click through) has a cinnamon sugar filling for making this a sweet loaf; it would be very fun to do one of each).
Instructions:
Combine the milk, butter, sugar, and salt and warm them all together until the butter is melted, either in a microwave or on the stove top. Let cool to lukewarm. (When I did this, since I was using dry milk powder, I combined the water with the butter, sugar and salt, and added the dry milk powder in with the flour in the next step). In a large mixing bowl or the bowl to your stand mixer, combine 4 cups of the flour, the yeast, eggs, and the potato flour, and add the butter mixture. Mix together to form a shaggy dough, and then mix until it's smooth. Add the rest of the flour if you need to -- I did, fyi. It took quite a while to do this in my stand mixer; maybe about ten minutes or slightly less, so be patient.
Place the dough in a greased container, cover, and let rise until puffy and almost doubled -- they said 90 minutes, but my kitchen was pretty warm on the day I made it, and it only took about an hour for me. It was rising so quickly I popped it in the fridge for a while towards the end.
While the dough is rising, combine all of the filling ingredients and mix so they're ready for you. Also, get your pans ready and lightly greased: this recipe calls for two 8 1/2 inch by 4 inch loaf pans, which are the small size loaf pans (or one large tea loaf pan, which I do not have but wish I did). If you don't have that size, you can use regular sized loaf pans, but you'll need to cut your rounds a little bigger than the recipe calls for, and/or you'll end up with one full size loaf and the rest in muffin tins.
When the dough is ready, deflate it and divide into two relatively equal halves. Put the dough on either a lightly greased or lightly floured surface (I used flour, I may try greasing it the next time) and roll it out so the dough is about 1/4 of an inch thick. Cut 4 inch circles into the dough (or slightly larger -- cut one test circle and then fold it in half and try to put it in the pan when you start to figure out if you need your circles to be a little bigger or not). Spread the butter/herb filling on half of each circle, then fold in half and place fold side down in the pan. Repeat with all of the dough until the pan is full. The recipe says to make any scraps into small rolls, but I rolled the scraps into a ball and rolled it back out and cut them into rounds and popped them in the pan (I know, you're not supposed to, it makes them tough, I did it anyway). Do this with the second half of the dough until it's all done.
Cover the pans with greased plastic and let the dough rise until puffy -- again they said 90 minutes, and it was closer to 75 or so for me. After an hour, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When you're ready, bake them for 25 to 30 minutes; it took just about 30 for me. Remove from the oven, and brush with additional melted butter (I had a little of the butter mixture left over, so I melted that with a little more butter and brushed it over the top). Turn the loaves out of the pan, and tear apart with your hands as soon as they're cool enough to eat and be happy that something as wonderful as butter exists in this world.
Sending love to you all!
Jasmine
P.S. If you have any of the bread leftover, it makes INCREDIBLE toast, let me tell you.
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party and Royal Holiday.
And preorder Party of Two!