Friday Bread Basket 12/1/23

The icing on top (or not)

Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain. I recently shared that image on Instagram along with an informal poll on whether people prefer icing or not on their cinnamon rolls, and the answers were quite divided! I also learned that not a few people pour cream around their rolls before baking, which is something I need to try out soon. Perhaps you’d like to weigh in here before I finish the recipe I am working on as part of an upcoming holiday collaboration with

Anne Byrn

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Mastic effect

Claire Dinhut, aka Condiment Claire, recently shared a detailed post on mastiha, or mastic, the Greek spice made from the sap of Pistacia lentiscus, an evergreen shrub that is a relative of of the plant that produces pistachios (Pistacia vera):

Mastic gums are also known as the tears of Chios* but don’t you worry, there are only happy tears here. The reason for this name is because of how it is harvested: the resin is extracted from the tree and forms a little droplet which hardens. Once it dries, it becomes a small white and hard gum which is then used in many different applications…

The word mastic comes from the Greek, μαστιχάειν (masticháein), which directly translates to “gnash the teeth”. It has been harvested in Greece for over 2500 years and used medicinally since then. On top of its flavor, mastic is fantastic as it really quells any stomach and digestive sensitivities. As someone who has been in and out of the hospital because of this, the one calming agent that has ever always worked for me is mastic in all shapes and forms.

The mastic harvest, also known as kentos, takes place from July to October. A few times a week, incisions are made in the bark of each tree which releases the resin and allows it to drip out and form a tear.

In many places, mastic is used to flavor breads and cakes, including tsoureki, the Greek Easter bread. Some Armenians do use mastic to flavor choreg, though most of us opt for mahleb instead. But Dinhuts post reminded me that I need to make a version of my tangzhong choreg using mastic, since I’ve never tried it, and I plan to include the spice in the bread flavorings section of my book.

Mastic, Mastiha

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Bread and onions

I loved this essay from Margaux Vialleron of The Onion Papers, which muses on breadmaking, empathy, and more:

This is my experience though, and there can’t be one way of making bread. A bread’s beauty isn’t about the density of the crumbs or the thickness of the crust, but the agencies that go into making and eating the bread. The thing is, I could be following my usual recipe or listen to an expert’s advice, I could be doing everything so right, and my bread wouldn’t rise. Preconceptions don’t bake well.

The word ‘dough’, I read in McGee’s encyclopaedia, comes from an Indo-European root that meant ‘to form, to build’, and that also gave us the words ‘figure’, ‘fiction’ and ‘paradise’ (a walled garden). McGee goes on to explain that this ‘derivation’ suggests the importance of ‘dough malleability, its clay-like capacity to be shaped by the human hand.’

So I raise a humble dough. I make bread to learn and relearn with each new loaf; kneading a dough at my kitchen counter to widen the lens through which I experience and see the world around me – watching, smelling, tasting, and asking why I see and smell and taste this way. This is a learning curve, and the learning deepens with reading about the traditions and methods of the bakers who worked before me. I often get it all wrong too; humble, humble dough.

The Humble Dough

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Panettone tool tips

Some of you might be gearing up to make panettone for the holidays this month. If so, I hope you’ve remembered to consult Olga Koutseridi’s Wordloaf essay, Eight Lessons from My Panettone Saga, which is overflowing with excellent advice for the beginning panettone baker. Over on her own Substack, Olga just shared a list of her essential panettone tools, making for a great companion-piece to Eight Lessons:

As much as I hate KitchenAid, I will admit that this is the most affordable option for panettone baking. Hate is a strong word, we just have a history. The 5-quart is perfect, more specifically it does a very good job of mixing about 500 grams of panettone dough. The mixer is also affordable for the majority of bakers. You still obviously need to save for it but it won’t cost you as much as a spiral mixer. I used to have a 7-Quart Professional Series KitchenAid and it didn’t do as good of a job mixing panettone dough since the quantity of dough was more than the mixer could comfortably handle.

Essential Panettone Baking Tools (Gift Guide) with Tips

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Stray Crumbs:

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That’s it for this week’s bread basket. Have a peaceful weekend, see you all on Monday.

—Andrew