Flying breadbox

Well, this is pretty funny. British Airways is running an ad campaign saying they found a star baker with a "secret recipe" to keep rolls fresh at 30,000 feet. (BTW, those are BA's rendering of dinner-roll clouds above, not Post Honey Bunches or peanut clusters)

Wow!  A couple of things:

1. The fact that they are trying to lure you aboard their planes with the promise of fresh dinner rolls is, to a baking enthusiast like myself, nothing short of fantastic. Bizarre, when you consider all the other facets of flying, but fantastic. As I wrote in the May issue of Saveur, the revolution has arrived.

2. Big deal. It's a challenge keeping bread fresh in a plane? Planes are kept extraordinarily dry (to keep rust at bay) and cool. Kind of like...hmm...what's the best analogy I can come up with... oh, like a breadbox! Really, a plane is really a flying breadbox. In fact, you may well feel like you've locked in a breadbox after an 8-hour flight to London.

So my note to British Airways. Thanks for thinking about the bread, but let me know when you've accomplished a really challenging feat -- like keep bread fresh for more than 4 hours in a New York August! (And putting my bags on the same plane as me.)

Give or take...

Fresh berries are in here in the Hudson Valley, and I wanted something light but tasty as a carrier for the berries. I figured a shortbread cookie would be perfect. As I often do, I went to my King Arthur Flour Cookbook first, and was startled to find the following ingredient:

1-1/2 to 3 cups flour

What? A variance of 100%?! I mean, we all know that volumes of flour are inexact (which is why all my recipes use weight, not volume), but this makes my grandmother's recipes sound like nuclear physics by comparison!

Here's the slightly more precise recipe (rom Epicurious)I ended up using, which gave me just what I was looking for: a tasty, crumbly, but light base for the berries and whipped cream. And quick and easy to make. Don't skip the orange zest.


Scottish Shortbread

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar (turbinado if you have it)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Combine chopped-up butter, sugar, zest, and salt in stand mixer or mix by hand until thoroughly blended. Add flour and mix with fingers. Form a ball, wrap dough in plastic, press into a disk, and place in refrigerator about 30 minutes (or freezer for 10).
3. Leaving dough on plastic, press out with hands and/or floured rolling pin into about a 5 x 10-inch rectangle. Transfer to baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
4. Poke surface evenly with fork. Lightly score partway into serving-size pieces. Sprinkle top with sugar, and bake about 15-20 minutes until edges are brown and middle is just beginning to turn golden.
5. Cut on score lines all the way through. Cool on rack. Top with berries and a dollop (1-8 tablespoons, as King Arthur might say) of freshly-whipped cream.