Almost-summer pleasures

SOMETIMES it is refreshing not to cook, but rather to assemble a few choice items together on your plate. Such was this light lunch after a bicycle trip to the local farmers’ market, where we got the fresh snow peas, radishes, cucumber and a loaf of delicious hearty Mountain Rye from Raven Breads. We already had some butter and cheese to complete the late spring/early summer plate. The fresh colors of the peas, cucumber and radishes looked especially attractive, I thought. And it all tasted as fresh and lovely as it looked.

Just in case that lunch seems a little too minimalist, let me assure you that last week I also embraced the late-spring/ almost-summer season more decadently with my usual passion for rhubarb pie. It was  delicious — and all too quickly devoured, before I even thought about getting ice cream to go with it (unnecessary, it turned out).

FOR THIS PIE, I used the top crust only, cutting the scalloped shapes with my biscuit cutter and roughly twisting strips of dough around the rim. Steve said he didn’t even realize there was no bottom crust! (True, you have to scoop it rather than slice it — but trust me, if you are serving any rhubarb-lovers, they won’t mind.)

The filling: 4 cups of chopped rhubarb, scant 1 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of flour and some fresh orange zest. Dot with one or two tablespoons of butter before putting on the crust.

As to the crust, I used about 1 1/4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon of sugar and a little salt, into which I cut 7 tablespoons of cold butter, then just enough ice water with a little bit of apple cider vinegar to hold the dough together. Refrigerate for half an hour, then roll out on lightly floured parchment paper or pastry cloth and cut into shapes or strips.

MY RHUBARB-LOVE was not quite satiated, but I did find more rhubarb at the farmers’ market, and made a simple rhubarb sauce (again with orange zest). A dollop of that sauce with my yogurt is a more modest, but still satisfying, late-spring pleasure!

Fruit salad, any day

Every year on Mother’s Day, my daughter used to make fruit salad for me. What a treat — the colors and flavors combining in a joyous medley.

This year, she’s far away, but I’ll still be eating fruit salad tomorrow morning. Why not? Who says you have to wait for a holiday or for someone else to make it for you? Fruit salad is great any time — healthful and delicious.

And there are countless variations to suit your taste. I like it with the simplest of dressings — a little lemon juice, some zest and a bit of sugar — or none at all. You can add other flavorings, spices, or vanilla; you can serve with yogurt or sour cream or crème fraiche; you can put nuts or dried fruit in your fruit salad, or whatever you like. 

As spring turns to summer, the choices for fresh ripe fruit increase, of course, but at this time of year I still rely on one of my all-time beloved fruits, the pineapple.  As one of my friends pointed out, if you consider the cost per pound of a pineapple, it is one of the best fruit bargains. (I have written two pineapple posts on this blog — here‘s one of them.)

Happy Fruit Salad Day to you!

Edible, tangible memories of Passover

 Matzoh, unleavened bread, is eaten in place of bread during Passover to remind us that Hebrew slaves fled Egypt so quickly that their bread did not have time to rise.

Passover is a holiday full of symbolic foods to help recall the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. It’s a favorite holiday of most Jews, including secular ones, for its meaningful ritual and celebration of spring, life and freedom.  When I think that people have celebrated this holiday in this way for more than 2,000 years, it never fails to move me.

During the seder, a ritual meal, the story of the Exodus is retold using special foods on the seder plate as edible reminders. One of those foods is charoset (you don’t pronounce the “c” but it makes the “h” more guttural), a mixture of apples, nuts, wine and cinnamon that is said to represent the mortar the Hebrew slaves used in building structures for their taskmasters in ancient Egypt.

There are actually many varieties of charoset made around the world, some with sugar or honey, some with dates or other dried fruit, some cooked for a long time and some that look a lot more like mortar than my family’s version.

Ours is simple: Just mince apples and walnuts, add some sweet wine (yes, Manischewitz is traditional) and cinnamon.

Making the charoset this morning, I used this old-fashioned nut chopper with a spring, which I use only once a year. Actually there are two choppers, and I think the other, a double handled curving affair works better for the apples, I think. I inherited both from my mother.

Usually, I try to avoid cluttering my kitchen with things I use so seldom, but the nut choppers definitely get a pass. They are tangible reminders of my childhood, when my mother always gave me the pleasurable assignment of chopping the apples and nuts for charoset, using the special nut choppers and a wooden bowl.

How many apples and nuts, how much wine and cinnamon? There is no recipe; just do whatever seems right.

Memories flooded back as I chopped the sweet apples and walnuts with the springy nut chopper, and remembered all the things my parents did to prepare for Passover, as well as all the things they kept that we would use only once a year during the holiday.  Two complete sets of dishes (as they kept kosher and needed separate dishes for the holiday), two sets of silverware, pots and pans — we hauled all of these up from the basement in  a series of orchestrated loads, while my parents taped up the cabinets holding the usual dishes, pots and pans so they would be clearly off limits.

Anything from the rest of the year that had to be used during Passover was “kashered,” a ritual that captured our rapt attention on the night before the holiday. A giant pot, containing the items covered in water, was set in the middle of the kitchen floor, while my father heated a large stone on the kitchen burner until it turned blazing red. Then, handling it with tongs, he dropped it into the water. Sitting at a safe distance on the stairway steps, we watched with fascination as the water erupted into a furiously bubbling boil.

This was my favorite of the Passover plates, with an image of apple pickers!

I think my mother might have gotten these dishes with A & P Grocery store coupons. I used to like to try to count all the apples in the picture before or after eating.

Though I love bread and baked goods (as anyone who has read this blog knows) I enjoy the restrictions of Passover too–and all the edible and tangible memories it brings with it.

For a sweet treat–since one can’t make the usual pies, cakes and cookies–sometimes I make meringues, adding grated orange zest to the recipe below. I also often love making a chocolate nut torte, with no flour — a cake with a great history, which I’ve written about here.

And this year, I am bringing a fruit salad and some non-traditional but very popular matzo-toffee-crunch (click the link for a recipe) for dessert to Seder at a friend’s home.

Whatever you decide to make for Passover, it’s best not to get too stressed about a holiday that celebrates freedom. And I always try to find some calm and quiet moments to contemplate the Passover apple plate, and see if I can count all the apples…..

Note: This post was originally published in 2011 and edited and added to in 2018

Nut-and-chocolate-studded meringues
Makes about 25-30 — you can cut recipe in half if you like

• 4 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into tiny cubes (or use chocolate chips)

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees and lay a sheet of parchment paper (or aluminum foil) atop a cookie sheet, and lightly flour with matzo meal.

1. Whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks; then add 1/2 cup of sugar, beating until whites are very shiny and gradually adding the rest of the sugar in two batches.
2. Fold in the nuts and the chocolate (and if you like, some grated orange rind), and spoon the mixture in mounds on the baking sheet, using about one tablespoon for each meringue. If you like, place a pecan or other nut half on top of each one (I didn’t do that).
3. Bake for 30 minutes; then reduce the oven to 250 degrees and bake another 30 minutes until firm and dry and easy to remove. Cool and store in an airtight container. If meringues become sticky, you can re-crisp them in a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Eating green

It’s time for a St. Patrick’s Day post — so I’m recycling this one from 7 years ago. I just made my favorite green soup (parsley-potato) and I’m keeping things simple this year, with a toast to my Dad and the idea of America welcoming immigrants!

toby's kitchen notes

My family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s not that our Jewish family has any Irish ancestry. But my father always talked about the “Irish luck” that allowed him to escape Nazi Germany and arrive in the United States on March 17, 1939.

After he’d made the decision to leave–in 1936, when he lost his job after his boss was ordered to dismiss all Jewish employees–it took years and many obstacles before he could obtain a visa to America. By that time, February, 1939, there were no more boats leaving Germany. He packed a few belongings in a brown steamer trunk, said goodbye to his parents and brother, and took a train to Holland.

In early March, he boarded a small ship bound for America.  Because of rough seas, the voyage lasted fourteen days and the ship arrived in New York on March 17, 1939 – St. Patrick’s Day.

A…

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What’s for supper?

“WHAT ARE YOU COOKING for supper, Toby?”

Many years ago, when my dad was in his late 80s and early 90s, at least once a week, he would call me about 5 p.m. and ask me that question.  It was a great way to start a conversation — even on days when I really had no idea what we would have for supper and could laugh with my father about my lack of a plan.

At 5 p.m. Pacific Time, it was already 7 p.m. in Chicago so my parents had eaten and the dishes were cleared, and I could find out what they’d had for supper.

Although I will always miss hearing my dad asking me that question, I’ve taken his cue and often ask my adult children that same question. There is a difference: while my father was not planning to replicate my recipes, both my children are great cooks, and often finding out what they’re making for supper gives me a good idea what to make.

Such was the case a couple nights ago, when Aviva told me she was making a pot pie with a biscuit topping. “Oh, that sounds delicious!” I said. “I’ve made that last winter — but I forgot all about it.”

After we hung up the phone, I went into the kitchen and scrounged around. Sure enough, I had all the ingredients for such a pie. Previously, Aviva had showed me about cooking the vegetables (in this case, a little onion, some celery, carrots, chopped potatoes and  sweet potatoes, peas, etc. etc.) and chicken if desired, in a cast iron skillet, then making a sauce with a flour-butter roux and putting the biscuit batter on top.

The beauty of this method was the one-skillet method — which I’ve written about in a former post (which also includes a puff-pastry topped pie and a delicious lentil-carrot soup which I intend to make again soon).

The next day, Aviva and I compared notes on our pot pies. She’d warned me that the sauce (gravy?) might get too thick, by the time the biscuits were baked — and mine was. Aviva said she’d overcompensated and made the sauce too thin. I think that next time, I will put the filling in a regular pie pan (which has less surface area) so the filling won’t get quite as much direct heat. Like life, cooking is a work in progress.

What are you making for supper?

p.s. (By the way, though you can use any type of biscuits atop your pot pie, I do like Mark Bittman’s recipe for a cobbler-style biscuit topping).

Old friends and new

Blackberry-blueberry jam, an attempt to get the blackberry flavor with fewer seeds.

I MARKED THE 8TH ANNIVERSARY OF THIS BLOG, by picking a tub of wild blackberries and making a blackberry cobbler. The first post that I wrote here, in 2009, was about the culmination of eight blackberry cobblers (!) that I made that summer. Well, I only made one this summer, but I can report that the recipe still holds up well and is suitable for any kind of berry. Cobbler and Blueberry Boy Bait are old friends during berry season, recipes I can count on–so familiar I can almost make them by instinct.

Speaking of instinct, my dear friend Martha and I read a post touching on this subject in one of our favorite food blogs, Juls’ Kitchen, written by Giulia, a cook and writer in Tuscany (We read it in the Italian version first, as we’re studying the language and she writes so well.) She wrote about making a cake by instinct — and it made me think about the dishes that I make instinctively, or almost so.

Since it’s summer, and I’m enjoying my small crop of cherry tomatoes and basil, grown in pots, one of the simplest and best pasta dishes came to mind — an easy one to make by instinct. I cut the tomatoes in half, add some garlic and a dash of salt, and cook them down a bit to release their juices. Then I add a little of the cooking water from the pasta, toss in a good dose of chopped basil, stir the cooked, drained pasta into the skillet, and sprinkle with grated Parmeggiano or Pecorino Romano. Done. The best old friend of the late summer menu: I can never have too much of it.

Leftover wild salmon, leftover rice, chopped cucumber and cherry tomatoes, corn kernels, chopped green onion, cilantro and a dressing of lime juice with a little oil and salt.

Summer, with its bounty of vegetables, is also such a great time to compose salads. I don’t know if there is an art to this, but I think there is something of an instinct, developed over time, of putting foods together so they marry well. Contrasts of color, flavor and texture work well in a composed salad. Leftovers and seasonal specials are equally welcome. It’s not that my instinct is always so great–some salads I’ve made did not marry well — in fact, probably needed to divorce! But usually, my instincts are not too bad and the ingredients get along pretty well — even complementing each other.

Especially in the lazy days of summer, I tend to forget what I can put together for a simple meal, and I need inspiration from something I’ve seen or read, which I can then adapt to what I have.  The salad above that was like that — I was just reading about a lime-juice salad dressing, and then put this together from leftovers and farmers’ market produce.

Then, as I was sorting through photos for this post, I looked at the photo of this salad and realized I could make it again for today’s lunch, even though I was missing the rice and had more cucumber. Avocado would be nice in this salad too, or black beans, or red pepper.  You could make it vegan without the salmon. You could use parsley instead of cilantro if you are one of the 4-to-14 percent of the population that thinks cilantro tastes like soap. You could add some sesame seeds or nuts on top .  . .

There are as many salad variations as there are mathematical combinations of vegetables with grains, beans, protein, what have you. Here’s a post with some of my late-summer favorites from seasons past: https://tobykitchen.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/salads-salads-salads/.

Have fun, eat well and stay cool,
Toby

Hmmmm, shall I make a blackberry focaccia as I did this time last year? https://tobykitchen.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/blackberry-supper/

Summer breakfast

ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS about summer is my everyday breakfast. It’s simple: plain yogurt, topped with fresh fruit and granola. But each day I enjoy it with seasonal fruit– raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apricots, peaches, plums or pears — and I consider it a treat!

Some years ago I wrote here about a granola made with very little oil and some applesauce, to reduce the granola’s usual high calorie count. Well, I have to say, that granola was good, but it was just a little too spartan! (for granola, that is. Muesli, which doesn’t have oil, would be a good alternative if you’re seriously watching weight — and it’s also good with yogurt and fruit.)

These days I just make a more classic granola, using a mixture of oil, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon to coat the oats, and add a healthy dose of nuts and seeds. It’s not the richest granola you will ever taste (I know someone who makes granola with butter rather than oil, for example) but it’s pretty darned good.

Oh– and is it caloric? Yup, I’m sure it is, but if you just use it as a topping, you can justify that little luxury, can’t you?

This recipe will just about fill a quart jar of granola. Or put some in a zip-lock bag and take it with you on a road trip, on the plane or camping. Make a double batch and share with friends. You can easily adjust the nuts, seeds, spices and dried fruit to your taste (for example, I don’t use almonds as Steve is allergic to them; but hazelnuts or walnuts are great alternatives).

With this recipe and some fresh fruit, it just may be summer all year long!

Summer Morning Granola

• 2 1/2 cups oats (preferably organic)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon (more or less to your taste) cinnamon,  or other spice (cardamom, ginger, etc.) or mixture
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup coarsely chopped nuts
•  2 to 4 Tablespoons seeds (sunflower, flax, sesame)
• 1/4 cup oil (I use grapeseed)
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• optional: dried fruit such as raisins, dried cranberries, dried apricots

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees

2. Combine the oats, salt and spice(s) in a large bowl.

3. Stir in nuts and seeds to distribute.

4. In a small pan (or microwave bowl) combine oil and maple syrup and gently heat to warm. Add water and vanilla; whisk together and pour over the oat mixture.

5. Spread out the mixture evenly on a rimmed cookie sheet and bake for about 30 minutes or until a toasty golden brown. (It’s a good idea to check the mixture after 25 minutes.)

6. Let cool in the pan atop a rack, then add raisins or other dried fruit if desired. Store in a quart glass jar or other container.

 

1

Pie plant season

Just in case you’re lucky enough to have some rhubarb around!

After reading my own post below, well, I just had to make my annual rhubarb pie! It’s really a half-pie, or anyway a top-crust only pie, with a little border too.

toby's kitchen notes

Thank you, Maggie, for the rhubarb!

It’s the season to celebrate rhubarb once again — and what better way than pie? After all, its nickname is pie plant, and every spring I seem to write about rhubarb pie — so why break the tradition? This time I decided to just take some photos along the way and show you how I spent my Sunday afternoon, along with some simple instructions if you’d like to make a delicious late-spring pie.

Chop the rhubarb — you’ll need 4 cups or a little more for a small 8-inch pie — and make enough pie dough for a double crust, pat into two circles and refrigerate for an hour.  Then go for a walk while the dough is chilling.

Sunday afternoon was the perfect time for pie making.

To the chopped rhubarb, add a cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, some orange or lemon…

View original post 144 more words

Edible, tangible memories of Passover

 Matzoh, unleavened bread, is eaten in place of bread during Passover to remind us that Hebrew slaves fled Egypt so quickly that their bread did not have time to rise.

Passover is a holiday full of symbolic foods to help recall the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. It’s a favorite holiday of most Jews, including secular ones, for its meaningful ritual and celebration of spring, life and freedom.  When I think that people have celebrated this holiday in this way for more than 2,000 years, it never fails to move me.

During the seder, a ritual meal, the story of the Exodus is retold using special foods on the seder plate as edible reminders. One of those foods is charoset (you don’t pronounce the “c” but it makes the “h” more guttural), a mixture of apples, nuts, wine and cinnamon that is said to represent the mortar the Hebrew slaves used in building structures for their taskmasters in ancient Egypt.

There are actually many varieties of charoset made around the world, some with sugar or honey, some with dates or other dried fruit, some cooked for a long time and some that look a lot more like mortar than my family’s version.

Ours is simple: Just mince apples and walnuts, add some sweet wine (yes, Manischewitz is traditional) and cinnamon.

Making the charoset this morning, I used this old-fashioned nut chopper with a spring, which I use only once a year.

Usually, I try to avoid cluttering my kitchen with things I use so seldom, but the nut chopper definitely gets a pass. It’s a tangible reminder of my childhood, when my mother always gave me the pleasurable assignment of chopping the apples and nuts for charoset, using the special nut chopper and a wooden bowl.

How many apples and nuts, how much wine and cinnamon? There is no recipe; just do whatever seems right.

Memories flooded back as I chopped the sweet apples and walnuts with the springy nut chopper, and remembered all the things my parents did to prepare for Passover, as well as all the things they kept that we would use only once a year during the holiday.  Two complete sets of dishes (as they kept kosher and needed separate dishes for the holiday), two sets of silverware, pots and pans — we hauled all of these up from the basement in  a series of orchestrated loads, while my parents taped up the cabinets holding the usual dishes, pots and pans so they would be clearly off limits.

Anything from the rest of the year that had to be used during Passover was “kashered,” a ritual that captured our rapt attention on the night before the holiday. A giant pot, containing the items covered in water, was set in the middle of the kitchen floor, while my father heated a large stone on the kitchen burner until it turned blazing red. Then, handling it with tongs, he dropped it into the water. Sitting at a safe distance on the stairway steps, we watched with fascination as the water erupted into a furiously bubbling boil.

This was my favorite of the Passover plates, with an image of apple pickers!

I think my mother might have gotten these dishes with A & P Grocery store coupons. I used to like to try to count all the apples in the picture before or after eating.

Though I love bread and baked goods (as anyone who has read this blog knows) I enjoy the restrictions of Passover too–and all the edible and tangible memories it brings with it.

For a sweet treat today–since one can’t make the usual pies, cakes and cookies–I made some meringues, adding grated orange zest to the recipe below.

The meringues are simple, though they take some time to bake. But that just gave me some extra moments to contemplate the Passover apple plate, and see if I could count all the apples…..

Note: This post was originally published in 2011.

Nut-and-chocolate-studded meringues
Makes about 25-30 — you can cut recipe in half if you like

• 4 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts
• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into tiny cubes (or use chocolate chips)

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees and lay a sheet of parchment paper (or aluminum foil) atop a cookie sheet, and lightly flour with matzo meal.

1. Whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks; then add 1/2 cup of sugar, beating until whites are very shiny and gradually adding the rest of the sugar in two batches.
2. Fold in the nuts and the chocolate (and if you like, some grated orange rind), and spoon the mixture in mounds on the baking sheet, using about one tablespoon for each meringue. If you like, place a pecan or other nut half on top of each one (I didn’t do that).
3. Bake for 30 minutes; then reduce the oven to 250 degrees and bake another 30 minutes until firm and dry and easy to remove. Cool and store in an airtight container. If meringues become sticky, you can re-crisp them in a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes.

In love with stecca

MY FRIEND NANCY knew that I often baked bread using Jim Lahey’s no-knead approach, using the Dutch oven to make a crusty round or oval loaf.  She’d tried a lot of Lahey’s recipes, and one favorite was the stecca (“stick” in Italian), a small and thin baguette-like loaf that incorporates olive oil as well as the usual flour-water-salt and yeast combo and is baked on a baking sheet rather than a Dutch oven.  Nancy’s partner, Duane, is Steve’s brother, and he would gladly eat stecca every day. After Steve and I tried it at their home in California, we fell in love with it too, so Nancy copied the recipe for me.

When I got home, I made it once or twice. It was a little messy — as Nancy had warned me, the tea towel was permanently marred by impossible-to-remove oil stains–but very, very good. Still, maybe because it was a bread that should be eaten in a day or two rather than a loaf to last for days (sometimes almost a week), I forgot about it and didn’t make it again for a year or two.

That all changed recently. I came across the recipe and thought I’d try it again. It was so easy — as long as I started it the night before we wanted to eat it — and made a wonderful accompaniment to soup or salad. It was delectable on its own with a bit of butter or some cheese. I made it again and again, playing around with variations, substituting a bit of whole wheat flour, sometimes adding seeds to the top.

Now I’m making it often, but only half a recipe at a time. Not that we couldn’t eat four stecca loaves in two days (it would be very easy to eat a stecca loaf by oneself in one sitting, especially if it’s still warm from the oven) — but it’s probably better if we don’t.

Isn’t it amazing what just 1/4 of a teaspoon (or 1/8 in the half recipe) will do, given a bit of time? Maybe there’s a moral there: Give it time.

STECCA

I tweaked Jim Lahey’s recipe just a little. This is the recipe for four little sticks of bread.

• 2 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 3/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon yeast (instant or regular)
• 1 1/2 cups cool water
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt; (sesame or other seeds optional)
• cornmeal and additional flour for dusting

1. In a medium bowl, stir together both flours, table salt, sugar and yeast. Add the water, and using a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until it comes together as a wet, sticky dough. Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature until it is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled, 12 to 18 hours (a few more won’t hurt).
2. When the first rise is complete, generously dust a work surface with flour. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the dough out of the bowl. Fold the dough over itself two or three times and gently shape it into a somewhat flattened ball. (If it is too sticky, you may need to first add a little more flour, but it should still be quite a moist dough).
3. Place a tea towel on the work surface and generously dust it with cornmeal. Place the dough on the towel, seam side down, and brush the top with some of the olive oil. Sprinkle top with 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt and a light dusting of cornmeal. Fold the ends of the tea towel loosely over the dough to cover it and place in a warm draft-free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours. The dough is ready when it is almost doubled, and when you gently poke it with your finger it holds the impression.
4. Half an hour before the end of the second rise (approximately) preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. with a rack in the center. Lahey says to oil your 13-by-18 baking pan, but sometimes I don’t oil, and it’s been fine.
5. Cut the dough into quarters. Gently stretch each piece more or less evenly (mine is always a little uneven, but it’s part of the charm) approximately the length of the pan. Brush with olive oil (you may not need the entire 1/4 cup) and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt. Sprinkle with sesame, poppy or other seeds if you like.
6. Bake for 14 to 20 minutes (I find it’s done at 14 or 15 minutes), until the crust is golden brown. Cool on the pan for five minutes, then transfer the stecca to a rack to cool (or not, if you must have some now).

NOTE: The crust of the stecca is thinner than a baguette, and the combination of the oil and salt may make it soggy in just a few hours. You can reheat the loaves in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes until the crust crisp but watch carefully — the stecca is so thin that it may turn into a cracker very quickly!