Gas House Eggs were a real favorite in my family while growing up. Eggs fried in a nest that you make by punching a hole in a slice of bread. The name is a common American mispronounciation of the term “Gasthaus”, but apparently these eggs are known by a dozen or more different names around the world

The best part of this breakfast is the small bread round that you cook alongside the egg. In my family, we called that part the “Ding-Ding”. That’s because we kids thought it looked like the Holy Host, and “Ding! Ding!” was the sound of the bells that rang whenever the priest raised the host for us to see during Mass. My kids have never been to a Mass, but they still call it a Ding-Ding.

Gas House Eggs

For each serving, you will need –

1 egg
1 slice bread (I used country white, but it’s just as good with whole wheat)
Butter or olive oil (I use olive oil these days, but butter tastes great…)
Salt and pepper to taste

Using a shot glass (who has shot glasses anymore?) or small jar top, punch out a hole in the center of each slice of bread.

Heat oil or melt butter in fry pan. Add bread to pan. Break the egg into the hole.

Add the Ding Ding to cook alongside the egg, flipping it halfway through so both side get nice and browned. Cover and cook till egg is cooked and bottom of bread is browned and crisp. (Flip the egg for once over If you like the yolk a bit more cooked.) Salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

If you cooked your gas house egg just right, the bottom will look something like this -

Call it what you like, I call it delicious!
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More Reading on Gas House Eggs

• Scanman makes gashouse eggs, inspired by this post!
• Kitchen Parade counts the calories in a Gas House Egg
• Gas House Eggs are a favorite breakfast in the movies
• Gas House grilled cheese!
• Whole Wheat Bread makes a great Gas House Egg
• How about Mexican Gas House Eggs (using tortillas!)

I’m still searching, baking and tweaking, looking for that perfect Zone diet muffin recipe. Along the way, I’m having fun making and eating some delicious muffins.

While this muffin isn’t quite in the Zone (40% CHO, 30% Protein and 30% Fat), it is very high in protein and made with healthy fat. If you have it with a bit of low fat protein on the side, you’re getting pretty darned close to a perfect Zone breakfast.

I figured that if I was going to criticize the popovers at Popover Cafe, I’d better be able to make a pretty darned perfect one myself.

Given that I’d never done it before, I was a little nervous, so I scoured the web for recipes and advice before starting. And thanks to the Joy of Cooking, Mark Bittman, Ina Garten and all the great food bloggers out there who have preceded me on this adventure (see links at the end of this post), my popovers turned out to be pretty near perfect, and to my mouth, at least, much tastier than the ones at Popover’s Cafe.

Pretty Near Perfect Popovers

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk (I used lowfat mixed with a little half and half)
2 large eggs
1 tbsp melted butter, plus another tbsp to grease the pan
A little flour or sugar to dust the pan

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat popover pan on a baking sheet in the oven for 5 minutes or so while combining the ingredients.

Make sure the milk, eggs and butter are at 70 degrees. (I heated the milk in the microwave then cooled in to around 70 or so degrees Fahrenheit).

Whisk flour and salt together in a bowl.

Whisk milk, butter and eggs together in a larger bowl.

Add flour to wet ingredients, whisking just enough to combine. It should be thin like cream and small lumps are okay.

Take popover pan out of oven and brush inside of cups with melter butter. Sprinkle a little sugar or flour on the cup inside walls. Pour in batter to 3/4 full. Place in oven so that the tops of the popovers will end up in the middle of the oven (My gas oven has the heat on the bottom).

Bake at 450 for 20 minutes. Do not open the oven door to peek (But if you have a glass door and a light, do look through the window and watch them pop!)

After 15 minutes, lower heat to 350 and bake another 20 minutes. Remember, no peeking except through the glass!

Remove from oven and immediately from pan. Insert a sharp knife into popover to let the steam escape (And don’t worry – if they are done, they won’t collapse).

Serve warm with butter and jam.

Popover Thoughts and Questions

1. Should my popovers have popped a bit more? The little dent in the middle makes me think so, but my god, they were delicious!

2. I think may have over-filled the cups, since I ran out of batter before the last cup. That may be why I didn’t get that last “pop” on my popovers.

3. Does the manner of combination of ingredients matter? For instance, Joy of Cooking has you combine everything but the eggs and then beat in the eggs. Another recipe has you beating the eggs first till they are a light color and then adding the milk and melted butter. I wonder if it makes a difference…

4. I’ve read that sifting the flour makes for a better pop. Some recipes call for bread flour instead of all purpose. (Don’t use cake flour, though – it won’t make enough strong gluten to keep the popover risen.)

5. Most commercial popover recipes (Such as those from Jordon Pond Restaurant and Nieman Marcus) rely on baking powder, probably so they have a guaranteed pop. I think that’s contrary to the magic of popovers – the fact that they rise without leavening. The rise comes from the steam produced by the high proportion of liquid ingredients in the batter, supported by a sidewall strengthened by gluten.

6. This recipe from Apartment Therapy uses 1/4 cup more milk than mine, and what a gorgeous pop they got! It makes sense that more liquid might just help. So next time I will be sifting the flour, filling the cups only a little more than halfway and using a bit more milk (whole milk this time). Will post the results.

Popover Links

Obama is like a popover. Discuss.

Of course, since this is an election year, I can’t ignore this post from Valentine Bonnaire comparing Obama to a Popover…

That thin crispy shell on the outside and nothing but a cavern of hot air inside. Popovers — another example of something with all of the audacity of nothingness. They taste good while you are consuming them, but there just isn’t a whole lot there is there?

I beg to differ. A popover is not a lot of nothingness – it has lots and lots of delicious flavor. And if Obama is like a popover, well, then it’s because he is taking politics to a higher level. A popover has to have a strong crust to hold itself up there, and he’s got that. And if he needs a little butter and jam to make him perfect, well that’s just fine with me. We’ve got plenty of that.

In our first attempt at making the perfect scone, my daughter Natalie and I made some pretty tasty scones, but the texture was not as light as we’d hoped. We tried Ina Garten’s scones next, and came up with a lighter scone that seemed a bit dry.

Thanks to my reader’s comments and a little research, I’ve figured out that the scone I am looking for must be an English scone, which it seems, is more akin what we Americans would call a biscuit. Given that the first scone I’d ever had was in Bath, England, that made sense to me.

So last weekend, at the suggestion of both Waynetta and Chairwoman, I finally tried Delia Smith’s Scone Recipe (complete with photos, here). Delia is sort of the Julia Child of Britian, a TV chef who made cooking seem simple, and whose recipes are known to be tried and true. (You can read her BBC bio here). I figured that if Delia didn’t have the right British scone recipe for me, no one would.

The first thing I noticed about Delia’s recipe was that she recommends the butter be at room temperature, which goes agains everything I’ve come to learn about making pastry, and is the exact opposite of the recommendation in my Professional Chef, namely, to put the butter back in the fridge after cutting it up to be sure it stays cold until the very last minute. This was my first inkling that perhaps Delia’s recipe would not be the best…

I decided to stick with the Professional Chef, and kept my butter cold. Otherwise I followed Delia’s recipe exactly, even using castor sugar and a round biscuit cutter (except I added chocolate chips).

The first batch was made with daughter and her friend. The kids took a little longer than I wanted working the dough, and it really became too cookie like. So I made a second batch myself, working like lightening to keep the dough light. Mine is on the left up there, and the kid’s scone is on the right.

They look great, and the flavor was great. But you know what? The scones were too dry. I know scones are meant to be eaten with clotted cream or jam, but still I was disappointed. I think the recipe I seek has a bit more liquid than Delia’s. In fact, when I look at biscuit recipes, they definitely have more liquid.

So it’s back to the drawing board. Next up, I think I will try the Cook’s Illustrated scone recipe. If anyone knows where I can find it, do let me know.

Of course, it may be that what I am looking for is not a scone, and perhaps doesn’t even exist. But I have this memory of a warm, light, not dry scone with clotted cream sometime in my culinary past (perhaps in Bath?), and I’m determined to make it…

Addendum: I Found it! The Pefect Scone.

Category: Food

Perfect scone update – I found it!

Chocolate chip scones have pretty much replaced chocolate chip cookies as the thing my daughter Natalie and I bake together. This is a good thing, I believe, for several reasons. First, less sugar and fat. Second, much quicker and an easier clean up. Third, only one baking time, as opposed to cookies where it’s in and out, in and out, onto the cooling racks, and then we tend to burn half of them because we lose track of the time. Finally, we love to drink tea, and scones are pretty much perfect with tea, although they also pair quite nicely with a tall glass of cold milk.

Still, I am not entirely happy. For, although I have tried at least four different recipes, I have yet to make the perfect chocolate chip scone.

Last Saturday, because Irene and Marvin left behind some buttermilk on their recent visit, Natalie and I decided to try buttermilk scones. Here’s the recipe we used, barely modified from a very nice web site called Baking Sheet. The scones in the picture looked pretty perfect to me, and I liked that the recipe only makes 4-6 small scones. Although they apparently freeze well, scones are best eaten the day they are made, so a smaller quantity seemed better to me.

Buttermilk Scones
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp butter, cold and cut into small pieces
5 tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup chocolate chips

For topping:
1 tbsp buttermilk
1 tbsp coarse sugar

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar and whisk to combine.
Rub butter into the flour mixture with your fingers or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles very coarse meal.

Mix vanilla into buttermilk and add to the dry ingredients.

Add chocolate chips. Turn out dough onto lightly floured surface, knead a very little and form dough into a disc 1 inch thick. Cut the dough disk into 4-6 wedges using a knife or a pizza cutter.

Brush with 1 tbsp buttermilk and sprinkle liberally with coarse sugar.

Place on baking sheet and bake at 400F for 15-18 minutes, or until lightly browned. Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

The end result, shown at the top of this post, was quite tasty. Everyone, including Natalie and her friend, enjoyed them immensely. But I was a bit disappointed in the texture. It wasn’t light enough, I thought. So, I decided to try again.

Most scone recipes I’d seen that originate in the UK called for Castor sugar, which is a very fine sugar. I figured that since scones originated in England, they might be onto something. I didn’t have any superfine sugar, but I read you can make your own using a food processor, so that’s what I did. Before is on the left, after is on the right, below. I’m not sure the photos show the difference, but the one on the right has a more powdery texture, not quite like confectioner’s sugar, but almost.

I also decided to add an egg to the recipe to see if that made a difference. Some scone recipes have an egg, others don’t. I wasn’t sure why, but I read in Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking that in baking, eggs act as leavening agents because they expand while they cook.

So back I went to the kitchen, and whipped up another batch of scones using these two modifications – the superfine sugar and the egg. Confirming my belief about the superiority of scones over chocolate chip cookies, they were into the oven in less than 10 minutes. And here was the result:

Here are the results of the two recipes side by side (with egg on the left, without on the right):

To be honest, I really couldn’t see or taste much difference. My husband Paul thought the ones with an egg tasted better, but that may have been because they were still warm when he tried them. Don’t get me wrong. Both scones were quite tasty. But they were heavier than I’d like, and a little more cakelike than I expected. I decided to do a little more research into the scone-making process, so that I could better choose a recipe next time.

There are many scone recipes out there. What seems to be common in all of them is flour, leavening (baking powder, soda or both), sugar, butter and a liquid. According to the very well-written Joy of Baking Newletter on scones, the ratio of liquid to dry ingredients is 1:3. The liquid can be cream, milk, or buttermilk. Interestingly, eggs are not a consistent ingredient of scones.

According to the CIA’s The Professional Chef, one makes both scones and biscuits using a “rubbed dough” method, similar to that used in making pie crust. Dry ingredients are well-blended, either by sifting or whisking together. Shortening is chilled and then rubbed into the dry ingredients to create layers. The Professional Chef actually recommends putting the butter back into the fridge after cutting it up, so that it remains hard until you actually use it. It is extremely important not to let the fat melt and mix evenly into the rest of the ingredients; thus the liquid must also be very chilled.

The best results are achieved by working the dough as little as possible. This means that after adding the liquid, you only mix the dough enough so that it is a “shaggy mass”. Some recipes call for rolling and cutting the dough, but the traditional method for scones is to just knead the dough slightly, pat it into a flat circle and cut it into triangles.

As for the leavening agent, most recipes call for baking powder. When buttermilk is used, however, baking soda is also added. I did a little reading in McGee on the difference between baking powder and baking soda. Without getting too much into the chemistry, the acidity in the buttermilk causes the baking soda to react and start bubbling right away (I felt it as I was working the dough). The problem with baking soda is that the reaction is short-lived, and if you don’t work quickly enough after adding the liquid, is over before the real baking starts. Baking powder, especially double acting baking powder, has two different ingredients that have different rising reaction times. The first reaction occurs on addition of the baking powder to the batter, the other later on at higher temperatures that occur in the baking process. I also found that you can test your baking powder and soda for freshness. I did both, and mine were fine, so that wasn’t my problem.

So, now that I am an expert on scones and baking, I have the following insights into why the scones I made last Saturday were still a little far from perfect (though not that far…):

1. We didn’t have the butter or the buttermilk cold enough
2. We worked the dough just a little too much (I thought the “shaggy mass” was a shaggy mess and kept working the dough. Now I know that a shaggy mass is just what I am aiming for.)
3. I think we cut up our dough into too many scones, so they may have overcooked due to the higher ratio of surface area to middle.
4. I think more baking powder is called for. I’ve checked dozens of scone recipes. The ratios of flour to leavener vary greatly, but some definitely call for more that what I used.

I found a recipe that claims to be an “authentic” scone from Devon, England, and that calls for a full tbsp of baking powder plus 1/2 tsp soda per cup of flour! It will be the next recipe I try. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

In the meantime, if anyone has any better insights, or can help me out in finding the perfect recipe, please feel free to comment. Because I am definitely on a mission here.

Next : Still Searching for the Perfect Scone…

Caegory: Food