Gastronomy Northwest // Black Bread Ice Cream

armies of choux photographed by mi amiga jen

Summers as a college student are wild and crazy. On Friday nights, for example, you might find yourself alone with Klaus Kinski and eighteen pounds of pork, surrounded by eight loaves of Russian black bread, six empty cartons of eggs, and four gallons of half-and-half.

Welcome to catering.



The coordinator for Reed's reunions was kind enough to offer /uncommons/ a table at Gastronomy Northwest, which assembled the alumni who've gone to careers in food: bakeries, vineyards, distilleries, salt shops, breweries... and us. We were told to make 400 samples, so make 400 samples we did, and then some. The planning for this event was a breeze--cohesion? who needs cohesion? Russia and Vietnam and France are totally on the same continent, it's called Eurasia--and we thought the cooking would be, too. Shop on Thursday, pick up the meat on Friday, bake the bread, slice it for the dessert, pipe the choux and braise the pork. On Saturday morning, pop open the oven, pull the pork, assemble, then just churn ice cream. Except of course the bread didn't freeze firmly enough to slice on Thursday, and the freezer was too small for all of that and  ice cream and 400 choux puffs, and there was this barbecue, and I had art class...

Until the day of the event on Saturday, there were likely to only be two people in the kitchen at any given time--I think there was but one blissful three-hour span in which three of us were present. One of us hand-chopped the loaves into breadcrumbs for the ice cream; another piped and froze several kilos of pâté à choux. One of us made two gallons of marinade; another diced shiitake mushrooms. And then came the eighteen pounds of pork, which I returned on Friday night to confront, alone in the darkness but for the DVD of Cobra Verde and my chef's knife. I thought I was gonna have to chop and sear all that meat by myself, when thankfully my compatriot appeared and we tackled that shoulder as a team. Although yesterday I learned from the sous-chef at St Jack that chopping it into two-inch chunks was entirely unnecessary and we could have seared it in slabs. Oh well.

jen rallies the brigade again, before the other choux drops

The pork was thrown in the oven to braise overnight, destined for the inside of a choux-mi pulled pork slider, which we served with a smear of leek-miso butter, pickled radish, and pickled carrot. For dessert, there was black bread ice cream, served on caramelized rye bread with a streak of guinness fudge. The picture below is a faked presentation, since we never actually plated it--it was scooped from a melting quart container onto pieces of toast while I explained the dessert to an audience of blank stares.

ENTHUSED ALUMNA: "So what flavor of ice cream is this?"
STEPHANIE: "It's rye bread ice cream, on a caramelized piece of rye bread with some fudge."
ENTHUSED ALUMNA: "Yes, I can see that there's rye bread, but what flavor is the ice cream?"
STEPHANIE: "Rye bread."
CONFUSED ALUMNA: "Yes, that's the dark stuff, but what's in the light colored tub?"
STEPHANIE:"Rye bread."
STILL CONFUSED ALUMNA: "Yes, I see there are pieces of bread mixed in, but what flavor is the ice cream?"
FRUSTRATED STEPHANIE: "...rye bread."
BEWILDERED ALUMNA: "I am very confused and have clearly had one too many glasses of wine from the table next to you."

photograph, classy food styling, and choux puns by jen, who measures happiness in pork buns

I dunno, but bread flavored ice cream doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. In fact, here is the recipe, which I made up myself, after three rounds of test batches, a very arduous process indeed, since I had to sample them all. A lot.

Ice cream is actually a really straightforward process once you've got a device for churning it, which can run from give-your-child-a-hamster-ball-to-shake-type devices to thousand-dollar industrial machines. My ice cream maker is a throwback to the 1890s, since the motor is suspended over a wooden barrel (my dad bought it in the nineties, and, well, I don't know if there's any excuse.) You can find a good Cuisinart model in the $50 range. If you churn enough ice cream--which, once you do once, you will probably want to do again--it'll pay for itself after a while. Since my preferred brand of supermarket ice cream runs for $5 a pint and doesn't come in flavors like olive oil and black sesame, this is how I get my fix.

The name of this ice cream has been changed so that you don't have to repeat "rye bread ice cream" fifty times while straining your wrist scooping. But it tastes the same, which is to say, ridiculously good.

Black Bread Ice Cream
makes a little more than 1 quart


One thing to be aware of is that this ice cream requires the cream base to infuse for 24 hours (or overnight), or else you won't get the full rye flavor. But the next day, once you've strained out the bread and added the egg yolks, you can chill it or churn it right away, depending on your patience and the instructions provided with your ice cream maker.


day one: toasted seeds, caramelized bread crumbs, and cream infusion
3.5 cups half-and-half (or equal parts cream and whole milk)

1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp caraway seeds

2-3 slices of black bread (250g, 9 ounces)
3 tablespoons (45g) unsalted butter
1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. While it warms up, crumble or cut the bread into pea-size pieces.
2. In a dry skillet, toast the fennel seeds until lightly browned and fragrant. Remove and let cool in a small bowl. Add the caraway seeds to the skillet and toast them until fragrant (the color won't change much since they're so dark to begin with). Remove and add to the fennel.
3. In the same skillet, melt the butter and cook until it begins to brown. Remove from heat, and stir in the bread pieces, sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
4. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes. Halfway through baking, rotate the pan stir the pieces to ensure they all toast to a dark, deep brown.
5. While that's toasting, heat the half-and-half in a medium pot over medium-low heat. Add your just-toasted spices.
6. When the breadcrumbs are done, immediately (yes, while it's still warm and hot) add 100 grams to the milk (flavors tend to infused better when warm). If any bread bits got a little toastier than the others, add those to the infusion first (the rest will be churned into the ice cream later).
7. Let cool to room temperature before transferring to a large bowl, covering with plastic wrap, and refrigerating overnight (or up to 24 hours).

day two: make your custard
yesterday's cream base
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp brown sugar, or to taste
remaining caramelized bread bits

1. First, get set up: this is very important when making ice cream, since you have to move quickly once the heat is on or else you'll end up with bits of scrambled egg floating in sugary milk. Fill a large bowl half-way with ice and water and set a medium bowl on top of that. If you have two strainers, set one on top of the medium bowl; if not, don't worry about it.
2. Now, your cream base. Set up a strainer over a medium saucepan. Pour the refrigerated cream base from yesterday through the strainer, pressing with a silicone spatula on all the soggy bread bits to extract as much liquid as possible. Taste the strained mixture to see how much sugar you want to add--since most of the sugar and butter from the bread crumbs has been absorbed into the liquid, chances are you'll only need a few tablespoons. Add sugar to the mix, to taste, possibly along with a pinch of salt or some cinnamon, and heat the cream mixture over medium-low until steaming but not boiling. Discard the bread bits from the strainer and rinse it off; set it on top of the medium bowl in the ice bath. 
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Once the cream is hot enough, add a bit into the bowl with the egg yolks (this is called tempering), whisking constantly as you pour. Pour that egg mixture back into the saucepan, stirring constantly with a silicone spatula (or another heat resistant spatula; I've melted the tips of so many rubber spatulas that silicone is my soulmate). The custard is done once it's hot enough to coat the back of the spatula and leaves a clear line when you run your finger down the back.
4. Strain the custard into the bowl set over the ice bath and let that cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions, either after chilling or right away. A few minutes before the ice cream is finished churning, add in as much of the bread crumbs as you want.
5. Serve with chocolate fudge, chocolate ganache, or a chocolate fountain, sprinkled with the remaining breadcrumbs, assuming you haven't been snacking on them this whole time.