i've made bread from scratch a few times in the last five years, but not with the same frequency of savory dishes and desserts. bread takes a lot of time and planning - even for the "simple" recipes. thanks to a few good buys and the help of pinterest and the internet, i'm starting to develop some bread-literacy.
peter reinhart's artisan breads every day was the first of many gifts to myself when it came to buying cookbooks. most of the recipes reinhart employs are easy to follow, if not somewhat time-consuming. you cannot produce a batch of biscuits on a whim unless you've got vinegar and heavy creams (which we don't at this stage of apartment pantry-building) and are down for all of that cold butter flaking. i just bought some pastry cutters so i'm getting prepped for some pimpin pimento biscuit sandwiches dupes. and as for delicious things that i've already made, check out the chocolate babka recipe (which we made without the chocolate) and the soft cheese bread (which we baked with gouda and red onion). these two pages in my book have seen extensive wear by my standards. there is flour and dried dough in more than one spot from more than one visit.
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| the babka. oh, the babka! |
the really great parts of artisan breads are all of reinhart's tips for making the bread product better or varying the ingredients (for foccacia, biscuits, etc), his first two chapters on really essential shaping methods and the fermentation process, and the awesome, super-illustrative pictures. i find that i'm a very visual cook and want to know exactly how something is supposed to look. if i'm staring at a wall of text, you can bet that i'm more than a little anxious to produce something appealing.
this is a great resource for anyone who really wants to make good breads - rye, pullman loaves, french batards, cheese breads, danishes, pannetone, etc. if you only buy one book of reinhart's, this should be it.
the bread baker's apprentice, also by peter reinhart, is fantastic if you're getting more serious about baking a variety of loaves and want to know the extensive background information on seed culture, grains, history of baking, and the really heirloomy types of bread. i love this book but have not baked anything from it yet. i was waiting to have my "own" oven and a pizza stone. now that those two things are checked off the list of necessaries, expect me to bring these test batches to your shindigs and get togethers in the future, but maybe not until after we get all of our furniture. thaaaat's more reasonable.
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| fresh out the oven |
this week's batch of bread didn't amount to much. our first ten days in the new place have been a great mix of eventful (unpacking, assembling furniture, responsibilities) and unadulterated laziness. oh yes, those were good times. while juan was at work saturday morning, i prepped a batch of no-knead bread dough from anna's table. i was looking for something easy and this was. i took a few pictures of the dough prep on the dslr but can't find the cable to upload them to my laptop. oop on me.
juan's parents came over yesterday so i threw the bread in the oven a few hours beforehand. the boule was dense. air too cold? transferred it too many times from oven to rise and then to closet (so i could bake breakfast) and didn't stretch it enough? either way, it came out looking gorge but was too, too dense. i am not a fan of doughy bread unless it's clearly cooked through and this was not totally done. totally edible, but not perfect. if you saw my last few entries you know that perfect is what i consider baseline acceptable. this all needs some serious work and bob is helping unpack.
next week(s): kind of scared to say that i'm going to try to write a chapter of my novel. yeah, that bigfoot i might mention in conversation without anyone having definitive proof of its existence. i have three lines so far and a lot of character development back-logged from nanowrimos of yesteryear. thissss may be a two week project, so i'll throw in the edible christmas gifts and another as-yet-undecided project to space out the time.
next entry might not be for a while, as such, so enjoy the next few weeks and be well!
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