Monthly Archives: January 2009

Alright, get out your flour and yeast and let’s get some dough mixed.  I’ve adapted the Rustic Bread recipe from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, by Jeffry Hamelman.  This is a terrific, detailed guide to making just about every type of bread under the sun, and I haven’t come across a dud yet.  This recipe will yield 2 large, or 3-4 small- to medium-sized loaves.

I just thought this was kind of a funny picture, and thought I’d share it.  I stopped by our building to make sure everything was okay with the freezing temperatures (everything was), and out in the sun flitting about the cars were about fifty of these puffy little birds.  They were obviously trying to glean what little bit of warmth there was from the sunshine!

I love ciabatta bread.  I love what a great, chewy bread it is, but with giant, irregular air pockets so that it doesn’t feel quite as heavy or filling as a rustic or country bread.  A wonderful yeasty smell without being overwhelming, and a crust that has just enough bite to it to be substantial, but without breaking into a billion shards.  Not necessarily the best of “soup” breads, but great for sandwiches and paninis, or just a roll with a dinner.  But sorry, this isn’t one of those “super easy, no kneading, hardly takes any time” breads.  This one begins the night before by mixing up a starter, or “poolish,” which the next day is added to additional flour, yeast, salt and water to make the final dough.  Then it rises for 3 hours, and has to be turned out and folded after each hour, and then shaped into loaves or rolls, then risen again for another 1 1/2 – 2 hours, and then finally baked.  But oh, the outcome.  Delicious, delicious ciabatta!

We don’t buy toys for our cats.  Once in a blue moon someone will give them a toy, which we douse in catnip and both cats will rub their faces on said toy, lick all the catnip off said toy, and then lay in a corner, completely dazed for about 30 minutes.  But what really gets them going?  This specific little crumpled up cough drop wrapper.  No kidding.  Justin threw this down for Storm to play with about TWO MONTHS ago, and she still plays with the silly little booger almost every day.  As we can all see in the photograph, it is very obviously the coolest thing on the planet.

Obviously, since these have a fancy french name, I’m not talking about the neon orange “cheesy” styrofoam peanuts at the store.  Nope, I’m talking about honest-to-goodness savory pate a choux (pronounced paat-aa-shoe), or cream puff dough, with shredded Gruyere cheese mixed in.  Since I got Pastry Cream out of the way yesterday, I figured I would conquer all my silly, completely unfounded kitchen phobias.  Pate a choux is even easier than pastry cream.  No worries about curdled eggs or lumpy custards, just mixing a dough in a saucepan and then shifting it to a mixing bowl to add the eggs.  I think I made about a gazillion cream puffs in school, as they were always a hit at fundraisers, and you bake what you know people like (and will give money for).  The next step is just to combine my last two projects, and make real cream puffs or eclairs, filled with that psychotically good vanilla pastry cream.  Oh crud.  I think I just gained 3 pounds just writing about it.  

Pastry Cream.  What I remember most about making pastry cream in culinary school was being totally stressed out by it – and everyone else being stressed about it too.  I know that we made it, and that it tasted phenomenal, but somehow the stress turned into some sort of fear that it wouldn’t turn out if I made it at home.  That it would take forever, or curdle, or burn, or do something strange that I would never recover from.  Something like that.  But you know what? It was, well, easy!  The milk came to a simmer just fine, the eggs were tempered just fine, and then it only took about 5 minutes for the mixture to thicken and turn to a nice, thick, smooth custard.  Half was saved as vanilla to make a Boston Cream Pie for Welcome to Woodlands, and the other half was mixed with some chocolate to make a Triple Chocolate Cream Cake for our friend Lincoln’s birthday.  And oh, the taste, the mouth-feel, the fresh vanilla bean smell.  Won-Der-Ful.  

I got an email from Jenn a couple of days ago, saying that this might be the recipe that she would actually try baking.  After several emails back and forth it was decided that I would bake them, but that she would come over and keep me company during the process.  It turns out it is a pretty good “visiting” type of cookie to bake.   You mix up the dough, then stick it in the fridge (and sit down and talk), then it goes from the fridge to the oven (again, opportunity to sit and talk), then allow it to cool (insert sitting and talking here), and then cut it and bake it again.  End result being lots of sitting and talking and some incredibly yummy, fragrant, not overly crunchy biscotti.  And actually, about halfway through the afternoon Jenn had to take her daughter to play practice, but they made sure to stop by afterwards to try some of the results of the day.   By the way, I ran into some dried Mission  ”Figlets” at Woodman’s, and that is what “we” used.  Well, and you can see that I drizzled them with a little bit of melted Ghirardelli double chocolate.  I’ll definitely be making these again!

Today’s recipe is a very homey, warm, comforting, granny-esque type of cake.  And I totally changed the name from the original (here) because I actually took it somewhere and didn’t want people scared off by it.  Oh, and you know they would be – people don’t actually rush forward when you say, “Oh this, just a little prune cake I whipped up.”  But when  you rename it to “Caramel Spice Cake,” that evokes a slightly more positive response.  Well, whatever you call it, it was very well received and really quite delicious.  I didn’t boil the caramel topping quite as long as I should have (because it was getting late) but it was still sweet and yummy, and of course, good for your innards!

Yummmm.