Today's bread bakeoff

One of my coworkers and I have been talking baking for some time and I got her started on my beloved no-knead. Of her own volition (I'm so proud) she found the Artisan Baking in Five Minutes a Day website and has turned into a baking maniac. Talk about going from zero to sixty in 10 seconds! She's now baking just about every day.

At any rate, we decided, since we were both in the office today, that we'd do a "bread off" and each bring a loaf in for our coworkers to taste. Hers was a bit softer and less sour than mine; mine had a chewier crust and a slightly "holier" look but there weren't even any crumbs left after the ravenous hordes were done.

I'm so glad I've been able to convert her. Tomorrow, total global baking domination...

And so another month begins

I have been the world's worst blogger, especially for someone who says she wants to get serious about this stuff, so I'm going to commit to blogging a bit more. I certainly don't want to get maudlin but it is amazing to me to think I've been baking for over 50 years! How the heck did I get THAT old?

More later...

Is it Reinhart?

Or is it me?

Oh, I think we all know the answer to that question, but it frustrates me nonetheless. I've been baking for a really, really, really long time (yes, I am that old) and never in my life have I had so many disasters as since I've taken up this BBA challenge. I'm starting to feel like a flour covered loser and my family is resisting eating any more of my failures.

Just to make myself feel better, I've baked three gorgeous loaves of my beloved no-knead bread (my stable bread-boyfriend who never lets me down) plus cornbread (not from BBA) and the best chocolate cupcakes I've ever produced, all in one week. I'm starting to regain my confidence, slowly, but I'm feeling a bit more like myself again.

Here's a picture of this morning's loaf, which I have to admit is just plain delicious. The girls have developed a new obsession with garlic bread so I think we'll be having that tonight along with our soup for dinner. Mom and Dad will have grownup grilled cheese (grated sharp cheddar with pepper jelly).

On the subject of cupcakes, before I forget, they are from Georgetown Cupcake, a precious little bake shop in DC where they sell upwards of 4000 cupcakes a day! They won the Washington Post's cupcake contest and having tasted the results, I can certainly see why. These cupcakes are simply spectacular - just don't overfill the cups or you'll get martian tops, which are a bit less lovely but still delicious. Here's the link to the recipe. Try it, you won't regret the calories one bit.

As for me, I may have the courage to pick up BBA again this weekend. Wish me luck.

Not a complete disaster by any means...

But not exactly what I was going for... yet again.

It all started when I realized I had a fair amount of roasted red pepper hummus but no pita with which to scoop it up. The hummus to pita ratio never seems to work out here (not unlike the dog to bun ratio in houses where hot dogs are consumed - not this house any more, sadly, because even though I know hot dogs are the work of Satan I still love them). At any rate, I needed pita and I needed it quickly.

In keeping with my personal challenge to bake my way through the Bread Baker's Apprentice, I didn't go directly to my fave pita recipe (Baking with Julia, the episode with Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, a couple of my favorite food writers). I love this recipe and have used it many, many times with complete success. BUT, I promised I'd stick with Reinhart so off I went. Turns out he doesn't have an actual pita recipe but suggests that using his lavash dough you can approximate pita if you make rounds and bake on a stone instead of a baking sheet.

The dough was nice to work with, shiny and smooth, and only needed to ferment for 90 minutes so it seemed I was in good shape. Once I was ready to bake I divided the dough into four pieces of about three ounces each and rolled them out into rounds (sort of). On to the stone went the first two but there was no puffing going on in my oven that day. I ended up with chewy, crispy flatbreads, which were delicious but definitely not pita.

Caroline suggested that I write an indignant letter to Peter Reinhart complaining about his recipes. I had to remind her that he's one of the most famous and respected bakers in the world and if I wasn't getting the right results the issue was most likely in MY kitchen, not his.

Sigh...

The countdown is on

One of the greatest pleasures of the holiday season for me is to get invited to my best friend Caroline's parents' house. No matter which holiday they have a full house of beautifully dressed, interesting people sipping cocktails and discussing things like art, music and books. This year we're invited for both Thanksgiving and Christmas and I got Big Daddy to agree to Thanksgiving (we'll work on Christmas later - he won't know what hit him).

At any rate, my contribution to these soirees is always dessert and this year I'm pulling out the stops. I have to do something flourless since Caroline's mom is gluten free so my trusty Giada de Laurentis chocolate cake with almonds and amaretti will do nicely (this is from her Everyday Italian cookbook - I'm not normally a Food Network kind of gal but got this as a gift and the chocolate cake is worth owning the book for). Next is my beloved sweet potato bourbon cheesecake. I have to leave out the bourbon since we'll have a couple of people in recovery in attendance but it is spectacularly delicious even without it.

Of course there has to be pumpkin pie but I'm going to do an apple buttermilk pie as well. This pie is the evolution of a recipe that Big Daddy presented to me when we were first married. His version calls for canned apple pie filling and a sweetened condensed milk custard topped with oatmeal strusel. Oh honey, that baby was so sweet I thought my teeth were going to fall right out of my head! I've reworked the recipe to call for caramlized Honeycrisp apples and a buttermilk custard but kept the strusel because it is GOOD. Big Daddy says his version is better but that didn't seem to stop him from eating three pieces of the test pie I made over the weekend.

So that leaves one dessert left and I can't decide what it should be. Different factions are rooting for their favorites - Caroline wants Shaker lemon tart, the kids want Hershey bar cake and I'm leaning towards something chocolate like Claudia Fleming's cheesecake tart only with a chocolate cookie crust instead of graham crackers. Plus I'm in the mood to make a salted caramel sauce and that would be delishment on a chocolate something. Watch this space to see where I end up.

Ciabetter but still not great...

I finally got a picture loaded but with this last batch of ciabatta I got at least one of the big holes that are so characteristic of the bread. I'll be the first to say that a pizza made from this dough kicked butt and took names but the darn dough still wasn't quite soft enough to spread properly. My family is objecting to me making another batch this weekend so I guess I'll have to comfort myself by baking ahead for Thanksgiving. More on that later.

Of course, I did have another disaster that promises to make me nuts for a very long time. Big Daddy gave me what, at the time, seemed like the best birthday present I ever received - 2000 sheets of parchment paper, cut to fit a half sheet pan. Since I am an insane cookie baker, this was the equivalent of giving a big fat Gucci purse stufffed with bling to one of the Real Housewives but I discovered the hard way that this parchment, which he got through their supplier in his kitchen, can't cope with moisture quite the way what I'm used to using can. So, a whole batch of bagels and a gorgeous loaf of no-knead sourdough later, I'm peeling shreds of parchment off the bottom before they can be eaten. Lord help me, what a mess. I keep telling the kids that paper is just another type of fiber and fiber is good for you, right? They're not buying even though I keep selling.

But for the Christmas cookie season I am golden! Or parchment colored! Whatever...

Not bad but not ciabatta...

I guess I was feeling overconfident, buoyed by my bagel success, but I knew from almost the beginning that my ciabatta dough was not wet enough to spread out into the classic slipper shape. In fact, based on the size of the dough after the first proof, it was pretty clear I was looking at the Ugg boot of bread as opposed to, say, the delicate Manolo Blahnik cocktail sandal I was striving for.

So, instead of ciabatta, I ended up with something I can only describe as the type of bread you get at a neighborhood red sauce Italian restaurant - not necessarily bad, in fact it is pretty tasty, but definitely not what I intended when I started my poolish on Saturday.

My misfortune wasn't limited to the dough, either. I attempted to follow Reinhart's directions for baking on a stone with a steam pan in the oven but apparently my oven gets hotter on the bottom than his does because the bottom crust of the first loaf charred before the top got done. I ended up throwing that loaf out and using my trusty cast iron dutch oven to bake the remaining loaves.

Well, live and learn. Lessons for next time? Wetter is better so however much water was in the dough - I need to double it. Also, put the stone higher up in the oven and put the steam pan in the bottom.

Now, the question is what am I going to do with three loaves of Italian-ish bread? I guess Auntie M and Grandma will take one but nobody in this house will eat the other two so I may be standing on the street corner begging passers by to take a loaf off my hands. I don't suppose it would be the strangest thing most people in this town have seen...