So the reason we go to Cincinnati is because my friends live there: Susan, and Andy & Heather and their absolutely adorable kids (you saw the fantastic Natalie in the aquarium pictures).

And the other reason is of course Jungle Jim’s. Let’s just say I spent about $100 an hour there, and leave it at that.

Susan met us at our hotel. Well, actually she was sitting in the hotel bar, drinking Guinness and waiting for us.
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This weekend I made two things: Italian bread and rice pudding.

I’ve been making Italian Bread every week, and learning about bread making with every loaf I make. Last week, when the loaf collapsed before going into the oven (tasted fine though) I had several insights as to what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. So this week I tried a couple different things and voila!

Perfect rise, no collapse, and nice oven spring!

The biggest change was not using greased plastic wrap to cover the loaf–I used a floured towel instead, and it worked out much better. Next time I think I can reduce the amount of flour, and I’ll try the egg wash again.

Second recipe was rice pudding.

A couple months ago I picked up Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor and have been wanting to try several recipes since. The first problem was that these recipes use lots of eggs and butter and sugar (not surprisingly) and are something that I’d prefer to make for multiple people, instead of just us. The second problem was that Grandmom can’t eat a lot of the desserts, because they have nuts or dairy or something else she can’t eat.

Thus, I decided to try rice pudding, only I’d have to modify the recipe to make it non-dairy. I decided to substitute coconut milk for regular milk. Of course, the fact I’ve never made rice pudding before, and the first time trying a recipe isn’t always the best time for making major changes didn’t deter me in the slightest.

So how did it turn out?

Not bad. Grandmom really liked it (the fact she loves rice pudding was part of the impetus behind selecting that recipe) and Michael said it was good. I think that rice pudding isn’t really my thing, but it wasn’t gross or disgusting, so I’m assuming that means it turned out well.

Cranberry Walnut Bread

Chocolate Pudding

We had the weekend to ourselves (I would have preferred being in Seattle, but alas those vacation plans were utterly crushed by the weather) so I didn’t bake at all this weekend.

Luckily, I had some pictures from previous weeks on hand, so I still have something delicious (which is good, because I’ve been slacking recently).

I really like Marcy Goldman’s book, A Passion for Baking, and have been making lots of recipes from it recently. This recipe is for yeasted sweet rolls, which may be somewhat misleading, since sweet rolls make me think of gooey, sticky, cinnamon rolls, which is not what these are. These are simply an enriched yeast bread with extra sugar, and the fabulous added touch of vanilla.
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I’ve been baking a lot recently, but I haven’t been very good about photographing what I’ve been baking. This weekend, however, I took the camera into the kitchen, and had Michael help me get pictures.

For some reason, bread always felt intimidating to me. Sure, I could make quick breads and cookies, but I never experimented with yeast as a child, so although I knew the very basics of how things worked, bread was never anything I felt I could do well, since I wasn’t 100% sure about the process.

I decided this needed to change.

Here’s the thing about bread: it doesn’t have very many ingredients (excluding the egg wash, there are only four ingredients in this recipe: water, yeast, salt, and flour. Although the total time is long, most of the time is waiting for the starter and dough to rise.

So with so few ingredients, where does the flavor come from when you bake bread? It comes from the proofing or fermentation

Here is the Italian bread recipe I’ve been making. It begins with a starter (a Biga, though I think the Biga for this recipe may be closer to a Poolish. What’s the difference? The ratio of water to flour. A Poolish has more liquid than a Biga. Simple, ‘eh?)
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If you remember back, a couple weeks ago I received a “gift” from John the Scientist: tentacles.

Luckily, my friend MWT is a marine biologist and volunteered to take the tentacles from me, and put them to good use.

Here is the result!

Hooray!

I am through using silicone mats when baking cookies.

Why, you ask?

Look at the difference between those two cookies!

So that’s it. No more. It’s parchment paper for me from here on out.

Between the holidays and the unusually cold weather, I’ve been baking up a storm.

Now, I love baking cookies, but after all the Christmas cookies I made, I wanted to make something different. Since I don’t like cake, I decided to try breads (pies are okay, but I find pie crust more frustrating than fun).

Now I have lots and lots of cookbooks, however, over half of them are for desserts and cookies and sweets. I discovered I really only had a couple good resources when it came to bread.

First was the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. This is this first book I grabbed of the shelf when looking for a specific bread recipe (such as the Challah I decided to make over the holidays). This is a very good all purpose book. The recipes always turn out well (unless I make unexpected substitutions without planning ahead), and they always taste good. I use King Arthur flour in my baking, but any quality flour will work fine I’m sure. Of course the advantage of using KAF, is that you don’t have to worry about regional variations in the gluten levels of the flour.

From the Baker’s Companion I made Challah and Italian bread, both of which turned out very well.

An advantage of those recipes is they called for all purpose flour. Yes, you can make substitutions, but if the recipe calls for one type of flour, you’re always better off sticking with that kind of flour. This is of course an advantage if you don’t bake frequently, and are unlikely to use the bread flour before it goes bad.

Now if you like lots of pictures, this is not the book for you. There are a handful of pictures, but for the most part this is your standard cookbook with very few pictures. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, it just means this book isn’t as pretty as some of the others out there.

As far as the recipes, they’re simple, and I very much like the way the recipes are laid out: all the ingredients are listed at the top, and if an ingredient is used multiple times, it is listed multiple times. Since I have a habit of leaping before I look, I find this very useful.

The next book I grabbed was a Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman. My aunt & uncle gave me this book for Christmas several years ago, and my pizza dough is based upon the recipe in this book.

The first chapter is dedicated to discussing different baking techniques, ingredients and tools. Most good baking books start this way, but it’s actually important to know how the author does things–especially if you don’t measure your ingredients by weight.

There are plenty of pictures here, showing everything from end results to intermediary steps. And they’re not just gorgeous pictures, but pictures of foods it looks like a normal human could bake. (I love Baking with Julia, but the photography only serves to make the book more intimidating, and I almost never use that book out of fear.)

The recipes are clear, and there are plenty of side notes, explaining different tricks or asides.

As I said, I very much like her pizza dough recipe and techniques, and have used that recipe for quite awhile. I also decided to branch out and tried her “BLT Bread” loaf. That turned out extremely well, and Grandmom particularly liked that bread. We made grilled cheese sandwiches from this bread, and they were fabulous. I also tried her cinnamon bread recipe, however, I attempted to substitute white wheat for all purpose (which I have done with several recipes from KAF) and although the bread tastes fine, it didn’t rise much, so that was somewhat disappointing. But again, that was the fault of the baker rather than the recipe.

And finally, I ordered The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, which I am slowly working my way through. He goes into great detail regarding technique, and I am learning a lot, but it is a bit overwhelming. Nothing like a good book to make you feel like you know nothing.

So that’s what I’ve been reading. And unlike most of the other books I read, these are leading to so fabulous and delicious results.

So, all the baking I did over the holidays? I pretty much took no pictures. At all.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that things were delicious.

As usual, I made a lot of cookies. Although I tried some new recipes, I also made some favorites from last year, including cranberry oatmeal cookies and lemon coins. Unfortunately for Michael, I never got around to making any sort of peanut butter cookie. Luckily, my friend Sarah gave us some, so the holidays were saved!

But I also tried to branch out a bit this year, by adding different kinds of breads to the mix.

As I mentioned last week, the cranberry walnut bread recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum turned out extremely well. We’re currently eating the loaf I froze.

I also tried my hand at challah, using the recipe frmo the King Arthur Flour Baking Book. That also turned out very well, and the french toast Michael made from the second loaf was delicious.

For something slightly sweeter, I made pumpkin walnut bread, with the recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated Holiday Baking 2007 magazine. Actually, one of the reasons I made challah was because Grandmom can’t eat nuts, and I really wanted walnuts in my pumpkin bread. I ended up making three loaves of this bread, and although I’ve run out of fresh pumpkin, I’m going to pick up canned pumpkin from the store so I can make more of this bread. It was wonderful to snack on, and for a lazy weekend breakfast. (Plus it has pumpkin! And Nuts! That makes it healthy! Yay!)

The fourth type of bread I made was an Italian bread, this recipe also from the King Arthur Flour Baking book. The first loaf turned out extremely well, although the egg wash made a crush that Grandmom has a harder time eating. I left the egg wash off the next flour, and although it tasted fine, the color was extremely pale. I made another loaf over the weekend using white wheat flour, and that was a disappointment–the loaf hardly rose–so no more substituting white wheat flour in breads without more planning ahead and a better knowledge of making that substitution.

All in all, it was a fabulous holiday, and there were plenty of delicious baked goods to be had around here.

One of the things I did over the holidays was try new recipes.

I tried a lot of new recipes over the past month.

Most of the recipes I found by flipping through my (multiple) baking cookbooks and looking for things I thought I (or everyone else) would like. But after making pumpkin walnut bread (very delicious–I’m eating part of the third loaf I made as I type) I decided I wanted some cranberry walnut bread.

Now this is a bit of a problem, because Grandmom can’t have nuts or cranberries, which means that if I make baked goods with those ingredients, she can’t have any. But as I also made challah and Italian bread, I figured Grandmom could just suffer, because I really wanted cranberry walnut bread.

Knowing precisely what I wanted, I started going through my cookbooks.

And I kept coming up short. I found a couple recipes for cranberry walnut quick breads, but I wanted a yeast bread, and not one of my cookbooks had anything close.

So I then googled, and discovered that Rose Levy Beranbaum has a blog, and on that blog she had a recipe for cranberry walnut bread (made with yeast).

I glanced at the recipe, then continued looking. I mean, that is a VERY long recipe. But, I couldn’t find anything else that looked like what I wanted, so I printed out the recipe and decided to try it.

I have to admit she uses a layout for her recipes I don’t particularly like–she lists the ingredients as they are added. Yes, that forces me to read through everything before starting, but I like to do my mis en place before starting to make sure I have everything I need, and I prefer having everything I need on a single page.

Be that as it may, I started the recipe and then discovered I did not have a back-up container of bread flour. Two bags of white wheat, plenty of all purpose, but no bags of bread flour. So I had to sub all purpose for much of the recipe.

Despite my lack of proper ingredients (I also don’t have malt powder [because I don’t like malt]) the bread turned out extremely well–in fact, I ended up making the recipe again (the second time with bread flour).

The only thing I didn’t like, is this recipe makes a humongous loaf. The second time around I made two loaves, and put one loaf in the freezer, because that is a LOT of bread, especially if there are only two people eating the bread.

I’ve joked for years that most guys I know treat me like the little sister they never wanted.

Now I have further proof.

Over a year ago, I came home to discover a surprise package. Why yes, I did in fact receive six bottles of bird vomit. How lucky am I?

So yesterday, I received yet another package in the mail. Now, before I show you what I receive, you should know that two of my friends also received packages.

Anne is very excited about her package of ramen, and MWT was thrilled to have received a box of sachima.

So what did Michelle receive, may you ask?

Was I this excited about my loot?

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Saturday I cut out sugar cookies and baked them. They still need iced, but that’s for another day.

I was looking for a new cookies recipe to try, and when I ran across this one, I remembered that I’d frozen some blueberries this summer, so that meant I had to make the recipe, right?

The recipe was straightforward, however, the cookies took longer than expected to bake, and although they are delicious, they’re sticky and fall apart when you pick them up. But they are really really good, so I’m going to play with the cookie size and baking times to see if I can get things to turn out better.

And definitely use the lemon oil–the lemon flavor makes these cookies.

Blueberry Hill Oatmeal Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp lemon oil
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup toasted coconut
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup semi-frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Blend butter and sugars. Add egg, vanilla, and lemon oil. Add baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Fold in oats, then coconut, then flour.

By hand, fold in blueberries.

Scoop 2 tbsp balls of dough on baking sheets, at least 3 inches apart (the cookies spread a lot).

Bake 14 minutes.

Cool on the cookie sheets for 10 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack.

As I said, they were very delicious, but extremely sticky, and completely fell apart. I’ll have to play with the recipe to see if I can get the next batch to hold together better.

From A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

Spent the weekend making Christmas cookies (most of which are frozen/refrigerated in dough form).

Any requests before I finish up next weekend?