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.

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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