Sesame Baguette

These are some quality baguettes.  I wanted to make something healthier than the usual, but still wonderful and delicious.  I settled for adding half a cup of spelt flour to my regular baguette recipe - from Confessions of a French Baker - which typically uses white flour and bread flour.  The spelt gave the bread a slightly nutty taste, and some added fiber, but didn't make it too dense.  Then, to compliment the spelt flavor, I toasted some sesame seeds (I bought them a few weeks ago with the dream of coating bread with them, but hadn't gotten around to it).  After shaping the loaves but before the second rise, I brushed the tops in water and then rolled the loaves in the sesame seeds.  The bread is so tasty with some creamy, salty butter spread on slices.  I have to stop myself from eating a whole loaf!

Rye Bread - it's all about the carraway seeds

I've made rye bread in the past, poorly.  It never rose properly and was always too stiff.  Last night, the dough I almost broke my mixer kneading was for two loaves of rye bread.  I made them using the River Cottage Bread Handbook's basic bread recipe.  The recipe calls for 8 cups of flour, so I used 2 cups of white flour, 3 cups of white bread flour, 1 cup of whole wheat bread flour, 1 cup of spelt flour, and 1 cup of rye flour.  I then sprinkled liberally with carraway seeds.  For the liquid, I mixed (rather old) buttermilk with water.  My theory is that buttermilk never goes bad, because it just gets more sour.  I'm sure that in the age of technology and pasteurized milk this is completely erroneous, but I don't care at all. 

I think it was a good idea to use bread flour mixed with the spelt and rye, because bread flour has better or more glutens than regular flour, which is better again than the denser whole wheat, spelt, or rye flours.  Or, in my personal, non-scientific version - bread flour = rise good; flour = rise okay; spelt/whole wheat/rye = rise not so good.  The bread rose nicely and is delicious, which I'm sure is due to the combination of rye flour, carraway seeds, and sour(er) buttermilk.  It has a slight sour flavor that is complex and wonderful, and then the carraway seeds make the flavor richer and bolder.  Toasted with a little cream cheese, it's divine.  Then again, what isn't divine toasted with a little cream cheese on top?

Technological Advances!

For about 36 hours, I was the proud owner of a Christmas bonus.  Now I am the equally proud owner of a factory refurbished KitchenAid mixer.  It rocks.  Mostly.  I've used it pretty much every day since I unpacked it from its huge box on Christmas Eve.  It was the muscle behind baguettes, rosemary rolls, focaccia, and innumerable batches of tortillas.  I love it.

I was initially skeptical about the usefulness of one of these machines, but after using my friend Beth's mixer, I realized that the machines actually make better bread than humans.  It took me a while to grapple with that reality.  I'm always trying to rely less on technology - less surfing the internet, fewer factory-made ingredients in my food, more reading, less t.v.  It was frustrating and fascinating to see how dough that was too stiff to work by hand became smooth and elastic in the machine.  I wanted to be able to do everything myself!  But, it's actually nice to let the machine do it for me.  It also decreases the time and effort I put in to the initial stages of baking, which means I can make bread on a weeknight, even if I stay late at work!

My only mishap to date occurred tonight, when I tried to make the machine knead dough that, if I had tried to knead it by hand, I would have realized was not moist enough.  It took the engine overheating and giving off an unfortunate odor for me to realize what I was doing.  I added water and kneaded the rest by hand, letting the engine cool down.  Hopefully haven't done irreparable damage, as I assume that being an idiot isn't covered by the warranty.

Vegetarian Christmas

I love vegetarian christmas.  It's like a regular feast, but the vegetables are the main course instead of sides and filler - which means that they get the spotlight.  This year I ate christmas dinner with some friends in Portland, and we turned the traditional holiday dinner inside out.  We stuck to eating mostly seasonal vegetables, so the meal still had the flavor of the holidays, but we dispensed with any notion of fake turkey, or even of stuffing or mashed potatoes.  This year, we ate mushroom and cream sauce lasagna, beet, pear, and chard salad (with chestnuts!), rosemary rolls, and decadent chocolate cookies and Russian tea cakes.  The meal was delicious and colorful and still felt christmas-y, without all the heavy starches and meat (and requisite napping afterward). 

My best friend and hostess made the lasagna, with whole wheat pasta, creamy cheese sauce, and loads of mushrooms.  It was rich enough that it satisfied the holiday calorie overload requirement, without the holiday overload waistline.  I contributed the rolls - a delicious recipe that I got from my aunt Martha and which only comes out at the holidays. Otherwise we would eat bread all the time and completely ignore vegetables and other delicious goodness.  For the salad, I roasted beets and roasted and shelled chestnuts.  Then I tossed the beets and chestnuts with a chopped bosc pear, fresh goat cheese with figs, and chopped rainbow chard.  I topped it with an apple cider vinaigrette that I made with nutmeg and ginger, for an extra holiday kick.  Finally, my hostess and her brother made decadent chocolate cookies with semi-sweet and white chocolate chips (full disclosure, I didn't have one because I don't really like chocolate, but I heard that they were amazing!!)  They also made the most mouthwatering Russian tea cakes with grated orange peel and cardamom.  They were divine (and small enough that I didn't feel like I was overindulging).  We started the meal with mulled wine and topped it off with a glass of champagne - all told a delightful meal.

FYI - I gave my best friend a guide to cheesemaking for christmas, so expect to see cheese experiments appearing soon!

Gingerbears

When I was a kid, my parents always used to read me a Christmas book called The Gingerbears' First Christmas.  I loved that book so much that when I learned to cook I never bothered making gingerbread men or women (or even houses until more recently) but only gingerbears.  Gingerbears don't really need facial features made of raisins or little buttons down their fronts, but they do need cinnamon hearts if you're going to serve them on Christmas day (it's kind of a long story, I recommend that you read it).  The gingerbears I made tonight don't have cinnamon hearts, which either means that Santa hasn't visited yet, or that I forgot to buy them at the store.

This was going to be a post about how the gingerbread recipe from the Joy of Cooking isn't as user-friendly as the one I used to use in my parents' Betty Crocker, but now I think I'll just urge you to read about the gingerbears.  If you have kids, this is a magical book to share with them.  If you don't, I think it's worth a read to remind you how awesome being a kid was.  I eventually bought my own copy, and I still read it every year!

Christmas Baking is Here!

For me, winter is a season filled with time commitments.  But it's also a great season for hunkering down and cooking, and the holidays provide an excuse to make foods we know we probably shouldn't be eating.  The best part is that, after we've cooked all these decadent, starchy, and fattening foods, we can force others to eat them (if we happen to be watching our waistlines).  I've been so busy cooking and going to Christmas parties, that I haven't had a chance to post photos of or stories about my creations here.  Mostly, I've been churning out Irish Soda Bread and rosemary focaccia like my life depends on it, and adding sugar cookies and muffins to the mix whenever I have time.

However, I have had a few exciting cooking experiences this December that I thought were worthy of noting here.  Today, I opened my first can of the tomatoes I canned this summer.  (That would be my first can of my first canning.)  I ate them heated up over cheese tortellini for dinner, and I'm still alive!  This is truly cause for celebration.  I have also been making a whole lot of delicious soups and stews and various delicious pumpkin creations that I have neglected to photograph or share here.  Last weekend, I made a delicious buttermilk split pea soup of my own creation.  The roasted garlic and buttermilk flavors almost make up for the lack of ham (but not quite, nothing really can).

Next up: Gingerbears, baguettes, knitting projects, and an adventure into traditional cookies I've never made before.  I'd also like to make a pumpkin pie, which I just haven't been able to get around to yet.  The problem, of course, is that I usually bake for other people, and so I never find the time to bake something to keep and eat all by myself!

Here's a little Christmas cheer to kick off my favorite baking season:

I'M A WINNER!!

That's right, folks.  I'm a NaNoWriMo winner!  Quite a few times this month, I doubted that I would finish and I doubted that finishing would be worth it.  Now, from the end of the road (or, at least, the end of November) I can say that it was totally worth it.  Is my novel finished?  Of course not.  I'm about halfway through the plot, and the half I have written was written in a crazy rush based on an arbitrary deadline.  But the important thing is that I met that arbitrary deadline.  It has given me a huge rush of confidence that I can, in fact, finish this novel, and that it's worth finishing.  So, I have set a new deadline for myself.  I'll finish the novel by October 31, 2011. 

In the meantime, I should have more time for baking!  The holidays make me cookie-tastic, so I'm looking forward to many delicious posts in the upcoming weeks.