Extra!

This just in: I finally made a baguette that's crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside!  It's still not as airy as the baguettes I like best, but it's remarkably close to the standard French baguette. 

Crafts!

Sometimes, despite my best intentions and my love of homemade bread, very little baking happens in this house.  When I'm not baking, I'm often working, but I'm also in the middle of a number of other projects during my free time.  Lately, my main projects have been knitting and crocheting.  Individualized arm-warmers are so much fun to make, and typically only take a few days.  Over Christmas I made a fabulous pair for my best friend:

The pattern is easy - 36 stitches across, knit until they're long enough, then sew up the edges, leaving about two inches for a thumb hole.  On this pair, using a hunter green tweed yarn, I got a little creative with the cabling in an attempt to bring out the flecks of color in the tweed.  Every time I see my friend she's wearing them.  I recently followed this up with a lovely pair of teal, cabled arm-warmers for myself that button all the way up the sides, with a matching hat!

I have also been hard at work on a long-term crochet project - started in July 2010:

This afghan was meant to be a wedding present for two of my good friends who were married in August, but now it's March and I'm only about a quarter of the way finished.  I really hope they don't repaint their house anytime soon!

St. Patrick's Day Three in a Row

I have been an Irish Soda Bread baking machine this week, and I've loved every minute of it.  My new mixer takes all the arm strain out of mixing the dough - make no mistake, this is dense bread - although it's still advisable to knead by hand for best results.  I'm not sure if the mixer made a more pliable, well-blended dough, or if St. Patrick was smiling on me, but this bread turned out fantastic.  The soda bread I make using my family's recipe often comes out a bit undercooked in the center, but Thursday's loaf (pictured here) was perfectly and uniformly done all the way through.

Friday's was a bit denser, because I bowed to health concerns and used half whole wheat flour, but still very even and well-cooked.  I've also learned to slice further into the loaf when making the cross, which I believe allows more heat to reach the center.  Growing up, I thought that the cross was for looks, and I've only realized in the past year or so how important it is for even baking.

Finally, this morning I used up the rest of the buttermilk to make to quick soda bread loaves following the River Cottage recipe.  While this recipe lacks some of the complexity of my family's recipe, it is basic, fast, and will tolerate endless tinkering and substitution.  This morning, I added some carraway seeds and a very small amount of brown sugar, and I used one part wheat flour to three parts white.  It was perfectly easy and perfectly delicious first thing in the morning.

Roti

Last night I whipped up a delicious red lentil dal that made my whole house smell like spices.  As I sat down to eat it with a fork, it occurred to me that one of my favorite things about Indian food is scooping it up with naan.  Unfortunately, I realized that I had never made naan, didn't have a recipe, and didn't exactly have time to make a batch before my dal cooled.  However, I had been wanting to try the recipe for roti from the River Cottage Bread Handbook.  Since this bread, unlike naan, is unleavened, it is quick and easy to make.  Just mix together some flour, salt, and water, knead a little, then roll out into rounds like tortillas.  I think that the main difference between roti and a tortilla is that you cook the roti for shorter intervals over higher heat, which is what allows it to puff up like a balloon.  The first time I saw the bread actually puff all the way I was delighted!  After you remove it from the heat, it quickly deflates, but the resulting bread is soft and chewy, and perfect for scooping a nice, thick, dal and rice mixture.

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.