Whole Wheat Baguette

I used a ratio of 1:2:1 of whole wheat bread flour : white bread flour : white flour and made two delicious and slightly nutritious baguettes!  Three rising periods made them lighter and crustier than baguettes I'd made in the past.  Weirdly, it also helped to cook them on the metal baking sheet they were rising on, rather than on my baking stone.  I'm wondering if the baking stone, which seemed like a really great recommendation at the time I picked it up, actually isn't the best for baguettes.  I think I'll try this on future baguettes and chart my progress.

Wedding Present Beer Coozies

Made these lovelies for my friends John and Lindsey as a wedding present.  Used yarn in their wedding colors (the hardest part was matching it to the invite!)  I love people who actually ask for homemade wedding presents ('cause everybody knows they're going to get them anyway!)

Wheat Sandwich Bread

One of my constant complaints about homemade wheat bread is that it's too dense and just isn't as fun to eat as most white bread.  Focaccia and baguette and fougasse and all the other lovely but nutrient deficient breads that I love are easy to eat with just a bit of olive oil or cheese.  But wheat bread is a project to eat.  So, I went looking for a better wheat bread recipe, and I found one!  Behold the power of the internet!  I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com.  It makes a basic sandwich loaf that holds together pretty well and is light and chewy.  I found out that it gets stale (or you can tell that it's stale) pretty quickly, but other than that it is delightful.

I only made half the recipe and ended up with two nice sized loaves.  Because of the size of my loaf pans, the slices are a bit small for a traditional sandwich, but I'm comfortable with eating two smaller sandwiches, in a pinch.  I think that in the future I might add a coating of oats and seeds to the outside, or even mix some seeds in, because this bread could be a bit more robust, but it fulfilled its promise of being easy to make and even easier to eat!

From the Garden

Somehow, even though I have totally abandoned my garden (best laid plans and all that) I managed to bring in quite a nice haul of chard and kale last night, plus a single beet and a head of garlic.  Veggie stir fry ensued.

Plum and Blackberry Jam

A friend has a huge plum tree in his backyard and invited me over this weekend to make plum wine. We spent a lot of time picking and sorting the under-ripe plums - figuring that the less ripe ones would make a flavorful but less sweet wine. Then it occurred to us that we were working ridiculously hard for something that we couldn't enjoy for three or four months at least! Being instant gratification types - and 'no project is too big' types - we decided to make jam as well.

I very loosely based the jam on some recipes from The Forgotten Skills of Cooking (best cookbook ever), mostly referring to it for general cooking times and pectin levels. I used 3 1/2 lbs of slightly under-ripe Italian plums, about 1 lb of blackberries, 1 cup of water, and 4 cups of sugar. In the end, the jam is a bit sweet for me, but not so sweet it makes me sick. Plus, the flavor is pretty potent, so you don't need too much of it.

I was a bit worried about the jam setting since I don't have any experience with plums and I know that blackberries have very low acidity. But I think we were saved by using under-ripe plums, and the jam set perfectly!

Also, I'm not sure that this has much at all to do with the process of making jam, but it is a very pleasant thing to make jam with an attractive man helping to pick and scrub the fruit.

Peach Marmalade: Fiasco or Fabulous?

The peach marmalade I cooked up a few weeks ago barely set at all and is really more like peach sauce. But, it's delicious. I love the hint of cinnamon and the general brightness of the fruit flavor. Leaving aside the fact that you spoon it rather than spread it, it mostly stays put in a sandwich or on toast. Speaking of which, my favorite restaurant ever is/was called On Toast and they served everything, wait for it, on toast. It was my paradise.

Anyway, I think the marmalade is fabulous, and now I only need to find five or six daring souls who will take jars of it off my hands. I made a bit more than I can eat in the next year!

Marmalade

Since I announced earlier this week that I would be making peach marmalade, a few friends have asked me what this is or if it exists. I know that I love it, but I'm honestly not sure what makes it "marmalade" as opposed to jelly or jam. The internet informs me that marmalade is just what we call jam made from citrus fruits. It also informs me that peaches are not citrus fruits. Good to know. Finally, the Internet has informed me that in many languages marmalade is approximately the equivalent of the English word jam.

To recap: marmalade = citrus jam; peaches = not citrus; marmalade sometimes = jam; Meg eats lots of snobby European condiments.

That said, I found a great Italian peach marmalade recipe online!