Since we had a big Italian dinner lined up with friends last weekend, I volunteered to bring bread. One, it gave me a chance to try the Italian Bread formula from BBA; two, I decided to take another crack at ciabatta, also from BBA; and three, these people love homemade bread.
The Italian bread was pretty straightforward--and delicious. Here's a photo:
Friends of ours are fond of panettone, so I thought that I would try making some for them as a Christmas gift. After much browsing, I decided to use the recipe for Il Panettone Milanese, located here: http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0946.htm. One of the things that drew me to this one is that it uses a naturally-yeasted biga, instead of commercial yeast. I figured that my sourdough starter (which isn’t especially sour) would yield a good biga and it did.
With bread in the freezer, there wasn't much reason for baking this weekend, so I contented myself with some sourdough English Muffins. After all, the starter was due for another feeding, right? Now that they are cooling on the rack, I suppose that I really do need to get to work in the basement.
Baking is so much more fun!
PMcCool
Variety is good. Even with all of the different types of bread to try and to enjoy, sometimes it's nice to do something a little different. So, when my wife asked if I would make some Rocky Road Fudge Bars, I was happy to oblige. This recipe was a Pillsbury Bake-off winner some mumble-mumble years back. I've been making ever since I was in college. It starts with a brownie base:
The base is then topped with a cream cheese filling:
We're leaving town today to visit our youngest daughter and son-in-law for their birthdays. One of the requests was "Could Dad bring some bread?" So Dad got busy and baked some sourdough bread from the King Arthur cookbook. I tweaked the recipe by substituting 2 cups of rye for some of the AP flour. I also made a batch of sourdough english muffins as well. Picture below:
In case you are thinking that there is no way that particular sequence of dots can be connected, stay with me. You may want to send for the nice men in the white coats when I'm done explaining, but until then, think of it as a case study in aberrant psychology.
It started simply enough. I needed to make bread this weekend for sandwiches this week. Since I hadn't gotten my starter out of the refrigerator and activated soon enough, it had to be a yeasted dough. And there are so many formulas to try in BBA . . .
This weekend's baking exercise focused on sourdough Enlish muffins, using the recipe from King Arthurs Flour. The taste is wonderful! Even my 4-year old grandson polished his off and he is at a stage where he is developing some very strong opinions about what flavors are or aren't acceptable.
