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I love buying bread books in all languages, the most inexpensive way of virtual travels and experience for me.  I came across a book by Swedish baker and owner of Brunkebergs Bageri (Brunkebergs Bakery) in Stockholm, Heléne Johansson's[i] Bröd, Från Brunkebergs Bageri [/i]([i]Bread, from Brunkebergs Bakery[/i]).   Her love and passion for bread exudes from the book.  For the first 15 pages of the book on the web, please click [b]

Next week we will be celebrating my daughter Valerie's 23rd birthday. I asked her what she would like me to make for her. She  said, she wanted to help me try and make my moms Pastizzi to keep the family tradition going. I got the recipe from my sister and did a test run. We will need to  adjust a few things next week.

1. salt and pepper they were bland.

2 The shaping needs lots of work

The Puff pastry ( The hardest part) I was pleased with, It was light and flaky. I think Valerie will have her birthday wish come true!

I wanted to make a lean yeast bread with some of the wonderful stoneground cornmeal from Ridgecut Gristmills that I posted about here. I decided on baguettes, since I hadn't used the fancy perforated pan that I bought from the King Arthur store in a while.

In the middle of the week,  I decided to make some bread after returning from 2 full days of meeting,  I need to de-stress.  Picked up Bernard Clayton's book and saw this attractive name - Feather Bread.  I wondered if this is the same kind of bread that I had at the restaurant of the hotel that I stayed.  So,  I started late in the night.  Click here for the recipe

Background:

I had read about the organic stoneground flours from La Meunerie Milanaise (La Milanaise Mills) in Daniel Leader's Local Breads and through numerous posts on TFL. I was anxious to try them so a few months ago as I was in Montreal visiting friends, I was able to bring back three 20 kg bags of their flours. I had to contact the US Customs to have their blessing before driving back across the border with 132 pounds of white powder.

The Perfect Baguette Eludes Me...  My Breads are Getting Worse...

Argh!

Recipe from 'Lorenza De Medici's - Tuscany The Beautiful Cookbook'

Like most Italian Cakes, this sweet Florentine pizza is linked to a religious feast: "Carnival".    At one time lard was used instead of butter, which added to the flavor.

Today was a lovely day in Arizona. Still in our little rental RV. The garden is taking off and I'm procrastinating on buying dirt for my new garden area where the tomatoes need to get transplanted. That will be a hard day or two of work. So, I bake and train my dog instead.

Apparently I was in the mood of trying new things, with this bread I used: new recipe (Almond Milk Loaf from Dan Lepard's "A handmade loaf"), new yeast (a natural yeast from Japanese Shirakami-Sanchi region), as well as new bread pans from China, good thing everything turned out well!

Why not try something different for Valentines Day and give your love ones a real double chocolate treat. These biscotti are perfect and wrapped in a pretty red box with ribbons would be a real surprise when opened. 

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