My Aunt and Uncle gave me an Amazon.com gift card.
And there is a link in case you wanted to get one for someone. They are quite fabulous gifts if I must say so myself. Amazon has everything under the sun! I vowed that I would spend this on MYSELF and no one else, but I didn't know what exactly I wanted to use it for.
Tom then promptly ran out of coffee filters and I realized that I should buy him a reusable one. I ordered it from Amazon, and in order to get free shipping I started thinking about myself. I have been wanting an artisan bread cookbook for a while so I read review after review after review until one seemed "ok." Wow people write some nasty reviews!
I picked a book by Peter Reinhart - Artisan Breads Every Day.
It has beautiful pictures and I felt like the recipes and reviews seemed good enough for me. Most of the recipes (I think all of them actually!) call for cold fermentation, which means making a dough and then letting it sit in the fridge for a while. Similar to the no-knead phenomenon brought on by Mark Bittman and the NY Times a few years ago.
I made my first recipe - very similar to the no-knead bread in fact, and it turned out beautiful. In my opinion it was more beautiful than delicious, but I think I f----ed some things up a teeny bit. When I was supposed to re-shape the loaf I just sort of left it, and I think it at least needed to be rounded again. Oh well - you live and your learn.
I am now in the process of feeding my sourdough starter. It has WORKED and is bubbling away. I will make my first sourdough bread this weekend or next week. Stay tuned for more baking news.
Nichols? Don't you feel like my pictures are getting better? Same camera....but I swear just being around you makes people better photographers!
well done. I actually heard about that book somewhere, can't remember where, but looks like fun!
ReplyDeleteSince I'm on a JC kick, and the only books that made it to sd with me were cook books, I have a Baking with Julia cookbook I was just looking at for making bread... might try my hand at it this weekend since bread is just about the only thing I'm eating right now.
what's a JC kick nicky??
ReplyDeleteand, the bread looks amazing ames! i definitely want to learn to make break when i move west. can you come live with me and teach me to cook for a week? thanks.
JC = Julia Child.
ReplyDeleteEr - I am not sure I am qualified to "teach" you how to make bread, but you will come visit up here or I will come down there and we will make a loaf one weekend so you feel comfortable. It was remarkably easy!
And I would TOTALLY love to come live and cook with you for a week. I just need to be able to drive there and bring Harps. I wish it wasn't 18 hours to San Diego or I would come down this summer and see you and Sar and Sar and Becca.