Bread Heals All Wounds

Sat, 01/23/10
Bread (ahem...Cupcake) Pudding
from Lizzie May

Hoorah!

After posting my last entry about the doomed cupcakes, I received many suggestions from loving friends and family about what to do with the charred remains, including: cake pops, rum balls, and the practical advice, "just swipe them in frosting and chow down!" (thanks, Stacy.) I finally settled on Lizzie's bread pudding recipe, with adjustments made for sweetened cupcakes.

This recipe was about as foolproof as they come: 4 eggs (plus a yolk), a 1-1/2 cup mixture of milk and half & half, 1 tsp vanilla, a smidge of cinnamon, and... Voila!


Aaahhh...


All Better!

Lizzie also mentioned raisins, but I didn't have anything special to soak them in (i.e. rum), so I left them out, but I think even just plain raisins would have been a good addition. But this bare-bones version turned out fine, as is. Yummy eggy goodness.

Next up on the Bread Train is...

Sun, 01/24/10
Sourdough Baguettes
from The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen by Peter Berley

This was my first attempt at really kneading dough... Until now, I've baked lots of loaves of yummy, crusty, rustic bread, but only using "no-knead" methods, all derived from New York Times' No-Knead Bread.

Those loaves have all been good, some better than others, and recently very good, after using the techniques described in Cooks Illustrated's "Almost No-Knead Bread" recipe.

However, I was up for a challenge, and I figured old-fashioned bread kneading would be the ideal next step in my bread-baking journey.

(Also, I had just acquired some prime kitchen loot: a SuperPeel and a heavy duty FibraMent baking stone. These items nicely took the place of the cast iron pot I had used for baking all my no-knead bread.)

Anyway, so I followed the instructions for a series of kneading, resting and rising: methods gathered from not only this Peter Berley recipe, but also Julia Child's bread-baking French Chef video "The Good Loaf", and step-by-step pictures in her cookbook The Way to Cook.

The process was labor intensive and time-consuming, but very fun—something I'll likely try out next weekend.

Here are the end results:


Talk about rewarding!

The bread was made from my sourdough starter, and it tasted wonderful. Also, thanks to steam created from tossing water into a hot pan on the oven floor, the crust of the bread turned out just as lovely as my no-knead loaves (which acquire their steam from the tightly-lidded cast iron dutch oven):





Yum, yum, yum.

Well, like I said, I'll be practicing this recipe many more times... Maybe I can turn it into pizza sometime, too!

Stay tuned for more crusty, doughy goodness.

Care and Use Instructions (or: "It Broke")

I recently received the stunning gift of a beautiful bright-green Le Creuset Cookware Set. I had baked my last loaves of No-Knead Bread with my Dad's older 7-qt Le Creuset dutch oven, so naturally I was eager to christen the Dutch oven in this new set with another batch of bread.

Well, last night I was reading the little booklet that came with my set, and noticed that the black phenolic knob on the lid was only oven-proof to 375 degrees. "Hmm..." I thought. "The NYT No-Knead Bread recipe is so popular, that surely many people have been able to use these pots at 450 degrees with no problems, and I've been able to use my older pot with no problems... so, eh, it'll be fine."

As you can probably guess... it was not fine. The knob was loose after taking the lid out of the oven 30 minutes later, and while nervously trying to screw it back on, the knob chipped right at the base, and I realized that my beautiful little brand-new pot was busted.

After several hours of panicking and fretting, a late night web search directed me to several wholesalers who sell Le Creuset pot knobs: not only the replacement black phenolic knobs, but hardcore, sure-thing, 100% heatproof stainless steel knobs, at just $10 a pop. Most dealers only sell one or the other, but I found this handy dealer who sells both: IraWoods.com. Here are the links for the Le Creuset Stainless Steel Knob and Large Phenolic Knob.

What really made me feel better during this web search was discovering that I wasn't the only dummy out there, stubbornly destroying her perfect cookware. It turns out that after the New York Times published the Mark Bittman No-Knead Bread recipe back in Nov. 2006, so many folks damaged their LC knobs that people took to stealing knobs from display models at department stores: see article Knob Heads: No Knead Bread Update.

So, the moral of this story is: when you receive a lovely and valuable gift, always read (and believe) the Care and Use Instructions, to ensure the gift stays lovely and valuable.

But don't feel so bad if you do mess up: a lot of people out there are just as stupid as you are, and are more than happy to blog about their mistakes.