In Good Taste

The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge (Week 15) Italian Bread: Finishing What I Start

When I was a child, I wasn't very good at finishing the things I started. If I fell during ice skating lessons, I never wanted to go again. If I didn't feel like going to dance class, my parents pulled me out. I quit the field hockey team mid-season during my senior year of high school and I changed majors about fifteen times in college before settling on two.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge (Week 14) French Bread...Or Not

If you think I made one heck of a loaf of French bread...think again. And read on below the fold!

Recently, a friend and I were talking about narcissism. Bloggers spend a great deal of timing writing into space, on our blogs and on Twitter, about ourselves, hoping people will read them, hoping people will like them, hoping people will like us.

We write about what we had for breakfast, we write about our dogs, our kids, our boyfriends and our parents. We right about the trivial moments of our lives and we write about the most important moments in our lives.

Are we narcissistic or just outgoing? Do we have a lot to say or do we say too much?

I think that there is a boundary, a happy medium that's defined by how genuine you are. Is it all good, all the time? Or are you just sharing stories from your life as they happen, when they happen, because you havre a passion for that?

Well, I talk about my great cooking all time but I'm going to be honest with you when I tell you about this week's Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge: it was a flop.

I. Am. Bad. At. Hearth. Baking.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge (Week 13) Focaccia Bread

I'm no stranger to focaccia bread. Specifically, foccacia bread with onion and rosemary that was so good I even recommended making it to impress a date (and I promise you won't wind up with onion breath).

I wish I could whole-heartedly recommend Peter Reinhart's recipe but for the strapped-for-time bread baker, I wouldn't suggest anything other than the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you're entertaining, though, this is the bread for you. It makes enough bread to easily feed a crowd, and a hungry crowd, at that.

Peter Reinhart's dough was difficult to manage because there was so much of it. Between each proof, I thought it might outgrow the pan. I had visions of it ballooning in my oven like a big, sticky dough pillow that I would have to untangle from my oven racks....and what kind of photo would that be?

The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge (Week 12) English Muffins

As much as I like living in the United States, I can't help but sometimes be jealous of other countries.Sure, we have democracy, baseball and Mount Rushmore, but think of the amazing contributions that other nations have brought to American culture.

France sent us French fries and French toast, Belgium sent us Belgian waffles and the UK shares a namesake with English muffins. And the US? Well, we have sausage, egg and cheese sandwiched between two pancakes.

This week, I made English muffins for the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge and they turned out so well, I made a second batch and swapped half the flour for whole wheat to make them a little bit more nutritious.

Bread Baker's Appentice Challenge (Week 11) Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread

Peter Reinhart and I have a very different idea of what it means to celebrate. Now, keep in mind that I've never even met Peter Reinhart, let alone celebrated with him, but I'm basing my statement on substantiated evidence. In The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Reinhart has a recipe for Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread.

Now, I like bread as much as the next person (maybe even more, as evident by the fact that I'm doing this challenge in the first place) but when I celebrate, I want to be celebrating with a rich, decadent dessert like my favorite chocolate cake.