Good eats

My dear husband has enthusiastically embraced our 50 recipes challenge and so, with his help, I have tried four more things in as many days. We have been leafing through our cookbook collection, skipping over our "tried and true favorites" for something just a little different.

I have also continued to delve into "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," holding the cookbook at arm's length due to my continued love/fear of yeast baking. I love to bake. I can bake bread! However, I still find it exceedingly stressful. Part of this is due to the sheer insanity of baking bread from scratch with two little ones around the house. Is it time to shape the loaves? Oh no, it's time to leave them trembling on the counter while I feed the baby.

It doesn't help matters any that Peter Reinhart's baking instructions are extraordinarily fussy. I just keep telling myself that women have baked bread for thousands of years without a spray bottle and three pages of prose. I would like to suggest renaming his book the Bread Baker's Indentured Servant. While the easy solution would be to just shelve the book indefinitely, I cannot escape my servitude. Quite simply, his recipes are a revelation.

For example, pizza:
While it may look like a hot mess, you have no idea how delicious this pizza tasted. Oh, the crust! I will contain myself. I will not wax eloquently about pizza dough because that's embarassing. But really, it has surplanted all other pizza dough recipes in our house. And if you know us, you know we are pizza fanatics. This is one of Reinhart's easier recipes. You mix it up the day before, knead it some, stick the dough in the fridge until the next day. Nothing happens. Then you take it out and it sits on the counter for a few hours before you shape the pizza. Nothing else happens. No rising or bubbling. No telltale signs of yeasty wonderfulness. My husband was convinced the dough was dead until the pizza came out of the oven. But then we tasted it and it was heavenly.

Speaking of other celestial gifts, we also made banana bread:
Did you know that Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit? I believe it. And only Americans could have come up with something so sinfully delicious as banana bread. I found a one bowl recipe on simply recipes and threw in two big handfuls of chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. And let me tell you, that was a very, very, good idea.

And then on Monday we made pasta with tomatoes, cauliflower, and red peppers from our Jeanne Lemlin cookbook collection. I won't say much about it except that I was surprised that cauliflower goes so well with pasta. We are making the most of the limited in season offerings at the market. ( I also have a lovely cabbage and some potatoes in my fridge.) Thank goodness next month the spinach comes in.

Finally, I completely lost my mind and decided to make Vienna bread from "Bread Baker's Apprentice." Anadama loaf was one of the first recipes; Vienna bread was one of the last. This bread requires a pre-ferment. You make dough the day before and then add it to your recipe the next day. I made one loaf and six knotted rolls. I couldn't wait until dinner tonight and just polished off a big hunk of what you see in the foreground of the below photo. It was my best bread yet.


So yeah, yum. Hopefully more to come.

Recipes (#8-11)