love at first bite.

sweet spinach.
i adore thee.

chicago deep dish

this weekend i attempted to create the "chicago style deep dish pie" lifted from the pages of "cooks illustrated". i started friday night, but the recipe was a little confusing and what i thought was going to take 2 hours quickly started to look like four. i tossed the dough after the final butter lamination at 10.30pm and decided i wasn't hungry enough to wait up for this pizza.

with the sauce and dough pre-made i jumped back into the project last night. i took the two doughs out of the fridge, let them sit half and hour and warmed up my oven to the 425* that the recipe called for. i sliced up some mozzarella from live oak farm that i've been itching to use and tossed those babies in the oven.

low and behold they came out great. i think it might have been my best pizza ever. i'll be sure to bring a copy of it next time i visit the farm.

meanwhile:

tonight i'll bring one of the two pizza's i made to the yoga-licious pot luck.

my next baking projects are going to be focused on getting myself ready for the art-mart, i'll be selling bagels and loaves.

right now- i have to tackle my talk 20 project.
yikes!

breads.

last weeks report.

transitional whole wheat sandwich loaf.
-peter reinharts "whole grain breads"

this loaf used a 50/50 blend of ap and whole wheat flour. i wanted a morning toast loaf to go with the nutritional yeast i acquired on my trip to the greenville earth fare. i consider nut yeast to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure since i'm not sure of its purposes/usefullness. i do know that i aquired a taste for it sprinkled over lightly buttered toast.

the loaf took two days and turned out well enough. sometimes my baking projects keep me up past my normal sleeping hour- and you can find me in the kitchen crouching besides the oven with a copy of "cooks illustrated". this is a typical saturday night for me in spartanburg.




i also used the scone recipe from rose levy beranbaum's "pie and pastry bible" to create a modified flaky pastry.

Saving for a car VS. desire for standing mixer.

standing mixer.

dang, thats a good looking feller. who could resist? I think most cars are esthetically undesirable and owning one will surely drain my pocketbook. A standing mixer on the other hand is sleek and rhythmic creating culinary opportunity around every bend.

Blog Slacker

So I've been slacking a little. Sorry about that.

Last week i did the unspeakable, I used a recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book. Im of the opinion that the book is poorly organized and boring... though I hear the recipes are solid enough. I spent the weekend at the farm- and when i couldn't find the butter I needed to make biscuits i turned to the cookbook shelf, and bit my tongue. I made molasses walnut muffins (a variation from the recipe on page 60).

In the mean time I started some bagels and used garlic salt and onion powder to give them some extra flavor- the outcome of both projects were well recieved.

more to come!