snow day!

yeah yeah, i know i know...it's just some snow, get over it already. but this is nashville and we don't do snow here, at least not that often and generally not this much.

photo #1, 11am on friday

photo #2, 1pm on friday

photo #3, 6pm on friday

photo #4, my crazy husband shoveling the snow as it still falls around 8pm on friday.

the view this morning at 8am and it is still falling! so far we have about 6 inches which may not seem like much to many but really, we just don't get much snow here. that 6 inches is probably equal to all of the snow we have had since we moved into this house 6 years ago! if we are lucky, we will be able to get out of the house later today when some other brave nutjobs have driven around on our street and cleared a path for us-we do not have four wheel drive or a snow plow handy!

birthday bread baking party

with everything i have going on, i found time to make some bread for this month's bread baking day, #26. the theme is to bake a loaf of bread to take to a birthday party. well, what kind of bread does one take to a birthday party? being a mom, i can see that this would not go over well with the kids; what kid wants a loaf of bread rather than cake or cookies? however, i can see making a couple of loaves of good sourdough bread, grilling a steak or some fish, tossing a salad, opening a nice bottle of wine, sharing it with friends and calling that a birthday party. add a few presents and some cake and i'm set and ready to par-tee. but this is a party for jamie of lifes a feast and i can only hope she approves of the menu!

with this challenge in mind, i decided to multi task. a coworker, stevo, has taken an interest in baking bread and he has been asking me questions, lots of questions in an effort to learn as much as he can. a week or so ago, i gave him some of my starter and a list of websites and cookbook titles but this week we had the opportunity to work together for two consecutive days. out of the fridge came the starter, we fed it and started two separate batches of sourdough bread. today we made two loaves of bread so that stevo could see just how easy it is to do.

on the left, a whole grain loaf and on the right, one with some semolina. i was looking in the fridge where i store all of my flour and discovered that i had more than a dozen varieties of flour so we could have made any number of combinations. we also started some rye sour so that we could make rye bread at some point.

here are the two loaves rising in bowls on my work table. since this is such an easy recipe to use, i was able to do this as i worked on stocking the restaurant for the day.

here they are in the oven

the finished loaves, this is the whole grain which is really only about 35% whole wheat and a few tablespoons of multigrain hot cereal mix. it was a good combination and a great learning experience for stevo since he wants to make whole grain breads at home.

the semolina loaf. both were wonderful while they were warm.

pretty loaves!

thanks to jamie for inviting us to this wonderful birthday party, we had fun!

and for those of you wanting the recipe, it is actually up on my blog already because i love this recipe and when something works, why change it!

ammurica's dumbest crimnals

we are lucky to live in a great neighborhood. there are lots of families here and we have met many of them while out working in the yard or when walking the mutt around. unfortunately, we also have a few apartment complexes and rental homes nearby that generally are fine but can house what you might refer to as undesirables. in the 6 years here, we haven't had much trouble but recently, we had an incident. late at night, someone ransacked darry's car. he was leaving for work about 5am when he noticed that things were laying on the passenger seat that are normally in the glove compartment. he put them back and in the process checked to see that the valuables were still there-his fancy laser pointer in its fancy case, his swiss army knife and his little leatherman tool were all present and accounted for as was all of the important car documents and a collection of coins. the only thing missing, his keys for the kitchen and his security pass for the building...what could anyone possibly do with them? wait, i know, we are idiots and we always leave a full set of house keys in the unlocked car in the carport!!! this is where you say DUH!!! of course i couldn't let it go unnoticed and i quickly put a note up on every door to the house just in case the crimnal returned to the scene of the crime.

and because i am who i am, i went house to house and passed out about 50 of these notes. best to be proactive and maybe we can prevent any more incidents. happy new year everyone!

holiday blur

every holiday season it is the same; hurried, frantic and a total blur. we gather the gang and drive to kentucky to spend it with the cousins (they come here for thanksgiving, you may have seen the trash can turkey posts on my other blog). after weeks of preparations it seems that we finally get to enjoy the day and relax but it is now the morning of the 26th...at this point i usually promise myself to get started earlier so i can enjoy the season. this year, i almost did it. most of my shopping was done before thanksgiving because i had started doing things in september-honestly. then i caught a horrible cold and there went the head start. i was sick for more than a week and i recovered just enough to get the trash can festivities underway. once again, i was in panic mode in december...

one of the highlights of the month, the opportunity to bake gingerbread cookies and assemble a house for the daring bakers december challenge. The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

my husband the practical joker and more proof that i cannot take him shopping with me. he rearranged the manger in macy's...lauren the snowgirl is now being showered with gifts from the three wise men while mary and joseph look on.

back to the daring bakers. when i saw that we would be doing a gingerbread house, i didn't know what to say. i love to build the houses, i've done it a few times for competitions and even come home with a blue ribbon but i also knew i wouldn't have the time or the energy. when i had my bakery, i stumbled upon a great set of cutters that when used would make a lovely tree that could be decorated. we sold hundreds of them! every year, i make at least a couple of them to take to kentucky. knowing my limitations and the requirements of the challenge, i decided to just make the trees. the challenge allowed for us to use gingerbread dough made from scratch, i used my own recipe which i will not post here because it is part of a book i am working on, and any template as long as we included it. my trees do not have a template since you just use the cutters.

this is the set of cutters, there are 5 stars in graduated sizes. my set came from the boston mountain copper company in arkansas about 9 years ago but apparently wilton now makes a similar item. several years ago, i contacted boston mountain and asked them if they still made the cutters and they did but that was probably 3 years ago and i do not know if they still make them since i couldn't find the set on their website. they may so if you are interested, contact them. the cutters are very well made and definitely worth the money.

you simply cut out 5 of each size and then stack them up to make a tree. here are the stars for two different trees.

using royal icing, pipe an outline on each star and stack them so that they are staggered and not lined up -this gives you the tree shape. start with the largest star and work your way up to the smallest. if you like, you can sprinkle colored sugar, non pariels or other decorettes as you go.

this one is for our neighbors, i sprinkled crystal sugar and snowflakes on it as i went, that didn't show up in the photo very well though.

for ours, i went back over every point and put a drift of snow-i am making this for kids after all.

the finished tree. it is important to use a level surface and a steady hand with the icing or you may end up with trees that look like staggering drunks-rather like mine...

the two trees side by side before they were wrapped up in a cello bag with ribbons.

here's hoping that you all had a merry holiday! happy new year to all.

all mixed up

another bread baking day is upon us, #24 in fact. this month's challenge was to bake a mixed bread; in other words, use more than one type of flour to make the bread. not a difficult thing to do, every market has a few different flours to choose from. the difficulty comes in which flours to choose-oh the endless possibilities...what's a baker to do? earlier this summer, i made a grape starter for bread and i have been using it on a regular basis and that is where i decided to start. next it was the flour choice and to do this, i went to the fridge. it seems that i have been collecting flours of all kinds and i had plenty to work with!

the first loaf was a combination of bread flour and semolina flour. it made a nice loaf with a slight yellow hue. it was delicious with salads and hummus.

in my flour collection, have a nice variety of corn meal/flour. organic blue corn meal, corn meal masa for tortillas and a roasted yellow cornmeal are just some of them. blue corn meal is one of my favorite things to bake with and i have used it in things ranging from biscotti to corn bread to a spiced caked so bread seemed like a natural choice. however, i decided to take it one step farther by combining the three together in the loaf of bread.

once again, i used my trusty grape starter and the result was a lovely loaf with a slight crunch and a slight red/purple hue.

generally, i do not post recipes on my blog. as a cookbook author, i know all about the consequences of people giving away your recipes and the lack of royalties. most importantly, i know that many people do not give proper credit when posting recipes. i have seen my name mispelled and my co-authors name omitted completely. since i have had such success with this recipe, i will post it and hope that others will enjoy it as i have.

Sourdough Bread

adapted from How to Bake by Nick Malgieri

sponge

1 cup water

1 cup starter-any kind

2 cups bread flour-can substitute as much as 1 cup of another flour

combine in a bowl and cover it. allow it to sit and ferment for at least 8 hours and as long as 36 hours at room temperature.

dough

to the sponge, add:

2 teaspoons salt

1-1/2 cups to 1-3/4 cups bread flour

mix together and turn out onto a floured surface. knead the dough by hand adding flour as needed for at least 5 minutes and up to 10 minutes. place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover it and allow it to rise until doubled, at least one hour.

preheat the oven and baking stone if you have one to 500 F. at this time, place a baking pan in the bottom oven if you want to have steam during the baking process. turn the dough out of the bowl and shape it into a tight ball. place the dough, seam side up, in a floured basket or a cloth lined bowl that is also floured and allow it to rise until doubled-about an hour. turn the loaf onto a pan or a bread peel that is sprinkled with cornmeal. place the bread in the oven, toss some ice cubes on to the pan, reduce the heat to 450F and bake for 20 minutes. reduce the heat again to 350F and bake until a thermometer reads about 210F, this could take 20 minutes and as long as 35 minutes. the bread will be nicely colored. cool completely on a rack before slicing.

good luck and have fun! thanks to idania for a tasty challenge! be sure to check back here for the round up