It's been a while. 

I have been reading but not really baking.  Perhaps blogging is not for me, however, I will attempt to renew my initial vigor and post a couple of times a week.

After all, a job and a child can't keep one occupied all of the time.

Bread is wonderful.  I have a great and simple bread recipe that I got from a class with a master baker.  While many might say that I paid too much for two recipes and some advice I think that the time spent and the ability to ask questions about techniques and how things should feel was well worth the price.  FYI: for those who would love to take a baking class in San Francisco go to www.bakingarts.net and check out the classes. Richard is an amazing teacher.

I recently saw one of his recipes on  Facebook.  It's pretty basic, and I am not posting it in its entirety because it was passed on to me in his class and that would be rude.  But, it's just flour, yeast, salt, and water.  I recently made a batch and upped the amount of salt.  Amazing....just that bit of extra salt.

Nice.

I hope to move into making soft pretzels this fall AND it's almost gingerbread house time again.  I really enjoy the gingerbread houses.

Til next time.

Book & Baking Blog Entry 29

Christmas is exciting.  So exciting that I still have 2 batches of unbaked cookies in my refrigerator.  Yep.  Chocolate with peanutbutter chip and oatmeal with butterscotch chip.  I like cookies with chips.  I don't care for cooked raisins.  Everyone has their thing.  That's mine.  I like raisins raw (so to speak) but never want to see one in a baked good.  Ever.  It can ruin an entire breakfast if my cinnamon roll has raisins.  I try not to let it, because, well, frankly diners seem pretty set on having raisins in the cinnamon buns.  Oh well.

So I got lucky this Christmas.  As a gift a friend gave me her best shot at a recipe for Danish Kringle.  So I expected this to be a bread-like concoction.  I had a friend come over and we got out my NEW Kitchen Aid pro (OH YEAH==600watts of baking power PLUS an icecream attachment) and tried to follow the recipe.  I'll be curious how her 1/2 turned out.

So, first analysis:  the dough was more like stretchy cookie dough than bread.  I used the paddle to make it, I'm sure that the bread hook wouldn't work.  The other surprise was that the dough needed to be refridgerated over-night.  OK, I can do that.  We split the dough, I kept half and my friend took the other half.  No harm, no foul. I can do this.

So, the next morning, imagine my surprise that the dough did not rise.  WHY does my dough never rise.  Seriously.  Never ever.  I use fresh yeast.  I think that my kitchen is too cold.  That's my hope.  Either that or I just am not the rising sort.

But as per usual, I trudge on not letting failure stop me now.  I knead the dough and divide it into 2 pieces and then roll it out.  Now you get to add the filling.  What's not great about sugar, butter, and cinnamon.  But I forgot I only had 1/2 the recipe.  Yep, you guessed it.  I made a full amount.  I did feel compelled to use it all.  Yes.  Too bad, because my oven was just cleaned.  So I put in my extra filling and rolled it up, cut and twisted per the recipe.  I left it to rise.

Did it rise?  No NO NO No no....  That stinks.  But again, undeterred I put it into the oven.  So, twice as much butter as called for in the filling.  And the filling isn't sealed into the pastry--merely "twisted."  My oven smokes more than a teen-aged boy.

The BEAUTY moment:  I don't know if it was the extra filling, but I do know that this is an incredible pasty.  Absolutely nothing like any pstry that I had in Denmark, but well worth the time and effort.

Changes that I might make:  I might add more flour and make it more bread-like.  I might heat my kitchen so that it's warmer or wait for a warmer day.

This may kill my determination to not over-indulge in 2011.  If it does I'll just be happy with my buttery, buttery pastry. 

PS:  Did I mention how unattractive the whole mess looked?  I need a photo next time.