I just returned from the one week long Advanced Bread Baking course with Certified Master Baker Jeffrey Hamelman at King Arthur Flour (KAF) in Norwich, Vermont.  How was it?

FABULOUS.

The last couple years have been exhausting in a number of ways, with lots of travel and caring for an ill family member.  My husband recommended a vacation.  At one point I even started looking at cruise brochures.  For some reason, I just wasn’t interested.  But I kept going back to the class offerings at KAF, and they REALLY interested me.

I met all sorts of wonderful people; some were in second or third careers, some were thinking of launching their own bakeries, and all of us were enthusiastic and eager to learn, and learn we did.  Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be posting about all the wonderful breads and pastries that we made,but I’ll start with the brioche.

I’ve made a lot of brioche, but never Brioche à tête because I was intimidated by the shaping.  Thanks to Chef Hamelman, I was able to produce a decent looking brioche, albeit a bit top heavy.  I named her Dolly Parton.  I’m not posting the recipe because we were baking in professional quantities, but any good brioche recipe will work for you.

Some tips:

• weigh your ingredients, including the eggs (Dorie’s recipe in the link above doesn’t have weights, but it works)
• develop the gluten in the dough until it “sheets” and you get a really good windowpane
• keep the dough cold
• don’t drown the dough in flour when shaping, but keep your HANDS well floured the whole time so that you don’t rip the dough ball
• when you are making a hole for the top knot, push all the way down to the bottom of the  pan and make sure that the circle of dough surrounding the hole is of even diameter all the way around so that the brioche rises and bakes evenly
• with dry, floured hands, really push that top knot into the hole, pushing until you feel the bottom of the pan
• with a pair of scissors, make about five slashes evenly around the periphery of the brioche, right next to the edge of the pan, before the final proof.

Stay tuned for more posts on what I learned.  I came home with over 100 pounds of flour, so I anticipate that my bread baking obsession will be well nurtured for the foreseeable future.  And be sure to check out Susan’s weekly roundup called Yeastspotting!

I’m at King Arthur Flour in Vermont, taking the advanced bread baking class. When I drove up and saw the sign, I felt like I’d arrived at the promised land!

Between no internet and phone, a trip to check on my auntie, and this trip, I have a backup of TWD posts to get up, plus info on the class. I’ll be posting the TWD post next Tuesday, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, my head is swimming with Baker’s percentages!

Fourteen days ago (yes, 14) my neighbor accidentally cut our phone and internet line while replacing the fence between our properties.  It took ten days for the phone company to actually send a tech out to repair the damage.  Only Verizon forgot to tell her that the LINE HAD BEEN CUT.  So, she arrived unprepared for the task, but managed to rig a patch after telling us that our entire line would have to be replaced.  That will involve ripping up our yard and digging a new trench.

So, that’s what’s been going on.  Sometimes, I think weird stuff happens to us.  Oh, and all this is on top of an $8,000 chimney repair.

But, as grandma used to say, we have our health, food on the table, and a roof over our heads.  Hallelujah!

Yes, I made these, and an expanded post with photo will be going up  soon.  Thanks to Nicole of Cookies on Friday for picking this recipe for today’s TWD.

*Begin rant*

I was supposed to be out of town, looking in on my auntie in Wisconsin.  Except that . . .

• Milwaukee had seven inches of rain in 2 hours
• They closed the airport
• Midwest Airlines knew that the airport was closed and, consistent with its poor customer service in the past, failed to:  call me, email me, OR UPDATE ITS AUTOMATED FLIGHT INFORMATION . . .

Whereupon, I sat in the airport for FIVE HOURS before I corralled an employee who informed me that the flight had been canceled at 5:00 am that morning.  When I mentioned the aforementioned failings, which have been going on for at least 10 years (based on my personal, first-had knowledge), I was told that “Yeah, IT (information technology) is a problem with the company.  But I don’t do that type of customer service.”  I was told I would have to wait three days for space to open up on the next available flight out.

Needless to say, my patience is at an end, and I have re-booked on a competing airline.  I figure 10 years of waiting for them to get their act together is long enough.

*End of rant. *

So, I went home and baked the blondies, which were really good. I cut back on the brown sugar to half a cup (I made a half batch) which was plenty sweet for me.  I even kept the coconut in the recipe even though my husband doesn’t like it (I had a little bit left and I had to use it up), and it was not offensive at all.  Be sure to check the blogroll to see what everyone else made!

I was fortunate enough to have my chive patch thrive this year, so I decided to use all of that abundance in a loaf of bread. Because Peter Reinhart is one of my favorite bread cookbook authors, I was happy to find this recipe on the epicurious website, which is the headquarters for all Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine recipes.

This bread was extremely easy to make and despite the large amount of chives, the onion flavor was very mild. If you want a strong onion flavor, you might want to consider using green onions instead.

I’m still out of town, and looking forward to next month’s journey to Vermont to attend the King Arthur Flour baking school! Be sure to check out Yeastspotting for a weekly roundup of all things yeast!

Recipe after the jump . . . .
continue reading "Wild Rice and Chive Bâtardes"

I’m out of town looking after my octogenarian auntie, and I won’t be back to baking for TWD until the first Tuesday in August.  I have a couple posts going up in the meantime, so this blog won’t sit idle.

As for the exciting baking news . . . I’m going to King Arthur Flour in Vermont for a one week bread baking course!  Whoopee!  I can hardly wait!  I will, of course, blog all about it.

This week for Tuesdays with Dorie, Dharmagirl of bliss: towards a delicious life chose Tarte Noire on page 351.  What, you ask, is a tarte noir?  It is a rich chocolate ganache poured into a tart shell and served with a diet book.  Ganache, made of chocolate and cream, is the luscious concoction used to make chocolate truffles.

I was looking forward to making this, but when the time came, I had a rare, irrepressible urge to eat cake.  Now, I may get that urge once a year; unlike my spouse, Master Chow, I am not a fan of cake.  So, I decided to make ganache, and put it on a cake.  A luscious, moist, decadent cake.  I turned to one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen, for a recipe that I had bookmarked a while ago.

The result?  Extraordinary.  Truly, truly extraordinary.  It puts all other chocolate layer cakes to shame, although the Chocolate Stout cake is definitely in the same league.

Here is what I did and some advice, as well.  Instead of two, 10-inch pans, I used three, 8-inch pans to end up with a three layer cake.  The ganache was so rich, however, that I don’t think I will do that again; two layers is plenty, and if I make three layers, I’m going to use a jam or a chocolate pudding or mousse to fill some of the layers.  Instead of buttermilk, I used low fat kefir (a liquid yogurt), and that worked really well.

Use top quality chocolate.  Trust me.  I used a combination of Valrhona, Callebaut, and some bits of Guittard that I had laying about.

You MUST freeze the layers before you frost them.  The cake is so tender that if you try to frost it with unfrozen cake layers, they WILL fall apart, so plan ahead.  Just double wrap the layers in plastic wrap and pop them into your freezer until they are good and hard.  They will that while you are frosting the cake.

I also recommend that you place the bottom layer on a foil-covered cake round, then put strips of wax paper UNDER the round between the round and the serving plate.  The cake layers are so delicate that when I removed my wax paper strips, I tore up the bottom of the cake, as you can see here:

This cake, with the aforementioned modifications is on the repeat list. It was amazing, and one of the few chocolate cakes that I’ve ever had that did not disappoint.  Recipe below the jump, but be sure to visit Dharmagirl for the Tarte Noir recipe, and the TWD blogroll to see what others made!
continue reading "TWD – My Ganache Went on a Cake, Not in a Tart Shell"

It had to be a success because my friend from Tennessee – from Tennessee, people! – had TWO helpings, and she never has two helpings of anything.  Except chocolate.  And she told me it was very good. And my husband doesn’t care for pulled pork, and he liked this.

For someone who doesn’t really eat meat, I’ve been fascinated by the whole barbecue/smoked meat genre.  So, I bought a pork shoulder at the market, and turned to Tyler Florence for a pulled pork recipe, because he’s from the South, too.  This was incredibly easy to make, and once again, reading the comments proved to be invaluable – I altered the sauce recipe based on those comments, and it turned out to be my husband’s favorite part of the dish.

Like the smoked turkey, this one is definitely on the repeat list, and it will feed a very hungry crowd!  Recipe after the jump . . . .
continue reading "Pulled Pork – Another First, and a Resounding Success"

This week, TWD baker made Wendy of Pink Stripes chose Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes on pages 226 and 227.  Wendy’s blog is one of my absolute favorites, so I encourage you to go on over there for the recipe and to look around.

My cake is cooling, but I’ve already eaten some because it stuck to my bundt pan and . . . .  Wait, let me back up.

I decided to bake one large cake in a very detailed bundt pan, and I used Kerrygold Irish butter in the recipe.  After all, if I was going to use some of my precious vanilla beans, I was going to use the best butter.

Now, despite using a non stick pan, and spraying it thoroughly with a non-stick baking spray (these contain flour, as well), my cake stuck to the pan.  In a LOT of places.  So, the lesson here is to flour the pan in addition to using the baking spray, or to use a pan that is not as ornate.  (Update – I did use Baker’s Joy, and I still had a lot of sticking).

Verdict:  one of the best Dorie recipes to date. The kitchen smells of warm butter and vanilla, and I can taste the rum and vanilla through the buttery goodness of the cake.  Hey, there are about two sticks of butter in this case, and I can definitely taste it.  Delicious, delicious, delicious.  Basically, this is a homemade version of the famous Bacardi Rum Cake, which gets rave reviews every time I make it.

Be sure to check out the TWD blogroll to see how everyone else did!

On my little Weber grill.  Nothing fancy shmansy.

After perusing several grilling/barbecue books, I ended up combining techniques from Weber’s Way to Grill: The Step-by-Step Guide to Expert Grilling (Sunset Books) (an excellent book), and The Barbecue! Bible.

The night before I smoked the turkey, I rubbed it all over with kosher salt (instead of brining it – the salt rub works like a brine), and let it sit over night in the refrigerator, uncovered.  If the skin looks all shriveled the next day, that’s a good thing.  After getting the charcoal fire going, I tossed in some soaked mesquite (kiawe, for those of you from Hawai’i) chips, and smoked a 16 pound turkey for five and a half hours, adding about 12 coals every hour to keep the heat going.

Thereafter, to quote my husband, I discovered that this is his equivalent of crack.  He went crazy.  The dogs went crazy.  He ate the whole turkey himself over the course of about a week, and would shoot me horrified looks when I suggested freezing it or, gasp!, giving some away.  He ate it for lunch and dinner almost every day.  The dogs would follow him around, waiting for any tasty morsel that he would deign to give them.

Now, I knew he liked smoked turkey, since his dad makes a mean smoked turkey, but I had NO idea he was this fond of it.  It is, I believe, his favorite food, and he hasn’t had homemade smoked turkey in 10 years, ever since me moved from Hawai’i.

Needless to say, this dish is on the repeat list.