It Started with a Journal

Since it was starting to get warm this week (ha, what a joke, it SNOWED this morning, just to spite me -.-), I brought my sourdough starters out of hibernation. Thought I had forgotten about them? No! Every time I opened my fridge and saw them sitting there, I thought wistfully of the time I'd get to make my own bread again. Supermarket bread just isn't cutting it anymore, I need my homemade artisan bread! The problem is, it's really hard to deal with yeast during the frigid winter. I ended up making the tough decision to toss out 2 of my 3 starters. I couldn't do it before because they were like pets to me. (Yes, it was easier to cut the cord when they'd been out of sight for months.)

I ended up making a garlic parmesan loaf that came out spectacularly. I was a little nervous about baking bread again and having to relearn everything as it's been so long, but it's like riding a bike, I guess. More details about the sourdough starters and the specifics of the bread I made at my food blog, but the bread looked so awesome I had to share the pictures here as well.

( Can you believe I made these? )

Yesterday significantowl asked for ideas about what to do with apples. I suggested cheese fondue, because when Jade and I were in NY not too long ago we went to Artisinal and got cheese fondue, and our server recommended apples for dipping. We were both rather skeptical (maybe because our last experience with dipping fruit with cheese was on our Oregon trip when Amdoch was dipping fruit and cookies on a dare into the pot of Velveeta Rotel that Krim had made), but we were pleasantly surprised by how yummy it was.

So I've been thinking about delicious, gooey cheese fondue, and how easy it is to make. Artisinal is known for its fondue, but what we had tasted exactly like what I myself have made a number of times from a recipe I got at the NY Times. If you have the desire for fondue, make it! You don't even need a fondue pot as long as you have a container that retains heat well, such as a cast-iron skillet. You can get one for like $10-20 new (depending on size), or perhaps even better, find one at a yard sale, sold by someone who doesn't appreciate the years of food memories that have gone into seasoning the skillet. And once you have it, it's good for sooooo much more (traditional Southern cornbread, for instance!).

( Classic cheese fondue recipe. )

It is 62°F today. *weeps* Come back, summer! I hardly knew ye!

This lack of sun is also bad for my new basil plant (I guess the thyme plant too, but I care much less about that one). I've trimmed the leaves as much as I can -- it's recommended everywhere that you keep basil trimmed so that it's encouraged to grow and not to flower -- but I don't see any growth activity. I don't expect it to sprout new leaves overnight, but ... it's been days and the plant looks the same. And yet I'm supposed to prune it every 4 weeks, so there should be extra leaves to prune, right? I mean I suppose I'm glad it's still alive, given my track record, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe overwatering? But in the past I've always underwatered and that's why my plants died, and I don't want the same thing to happen. >< Maybe I need to go to Lowe's and get something that simulates sunlight.

The colder weather has also started to make my starter act sluggish. I'm starting to think that I am just going to keep it in the fridge, since I'm not baking as much. I tried the English muffins again and they were successful, but a little too oily for my taste. Will try again some time.

akscully, I got my copy of The Bread Bible! I can see why you love it. I'm going to attempt the sourdough loaf and pizza recipes first. Have you baked anything you would recommend in particular?

Also, still trying to decide whether or not I want to get Heroes S2. I've just heard such terrible things about it, and it's only half a season -- do I want to waste money on that? (How dare they sell Lost S4 for the same price as previous seasons when there's only half the eps, btw.)

I have FINALLY made decent homemade pizza, YAY. (Coming on the tail of my first free-form sourdough loaf attempt, which was kind of a failure. Sigh.) I didn't take a picture of it, because it honestly looked like crap (I suck at shaping pizza dough ... and most other doughs), but for the first time ever the crust was thin and tasted more like pizza instead of a thick, bread-like substance. Woot! All this sourdough knowledge has finally come in handy. There are a number of things that I was doing wrong before, but I don't suppose it's all that interesting to talk about. So instead I will just give the recipe/method for what I used, which I adapted from a simple recipe I found online, and a not-so-simple recipe from my new book The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart.

This all came about because I had leftover ripe sourdough starter that I didn't know what to do with. So I deliberately used a recipe that used sourdough starter instead of anything that required the addition of active dry/instant yeast. The online recipes seemed too simplistic (like the other recipes I've tried in the past that were failures) while the recipe from the book didn't use sourdough starter at all. So I just kind of combined the two to make them work for my purposes.

( Sourdough Pizza Crust Recipe/Method )

I also had a bit of leftover starter this morning from feeding, and I'm going to make sourdough English muffins! Will let you know how those turn out.

Last night, I took my Ischia.b starter and turned it into a liquid culture. And then I made avocado soup. ( Click for pics! )

More fun/useful sourdough links and recipes, mostly for me to keep as a resource but if they help someone else, awesome. :-)

( Links to yeasty goodness. )

So, I have 3 new pets. Their names are Italy (Camaldoli), Italy (Ischia Island), and France.

Who or what are these new pets? you might ask. They are sourdough starters! ( I go on and on about bread and yeast. Any other bakers out there? )