Bread for Sale!

Posted on 17 May 2008 under admin, announcements, photos | No Comments

Have you ever wanted to buy some of the delicious, freshly-baked bread you’ve seen on this site? Or other delicious, freshly-baked breads you haven’t seen on this site?

Have you ever wished you could buy my bread?

Now you can.

I’m proud to announce that I’m now baking bread at the lovely and amazing Lynfred Winery on weekends. If you buy bread from them on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, chances are excellent it’s something I’ve made.

So come check it out!

Some samples of a typical Saturday’s bounty, as taken by my camera phone (so in no way particularly lovely photos) can be found behind the cut… Read the rest of this entry…

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Top Chef S04E10 - To Serve and Protect

Posted on 17 May 2008 under announcements, top chef, tv: commentary | No Comments

see more at overcastmedia.comYour Kitchen Ninja Overcast for Top Chef S04E10 is now up! Enjoy.

(The ones for E08 and E09 are up as well; just follow the link to the OvercastMedia website to view those or any other entries in the series in their entirety. )

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Top Chef S4E7: The One with the Kids with Sharp Pointy Things

Posted on 5 May 2008 under announcements, top chef, tv: commentary | 1 Comment

see more at overcastmedia.com Your Kitchen Ninja Overcast for Top Chef S4E8 is now up! Enjoy!

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Unbearably cheesy.

Posted on 27 April 2008 under photos, vegetarian | 1 Comment

I’ve shown you my pizza before, I’m pretty sure. It’s something that my friends know me for, something I’ve made for many years. And I think I’ve also mentioned how I have a tendency to go off in about fifty directions trying new things, but Joe often comes up with good ideas on how to refine my ideas and make them better. It works out well, usually.

This was no exception. When I first made my ricotta and parmesan bread, Joe had the brilliant idea to use that recipe as a pizza dough for one of my stuffed pizzas. Earlier this week, I decided to try my hand at making my own ricotta; I’m always on the lookout for ways to make what I do better in any way possible, and this seemed to be a natural progression. ¹

Of course, that meant I had a bunch of fresh ricotta around—which meant I needed to find something to do with it.

Enter the spinach, tomato, and fresh homemade ricotta stuffed pizza made on a ricotta parmesan crust.

I don’t need to tell you how much win this pizza was made of, do I?

There was extra dough, too, so we got a cute little boule out of it as well.

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Yes, I’ll post the recipe later. [↩]

Top Chef S4E7: Improv Everywhere

Posted on 25 April 2008 under admin, top chef, tv: commentary | No Comments

see more at overcastmedia.com

Your Kitchen Ninja Overcast for S4E7 of Top Chef is now up! Please enjoy it!

I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize for being a bit absent as of late. I’ve got a few things I’ll be posting in the next few days…for real, this time. No, the bread has not been abandoned, but neither is it completely “daily” anymore. Instead, it’s semi-daily. But it’s still quite tasty, so I hope you’ll enjoy it regardless—and perhaps think me a touch saner than you might otherwise have estimated.

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Top Chef S4E6: More than One Way to Skin a Pig

Posted on 17 April 2008 under announcements, top chef, tv: commentary | 1 Comment

see more at overcastmedia.com

Your Kitchen Ninja Overcast for Top Chef S4E6 is now up. Enjoy!

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Day Eighty: Cinnamon Ginger Orange Buns

Posted on 11 April 2008 under daily bread, photos, recipes | No Comments

Winter is great at first, but eventually it starts to wear on you. You find yourself wanting to either hibernate until Spring arrives, or else forcing that first little taste of Spring to cheer yourself up.

If this sounds familiar, have I got a breakfast for you.

They’re relatively fast, simple, and good. Sweet, but not too sweet. Perfect with that first morning cup of tea…or coffee, if you insist. ¹

Cinnamon Ginger Orange Buns

INGREDIENTS

For the buns:

1.5 tsp instant or active dry yeast
1 c. warm water
1 egg
1 tbsp butter, softened; at room temperature
Zest of one orange
2 tbsp grated ginger
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 c. bread flour
1 tsp salt

For the glaze:

1/4 c. orange juice
1 c. confectioner’s sugar, plus possibly a little more.

PREPARATION

Dissolve yeast in water. Mix all dry ingredients together and stir into the water/yeast mixture; when it becomes too difficult to stir, knead by hand. If dough is too wet, add flour in incremental amounts; if too dry, add water in incremental amounts. Knead in butter. Knead dough until it is smooth and elastic. Place in lightly greased bowl and turn dough over so that the outside is lightly coated as well. Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from draft, for about 2-3 hours, or until doubled in bulk.

When 2-3 hours have elapsed, preheat oven to 350F. Turn dough out onto lightly-floured work surface and divide into six equally-sized balls. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.

When 10 minutes have elapsed, shape balls into buns and place on a sheet of parchment on your baking sheet. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and allow to rise until your oven has fully preheated. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Mix orange juice and confectioner’s sugar glaze together while you wait for the buns to bake. Consistency should be almost like syrup; you may need to add a little more confectioner’s sugar or orange juice to your mixture to get it to the consistency you want.

Cool buns on a rack; serve warm, drizzled with glaze. Serves 6.

If that doesn’t taste like warmer weather, I don’t know what does.

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Bet you can’t tell which I prefer, can you? [↩]

Top Chef S4E5 - It’s Elemental

Posted on 10 April 2008 under announcements, top chef, tv: commentary | No Comments

see more at overcastmedia.com

Your Kitchen Ninja Overcast for Top Chef Season Four, Episode Five is now up! Go take a look!

I’m going to try to remedy my bread backlog starting tomorrow; please bear with me. And try not to lick your monitors all at once as I toss these loaves up to my server.

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Top Chef S4E4: Film Flan

Posted on 4 April 2008 under announcements, top chef, tv: commentary | No Comments

see more at overcastmedia.com

Top Chef, S4E4 is now up! Go check it out!

There’s been bread baked; I just haven’t posted it yet. Look for it soon.

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Days Seventy-Eight and Seventy-Nine: Rustic Herbed Sourdough

Posted on 31 March 2008 under daily bread, photos, recipes | 1 Comment

For some reason, a lot of people are afraid of yeast.

I’ve never been quite sure why this is. I have ideas, of course. I suspect that somewhere along the line, many of these people encountered a bad batch of yeast. If your first experience of attempting yeast bakery turns out to be a bad one, of course it’s going to color how you view yeast, your baking, and any combination of the two from that point forward. Which is a particularly sad thing if the fact your bread didn’t end up rising properly (or at all) is due to your having dead yeast.

That having been said, yeast isn’t really so difficult a thing to contemplate. Once you understand that they’re living organisms, and that if you feed them, they generally stay happy and do what you want them to do, you’re well on your way to creating a great loaf of bread. Or several great loaves of bread. And lo, the magic will be yours, and you’ll feel great and eat well.

Of course, you don’t have to rely on store-bought yeast. Or brewer’s yeast. Or, indeed, any yeast beyond what’s in the air all around us, all the time. That’s the magic of sourdough. It’s an old magic, to be sure; pre-dating the advent of packaged yeast by a long margin. That hardly means it’s outdated; on the contrary, I prefer to think of it as an ever-evolving, mystical sort of baking magic that you can tap into with just a little bit of flour and some water. If you’d like to get marginally fancier, as with this recipe, you can incorporate some salt and some olive oil and herbs, too.

Rustic Herbed Sourdough

INGREDIENTS

1 c. sourdough starter of your choice, fed and at room temperature (I like to feed mine and let it rest at room temperature overnight, which is why this took two days)
1 c. warm water
2-3 c. all-purpose flour
Olive oil to coat the pan and to brush over the top of the loaf
2-3 tbsp fresh or dried basil and oregano
Coarse sea salt (for sprinkling)

PREPARATION

Once your sourdough starter has come to room temperature, add water and enough flour so that it isn’t a thoroughly clumpy mess as you knead it. Knead for a few minutes only, to pull the dough together into a cohesive mass. Form into a slightly shaggy ball and rub it and your bowl with a little olive oil. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise in a warm place, free from draft, for 4-6 hours.

When 4-6 hours have elapsed, preheat your oven to 350F. Gently punch down dough and knead for a few minutes; form into a boule and place on olive-oil coated baking sheet. Cover and let rise for another half hour.

When half an hour has elapsed, brush loaf with olive oil and sprinkle with herbs and sea salt. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until loaf is lightly golden brown and hollow when rapped on the bottom.

Fling convention out the window and serve immediately, ripping into and/or slicing it with abandon. Best served with a good soup, and it is AMAZING straight from the oven.