Bread!

I made bread! No really, I realize this doesn't sound like anything monumental but it is vastly encouraging for me. I have never had much luck with it. I follow all the rules, I read all the instructions, and I can just never make it work. I have a 50/50 chance with focaccia but those just aren't very good odds. I have learned to accept the fact that if there is yeast in the dough there is a high likelihood for fail if I am the one making it.

However, at the Cooks Collegium last weekend I was presented with what seemed like a pretty fool proof bread recipe. I was enchanted with the idea of beautiful fresh baked bread, and I had to give it a shot.

And it worked. I made bread! Granted I have only made it once and it is possible that this will become the 50/50 sadness of my previous "reliable recipe" bread attempts. I remain hopeful. I am also excited about experimenting because a lot of the recipe is based on ratios so you can alter the dry to wet ingredients you use as long as you maintain the ratios and still have success. Hopefully there will be future happy bread posts. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I love cooking events...I always come home with such exciting recipes and kitchen ideas. I have a couple of others waiting for me in the kitchen I can't wait to try.

With the bread, I also took some pointers from the Good Eats bread episode (I have been watching these a lot lately...they are uber helpful), and I think between the two of them I had a good approach. One of them in particular is the proper temperature bread is supposed to reach in order for it to be considered done. I think that this is why I don't like a lot of homemade breads because a lot of times they end up really dry. Turns out the bread should be between 205 and 210 degrees F. Any hotter and it reaches the boiling point so all the water boils/evaporates away.

I should have put it on a rack instead of cutting board though. The steam all settled at the bottom and loaf got a little soggy there. I also cut into it too early and it didn't have enough time to set. It was still a little dough-y. Fresh baked bread is a challenge in patience.

Torta Bianca (updated)

Previously I posted a recipe for Torta Bianca a couple years ago. I felt that the recipe needed some work and just have not taken the time to make the corrections that I wanted to. I decided that I wanted to make this tart for a potluck at the Middle Kingdom Cooks Collegium that took place last weekend.

Life intervened and I did not end up getting the chance to make cheese as I did before and I was just going to use cream cheese. However, my traveling companion is quickly becoming a cheese goddess and made some neufchatel for me to use. This had a much better texture than the cheese I usually make and worked perfectly.

One of the things that I was hoping to correct was the 'oily' texture my original tart had to it. I thought that it was just an issue of too much fat being added but decided to do a little research. By research, I mean watch the Good Eats episode on cheesecake :)

Turns out that one of the issues may have been that I didn't allow the pie shell to cool enough before adding the filling. The shock of heat caused the butter to separate and created the slimy texture. This made a lot of sense given my general impatience. I also approached the recipe as a cheesecake rather than just a recipe with some instructions. I wiped the cheese longer and to a much smoother texture than I did previously. I slowly incorporated the wet ingredients. And by using just ginger this time I improved the likely hood of snow white tart.

It is one of the interesting things about period redactions...the way you approach things can change what you ultimately get.

Anyway here is the new recipe:
12-16 ounces homemade cheese at room temperature (depends on what type of cheese you use. It should be a soft white cheese. You can also use 16 ounces of cream cheese)
6 egg whites
1 cup of sugar
4 tablespoons of butter, softened
1 tsp ginger
1 cup milk
salt (to taste)
Rosewater/additional sugar

I beat the cheese and butter together until smooth, added the sugar, salt, and ginger. I mixed the egg whites and milk together and gradually beat these into the cheese mixture. This was poured into a pie shell and baked at 350-375 (depending on your oven) for 1 hour.

Sprinkle lightly with rosewater and sugar.

End of Summer

My toes are cold this morning - second day in a row so fall must be officially here. I suppose that means now is as good a time as any to wrap up my summer.

I did not really accomplish much on the crafty front with the crazy hours I put in at work all summer and moving into our first home.



I am still getting used to the space but I can't begin to describe how much I love it here. I am also starting to learn the personality of my new kitchen. It sounds odd but we seem to be a little shy around each other. It is getting better.

I did manage to do some canning at the close of the summer season. I made pickled green beans for my husband using some of the produce from the farmers market and also the end-of-summer jam he loves. It is a combination of peaches, pears, plums, lemon and ginger and is unbelievably tasty. It comes out this gorgeous blush color. Sadly my impatience meant I took it off the heat too quick so it is a little thin. Still workable but you have to eat PBJ very quickly :)



I also made some sekanjabin as well. It was a drink I was introduced to through the SCA and while not a big fan at first it has really grown on me. When properly diluted it is really very refreshing.

I am on vacation this week from work so I decided to use the time to get some knitting projects started. I had a bunch of time I needed to use up so while not an exciting vacation hopefully it will be a relaxed one. It is starting to look like it won't be as productive as I originally intended but after all these years you would think I would know that about myself. I have gotten 3 of my 5 knitting projects started. My intent is to cast on a bunch of different patterns/yarns into various projects so when I get a moment I can pick something up and knit on it rather than stalling because I don't feel like casting something on. Mostly just socks although my sweater project is staring at me waiting for me to get the courage to make a swatch. I know I shouldn't be daunted but I am.

On patterns and things and other stuff

I had this brilliant idea that I was going to sew my Halloween costume this year. I have long been obsessed with the awesomeness of costuming but my dislike and frustrations over sewing have turned me off to actually becoming a costumer. However, my desire to have truly awesome costumes has brought me to the realization that I am going to learn how to sew one way or the other.

I have done some sewing in the past. I actually made the vest my husband wore for our wedding. Mostly though it has been a "close your eyes and go" situation.

So, I took myself down to our local fabric megamart to look at patterns. And I quickly decided that I was in over my head (and my budget this month). I am proud of myself in that I finally decided to start small and bought a pattern to make an apron instead. It was a significantly better idea then spending money on a project I couldn't really afford that had a high likelihood of failure. I guess I will try the one step at a time approach.

This does mean that I am now clueless as to what I am going to do for Halloween this year. I think I will try to hit some thrift stores this week.

I have also been thinking long and hard about learning to make hats. I love hats and I am starting to realize a passion for crazy wild hats. They are expensive though and part of me has been wondering if it would be more affordable to make them myself. My one fear is that I am not really much of a designer so I don't know where I would come up with ideas but I thought I wouldn't worry about that so much just yet. For now I am going to work on assembling the skills. YouTube user "Threadbanger" has some interesting how-to videos and some of them involve hat making.

In my quest for acquiring costuming skills, I have been paging through pattern books. Particularly costuming because that is really the kind of sewing I want to be doing. Here is the thing I don't understand about the costume world. I have seen in Halloween stores the costumes with the slutty-I mean "vamped" up versions of a theme. The sexy nurse, the sexy cartoon princess, etc where the hemline falls just below the butt cheek and the neckline falls in the middle of the cleavage. But you can also get patterns to make these.

For me costuming is about the escape and the better the costume the better the escape. I suppose I can see the appeal of sexy costume role-play but really good costumers can make some truly sexy pieces without having to cheapen it. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't judge. To each their own. Off for a walk and probably some playing with string later.

Fallen

I recently finished Fallen by Lauren Kate. It is a book aimed at the young adult/teenage audience. It is difficult to describe without giving away too much of the later half of the book. The first 3/4 is mostly setup of the characters and there is a lot of angsty soul-searching on the part of the heroine.

I am not really what one would call "well-read". I read a lot to be sure but not one would call "steady" reading. Most of the books on the list of books a person is supposed to have read I have found endlessly boring and have preferred to stick with books that amuse my brain rather than strengthen it.

However, I realized that there was a lot of really great fiction geared towards young adults that I missed when I was a teen. I read a lot of best-seller/murder-mystery type books at that time in my life. I have been trying to read more of what I missed.

The thing I like about the fiction written for this age group is it lacks some of the...and I have been wrestling to come up with the right word for it...but it lacks some of the pretentiousness and the boundaries that come when writing fiction for adults. And not even sci-fi and fantasy are able to overcome those boundaries.

I am not sure why but for some reason when I open the cover of a young adult novel, I feel like the author is giving me much more freedom as a reader to explore my own imagination within the structure of the world they are creating in the book. Maybe we loose something as adults as we get older and become more experienced that we expect the fiction written to target an adult audience mirror. Maybe we loose something as we gain wisdom and perhaps it is the connection to our imagination. Which is odd because there is quite enough examples of junk literature cluttering the adult fiction section. And I am certainly guilty of considering the devouring of a brain-candy novel before a more serious tome.

But even where the fiction is light and unencumbered it still lacks the freedom that youth fiction has.

Anyway, Fallen was in a recommended reading list based upon other books I had read so I thought I would give it a shot. It was pretty angsty. Don't get me wrong - at 15 I would have gobbled up every word and probably not left my room until I had poured through the whole series. I still have enough of a connection to that part of myself to see how it would have appealed to me. However, I have also lost enough of it to find it somewhat unpalatable now. I am not sure that I want to finish the series. I may but I am just not the sort of person the book is really written for.

You can't always go back to who you were and what you used to love I guess. I am finding this out when I try to re-visit some of my old favorite TV shows. Occasionally nostalgia is ruined when one attempts to re-discover.