Once again, it has been awhile since I have baked anything. Since I will be starting grad school at the end of August, you might as well get used to it. *sigh*
But I was commissioned to bake dessert for tomorrow’s Father’s Day celebration, so I finally had a chance to try something I have been wanting to do for a couple of weeks: a cherry pie. Read the rest of this entry »
This is definitely the first bread that a person new to bread should try. It’s very simple, very forgiving, and very tasty. It’s not as intimidating as other breads, either. The long recipe, amount of time, and all the steps might seem a little scary, but they are actually pretty easy.
I don’t know what made me decide to try making bread from scratch the first time a few years ago. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it was boredom and a desire for something new. I don’t remember what kind I made, either – I never thought that one loaf would lead me into the fascinating wilds of all kinds of baked goods. It certainly should have been a plain white but knowing myself as I do, it was probably one of the most complicated ones in the book.
But I loved making bread that first time, even though my attempts weren’t all that pretty, so I kept doing it when I had the chance. The silky flour in my hands, the rewarding ache of my muscles, and especially the warm smell and unmatchable taste of fresh-baked bread drove me to it.
This was originally posted on my other blog, What If. I’m moving it – and all of my baking posts – here in the next few weeks.
One of the things that I find so wonderful about baking is that I get to have tasty treats without paying huge amounts of money. It really started about two years ago, when ManPants and I researched a bunch of fast food restaurants (which is almost all of the restaurants around here) and realized that eating at them almost every day was not only hard on our bank account but not healthy in the slightest. Consuming more than a day’s recommended serving of fat in one meal was more rip-off than convenience. So we decided to cook a lot more often and I started to bake bread.
I didn’t attempt pizza dough until I’d learned a lot about break-baking, but pizza dough is in some ways far more forgiving.
My younger brother came to visit right before Christmas. He seems to have a fear of failure, plus a lack of confidence in his own abilities. So the last couple of times he’s come to visit, I made him make bread with me – one of the hardest, and therefore most satisfying, things a person can do in baking.
This year, since it was so close to Christmas, we made Stollen. Read the rest of this entry »
The last recipe I posted for the chocolate chip mountains was entirely experimental and a little convoluted. This is the simplified, perfected version and it was a big hit at Christmas – especially with my father-in-law, who loves cookies so much, he hides them so no one else will eat them. (I provided him with his own little batch, of course).
I have a recipe for amazing chocolate chip cookies that also happen to be low-fat.
And I have a recipe for “Snow-capped Mountain” cookies that taste incredible too.
So in a little fit of nostalgia for the mountains I grew up near, I decided to combine the two.
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