A paean to the pinnacle of provisionary perfection; a commendation of the culinary culmination of corn's cultivation!
I really, really, really like cornbread.
Things I like about cornbread:
-The crunch! The firm, snappy crust! "Cornbread" with a soft, spongy top and sides? AN ABOMINATION! Not cornbread at all! And cornbread recipes that call for a cake pan? Please, no! Cornbread is cooked in a cast-iron skillet, just the way my mother always does, thanksverymuch, and it CRUNCHES. Don't give me any of this northern-cornbread cakey nonsense.
-The texture! Delightfully rustic, simple, coarse, moist-centered, generally fabulous.
-The sweetness! Even traditionally-unsweetened cornbread is sweet, because it's made out of, you know, corn. Which is sweet. But if you're crazy like me, you'll break tradition and add a few tablespoons of sugar. Because it is FABULOUS.
-Do you see that I am so excited I am YELLING?
-The flavor! It has... bite, somehow. I also love cornbread batter, straight out of the bowl, and it is even more defined there -- a hint of something sharp amid all the soft, mild, sweet flavors of the bread. Like the gentle crumb inside versus the crunchy crust. Cornbread has depth, people. Cornbread has character.
-The versatility! You can put all KINDS of things in cornbread and have it still be fabulous. I don't, but, you know, you could. And that's cool.
-Its simplicity! It's not hard to make cornbread. In fact, it's downright easy! And the ingredients aren't fancy -- flour, cornmeal, butter, buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, salt, an egg. Sugar if you're crazy. Easy! Cheap! Simple! AND SO FREAKING GOOD!
I absolutely adore cornbread. And sometimes, I get these cravings... this overwhelming need to have cornbread. (The same thing happens with biscuits.)
And you can't just slap cornbread down beside stir-fry, or curry, or any other standard dinner I make. You just can't. So I make beans and rice, and greens, and maybe a cobbler for dessert, and I don't make sweet tea because -- although I did at last develop a taste for it -- seeing just how much sugar is involved makes me want to cry -- but overall I think I'd make my grandmama's family proud.
I'm no Southerner, not really. I'm a quarter-blood transplant at best, and that's debatable. And I know the cornbread I make is hardly traditional -- sugar aside, there's also no bacon grease, and I fake my buttermilk with milk and lemonjuice. I know. I really have no room to talk. And I didn't really mean to badmouth Yankee cornbread.
But a girl has needs, you know? I happen to need regular doses of hot, crunchy, Southern-style cornbread deliciousness. I might be a bit of an evangelical cornbread lover.
I must spread the word!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
An ode to cornbread
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Baguettes
I baked baguettes yesterday! I know what you're probably thinking. Maybe it's a little like what I'm thinking, which is, "Why is Camila on such a French kick? First a souffle, now baguettes... before you know it she'll be parlez-vousing the french!"
Sometimes I think about myself in the third person. Inaccurately, apparently, as odds of me speaking french are zilch to none. The whole hrrrrrr thing in the back of the throat? Doesn't seem to work for me!
At any rate, I did make baguettes... but QUICK baguettes. Not fancy-schmancy, triple-rise, intimidating French bread. It was actually really, really simple. Daniel Leader said he didn't include it in his previous books because it just seemed too darn simple... but it did seem to work!
It's miraculous, really. Flour, water, yeast and salt -- that's it! Not fancy flour -- all-purpose flour, which is apparently pretty close to French type-55. (I finally go out and buy bread flour, and the next bread recipe I bake calls for all-purpose... figures.) Not fancy water. Not fancy yeast or fancy salt, no prefermentation or difficult steps or anything crazy at all. Flour, water, yeast, salt and four hours of time, and you end up with this.
And these aren't even good baguettes! The shaping of them was a bit difficult, and it was my first time, so yeah, they are distinctly uneven. The crumb is obviously pretty dense -- probably a result of the shorter fermentation time, but maybe also my lack of skill. And I listened -- they didn't crackle while they cooled. :(
But they were distinctly baguettes. The crusts were crisp, the interiors soft, they tore with a satisfying sound and cut neatly into circles, and they tasted -- baguettey! I made baguettes. All by myself, with some help from Daniel Leader! Man, what a great day.
So what could we possibly have for lunch, except for this?
We ate right on the floor, butter and honey and gruyere and still-warm baguette and grapes. William laughed and said he felt very bohemian. I just felt very, very proud. Proud and happy.
And delightfully full.
Food = love.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
bread books
I am just about finished with "The Bread Bible." I learned a lot from it, and now I think it's time to move on and see some other perspectives on bread baking. I've definitely gotten a keeper-recipe from it: her "heart of wheat" bread, with wheat germ in it, is pretty darn delicious. It was also so easy to work with that I'm very concerned I was doing something wrong; it wasn't "extremely sticky" at all.
At any rate, the Bread Bible is headed back to the library. Unfortunately, the three books I want to try next aren't available at that venerable institution.
I've seen "Bread Alone," by Daniel Leader recommended in several places in the blogosphere. In some cases, it is recommended quite enthusiastically. But since Farmgirl is even more fond of his "Local Breads," which is at my library, I guess I'll be using that one, instead.
I started reading "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," by Peter Reinhart, on Amazon. That Search Inside function is brilliant; after reading the excerpt, I am dying to buy this book. Because deep down inside, I wish I was a bread baker's apprentice. I think that's the only way I'll really learn a lot of the things I wish I knew. Again, the library fails me... but they do have his "Crust and Crumb." I guess I'll try it out, as a substitute... *heavy sigh.*
Finally, of course, I want to get my hands on a copy of "Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day." If you haven't read fifty posts raving about this book, then you must not read many food blogs. It is No-Knead Bread, 2.0. And I wants it, my precious, I wants it!
You know what else I want? I want a name like Crescent Dragonwagon. How awesome is that?!
Anybody have other bread-book recommendations?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
failures
man. this is hard.
Last night I made tomato, corn and garbanzo bean soup. It was... not good. It had a peculiar and very unpleasant flavor to it. I also made irish soda bread, but messed up the recipe by leaving out the oats. Can you say oops?
William's comment: "Weeeell, the garbanzo beans are good. And the bread is delicious!" (It wasn't. It is okay, but it is not delicious.)
As for the soup, I blame the stuff from the cans. I kept it simple and quick, grabbing and adapting a random quick soup recipe from Joy of Cooking. I sauteed onions and garlic, then added condensed tomato soup, milk, cream-style corn and garbanzo beans. Why did I have tomato soup? Annie bought it. Why did I have cream-style corn? Well, it was on sale. What can I say.
So my theory is that the soup, having unpleasantries like corn syrup and too much salt, and the corn, having corn starch and other seemingly unnecessary ingredients, introduced a not-delicious-ness to the soup. Because I know there was nothing wrong with the onions, garlic, and garbanzo beans, and the only spices I added were a little bit of curry powder. I really don't know how even I could mess that up so badly. The wrongness lay somewhere in a strange sweetness... yeah. I've thought about it. I blame the tomato soup. Unfair of me? Perhaps. But there you go.
Wow. It was really not good, though. Ugh. I don't want to talk about it.
All the same, it seemed like it might have been trying for something positive. I might try the same thing again, except making my own tomato soup and using frozen, un-creamed, un-canned, un-additivized corn. Additivized. That's right. Anyway. Maybe I'll try again a long time from now, when this trauma is gone from my memory.
Tonight? Tonight I made tempura. I was going to make beer-battered vegetables, but the beer I grabbed from Andrew's house turned out to be barbecue sauce. In a seemingly-unopened beer bottle. WTF? I called him to complain, and he just shrugged it off and said he can't explain his roommates. Whatever.
So I ended up making tempura with water instead, and it was profoundly uninspiring. Squash, zucchini, onions and tofu, deep-fried and pretty much tasteless. Also: not crunchy. Is tempura supposed to be crunchy? I don't know. I can't remember ever having it. I sort of expected it to be, but it was almost limp, instead. And did I mention flavorless? I put curry powder and ginger in the batter, but believe me. You couldn't tell.
And I tried to make a dipping sauce, using soy sauce, red crushed peppers, lime juice, honey... I was doing okay until I added some vinegar. Have I mentioned that I don't know what the hell I'm doing? It was DREADFUL. I had to stop and start over again -- soy sauce, red crushed peppers, lime juice, STOP. It was uninspiring, too, but at least it wasn't dreadful. (And we are apparently out of fresh ginger, or I would have used that -- I couldn't find it in the fridge).
In short? NOT a success.
William's comment: "Well, it's better than last night's dinner."
It makes me want to cry. Well, not really. It makes me want to throw my hands up in despair and look angrily at something. Also? I have a splatter burn on my forehead. I hope it doesn't turn into an angry red mark. I have three zits that are just starting to go away. Come on. Cut me some slack, face.
Anyway. I want to throw up my hands in despair. How does one get good at cooking, anyway? I know how you become a chef -- culinary school. But I don't want to be a chef right now. I just want to be a kick-ass cook. And so I read about cooking and think about cooking and I try new things, and I try really hard, and... and it makes me want to throw my hands up in despair. Because there are people who seem like they just excel effortlessly at this. Like everything they touch magically responds to the meal in their mind, while I'm left with a big and active imagination, with a perfect plate in my head and mediocrity on the table.
Maybe this is the world balancing out my test-taking skills, gently teaching me a lesson. Right at this moment I am frustrated enough that I would rather be a killer cook with a C-average. I have priorities. And I am hungry.
I really, really want to be good at this. I want to cook foods that make eyes widen, smiles erupt, hearts feel warmer. I want to cook food that can adequately express my love for my favorite people. I want my food to fill bellies and warm hearts and comfort souls and blow minds. I want to make dishes people talk about for years, request again and again, remember fondly. Food is, in my mind, one of the best parts about living, and I want my food to be as good as the rest of my fantastic life is.
Mantra: It takes time. Keep trying. It takes practice. Keep going.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. "It takes time, keep trying..."
But I feel like it doesn't, not for everybody. I know people who are younger than me who are fantastic cooks. I know. I have eaten their food. So I don't even have my youth on my side, really. And I'm not lazy, and I'm not too busy, and I don't not care, and dammit, I am really trying here.
Maybe I am just doomed to make edible food (because I've been managing that, so far) and I will have to pay other people to make me the lovely and delightful things I really want to eat. This whole cooking-really-fantastic-food thing might just be a bad idea. Maybe I'm aiming too high. Maybe I should just give up.
Stop. Enter William:
"Camila, you can't expect to make things perfectly the first time. But I have every faith that you can make them perfectly the second or third time. So try again later!"
Breath deeply. Rinse. Repeat.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
luster lacked, falafel fried
So I do have pictures of pizza, but they are a little blurry, and I have pictures of thai curry, but I was really hungry and ate first so it's just leftovers and they are unattractive,
(side note: the curry was hampered by its lack of onions. I now know and occasionally cook for two people who absolutely despise onions, and it has made me realize how much I cook with onions all the freaking time. I am so used to onions being a part of the food I make that I leave it out and am just shocked at how sad and bereft the meals are. I am beginning to understand what it must be like for a carnivorous-type who cooks for vegetarians by making meat dishes but leaving out the meat, or serving meals entirely consisting of meatless side dishes. 'But there's something missing!," they say. "How can you eat like this all the time?"
And that is amusing, because they are just looking at their food the way they always have and taking things out, instead of starting from a vegetable-centric or legume-centric or any-other-centric point of view, where nothing is "missing" in a dish that happens to not have meat. And it turns out that I have the same problem with my onion-centricity. So I am sure -- positive! -- that it is quite possible to make scrumptiously delicious food without a whiff of onionness. I just don't know how yet. And since so many people try to make good vegetarian food on behalf of all the vegetarians in the world, which I do appreciate, I think I will start working on making onionless dishes that are more than onion-containing dishes with the onions left out. Does that even make sense?)
and last night was a pretty dull meal of lentils and rice -- not dreadful, certainly very healthy, but not good. I was lazy. Tonight's dinner was a case of, "Ah, shoot, I was supposed to go grocery shopping and blew two hours on the internet doing nothing productive instead, and we are running out of food. Beans it is," and so beans and corn and carrots served over thoroughly mediocre homemade tortillas. This tortilla thing is hard. I think a tortilla press would help loads -- it is the getting it to the correct thickness that is really vexing me.
The point is that there have been lots of un-special meals here lately. On the other hand, it cost me $30 for last week's groceries, so at least it was cheap. I will have to compensate for that a little bit this week -- we're low on oil and out of yeast, both pricey -- but I didn't really cheat at all. We had all the food we needed, and it was great. I wish I could do that every week.
THE POINT -- I'm sorry, I got distracted -- is that I am not going to talk about those meals. Instead, I am going to talk about falafel.
Mmm, deep-fried garbanzo balls. Heh. Balls.
Anyway.
Here are the balls (teehee!) after they have been rolled and are awaiting their splattery doom. I make such a mess every time I deepfry things, it is ridiculous. That was not a comma splice, I swear to you. If I weren't already trying to limit our deepfried-items-consumption to once a week for health and oil-conserving purposes, I would have to keep it controlled on behalf of my standards of mess-making. Those standards are very lax -- that is saying something.
Why do I keep deep-frying things? It is dreadful for us! I didn't grow up eating like that! I blame the fact that, 1) falafel is delicious, 2) most everything improves when you deep-fry it, including, evidently, tofu, 3) samosas are perfection in triangular form, and 4) eggrolls are still challenging me. Those are the things I deep-fry. I can't help myself! It's just too tempting!
Anyway, funny story about rolling the falafel balls. I will try to be more mature than a third-grader, and will now giggle silently to myself when I type "balls" instead of forcing you to read about it. Moving on. They are coated in bagel crumbs -- so if you were looking at that picture and thinking, "why does Camila have white bread? I thought she didn't allow that in the house," you are right. Those are bits of bagel that you see. I allow commercial bagels (with all the nutrition of white bread) in the house because I haven't figured out how to bake them myself yet, and William insists.
That's not the funny bit. The funny bit is that I was trying to bake pita bread at the same time, so asked William for some help. He was rolling the balls. Now, we have made falafel many times. We have made falafel many times because William, heaven help his arteries, absolutely adores them. When I decide to make falafel, I make sure to casually mention it the night before or that morning, just to see him get all happy and anticipatory. "You're making FALAFEL? Oh, I'm so excited!" It's kind of funny, because, I mean, they're just deep-fried garbanzo beans! -- but it is also adorable.
William has helped me make falafel many times. I thought he knew the drill. The drill, by the way, is 'make a ball, dip it in egg, coat it in crumbs.' So I handed him the bowl of mushed garbanzos (and onions and green bell pepper and garlic and cilantro and cumin and coriander and some hot pepper all mixed with bread/bagel crumbs) and an egg and the bagel crumbs and a bowl for the egg.
He broke the egg into the bowl. "Does the egg get all mashed together?" I was unhappily pictured a dish entitled Mashed Eggs as I answered, "Well, they get beaten, yes."
"Mashed together. Right. Don't use this fancy cooking terminology on me." So I busy myself with the pita bread and he is rolling balls and he gets very frustrated. "The damn bagel crumbs won't stick!," he said, and I apologized for the lack of bread in the house and said that I had thought bagel crumbs would work but it was just an experiment, it's okay if it doesn't work. I continued to pay attention to the pita bread.
When the pitas were all ready to be slipped into the oven, I glanced over and nearly had a heart attack. The falafel balls were totally eggy still -- it looked like the bagel crumbs had completely absorbed the egg they covered, and the balls were just a gooey, gross mess.
I remained calm, although inwardly I despaired. Another ruined dinner, what did I do wrong this time? "Wow, those crumbs really aren't sticking, are they?" I dropped a ball back into the bagel crumb bowl. "Have you tried squeezing it after it's been covered in crumbs?" I rolled the ball around, and it immediately was covered in lovely, fluffy crumbs. Strange -- it seemed to be working just fine.
William asked, "Well, aren't you going to dip it into the egg again?" I looked at him with what must have been a peculiar expression, and he looked back with a growing horror.
"Oh no!" I started to laugh, relieved that the bread crumbs were working just fine, and dropped the remaining falafels into the crumbs for a second coating. "Did I get it backwards? I got it BACKWARDS! I am so stupid!" He berated himself for a full five minutes while I tried to persuade him that it really was okay, he should keep going, it would be lots easier now that he'd be putting the crumbs on after the egg, come on, darling, it really is okay. You got a three-step process backwards, no worries. It'll be fine!
And it really was.
They were crunchy and deliciousful. That is all about the falafel.
Do my pictures look less-fuzzy? I bought an adorable little tripod for my camera. I was going to buy it online, and then I realized there is a professional camera store literally right next door. I stand by it and wait for the bus every day. Now I have a less-frustrating flash-free photographing experience, AND I got to support a local business!
I also made pita bread! The recipe is here. It worked just fine:
Mm, warm, paprika-sprinkled pitas. They aren't delicious yet. It was my first time making pitas, cut me some slack! But they were recognizably pitas, and that's what I was going for.
Look, some of them even had real pockets! They are filled with lettuce and falafel and yogurt sauce and feta cheese. And I made it myself. Not the lettuce and cheese, but -- you know what I mean.
Others were sort of unevenly puffy, and a few didn't puff up at all. Ah well. I think I will follow farmgirl's excellent advice and make pita chips. Because that sounds pretty much amazing. (Check out that chunk of feta cheese in the post-bite photo. What's it doing being so square? It looks weird. Whatever.)
Three cheers for foreign fast food! To think that something this delicious is another culture's junk food, another country's street-vendor fare... I'd take falafel and pad thai and even fish and chips over a hotdog any day of the week. Why does everybody else in the world do junk food better than we do? Junk food is America's staple food item! It is our trademark! Our MO! The death of us!
You'd think we could at least do it well!!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
brunch and breakfast beer
We had a Business Brunch yesterday -- we had to meet to talk about our Americorps project, so of course I decided this was a great excuse to feed people. Honestly, what isn't a great excuse to feed people?
So Steph brought eggs and bread, and nobody else brought anything, and that was cool. Because I made cinnamon rolls (from pioneer woman's recipe this time, mixing it up!) and cinnamon raisin bread (because Steph and Andrew conspired to convince me to make it for them. They aren't very good conspirators. I think Andrew said, "So... Cinnamon raisin bread. Pretty good, huh? Think you could make it?")
And also poached eggs with toast. Hence the eggs and bread.
So. Brunch. That morning, Andrew actually arrived on time, which threw us all off -- William had to get out of bed, and I had to change out of my pajamas, because since when have any of our friends arrived anywhere on time? I mean, really?
Anyway, as he was sitting around watching me cook and waiting for the Business Meeting to start, he starts talking about breakfast beer -- that is, any beer you drink before noon. "Brunch is pretty much the perfect meal," he said, by way of explanation. We were confused, too.
"Taste-wise, I mean. It's scientifically proven that your taste buds are most awake at 10 a.m., or 10:30-ish." Bear in mind that Andrew is fond of making up facts.
"So the food you eat at 10-ish tastes better than if you eat it at other times of the day." We waited for it. "And the same goes for beer!"
So Andrew did end up buying breakfast beer, which he drank with brunch. The whole idea sounds a little bit nauseating to me.
Speaking of nauseating, let's talk about how much sugar we all ingested. I need to stop making cinnamon buns, I mean, really.
I actually started off my morning bright and early, starting the cinnamon raisin bread. I wanted the raisins throughout the recipe, not just in the spiral, because putting too much in the spirally bit is pretty much a recipe for things falling apart. I'm no baking buff, but I know just a smidge about literature, and what Mr. Achebe taught me is that things do indeed fall apart. Especially if you put too many raisins in the spirally bit.
So I scalded the milk -- okay, what's up with scalding milk? I can NEVER do it. I swear to goodness, I look at the milk, no bubbles, stick my finger in, it's just warm, turn around for 5 SECONDS (or maybe just long enough to read the comics, whatever) and BOOM, there's a milk explosion and all the milk in the WORLD is boiling in my saucepan. Stupid milk.
So then I wait for it to cool, and start reading webcomics, and before I know it my milk mixture is frigid and I have to heat it up AGAIN.
Did everybody who ever tried to learn how to cook once suck this much? I swear. I think not.
Point is, it took a little while to get the milk bit all started, but after that, I was doing really well. I got to knead the bread, which pretty much eliminated all my frustrations. There's something immensely satisfying in taking an ornery-looking, sticky, flour-covered mess and, using just your hands and a floury table, persuading it to turn into a delightful, smooth, springy, PROPER dough.
Which, after rising, looked a lot like this:
So then I got to roll it out and smear it with butter...
... and then cover it with oodles of brown sugar and cinnamon...
...then roll it up!
Oh man. This is one of my favorite parts of cooking. When everything is all set to undergo its Transformative Heat Experience -- the hero's journey through the underworld, if you will -- and I've done everything right so far and it seems there's nothing I can do to mess it up now, just pop it in the oven and it'll be done, it's gonna be great!
It's the moment BEFORE I've screwed everything up -- the milk got scalded twice, whatever, look how great it looks! Oh, brief, shining, golden moment...
So, while the bread was rising beautifully in the loaf pans, I went back to the cinnamon rolls. I'd started the recipe last night, then paused and put it in the fridge. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember at what point I'd stopped... so, I thought about it rationally. There was a point in the recipe where it SUGGESTED you pause, and then another part a little bit before that where it really didn't make any sense to stop.
Hmm. Which would I have done?
No contest. The wrong one. So, using that logic -- which turned out to be splendidly correct! -- I soldiered on. Roll it out, cover it in butter, then sugar, then cinnamon... hey, this sounds familiar!
Oh man. Doesn't it look beautiful?
Have I ever mentioned how much I love this part of cooking? The bit where everything's assembled and okay and all you have to do is pop it in the oven and everything will be fine?
I popped 'em in the oven, other Americorps showed up, I pulled them out of the oven and liberally doused them with vanilla glaze, plopped them ceremoniously upside-down on a plate, with much splattering of glaze, and proudly served them to my guests...
... who, after a few chewy chews, unpolitely said, "You know, Camila, these really could have used a good while longer in the oven."
Well. One of them said that, anyway. And how right she was... the outside was perfect, but the inside of the swirly bits? Raw, raw, raw.
I sighed, and tossed the next pan of cinnamon rolls in the oven. That's right. I made PANS of them. I still have dough in my fridge. I can be excessive sometimes.
I ate the raw-ish ones anyway. Looked pretty, at least.
Meanwhile, I was poaching eggs -- oh, and wearing a dress and apron, which Steph thought was HILARIOUS. She said all I needed was pearls, so I threw those on, too -- and when I was wearing heels and pouring tea I think she almost had a heart attack.
Poaching eggs. Right. Is it just me, or is that also impossible? I can poach 'em just fine, as long as you're okay with them being extremely flat -- or swirly -- or stringy -- or kind of like a bunch of balloons -- or, really, any shape other than nice and roundish. I even do the thing where you make the water like a little whirlpool first -- doesn't help! I've lowered them from spoons, plopped them straight in, I swear, nothing helps.
And since poached is really the only way I actually LIKE eggs -- poached, on toast, with cheddar cheese and bell peppers and salsa, like my parents used to make on those rare occasions when they'd make poached eggs -- point is, it's problematic. Ah well.
And then I pulled the second batch of cinnamon rolls from the oven, and they were VERY brown on top, but I wasn't gonna take them out early because, god damn it, these were going to be done enough for Steph if it killed me.
They were pretty darn done.
They were good too, though.
So then I popped the bread in the oven, and finally got to sit down and enjoy my eggs, and we had a charming Business meeting after our Brunch. Also, there was tea.
And then we sort of hung around for a while, and then we went to the park and played frisbee, and also dodgeball sort of simultaneously, and it was BEAUTIFUL day. February is by far the best time to be living in the desert. I hate February back home, but here it is 70 degrees and sunny and blue and flowery and generally just May-gorgeous.
And we were frolicking about and throwing balls at each other and William and James were doing trick throws and I thought about how lovely it was and
DARN DARN DARN
I remembered the bread! The bread that was supposed to bake for 45 minutes, and that I put in the oven TWO HOURS ago!
We literally ran back to the complex while the others drove home, half-expecting a smoky, loudly-beeping apartment with two huge lumps of charcoal in the oven. Rarely do I feel quite that stupid.
and I pulled them out and kind of wanted to cry -- but didn't! -- and I took out the extra loaf of bread and put it in a loaf pan to rise because I had to redeem this somehow,
and then I actually looked at the bread.
I mean... that's not really that bad, is it?
(Isn't that giant swollen raisin funny?) Nervously, I cut off the very end... and it was -- okay! Very crusty, but not charcoal! I cooked it for more than twice as long as I was supposed to, and it just got crustier!!!
That is hands-down the thing that has surprised me the most about baking bread... how forgiving it is. I have always had the idea that baking, more than any other kind of cooking, requires precise measurements and careful timing and delicacy. I've thought that if you didn't do it just right, you'd end up with a catastrophe.But I messed up on this bread so many times, and yet -- pretty darn okay! I'm beginning to think that it's not as bad as I thought -- as long as I don't kill the yeast, and give it time to rise, everything else can probably be okay.
Watch -- now that I've said that, the next loaf of bread I make will be utterly destroyed because I used 1/16th of a teaspoon too little salt.
It's pretty darn delicious toasted, with butter, if I do say so myself.
Anyway. That was my brunchy adventure. The house smelled awesome for a day or so -- I highly recommend baking cinnamon raisin bread.
Cinnamon rolls? Not so much. All you'll get is ingratitude and complaints about gooiness.
Oh yeah -- and a dozen cinnamon rolls left over that you'll have to eat all by yourself.
My life is so hard.