July 6, 2009 By cheryl

What Ciabatta Taught Me

This moment, I had known it would come.

The one where I’m sitting on the floor of my smoke-filled apartment, staring at three rock-hard, blackened loaves and thinking, “I am a failure.”

Having never baked bread before, I’d known it was a little insane to sign up for the weekly Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge, where a group of more than 200 amateur bakers around the world bake a bread every week from a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s bread-making bible.

But then my first attempt — bagels — had gone well. And in the ensuing weeks, decent versions of brioche and challah followed.

I started to get cocky — I even promised chef Simpson that I would bring my first stab at ciabatta to his July 4 party. There would be two Italians there — who better to judge the quality of my first Italian bread?

Of course, this was all before the alarming amounts of smoke, the smell of burnt cornmeal seeping into every cranny of my apartment and, eventually, the surfacing of three dark lumps of what could pass for coal but were actually my “ciabatta.”

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July 4, 2009 By cheryl

A New Red, White And Blue

I’ve often said that when life gives me lemons, I make lemon thumbprint cookies.

For years now, this Bon Appetit recipe has been a source of comfort and relaxation — the process is so easy that these cookies are truly therapeutic to bake.

I suppose my friends may know by now that these tend to appear when I’m under some stress. There’s no stress in the air this July 4 weekend, however. (Unless you count my mammoth struggles with baking ciabatta for the first time — more on that later.)

Just a desire to create sweets with somewhat festive hues — yellow, red and sort-of-purplish blue come close enough for me.

Hey, I wasn’t about to whip out the food coloring.

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June 29, 2009 By cheryl

Challah: A Lesson Learned

I was never any good at girlish things as a child.

Not jump rope nor dressing up Barbie. (Or myself, for that matter.) And certainly not the braiding of any hair.

So it would be accurate to say that the notion that someday I'd attempt to make challah, the braided bread traditionally eaten on the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays — no, that never once crossed my mind.

In fact, when I learned last week that challah was on the schedule for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge, I instantly planned to sit this one out.

Me? Braiding? Gummy ropes of dough? I was set to say "No thank you" to failure and disappointment and skip ahead to ciabatta, the next bread on the list. But no, my friends wouldn't allow it. "It's easier than ciabatta," said Heather. "Think of the French toast that you can make after," Geri said.

Since "French toast" is high on the list of magic words in my husband's vocabulary, out came the mixing bowls and the challah-making commenced.

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June 5, 2009 By cheryl

Prelude to Paris

I’ve been thinking about Paris.

About bumping knees with Mike at the petite tables of the always-packed Bistrot Paul Bert. And wandering the streets in search of good bread. Or shoes. Or both.

So when it was announced that Recipe #4 of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge was brioche, I took it as a sign.

Sure, it seemed silly to be attempting to make brioche for the first time when in a matter of days, I’d be in the land of great brioche. But I wanted to understand it. Just last week, I’d made bagels for the first time, a Herculean task that helped me develop a mammoth respect for a bread I’d often overlooked at breakfast.

So, with one pound of butter and a carton of eggs in hand, I steeled my arteries and was ready to go.

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June 4, 2009 By cheryl

A Glimpse of Things to Come

There have been some significant firsts of late.

The saucy ones, I won’t go into. But in the kitchen, my oven and I have been busy taking our relationship to another level.

First, there were the first home-made bagels, golden, sweet and soft. And soon, there will be my first petites brioches a tete, attempted for Week #4 of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge.

The waiting, the growing excitement, it’s all been hard on this read-the-last-page-of-a-book-first type of gal with no patience for surprises.

So, here’s an early peek at said brioche, looking rather perfect — if I do say so myself — for just a moment.

If it all goes downhill from here … well, hey, we’ll always have this blog post.