I thought that I would end up writing about food a lot more, but, somehow I’ve been sidetracked by many other more exciting things. However, I did venture into some unchartered territory in the kitchen in the past week. For one, both Kevin and I have been trying to make bread with our new bread maker. Actually, its my new bread maker that Kevin got for me for my birthday, but, somehow, he seems a lot more excited about it seeing as it was a present he picked out for me. I’m not complaining if he wants to cook though!
My first loaf of bread was a sunflower seed bread. I read through the bread maker handbook and tried to follow all of the directions. The book specifically said, “The secret to great bread is exact measurements”. So, unlike many of my other culinary adventures, I was rigorous about my measurements from leveling off the measuring cup of flour to sitting the measuring cup with water on a table and looking at it at eye level. These are small details that are good practice, but, I almost never follow. To cut to the chase, my first loaf of bread looked beautiful, but, it was way too dense. Kevin made loaf #2. He tried plain white bread but, left out the dry milk powder and substituted the liquid for lowfat milk. This loaf never really rose. Kevin tried again after we got dry milk powder. With this loaf, he tried to activate the yeast first. Loaf #3 … defeated us again. It looked great for a while, but, then collapsed near the end of the baking cycle.
With a score of Bread maker=3, Us=0 wins, we were starting to hate the bread maker. Isn’t this supposed to be easier? On Saturday, I decided to try a lemon honey loaf. This time, I made a few changes:
1. I measured the flour by pouring it into a measuring cup rather than scooping it out of the bag. The scooping action apparently packs in the flour and you get more than you need.
2. I used regular salt rather than sea salt.
3. I spread the yeast all over the top rather than putting it in a small pocket in the flour.
Voila! The perfect loaf! Bread maker=3 … Me = 1 win! Here is my perfect, lovely, yummy, loaf of homemade bread (with a couple of slices already taken off):
This past night, I made some sweet chard and ricotta raviolis with a sage/butter sauce. I thought these tasted alright, but, Kevin went back for seconds, so, that was a good sign. It must be the loads of butter in the final sauce that he loved. I got the recipe from epicurious.com. It originally came from Gourmet magazine. In my opinion, I think I’m not actually a good enough cook yet to take on these recipes on a weekday when I have about an hour to get dinner ready. Our kitchen is pretty small too, so, the counter space is really limited.
