Bagels and Broccolini

I just finished making the bagel recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice. I haven't tried one yet, but they look gorgeous and very authentic. It was a bit of a baking fiasco at first though. I always use my Kitchen-Aid because I'm too lazy to knead. I dumped everything into the bowl and got all set up to let my mixer do the work. Just before I switched it to on, my husband called from work. Always in a rush (for no particular reason this time), I figured I could multitask and went ahead and switched it on. Flour went everywhere. Much foul language was uttered with my husband on the other end of the phone. He didn't even bother to ask. I don't think he wanted to know. In hindsight, obviously, I should have given it a little stir by hand to moisten the flour. Oh well, I got it all cleaned up and got the mixer going again. It was really struggling, and I hadn't even put in all the flour that the recipe called for yet. I finally gave up and kneaded by hand which I have to say wasn't really that bad. I tried adding more flour that way, but that didn't really work then I think I had it too dry and had to add more water. I must have measured something wrong along the way. Finally, the recipe asks you to fit two cookie sheets full of bagels in your fridge overnight. I have a normal-sized side-by-side (which I would never buy again!), so there's no way even one was going to fit. I misted a couple of freezer bags with spray oil and put the bagels in those. When I took them out of the fridge this morning, it looked like they were all going to be horribly stuck together, but they ended up separating just fine - a bit misshapen, that's all. This is another bagel recipe that I had been making. It's pretty quick, doesn't require the overnight refrigeration, fits in my mixer, and has gotten rave reviews from my family. On the other hand, everything else I've made from BBA has been way better than any other bread I've made, so I'll have to see. (Oh, before I forget, more of a reminder to myself than anything . . . two other kinds of breads I want to try to make that aren't in BBA are pita bread and raised donuts.) Very exciting news to report in the garden. On of my broccolini plants is starting to flower. I think that the flour is the part that you eat. I tried to take a photo, but the flower part is so small the camera couldn't focus on it. (I'll have to try the manual focus tomorrow.) Oh and I did make the hummus I mentioned in yesterday's post. It was delicious, but you definitely need to top with the red pepper oil to get some spiciness.

More Bread

I've been a terrible blogger lately. Just before my week-long hiatus I had stumbled across a cool website that challenges you to write a blog post every day for 30 days. At the time I thought, "Oh yeah, I could do that no problem." Oops. There hasn't been a whole lot going on in the garden but certainly enough that I could have found something to blog about. There has been a lot going on in the kitchen, and I'd like to share some of the fun recipes I've tried and some that I'm dying to try, but first I need to write an update on where I am in the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge.

I think I'm doing quite well in keeping up with the pace. I made my Anadama bread last weekend, and it was delicious. Here's a photo:

I also made another loaf of Multigrain (my third) which is still my favorite for sandwiches so far to send to my mother. I think the family liked the Anadama better though. They polished it off quickly for cinnamon toast. I finished off my second loaf of Multigrain last week with some delicious croutons. They barely even made it into the salad. The Multigrain is delicious in this Vegan sandwich:Toast two slices of bread. Mash up an avocado and spread it on one slice of bread. Top with slices of tomatoes and sprouts. Spread Vegennaise on the other slice. Put your sandwich together and voila.

I ate this at least 3 times last week. Heavenly! (I thought that with the avocado, I wouldn't really need or notice the Vegennaise, but it definitely made a yummy difference.) Oh, and I used rice milk in place of the regular milk in the bread recipe.

So, moving on to my next recipe, this week's was Artos or Greek Celebration breads. I loved the beautiful little bread curly-Q's in the picture of the Chistopsomos bread, so I made that shape but didn't include the dried fruit and nuts. I kind of which I had, but I got lazy at the last minute, and I wanted to save the last of my walnuts for this hummus recipe, I'm going to make later today. I definitely need to work on my dough shaping skills, but I think it's still quite pretty. I snuck a little slice last night before letting it cool the recommended one hour, and I must say I wasn't crazy about the flavor, but maybe toasted with some butter and cinnamon sugar or as french toast. Here it is:

I used the wild yeast starter as the recipe recommended, so I was quite proud of myself for feeding it and taking care of it all week. Now that I have it, I think I should skip to the end of the book and use it in one of the sourdough recipes. I have to read more to figure out how I'm supposed to continue to feed it.

Anyway, I think I'll go down to the kitchen now and try another slice.

Anadama, Flowers, and Farmer's Market

It's 5:30 in the morning. The birds are chirping and the sun's debating about coming out. I love waking up early before the kids do and puttering around the house. I got up about an hour ago and started my Anadama bread for the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge that I mentioned in my last post. I'm waiting for the "sponge" to form before I can do the next step. I also started the "barm" for the next bread. As far as I can tell that's like a sourdough starter. I have to feed it everyday for the next four or five days. Hopefully I won't forget. Not too much work to do in the garden yet. I keep debating about thinning out my mesclun lettuce. It seems like the best part of mesclun is that it's a variety of a bunch of different lettuces. I don't want to thin that away. Maybe I'll thin just a little bit. My tomato plants seem to be struggling. The leaves are getting quite yellowish. It's really worrying me. They looked so beautiful and perfect when they were growing inside. I don't know if it's the cold or too much rain or the squirrels that keep digging around the tomato's roots looking for acorns. The darn things (the squirrels, I mean) are driving me crazy. I'll have to create a long tirade-like post about them another day. They probably won't read it though. Yesterday, I puttered around in the yard anyway. Quite a bit of the grass seed that I planted is coming up. I may try to scatter a bit around this weekend. My two-year-old and I picked some violets that are growing all over the place under the apple tree. While we did, apple blossoms were raining down on us. How romantic is that?! I picked some lilacs, too - just a few because they're really not quite ready. I put them in a vase that I had made in pottery class this winter. How's that for homemade?! I organized my nightstand a bit and executed a badly-needed dusting then put the vase of lilacs on top. Going to bed later was even better than usual. I read my Bread Baker's Apprentice book for a bit while taking in the lovely lilac perfume. What a great way to spend the evening! At 7:00 (depending on the state of my Anadama), I'm planning to visit our local farmer's market for the first time this year. I can't wait! I don't think there will be much available yet, but I'm mostly looking for some herb seedlings. It's always fun to see what there is though, and there's always more than I expect. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Garden Square #1 and More on Bread

Here's a diagram of one of my 4x4 foot raised bed gardens:I filled this one up with things I could plant before the last frost. Most of the seed packets said "as soon as the soil can be worked". I think I was a little too excited about that little comment. If I'd been a bit more logical, I don't think I would have planted so many squares of Broccoli Raab and Sweet Peas. I've been wondering what the number of days on the seed packets means exactly. My broccoli raab, for instance, says 45 days. I had assumed that meant that was how long until you'd be eating it, but maybe it means something else entirely. My little 1 inch tall broccoli raab sprouts have some serious work to do in the next week if that's the case. And do you start counting the 45 days from the day you planted the seed or the day you first saw a little sprout come up or what? Something else for me to research. I'm on the fence between loving the mystery of not knowing when I'll have vegies and loving the idea of knowing when to expect them. In any case, I did the date math to figure out when to expect them based on the seed packet dates, so we'll see how accurate that actually is. I ordered most of my seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange in Iowa which I had read about in Barbara Kingsolver's awesome book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (I just reread it. I love to read, and I read a lot, but this is the only book I've ever read twice. It's really what motivated me to start this whole gardening thing in the first place.) I'm looking forward to trying to save some seeds for next year. The Forellenschuss lettuce is especially cool, since it's one of the vegies in the U.S. Slow Food Ark of Taste. It's still quite small, but you can already see the pretty speckled markings. (I'll add a photo soon.) Back on the bread subject . . . Yesterday, I googled the book I mentioned, Bread Baker's Apprentice, so that I could include a link to it in the blog post. When I did that I happened to spot a site that was doing a Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. Wondering what that was, I checked it out, and it turns out a group of people are baking their way through the book - making one bread per week. Isn't that such a cool idea?! I thought about that for half a second then decided I wanted to do it, too. I just found out that I'm too late to officially join the group. Of course I can follow along anyway, but I'm not sure I'll do as well without the group pressure. I'm still going to give it a try. This weekend is Anadama. I'll let you know how it goes.