More breakfast: French Toast!

Hey all,

So it's been a while! But I'm back with more breakfast foods... this time, French Toast. :) More specifically, Nutella-stuffed Brioche French Toast with Sauteed Cinnamon Apples.

I've been wanting to make french toast for a while, so I even specifically made Peter Reinhart's Brioche (from the Bread Baker's Apprentice)... it's a lot nicer than a previous brioche recipe that I've used before. But, like any brioche recipe, the dough is kind of sticky and annoying to work with, and definitely requires refrigeration. There are various versions--the Rich Man's Brioche, the Middle Man's Brioche, and the Poor Man's Brioche. The difference is mainly in the amount of butter used... I think that the Middle Man's Brioche was a good choice--not too high in fat, but still buttery, rich, and delicious.

Little brioche à têtes! :D I made one giant 9"x5" loaf, and then another 4 brioche à têtes. :) The little brioche à tête were delicious to eat on their own... I am such a sucker for carbs. They weren't the prettiest things... I tried using the knotting technique instead of making separate balls to make the shape... but I'm sure they'll be prettier next time. :)

Anyhow, so I decided to make french toast the next morning! :) Okay, so yes, they all say that french toast is best made with stale bread, that was it can soak up the "custard" mixture while still holding its shape. I really really wanted to make french toast and to use my brioche, so what I did was cut thick 1/2" slices and toast them on the lowest setting just to dry them out a little. I think stale bread would've been the best... but you work with what you've got!

Click below for more nutella-stuffed brioche french toast with sauteed cinnamon apples.

Lemon Poppy Seed Bread

So I still had part of a Costco-sized bag of lemons, and I didn't feel like making lemon tarts, lemon curd, or lemon bars... too many eggs and butter and different parts and meh, I was lazy and had been baking a lot. (I had been baking and coking a lot last week... including a whole wheat multi-grain bread, 2 of these lemon poppy seed loafs, vegetable stew, and hot cross buns!  And then a tiramisu cake!) Unfortunately, most lemon cookies or muffins or whatnot require the lemon zest, but not the lemon juice. So what better than a lemon quick bread that requires soaking it with a lemon syrup? ...And then top it off with a lemon glaze?? Not only does it then use lemon juice, but it is also lemon and buttery and delicious.

Okay, confession. I don't really like poppy seed. Maybe my parents bought one too many Noah's poppy seed bagels (By the way, I love Noah's bagels. Grab me a plain bagel, a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, and an asiago bagel and I will love you forever. Okay, for a moment, until my waist line disappears, then I will hate you. It's that whole love-hate thing, ya know?). Or maybe I really hate how they get stuck in your teeth. Or maybe the flavor's a little too strong. Either way, I don't like poppy seed. But my roommate likes things with poppy seeds. And so do other people. And I found out a couple weeks ago that the local market sells poppy seeds for not to bad a price. So I grab myself a bunch of poppy seeds, figuring that I'd use it for something. Then I remembered, of course. Lemon + poppy seed. Who hasn't heard of that combination?

It seemed to be very popular.

And the glaze. I love sugar. I wanted to lick my cookie sheet after all the excess lemon glaze dripped off of the bread. ...I might've scraped off a few spoonfulls of that delicious lemon-sugar combination. But enough about me, more about the bread behind the jump!

Hot Cross Buns, one a penny, two a penny

Why hello and happy Good Friday and Happy Easter everybody! (To be fair, I started writing this on Friday...) I'm loving trying to bake something for various holidays and celebrations, because I end up learning about the history of the food and the culture/religion it's tied to.

Hot cross buns!  Hot cross buns! One-a-penny, Two-a-penny, Hot cross buns! So everyone's heard of hot cross buns, but it turns out that most people I know have never actually had them, nor do they know what they are. In fact, most people (including myself) only know the first two lines of the nursery rhyme, haha.

So what are hot cross buns? They're generally associated with Easter, and more specifically, Good Friday, with the cross symbolizing The Crucifixion. However, it seems that the hot cross bun actually predates Christianity! Their origins lie in pagan traditions of ancient cultures, celebrating the vernal equinox (Eostre), with the cross possibly representing the balance between light and darkness of the equinox, the four quarters of the moon, or the symmetry of the seasons. During early missionary efforts, the Christian church adopted the buns and re-interpreted the icing cross. In 1361, a monk named Father Thomas Rockcliffe began a tradition of giving Hot Cross Buns to the poor of St. Albans on Good Friday.

Now wasn't that an exciting history lesson?

Anyhow, simply put, hot cross buns is a sweet, spiced yeast bun with currants (or raisins) and often candied citrus peel, and has a cross of a sweet dough on top (though many people now just use an icing for the cross).

I adapted the recipe from Wild Yeast Blog, and oh my goodness is it delicious. I didn't have dried currants, or candied lemon/orange peel, so I just made it with raisins and added a little bit of lemon simple syrup I made while candying lemon slices (I'll write about it later, but it's negligible for the recipe). I saw dried currants at a local farmer's market, so I might get those some day and make these again! Click below for recipe.

Garlic and Herb Focaccia (and an Egret)

Hey all. I can't believe it's already February. If you didn't know, this coming weekend is Chinese New Years, Valentine's Day, and President's Day! And then Tuesday is Mardi Gras. Craziness, ain't it? I can't believe it's February already.

Anyhow, this past week I also decided to come face-to-face with something I've been avoiding... breads that take overnight to proof (to do that whole... developing the flavors thing!). The only other one I've done was that ridiculously amazing but labor-intensive brioche loaf. Of course, there are less time and labor intensive focaccia recipes out there, but oh, how can I deny Peter Reinhart? His recipes and formulas and instructions have yet to fail me. Anyhow, this involved lots of waiting, over-night refrigeration, and making my own garlic and herb olive oil! But it was worth it... doesn't it look tasty?



Oh. Minor digression. While I walked to Trader Joe's to buy fresh basil (I forgot fresh basil! How could I forget the fresh basil?!?), I saw a gorgeous white egret that decides to show itself on our little bay every so often. All I had was my phone camera, so I took a picture with my phone for the time being (it's my new phone wallpaper!), annoyed that I didn't have my camera with me. On the way back from TJs, I saw it was still there! Awesomeness. Still, it was starting to get really cold, windy, and cloudy, so I decided to hide back in my apartment. However, discussing this with my friend, I decided that I might as well go outside and track this bird outside.



Click below to see more photos and to read about Peter Reinhart's focaccia!

Thanksgiving #1

(First off, I would like to say that whoever is taking my photos and putting them on myspace.com, please either stop, or at least let me know who you are.)

Hi all! I hope you guys had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday, whether you spent it gorging on food, skiing or snowboarding, or what have you. I had the fortune of having TWO fantastic Thanksgiving meals. The first, being with my family. There was a huge table with mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and of course, a giant 16 pound turkey!

So my roommate and I drove down to my parents place. First off, I would like to say that the autumn colors are just gorgeous right now.



There was a whole day of cooking and cleaning, there were a few of us stacked up in the kitchen, with anything from maple sweet potatoes to clam chowder. Needless to say, there were definitely many cooks in the kitchen.



Click below to see more of the Thanksgiving feast!

Photography, pound cake, and so much catching up

So for any of you living in California, or more specifically, the Bay Area... seriously, what's with the weather? Pouring rains, ridiculous humidity and mid-70s the next day, and "afternoon showers" that flood streets and burst pipes in the 5 hours it rains. Seriously? However, it has led to some great opportunities for photography and playing around with my camera.



The nights in the past few weeks have been amazingly clear, and the previous photograph and the next ones are a result from playing around with my shutter speed.

Look at how amazingly still that water is! This is the bay... all summer it was ridiculously windy, and it was definitely a lot colder at night back in July and August. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of scenic/still photography, but it's still fun to capture the weather and light is always fun to play around with... like when the sky opens up on the Bay with San Francisco in the background.



The sunset on Monday night after the afternoon "showers" was gorgeous. I was waiting at the bus stop on the way to an Owl City concert in the city, and the sunset was just so gorgeous that I couldn't resist.





But enough pictures of the bay (I promise there won't be too many anymore... I mean, you can only have so many pictures of the same place before you get sick of seeing yet another pretty sunset or "Jesus beams."). I have a backlog of photos of the food that I baked 2 weeks ago, and I totally forgot about the cranberry cream cheese pound cake that I baked for the tea party!



So, for some carrot cake, celebration challah, and cranberry cream cheese pound cake, click below! I apologize for the half-photographed steps, but I was in a constant rush making all of these. (Recipe for pound cake below as well!)

Cheesy Crusty Loaf and failure.

So perhaps an explanation of my little cheesy bread monster is called for...

So my volcano of bread and cheese (i.e. the CHEESE SQUID MONSTER!) was an attempt of making the King Arthur's Hot Cheese Bread. Unfortunately, aside from amazingly tasty cheese, the bread dough itself didn't turn out well. It looked like it wasn't completely cooked thoroughly, but I don't think that was the problem... maybe I added too much gluten protein? I had substituted some AP Flour for the bread flour (since bread flour is more expensive!), and it usually works out well, but maybe I put too much? Or kneaded it too much? Not sure. Anyhow, click below for a step-by-step.

Volcano of Bread and Cheese!!!

Okay, so I know I just made a post, but this just came out of my oven, and I'm too excited, because it looks like a fountain (or a volcano) of CHEESE AND BREAD!!! And apparently, my life just doesn't get more exciting than that:



Although, doesn't it kind of look like a cartoon squid monster thing? It's really reminding me of a cartoon, but for the life of me, I can't remember what. So, I'll just show you a picture of how I see it. :P



More on this later. ...When I'm a little more sane.

...Yeah...

Cinnamon Buns and a Humble Dinner

So apparently I was inspired enough to bake last night after all. I think part of it has to do with the fact that, since the only people that end up eating my baked goods are people at my roommate's office, I needed to get the baking out of me since he's not able to have any modes of transportation up here for basically the rest of the week.

First, I just wanted to show off a picture of my humble dinner, a simple pork soup.



This tends to be generally what I go for when I make dinner... often it's a nice pot of soup or stew, or the simplest stir-fry ever. I actually missed my simple home-cooked meals a lot during the mini road trip down south... I hadn't eaten out so much in such a short period of time in a while. Home-cooked meals are so nice, and can be so simple... not to mention healthier and cheaper, too! This soup is very simple. Beforehand, you get some pork ribs/bones from the market (in about 1-2" cubes) and parboil them to get rid of some of the excess blood, fat, and marrow, and then freeze that for a later date (or, just use right away). On the day you want to cook it, you boil a nice big pot of water with a slice of ginger. After it comes to a boil, you toss the pork in, let it come back to a boil, turn it down to a medium-low, and let the meat stew enough to make a tasty broth (use a ladle to scoop away the frothy bone marrow that floats to the top). Season with salt to taste. In the mean time, when it gets close, prepare your noodles. This time around I used... thick green bean noodles (also known as cellophane noodles, glass noodles... I think? I know the Chinese name...! English names are so confusing!) which I soaked in water first. Tossed the noodles in for a few minutes, tossed in (many) handfuls of spinach, and voila, it is done!

Meanwhile, there were tasty things on the rise...



Now it should start looking familiar...



Especially after being baked...



And finally, glazed!



Yes, if you can't tell already, those are cinnamon buns. :d

I used Peter Reinhart's recipe this time around. I used to use just a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com which was fun, but a lot messier. Comparing the two... honestly? I don't know if I can tell the difference. It's been over half a year since I made the other cinnamon buns, though, and I wasn't as good at baking with yeast back then either. In fact, cinnamon buns were the first yeast breads I made! I think, in the end, Peter Reinhart's dough recipe stood up to the test, though... just with regards to how it tasted after it cooled down and how well it stood together. Another big difference between this cinnamon bun and any others I've seen is that the filling isn't overwhelmed by butter. Most other ways I've seen it done is rubbing softened butter all over the insides before sprinkling it with cinnamon and sugar. Personally, I like this way better, but that might be because I don't like butter. It's definitely a lot less rich and a lot less gooey and sticky, but it tasted wonderful, especially still warm. I decided to use a simple white glaze, which hardened beautifully. I usually prefer a cream cheese frosting, but since these were going to be eaten a whole day later by people running around the office... I figured this would be a nice solution... and it was great! It hardens ever so slightly when cooled, making it less messy (even though working with it was kind of messy!).

I heard reception at my roommate's office was good. :D This shall be my new go-to cinnamon roll recipe. ...I want to make the sticky buns some day. :D

Does it look amazing? (And so cute! It's like a little snail shell...)



(order some now! :P)

Oh yeah! And I baked another banana bread again... low fat, again, as usual, with whole wheat flour (half white whole wheat, and half whole wheat), and this time, with sugar cut down and replaced with agave nectar. That stuff is interesting... I need to experiment more with it at some later point. I also added some extra spices, and I think that they added a nice touch without really being over-powering, or even discerning. Must play around with that more as well... I have another 3 bananas frozen in the freezer...

Also, I totally need to just bake during the day instead of at midnight... my pictures turn out so much prettier with natural lighting, sigh.

Casatiello and Pasadena/LA Foods

Greetings! So it's been a while since I posted about baked goods, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been busy with my lovely oven (Oh yes, I love it so... it's big enough to fit my large baking sheet, as opposed to my old oven in my old apartment which was tiny.) Also, I just went on a mostly spontaneous trip down to Pasadena with one of my good friends from high school, visiting his old college, Caltech, and his old college friends. It was a fantastic trip full of fantastic food... I haven't eaten out so much in so many days in a row in a while. Though, I suppose that's what happens when you go on a trip. I'm genius.

On the way down, we took Highway 101, a longer, but definitely more scenic drive down from the Bay Area down to the South. On the way down, we stopped by Morro Bay with its ridiculous fog, giant platters of salads, and shell stores, then Solvang, a quaint little Danish town (unfortunately, we arrived around 6:00, so everything was closed for the most part), and Butterfly Beach in Santa Barbara to walk along the beach at dusk (we missed sunset by about 15 minutes).

At Morro Bay, we stopped by Outrigger Restaurant, and I polished off a giant plate of Caesar Salad with giant prawns.


Photograph courtesy of Andrei Lita.

The giant plate sitting in front of me was an Ahi Salad with seared Ahi tuna, a delightful vinaigrette and a slightly spicy mango salsa. His was more delicious, but he decided to order it first, so I defaulted to my usual Caesar Salad with dressing on the side.

The next day, we ate at some Asian noodle restaurant in the Alhambra area for lunch, explored the Caltech campus, and eventually ended up at his newly-wed friends' house. There, we proceeded to eat dessert at Bulgarini Gelato, an amazing little gelato store tucked away in the back corner behind a Rite Aid in the middle of Pasadena. Although I wasn't too hungry, I snuck some bites from everyone else. Their chocolate gelato is slightly salted and was fantastic. The hazelnut gelato is made from hazelnuts freshly roasted and ground right there, and is amazing. They also had interesting flavors such as goat's milk with cocoa nibs (I'm not a fan of the goat flavor, but I can see how somebody who likes it would love it), lime with milk, cantaloupe, and just so many different unique flavors. I wish I had a chance to take photos, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to bring my giant camera with me.

After gelato, we proceeded to Park's BBQ in Korea Town in Los Angeles. There, I watched what was basically 3 small-ish guys finishing off what must've been about 7 or 8 pounds of beef--2 orders of Bulgogi (seasoned sliced beef), what I think was an order of another type of beef cut, and 1 order of beef tartar, which is raw ground beef with an egg (or just an egg yolk?) cracked over it. My goodness, I wish I had my camera to show just how much meat was consumed. I can't say how good the beef is since I personally do not eat beef (although, I did eat the smallest sliver of beef tartar just as a new experience, and, well, I guess it tasted like meat?), but the others seemed to like it. There was also an order of pork belly... I'm not a big fan of slices of fat, but I can see how it was good. The meat aside, though, Park's BBQ had an amazing assortment of small Korean dishes like kimchi, pickled cucumbers, and the like. All of it was great, and if you or your friends are big meat eaters, I suggest that you try out Park's BBQ. Next time if I end up there, I would love a chance to try out their marinated shrimp and assorted mushrooms (basically the only thing on the menu not beef and not pork belly).

The next morning, for brunch we all went to Elements Kitchen, which has an amazing and fantastic brunch menu. When my friend and I arrived (late, oops), there were small slices of a raspberry cream cheese danish that was delectable, and a piece of a candied ginger scone that I did not try, but had rave reviews. People ordered an array of things from Ebelskivers to Mac 'n Cheese with Truffle Oil to Banana Fosters French Toast to a Farmer's Market Salad.

What are Ebelskivers, you ask?

Here is a look into one:



What a beautiful breakfast pastry stuffed with home-made blueberry jam. If you look closely, there's a drip of amazing maple syrup dripping from it. Unfortunately, I did not know the other people well, so I was too embarrassed to ask for photos of their food.

But my Farmer's Market Salad was beautiful.



It was a decomposed salad (Yes!) composed of beets (I usually don't like beets, but it wasn't too bad in this salad), baby zucchini, figs, strawberries, pears, and heirloom tomatoes (which weren't too flavorful, alas), candied walnuts, prosciutto, and buttered lettuce with a vinaigrette drizzled on top. It was delectable, and the vinaigrette really tied things together. I had a bite of the Banana's Foster French Toast, and although I'm generally not a fan of french toast, this one was amazing. ...Maybe it just means that other french toast, including mine, wasn't amazing enough... :|

Anyhow, that was the culinary exploration for the past few days. If you're in the area, go check out these places--you won't be disappointed.

And now, back to the baking. I've been wanting to make Peter Reinhart's Casatiello, an Italian rich bread filled with pockets of cheese and spiced salami. I haven't had a chance to, just because, although I often have left-over cheddar from making quiches and such, salami isn't in my usual pantry, but I made a trip to Trader Joe's just because, and came back with this:



Which, after much mixing and kneading (oh my goodness, the mixing and the kneading...), I placed my dough in a 9" cake pan and sprinkled it with more sharp white cheddar:



After the oven, resulting in:



Isn't it beautiful?



And it was amazingly tasty. Which is amusing to me, considering I don't really like rich breads and I don't like salami, but it was still tasty, darn it! Next time, I want to cube the cheese more than grate/shred it, but I liked the white sharp cheddar as a choice for cheese. I was debating making a sort of "vegetarian version" with just different types of cheese. :d

I also made a whole wheat, low fat chocolate zucchini bread that day. I managed to only put half the sugar in compared to the original recipe... I had planned to halve the recipe, but then decided not to, but forgot about this fact when I put in the sugar. Oops. But it still didn't turn out too bad, and was polished off by people at my roommate's workplace.

Anyhow, that's all. I'm not really inspired to make anything right now... although, I did also pick up some agave nectar when I went to TJ's, and I have some bananas in the freezer, so I might play around more with the whole diabetic-friendly (or at least, more-friendly) banana bread loaf. I hope the amount of text wasn't too over-whelming, or, at least, was informative. :)

Cheers!

A week of baking: Oreos, Galettes, Banana Bread, Crostatas, Brioche, and Tortes

Why hello there. It's been a while... the past week has been full of baking, and not much blogging. Still, it's now ridiculous o'clock since I have screwed up my sleeping schedule for the past 2 days, and since I am still running off the energy of just finished cleaning up my kitchen from a week of crazy baking, I figure why not bombard you with a ridiculous amount of pretty photos of food? (So I might also be running off of the bleach fumes from cleaning the kitchen... but that's aside the point)

First off in this ridiculous week of baking are home-made oreos from Wayne Brachman's Retro Desserts. If you love Oreos, but love softer cookies, this is the cookie for you. It's amazing how ridiculously close the taste is to the true Oreos. (By the way, Double-Stuffed Oreos are the best things. Ever.)

The cookies themselves are of the softer variety--though, if you bake them longer, they get crunchier.



Aren't they pretty? They're even prettier when stuffed full of unhealthy, but ridiculously tasty filling. Yum.



The same day, I also worked on these hand-sized berry galettes for dessert, which turned out better than I thought they would. I basically took 4 or 5 different galette recipes and combined them all to suit what I needed. I don't think they turned out too bad. I'm still trying to figure out the type of dough I like for something like this... I used a different type of crust than the usual one I use for pies and quiches, but I'm not sure which one I like better yet.

Galettes are fun to make, and it really does save on the trouble of rolling out the crust to make it all fit into a pie dish properly, but it's also a little harder to cut. I do like the rustic look to it, though. (Not the best photograph in the world, but it'll do for now.)



Oh yes, and I just have to say: Berries are the best food group. Yes, that's right, food group. :)



I could probably live off of blackberries and never get sick of them. <3 True, I might get diabetes, but who cares... they're blackberries. They're just amazing when you squish them against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. :)

That was all one day, then a few days later, I baked two loaves of brioche for my mother's birthday--she claims she doesn't like sweets (I'm not sure I believe her, still!), but she does love a good loaf of soft bread--and an apple crostata and a lemon torte for a lazy Sunday afternoon BBQ. This required staying up until 2:00 am and waking up at 6:30 in the morning in order to bake the brioche (which required resting in the fridge overnight after ridiculous kneading and 4 hours of rising and being attended to). It was worth it!

The brioche was probably the hardest dough to work with. I used a recipe from Epicurious. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I chose this recipe instead of another one, for example, from Peter Reinhart's book. But I did, and it was too late to change it after I had already warmed my 3 sticks of butter to room temperature. Yes, this recipe made one loaf in my 8" and one in my 9" loaf pan, and it required 3 sticks of butter and 3 eggs. Next time, I'm going to try and make it and cut the butter down by half a stick, because I think it was unnecessarily buttery, even for a brioche.



The dough was ridiculous, and veeery hard to knead by hand. It took a ridiculous amount of arm strength, and I swear my right arm is becoming a lot stronger than my left arm, but I did it, yay! What was frustrating was the part of waiting 2 hours for the first rise, and then constantly deflating the dough in the refrigerator for another 2 hours, then needing to wait for the dough to rest overnight before shaping and allowing for another rise before baking. Still, they still came out beautifully and they were well-received, yay! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the bread, but it was definitely one of the softest breads I've ever made!

So, for the BBQ, I used the left-over crust dough from the berry galettes for an apple crostata. It was fairly tasty. It's basically the pie crust, apples (I used granny smiths, as per the usual apple affair), and a cinnamon-sugar crumb topping.



Then, I wanted to use up all the lemons I had bought from Berkeley Bowl earlier in the week!



So, I used them and almond meal to make a lemon torte:



Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of it sliced, but the torte had a nice, dense crumb. This lemon torte is not the flourless type of torte, but does use almond meal with the flour. I think it was pretty darn good, especially with the lemon glaze, yum.

Oh yeah! I had bought almond meal from Trader Joe's, and I had actually used it to make more banana bread for somebody who was diabetic, so I had used whole wheat flour and substituted almond meal for half of the flour, reduced the sugar, etc. It was supposedly received very well, so yay. In fact, I actually baked TWO loaves of banana bread on the same day, hehehe.

Hopefully loading this page wasn't getting ridiculous with all the pictures. Now I need to decide what to make next in my sparkling clean kitchen... :)

Scales, Cinnamon Raisin Bread, and Julie&Julia

I have decided that I have a fascination with bread, out of all the things that I bake. Cookies become a pain in the butt--seriously, all the scooping and plopping and individual things... what a pain! Bars are easy but boring, and fancy cakes... well, it's harder to know what to do with a giant 3-tiered 9" cake, you know what I mean? However, bread is fantastic. There is something so therapeutic about kneading bread, and for some reason, it's fascinating for me to watch it rise. The repressed biology nerd inside of me squeals a little squeak of joy thinking about the gasses created by the yeast... also, it just reminds me of genetics lab when we were replica-plating oh so many yeast plates...

That being said, breads are less fudge-able to me. I can usually play around with a quick bread recipe, or a cupcake recipe, but bread recipes... I try and follow the steps important to the chemistry of rising bread to the tee. So, with my gift certificate that my old work place gave me (I love them all--they ate through batches of cookies and cupcakes and bars during my undergraduate career, and when I graduated, they left me a gift card with a very generous sum... many thanks to dearest Ezra who is supposedly the one who put it all together), I bought myself a scale and a microplane zester. I'll spaz about my microplane later. For now, I have a beautiful black scale sitting in my kitchen, helping me measure out just the right amount of bread flour. I hate sifting my flour, and this beautiful machine allows me to just dump my flour out into a bowl--how amazing is that!?

I present to you, my beautiful new kitchen scale:



We'll see how long this baby will last.

With this sleek and simple, and yet useful, new scale of mine, I made two loaves of Peter Reinhart's Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread, sans walnuts (Yes, I don't like nuts of any sort in my baked goods, blasphemous, I know), which I suppose means just a Cinnamon Raisin Bread. This bread turned out to be one of the softest bread I made. Unfortunately, I dried out kind of quickly after being sliced--I'm not sure what to do about that. But the next day when it was just sliced, the bread was amazingly soft and tender.

Mixing all the ingredients together. That's right, metal bowl and a wooden spoon--no fancy, expensive Kitchen Aid for me. It's okay--I actually like it this way:



The dough after kneading and after the addition of the raisins waiting to rise for the first time.



After the first rise, the dough is then divided (this time with my awesome new electric scale!!!) and rolled into a loaf to rise a second time:



Doesn't the final product look SO GOOD?



I think it does. And it is very awesome indeed. I personally prefer a little more cinnamon flavor to the bread... I actually already added more than the recipe called for. Maybe it's something to make up for since I don't add walnuts in. I was thinking of giving it a little bit of a cinnamon swirl to it, or adding dried cranberries to it instead.

There has been a little more baking here and there--a chocolate chip chocolate fudge cookie, which screams of chocolate... perfect for those choco-holics out there. There has also been some breakfast fun with a whole wheat apple oatmeal pancake, but I'll inundate you with more food porn later.

Oh yes! And I had a chance to watch Julie&Julia, and it was an AMAZING film. To all the guys out there, it wasn't just a silly chick flick. It was great. How do I know? I dragged three other guys with me, and they all loved it. ...So they weren't the manliest of men, but it was still a good movie. It was sweet, and also hilarious. Meryl Streep is an amazing actress, and she was perfect for the role of Julia. :) You should ALL go see it.

Time to get back to those cover letters...

I hope everyone is doing great, and thank you guys so much for the comments and to those of you who are reading this! :)

Backpacking and Banana Bread

Yay alliteration! ...Kind of.

So in the past week or so, there has been some banana bread and backpacking at the Emigrant Wilderness. The backpacking was amazing. Three of us, Mike, Ben, and I, went to the Emigrant Wilderness to go on a supposed 3-day backpacking trip. Seeing as this isn't a backpacking blog (unlike my travel blog), I'll just give a brief account. Basically, a 3-day backpacking trip was turned into a 2-day backpacking trip, but highlights of the trip involved:

Three people crammed into what was supposedly a queen-sized bed, but I swear it was a full-sized bed in kind of a creepy hotel in Jamestown:



Amazing views of granite landscapes and of gorgeous lakes:



And lots of snacking under beautiful weather:


Photograph courtesy of Benjamin Bracamonte

I look tired and miserable there, but I swear it was a blast--the whole 6.5 miles in and 6.5 miles out. :)

That said, I had made a banana bread the day before heading out. It was great--I had tried out this new banana bread recipe found on a baking community (Unfortunately, it is a locked post, and I do not feel comfortable re-posting other people's recipes without giving proper references, I will not be posting the recipe) and had only tried it out once. It was a hit--it was moist, without being overly dense and heavy. This time around, I switched up the ratios of the ingredients a bit, substituted ingredients, and used only white whole wheat flour since I was still out of all-purpose flour. Personally, I think it turned out even better than the original recipe. :P


Whole Wheat Banana Bread

Isn't it gorgeous? The texture was great, and was the perfect way to use up the last 3 bananas that were definitely turning black. I think I always insist that my roommate buy bananas (I don't really eat them, but he likes them), just so that I can make banana bread.

That's all for now--mostly cooking has been backpacking pantry including tuna from a bag, instant oatmeal, and experiments with cous-cous. I hope to be making a nice loaf of bread soon, because it's something that's definitely missing in the apartment. AND, I just got all purpose flour from Costco, so yay!