Blissful Birthday

by Janice on November 23, 2009

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Today I turned forty-nine, and there’s only one thing I know for sure: I’m older than I’ve ever been.  I also like to think I’m wiser than I’ve ever been, though not as wise as I hope to someday be.  Which means, all in all, this is a pretty good day.

The air is warmer than it was last week, and people seem to be slowing down, in spite of the rapid approach of the Thanksgiving holiday.  Or maybe it’s because of the impending holiday.  Who knows?  One last chance to savor the soft air before we dive headfirst into celebrations that will manage to keep us so busy until the frigid air of January stops us clean in our tracks.  On my way to the community garden, I passed an elderly gentleman stringing Christmas lights about his yard while the sun shone in the bright blue autumn sky.  I heard a grandmother singing a hauntingly beautiful melody to a baby she cradled in her arms, rocking from one leg to the other, catching the warmth in her sunny driveway on our busy street.  I eavesdropped as a concerned citizen raised issues with a local political figure attempting to walk his dog in the park, unable to shed his duties even long enough for a quiet stroll.

It’s difficult to find words to share how much this all means to me today.  To be alive.  Suffice it to say, I feel lucky to live in this beautiful, diverse land called California, and even luckier to love and be loved.

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Panettone Saga

by Janice on November 9, 2009

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I have to admit, it was a little strange making a traditional Christmas bread during Halloween.  But when we committed to baking through a entire bread book, one recipe at a time, in order, those of us in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge knew we were in for some odd timing.

I also have to admit is that in all my time in Italy, I never once ate Panettone.  In my defense, I spent some summers there, and Panettone is not a summer bread.  I was also there on quick trips at other times of the year, but I didn’t notice Panettone then, either.  Even if I had, I would have most likely run screaming in the opposite direction.  Because it looks like fruitcake.

My father loved fruitcake.  That meant we had it in the house once a year, where upon I studied it with curiosity.  Seriously, there are few things as nasty to me as neon-colored pieces of candied fruit.  I still don’t get it.  I even despise maraschino cherries.  I have memories of pulling at the almost-caramelized bottoms of fruitcake slices, eating the darkly sweet and chewy liquor-soaked cake and nuts, marveling at the exotic flavor.  But the rest of the fruitcake slice went directly in the trash, along with any candied fruit bit that had dared come close to the bottom of the cake.

So you can guess how excited I was to make a bread that looked like fruitcake.  Thankfully, Peter Reinhart, in a sidebar note, lets you know you can use dried fruit in this bread.  “Feel free to make a substitution if you prefer.”  Well, good, I thought, because that’s the only way I’m going near this bread!  I used a mixture of golden raisins, and dried apples, sour cherries, cranberries, and unsulphured apricots.  Which then got soaked in whiskey overnight.  And Fiori di Sicilia and lemon extracts.  Pretty intriguing stuff.

Then there’s the fact that this bread starts with a wild-yeast sponge.  I won’t go into too many details, because it would make most of my readers want to jump off a bridge.  The short version is that you make a sourdough starter (I’ve kept mine going since June), and you mix a little of that with some milk and more flour, and you let it sit until the wild-yeast makes it bubbly.  And then you pop that in the fridge overnight.

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The next day, you drive yourself a little crazy, trying to get just the right amount of flour into a rather wet and very sticky dough that you’ve made with that sponge and some butter, eggs, sugar, yeast, and flour.  Once you think you’ve got it, you dump the dough out onto the counter, where it sticks to everything, and you attempt to add a ton of liquor-soaked fruit and a whole lot of almonds.  Which does absolutely nothing to alleviate the sticky problem.  Because the dough is so sticky, in spite of all the flour you add, the sliced almonds refuse to get distributed evenly throughout the dough.  Still, you hope for the best, and let the dough rise.

Except you haven’t mail-ordered the special “osmotolerant” yeast, believing instead that Peter is right when he says regular yeast will work just fine, “but it may take longer.”  Unfortunately, it’s so much longer that you might not live long enough to see the day when that shocked yeast wakes up (shocked from all the acid and sugar).  Though you have started the process early in the morning, it is now 10pm when you are finally shaping the little panettone for their second rise.  They are still pretty sticky, which makes for a cranky fun late-night challenge in the kitchen.

So you do the only thing possible at that point, and you stick the dough in the cute little special-ordered paper panettone cups, and you put them in the fridge overnight, knowing full well that this might be the last straw for that sleepy, shocked yeast.

The next morning, the dough hasn’t risen at all.  You take it out of the fridge, and again, hope for the best.  You add a little prayer to the hope this time.  You scour the internet for panettone recipes/techniques and find some that rise so much they have to be hung upside-down like an angel food cake after baking.  (You are well aware this has nothing to do with your current reality.)  By 7pm, you figure that fruit flies will move in before this dough budges enough to reach the tops of the little cups.  You watch through the oven door and convince yourself that there is an almost imperceptible amount of oven spring, though you might be hallucinating from all the alcohol fumes radiating out of the oven.

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By 9pm, you just have to know.  Screw this 2-hour cooling period; you’ve been waiting days to taste this bread!  You take a bite of the still-warm bread.  Surprised, you take another.  Moist, heady, fruity, unfortunately overly-dense and with clumps of almond, it tastes good.  It’s fun, toasted and dipped into coffee the next morning, while you pretend you’re in Italy.  Your spouse likes it, but your son hates it.  You’re feeling mezzo e mezzo about the whole thing.  Would you make it again?  Nah, it takes less time to fly to Rome!

p.s. Oddly enough, I find myself wondering whether I should order some of the special yeast and try again.  Here’s why: 5 days after making the bread, I’m still slicing it and lightly toasting it for breakfast.  Very few breads last that long on the counter.  I like it plain, no extra butter, because the bread is just rich enough already.  The fruit satisfies my morning sweet tooth, without being cloying.  Once again, eating my words.

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Pumpkin Leftover Rice Pudding

November 6, 2009

I hate dislike having a refrigerator full of bits of food.  Do you?  In fact, I dislike it so much that often our best meals come from using up those leftovers in creative ways, purely for the pleasure of emptying container after container.  Because I also abhor waste.  I firmly believe our world would be [...]

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Pane Siciliano

November 4, 2009

Bread number 4,652 for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge is a gorgeously-browned loaf.  Okay, I made that up.  I think it’s really only bread #23, but my hips look as though I have made many more types of bread than that.  Most of the time now, I only make a half-recipe, which is not something [...]

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Pain de Campagne

November 2, 2009

Time is once again rushing by faster than Canadian geese flying south for the winter.  Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and I will be wondering how I managed to age yet another year in what surely must have been the blink of an eye.  The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge is more than halfway over, and [...]

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Spinach Quiche

October 26, 2009

Some days, I just want something completely different for dinner.  Does that ever happen to you?   Chicken, fish, and meat recipes suddenly stop inspiring you?  (Of course, if you’re a vegetarian, that happens daily!)  Last week, I had several of those days.  So we had curried lentil soup one night, and chana masala for another [...]

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Pain à l’Ancienne

October 20, 2009

Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge Pain à l’Ancienne is a challenging bread for some people.  Specifically me.  I like to eat bread that comes from wet dough (crispy, crunchy, airy, and chewy), but I’m not so good at handling the sticky wet stuff.  So I approached this bread as though it needed kid gloves.  And it [...]

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Corn Chowder

October 16, 2009

It’s time for a tribute.  The Brentwood corn stand had its last weekend at the farmer’s market until next May.  That might not seem very important, given that other stands are still selling corn here, but the Brentwood corn is special.  The line is always long, and they always sell out.  Some days they have [...]

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Multigrain Struan Bread Extraordinaire

October 8, 2009

Back when I lived in Sonoma County, and Brother Juniper’s Bread was a way to “eat local” long before anyone actually said those words, Peter Reinhart’s (Brother Juniper) Struan Bread was one of my favorite breads to buy at Food 4 Thought Natural Foods Grocery Store (which of course got bought by Whole Foods long [...]

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Food Bloggers: Lovers, Not Fighters

October 6, 2009

At the end of September, I went to BlogHer Food 09.  An entire day-long conference at the St. Regis in San Francisco just for food bloggers.  I didn’t encounter a bad attitude all day.  How many conferences have you attended where you could say the same thing?  It was incredible: smiles, hugs, laughter all around.  [...]

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