Is it wrong to love one Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge bread so much more than all the others?  To play favorites, when there are so many really amazing breads?  Well, if lovin’ this one above all others is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.  (Yeah, I know, that was bad.)

This manna from heaven is made from the method that Peter Reinhart learned when he visited the “most famous bread baker in the world,” Lionel Poilâne in France.  And, of course, the method had to be adapted to home kitchens in order for it to work for those of us who do not have wood-burning bread ovens at our disposal.  Clearly, I am the most ignorant bread-head in the world, having never even heard of Lionel.  That’s right, never.  I’ve been in France once, thirty years ago, and believe you me, every single bite of food I ate was so amazing to this then-young woman from Southern California that I didn’t care who made the breads I was eating.  (And, to be perfectly honest, Italy had my heart, so the breads of Italy were the ones that inspired my adulation.)

Therefore, except for all the hype about Poilâne in the book, I had no idea what I was in for when I made this bread.  I knew it was the loaf featured on the cover of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which should have given me a clue.  The ingredients pleased me: sourdough starter, whole-wheat flour, salt and water.  But I couldn’t figure out where to procure the “medium-grain whole-wheat flour” or a sifter that was fine enough to strain out the bran particles in that type of flour.  Luckily, Peter gives the alternative of using half whole-wheat and half bread flour.  Lacking the right flour and strainer, however, I thought I was starting from such a compromised place that the bread would only be okay.

I was so wrong.  This bread rocked my world.  It’s sour.  It’s wheaty.  It’s chewy and wholesome without being too dense.  It lasts forever on the counter; I ate it every day for over a week.  Sandwiches, toast with homemade apricot jam, croutons from torn pieces tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, bread crumbs from the last precious bits – the flavor transitioned with each treatment and the passage of time, evoking the essence of toasted walnuts and crème fraîche.  Obviously, I’m totally infatuated.  When I’m finished with the challenge, it will be on regular rotation here, and I may try harder to find the perfect flour and sieve.  Because there are worse things in life than falling in love with a bread, right?

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When life gives you lemons, you can do a whole lot more than make lemonade.  With our tiny backyard tree drooping from the weight of these gems, I’m acting like a kid in a candy store.  Neener, neener, ha, ha!  I have Meyer lemons!!  Especially since rain and clouds haunt us, and all seems grey most days, their vibrant, intense yellow color brightens our tabletop as surely as the missing sun.

So it was with delight that I found a recipe that turned them into a modern version of pudding-cake.  Do you remember those?  You put together some ingredients, throw them all in a baking dish, and out comes a sweet cake with a pudding sauce.  I hadn’t thought of one in years.  But this is like the pudding-cake’s grown-up cousin: tart, tangy, with a lighter than air texture that melts in your mouth.  Find some Meyer lemons, get out your ramekins, and start whipping those egg whites.  You, too, could be walking on sunshine.

Meyer Lemon Custard Cakes
(from Bon Appétit)
Makes 8

Ingredients
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1/4 cup all purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1 1/3 cups whole milk
2 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup fresh Meyer lemon juice or regular lemon juice
2 tablespoons finely grated Meyer lemon peel or regular lemon peel
Whipped crème fraîche (I would have preferred a tiny dollop of whipped cream instead.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter eight 3/4-cup ramekins or custard cups. Whisk 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons of the sugar, flour, and pinch of salt in medium bowl to blend. Combine milk, egg yolks, lemon juice, and lemon peel in large bowl; whisk until blended. Add flour mixture to yolk mixture and whisk custard until blended.

With an electric mixer, beat egg whites in another large bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining 1/4 cup sugar to whites and beat until stiff but not dry. Fold 1/4 of whites into custard. Fold remaining whites into custard in 2 additions (custard will be runny).

Divide custard equally among prepared ramekins. Place ramekins in large roasting pan. Place the pan in the oven. Carefully pour enough hot water into pan to come halfway up sides of ramekins. Bake custard cakes until set on top (custard cakes will be slightly soft in center), about 30 minutes. Chill custard cakes uncovered until cold, at least 4 hours, then cover and keep refrigerated.

Run small knife around each custard cake to loosen. Invert each cake onto plate. Place dollop of crème fraîche on cakes and serve. (The flavor of whipped cream would be far preferable to me, as the lemon is already tangy and the cream would be a gentle counterpoint.)

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I really didn’t want to make this Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge bread.  In fact, I stalled on my baking schedule for a long time when we arrived at this sourdough rye section.  I mean, truly, how many people do you know who rhapsodize about sour rye?  But a challenge is a challenge, and I wasn’t about to let one bread get in the way of completing it.

And then there were my fellow bakers – many reported disasters with this bread.  Didn’t make me want to jump in and try it, knowing my family wouldn’t touch it – rye haters all.  But did you know that the flavors of caraway and rye are two different things altogether?  I’ve had them co-mingled in my mind, and I’m only up for caraway once in a while.  However, if you leave out the caraway seeds, rye has a subtle taste I’ve yet to accurately describe – especially when it’s mixed with sourdough.  Luckily, the tangy chew of this bread was worth pushing through my hesitation.

Being 100% rye, this dough is no exception to the gummy problem I mentioned in my last bread post.  In fact, I wasn’t even sure this dough would turn into bread.  It all starts when you take your sourdough starter and turn it into a firm rye starter by adding white rye flour and water (on day 1).  It rises for several hours and then you refrigerate it overnight.  At this point, I would already describe the starter as gummy!  On the same day (day 1), you make a soaker with pumpernickel-grind rye and water.  That sits at room temperature overnight.

Day 2 begins with the now-familiar process of cutting the refrigerated starter into smaller pieces and letting it come to room temperature.  Then you add the soaker, more white rye flour, salt, and water and mix it all up.  The kneading starts, and the gummy games begin, while the dough takes on the texture of sticky play-doh mixed with clay.  Strangest dough ever.  It doesn’t even hold together well, as rye doesn’t have enough gluten to make stretchy strands.

After a 4-hour rise, you gently ease it out of the bowl and onto the counter.  I cut and shaped the dough into one small and one large bâtard before letting it go through its second rise on the baking sheet.

Given that the surface had an odd dimpled texture, I crossed my fingers and prayed to the bread gods.  Would this even be edible after baking?

Peter says that the dough will spread sideways as well (in other words, it flattens a lot).  And it did.  After the loaves were baked (which filled the house with an amazing sourdough aroma), and the requisite cooling period, I cut a slice, certain that it would be awful.  I was pleasantly startled!  Reinhart talks of a “sweet, creamy, yet chewy texture.”  He’s right.  I couldn’t describe it better.  Except my loaves were a mixture of sweet and tangy, depending upon where the bites hit my tongue.  While they wouldn’t win a beauty contest, their flavor was surprisingly nuanced and the texture was a springy dream!

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Yesterday, a friend asked me what I like to eat for breakfast.  Which was a little surprising, considering I had just (moments before) been thinking about that myself.  I realized I am a serial eater, but not a cereal eater.  Yes, I’m feeling very clever today.  The only time I ever seem to want cold cereal is in the afternoon, straight from the box, by the handful, and not very often.  Rarely for breakfast, with milk, unless under duress.

No, I tend to go in cycles (otherwise known as stuck-in-a-rut): oatmeal for a while, then muffins, moving on to granola with yogurt, and eventually toast with butter or homemade mini-bagels with cream cheese.  Scrambled eggs with cheese, or salsa, or spinach (or all three) happens maybe 4 times a year.  I make tons of pancakes, waffles, scones, cinnamon rolls, and coffee cakes, but those are really because my family gets in a very good mood when I do.  Left on my own, I eat the first meal of the day more simply, with an eye toward my health.  Yes, I’m that boring.

Which is where this recipe comes in.  When I go through a muffin phase nowadays, I make three types, all from Ellie Krieger, the nutrition expert over at Food Network.  And then I wrap them individually and freeze them, so that a warm morning muffin is only a 45 second microwave zap away.  With three kinds to choose from, breakfast doesn’t have to be dull to be healthy.  (I’ve already written about her apple pecan muffins.  Another favorite of mine is her pumpkin muffin, and after I make some tweaks to her recipe, I’ll be sure to write about it, too.)

Today’s bran muffin knocks the socks off those two-pound, sticky, sit in your stomach like a rock, sickly-sweet things you can find at coffee counters everywhere.  This muffin is light and moist, with a bit of chew from the dried figs.  Using applesauce, honey, and a touch of molasses to sweeten the batter means these don’t taste like dessert.  (I feel so virtuous!)  Making them with whole-wheat flour and bran cereal ensures there won’t be a sugar crash mid-morning.  Leaving out most of the fat saves those calories for later in the day.  Did I mention how freaking good these taste?

Bran Muffins with Figs (from Ellie Krieger)

Ingredients

1 cup chopped dried figs, plus 3 whole dried figs
1 1/2 cups bran cereal (she recommends: All-Bran, and that’s what I use)
1 cup lowfat milk
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons unsulfured molasses
1 large egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Coat a standard muffin pan with cooking spray or grease with butter. Slice each whole figs into three slices lengthwise.

In a large bowl, combine the cereal and milk. Let sit until softened, about 5 minutes. In a separate bowl, whisk together the whole-wheat flour, baking powder and salt.

Add the applesauce, honey, oil, molasses, and egg to the cereal mixture and stir until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Gently stir in the chopped figs, but not the sliced figs. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and top each muffin with a fig slice. Tap the pan on the counter a few times to remove any air bubbles.

Bake for about 18 to 20 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center of 1 of the muffins comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. If necessary, run a knife around the muffins to loosen. Unmold and cool completely on a rack. Unless you’re like me, and can’t resist having a warm, only slightly-cooled one before everyone else descends upon the kitchen and devours them.

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Oh my.  It seem I have left you breadless for quite a while.  I apologize for my absence here, but life has been very busy indeed.  I am writing, just not here.  In fact, I am writing a paper that is long overdue on Organizationally Internalized Shame.  Now, aren’t you glad I haven’t been boring you with that?

So I return today to write about something far more interesting to most of you: the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge New York Deli Rye.  To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from this bread.  If I’ve ever had New York Deli Rye, I didn’t know it.  It turns out that I liked this bread, but no one else in my family did.  Which means that half of it got made into croutons.

Remember my sourdough starter?  The nameless one, because I am a bad mommy?  This bread uses more of that starter, and what you see in the picture above is that very starter mixed with white rye flour, sautéed onions, and water.  Which makes something that looks very much like onion dip, if you ask me.

Once you mix all of that up, you let it sit until it foams (3 or 4 hours later), and then you place it in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, you take it out, and add bread flour, more white rye, brown sugar, salt, yeast, oil, buttermilk, and water.  Now here’s where it gets interesting.  You are not supposed to knead rye breads very long, because the dough will get gummy.  Getting gummy is a rye flour specialty.  But at the allotted time, my dough was not at all the firm, slightly tacky dough it was supposed to be.  No sirreee.  So after a whole lot of illicit kneading, during which I held my breath, certain the bread police would come and arrest me, my dough came together.

After all the drama, I wasn’t sure if my bread would even rise, but it did.  I made a large loaf and a mini loaf.  The oddly textured dough produced a tangy, oniony, soft, sandwich bread.  Turns out my family isn’t so fond of the oniony part.  Unless the oniony part gets crisped and subsequently drenched in salad dressing.  Probably not on my list of things to make again, but at least I know what New York Deli Rye is now!

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Finally, we arrive at The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Basic Sourdough Bread!  Which is pretty much one reason to live, as far as I’m concerned.  I grew up in California, thinking a good and sour sourdough was my birthright.  So it astounded me when I moved to Austin and tasted what was considered good sourdough bread at a great bakery downtown.  It wasn’t sour! At least not to my San Francisco sourdough accustomed tastebuds.  And thus began my education in the reality of local airborne yeast strains and how much they influence the nuances of sourdough bread.

You see, you can buy sourdough starter from San Francisco online, and you can do everything completely right, but unless you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, you will eventually end up with a sourdough starter that makes good bread, and yet tastes nothing like San Francisco sourdough.  Really.  I know you must be fascinated.

But to those of us who bake bread, who are crazy bread-baking nut-cases, this matters a whole lot.  Plus there are other things to know about sourdough.  Such as, when you first cultivate a starter (from scratch even!), it will not be very sour.  That can take months of care and feeding and sweet-talking to get to.  It’s like having a pet you can keep on your kitchen counter, and then throw in the refrigerator when you take a trip out of town.  Some people name their starters, and they have several.  I am so not making this up.

So the first thing I did all those months ago, when I joined the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, was to make my sourdough starter with rye flour and pineapple juice (and no purchased yeast at all!).  Because I wanted to be prepared when we reached this point in the book.  I wanted to grow a kick-butt starter.  I wanted my starter to have lived through a lot; that’s what makes it have personality.  That’s what allows it to incorporate all that natural yeast in the air and turn it into pure tangy goodness.  I haven’t been disappointed in my quest.

Peter Reinhart gives wonderful instructions on how to do this in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  Some people in the challenge used other methods to make their starter, and believe me, there are many ways to do it.  But Peter’s way worked for me (he doesn’t over-complicate the process), and I therefore have a wonderful, good-natured, 9-month-old baby sourdough starter to play bake with regularly.

The picture above is a loaf of bread I made when the starter was young.  While very pretty, with a high rise, it didn’t bowl me over with sourdough flavor.  Now (see the first picture), the starter has a depth that only months of fermenting, discarding, and refreshing can develop.  It’s like the difference between a sweet, innocent child, and a complex adult with some interesting life experience.  They aren’t the same thing at all.

This particular loaf didn’t rise as high as most of mine do, because I was impatient and my kitchen is about 60 degrees in the winter.  (I made another loaf for this post, and I tried to coax it along by letting it rise in my warming oven.  That ended in a partially-cooked dough ball, since I hit the wrong button on the oven.  Thank god for a sense of humor.)

For some reason, I’ve become obsessed with letting the dough go through the final rise in a cloth-lined bowl.  Which brings me the same pain I have with very wet dough.  No matter how much I flour the cloth, the dough ends up sticking a little bit when I transfer it to the baking sheet.

Which, of course, only makes me more determined to get it right – one of these times!  If you would like to get your own countertop pet starter, you can read more about it here, although I truly encourage you to buy the book.  It contains so much information, and so many wonderful recipes (even variations on basic sourdough, should you ever grow tired of eating fantastic, plain sourdough), that you will never regret your purchase.  But beware – it’s addicting.  You, too, could find yourself talking to a gooey mass of bubbling starter, and become known as just another crazy bread person.  I guess there are worse things!

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For those of you following my progress through the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, you already know my dread of “wet” dough.  Pugliese dough is another one of the wet dough recipes, so you can imagine how much I was not looking forward to making it.  But the whole point of a challenge is to challenge one’s self, is it not?  So on I pressed.  And I’m sure glad I did!  Not because I made incredible bread with it.  The bread was, well, meh, at best, largely because I still can’t seem to gently dump the dough out of the bowl after its second rise.  I deflate a whole lot of the trapped air bubbles every single time!  And it sticks to the darned flour-dusted cloth, every single time!  No, the reason I am glad I made this dough is because it made the best non-thin, non-thick pizza crust in the world, yessirrrreeee!

The dough was very wet, as you can see, and uses fancy durum flour, which I didn’t have, and didn’t want to buy.  (The twenty different flours I currently store in my tiny house are quite enough, thank-you-very-much!)  I instead used the suggested option of a bread flour and semolina flour mix.  I also chose the additional option of throwing in a small amount of mashed potatoes, because we had some in the fridge.  As I literally poured the dough from the mixer bowl onto the flour-covered counter, I was pretty concerned about handling the dough.  Peter Reinhart’s exact words are, “Don’t be alarmed if the dough seems very sticky.  The wetter it is, the better the final bread will be.”  So, I figured, okay, from the looks of my dough, I was heading for a real winner!

And, sure enough, after following the instructions to dust flour on top of the dough and pat the wet mess into a neat rectangle, I had something on my counter that looked a lot better.

I was able to do the stretch-and-fold method with no problem.  (You basically take each end, one at a time, and pull outward, then fold the dough over in thirds, letter-style)

Each time I did the stretch-and-fold method, the dough became stronger and less sticky, as promised.

With the help of my dough scraper, I managed to get the still-pretty-wet dough into an oiled bowl, where it rested for two hours, rose beautifully, and got filled with lovely gas bubbles.  Which broke my heart.  Because I knew that in the next steps, I was going to man-handle all those bubbles right out of the dough with my inexperience.  And that’s when I decided to make pizza with half the dough.  (Another one of Peter’s great options/suggestions.)

What a stupendous pizza it was!  Now my family could eat pizza (any kind of crust) every night for a week and never complain.  I, on the other hand, really only like super-thin crust pizza.  And not very often.  This pizza dough cured me.  Not thick-crust, not thin-crust, it was an amazingly chewy, tender, air-filled, moist, salty, complex crust.  Seriously.  Covered in olive oil, caramelized onions, arugula, mushrooms, and goat cheese, it was heaven on a slice of bread, really.  And I didn’t have to worry about getting it from the final proofing bowl onto the baking surface without it sticking to the cloth.  What could be better?

Not the loaf of bread I made with the other half, certainly.  That got eaten as toast, mostly.  It did stick to the cloth a little in the last transfer before baking.  And I did manage to degas the dough more than I wanted to.  But it was edible.  I had no complaints.  I’d eaten manna from heaven, made with the same dough, and that was enough for me.

As usual, we’re not allowed to post the recipes for the challenge.  However, Google has it here.  Scroll to page 224.  I really do suggest you buy the book.  The first third of the book is filled with instruction and is well worth having on the shelf to read multiple times.  Then you, too, could stay up long into the night wondering exactly how one transfers soft, wet dough around without degassing it!

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I’m interrupting the regularly scheduled Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge programming to share with you my new favorite muffin recipe.  Because it’s January.  And we are all, or almost all, trying to get back into our pre-November sized jeans.

What, you say?  Then why are you sharing a muffin recipe, of all things???  Muffins are filled with fat and sugar, not lettuce and skinless, grilled chicken breasts!  Well, this is where things get interesting.  (No, this muffin recipe most definitely does not have lettuce or chicken breasts in it.  But this tender, sweet, tasty muffin also does not have much fat or sugar, and it will keep you feeling full and happy until lunchtime.)

Sometimes a breakfast muffin promises so much and delivers so little, really.  It either is the size of a basketball (and no matter how you try to eat only a third of it, you still manage to polish it off, picking at it while it sits on your desk until it’s gone) and it lands in your stomach like a very heavy basketball, or it is a tasteless ball of sawdust, albeit a low-fat ball of sawdust.

This muffin does neither of those things.  This muffin recipe is from Ellie Krieger, the Food Network queen of healthy cooking.  And I wouldn’t be writing about it if it wasn’t one of the best apple muffins I have ever had, low-fat, full-fat, or otherwise.  Really.  Ellie has solved the how-to-make-a delicious-healthy-muffin dilemma for me.  Do you see that little bit of brown sugar-pecan crumb topping?  Yum.

There are a couple of tricks to this muffin.  Go out and buy whole-wheat pastry flour at your local health food store or Whole Foods or Central Market.  It is worth it.  I’ll be sharing other muffin recipes soon, also using whole-wheat pastry flour, so it will be sure to get used and not sit idly by in your pantry.  (The original recipe says you can substitute regular whole-wheat flour.  DON’T DO IT!  You will be disappointed.  Your muffin will not be as tender.  It will instead remind you of the dreaded “healthy” muffins.)  And when you measure the flours for the recipe, make sure you spoon the flour into the measuring cup before you level it off.  If you scoop and then level, you will be compacting it, using too much flour, and again, you will have a leaden crumb.  No need for that.  Fair warning.

Apple Pecan Muffins

(from Ellie Krieger)

Ingredients

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped pecans

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup canola oil

2 large eggs

1 cup natural applesauce

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk

1 Golden Delicious apple, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch pieces

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Coat a muffin pan with cooking spray or very lightly oil it.  In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar, the pecans and cinnamon.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose and whole-wheat flours, the baking soda and salt.  In a large bowl, whisk the remaining 3/4 cup brown sugar and the canola oil until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each addition.  Whisk in the applesauce and vanilla.  Whisk in the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the buttermilk.  Whisk just until combined.  Gently stir in the apple chunks.  Pour the batter into the prepared muffin pan and sprinkle with the pecan mixture.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.  Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes.  Run a knife around the muffins to loosen them and unmold.  Cool completely on the rack.

Once they are cool, you can wrap them individually and freeze them.  That way, you can always have a breakfast muffin at the ready, either by taking one out the night before or by zapping one in the microwave for about 15 seconds.

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I love the holidays, I really do.  I also love the moment they are over.  The way we can reclaim the space in our small living room where the tree stood.  Being able to rid every surface of dog hair, instead of only being able to vacuum around the packages and decorations.  Seeing empty breathing spaces where all the Christmas decorations brightened every tiny corner.  Yes, it was wonderful, bright, fun, and exciting.  And, yes, I’m delighted to have it over with.  To end the excess and remember how much I like normal and everyday.

Last night I made chili and skillet cornbread.  A few days earlier I made pasta e fagioli.  Need I tell you how good it tastes to eat humble, filling food after a month of indulgence?  No creamy dips, rich cheeses, heavy meats, or chocolate in sight.  Simple, gratifying food for cold evenings.  A reminder that we don’t need so much in order to celebrate being alive.  Give me my family, gathered around our table, a candle lit against the darkness, the residual heat from the oven warming our kitchen, and I’m contented.

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge Potato Roasted Garlic Rosemary Bread makes me feel the same way.  Adding roasted garlic, rosemary, and mashed potatoes to an otherwise unremarkable dough of flour, water, olive oil, yeast and salt yields a hearty, satisfying loaf.  The crumb is tender, while managing to retain just enough “chewy” factor.  And the flavor, well, it borders on indulgence while staying firmly on this side of excess.  All of which means it is perfect for January, and for dipping into soups, or for eating with roasted winter vegetables.

The dough starts with a biga (pre-ferment) on the first day.  The second day is the usual process of mixing, kneading, rising, shaping, rising again, and baking.  (Just make sure you have some leftover mashed potatoes to throw in!)  I made my dough into a loaf and nine rolls.  I also added some coarse salt to the top, and I’d happily do it again, as the slight crunch of the salt was a perfect foil for the tender interior.  The dough was easy to work with, and the crust browned up beautifully after being brushed with olive oil.  As usual, I don’t post Peter Reinhart’s recipes from the Challenge, but you can find the recipe here.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet (or not), just like the bread I baked.  I’m sure you have heard of the expression “h-e-double hockey sticks?”  Well, I had an h-e-double hockey sticks of a time with this bread, as you can see.  The Portuguese Sweet Bread from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge actually turned into something more like h-e-double hockey pucks in my hands.  Completely inedible.  And I know it was my fault, because several fellow bakers turned out cloud-like, billowy, luscious-looking loaves.

I can guess it had something to do with my attitude.  I’ve only had this type of bread in the orange and brown wrapper.  And I didn’t like it at all.  So I was less than thrilled to make it.  And you see what I got.  That’s all the proof I need that Like Water For Chocolate is a true story, and not magical realism at all.  Next up is Potato Rosemary Bread, which turned out much better.  And, yes, I had a better attitude while making it.  I’ll share it with you later this week.

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