Well, the Husband was on a roll last week (ha! no pun intended!) Thanks to his efforts on the last day of the month, we ended January at 18 new recipes. What a great start to the year. The incredibly cold weather has kept us inside and what a better way to warm up a chilly house that to do a little baking. I know come July and August we certainly won’t be making anywhere near this many new recipes.
Low-Risk Sourdough Bread (The Bread Bible by Ruth Levy Beranbaum, pg 473) 4.5
The Husband really branched out into some artisan bread making with this recipe. It is a more "delicate" dough, in that you let it rise in a special basket called a banneton, then gently roll it onto the baking sheet. We do not have such a special basket, but the recipe noted a bowl lined with a flour dusted towel works as a good substitute. According to the Husband, not so much. The bread stuck to the towel where he had missed flouring it and when he rolled it out onto the cookie sheet, it oozed across the parchment like some living amoeba.
Then partway through baking one is supposed to remove the bread from the cookie sheet and place it directly on the baking stone. This was also reported to be easier said than done, as he was leaning over a 425* oven trying to get the bread to turn and slide off and somehow in the process he burned his bicep.
The bread didn’t poof up as much as he thought it should have (think back to the oozing amoeba) and we ended up with two disk shaped loaves of different sizes. Despite the bicep burn, losing a tuperware lid (still not sure how he did that), and thinking he had ruined my cookie sheet, he made two absolutely fantastic loaves of rustic sourdough bread. The smaller one of the two was eaten in one sitting. I think with some work on technique, he would make this again.
French Country Sourdough Bread ( The Bread Bible by Ruth Levy Beranbaum, pg 478) 3.5
After the near disaster of the aforementioned bread, he decided to make a second bread where he did a few thing differently. This produced a beautiful small boule with a nice crisp crust. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on how it tastes, as it will be given away to a co-worker of the Husbands. The Husband is already talking of making this one again, but for us.
Leek and Potato Soup (Irish Pub Cookbook) 3
And after all the bread was done, he turned his attention to soup! Pretty basic recipe: leeks, potatoes, butter, onions, half-n-half; cook, simmer and puree. He had a bit of trouble in the puree department, but I think it was because his potatoes chunks were too larger for the immersion blender. This wasn’t as flavorful as other leek and potato soups I’ve had and I’m not sure why. I even garnished our bowls with chopped parsley, salt and fresh ground pepper. I’m thinking for leftovers frying up some of the leftover pancetta I have in the fridge and serving that on top. Still, served with a bit of the sourdough bread, it was great supper.
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