events

Butternut Brioche

If I’m remembering my childhood correctly, there was a time when I didn’t like winter squash. Hard to believe, because I can’t get enough of it now: roasted or steamed; stand-alone, stuffed, or in risotto or pasta; with sweet spices or savory herbs. On top of all that, I have discovered it makes a pretty darn good brioche.

This bread is only lightly spiced so the squash flavor really shines through. Feel free to increase or tweak the spices to your taste. Also, it has less butter and sugar than a typical brioche; if you leave the pecans off the top, it could pass for dinner rolls, but the nuts push it over into pastry territory in my book. Either way, I think it’s a delicious and festive addition to a holiday table.

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It’s A Toss-Up

potato rosemary goat cheese pizza

There are times when a toss-up is definitely not a good thing. The upcoming election, for example. You want your candidate to earn an unequivocal win, right? So get out there and vote on November 4, if you haven’t done so already. I’ll be really ticked off if I have to stay up until 6 AM while “too close to call” remains on the lips of every news anchorperson in the country, because you didn’t bother to vote. So go, no excuses. That means you!

This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge was a toss-up of a different kind. Our host Rosa (Rosa’s Yummy Yums) delighted me by choosing pizza, but terrified me by stipulating that we had to shape the crust by tossing it up in the air like a real pizzaiola. The last time any crust of mine was airborne involved a few choice expletives and a pretty extensive patch job. Thenceforth, until Rosa stirred things up, I resigned myself to being a more relaxed, if inauthentic, pizza crust roller.

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Roasted Garlic Bread

This is a bread I’ve had on my list for a while, and now I’m wondering what took me so long. Besides looking pretty, it’s heaven on earth for garlic lovers. That would be me, and this summer I’ve been lucky to have a virtually unlimited supply of garlic from my brother-in-law’s prolific garden. I’m happy to share this loaf for the World Bread Day event hosted by Zorra (1x umrühren bitte).

The recipe comes (with a few adaptations) from one of my favorite baking books, Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking. Whether you are a beginning baker or an old hand, I think you’ll love the meeting the farmers, millers, and bakers profiled therein who share a wealth of baking knowledge, skill, and recipes. This bread is from Della Fattoria, a small northern California bakery featured in the book. We don’t get their bread in my immediate neighborhood, but I can tell you that on the occasions when I have picked up one of their loaves at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, I have not been disappointed.

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It’s Blog Action Day, and I Voted

Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers of every persuasion are tasked with writing about a common issue. This year’s issue is Poverty.

There were quite a lot of things I thought about writing about. I thought about my patients, who are mostly poor and uninsured and often don’t take their medications because feeding their children is a higher priority than buying their blood pressure pills. I thought about organizations such as The Hunger Project, which is dedicated to sustainable strategies towards ending the chronic hunger and poverty that affects over 800 million people worldwide. I could have written about climate change, which exerts its largest effect upon the world’s poor and is the theme of this year’s Word Food Day (which is tomorrow). Or how about about the shame I feel that in my own country, one of the world’s wealthiest, more than one in ten people lives with hunger and poverty?

I decided to write about none of that and all of that at once: I decided to use this post to urge you to vote, because our vote is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the fight against poverty.

I won’t tell you who you should vote for, but I’ll tell you who I voted for for President (I mailed in my ballot last night, and I feel damned good about it).

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Tips for Idiots

If you’re going to be an idiot, it helps if you’re at least an early-rising idiot.

That way, when you get up at 6 AM and see that the world is being taken over by Daring Bakers bearing lavash crackers with all manner of vegan, gluten-free dips, spreads, and salsas, and you slap your forehead and realize that yes, it’s that day and you’re caught not only lavash-less but lavash-plan-less, well, you still might have time to pull something together before you get caught up in the rest of your day.

It helps to have a few other things on your side.

Like that your lovely hosts Natalie (Gluten A Go Go) and Shel (Musings From the Fishbowl) have crafted a challenge that is fun and delicious (and yeasted in the bargain!) without being too time-intensive.

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Worst Best Pâte à Choux Ever

How do you go from cursing your pâte à choux to adoring it in 60 seconds flat? Here are the steps I used (YMMV):

Be delighted and excited about the challenge Meeta (What’s For Lunch Honey?) and Tony (Tony Tahhan) have chosen for the August Daring Bakers challenge: Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs.
Plan to make the éclairs to take to work, where you are sure to have enough chocoholics around to summarily devour them.
Make the chocolate pastry cream and chocolate sauce for the glaze the night before, without incident. Plan to make the éclair shells that night also, but be too exhausted to do so safely.
Get up at 5AM. Make coffee.
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