Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

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Time to Make the Baked Doughnuts

Baked doughnuts with cinnamon sugar

I made these doughnuts (my first ever; don’t know what I was waiting for) for Tartelette and Peabody’s Time to Make the Doughnuts event. They allowed baked doughnuts, although they warned against making a habit of it. Still reeling from holiday fat overload, I couldn’t bring myself to deep fry anything right now. Next time.

These were inspired by Heidi’s Baked Dougnuts at 101 Cookbooks, and my recipe loosely based on hers.

I experimented with different sugar/spice mixtures for the coating, in which the doughnuts are dipped after baking. My favorites were 50/50 brown sugar and granulated sugar with cinnamon (pictured above), and granulated sugar with cardamom. Another interesting one was granulated sugar with chipotle powder. The possibilities are limitless.

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Shaping a Couronne Bordelaise

Couronnes Bordelaise

Couronne bannetonIt’s time for another BreadBakingDay, and host Eva (Sweet Sins) chose “Shape” as this month’s excellent theme. I opted to make a couronne Bordelaise (Bordeaux-style crown), because it was about time I put my oddly-shaped couronne banneton, which I’ve had for a few months now, to use.

What I wish I had figured out before I spent a small fortune ordering this 12″ linen-lined banneton from France, however, is that you absolutely don’t need it. You can rig up a perfectly good stand-in with an inverted cereal bowl inside any flat-ish basket (even a large pie plate would do), and a piece of linen draped over them. I made one couronne in the “real” banneton and one in the mock-up, and I truly couldn’t tell the difference in the final loaves. The diameter of my basket is about 11″, and of the bowl, about 4.5″.

Mock couronne basket Linen-draped mock couronne banneton

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Adventures in Last-Minute Lemon Meringue Pie

lemon meringue pie

In her Christmas stocking this year, my daughter found a post-it note pad that says “If it weren’t for the last minute, I’d never get anything done.” She feigned offense, but she grudgingly admits it’s true. The rest of that truth is that she inherited the procrastination gene from her parents.

With my three previous Daring Bakers challenges, I’ve fought it off successfully. I’m on shaky ground with most non-yeast baking, so the threat of public humiliation has been enough to stir me to action plenty early in the month. I had time to re-make the Bostini Cream Pie when the chiffon cake didn’t cooperate. Made the Potato Bread three times. And although I had some decent beginner’s luck with the Yule Log, I made darn sure my schedule could accommodate a take-two before the deadline, if needed.

Well, my true nature was bound to catch up with me sooner or later. I waited until the last possible (for me) day to bake the lemon meringue pie that is the January challenge, hosted by Canadian Baker Jen. And it was a day we had company for dinner, proving that, in addition to the procrastination gene, the stupid gene was also at work here. (In my defense, it was an old friend, a good sport not likely to be easily fazed by scary pie. Also, I did have some nice pistachio gelato on standby, just in case.)
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Cardamom-Pear-Pecan Sticky Buns for BBD (Recipe Not Included)

Cardamom-Pear-Pecan Sticky Buns

If I’m being honest, I have to breathe a sigh of relief that 2007 is almost over. Well, maybe not all of 2007, just the last couple of weeks. OK, maybe not all of the last couple of weeks, but the baking part. At least the part where I make at least one very stupid mistake with each and every thing I bake.

My mental bandwidth overloaded with holiday freneticism, and my brain cells additionally blunted by the consumption of a staggering amount of butter and sugar (excuses, excuses), I have felt, of late, like I’m starring in “Inspector Clouseau in the Kitchen.”

Everything turned out to be salvageable, and I’ll spare you the details, except to offer a vague explanation for why I’m not including the recipe for my submission to this month’s BreadBakingDay (#05). Our host Chelsea of Rolling in Dough chose the theme of filled breads, and I made Cardamom-Pear-Pecan Sticky Buns.

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I Play Favorites

Best of 2007 logoIt’s that time of year when superlatives abound, and Zorra (1 x umrühren bitte) and Sandra (Un Tocco di Zenzero) are hosting Best of 2007 for food bloggers. (What, is that me? Who’d have thought?). Everyone is invited to submit the one recipe that stands above all the others among their 2007 entries.

Deciding on a single recipe to designate as my best gave me more than a little pause, as each bread exhorted, “Pick me! Pick me!” From Norwich Sourdough: “You know I’m the most reliable and versatile bread ever to grace your oven. You can’t live without me!” But here’s Semolina Bread with Fennel, Currants and Pine Nuts, giving me that golden yellow, jewel-studded, come-hither look. “You want a piece of me?” barks beefy High-Extraction Miche as he muscles them both out of the way. “I can take the two of you with my hands tied behind my back!” And so on.

No, it wasn’t easy, but I do have a winner, which I will announce forthwith (before I change my mind again). But first, just a tiny break for station identification:

You are reading Wild Yeast. Be sure and tune in next week, when Susan will reveal which of her children she loves more.

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