Friday, January 15, 2010

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”

So, my New Year's Resolution was to learn to cook better. Each month I'm going to pick a different kind of food, and learn new recipes and techniques for it. This month I chose to do bread. I used to do bread when I was in undergrad, and I used to really enjoy it. Last night I broke out my stand mixer, flour and yeast and went to work. I did not have my nice stand mixer and bread hook before, and mixing the ingrediants was so much easier with them. I made a recipe for Honey Wheat bread from the Mennonite Cookbook "More with Less" I love this cookbook, seriously everyone should own it.
The recipe makes two loaves at a time. I did one loaf in the normal bread pan as per the recipe. For the other loaf I kneaded it into a ball, and put it on my pizza stone. I was really worried tht they wouldn't rise enough, but they rose real nice in the oven. The recipe called for them to stay in about 45 minutes, but that proved to be a little bit too long. I'll have to take them out sooner next time.
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I'm pretty darn proud of myself.
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