Rainy return of EPIC bread proportions!

Hello =D

Its been a year since my last entry I figured that I should get thing silly blog going again. What inspired this blog initially was a desire to share my thoughts and parts of the my life with the world. Things have definitely been chaotic since last year, but today was a "lazy" day and I was once again reminded of how blessed I am. I work an 8-5, 5 days of week which doesn't leave much time for my favorite hobbies so today's holiday was used to its fullest.

The baking began at 11:30pm last night. Started a batch of french baguettes using a King Author flour recipe... with credit to James who found the recipe.

Early this afternoon I started the dough for focaccia from Chef Batali's Molto Italiano. It didn't rise as much as it should have... probably because its cold in my house but it still came out tasty. Note to self - fresh parm reg., scallions, and salt make excellent focaccia toppings.











Next came the french baguettes! So the starter bubbled and doubled in size overnight and was then added to more of flour, yeast, water, salt. I used 10-11 oz of warm water ... which resulted in a very sticky dough. I'll have to make it again to see if the stickiness is a result of water or if its just the way the dough it.

Thanks to the focaccia baking in the oven, the french breads puffed up nicely!!! Don't use olive oil on these things!!! One of the bottoms was scorched because the smoking point of olive oil is lower than other oils. Next time, greased pan with just regular canola...
In between the bread makings I made pumpkin/acon squash soup pictured up top. Very simple and easy made in my new Le creuset dutch oven (thanks to David).

The bread, soup and a fresh salad from the garden made an excellent meal... and a huge load of dishes!

I also noticed that my extra virgin olive oil from costco doesn't make the best dipping oil... and I still have another sugar pumpkin to deal with... so lots more to write about in the future.

Hopefully more posts will follow on the garden and worm composting!