A Ku Indeed!

I came into this week’s challenge humming: “Happy days, are here again, the sky above, is clear again…!!:

If you read regularly, you know why. We’ve finally moved away from all of that dreadfully boring sandwich bread and back to the good stuff. I’ve gotta tell you, it really was like climbing over the peak of a mountain, having to bake three sandwich loafs in a row. They were good, but eh…I’ll put it this way: if, tomorrow, all sandwich breads disappeared and were replaced by good Italian and French breads, I wouldn’t miss them a bit. I’d actually be pretty happy.

This animosity to the sandwich loaf has caused a rift in my home, however. Whereas I love rustic European breads, my wife prefers the bland good ol’ American sandwich bread and gets excited when one of those loaves comes up in the challenge. What can I say, she’s from Arkansas, she doesn’t know any better when it comes to bread.

Which reminds me: this pain a l’ancienne — the ancient bread – is good stuff. This time around, I decided to make two batches of this recipe, one to make the bread and then one to try out a foccacia-based pizza (since Reinhart mentions that it could be used in this way). I discuss both experiments below, and both of them were equally excellent.

(As fellow BBA’ers come in, such as Jim, and Susie, I’ll quick link to their products here)

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I found myself disagreeing (no surprise here) with a number of points Charles Krauthammer makes in his editorial in the Washington Post today, criticizing Obama’s speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — most notably on the subject of the 1967 borders. Instead of replying and pointing out where I disagreed, I found William Saletan’s reply in Slate to be on pretty much on target, so I’ll just point to it instead. I’d recommend reading them both.

I picked this lemon chicken recipe out of the Arthur Avenue Cookbook because it was so simple, I didn’t feel like cooking anything complicated today, and I haven’t made anything out of this cookbook for a while.

True to form, this recipe is very easy to make and doesn’t take very much time either — perhaps 20 minutes tops, with maybe 10 minutes of prep time. Come to think of it, this one could fit into one of those “Meals in 30 minutes” (of the Rachel Ray variety) books.

Overall, while it was a quick meal to make, I did think it was a bit plain. Perhaps a little bit too plain. It’s good, but it’s just not a dish that jumps out at you. Then again, what should you expect for a meal prepared in 30 minutes from start to end?

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A friend of mine asked me if I would mind giving Rosemary Bread a try. I’ve had it, but never tried to bake it, so I agreed. Admittedly, this wasn’t a bread that was on my ‘short list’ – but now that I’ve made it, I’m glad that I did.

This is an incredibly tasty bread, and the recipe is really not hard to make. The rosemary in the bread, mixed in with the sea salt that is sprinkled into the slashes at the top of the bread, is really an amazing combination.

After making it, I was immediately thinking of just how excellent this bread would go with plainer foods, such as salads, grilled chicken or fish, or perhaps even pork. There’s so much taste in the bread, you wouldn’t want to mix this one with a food that is equally spicy or very herb-oriented. Certainly worth a try!

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It’s hard to know what to say about something this terrible, I find it hard to grapple with personally. My wife teaches in Joplin, and knows many people who are being affected by this awful, tragic event. To get a sense of the devastation, see this story, which has a lot of before-after pictures of the damage. Unbelievable.

I wasn’t all that psyched to make this bread. I was a bit tired of all of these loaf breads, to be honest — but this one was a pleasant surprise to me, and I’m glad we did it.

It has a very sophisticated taste, due no doubt to the multiple types of grains (oats, wheat bran, brown rice) that are present in the recipe. In addition the bread is nicely moist, and it has a remarkably open crumb. In fact, I was actually a bit surprised by just how open the crumb was, given the not that high hydration rate on this bread.

This bread is well worth making, I’d argue. In fact, I’m waiting until the morning to see if it works as excellently as toast as Peter Reinhart claims it does!

(As BBA’ers show up, such as Nancy and Jim, I’ll quick link to their products here).

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This one was a little strange for me, given the fact that I am ethically opposed to veal, and haven’t eaten it since God knows when. I figured I’d let it go this time, just to see how the recipe came out. Still, I must admit, I didn’t enjoy preparing it given my opposition to veal production.

In the end, I wound up making a number of errors in this mission, each of which I briefly explain below. I ended up with a good, but not great, meal. That’s okay – there are always things to learn, so I don’t mind screw ups now and again. I have a solid idea now how to fix the problems I encountered next time — with chicken the next time around. I also now have a great new way to make a non-red sauce for pasta!

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I’m now caught up!

Making this rye bread was really not a whole lot different from making the Light Wheat Bread. It wasn’t that exciting to do. However, it’s rye bread, so of course it tastes better and is more interesting than wheat bread. This is actually a really good sandwich bread.

There were a few steps along the way, however, that I definitely didn’t do particularly well. These all led to aesthetic problems only, luckily. As I’ll explain below, I just didn’t get the shaping part on this bread right. In truth I was rushed and went too quickly here, and so didn’t think through the consequences of the method I had chosen to use. I’ll explain below how this led to a few problems down the line.

(As fellow BBA’ers, such as Nancy, Susie and Jim, show up, I’ll quick link to their products here.)

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Zzzzzz.

Okay, so I’m a bit behind here. There’s a two-fold reason why. First, it’s finals time, and I’ve been overwhelmed with end of the semester tasks — papers, exams and so on. The good news is that it’s over in a few days. The bad news is that it put me behind in the BBA challenges by a week.

The second reason has more to do with bread making itself: I was so bored by this challenge that I simply couldn’t muster up the energy to do it! I mean look — after making all those great breads, what sense does it make to then back up and make a loaf of wheat bread? Why not just have us make a loaf of Wonder Bread? Ah well, it is now done, so it’s behind me.

Truth be told, however, the bread is actually quite good. Just boring. As long as you can stay awake during the process, it will all be good.

(When BBAers stream in, such as Nancy, Adam, Jim and Joanne, I’ll quick link to their products here.)

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I always have problems with shaping long bread loaves. I don’t have any issues getting the dough to stretch out – my problem is in increasing the surface tension of the skin from side to side. My methods so far have been pretty sloppy. In the middle of grading some papers today, I found a video on YouTube that really does a great job of explaining how to do it right. I’ve already tried it, with a lot of success. Normally I’d embed the video here, but for some reason, the video maker disabled embedding, for reasons mysterious and strange.  (By the way, yes – I know I’m behind schedule on the next BBA bread – I’ll have my post up by Tuesday — finals week delays!)

This dessert recipe — which is semolina pudding with blueberry sauce — caught my eye in Lidia’s Cooking from the Heart of Italy. I’m not sure exactly why it caught my eye.  I’m not the biggest fan of blueberries and although I like pasta made from semolina flour, semolina pudding does sound a bit odd. It could just be that I’ve been in the mood for something different and off the beaten track lately.

Well, it was definitely different, but I unfortunately didn’t love it. That’s alright, though: it was easy enough to make and worth giving a whirl. I’m not saying that this dessert isn’t good — I’m sure lots of people would like it. It just wasn’t my cup o’ tea.

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The comic below the fold is awesome. It exactly embodies the point and substance of Kierkegaard’s existential criticism of the pervasiveness of the modern (for his time) media and what he calls “rotation method” — both of which combined in his day to allow a person to continually distract him/herself and hide in a vague and abstract world of “the they” where nothing of actual substance occurs, thus emptying one’s life of all significance. Living meaningful life is hard, risky and anxiety laden, and as a result we run to the “they” — where life is blissfully tranquil, soothing and tempting – though meaningless. If Kierkegaard were alive today, that same criticism would be lodged (as Hubert Dreyfus once wrote) against “the Internet” and “social media.” See below! (h/t: Mark Walter)

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