Chronicling Days Off III

Days off come around every two weeks or so. I am not complaining (a couple work days are only three to five hours, anyway). When I woke up this morning confused briefly as to what day it was, it was delightful to realize my neglected alarm wasn't making me late for work or a running date.

Going into the day, it was a toe-curling pleasure to see sunshine and need car windows rolled down, riding with James Vincent McMorrow and Oh Land in my speakers; to match Pickwick with screen doors and open kitchen windows; to pair Lisa Hannigan with measuring flour under evening light; and to wear whatever colors and uncomfortable shoes I wanted because there was no decor to match or good soles needed for long periods of standing...



[Days off are for] strolling through Fairhaven in good company. Stopping for poppies along the sidewalk; sipping margaritas; acquiring a madeleine pan.



[Days off are for] finding a used copy of a cookbook I've craved for its smooth aesthetic and clean typography, the charming British voice of Nigel Slater, and recipes like pistachio cake.







[Days off are for] taking the time to walk over to the neighbor's fence and see their rose blooms through a viewfinder.



[Days off are for] spontaneously gathering together the ingredients for an old familiar from my mother's kitchen and making it my own: Sally Lunn Bread.

Family Time

With my family spread around the country (and some around the globe), it's always special when I get to spend time with relatives.

It just so happens that the family I have in Texas is incredibly photogenic, outdoorsy, and entertaining...







And that's just my little cousins.

My aunt and uncle have a wonderful laid back hospitality and appreciation of good food. Evidence of our delicious meals is lacking here, but gyros, an apple German pancake, and sourdough waffles were all on the menu. Not to mention the delicious home-brewed beer that went with our Saturday night homemade pizza dinner.

Besides the mandatory bread-making time my uncle and I spent together, we also got to bottle some delicious raspberry mead and taste-test a prickly pear variety he had been storing in his bedroom closet until we got the acidly just right.

Here are the bottles after a sanitizing bath of their own.

In the Winter Chill

My shoes crunched their way up the stairs to my front door tonight. Not because of dried leaves or snow but because a strange layer of whiteness has covered the land. It is not snow and it's not hail or sleet. Just fine shavings of ice that are unable to melt in the winter chill.

This very chill kept the temperature in the 20s today and called off all classes.

What better way to embrace winter weather at its truest, than making use of the oven, reading on a couch, and gazing outside through steamy windows at trees branches haloed by their icy encasement? And this is exactly what I did for the better part of the day.





This bread was an adaptation of an old standard. The only thing I did differently was to roll it out before shaping it into a loaf, then I rubbed it with a thin layer of butter and sprinkled cinnamon, cocoa, sugar, and raisins evenly across the top. I just rolled it up and tucked it into its loaf pan for one final rise from there. Delicious.

Deprived of Sleep...by a Loaf of Garlicy Bread

There is a very good reason the average college student strategically avoids eight o'clock classes and continuously grumbles about those their schedule and graduation date force upon them. If any of us were morning people before entering freshman year, it's likely that we've become quite acclimated to hitting the snooze button. All night cram sessions, projects that have been put off and put off some more, and parties keep students awake far too long for them to function shortly after the break of dawn. Stop me now if these stereotypes simply don't fit, and I'll admit I'm just talking about myself.

Yesterday I found myself yawning excessively during class because my body was dreaming of that bed I had left sooner than I wanted to, the bed I didn't get to curl up and fall asleep in until 2:30am.

The pathetic part is that a loaf of bread kept me up.

You would think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but when I set about kneading my biga into the rest of my dough it was 8pm, and I couldn't imagine the entire process of making a rustic country loaf of bread would keep me up past midnight. Oh, was I wrong.

To save you the mundane details of watching the clock tick away necessary intervals of rising, I will just say that my efforts were not in vain. I pulled a beautiful loaf out of the oven, chuckling at what I was going to do with such a massive amount of bread. (It was huge.)

But it was also delicious. I sliced the thing in half the next morning and brought one portion over to a house full of guys, and my roommates and I are still picking away at what's left.

It was an almost foolproof recipe, thanks to the details and specifics that can be depended on from Cook's Illustrated. It would have been even more perfect, if I would buckle down and save enough money for a baking thermometer, spray bottle, and bench scraper (I know these can probably come incredibly cheap, but, hey, I'm a student).

Oh, one last note! I made this recipe my own by roasting a head of garlic beforehand and distributing the cloves on the flattened rectangle of dough just before shaping it into a loaf. It was a delicious touch, but if you choose to do this, I would definitely advise using two heads, to make sure there are at least two cloves in every slice.

Whole Wheat Rustic Italian Bread Recipe

New familiars

Today is full of new familiars, things that are familiar but have patiently waited as old memories so that they now feel new.

Familiarity Number One is Christmas music. Leigh Nash is back in my life! As a teen I listened to her with Sixpence and coyly sang along to "Kiss Me," but today my favorite song of hers is "Baby It's Cold Outside."

So in the transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas I am listening to new yet old tunes and savoring one of my favorite flavors of this season: cranberries. The mixed berry cranberry sauce I got from Deb at Smitten Kitchen made a delightfully large batch, and even split between Katie and me, is promising to last quite a few more days.

In summary of all things worth giving thanks for, my roomies and I sat down for breakfast together this morning. Pancakes were on the menu with plenty of creamy vanilla yogurt, tangy cranberry sauce, and spicy cinnamon. It was cold and rainy outside, but we were dry and cozy in our apartment with satisfied bellies.

Familiarity Number Two is homemade bread. Though it bears no familiar presence in my own adult kitchen, my childhood kitchen, the one that required a nearby stool to see the countertop, knows the smell and appearance of freshly baked bread well.

My most vivid memories of my mother's amazing bread-making skills are in the land where my brothers, sister, and I drew amused looks for widely opening our mouths to form a long O sound and call out "Mom!" In those years my own culinary curiousity was born. Most likely to distract us from destroying her recipes, my mom/mum occasionally gave my sister and I freedom to experiment on our own in the kitchen. I clearly remember one particular batch of muffins with toothpaste in it!

Maybe that toothpaste flop is the perfect segue into my first ever loaf of bread kneaded, left to rise, and baked all on my lonesome. Not that this was a complete flop, but I'm not declaring gastronomical genius either.

I have much to learn.

For example, barely cutting away at the surface of a doughy loaf before it goes in the oven (with an only semi-sharp knife) probably will not achieve beautiful, true baker-esque slits in the top of my bread. This was probably the greatest flaw in this nervous, exciting endeavor. Somehow, the rest came out deliciously chewy on the inside and with a truly rustic, crusty outside -- fine enough to be eaten with plenty of contented sighs and addicted nibbling.

Thankfully, I am not so discouraged as to push my bread flour and yeast packets to the back of the cupboard. In fact, for now they have a prominent place on the foremost edge of the shelf, where I can more easily and confidently grab them to knead away academic frustration as the last two weeks of classes slip away.

Now...I really can't stay/I've got to go away/this evening has been so very nice...





[To find my bread recipe, visit Smitten Kitchen here and scroll down to the Rustic White Bread.]