Bits ‘n Bites

One of the exhilarating aspects of being part of the bakerhood that is Daring Bakers, is knowing that you become a better baker after each new challenge. There is always a trick or two to pick up, a new way of looking at a process, a new direction to stretch your skills and comfort zone. This challenge proved this once more.

Hosted by  Breadchick Mary (The Sour Dough), and Sara (I like to cook), we were dared to bake French Bread, the Julia Child way. Well, I’ve baked a lot of bread from scratch, but I have to admit my jaw dropped when I read the instructions. How could a recipe with four (4) basic ingredients take so long!? Eight ( to nine (9) hours?! Whoa! The bread I usually bake entails one proof/rise, shaping and a second shorter rise. Total time from kneading to fragrant bread out of the oven: 2.5 hours. My curiosity was piqued. We had been warned so many times in cooking school not to let the bread over-rise, that I was a bit skeptical. Nonetheless, on a quiet Sunday, I got up early and plunged in.

I’ve always made bread the old fashion way, kneading by hand. Since the option to use an electric mixer was offered with this challenge, I decided to try it that way. Improvement #1: It’s a lot more efficient to make bread this way. The mixer bowl is ideal for the first proofing. A keeper. Next up? Using the oven, with the light on, as the rising chamber. Brilliant! Even better, wrapping the bowl in a towel. That’s how I’ll be rising bread from now on.

The whole process was pretty straightforward, just time consuming. I may have gotten a bit impatient at the end. My shaped bread (three ficelles) could have risen a little longer. Still, I was really happy with the final results. I’m not sure I’ll be repeating the whole process in the future, but I’m sure the tricks learned will make my regular method even tastier. Thanks for the challenge, Breadchick Mary and Sara!

The full recipe is available here.

Barilla does it again, this time in support of Second Harvest in the US. The free downloadable pdf includes recipes from Mario Batali, David Tutera, Debra Messing, Stanley Tucci, Natalie Portman, Chris Daughtry and Marisa Tomei.

So, if Penne in a Spicy Sauce with Capers and Olives, Autumn Vegetables with Goat Cheese and Pumpkinseed Oil and Saffron Panna Cotta sound like your type of Italian delectables, head over to this site to download the book. If you’re from the USA, you can actually specify which Second Harvest you wish Barilla to send its contribution.

Offer ends February 29th has been extended to March 31st!

Stumbled upon another cooking video site today, called I’m Cooked. It looks even more homespun than Active Cooks, except for one dash of stardust: Christopher Walken showing how to roast a chicken.

(The clip above is from YouTube, but I saw the original on I’m Cooked). I haven’t seen much of Walken’s work. I know of his roles in Deer Hunter and Pulp Fiction, among others, but first saw him last Summer in Hairspray. So much for the tough guy image, I thought watching him, as Wilbur Turnblad, hoofing it with John Travolta as his wife. The next film I saw him in was Mousehunt with Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. He played a nutty pest exterminator, vanquished by the mouse of the house. Now, here he is, roasting a chicken… Nice bit of trivia: Walken’s parents were both bakers, and he grew up working in the family bakery in Queens, Walken’s Bakery.

Harper Collins is releasing a series of books people can read online for free. The one that caught my eye was the one by Robert Irvine, star of Dinner Impossible on the Food Network. You can access the full text of Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes, and Making the Impossible Easy here, or by clicking on the icon below for a preview (note not all chapters are available through the icon, but they are through the preceding link.)

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Came across a couple of cooking video sites today, courtesy of Ohio.com. The first one is called The Food Channel, part of the larger AnswersTV lifestyle network. Nice series of recipes and tips and tricks free videos. There is also an extensive series with Chefs and restaurants. Quite nice. In addition, you can pair these videos with the Wine Channel, and its  “Wine School”, another free series of videos on wine.

The second one is Active Cooks. Think of it as the YouTube for aspiring tv chefs. Always wanted to have your own cooking show? Here’s your platform! There’s a mixture of slick and homespun videos. The site has a little over 170 members and membership is free.

Take out your pots and pans, get your “mise” ready and let the cameras roll…

Maria Liberati, former super-model, now celebrity chef, stopped by Athena Isle today, as guest speaker for the Writers Club weekly meeting. She has just launched her second book, The Basic Art of Italian Cooking, available in stores and online at Amazon.

The format of a roundtable made this particularly enjoyable. Before long, there were quite a few of us sitting around Cybergrrl Oh’s magical table (a new chair appears every time someone sits on one). Maria proved to be very comfortable fielding questions and moving around. Considering this was her first time in Second  Life, I was impressed. We touched on various topics, from the use of fresh ingredients as the key to Italian cooking, to the Slow Food movement, very common in Europe, and now gaining a foothold in North America. Maria explained that her book is not so much a collection of recipes, as a story, or a collection of stories related to various dishes and foods in Italy.

Maria has a few plans in store, including a podcast and a television series featuring celebrities talking about what they like to eat and favorite recipes. The full transcript of the chat will be available a little later this week on the Second Life Writers Club website. Maria is one of the latest author to make Second Life a stop on a book tour.

From the folks who brought the Chocomap, free valentine e-cards, designed to let that person you really care, without the calories.

Check it out at: Send an e-card bonbon