pan de muerto

well, i thought maybe i would get this posted on the actual day of the dead or (dia de los muertos), but i wasn't quick enough. the past couple years i've seen recipes for pan de muerto (day of the dead bread). i never made it till now. its kinda like challah, but this contains anise seed, which adds a nice subtle flavor to an otherwise basic rich dough. this loaf also receives a skull and crossbones shaped from a portion of the dough that is placed on top to give it some added flare.

this is the recipe i used.

pan de muerto

note: the second egg wash should only be place on the skull and crossbones to help give them an extra brown color, so they stand out. i assumed this was the case, but went a head and followed the directions as they were written. this gave me an all around dark loaf with little indication of the accent on top. as you can see below. still a cute little hunk of bread though. perfect toasted w/ some jam for breakfast or anytime for that matter

holly, jolly, awesome!

so its nearing that time again when we gather together and hope for snow while exchanging gifts that we may or may not want. since being in the northwest snow doesn't just happen anymore its sought out.

this weekend i had the opportunity to travel to lake tahoe and celebrate my friend anne's birthday in a cabin about a block from the shore. we ate, drank, and were merry. the highlight was ice skating above the mountains, but watching chefs compete on tv with eggnog and ice while drinking manhattans came in a close second.

the weekend prior i went to a holiday gathering and partook in a white elephant, to which i brought a ceramic peanut and received edible underwear. fruit rollups it was not, but unlike my luck at selecting gifts my ability to provide sweet delights was a success. that night i brought in toe a carmel apple almond cream tart. pictures of this delight are below.

more cheer and celebrations are ahead. i wish everyone high spirits and warm hearts as they head toward the new year.

busy, busy, busy! or am i slow?

well, its been busy for me as i've been drusin around this last half of nov. drusin is a term coined by my friends anne and alan for when someone is moving quite slow. a prime example of this is me, hence the play on words.

anyway, its been a while and i've done a lot of baking recently, so i thought i would go ahead and post a bunch of photos of things i've worked on.

these first few photos are of two german chocolate cakes i made for my friend martin's 40th birthday. i used a recipe i took from david lebovitz's blog which you can find here. as you may have guessed he like to bike, so i spruced up the top of one of the cakes with a few chocolate cycles. 

 

 

after making these two monsters you think i would have stopped for a bit, but i kept chugging along right through thanksgiving. unfortunately i have to wrangle up some shots of the pies i made for the holidays, but there is plenty of other items to display.

as i posted before i'd been on an effort to perfect my skills of baking french macarons, those tricky french sandwich cookies made from no more then egg whites, almond meal and sugar. i found a pretty good formula on an aussies blog syrup and tang. it tells you how much of each ingredient to use based off the amount of egg whites you have; a baker percentage for macarons.

well, they've been getting better each bake off and i think i hit my stride on thanksgiving, so lets see if i can keep it up. along with macarons i've been exploring another sandwich cookie with a more humble background, the whoopie pie. my first attempt was actually using a recipe i found from a british newspaper. i guess the craze has jumped the pond and landed in london town. europeans scale there ingredients by weight, making things more exact, which is why i clung to this recipe.

finally i'll leave you with these last two photos, one being a slice of a caramel chocolate tart from the book the sweet life by kate zuckerman and a loaf of bread produced in the fashion of chad robertson of tartine bakery fame. I have to thank my friend anne for jotting down the  bread formula the same day i was demanded to make the chocolate tart in order to cure a group of ladies from sweet depletion.

come back in the following weeks to see even more treats as i'm sure the holidays will spark a flurry of baking, maybe even a few drawings and other surprises too.

little chocolate bombs

i've been trying to produce a nice chocolate french macaron and its been tricky. i initially attempted a recipe from my school text book, but although the taste was good the cookies were in poor form. so i did some online research and found david lebovitz had a promising recipe. he admits to having equal difficulty making chocolate macarons, which while questioning some french chefs was told are the most temperamental. in the final variation of his recipe he recommends baking the cookies as soon as there piped. this practice is contradicting to what i was taught and of most formulas i've read. typically you let the macarons rest till the outside has formed a shell that is dry to the touch. the forming of this shell appears to help the little guys create their distinctive foot.

i let mine rest a few hours to develop the shell, which appeared to work out just fine, but as they came from the oven the desirable smooth caps deformed. i'm not sure what caused this, but i decided to remedy the look by dressing them up in cookie makeup (tempered chocolate). the extra chocolate in addition to the ganache filling turned the macarons into some potent bites. later that evening my friends cleared the lot of them from the kitchen with exclamations and moans of appreciation, so a success after all.

in an attempt to make my images of food a bit more dynamic i've decided to commit to taking shots in more interesting locations. what macarons and bonsai trees have in common i can't say, but its better then looking at another yearbook photo of food in front of a kitchen table backdrop.

born warm breaded

i don't know what that means, but i was trying to think of a title that would connect my latest loaf and a drawing i did from a photo of my grandmother with newborn me.

my friend kacie and her man alan brewed beer this past weekend, which left a bunch of spent grain at my disposal. spent grain is malted barely that has been soaked in hot water, in this case for a partial mash. i could further explain the brewing process, but i'm not that educated on it and i don't know if readers are ready for me to break a record for longest post to date. all you really need to know is that this was a porter style beer, so the barely had a nice toasted flavor that i thought would impart a good taste in some bread.

all in all the bread came out fine, but the barley flavor wasn't as strong as i'd like. i think the soaking probably zapped a lot of the flavor or maybe i just should have added more barley. well, will see what happens next time, because trust me there will be a next time with how much spent grain is left. i've already tried a few other experiments with it like substituting it for oat in oatmeal cookies. that recipe has potential, but i definitely need to work out some kinks.

unrelated to the bread i was feeling a little realistic today and sketched a drawing of me and my grandmother while lounging at 4 barrel, a coffee shop here in sf. good stuff. ok, more to come.

a tart tart tatin

tonight while casually keeping watch on the san francisco giants third victory over the texas rangers (kacie's boyfriend alan is a huge baseball fan) i lovingly attended to some tart tatin. tart tatin is a french apple pie of sorts. making this dessert involves cooking apples in butter and sugar on the stove top till the juices have begun to thicken. then its covered with blitz puff dough and baked off in the oven where the crust achieves a flaky golden brown. once out of the oven the whole thing is inverted onto a serving dish.

the initial cook on the stove top allows the apples to caramelize giving the tart its unique flavor. i threw a few dried sour cherries in this time for kicks, but in hindsight would have liked to soak them in brandy beforehand for they ended up a little chewy. they also covered up the decorative apple arrangement that i constructed while filling the pan, but overall it was a success.

boule, hooray!

my currant host friends kitchen (thank you miss vitucci) has an equisitly hot oven, perfect for bread baking. so, with my new bit of starter eager to feed and my relentless desire for carbs i went to work. after two and a half days this was my reward.