Bread

I spent the weekend baking bread. I promised pictures, but I was way too busy to take any. I made two loaves of Royal Crown Tortano from Maggie Gleazer's Aritsan Baking book, and six loaves of my own daily bread recipe. It took all day, and the really tricky part is remembering the timing for all those different batches.

The Royal Crown Tortano is a fantastic bread, a huge, round, donut-shaped loaf with a dark golden crust that's not too crunchy, and a soft, well-structured crumb full of big holes. (I know, I need to take pictures). It calls for potato, honey, and a starter you make the night before. While it takes a LOT of time (you pretty much have to be home all day), it actually requires very little hands-on work. And while the dough is wet compared to your standard sandwich loaf, for an artisanal loaf it's relatively easy to work with, and forgiving of mistakes. And it's delicious, and lasts for a few days before drying out. I highly recommend this bread, it's one of my favorites.

Although this makes a really large loaf, I had no trouble mixing up a double recipe in my Kitchenaid stand mixer (note - I have a professional size - don't try it in one of the standard sized ones). I then had to stagger the rising and baking times because I can only bake one at a time. In the meantime, I did two large batches of basic bread for a total of 6 loaves.

The reason I made so many is that I'm freezing them, now that we have our fantastic freezer. This is working out great - I dobule-wrap them in plastic and stick them in the freezer after they cool off from the oven. Then when we need some bread, we turn on the oven, put in a frozen loaf, cover it with an aluminum roasting pan, and voila. Fresh-tasting bread, with a crispy crust.

So far I've only done it with my daily bread, but I've just tried it with the tortano, so we'll see how that turns out.

Freezing

I'm not actually freezing, considering that it's been over 100 degrees these last few days and sleeping is even difficult because it's so hot. I walked to the Amtrak station before 10am to pick up my pass for September, and it was already hot - really nice for a summer afternoon, not such a great thing when there are still many hours to go before the hottest part of the day. Last night around 6:45, in the car with the windows down on the freeway, sweat was trickling down my legs as we drove to Woodland to get our new ... freezer!

We begged the guy at Sears to give it to us even though we arrived 5 minutes after they closed, loaded the hulky thing into our car, and made a stop at Home Depot for a board to put under it since it will be sitting on carpet. We got home, started to unpack it, and discovered ... a wooden stake jammed into the vent on the side of the freezer. I was so disappointed. A call to customer service revealed that we could of course return it to the store where we purchased it, but they would not come pick it up nor deliver a replacement. We'd have to order it again and wait for it to arrive again and make another trip to Woodland.

After a few hours of me grumping about the situation, Loris discovered that the stake probably hadn't caused any damage besides the obvious bent metal of the vent - we could see into the back of the engine unit and it looked like it had missed damaging anything inside. We're not supposed to turn it on until 24 horus after we set it upright inside, so we'll find out tonight or tomorrow if it's ok.

And then ... ice cream, frozen peppers (chopped and roasted), grass-fed meat, loaves of bread, soup, zucchini, green beans ... it's going to be crazy few weeks while I can and freeze stuff.

Crazy days of summer

Last night was busy again. I baked bread, made simple syrup and started filtering the basil liquor, made two crostate (with my "new" tart pan - 50 cents from the thrift store), and chopped up peppers to freeze. And walked to the store to get milk for the crostata.

Loris and I ordered a small (I hope) chest freezer, and it's available for pick-up today. I'm really excited, in a nerdy sort of way. My fridge is full of eggplant, zucchini, carrots, and green beans. I'll probably make some eggplant parmesan to freeze, and chop up a few more bags of vegetables for soup. I also plan to occasional freeze a loaf of bread, so we won't go without so often. I'll be freezing some soft bread for my morning toast. Maybe some ice cream to have on hand. And some soup. Maybe I'll also chop up and freeze some butternut squash, so I have it on hand when I need it.

The possibilities are endless.