For my first blog entry ...

I tend to dive head first into projects that are of interest to me.  At the moment, and it should come as no surprise to anyone, my obsession is bread.

Now, we are not talking about the homogeneous loafs of bland white sandwich bread that line the shelves at the super-mega mart.  What we are talking about is the hand crafted, rustic loafs of bread with distinct flavor, crustiness and unique texture. 

I had some minor success with cibatta bread (tasty, but the crumb was too tight and can be improved with a longer final proof ... see below), and I also made two tasty baguettes that were far superior to anything I could buy despite not having quite the texture I would have liked.  There were a little dry, and I need a better recipe I think.   

As you can see below, the crumb on the ciabatta is pretty tight.  That is because I put it into the oven with out a good long final proof.  My husband, who is a real doll most of the time, was tired and wanted to go to bed.  It was either bake the bread after only an hour of proofing, or listen to my darling whine. 

The bread lost.  It was still really tasy, however and had a good crunchy crust.  Gotta love that steam!

And here is my French Baguette that I made for Sunday dinner.

And ... turnovers that I made for dessert.  They had an apple filling, and I glazed them with flat icing when they were cool.  I used blitz puff pastry and I am thinking of doing a little photo demo of the process.  It is really very easy and far superior in flavor to frozen puff. Yeah, it may  not get as much puff, but for a turnover or a Napoleon it is just fine.