We had nothing to go with our pork chops for dinner tonight so I made a loaf of bread.
It tasted pretty good. I would've liked a slightly less tight crumb, but it still tasted pretty good. It had a nice crust. I seriously need to work on my shaping and scoring!



































On saturday I'm ordering some instant yeast and bread flour off of King Arthurs website! I'm having a hard time finding instant yeast in my local stores, and bread flour is a bit expensive.

Daribg Baker's Challenge, January 08: Lemon Meringue Pie!

This is it--my first Daring Bakers Challenge! I joined for the December challenge, but unfortunately I was unable to compete. But now January, 2008 is here, and it's a new year that I officially dedicate to making myself a better baker and artist. I hope joining the Daring Bakers willl help this, and so far I think it will, I really do!

This months challenge was hosted by http://canadianbaker.blogspot.com/

So, onto the story!

I started out with making the crust. I didn't have and fancy food processor or pastry cutter so I had to use the ol' two knife method, which I've only sort of witnessed, never practiced. I thought I wouldn't be able to get the "course meal" to stick together, but I somehow managed to force most of it into a ball long enough to put it in a container and chill it for the given time. half hour later, I rolled it out and put it in the pie pan. It was uneven and definitely not the prettiest, but when I tried playing around with it, it wanted to break. So I stuck with it. I used rice instead of dried beans or pie weights for the blind baking, as that was the only thing I had. First time doing a blind bake. After removing the tin foil I found a slight puttle of sizzling butter on the crust but let it continue baking a while longer. Pieces that were hovering out of the pie pan broke and fell onto the oven bottom, which caused a fire in the oven about 5 minutes before I baked the meringue. Thanks goodness for Daddy! LOL.

The filling cam out beautiful and delicious. Definitely a keeper!

Meringue: love, love, love it! SO fluffy and yummy with the sligt crisp brown parts.

I wanted to make this pie more eye-pleasing, but I was running out of time. The pie was in the oven at 6:08 and I hade to be somewhere at 6:30, and I hadn't even eaten dinner yet! Next time, I'll make sure I have more time.

First time ever tasting this kind of pie, I really couldn't stop myself from having two pieces! I had to make sure it was fit for my family, ya'know? ^-^

I had a tiny bit of left over pie crust, so I made my brother a little cherry tart-thing. Made me wish I did all tarts, no big pie!

You know that bread I was making? Turned out amazing. That was the best raisin bread I have ever had in my entire life. The recipe makes two loaves, both of which were gone before the end of the night! I need to start doubling recipes! I made it with the optional cinnamon sugar swirl and sugar crunch top. My sisted thought it needed a glaze, so I pulled out the powdered sugar and milk!

Here's the dough divided -

Ready for baking:

Happy New Year! It's been a little while since my last post, but I'm still baking! Rght now I have some Cinnamon Raison Walnut Swirl bread from Peter Reinhart's " The Bread Baker's Apprentice" proofing in some loaf pans. (which I got from my gran'ma and gran'pa for Christmas.) Pictures to come later!

Last week I made 3 French baguettes from TBBA. They actually came out pretty good. My family loved them, especially Mom and Dad. I think my dad ate almost a whole loaf himself! I wasn't complaining.

On News Years Eve I made Pretzels following the recipe on The Fresh Loaf. They were delicious, even better then the first time I made them. I have pictures of them!

Adventures in Bread Baking.

Well, today I made my first loaf of bread! It was very strange, I wasn't expecting it to bake well once I saw that it had barely even doubled while proofing, but it did! It came out crispy on the outside, chewy and bread-like on the inside. Very yummy! My brother and sister said they wouldn't have guessed it was homemade if I hadn't told them. Unfortunately, my mom turned some store bought bread into garlic cheese bread, so my bread was kind of pale in comparison and everyone had mostly the garlic bread. Oh well, I thought it tasted great!

I didn't exactly have a recipe for it, I was just fooling with some techniques I had read about on www.Thefreshloaf.com
Here are some pictures:















Toasted, with butter: