This blog has never been about recipes, but I do like to occasionally pass on some good ones. The first one is my famous-in-my-own-mind brownie recipe. It's based on the One-Bowl Brownie recipe on the Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate box, but I've changed it enough that I consider it my own.

BrowniesPreheat oven to 350 ( Read more... )

It's been said innumerable times that bread is very forgiving. I've said it myself. What's left out is how unpredictable bread can be ( Read more... )

It's been two years almost to the day since my last post. I was in the middle (probably closer to the end, as it turned out) of my grand sourdough experiment. I'd done pretty much everything I could do with and to the starter, and eventually there were a couple of mason jars, filled with starter, languishing in the refrigerator; there were also a ( Read more... )

I'm a little over four months into my sourdough experiment. I've frozen the starter, left it on the counter and fed it every day, left it on the counter and ignored it for up to a week at a time, refrigerated it, damn near killed it, cursed it, and revived it by throwing most of it out and building it up again. The most important thing I've learned ( Read more... )

I started this experiment five weeks ago. Other than practically killing the starter within 72 hours, it's been going well. Instead of doing any more day by day rundowns (which would be boring as hell. Also impossible at this point), I'll just pass on what I've been doing ( Read more... )

"Feeding the Bitch" is more fitting than "Starting Again", or whatever the hell I've been calling these posts.

When last we spoke of our bubbly slavemaster (some time on Monday, Day 6), she was barely recovering from near death. Here's how she's doing, and how she got there.

Day 6, late evening. The starter was looking a little better, but not enough ( Read more... )

Day 5, post-Mad Men. Mold. I found mold. It was just a small dot on the cheesecloth the grapes were wrapped in. Luckily, the mold was in an area that wasn't submerged in the starter. I examined the starter for more mold, but didn't find any. I'd like to call that a small victory, but it's more like a huge amount of luck It was looking kind of sad ( Read more... )

As usual, I'm running a bit behind on my posts. Here's the progress so far:

On Thursday (Day 2), I fed the starter with one cup each of unbleached bread flour and water. I checked it every few hours for progress. There were a few healthy looking bubbles, and the starter still smelled like wet flour.

On Friday, I added 1 1/3 cups each of unbleached ( Read more... )

I've tried sourdough starters before. Once, about 30 years ago, when I had just begun making bread and didn't have a clue what I was doing. It wasn't long before it was moldy and dead in the refrigerator.

I tried it again about seven years ago. I used a Nancy Silverton recipe that was so precise and detailed it would have made Martha Stewart jump ( Read more... )

A few years ago, I was at my sister's house for  Christmas. We were  making dinner on Christmas Eve, and she handed me a recipe and said "You know how to make polenta, don't you?" I said I knew you had to work very quickly with it or it's useless. She said "Good, make this." It came out perfectly, which is such a rare thing, it's become one of my ( Read more... )