Treats for appetites of every size
I have been on a big yeasted bread kick this year, which is really quite a step forward in my baking life. I used to be terrified of recipes that included yeast. You invest so much time up front in making the dough, that the fear of it not rising often scared me off from starting at all.
Get ready for a marathon: croissants may be the most time-intensive (and exciting) thing I have made in a very long time. It’s not often I have a weekend where I can pull this off, but I am so glad that I did.
This is a cop out post. I know if I don’t say it up front, Jonathan Topaz is going to call me out in the comments. I freely admit I made this pita bread weeks ago and have been sitting on the recipe until I was too busy to bake some week – this week was that week.
This was one of those weeks where it was getting to be most of the way through Saturday and I was quickly coming to the conclusion that I did not have time to bake. I began to panic. How terrible would it be if I posted a review of that awesome magic bar I had? (Go to Petsi Pies in Somerville.) Did I have anyone in mind that could guest post? (Marj, it felt too last minute to ask you.) In short, I was in a tight spot.
My original plan was to make croissants this weekend, but time, as it often does, got away from me. However, I was stuck on the idea of making a recipe with yeast. I wanted something a little complicated, but not two-day complicated.
I don’t know why I have this idea in my head, but I firmly believe that anything baked in a bundt pan is breakfast food. For some reason, the ring-shape of a cake makes it not a cake cake, just a breakfast cake. Fortunately, all of my friends in town for Harvard-Yale agreed and it’s just about gone.
When I hit “publish” on this, I’ll be sitting in a big lake house in Maine with my law school friends, hopefully after a full day of hiking or kayaking or generally being outdoorsy. The plan is to not bring my laptop with me, so hopefully my phone is up to the challenge of logging into WordPress (I’m considering it a “mostly unplugged” vacation).
Today I didn’t so much bake as provide a kitchen and hover while a true master did the hard part. Kind of a nice change, though I did have to fight an urge to micromanage – I’m not used to being less knowledgeable about a recipe than someone else in the room. Regardless, the result was delicious.
It is way too hot out. Unbearably so. So hot that I went home for the weekend largely because it would include the ability to sit indoors with central air (and to see my lovely family, of course).
Two weeks in a row with a Tassajara Bread Book recipe! AND two weeks in a row with a I-have-everthing-in-my-kitchen recipe.