I’ve been stretching my culinary skills the past few weeks making my own pasta and bread.
You can blame the King Arthur retail store in Norwich, Vermont for my stretching exercises.
You see, my mother-in-law lives about three sheet pans length away from the store, which offers just about any baking item you could ever want. It also offers more flour varieties than you can shake a sifter over.
It seems every time we visit my mother-in-law, we stop at the store and leave with more flour, more paraphernalia and more ideas of what to make.
Just in the past few weeks I’ve made challah, whole wheat bread (that took four days what with all the fridge proofing and punching down), banana/chocolate bread (twice naturally), cornbread, pizza dough, linguine, lasagna sheets, Irish soda bread, English muffins and English muffin bread.
I’ve also been freezing lots of pasta and pizza dough. Very handy. Doesn’t take long to thaw and loses nothing from freezing.
I have so many different types of flours that I had to buy a whole bunch of airtight containers to help extend their lives.
Among the several bread cookbooks I’ve been perusing for proper techniques is my wife’s faded 1973 paperback copy of “The Tassajara Bread Book.” She says she remembers a time long, long ago and far, far away when she cooked things.
Next up for me to try to make will be brioche. For French toast, of course.
Will I ever become a competent bread-maker? Only time (and temperature) will tell. And I will not say that the proof will be in the pudding.
— LOU
Never liked making bread. I always thought why make bread, when I can go to a local bakery and get better bread than I could ever dream of making.
But I guess if you are retired and have oodles of time on your hands why not make bread?
— LUCY