Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Did I read this right?

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I took Martha Stewart Baking out of the library. It looked great! Excellent pictures. A wide range of great baking recipes, not all of the whip-up-this-little-wedding-cake-in-your-spare-time variety, but homemade Oreos and cupcakes.

She had a recipe for Pullman bread (also known as pain de mie), and since I am still looking for the sine qua non of pain de mie, I couldn’t wait to try it.

Then I read the instructions and went, “Huh?”

Let me summarize it: make the dough. Let proof. Punch down; let proof again in the proofing bowl. (Most recipes I’ve read do only one proofing in the proofing bowl, but whatever.) Take the dough out, fold up, put in pain de mie pan, let rise.

So far, so good. Then we get to this:

Close the lid completely and bake, rotating pan halfway through, until loaf is light golden brown, about 45 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350F, close the lid, and continue baking another 30 minutes.

I assume that second “close the lid” is there because you opened the lid to check on the loaf’s color. But this baking time — what the hey? 75 minutes total is almost double what any other recipe I’ve read has called for.

I pulled the loaf out after the 45 minutes were up: the loaf was a deep golden brown, and the crust was actually several millimeter thick. To be absolutely sure I used my insta-read thermometer, and the interior temperature was fine.

What’s up with that extra 30 minutes? If this was the first time I’d baked bread, I would have cremated the loaf.

This makes me very nervous about trying other recipes.

Comfort baking

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I learned something new this week: when you’re violently ill for 24 hours, it’s not a “24 hour thing,” it’s the “stomach flu.” I haven’t gotten the flu very often, okay?

Anyhow. Whatever this thing was, it has completely kicked my ass for the past week. I’ve been lethargic and my stomach has felt queasy for days. I’ve been home a lot.

During this week, I’ve discovered that one way I like to pass the time is by baking. In fact, several times I was itching to get started baking something and felt stymied that I had to do something like, I don’t know, laundry. Or napping.

On Friday I made the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for shortbread. I burned the first batch. So I dumped the entire thing and got to making a second batch. Not that I particularly felt like eating any, and Darin certainly wasn’t in the mood for a cookie. (I’m a little disappointed, because while the CI recipe is good, it’s still not the kind of shortbread I want to make, which is the kind I get at a local coffee house: softish, flaky, very buttery. Maybe I can’t make it at home, but I keep trying.)

I picked up Chocolatier magazine (personally entranced by the “perfect chocolate chip cookie” recipe, just as Ivonne at Paper Palate was, but the deciding factor was the Chocolate Cherry Bread recipe, which I want to make for Darin) and 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson. Yes, I’m currently into the whole cupcake craze.

I made the honeycomb recipe from Chocolatier, mainly because I had some honey on hand and because I love Violet Crumbles so much. It was fun to make — the part where the sugar-honey goo bubbles up with the baking soda is cool — but the end result screamed, “Extreme dental work will be required if you eat more than one crumb of this!” So I tossed it.

Yesterday, however, was the sine qua non of baking mania: I made a loaf of sandwich bread, I made biscuits for dinner (the best I’ve ever made! and the kids didn’t eat them! what’s up with that?), I made banana chocolate chip cake after dinner.

While I am enjoying some of the fruits of my labors (I am as fond of banana chocolate chip cake as the next person (the next person who likes banana chocolate chip cake, that is)), I’m not especially crazed to eat these things I’m making. I’m just finding that baking is very relaxing for me. The idea of mixing a whole bunch of stuff together and having a new food at the end is just deeply appealing. And very odd. Would never have thought it was possible, but there it is.

If When we remodel the kitchen, I am so asking for a baking area.