"Guess what!! I made bread and it doesn't suck!!"

I left that on Miss Dick's answering machine Sunday afternoon. It's Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread. It rose. I didn't burn my kitchen down. It made a hollow sound when I rapped it with my knuckles like the recipe told me to do. And it doesn't taste half bad.

The recipe came from the book I'm reading, Going with the Grain by Susan Seligson. It comes from her chapter on the Ballymaloe House in Shanagarry Ireland where a man named Tim and his wife Darina are making really awesome traditional breads. (Did you know that to get Irish Soda Bread to rise you have to cut an 'x' in the top and they call it "letting the fairies out"?!)

But it's his mother, Myrtle, who is famous for her brown wheat bread. Seligson describes it as "at once dense and airy...it's got the kind of wholesome wheaty aroma that makes you want to rub your nose in it like a dog.". Well I guess you could call this loaf dense and airy. And I do keep smelling it...I think it could be a little sweeter though. Just a bit. More molasses? Honey? Or maybe its just a bread that requires you to serve it with butter or jam. How terrible.

I ate mine with some apple butter from good old Legend Hills Orchard from last fall. (And English Breakfast Tea....oops! Whatever, they're supposed to be friends now right?) Later that night I tried it with the dregs of my Bonne Maman Raspberry Preserve, and that is hands down a delicious pairing! I usually find raspberry jam to be too sweet, but this bread is so hearty its not a problem. Will have to buy some more jam...

I put half the loaf aside for a dinner later in the week (riding the bus with a loaf of bread in your purse is pretty special) and ate a slice for tea every night of the week. Tastycakes.

My Auntie M has recommended I get this book, Savory Baking from the Mediterranean, and who knows, maybe I'll keep breading. I mean this time there wasn't a yeast-icide and I only almost melted a plastic bowl and set a towel alight. Improvement?? Back in college Dr K apparently tried his hand at baking which produced "a pair of rye loaves that hybridized turd and brick" and "several pies that both looked and tasted like wet cardboard". Good job dad. Mine at least are edible, my kitchen may just end up being collateral damage some day. Is this baking evolution at work?? I wonder...

Ballymole Brown Yeast Bread from Going with the Grain

Ingredients:

4 1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp molasses

2 c warm water (I ended up using 2 1/2 c since it was too dry when I mixed it all together)

1 tbs active dry yeast

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix flour with salt and warm it slightly in an oven just beginning to heat (don't be a dumbass and use a plastic bowl like me).

In a small bowl mix the molasses with some of the water and mix in the yeast. Put the bowl in a warm place (e.g., stove top). Let yeast grow for about five minutes or until the mixture is creamy and slightly frothy on top.

Grease a loaf tin and put it in the oven to warm, also warm a clean towel (as the oven is so hot this does NOT take long!!! Be careful!)

Stir yeast mixture well and pour it, with most of the remaining water, into the flour to make a wettish dough. The mixture should be too wet to knead (here's where I had to add 1/2 c more water). Put mixture into the greased, warmed tin. Put the tin in a warm place and cover it with the tea towel.

Let the loaf rise for about 40 minutes or so, until it rises to twice its original size (ok it took me like an hour for it to double in size, my yeast might suck so just add time as necessary).

Remove the tea towel and bake the loaf for 45 to 50 minutes, or until it appears nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped. At Ballymaloe the loaves are removed from their tins about ten minutes before the end of cooking and immediately placed back in the oven to crisp all around. If you prefer a softer crust leave bread to finish baking in the pan.

Serve with butter, jam or honey and of course tea....and maybe an Irish movie.

Twitch. Twitch. Fail.

These past few days have been the sort so full of stress that I fear my brain might explode. I'm exhausted, mentally and physically. Friday was waking up to the chicago police dept, crazy people, mice, blocked drains, broken buzzers, bad smells and stolen CTA cards. After I told her about my day Mom said, "You just can't make that shit up". No. You can't. It left me out of sorts and twitchy. Not even Asian food and Ben & Jerry's provided by the Moshka quite got me out of it. I've never been terribly good at handling stress. I get things done, usually not gracefully, but it takes a physical toll on me that makes it even worse. I'm a tense little person and just turn into one giant muscle knot with a whelmed brain. Blah.

Saturday I slept later than anticipated so woke up already running behind for a brunch date. Fantastic. What is this, Fail Month?? So I arrived half and hour late to a brunch (in Lincoln Park, aha) where I only knew the hostess looking like a hot mess with wet hair. I felt like a shit but the second I saw Miss Leslie (the lovely lady who has known me since I was about 5, always gave me odd jobs to do on my winter breaks, and takes me out to lunch every time she comes to Chicago) I got over it. She's just like that. It turned out to be a great brunch, Leslie is a natural hostess, and the grilled fish sandwich was delicious. And I got one of the nicest compliments from her friend, apparently I'm the most interesting person she's ever met. How sweet is that?

After running a few errands I came home and for a little while just sat curled up in the chair by the window to just sit in the sun. Like a cat. It helped but I was still panic-y. I made some tea but that still wasn't quite doing it so I figured I might as well try cooking.

You see, I've found that cooking in that state can either be a remedy or a really dumb idea. For example, Friday in a panic I made a batch of not-that-tasty-Beduin flatbread since I was out of pita. That was a dumb idea. I ate two out of eight and may just throw the rest out.

But yesterday I made Sweet Potato with Apple Bake and for the first time in two days had a normal heart beat. I was worried I'd eventually just morph into a hummingbird or mouse or GIR from Invader Zim. A tweaky mess basically. But a half hour of peeling, chopping and listening to a Prarie Home Companion calmed me down into something like a real person.

Which is good since I was having company coming over! Luckily it was the best kind of company who don't care that I'm wearing my pjs. It was Miss Connie and Miss Cait, and we watched Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal and got tipsy and ate Sweet Potato Bake and made an entire tray of brownies which we ate 3/4 ths of. I was 100% twitch free by the time they left (which was 1:30 AM!!). Brownies and booze can fix anything.

I'm really glad this is the last week of March. It's been a difficult month, for lots of reasons, but most of them have added up to me feeling like a bad grown up. Which is stupid because I have more of my shit together than most kids my age, but it doesn't change how mad I get when I "fail" at something. And the month itself doesn't help either! The weather is wacked, daylight savings messes your clock up and I have a lot of things going on in my life at the moment. So maybe its just that I don't feel centered, just a bit off my axis so everything is harder or more likely to go awry.

Oh well, on Friday it will be a new month and a very exciting month! I'm getting my Illinois license (hopefully), taking a swing dancing class with Miss Haley, Miss Anwen is coming to visit, and I'm turning 25. All within the first week! Madness! I guess I'll just have to keep cooking huh?

Yeast. It hates me.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that I am good in the kitchen. Until you add yeast. Then all hell breaks loose.

I've been around baking my whole life, my mother can bake in her sleep and yet every time I attempt something where yeast is one of the ingredients it's always a disaster. ALWAYS. My last fail was so bad I haven't touched yeast since then. And that was approximately seven years ago. I was in high school. But when I saw Smitten's post last week on Sally Lunn bread, it looked so good (and there is no kneading involved) I decided to bite the bullet and give yeast another try.

Stupid plan.

My kitchen is a wreck. There is a towel COATED in sticky dough. There is the ugliest loaf of bread I've ever seen in my life sitting on my counter. And I need a stiff drink.

Do you know what the best part is? I was following a recipe out of a CHILDREN'S COOKBOOK. No lie! I was too chicken shit to follow the grown up recipe so dug out my copy of Felicity's Cookbook and used that one! And I still epic failed!

At least this time I got the yeast to activate. That was a fail point last time. And it did rise. I just had it rising in a bowl that was too small so it got all over the towel when it doubled in size. And then in an oven that was a little too hot so it started to bake IN THE GLASS BOWL. I was on the phone with the darling Miss Dick when I discovered that horrifying fact and I'm glad somebody found it funny. *glare*

I honestly think the only reason I didn't throw it's lumpy ass out right then and there was a line from an email my mom sent me the other day. To embrace my successes as well as my failures. So in this case bake and eat them. Like Julia Child after she failed her Cordon Bleu exam.

And in the end I'm glad I did. Even though it's a loaf with looks only a mother could love, it managed to not taste too bad. Maybe a bit good. The crust is golden and crusty, the innards soft and yeasty. They say looks aren't everything right??

So not a complete fail. A first attempt perhaps? I wouldn't say my luck with yeast-y things has improved, that would be tempting fate, but its at least a bit less hostile.

I had drinks later that evening (after a fierce walk to let off the Fail steam) with Miss Cait and her girlfriend Miss Lisa. I relayed the whole mess to them, as well as made them eat a slice, and in the course of conversation Cait shared something really lovely her mom said. That bread is a habit. And I think she's right about that. Baking bread when you do it often is one of the easiest things in the world to do. On the other hand if you're an infrequent bread maker it is sooo easy to do something really stupid. It's a habit I'd like to take up, not at the moment, but some day. For a few glorious years my mom made bread in her bread machine religiously. It was just sandwich bread but it was damn good and I'll never forget it. There's something about fresh bread that is so unbeatable, such a simply good thing. An excellent habit indeed!

And funny enough, my next food book read (courtesy of Miss Moshka) is Susan Seligson's Going With the Grain. It's all about bread. Specifically the cultural role of bread all over the world, and it's got recipes. Yes please!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, putting a dough covered towel in a bowl of hot water and scraping with a spoon will eventually leave you with a (soaking wet) but dough free towel.

Happy weekend.

Tuna corks.

I mentioned I was making Miss Molly's bouchons du thon last time right?

'Cause I did. I even took pictures.

It was a cloudy faux St Patrick's day here in Chicago last Saturday. (May I add how much I adore living in a city where we dump chemicals into the river which turn it green ON PURPOSE! It's a beautifully ridiculous thing.) With Deer Tick wailin' in the background I mixed things in a bowl. Poured them into muffin tins. Baked them in a hot oven for 25 minutes. And then ate them.

Well two out of eight.

The rest I ate for lunch with Ritz crackers the next two days. And let me tell ya. These are fantastic. Do you know how valuable pantry staple, one bowl, no fuss, leftover leaving recipes are?? They are gold my friend! And since they are very similar to quiches there is a lot of wiggle room on fillings. I substituted swiss cheese for Gruyere and plain milk for creme fraiche with no backfiring. And while I don't typically have tomato paste I think tomato sauce would work just fine in a pinch. I can totally see myself, some late Sunday night, dumping anything from frozen peas to spinach into these babies (give or take the tuna) for lunch the next day. Hmm there's a frittata recipe I love, I wonder how that would do cork style? I'll have to chop much finer...it would be worth it.

But I'm dropping their French title. Anything that gets eaten on my lunch break can't be that fancy. I'm typically covered in thread, glue, and bits of leather. There is nothing fancy about that, believe me. And due to the word bouchon meaning traffic jam as well as cork I kept getting the mental image of a bunch of tuna crowding up the streets of Paris. And that's just ridiculous.

So tuna corks it is folks!