Baking Through "The Art and Soul of Baking"

How Many Marbles Are in the Jar?

highttime — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:02:59 +0000

So like Michelle had mentioned, we made banana marble bread. Yum. At first, we thought it would be pretty difficult to make marblized bread but the book’s explanation made it super easy. We just had to make the batter.

And then we had to mix do a checkered pattern of the mixtures. As seen below. You had to make sure that each square was even layered as the other square.

After we folded the mixtures over each other with a spoon. For example, use a spoon and fold the chocolate mixture over the banana mixture, we put the bread in the oven to bake!

We had to let the bread chill for quite a while or else we would burn ourselves. But boy did it come out all yummy and moist. I believe the moisture came from the buttermilk. It also look gorgeous! My boyfriend, DJ, loved eating it. Michelle took quite a portion home. Lol.

Try the recipe and tell us your take on it!

What is Beethoven’s favorite fruit?

sbfreak9788 — Sat, 29 May 2010 08:53:10 +0000

So last Tuesday, Jess and I baked some Banana Marble Bread (I forgot the exact wording of the name). It was sooo pretty and delicious!! (I thought Jess would post pics faster but apparently not…so so slowww…. jk i heart you jess) But anyways, I got to mash bananas with a fork. It’s more difficult than it seems. And we keep running out of flour. And I got to make this awesome chocolate paste that tastes gross cuz it’s made with unsweetened cocoa powder. But in the end, the bread was nom-worthy and I finished it super fast even though I got the bigger half between Jess and me.

We also made some Monkey Bread, which meant more dough-kneading, which meant more sore arms. That’s okay though. I feel like I’m getting such a good work out each time I bake. I wonder if the neighbors will ever complain about the noise. The monkey bread turned out kinda hard, but still tasted delicious. And apparently it was good enough so that I didn’t even get my share D: So hooray I guess?

The next couple days, we made a bajillion cookies!!!! Snickerdoodles and chocolate chip (two different kinds of cookies, not one huge overly delicious thing. that would just be dangerous). DE-RI-SHUS! And then we packed em up all nice and pretty to give to people.

We have to decide what to make next time. Suggestions would be nice…assuming we had any readers… I’m so alone. Why wont you love me???????????? :( lolz.

My arms hurt.

sbfreak9788 — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:51:05 +0000

Yesterday was my first time baking bread. Or much else for that matter. I didn’t really start baking until Jess told me to bake with her starting a couple weeks ago. I’m pretty good at the instant stuff though. And the pre-made cookie dough. And the cake and brownie mixes.

So the first thing we made were snickerdoodles! And chocolate chip cookies! Then our next adventure was red velvet cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes! And finally our most recent challenges: bread, scones, and checkered cookies.

The checkered cookies were kinda fail. Maybe Jess will post pics later. The chocolate dough was fun to play with. It also looked like poo. But that’s not the reason it was fun to play with. But then we had to make white dough to make the checkerboard colors. The white dough was this ultra-super-buttery pastry dough recipe. The butter kept MELTING!!! It was so so sad. In the end, the cookies looked like strange blobs, not checkerboard at all. But they still tasted good so I guess it’s okay.

More baking next week! YAY!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the title…dough-kneading hurts my arms and shoulders. So so tired.

Droplets of Blueberry-Lemon Scones

highttime — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:24:07 +0000

So am I currently taking my break from writing my paper for bio class. I just wanted to update you alls on my baking. After baking bread yesterday, Michelle and I decided to do scones! Lemon-blueberry to be exact. They were from allrecipes.com if you were wondering where I got the recipe from. I had planned to make these scones earlier before I decided to bake through “The Art and Soul of Baking” (I’m just going to say “TASB” from now on. It’s easier.

The process for making the scones was soo much easier and faster then making the bread. Less work and less waiting. We mixed the dough and it was pretty quick. Just adding all the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Michelle had fun with the grater to get the lemon zest. The scones we made were super mini. You could call them bite sized.

When the scones came out of the oven, they were delicious! We added extra glaze on top and that gave the scones an extra lemony sweet flavor. Michelle said one batch wasn’t enough, so we ended up doing two batches! They weren’t like scones I’m use to eating though, more like muffin tops. But still really good. Go to allrecipes.com and look for the lemon-blueberry scones and I hope you enjoy them too!

Breaking Bread

highttime — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:22:45 +0000

Hello Everyone.

My name is Jessica and I am currently a freshman at a UC in California. I have just started baking and love it. I will baking through the book “The Art and Soul of Baking” with my good friend, Michelle, but I will also be baking other recipes on the side. Please give me your feedback and advice on baking!

Today I baked my very first Old-Fashioned White Loaf. The very first recipe in the book. When we mixed all the ingredients, it looked like a big blob of dough.

Then we had to wait for the blob to sit for a good 20 minutes. Lots of waiting but thank goodness we have technology to distract us. After waiting 20 minutes, we had to knead the dough. We kneaded the dough with our HANDS. You don’t really appreciate bread until you have to knead it, thats all I have to say. Took us 25 minutes to knead the dough properly. If you don’t knead it properly, then the bread won’t taste good. Our forearms are super sore from kneading now.

After kneading the dough, the dough looked like a big bun.

We had to wait another hour for the dough to rest. Lots of waiting and waiting. After a hour, we pushed all the air out of the dough and formed it into our baking pan. What did we do after we put it in the baking pan? We waited another HOUR. We waited another hour for the dough to rise again in the loaf pan.

After waiting for an hour, we brushed egg onto the dough and placed it in the oven for 35 minutes. Deliciousness came out at the end of the 35 minutes.

After hours and hours of labor and waiting this bread is definitely worth it. The outside was crunchy and the inside was nice and soft. So warm and so good. Next bread we’re making? Monkey bread. Stay tune for our next endeavor!