Monthly Archive: June 2010

Jun
08

Pizza Napoletana

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8 Jun, 2010

We like to make homemade pizzas fairly often, so this formula came at a good time.  This dough is meant to be slowly fermented, from the ice cold water used in the mixing, to the at least overnight fermentation in the refrigerator.  Unfortunately my hand tossing skills are not up to par yet, so i ended up with the squarish pizza you see above.

On pizza day, you remove the dough from the refrigerator a couple hours before you will bake the pizza.  When I got ready to attempt to hand toss the dough, I had a nice round piece of dough.  I need a lot of practice to get the hand tossing technique down though.  I get the dough too thin in the center and it tears.  In the end…the square pizza at the beginning of this post.

I will have more opportunity to practice however, as I’ve got two more balls of dough in the freezer to use later.

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Jun
08

Pane Siciliano

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8 Jun, 2010

As you can see, this was a uniquely shaped bread.  It also took 3 days to make.  Day 1 was for the biga (pre-ferment).  On day 2, the rest of the ingredients were mixed and the loaves were shaped.  To shape the loaves, I divided the risen dough into 3 similarly sized pieces and shaped them as I would a baguette.  Then I curled them in on opposite sides of the loaf to make the S-shape of the loaves.  A spray of water and sprinkling of black sesame seeds on top, and the loaves were placed in the refrigerator to retard overnight.

Day 3 was finally baking day and it was worth it.  This bread was amazing.  A nice nutty flavor from the long ferments.  I definitely look forward to making this again.

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Jun
08

Pugliese

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8 Jun, 2010

 
I had to search around to find the durum flour for my attempt at Pugliese.  The usual suspects had semolina flour but I needed the finer grind of the durum.  I finally picked some up at Surfas in Culver City.

The formula called for a mix of durum and bread flour, however I used mostly durum and saved the bread flour to add while kneading.  My loaves ended up flattening on the edges when I put them in the oven.  The bread had a great flavor to it, especially the crust.

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Jun
07

Potato Rosemary Bread

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7 Jun, 2010

For this bread, we get a new ingredient to play with.  Potatoes!  I cooked up a batch of Yukon Gold potatoes (From Zuckerman Farms @ the Hollywood Farmers Market) to make the mashed potatoes for this loaf.

My round loaves didn’t turn out to be as thick in the center as I would have liked, but it tasted good.  I spread some fresh avocado on some toasted slices for lunch one day and it was heavenly.

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Jun
05

Portuguese Sweet Bread

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5 Jun, 2010

Peter Reinhart describes this bread as the east coast version of the popular Hawaiian style bread on the west coast.  They are both sweet breads for sure, but I think this formula at least has a little more fruit forward flavor (the citrus extracts really stay present in the baked loaf).  While this loaf uses a sponge, it does not need an overnight rest like many of the other breads I’ve made.  The sponge has a relatively large amount of yeast for the size of the sponge.

After the sponge is nice and bubbly, it was time to mix the rest of the dough.  First step was to mix up some of the liquid ingredients.  Eggs, some vanilla, orange, & lemon extract.

To this mixture I added the sponge and the remaining flour and mixed until the ingredients formed a course ball.

Because this bread has a high fat content, it takes a little more time
to knead than one of the more lean breads (like French Baguettes).  I
think I kneaded this for almost 15 minutes.  Then it was time to let it rise.

While the formula suggested baking these in round pie pans, I decided i wanted these as sandwich loaves.  They took quite awhile to proof, and even then they were a little smaller than I would have liked.  The nice deep caramel color of the tops of the loaves were due to an egg wash applied just before baking.  Another popular loaf among my co-workers.  I’ve already got requests for another batch.

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Jun
01

A Rogue Wedding in Disneyland

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1 Jun, 2010

A couple years ago, I signed up at the Universal Life Church Monastery, and became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church.  I did this in order to perform the wedding of one of my best friends.  A few months ago, one of my former co-workers at Symantec, messaged me to see if I could still do weddings.  He and his long time partner were finally going to get married, and they wanted to get married at one of their favorite places to go…Disneyland.

The problem with getting married at Disneyland is that its not allowed.  Sure you can get married at one of the hotels…starting at $10,000 for the official Disneyland wedding experience.  Even then, you can’t get married inside the park at that rate. 

So my friend asked if I’d be willing to perform a “rogue” wedding inside the park.  It would be just the two of them, a witness and myself.  I was more than glad to help out, so it was just a matter of my friend figuring out the date.

The date was finally set for May 5th and I took the afternoon off from work.  Because of a last minute change of schedule, Alicia wasn’t able to come with to be the witness, so my friend Noelle stood in.  We got to the park around 3pm and headed in to find a good location to perform the ceremony.  But first we had to stop and get some Mickey ear’s to complete the dress code.  We ended up finding a nice quiet spot next to the Thunder Mountain Ride (which was closed for maintenance), on a wooden bridge overlooking a pond (with turtles sunning on the shore).  The ceremony was fairly quick, just the vows (read off of the Bride’s iPhone), and the exchange of rings.  A few people caught on and cheered when it was over (and the possible staff member that walked by ignored it). 

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After the ceremony, we got some celebratory lemonade (enhanced with some adult water) to toast the happy couple, and then explored the park until closing. 

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After the parks closed, we returned to their hotel to sign the papers (and make it official), and then had dinner at the mexican restaurant at Downtown Disney to celebrate both the wedding and have Cinco de Mayo margharitas!

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