Dancing with the Universe

What more evidence do you need that a group of people truly has its own culture than the fact that they have their own set of observed holidays?

I observed Pi Day by baking, of course. Rhubarb seems to have gone out of season already in the stores around here (a month or so early, and it just happens to be the year I divided my own crowns in the garden...) Failing that, I fell back on other supplies, and made a very tasty butterscotch peach pie from home-canned peaches. It's lovely with vanilla ice cream.

I took the rest of the triple batch of pie crust and made 25 miniature crusts, ready to become mini-pies in a few days. One set will be pecan for Thursday evening, as our hostess loves pecan pie; the other set will, once I process the necessary ingredients, become lime meringue pies. I got an influx of limes, you see, and I need something to do with the juice after I've stashed away the zest. The first step is to make lime curd; the second step is to take whatever lime curd survives predation and use it to make pie... :)

If you ever have the opportunity to pick up a copy of Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook, buy it without hesitation. It is, hands-down, the best reference book for pies I have ever seen. I should take the time to scan it someday, put it into PDF for when our copy completely disintegrates; it's out of print and difficult to find even now. It's the first thing I reach for when making any pie or similar object.

Upper East Bay wheat/gluten free folks: I'm baking my way through a set of recipes in the next fortnight, and I'll be producing a surplus of very good gluten-free bread. If you want to know what's fresh for pickup daily, I created a Twitter account specifically for announcing bread giveaways... if you don't want to touch Twitter, message me with an email address and I'll mail you with what's available out of my freezer at the end of the week.

Nobody's responded to these announcements yet -- the only one following me on Twitter so far is a girl in the Philippines -- so if you're able to work out a reasonable plan for me to get the bread to you, you'll have your pick. First dibs gets any item.

With only a few days left until Christmas, I got the itch... so I started mixing cookie dough like a fiend today. I made dough for chocolate refrigerator cookies, soft gingersnaps, plain sugar cookies, and the family peppernuts. The chocolate cookies were new to me, but the Farm Journal hasn't let me down yet, and the dough tastes good. :)

The sugar cookies were also new; since my goal is to make a filled/cutout cookie with lemon custard in the middle, I wanted a plain, basic sugar dough to start with. I reached for Mark Ruhlman's "Ratio", knowing that he has a ratio for the simplest cookie possible (sugar, butter, flour). So I mixed up a batch according to his recipe: 2 ounces sugar, 4 ounces butter, 6 ounces flour. At least we have a good electronic "scale".

What I discovered is that this ratio fails with rice flour. It's odd, as I would expect weight to be the great equalizer between wheat and Asian rice flour -- they pack differently, but wouldn't the amount of actual material needed be the same? Apparently not. I adjusted it (1:3:3 seems to work well), added a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt as suggested, and got a cookie dough that tastes just marvelous. If the cookies themselves taste anything like it, I'm sold. Ruhlman mentions that it's the quality of the butter that causes these cookies to succeed or fail; in that case, I highly recommend the store brand at Smart & Final, as it's fresh, very cheap, and tastes great. There's enough water in it to help with lifting baked goods, too. :)

So tomorrow I'll be baking these, as many as I get through, anyway. Not sure whether I'll get to making the lemon custard for the sugar cookies just yet. I made my Ninja Fudge today, so it's done and chilling in the fridge. I still have pie crust to make in the next few days; we need a mince pie, and I've had a request for another pumpkin pie too. Pie crust means more Cinnamon Pie Destroyers, which will make Greg happy.

Before Friday, we need to buy fruit (at least some D'anjou pears and a pineapple, maybe a grapefruit if there are some good ones out there) and our traditional lunch fare of sausage and cheeses for Christmas Day... I've been done with shopping for a while, and I'm ready to start wrapping. Whee!

I spent the day trying to make puff pastry -- the stuff croissants and turnovers are made of.

I gave it five or six turns (I lost count), rolled it out to a quarter-inch, and cut it into rough squares. It was my first time, I wasn't going to get neat edges. :) Then I put apple-pie filling into the squares, folded them over, and baked until golden brown.

Not one of the books and websites I've consulted on puff pastry said anything about providing drainage while baking. Yow.

Despite the impressive amount of clarified butter that ended up on the pan, these things are RICH. Not greasy, fortunately -- but when I eat one, I can feel my stomach getting a bit uneasy because of the sheer amount of oil I'm dumping on it. They're still good enough that I ate two, and I'm eyeing a third, but I really don't want to be ill tonight. It's a good thing my metabolism is so resilient -- these are diet-busters.

I would say that this was a success, in that I believe it was (once again) a lack of technique rather than a recipe failure which kept them from being perfect turnovers; the edges are very crispy and flaky, and the interior with the apples is moist and comes apart in sheets. BUT... The recipe would need a minimum of two more tests to make it out of my house, and I'm afraid I would not survive eating the results. Even if I stretched out my attempts across a couple of months, still... damn. Maybe if I made the squares/croissants really small, I think they freeze okay after baking...

As some of you know, I'm writing a cookbook. Unfortunately, while I know a great deal about gluten-free bread, I know next to nothing about submitting a manuscript to publishers and evaluating potential offers. I think that if I'm at the point of putting "pen" to "paper" on this, it's time I start considering what format a publisher might want, and how to make it appealing to them.

So I ask my multi-talented friends list: Have any of you been involved in getting a how-to book (anything from how to do Europe on 3 euros a day to how to make your own siege engines to, well, a cookbook) from handwritten material to hold-it-in-your-hand book form?

I'm hoping that someone out there might be able to, if not offer some advice on the workings of the publishing industry, at least offer the name of a good book on the subject. :)

Thank you!

I think I'd open a bakery.

My dream house has an outbuilding with an auxiliary kitchen -- who knows, if I ever manage to get my dream house or something like it, maybe I could have the outbuilding inspected by the health dept. and sell gluten-free breads to local bakeries.

Way down the line, that. I'm too busy right now to even think about getting a loan to set up shop in a real bakery space (ignoring the fact that there isn't a bank in the US right now that would be signing such loans).

Still... I made sixteen beautiful, uniform buns today, when I was almost too tired to see straight. No indication anywhere on them that they were actually filled with cheese before baking. Mmmmm, cheese.

I like baking. I want to share.

No, the weather is actually fairly cool here for a change. That means, however, I took the opportunity to fire up the oven.

( Sunday )

( Yesterday )

Oh, and just for the record: I had forgotten what it was like to have a home-grilled cheeseburger on a real, honest, proper bun. zomg.

(...and I have six buns still in the freezer... *drool*)

Caught up on LJ (I hit "skip=120"). Whew.

Lots of stuff brewing up for a thought-provoking post... hopefully later.

Today I baked rolls -- the usual little cheese rolls for school mornings, plus big fat Lunch Rolls as an experiment. One set has canadian bacon and American cheese (the cheese escaped wherever it could, but came out well otherwise) and the other has deli turkey, dill havarti, and a squirt of pesto added after they had cooled down a bit. All of them are now in the freezer; I'll test-drive them next week.

That was all the energy I had, sadly. I really need to plant stuff out, but simply walking around the house has been exhausting me this weekend. Sigh.

Homemade bread is a blessing. Good homemade bread, fresh and warm from the oven with a little butter, rivals good sex. In my opinion. Perhaps the years of hunting for a good store-bought loaf without wheat, and now the fact that if I want it I have to craft it myself, has something to do with that -- but I've always appreciated bread.

( Last night's baking, and a few related thoughts... )

Life is generally good right now -- while I'm still waiting on ENT to call me for a medical appointment, my throat is only a tiny bit sore right now, and the systemic inflammation seems to be a little better. I'm dog-tired, but no one expects much from me this week, and I get a nice four-day weekend before finals. I get to drop a class for next quarter, so I'll take three (and three in spring). I'm waiting for the garden to dry out a little, and for me to have some time, before I finally transplant stuff. And my home life is very good. Yay December.

I'm ready to not be sick now. I'm so done. It can go away any time...

I've got a referral to Ear/Nose/Throat, which may take me to Woodland instead of Sacramento (Sutter/Davis doesn't have anything free until February). I'm willing to miss class at this point; not being sick is more important to me than grades. The current bout started on Friday night, and instead of fading after four days, it's been six and it's still trying to climb into my sinuses. At least it's (mostly) been leaving my lungs alone after the first two days, and my throat isn't too swollen.

General consensus is that my tonsils are in the process of failing, and they're out of warranty... we'll see what ENT has to say. It would mean that this isn't one bug, but several in succession, minor things that my immune system would normally munch without a second thought. The interval is down to about 20 days, though, and the constant inflammatory immune response is hammering my chronic fatigue triggers. As if this quarter weren't difficult enough already.

I'm at home today, as Russian was cancelled and I took the quiz for Cuba yesterday in office hours. I wish I were well enough to take full advantage of a free day, but I'll use it to rest and relax and hope that helps out my immune system. I'm ensconced in bed with my laptop and a great deal of tea. Maybe after I drink the rest of the six or seven mugs' worth I'll stop feeling like my upper respiratory tract is cracking from dehydration.

I made raisin bread last night, and came pretty darned close to the objective. Some fine-tuning is required, of course, but I have lovely, moist, slightly chewy sweet bread with raisins and a little cinnamon. Damned good for a first attempt. I learned a great deal about handling the magic flour in the process, and about the manner and order of addition for both eggs and butter. If I had the time, I'd pull together my recipes and start on a wheat/gluten-free bread book. Much testing is still required for the kneaded breads, though I have several quite-adequate batter breads already, along with some desserts. (I really ought to try challah one of these days...)

I should find out whether Morgan's brewing this morning, and see about picking up some mash if I can. I won't dig much today, but I'd like to have the amendments on hand.