An hour after breakfast saw me sitting in the kitchen with my feet up, drinking sinfully rich hot chocolate made in the hot chocolate maker my husband gave me, (milk and dark chocolate chips, with whipped cream.) while reading the book my sister, who has read this blog, sent me.
This book is full of all kinds of geeky facts such as the role of salt in yeast breads or what exactly makes gluten. I kept squealing and reading parts to my husband, happily as geeky as I am, who enjoyed them every bit as much. This book is going to come with me back to school when it starts up again, so I can show it to the biology teacher in the room next door, who has a special interest in microbiology. (I tell my students that baking cookies, because they use chemical leavening agents, is kitchen chemistry, and yeast bread baking is kitchen biology.)
One thing I loved was finding the instructions for using wild-caught yeast (learning to my great surprise and fascination that what really matters is not just the yeast, but the bacteria caught in the process). Calculating the time required to make a starter for this purpose, and recognizing the need to stir the mixture several times a day, I realized I'd better get it finished while school was still out, or I'd have a much more difficult time once school started again.
And here it is: the start of my starter attempt! (Behold the proof of my geekiness in the form of the notebook set to record the progression of this scientific experiment . . .) I'm excited to see what I can do once the starter is really completed. My husband is dubious that we can catch any sort of yeast and bacteria in the desert in winter, but time will tell.
Like many people I know, Christmas is a time of food and family, not necessarily in that order. Here is a sample of the things we made this year for the holiday, a bit simpler than normal, since my school teaching schedule really cut down on the time I had available.
The Junior Taste-tester and the Master Kitchen Helper worked with me to make the gingerbread cookies. The round iced ones are lebkuchen, a recipe my family picked up in Germany when I was a child, which must be carefully aged for a month to blend the flavors just right. The tiny ones are pfefferneuse, a Danish cookie made with baker's ammonia, the existence of which I discovered only two years ago. My husband has nicknamed them "Scooby Snacks", because they are tiny bits of buttery, spicy flavor, and very addicting. The ones half dipped in chocolate are sugar cookies, made with peppermint extract in lieu of vanilla extract, with crushed candy canes mixed into the dough. This was an experiment I did for the first time this year and while it was tasty by itself, the cookie was elevated to a step shy of genius after being dipped in a mixture of melting chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate. The candy in the middle is dipped in the same mixture, with a center based on peanut butter.
On my kitchen counter are also some of my crackers, made with rye flour, at which my college daughter (who really does look very similar to the princess on "Brave", with slightly shorter hair) rolls her eyes in ecstasy and exclaims they are the best things ever. Of course we still have Holiday Crescent Rolls left over from our Christmas Eve dinner, but I bet they'll be gone after breakfast tomorrow. We still have a good deal of our traditional pumpkin pie in the refrigerator, as well as some chess pie, which I made for the first time this year. ("Mom, what on earth is a 'chess pie'?" "Good question, hun . . .") And there is enough of the cheap ham I managed to doctor sufficiently to seem like a much more expensive ham for another meal.
All in all, we've had a very tasty and satisfying Christmas. To my readers, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, wherever you are and whatever flavors you enjoy at this time of year!
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I have this book and I love it!
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