Monday, February 08, 2010

Bread & butter

I have had this book for almost a year and haven't baked a thing from until this weekend. Everyone has raved about it but I didn't the right equipment so I just put off making anything from. I realized I should just improvise and make something from it, so it did. I made the Olive Oil bread dough and used one portion of it to make Prosciutto & Rosemary Flatbread (also from the book). Except I had some diced pancetta in the fridge instead of prosciutto so that's what I used. The rosemary was from my garden, still hanging on despite the frigid temps and sleet. It turned out really well, it didn't rise as much as I thought it would but other than it came out really nicely. I just used a cookie sheet with a Silpat since I don't have a baking stone (have to get one). The bread was crispy and the rosemary was fragrant and a perfect compliment to the pancetta. The dough makes four portions of bread dough so I have enough for some other projects during the week. There's a recipe in the book for a Neapolitan pizza I might try, as well as a Philadelphia style stromboli. Maybe next week I'll tackle something else from the book, maybe a baguette.

Since I made bread it was only fitting I make butter too. Months and months ago before I got my KitchenAid a friend told me about how you could make butter with a standmixer, an idea I filed away for when I got my much lusted for KitchenAid. Fast forward to now, there's not time the present, or in my case, a weekend afternoon. The directions came from here and I used almost an entire quart of heavy whipping cream. There was a lot of waiting for the cream to whip past the whipped cream stage, it took at least 20 minutes for the butter to seize up and try throwing off the buttermilk. Boy was there a lot of buttermilk too. After the buttermilk was poured off I rinsed the butter by kneading it in cold water until the water was clear. It was a ball by then and I stuck back in the mixer to whip some air into it and add some sea salt. It tastes just like butter, although more creamy than store bought. I can really tell it's made from actual cream. A fun and easy project, makes me have lots of respect for those (like my great-grandparents) who churned butter in one of these.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

everything sounds delicious! i'm going to have to try to make butter next time i have left over cream