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bread shots are little balls of starchy goodness. the recipe came from richard bertinet’s dough.(i swear i should be getting free books for the ongoing endorsement).
You make white bread dough (flour, yeast, sea salt, water), roll it into little balls, poke your finger in the top and then fill with your choice. Bake until golden brown and then munch away.
for an easter dinner appie, we tried out four approaches: olive tapenade, gouda chunks, smoked salmon pate, and garlic cream cheese.
the clear winner was the gouda – it was an universal thumbs up. the cheese melted into a sunken hole of gouda goodness – kind of like a jambuster, but cheesy.
the other three assumed volcanic shapes and rose to a peak with the fillings intact. the olive tapenade sizzled nicely and dispersed a light slick of oil over the top of the bread which was excellent – a close second in my view. the salmon pate was nice but would have been better if it had been smeared on the bread post-baking. the cream cheese was fine, but average.
the only change i would make for the next time would be to make the dough balls smaller – barely an inch in diameter before the final rise – but with the same amount of filling (1/2 inch chunk of gouda). yum.
I’m still baking most of the bread that we consume around here, and I’ve figured out a few things along the way.
1. Making bread by hand is easier than using the bread machine. Seriously.
You can make multiple loaves at the same time, easily adjust for conditions in your kitchen (more/less flour), and if you need to make an emergency side trip to the park for two hours because your spawn are climbing the walls, the dough will wait for you. Patiently.
2. For those of us with small children and/or impatient spouses, slice the loaves before you freeze them. That way, when you use up a loaf halfway through making a peanut butter and jam sandwich, you can throw a frozen slice in the toaster and still have lunch ready in five minutes.
3. If you bake anything like me, you have good breads and bad breads. One or two good breads, trotted out for public consumption at potlucks or dinner parties can do wonders for your baking rep.
If you’re super-organized, make a bunch of artisan loaves at one time, partly bake them, and then freeze them. You can whip them out the day of the event, throw them in the oven and serve “fresh bread” with minimal effort on your part – more time to devote to the really important things like taking that damn scrunchie out of your hair before people arrive.
4. Anything baked with cheese is good. Gouda is better.
5. Small breads are the cheerleaders of the bread world – they’re small, really cute and shout ‘look at me!’. Whether or not they taste better has yet to be determined.
6. Find a really good bread cookbook and use it frequently.
Happy baking!
Who wouldn’t want to keep chickens in the city with a stylish coop such as Omlet’s Eglu? It even comes with a fox-safe chicken run, a handy egg-hatch, and the “grub-and-glug” food/water container. Chickens are optional.
If you’re thinking of raising chickens in the city, consider the following:
backyard chickens
the ubiquitous path to freedom project
the city chicken – a lady who loves her chickens
ny times: chickens in manhattan
the fruits of a half day’s labour
the empty 5′ x 10′ box has been dug and filled with peat moss, compost, garden soil, sea soil, and sand (this necessitated yet another trip to the garden store today where i shoveled garden soil into 10 black plastic bags and powerlifted them into the back of the vehicle with the encouragement of my miniminions). it has been planted with one of my frankenfruit pear trees (4 varieties), a strawberry rhubarb and 70 strawberry plants of various descriptions. i’m sure it will be gorgeous in a few months.
on other fronts, another box has been built in the back garden, but not planted, a third box has been constructed but not anchored and the pieces of a fourth box have been purchased but not constructed. the peas are sprouting and the spinach and radishes have poked above ground – even some of the radishes planted back in january now have a few true leaves forming.
tulips are above ground, although sadly they keep getting trampled with little feet run amok and one of the camellia trees has three beautiful blooms on it already. i must take photos of it tomorrow. i also transplanted two existing blueberry bushes and planted two newly purchased ones into a mini blueberry grove. i’m thinking of transplating a purple smokebush to the front yard and planting the plum tree in its place. spring is busy and dirty and exhausting and i love it.
so this is what we did yesterday. i’ve been planning to move one of our camellias from the back yard to the front yard for ages – it’s right by the garden, behind a trellis. I wanted to make more room for raised beds and compost, and this area is nicely tucked away at the back.
the camellia wasn’t doing great in its existing location and we have another 5 or 6 scattered around, so it was worth the attempt – our front yard is desperately in need of some evergreen foundation plantings at the moment and this is a decent size tree.
I’ve never dug up a tree before, and let me tell you, it takes some digging. thankfully, I had some muscle help out.
i got my husband to “be the tree” to figure out exactly where to plant it in the front. it was dark by the time we finished.
and then there was beer.
beer is good.
