More Baking

I got around to making supper tonight, and some Chelsea Buns! I hope these taste OK because I have never actually made them before.

Pizza!

Here are some pictures of the pizzas we made yesterday. We have been making one fancy one (prosciutto ham, sun-dried tomatoes, black olives, pesto) and the usual "kitchen sink" pizza. They are both good. The crust turned out a little thinner than it should have, but that was because I was pushing it to fit the two large pizza stones.







I think today I am going to try to make Chelsea Buns!

Long Weekend

This weekend is a long one in Canada as Monday is Labour Day. We don't really have any plans, but personally I'd like to get the following done in no particular order:

• Bake some bread


• Play lots of guitar


• Work on the latest amplifier cabinet


• Clean out all the old computer carcasses lying around my basement

Seeing as it is freezing cold and raining, it should be a good weekend to get some indoor stuff done.

Since we didn't have our usual Friday night home-made pizza last night, we're doing it tonight. We've been making some rather nice pizzas lately. Perhaps I'll post some pictures later tonight before we eat them!

A Weekend At Home

This weekend was one of the first weekends we had at home (and without something going on like a sleep-over, TaeKwonDo belt testing, etc.). We were blessed with another gorgeous weekend weather-wise, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time outside. Yesterday I had a hankering for leek and potato soup. I'd never actually had it before, and figured I would make it from scratch along with a fresh loaf of bread while I was at it. I went with one of the first recipes I could find online, dug up a recipe for a quick loaf of basic brown bread from The Bread Book and went for it. Although we didn't eat until about 7:30pm, I think the results were worth it. It was delicious (even if I do say so myself!).

From Fall 2008

Today we went to the Liddel family farm and got our pumpkins for the Hallowe'en season. The Liddel farm is a little cheezy, but the kids love it, the prices are awesome, and we like to support the small, local farm while still enjoying the bigger guys.

From Fall 2008

After that we went to the Schantzholm farm to go through the corn maze. We did this last year, and ever since Drew thinks every corn field is a corn maze. We had a long walk through the maze, saw the animals, and had a very nice drive home amongst the fall colours.

From Fall 2008

We ended the day with a nice pork roast with vegetables that Sharon managed to find the time to prepare (whilst elbow-deep making apple sauce) which gave me time to put my motorcycle away for the season. All-in-all, a very relaxing Canadian autumn weekend!

Mmm...Fresh Bread!

I have been wanting to make my own bread from scratch for quite some time ("from scratch" scratch, not bread machine scratch) so this weekend I decided to give it a whirl. I've been keeping a recipe handy for Portuguese Sweet Bread for quite some time and figured that was as good a place to start as any.

Last night I started in on the dough, and immediately it looked like a disaster. Where the recipe indicated I should have a "smooth batter" I already had a very thick ball of dough. I was rapidly spiraling into panic as I had a lot more flour to add, and it already looked like the dough was too dry.

I persevered and continued kneading, using most of the recommended amount of flour (I left 1-2 cups out) and suddenly realized at the rate I was moving it would be 3am by the time I finished. We were heading to Sarnia to the in-laws in the morning so I decided to let the dough rise, wrap it up and refrigerate it, finshing the bread in Sarnia the following day.

After we arrived today, I attempted to form the dough into loaves and things were once again looking quite grim as the dough was essentially like rubber. It was very hard to work with and it was quite a struggle to form it into the required long, thin tubes for coiling and braiding. Once again, I pushed through and quite frankly expected the worst. After forming it into loaves and allowing them to rise for another hour, I glazed the loaves and sprinkled some sugar on top and threw them into the oven.

The result was far beyond my expectations considering how awful the dough-making process went:





And it was damn tasty too! Let's hope that I can reproduce this result the next time I attempt this recipe.