All the Ingredients

Brewing Drinks with Godiva Coffee: Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Smoothie

Recently I received two bags of new coffees from Godiva as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. In a past life, I used to be a barista--server of wondrous coffee drinks hot and cold. I came late to the coffee game. When I started as a barista, I didn't drink it. Five years later when I left my cafe, I was addicted. I now have to have coffee every morning or the day doesn't start right. I have gradually toned down the amount of caffeine consumed, but I still crave the flavor and the aroma.

Enter the Godiva coffees. The first one I tried was the Hazelnut Creme. The bag described it as: "Enticing toasted hazelnut flavor with a sweet creamy finish. Medium roast." Now if you open one of the gorgeous gold Godiva chocolate boxes and offer me a piece, I will skip the pieces filled with their signature hazelnut praline. It's not that I don't like hazelnut. I do. But there are several different flavors that I like only in or close to their original state. I do not like bananas any way except as bananas whole or sliced directly in to something--like banana cream pie. Banana bread? Not so much. Hazelnuts have to be whole or toasted as an ingredient still close to their original form in a dish--like a hazelnut cookie.

I like the Hazelnut Creme coffee, but don't think it satisfies my craving for a pure hazelnut flavor. However, if you are a person who opens a gold box of Godiva delight and goes straight for the little chocolate oyster shell filled with the creamy hazelnut praline, then this is the coffee for you. I know hazelnut is a popular coffee flavor, and this is certainly the best one I've had. The aroma from the cup is lovely--hazelnut with a chaser of milk chocolate.

The second bag I got was the Chocolate Truffle: "Melt-in-your-mouth Godiva chocolate flavor with a sweet creamy finish. Medium roast." I opened this bag of coffee and was whapped in the face by a strong coffee-chocolate one-two punch. I love chocolate and coffee together! I envision angels at staff meeting every morning drinking coffee and eating chocolate cake--my idea of a heavenly breakfast. I love chocolate truffles, and this coffee tastes like one melted in my cup.

When I get the chance to go to a Godiva store (the closest one is and hour and a half away), I love the chocolate-covered fresh strawberries they have this time of year. The bite of the fresh, sweet strawberry with the snap of the chocolate covering is bliss in my mouth. Although I love this coffee hot, I wanted to try and recreate that chocolate berry blast in an icier, middle-of-the-summer form.

First, I brewed the Chocolate Truffle coffee at one and a half strength, and chilled it. I wanted all the ingredients as cold as possible so that the end result wouldn't be diluted. Then I went to the blender to create my Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Smoothie:

• 2 cups chilled Godiva Chocolate truffle coffee, brewed at 1 1/2 times strength
• 1 1/2 cups frozen, unsweetened strawberries
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1/4 chocolate syrup

Blend and serve in a tall glass with whipped cream, chocolate drizzle, and a strawberry on top. Perfect for a hot August day--and it makes enough for two servings!

 

What's for Dinner: The Bacon Ovation

My husband and I enjoy watching Outrageous Foods with Tom Pizzica on the Food Network. We were sad when he didn't win Season 6 of The Next Food Network Star, but were happy to see him on the network later with a show more interesting than that of the woman who won. Usually Tom highlights foods that are A) obscenely large (like the 35-lb sandwich), B) too hot to handle (Is a food really enhanced with a sauce made of 28 different hot peppers that is SO hot you start sweating as soon as you start eating?), or C) amazingly porky. In the last category, he featured a dish served at Paddy Long's in Chicago--the Bacon Bomb. This is a seasoned meatloaf, wrapped in bacon and grilled. "I could do that!" I said. So on my last trip to Megamart, I bought a two-pound package of 90% lean ground beef, a pound of "lean " ground pork, and two pounds of the least expensive bacon. I don't know about where you live, but around here a pound of really nice bacon costs more than a gallon of gas!

First, I started coals in the chimney in the grill. While they were getting hot, I cooked half of the first pound of bacon, liberally sprinkling it as it cooked with pepper. The second half I cooked and put away to use for something else. Then I took the second pound of bacon and wove a lattice on the table. "Gross!" my daughter commented, passing through. Perhaps she thought I was topping a pie with it?

Then I mixed the two meats in a bowl, adding four liberal spoonfuls of my own dry rub. Usually I add binders to meatloaf--some bread crumbs, an egg or two--but since the bacon on the outside would keep the loaf together, I skipped adding anything else. I patted the meat mixture out to within an inch of the edge of the bacon lattice.

My husband and I had recently gone to the Cedar Rapids Barbecue Fest where I had bought a bottle of Famous Dave's Texas Pit Barbecue Sauce. Although Famous Dave's Sweet and Zesty is a standard sauce in our house, we had both really liked the slight pepper burn of this new sauce on Dave's famous ribs. I  opened the bottle and applied a liberal layer on top of the meat. Then I crumbled the pepper-bacon across the top. Using a thin, flexible cutting board, I lifted one edge of the lattic e and began to roll the meat into a tube. Once I had rolled it up, I tucked in the bacon ends and wrapped the whole loaf tightly in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator.

When the coals were gray, so I spread them into the two bottom sides of my big black Webber grill, putting a heavy duty foil drip pan in the center. Then I added a few more coals to each side, put the cooking grate back in, and set the meatloaf on the grill and put the lid on. For a very brief time about ten years ago, Reynold's Wrap made perforated, heavy duty gril lfoil sheets to use in your grill on top of the grate. I loved grilling meatloaf on them: they were already perforated and let the fat drip through, and I didn't have to wash them. I have since tried a perforated silicone grilling mat, and was less than pleased with the result. Williams-Sonoma recently brought out a Fine-Mesh Grill Pan, and I bought one with a gift card a friend gave me for my birthday.

The pan fits nicely into my Webber, and it has a removable handle that clicks on and off easily. That lets you get the handle off the pan so you can shut the lid, and the handle is not too hot to touch when you click it back on to remove the pan at the end of cooking. I already have a Williams-Sonoma grilling skillet for sauteing vegetables on the grill, and have loved using it. The Fine-Mesh Grill Pan worked perfectly. It had a large enough surface so that I could easily roll the bacon meatloaf over, and the fat dripped through into my drip pan.Williams-Sonoma Fine-Mesh Grill Pan

Now, it was boogers to clean afterwards, even though I had sprayed it with Pam before I used it, and soaked it in hot soapy water immediately afterwards. However, I had just bought a new kitchen scrub brush, and it cleaned out most of the char caught in the mesh. I was raised to believe that kitchen utensils should look like you have used them, so I don't care that it's not pristine anymore, and I am sure that it won't contaminate whatever I use it for next. I cooked the bacon meatloaf for one and a half hours until a thermometer read an internal temperature of 160 degrees, and I had turned it every half hour, starting bottom seam up, adding a few coals to each side as needed. The bacon was nicely crisp all over, and the meat smelled fabulous!

I let the loaf rest for about fifteen minutes while I grilled some new potatoes for a grilled potato salad, dressed with a little mayo, apple cider vinegar, and fresh dill out of the garden. I also had made my famous pineapple coleslaw. When I sliced the loaf to serve it, there was a lovely spiral on the inside of the pepper bacon, and it's flavor, as well as that of the Texas Pit sauce had permeated the meat. I served the meatloaf with the two salads and a side of the barbecue sauce. My husband and I each had two helpings! When he had cleaned his plate the second time, he gave me a standing ovation for "the best meatloaf he had ever eaten." It truly was fabulous.

But what to do with the leftovers? I hope Bacon Boy stops by in time to try a slice before it's all gone!

 

A Gift of Peaches: Peach Pies for the Freezer

My husband and kids have returned from visiting his parents in Texas. Some husbands bring their wives jewelry or chocolate. Mine brought me two jars of jam, and a giant box of Texas peaches. He said that they fit my criteria for roadside vendors: he bought the peaches out of the back of a beat-up pickup truck, and they looked and smelled fabulous! I never buy fruit that doesn't smell like fresh, ripe, whatever-it-is. That eliminates  most grocery store fruit. This time of year, teenagers making spending money with their local produce have pickups parked in lots all over town.

My husband had an ulterior motive. He considers pie to be a food group (along with ice cream, hamburgers, and pizza).  He knew I would be happy to bake most of these peaches up, two at a time, for the freezer.  And he makes the best batch of pie of crust--"Foolproof Pie Crust"--from a recipe my mom cut out of a Woman's Day in the 1960s:

4 cups all-purpose flour, lightly spooned into cup
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cup vegetable Crisco
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar
1 large egg

In large bowl, stir together with fork (or pastry blender) flour, sugar and salt. Cut in shortening until crumbly. In small bowl, beat together water, vinegar and egg. Add to flour mixture and stir until all ingredients are moistened. Divide dough into 5 portions (4 if you use large pie plates). With hands shape each portion into a flat, round patty; wrap each patty in plastic wrap and chill at least 1/2 hour.

At this point, for fruit pies, I don't really use a recipe. In the case of the peaches, I used 12-16 peaches (they were on the smaller side) and rinsed and dried them, leaving the peels on. Then I sliced them into a bowl and added 3 tablespoons Instant ClearJel from King Arthur Flour, http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/instant-clearjel-8-oz . This magic powder thickens fruit pies without the cloudiness of flour or the visible pearls of tapioca. I also added 1/4 cup of sugar and a healthy dash of Vietnamese Cinnamon, also from King Arthur.  I poured the peaches into a pie pan with a bottom crust. After I put the top crust on and crimped the edges, I spritzed it with a little Pam and then sprinkled it with colored sugar.

I baked the pies for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Then finished them off with an hour at 350 degrees--until the crust was golden and the fruit filling just starting to come through the slits on the top of the crust. I cooled the pies completely. Then I wrapped them in heavy duty foil, and  bagged them for the freezer. To thaw them, I bake them again at 350 degrees until a knife stuck into the pie comes out hot to the touch: at least an hour.

My husband says that nothing tastes as good as a slice of warm peach pie on a snowy January day. I would have to agree with that!

Rustic Fruit Tart

I had to work all of this past holiday weekend, and didn't have time to  cook anything complicated. I had bought lovely peaches at the natural foods co-op (where they sell organic fruit that actually smells like it's supposed to, unlike those plastic pieces of fruit at the super market). So I handed my daughter Emily several cookbooks and told her to look for a rustic fruit tart recipe. As a child of the new century, she simply did a web search and picked out a recipe that sounded good and looked simple. I was impressed with this. The recipe had no accompanying picture (I was was trained by my mother to cook by picture), yet it seemed  simple enough. Basically I just needed a crust to hold these gorgeous peaches together.

I would provide a link to the recipe, but not only did I change the manner or preparing the dough, I changed the ingredients. The original recipe gave careful directions for mounding the flour on your work surface, adding the egg yolk, and sugar and so on. I didn't have that kind of time. I threw the ingredients in the food processor, whirred them about, rolled the dough into a ball and carried on. The tart was ready to eat one and a half hours after we started.

For the dough, put the following into the food processor with a metal blade attachment:

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup Crisco (I use the stick form because I can also cut that into pieces like the butter)
• 1 egg yolk 1/4 cup sugar
• 4-5 tablespoons of ice water

Pulse blend until the mixture has the consistency of coarse meal. Add water 1/2 tablespoon at a time until it starts to come together. Turn the dough onto a work surface and knead gently into a ball, adding more water if you need to. Do not overwork the dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

For the filling you will need:

• 4 large ripe peaches, pitted and sliced with the peels left on
• 3 tablespoons apricot preserves (made without sugar)
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg

some raw sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the chilled dough on a floured surface to make a circle about 12 inches in diameter. Place on a baking sheet and coat evenly to within one inch of the edge with the preserves. Mix the fruit with the brown sugar and spices. Mound the fruit into the center of the dough and fold the dough up over the fruit, making an edge of folded dough about two inches wide. Brush the exposed dough with the egg white left from the egg, and sprinkle it with the raw sugar.  Bake about 30 minutes until the crust is browned and the fruit bubbling. Cool to room temperature before serving.

The one my daughter and I made for the 4th, disappeared quickly. The peaches that I had bought were fabulous, and it would have been hard to make something with them that didn't taste great. But my husband said it was the best dessert he had ever eaten. I made another one with more fresh peaches and blueberries from the farmer's market. I think it could easily be made with any combination of fresh summer fruits (except, perhaps, watermelon!).

Handcrafted Cheeses

I have long been a fan of hand-crafted cheeses. A friend and I go to the local food co-op's fall tasting of wines and cheeses every year in order to pick out what we are going to put on the Thanksgiving appetizer cheese board.

Over the years I have become very fond of cheeses from Neal's Yard Dairy: http://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/about.html . I especially like the cow's milk cheeses like the Montgomery's Cheddar and Keen's Cheddar. I have tried a number of sheep's milk cheeses, but haven't developed a taste for those yet.

Last year as part of the Slow Food auction, I bid on and won a gift certificate for a pound of aged cheddar from Shelburne Farms in Vermont. I redeemed it before Christmas and received not only a pound of their Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese, but also a copy of a lovely cookbook, Cooking with Shelburne Farms. I adore cheddar and can just sit down and eat it, but I wanted to do something special with this cheese.

I also received a Williams-Sonoma gift card for Christmas. With it, I ordered a pound of Beecher's Handmade Cheeses from the Pike Place Market: half a pound of Flagship, a year-old semi-soft cow's milk cheese, and half a pound of Marco Polo, a creamy cow's milk cheese blended with green and black Madagascar peppercorns.

I wanted to do something with these cheeses that let the flavor of the cheeses come through. Something simple. So for a special dinner, I made grilled cheese sandwiches. I got a nice loaf of bread from the local food coop--a large grain loaf that crisped up beautifully. And to made each sandwich even more special, I cooked some bacon so that each sandwich was striped with it down the middle. I grilled three sandwiches, one with each cheese.

With just a little butter on the outside of each piece of bread, I grilled each to a nice golden brown. All three of these cheese are made from cows milk, and are not the bright orange of their artificially colored grocery store counterparts. The cheeses melted quickly as I grilled the sandwiches and oozed out from the edges of the bread.

My husband liked the Marco Polo best. He loves pepper and its inclusion gave the sandwich a slight bite that was a pleasant combination with the bacon. I thought the Flagship made the creamiest grilled cheese sandwich I have ever eaten. I made another one days later without the bacon, and it was sublime. But the Farmhouse Cheddar was also fabulous, and less crumbly just to eat out of hand. I have a half a pound of it left and will try a recipe from the Shelburne Farms cookbook with it.

I have always loved cheese and have greatly enjoyed getting to know handcrafted cheeses--certainly they weren't available in my mother's 1950s kitchen, although I am sure she would have loved them. There are some fine ones made locally where I live, and I will continue to buy them mail order whenever I can. Shelburne Farms has a great mail-order catalog, and the farm itself has a guest lodge and is open for tours: http://www.vtcheese.com/members/shelburne/shelburne.htm . Check out Beecher's Handmade Cheeses as well: http://www.beechershandmadecheese.com/ . Their webpage boasts that they make "The World's Best Mac & Cheese." I am sure you could do a wonderful job at home yourself with their cheeses. Until then, find a local cheese, some handmade bread, and treat yourself to a great sandwich.

 

Tamales--Part 2

Wednesday's assembly plan was compromised by flash floods, tornado warnings, and the fact that I had to drive to two different cities to get masa flour for the tamales. I live in a ethnically diverse part of the Midwest and can get authentic Thai, Chinese, and Mexican food nearby, but it can be frustrating at times to find specific ingredients for recipes. The conversation at Big-Box-Mart went like this:

"Do you have Masa flour for making tamales?"

"Masa Flowers? That would be in the Lawn and Garden section."

So my daughter Emily and I made the tamales yesterday. We prepared three fillings. The first was black bean and corn based on my standby black bean and corn soup (see http://alltheingredients.typepad.com/weblog/2007/04/black_bean_corn.html ). I made half a recipe and simmered it longer so there was less juice. The second filling was the chicken breast I had roasted pulled off the bone and mixed with a small jar of black bean and corn salsa and extra jalapenos. The third filling was the pulled pork mixed with jalapenos, enough canned tomato sauce to make it hold together, and some of my friend Jim's "X-Scorn" hot sauce. The filling had a slight kick, but since these are going to be served to a diverse group, I didn't want to make them too hot. We will add some more sauce as we eat them.

Then I made the "Masa Harina Masa" recipe out of Tamales 101. I made it in half batches since my Kitchen Aid mixer could only handle that much at once--about ten cups resulted from each batch. Then Emily and I started out assembly line. I would spread the masa on the damp corn husk, add a tablespoon or so of the filling, and then roll them. Emily tied them with smaller strips of corn husk. Tamales 101 has diagrams of a number of different tamales wrapping styles. We used three different ones for each type of filling so we could tell them apart after they are steamed. Pickles, the kitten Emily rescued from a downpour at the stables last September, came along to attack the corn husks sticking up out of the bowl holding the finished tamales.The masa recipe says that it will create enough for two to three dozen tamales. We ended up with over six dozen with some masa leftover. I will steam some of the tamales for about an hour and them pack them in the preheated Crock Pot for the trip to the park today. The rest have gone into bags in the freezer for later. The whole assembly process took about five hours, but is worth it considering how long the tamales will last. However you celebrate today, have a Happy Fourth of July!

Tamales--Part 1

Every year for the Fourth of July, we go to a local park with friends and family to watch fireworks. My friend Janice and I get there in the afternoon and spread out blankets and lawn chairs to claim our space for the family members that will accumulate before the celebration begins. We wander through the adjacent fair, watching people braver than us ride the Tilt-a-Whirl, and always end up in front of the food booths. These are run by local businesses, selling barbecue, burgers and dogs, fruit platters, ice cream, and fried delights. We work our way back to our spot through the crazy quilt of blankets on the grass, and split a funnel cake. This is just the appetizer before our Fourth Feast.

Every year we bring a shrimp ring, raw veggies, and chips and salsa. There's a cooler of soft drinks and waters, fast food fried poultry pieces for the kids, and a wonderful something for the adults. One year I made Italian sausages with peppers and onions. I have a Crockpot with an insulated cover and handle. The sausages stayed plenty warm until they were all gone. Two years ago my daughter Emily and I made tamales form scratch, also served from the warm Crockpot. She liked them so much, she wants to make them again this year.

My mother and father, in their final years, had a wonderfully kind Japanese couple that worked for them at their home in Phoenix. George mowed the lawn every week and his wife, Cheese, cleaned house one day a week, cooking lunch for or with my mother. Cheese would plug in her rice cooker after she got to the house for the day, and she and my mom would open cans of eel and other delicacies to eat with it. Or the two ladies would sneak out to a Japanese restaurant and eat tempura. I asked my mother once if "Cheese" was really the name of George's wife. She replied that no, it wasn't, but it was as close as she could get to the Japanese pronunciation, and Cheese didn't mind.

Cheese was an excellent cook, and she made the best tamales I have ever eaten. She made two kinds, pork and chicken, and my mother would pay her to make extra for our freezer. Once Cheese learned how much I liked her tamales, I would come home from college to find large Ziploc bags of them in the freezer that she had left to welcome me back. My mother just popped them in the microwave for her and my father, but I preferred to steam them, using my mother's little silver collapsible steamer that fit in the bottom of her sauce pots. Then I would mix a slurry of sour cream and salsa to top them. The masa coating was soft and smooth, and the meats in each tamale were seasoned with peppers and were almost too hot for me. I stopped ordering tamales in restaurant decades ago, because no matter where in the southwest I was, the tamales were never as good as those made by my mother's Japanese housekeeper.

After college, I went to Iowa to go to graduate school, got married, and settled in for good. My father passed away, and a little over a year later, my mother did too. I got got a lovely sympathy card from George and his wife, who had continued to work weekly for my parents as long as they were alive. It was signed "George and Shizuko." And so it was with Shizuko's wonderful tamales in mind that I bought a copy of Tamales 101: A Beginner's Guide to Making Traditional Tamales, by Alice Guadalupe Tapp. Emily and I worked our way through the pulled pork tamales, and black bean & corn tamales in the book two years ago.

So I spent Sunday simmering pork tenderloin in the Crockpot with a sliced onion, salt, and pepper to make the base for the pork tamales. I oven roasted two large chicken breasts with salt and pepper, pulling the meat off the bones to make the base for the chicken tamales. I will also make the black bean and corn filling, so for our Fourth Feast we will have three types of tamales. This year I have so many more choices of spices and seasonings at hand, including my friend Jim's spectrum of hot sauces, that I would like to make a batch of firecracker tamales that will be hotter than usual.

Stay tuned. Wednesday is assembly day.

Retro Food--Banana Cream Pie

We eat a lot of pie in our house. Mostly we bake fresh or frozen-fruit pies with half the usual amount of sugar, some tapioca for thickener, and a nice double-crust. Recently I had cause to make a banana cream pie for a friend, and I realized how long it had been since I had thrown caloric considerations to the wind, and made a custard-based pie.

The first cookbook I ever bought of my own was the 1980 edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.  Fannie was a great teacher of cooking techniques I needed to learn. The second cookbook I bought was the first paperback version of The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, the "newly revised" version of 1971, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer. This book was originally printed in the 1940s, and includes basic recipes for many foods that are now retro such as "Bologna Cups with Peas" (broiled bologna slices filled with cooked peas and served with rice and tomato wedges) and meats that no one in my neighborhood cooks such as moose, reindeer, and opossum. But as fascinating as the roasted squirrel recipe is, I love looking through the old dessert recipes. This is the cookbook that taught me how to make a killer banana cream pie when I had my first apartment in the early 1980s, and had yet to acquire a middle-aged waist.

I found the page in the encyclopedia's section on pies with my pencil notations that showed what recipes I had used, and started in. First, I followed the recipe for a basic graham cracker crust. While that was cooling, I prepared the "Cream Pie" filling. First I scalded 1 1/2 cups cold milk, and added it to 1/2 cup of cold milk, 1/3 cup of sugar, a dash of salt, and 3 tablespoons of cornstarch. Once I had simmered this mixture, stirring until it thickened, I added 3 egg yolks (tempered with some of the hot custard), and a dash of vanilla. Then I cooled the custard, added four sliced bananas, and spooned it into the graham cracker crust.

The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook has five different meringue recipes. I have always topped my banana cream pie with meringue instead of cream, and like the "Brown Sugar Meringue." This consists of 2 egg whites beaten until stiff with 4 tablespoons brown sugar and a dash of vanilla. Once I had made the meringue, I topped the pie with it, being sure to connect with the crust all the way around so the meringue wouldn't shrink, and then baked it at 350 degrees for 10 minutes until the meringue was a nice golden brown.

Rather than make a second pie just for myself, I  made four, small graham cracker crusts so that I could experiment with a batch of the custard filling. The first pie I made plain banana cream, to the second one I added coconut to the custard, and for the last two I mixed banana and coconu in the filling.

My husband and I split one of the banana-coconut pies. We both liked it, but agreed that it was too sweet to eat very often. And it certainly took longer to prepare, assemble, and clean up after than a fresh or frozen-fruit pie. Retro pie was fun, but for now is done!

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Several people I know have recently experimented with the bread-baking recipes outlined in Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois's new book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. This book promotes a system of preparing a wetter-than-average bread dough that lives in your refrigerator for up to two weeks, waiting for you to shape it, let it rise, and bake it. I like the idea of coming home from work and quickly baking fresh bread for dinner, so I bought the book.

The basic recipe is simple: mix 3 cups lukewarm water, 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 6 1/2 cups of flour in a container large enough to allow it to at least double in bulk. The dough sits out for two hours to start percolating, and then goes into the refrigerator where it lives for up to two weeks. This basic recipe makes four, one pound batches--four small loaves of bread. The book is full of other great looking recipes for you to try, using this basic dough and other variations.

The first loaf of bread the authors teach you, a French boule, is easy and quick. Sixty seconds to shape, 40 minutes to rise, 30 minutes to bake. The authors also recommend only preheating the pizza stone used for baking for 20 minutes. For my first loaf, that wasn't long enough. I had to bake my loaf 45 minutes to get a browned bottom and a hallow thump that told me the loaf was done. I used the other three-fourths of the first batch to make three pizzas. The rest of the family loved them, but I found it very difficult to get enough cornmeal on the peel to get the dough rounds on the baking stone in roughly the same shape as they started. The solution (according to discussion threads on the Artisan Bread webpage) is to prepare the pizzas on baking parchment and slide the pizza onto the stone along with the parchment. I will have to try that. I thought the thick-crust dough was very tasty, but it's hard to easily divide a pizza shaped like Texas.

The second batch of dough I made, I blended one part whole-wheat flour to five parts all purpose flour. It rose happily and waited quietly in the refrigerator until I had time to bake this afternoon. The first loaf I prepped didn't seem to have risen at all on the peel at the end of 40 minutes. I waited another ten before sliding the boule into the oven. After all, the book says, "Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise during this period." Well, not only did I not see much rise on the peel, there wasn't much rise afterward  in the oven. The bread browned nicely and cooked quicker (I heated the pizza stone the entire time the dough rested on the pizza peel), but it was very heavy. I knew this was not quite how the loaf was supposed to turn out. I shaped another loaf and left it to rest on the peel.

In the meantime, I explored the authors' webpage for the book: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/. They continue to post new recipes developed with this technique, and also have question and answer threads from readers. The most interesting part of the webpage to me was the section on "errors" in the book. The very first issue addressed here is the rising time of the bread which they change to 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hours due to variations in peoples' kitchens and the way they handle the dough. Other "errors" correct details of the master and other recipes.

I find this fascinating. Here is a forum for Hertzberg and Francois to communicate with their readers and actually tweak what's in the fixed text of the book. How many times have you made a recipe out of a book and wondered what was wrong when it didn't turn out quite right? Part of that I am sure comes from someone who is an intuitive cook trying to transcribe a recipe that might be more changeable than they think. Whenever I buy a new cookbook now, I search for the author's online presence. Sometimes it consists of a brief list of appearances or a bio. Other times it has introduced me to new arenas for reading and writing about food. (Thank you Mr. Ruhlman.)

For dinner tonight, my husband and daughter gladly agreed to have toast--our family's method of testing any bread. They both liked the bread, but preferred the original version without the addition of the whole wheat flour. To my mouth, it was so little whole wheat, I almost didn't know it was there (but then, I actually like whole wheat bread). The second loaf had risen more on the peel after an hour and a half, and had finished about a third larger than the first loaf. The first loaf had a small and tight grain, but tasted every bit as good as the second, lighter, more-textured loaf. The second loaf also made crisper toast. Although the first loaf was smaller and denser, it was by no means a failure. So longer rising and preheating times are definitely good ideas.

My only complaint about Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is that the "quick" component is misleading. Yes, mixing the dough is quick. Shaping the initial boule and many of the other loves is too. But rising and baking is not. I calculated this morning, that for me to make the Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls would take two hours from start to finish. Not something I could make in the morning to take to work. But I really like the fact that this is a system that for the most part adapts to my baking lifestyle. I have a job where my schedule changes every week. That makes it difficult to commit to a long-term relationship with a sourdough starter. When I want to bake on my days off, this dough is ready to go. I can't wait to try some of the other recipes.

"Coffee Snob"

No one in my household likes coffee or tea but me. My husband eschews all hot beverages except cocoa after sledding. My daughter likes cocoa; my son drinks no hot beverages--perhaps he would if Pepsi was offered that way. So I have free reign over the hot beverages in our house. I make coffee and tea and don't have to share.

When I became the manager of the cafe in the Big Bookstore ten years ago, I didn't drink coffee at all. I had been a dedicated tea drinker since I was young--hot, cold, and any temperature in between. I even have an automatic tea brewer (it looks like a Mr. Coffee but it really is a Miss Tea). My parents drank coffee, but mostly it was instant and I didn't like the odor or the taste. We lived in Phoenix and made sun tea probably seven or eight months of the year. In the winter, my mother brewed tea (orange pekoe loose leaf) in a china tea pot. It wasn't until I was in college that I learned about all the varieties of loose leaf tea that were out there. All my friends drank tea (when they weren't pursuing alcohol), and we shared our favorites. This was also in the dark ages before there was a Starbucks on every corner--there was no coffee house on my campus, as I am sure there must be by now.

But over the course of the five years I was a cafe manager, I was exposed to coffee day in and day out. I learned how coffee is grown, roasted, and brewed, and how espresso is extracted. I discovered that I like the way coffee ground from fresh beans smells and tastes. I also discovered I am a coffee wuss. I don't care for it straight. Good coffee is strong coffee, but I prefer to take it down a notch. I am not a fan of mochas or flavored coffee confections, although I will have one once in awhile when I need the caffeine and the sugar boost. In those drinks coffee takes a back seat and is almost not necessary to the drink at all. But I do like my strong coffee mixed with steamed milk, cafe au lait style. I take it plain or add a little hazelnut flavoring. When I order coffee, and I tell the barista exactly how I want it, my daughter accuses me of being  "coffee snob." I tell her no, I just know how I like it, and if I am going to pay for coffee in a coffee shop, I want it exactly the way I prefer it.

I don't, as a rule, drink preflavored coffees because in my mouth, all I can taste is the chemical flavoring of the hazelnut or vanilla, and not the fullness of the coffee itself. They leave a bad "finish" in my mouth. This could also be because as a cafe manager, I was indoctrinated into the world of plain coffee where the beans are blended to specific roasts, but if you want any other flavor, you have add it to the finished cup of coffee in the form of syrup. Flavored coffees taint the grinders and the pots you brew them in.

But a lot of people like flavored coffees and drink them. Recently I received a sample of a coffee that was preflavored, Joffrey's Coffee Jamaican Me Crazy, a blend of "caramel, vanilla, and coffee liqueur" flavors. This was a medium roast, very smooth. With steamed milk added, it was a nice cup of coffee. You can check out Joffrey's at http://joffreys.com/ and see their different blends, flavored and unflavored. Even though I was indoctrinated by a large coffee chain to prefer regular coffees that aren't preflavored, I think there's room for lots of choices. Personally, I think the idea of adding pumpkin and spice flavors to coffee for an autumnal blend is ghastly (and I tried it once at a major chain). But I think you can also be a coffee snob and drink it the way you like it, as long as I get my "venti non-fat au lait with two pumps hazelnut."