whatchoo want, a cookie?

Week number two, check. You'll be happy to hear that no hands were injured in the world of bread making this week; however, my love of bread may be "losing some of its rise" per say. Seriously, you can only smell fresh yeast so many times before all you want is a sinfully sweet cookie that you don't have to use twelve steps to make. This week we were introduced to the world of Italian and French bread. My taste buds felt like they were still eating the soft rolls from last week, but I guess my buds need a little bread tasting refinement. Although with flour, yeast, water, salt and sugar in each bread, you can understand my dilemma...

Here is the first round of Italian bread. The dark background in this image is appropriate because the top back corner of the loaf was burnt. This was caused by a hot spot in the oven and is very disappointing to someone who doesn't enjoy burnt food - a.k.a. me. Luckily, we made 7x the original recipe so we were able to try out a few varieties including pizza, which we shared with another class and got to eat for lunch ourselves. I decided to make mine into a calzone since the rest of my group was making regular pizza. Here are the statuesque results.

Those of you who know my baking style are aware that my rule for sweet baked goods is the bigger the better. Apparently that ideology has carried over to bread as well. This calzone was bigger than the Italian loaf when it first came out of the oven. We are not talking Pizza Hut calzones here people.

These braided bread sticks were the final variety made from our Italian dough. Not only were they fun to make (who doesn't like braiding dough?), they were also the tastiest bread we made. Tasty tip for happiness: brushing melted butter over freshly baked bread is always a good idea. DO try this at home.

Last but not least, our bread from the land of the Eiffel Tower. What this French bread lacks in uniformity, it makes up for in taste. One of my favorite parts of bread making is scoring the bread before it goes into the oven. This is also the trickiest part because if one part of the bread is scored deeper than the others, your bread will have large dips in it and not be the same width throughout. Educational side note: scoring is putting shallow slices in the top of the bread so that gases can escape during baking. And in bread or in life, it's never good to let out too much gas at one time.

After a Saturday full of bread, I decided to indulge my sweet tooth (and more finely tuned baking skills) and whip up a batch of cookies today. These peanut blossom cookies were just what the baker ordered and made my apartment smell way better than yeasty bread. I guess sometimes you just need a cookie.