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Showing posts from September, 2012

Review: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese

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Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch -- Over 120 Recipes for the Best Homemade Foods by Jennifer Reese My rating: 4 of 5 stars Jennifer Reese lost her job and began experimenting in the kitchen to see what was better when made at home and whether it was worth the time and labor involved to do so. The result is this cookbook which I like very much. Reese's calm common-sense comes shining through in the introductions to each recipe. Her sensibilities are very much like mine and, just in case they aren't, she clearly describes her likes and dislikes about each project. Thus I know that I probably don't want to make my own cream cheese (at least from her recipe) because I don't want something noticeably tangier (or as her family says "sour") than Philly Cream Cheese. Would I mind my homemade peanut butter being "nubbier" than commercial brands if the peanut flavor sings forth? Maybe not. Each recipe

Neapolitan -Style Pizza Dough ... Something to Build On

Since we've been talking about pizza, I can't believe I never gave you some of the most basic recipes that are used to "build" pizza around our house. From my favorite cookbook on the subject, Pizza: Anyway You Slice It by Charles and Michele Scicolone,  comes one of the favorite pizza doughs of our household. I used it when we had a party and had a couple of people particularly comment upon how much they like it. It has what may seem like an unusual ingredient, cake flour. This is included because Italian flour is lower in gluten than American flour and cake flour helps turn the crust into a tender, easily stretched dough which is easy to shape. I'll confess that I often cheat and use 2-1/2 teaspoons yeast, a more traditional amount (at least for someone who is used to bread baking), to get the dough to rise in an hour or less. Neapolitan-Style Pizza Dough 1 teaspoon active dry yeast 1-1/4 cups warm water 1 cup cake flour (not self-rising) 2-1/2 to 3