My first loaf of homemade bread, baked in my new dutch oven
Baking and making bread is one of the simplest, most satisfying pleasures in the world.
Last year I began to challenge my long-held belief that I cannot bake. I made a personal vow to teach myself some very simple baking recipes. True to form that was not enough. Given my frugal ways, I began to take a long hard look at grocery store prices. “Why does fresh pasta and bread cost so much?” I wondered. “And if it costs so much, why is it so often not that tasty?” I decided to try my hand at making my own, and made the resolution that this year I wouldn’t buy any bread or pasta.
My pasta adventures are coming along. With proficiency in basic egg pasta dough, I’ve moved on to incorporating ingredients like spinach, beets, and carrots to create healthier options. (More on that in a future post.) It was easier for me to start with pasta because it’s so logical: mound the flour and add the eggs, salt, olive oil, milk, and a dash of cinnamon (yes, cinnamon!) to a well in the center of the flour. Knead, roll, cut, shape, boil, eat. There’s a lot of tinkering in pasta making and I love to tinker.
Bread baking? That’s a different story because the baker has so little control. The ingredients must be measured precisely and then the baker has to walk away, exhibiting extreme patience. 18 hours of patience, to be precise. The flour, yeast, warm water, and salt do some type of magic rising dance and voila – dough, ready for the super hot oven! Baking is an act of trust and faith in something that we cannot manipulate. The yeast and heat from the oven must be allowed to do what it does best all on its own, without our assistance.
But oh, the final result is well worth it. I used this bread recipe, followed it to the letter, and literally ooo’ed and ahh’ed over the result. Thick, golden crust and a moist, chewy interior. Slathered with butter and 3 berry jam, along with a mug of green peppermint tea, it was the perfect way to begin my Sunday morning.
The presents I love the most are ones that are old, passed down through loving hands, and put to good use immediately.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on the skill of making homemade pasta. I’ve tried a few different recipes, purchased a couple of books, and signed myself up for a class here in NYC (more on that once I complete the class.) There’s something very satisfying about crafting food with my hands that gives me a happy glow. I love the feeling of kneading the dough, forming the pasta with my hands, and then watching it float to the top of a pot of salty water to meet its destiny on a plate covered with homemade sauce and freshly grated cheese.
Hearing about my new-found pasta creation hobby, my mom boxed up the pasta machine pictured here out of her own kitchen. It’s older than I am, simple to use, and gets the job done when it comes to noodle making. I’m not sure where this new hobby is leading me – perhaps in the direction of another entrepreneurial venture? – but I’m planning to cook and eat my way wherever it goes. (Thanks, Mom!)
If you’re up for enjoying a plate of homemade pasta with me and giving me feedback on the recipes, come on over for dinner!
Encouraged by my baked brie and apples in homemade pastry dough, I set out on the journey to make homemade pasta and homemade sauce. All of my ancestors are Italian so this seems like something I should be genetically capable of doing. (Yes, I’m one of that breed that has not yet mixed into America which I always think is especially odd because I adore cultures that are radically different from my own.)
A few times in my life I’ve made sauce from scratch, though not in several years. I’ve never made homemade pasta before except for one attempt to make gnocchi in graduate school, which went fairly well. Armed with only an exceedingly simple recipe, a bag of all-purpose flour, and eggs I decided to dive in to see what these two hands could make.
The humble beginnings of homemade pasta sauceThe even more humble beginnings of pasta dough
I started with the sauce. I used this recipe from allrecipes.com as a base but left out the fennel seeds (couldn’t find any at my local grocery stores) and substituted cubes of beef for the sausage. I also added paprika, chili powder, red pepper, rosemary, sage, and thyme. (Simon & Garfunkel would be proud.) I should have stuck with the sausage for its flavor and fat content though I love the kick of the added heat from the extra spices. I only had about two hours to let it simmer. Next time, I’ll let it cook all day.
Once the sauce was on its way, I turned my attention to making the pasta. I used this recipe though it proved to be a bit too simplistic. (More details on that in a moment.) Similar to my experience with pastry dough, I seemed doomed for failure at the start. The eggs broke through the flour well I made and went running for dear life for the edge of the counter. I was too quick for them and caught them in time but they wrecked my plan to gradually add flour from the sides of the well. I kept breathing and kneading until I ended up with two perfect looking balls of pasta dough.
Pasta dough – ready for a quick nap in the fridge
I tucked the dough away in the fridge for about 30 minutes because I saw some advice online that this would make the dough easier to work with. I think it would have been a better idea to let the dough rest covered right on the counter. The dough was a tad bit tough when I retrieved it from the fridge. I pressed on.
While the dough was in the fridge, I turned my attention to the architecture of the pasta. Yep, I said architecture. In the land of pasta, form begets function just like it does for so many other products, edible or not. Last week, I saw a piece on CBS Sunday about George L. Legendre, a principal of IJP Architects in London and a leading specialist in complex surfaces, who has spent years collecting samples of every conceivable shape of pasta ever made. He captured his findings in the stunning volume Pasta by Design, which is exquisitely photographed by Stefano Grazini.
Legendre’s work and my own career as a product developer made me carefully consider the shape of my pasta. Knowing that my sauce was hearty and needed to be scooped up, I settled on orecchiette, a tiny ear-shaped pasta which gives it its name. “Orecchio” is Italian for “ear” and the addition of “-ette” at the end of an Italian word means “little”.
To make orecchiette, I rolled the dough out into a long tube, sliced it thinly and then used my thumb and a knife to roll the pasta into the ear shapes. Forming pasta felt like a very natural action for me – genetics at work combined with an intense desire to figure this out.
Putting my thumbs to good use. You could also use a flat-edge knife to shape the pasta.
After shaping the pasta, I placed it on a floured cookie sheet and then brought a pot of very salty water to a rolling boil. In went the raw orecchiette and out came the al dente ears about 5 minutes later. Slathered in sauce, I grated some fresh romano and parmesan cheese (we might as well go all the way here, folks!) and sat down to my very first entirely homemade pasta meal. And I was proud. Very proud. It was a solid first attempt with an endless amount of runway for improvement.
The finished product
Next time, I’ll use a more complex recipe for the pasta dough to improve both the taste and texture. I recently found this one that suggests a combination of semolina and all-purpose flour as well as a bit of salt and olive oil. Here’s an excellent resource that explains the differences between different types of flour. I found my pasta to be a bit too plain and a bit too tough. Also, I need to make the individual pieces of pasta MUCH smaller and thinner. My ears were giants in length and thickness which affected their texture and consistency. Luckily, I’ve got another 3 portions of pasta in my freezer just waiting to be used for another meal in the not-too-distant future.
After my meal, I sat down to my computer to write this post with the almost-winter sunshine of late afternoon streaming through my window. In the glow, I felt all of my dearly departed Italian ancestors sending good wishes for joyfully attempting to make something new to nourish my body, mind, and heart. There is something so special about crafting sustenance with our own two hands.
With all of the dishes washed and put away, I settled in with a mug of cocoa and a handful of gingerbread cookies for dessert. Sipping and nibbling away, I realized there’s no reason why I couldn’t make these treats during my next set of kitchen tricks. A homemade life is rather addictive, isn’t it?
Next on my list of culinary adventures – making my own hot cocoa and gingerbread cookies. Stay tuned!
My baked brie and apples in pastry dough – made from scratch!
Baking is an act of pure belief and stubborn patience. We sift together dry ingredients, add wet ingredients, form a dough of some sort that (we hope) looks nothing like the final product, and send it off to the oven to be transformed into something edible. We are not certain of our success until some brave soul takes a forkful.
With cooking, we can taste as we go. We can sample and adjust. We see the process as it happens and can pivot if and when needed to save the meal. Before anyone attempts to taste it, we already know the quality because we’ve tasted it all along.
By contrast, a sampling of dough is a terrible idea for many reasons. One, it (God willing) won’t taste the same as when it’s baked. Two, raw ingredients like eggs aren’t safe. Three, it makes no difference if you taste it along the way or not because it cannot be adjusted. Still, we press on fully aware that there is no saving a bad baking job. If it’s bad, all we can do is chuck it, chalk it up to experience, and begin again. Or not.
For these reasons, I have long lived in awe and loathing of the act of baking. (Please see my post from about this time last year regarding a failed attempt at baking a pumpkin pie that I continue to lovingly refer to as “the oven incident”.) Or at least I did until a few weeks ago. I was shopping in my local Whole Foods and navigated my wheel-y basket to the sandwich bread. $4 / loaf. Sounds like an awful lot of money for a loaf of relatively boring bread.
“I could bake bread,” I thought to myself, “for a heck of a lot less than $4 / loaf.”
“You can’t bake,” said a tiny voice that popped out unexpectedly from behind a corner of my mind.
“Oh, shut up,” I replied (thankfully using my inside voice as I was still in Whole Foods surrounded by other people.) “I could bake if I really wanted to.”
For the next week every time I opened up my kitchen cabinet where I keep my dry goods, I saw a barely used bag of flour just staring at me. I bought it when I fancied myself a pumpkin pie baker. This did not go well. I tossed the dough, sealed up the bag of flour, hid it in the back of the cabinet, and decided that I do not bake.
Nothing will get me to grow a new skill set faster than my thriftiness. $4 for a loaf of plain, commercially baked bread just seems ridiculous. So I set about learning to bake. Or at least learning about learning how to bake.
The other day my sister, Weez, posted a Pinterest picture of a gorgeous loaf of fresh-baked bread in a powder blue Le Creuset Dutch oven. I gasped out loud (I was home so no inside voice necessary. Phineas is quite used to my constant audible stream of consciousness.) It was gorgeous. I clicked through and found a remarkably easy recipe for making homemade bread. It actually seemed foolproof, which is exactly what I need.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving arrived. I spent it with friends. My lovely friend, Crystal, was kind enough to have my dear friend, Amy, and me over to her home. Crystal’s a top-notch chef who owned a restaurant prior to business school. I was in charge of the cheese plate and decided I wanted to bring a few of my favorite types along with Brie and apples baked in pastry dough. I took myself to the grocery store and they were all out of pastry dough. I thought about possible alternatives like biscuit or pizza dough and decided against them.
“I could make pastry dough,” I thought to myself. “I actually already have all of the ingredients at home.”
Tiny Voice returned. “Pastry dough is tough to make! Tougher than pumpkin pie and you remember how that went!”
“Oh, shut up,” I replied. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)
I went home and googled “pastry dough recipe.” This one popped up on allrecipes.com. Seemed foolproof. (Another pattern.)
So I set about sifting together flour and salt, adding water, rolling out butter to refrigerate, and then incorporating the butter into the dough – over the course of 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. You have to roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate, roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate, roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate. My first turn (that’s a technical term in the world of us pastry dough makers) was in a word, awful. The butter broke through the dough, got all over my rolling pin and the counter. The dough was sticking to everything. The recipe predicted this may happen and it instructed to add more flour. I was skeptical but followed along. I added more flour, and more flour again, until it turned into some kind of unruly balled mess.
“I told you this was hard,” said Tiny Voice in that lilting know-it-all tone that all Tiny Voices use.
Not easily deterred, I turned down the volume on Tiny Voice, wrapped up my messy dough ball, and refrigerated it again as the recipe instructed. “I could save this,” I kept thinking. This thought was followed closely by, “I wonder if using pizza dough as a substitute really was such a bad idea.”
The timer went off. I marched over to the fridge to retrieve the dough ball and put it through its paces of roll, turn, refrigerate. To my shock and delight, it was actually much improved. It improved even further on the third turn. I could even see what would become the flaky layers once baked! My fridge is a magician! Following directions and having patience actually works in the world of baking. Every accomplished baker in the world was right and I was wrong. Go figure!
Buoyed by my dough success, I went to my kitchen cabinet to see what other food staples I might consider making rather than buying. The dried pasta stared back at me with a similar gaze as that recently re-employed bag of flour. In business school, friends of mine and I made gnocchi by-hand. That also looked destined for failure until somehow the dough came together as if by magic pixie dust. I always assumed it was the divine intervention of my Italian ancestors, but maybe it was baking patience at play.
I toddled over to the computer and found this recipe for fresh pasta dough. Again, allrecipes.com to the rescue. Again, seemingly fool-proof. I’m beginning to like this pattern. And what’s become of Tiny Voice? Well, it’s been silenced for the time being. I intend to keep it that way by stuffing it with homemade goodness.
Folks, against all odds, I may actually learn to bake.
I walk into the produce department at Whole Foods or Westside Market and I breathe easier. My kitchen and its humble tools beckon me away from my laptop. In the past week I’ve made my own chicken stock from scratch for the first time (it is so much better than stock I buy), whipped up a hot and hearty bowl of soup with items I had on-hand, made an entire meal courtesy of my grill pan, and saved some sad-looking apples from the fate of the trash can by quickly turning them into homemade apple sauce.
On Wednesday I was very early to a meeting by Grand Central Station due to an easier-than-expected commute and found myself wandering through the gourmet food market. I couldn’t get enough of all of the interesting hand-made, hand-cut, hand-mixed goodies. For the first time in a long time, I consciously felt all of my senses fully engaged and activated. As my senses opened up, so did my heart. I could have stayed there all afternoon. I was swooning over local food products as if I had a teenage crush. It was….wonderful.
Food memoirs are among my most treasured reads because there is so much history, mystery, and emotion literally folded into the foods we eat. Food and recipes connect us across generations, time zones, and cultures. They are our tie to the past and our gateway to the future.
As I think about future passion projects, I’m wondering how I might position my love of and fascination with food into my professional work. There must be a way. While turning that thought over in mind, I’m going to toddle back over to my stand-up kitchen to see which ingredients are jumping up and down saying “Pick me! Pick me!” Who knows…I may even bake a pie.
I’ve enjoyed the last two contests that I’ve run on this blog in recent weeks – the first was for a free 12-week subscription to the digital version of the New York Times (congrats, Trish!) and the second was for a copy of the book Lessons from the Monk I Married by Katherine Jenkins, one of my writerly friends. Those were so much fun that I’ve been hunting around for a third way to share the wealth!
The site Underground Eats has just launched to a small, invite-only audience and I have an invite to give away. I’d like to give it to you! Underground Eats is “the go-to site for exclusive Alternative Dining Experiences.” At the moment, they are only in New York City but they are hoping to expand to other cities shortly so I’m not going to limit this contest to New York City-area residents only. I just want to be clear that at the moment the only experiences available for purchase on the site are in New York City. The experiences are truly exclusive, unique, and can only be purchased through the site.
So what exactly does ‘Alternative Dining Experience’ mean? Here’s a little sampling of what’s on offer at this very moment:
The Truck Stops Here: 5-Course Food Truck + Beer Dinner – $40
No need to keep checking Twitter and chasing food trucks all over the city. For one night only – all your favorite food trucks, under one roof.
Edible presents The Drive-In Dinner at Brooklyn Brewery, hosting the Morris Truck, Bongo Brothers Cuban Food Truck, Red Hook Lobster Pound, Feed Your Hole and Coolhaus for a sit-down, five-course dinner with beer pairings.
Each course comes from a different food truck and is paired with the perfect Brooklyn Brewery beer – even dessert.
A Dinner of Titanic Proportions: 100 Years in the Making – $300
Bon vivants, all aboard.
Culinary provocateurs Jonny Cigar of The Noble Rot, Hell’s Kitchen’s Rob McCue and Adam Banks of Bravo’s Chef Roblé & Co., cordially welcome you to an evening of culinary history and decadence.
Heed the call, First Class and VIP passengers: no expense will be spared in this indulgent tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s last supper. You will dine amongst an intimate clique of black-tied guests, on a seven-course menu, based on the original, but updated and reinterpreted from carte du jour of April 14, 1912. The galley is keeping the menu top secret for now (but we’ll send you a sneak peak closer to the event).
Drinks will pour, hijinks and other under-wraps surprises are rumored to ensue…and the band will play on.
The Ultimate Foodie Fantasy Camp: The New York Culinary Experience – $1395
You buy their cookbooks, eat at their restaurants, watch their cooking shows.
Now, imagine a whole weekend cooking side-by-side with your favorite star chefs, such as David Bouley, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Dan Kluger? Pinch yourself, now.
Hosted by The International Culinary Center and New York magazine, The New York Culinary Experience is foodie fantasy camp. Learn how to make pasta sauces with A Voce’s Missy Robbins, Tuscan-style seafood with Cesare Casella, and chocolate desserts with celebrity pâtissier Jacques Torres. All classes are completely interactive, and you’ll get to enjoy every dish you prepare.
You’ll even have the chance to get up close and personal with the likes of Jacques Pépin and Bill Telepan at daily Q&A sessions.
The Michelin star count alone will drive your friends mad with envy.
So how do you enter to win an invite to the site? Like this post, leave a comment, or contact me through Twitter or Facebook. I’ll leave this contest open all weekend and then announce the winner Monday morning. Happy eating and good luck!
When I was little, Easter was my favorite holiday. When I think of the happiest days of my childhood, they all revolve around that Easter dinner table at my grandmother’s house. I wish I had told my grandmother how much those days meant to me then and now I wish I had the chance to tell her that they mean even more to me now.
Easter was a special time in that home. The Sharon Rose bush outside would be in full bloom in the front yard. As we pulled into the driveway, my grandmother would be at the door waiting for us to arrive. We were the very best part of her life and she made sure we knew it every second that she was around us.
The kitchen was the first room we entered in her home and there was always a glorious, welcoming scent coming from the oven. On Easter, it was lamb – a dish I never had anywhere else and not at any time of year.It would be accompanied by potatoes, glazed carrots, and buttered peas. Everyone got their own individual salad in their own individual bowl which I always got such a kick out of. And then there would be the black olive game. My grandfather and I would put the black olives in our finger tips – the olives too big for my fingers and too small for his – and then we would wave at each other.
Once the dishes had been cleared and washed, my favorite part of the meal would start. My grandmother would make her way over to the fridge and use the step stool to grab a large, round Tupperware container. Inside would be her special cake that I always thought she made just for me. It was incredibly simple – a yellow cake made from a Duncan Hines mix topped with sliced cinnamon apples. It’s still my very favorite food in the world and I’ve never been able to re-create exactly as she made it. There was something special about that cake; I think it was all the love she put into it.
The coffee would start brewing, the walnuts and the nut cracker would come out, and then the stories would start spilling from everyone. Most of them were about people whom I’d never met, relatives who had passed on long before I was born, but through all of those stories I came to know them and love them as much as I loved all of the people around that table. I’d grab another slice of cake and hope that somehow that dinner could go on forever.
But of course, it couldn’t. It was only a snapshot in time; a day that would come and go like every other day. Long after the sun went down, we’d pile back into the car with leftovers in tow, and make the long drive back to our house. My grandmother would be at the door, waving good-bye and staring out into the darkness long after our car was out of view.
Though today I’m spending Easter in a much different way than I did all those years ago, my mind is traveling back in time to that table surrounded by those people. I’m so grateful that for a little while we all had the chance to be together.
Last Sunday morning I went to Sur la Table with my friend, Allan, to take a coffee class. One of Allan’s new year’s resolutions is to learn more about food and its preparation so he asked me where he might take some classes. I had read about Sur la Table’s new course schedule in the Times a few weeks ago and wanted to check it out.
Allan has also been a tremendous support of every adventure I’ve attempted over the last 7 years I’ve known him so I’m all too happy to return the favor. Judging by the fun we had on Sunday, I think the coffee class is just the beginning of our culinary classes.
The class was put together by Illy and coffee master Giorgio Milos walked us through the intricacies of selecting, preparing, and enjoying coffee in a variety of its beautiful forms. A caffeine lightweight and a lover of a good adventure story, I was sufficiently buzzed through Monday, body and soul. Giorgio spun a tale of intrigue, passion, and jealousy peppered with royal battles and thievery, all while he served up cup after cup of rich, frothy coffee. It was like sitting around a campfire late at night and hearing the rich oral history of a people passed down by a wise village elder in a fine Italian suit.
Lesson #1: We determine our destiny
The bit of information that had my mind whirring (beyond the effects of the caffeine) was how the method of brewing deeply affected the taste, consistency, visual appearance, and aroma. Same raw grounds and water in, completely different end-product out. The only variables were the pack of the grounds, the pressure and temperature of the water, the texture of the grind, and how long the water was in contact with the coffee grounds. All variables are controlled by the person making the coffee. The raw material matters, certainly, but how we treat that raw material has an incredible impact on our results.
Lesson #2: Every moment offers the opportunity for creativity
I was also struck by the artistry of coffee-making, and I’m not talking about pretty pictures made in crema. Giorgio had a finesse and a grace that reminded me that creativity can be brought to bear in every act we take. Whether we’re painting, playing the piano, or making our morning joe, we can always find ways of expressing our deepest selves and enjoying our work.
In life, business, and coffee, it’s the actions we take and the manner in which we take them that matter most. And it doesn’t hurt to have a guide with an Italian accent.
I have tried my hand at baking. Dessert is my favorite course of any meal. I once read that the body needs something sweet at the end of every meal to know it’s time to stop eating and start digesting. That’s all the motivation I need to give a hearty “Yes!” every time a waiter asks if I’d like to see the dessert menu. And since I’m on a confessional kick I’ll also tell you that yes, I have had dessert for dinner and no, I am not ashamed of that.
I have fantasies of impressing my friends with sugary baked goodness, inviting me to dinner parties purely because they just cannot get enough of my baking skills. In these fantasies, my friends often say things like, “Oh, Christa, can you please bring that incredible double chocolate souffle that everyone raved about last time. I’m having dreams about it!” Of course, this never happens because I never bring dessert to a dinner party unless I buy it or it’s fruit.
In my year of new beginnings, I decided that this was going to be the year I learned how to bake. Witness exhibit A above – my attempt to make a recipe entitled “Easy Pumpkin Pie”. Easy for Recipes.com to say. The evidence speaks for itself. Have you ever seen a pumpkin pie with a dome? Despite my painstaking attention to detail, measuring every single ingredient to supreme accuracy, and following all of the instructions down to the letter, I must admit that no, I can’t bake. That new beginning has been put to bed.
Looking at my “Easy Pumpkin Pie” I was a bit sad. Why can’t I bake?! Why is this skill that I want so much eluding me? In the process, I broke a glass bowl (Whoops! that one wasn’t meant to melt butter in a microwave) and spent more money on ingredients than I would have spent buying a picture perfect, tummy satisfying pie from my local Whole Foods.So I did what any self-respecting girl with a little tear in her eye and a propensity for sweets would do – I got out a fork and ate the pie filling. It was delicious, or at least edible.
(And then I started thinking about how this burned pie might lead to some creative spark in my writing. I came up with the idea for a collection of essays with titles like: I Burned the Pie, and Other Confessions of a Modern American Girl and I Don’t Bake, Other Things You Should Know Before You Fall in Love With Me, or We Won’t Be Eating Cake, and Other Helpful Hints for My Husband To-Be. What do you think?)
I cook well, but when it comes to baking I didn’t get the genes for it. I will continue to be marveled by those who can somehow whip up the perfect dessert with barely a speck of flour on their faces. From now on, I’ll happily buy my dessert and fully understand the value of its price. Crumbs, here I come!
Last week, I wrote a post about the point of all teaching – to help others rise. That statement can be taken literally and figuratively, as I recently found out through a cupcake baking class at Butter Lane Bakery. Joe, our teacher and cupcake baker (and frosting!) extraordinaire, helped me recognize a very important business principle that we should learn from: we all have something to teach and should make it a part of our business model. (Yes, thoughts that profound can be found in the depths of a cupcake.)
Joe counseled us on the proper techniques to cream butter and sugar, why we need to add in the dry ingredients with a minimal amount of mixing, and the short window in which we have to add the dairy. With our fluffy cakes baked, he taught us the “pat down” frosting technique which produces a cute little wisp worthy of a Real Simple Magazine cover. (Okay, mine weren’t that good but they were damn close!)
The result: little pillows of sugar-sweet happiness, and more importantly, confidence in the kitchen. I can whip up a delicious dinner in not time; my baking skills are less-than-adequate, but this class helped me understand baking on a more intellectual level. The nerd in me needed that boost of knowledge, and I got it thanks to Joe.
Butter Lane Bakery could just keep churning out these sinfully sweet little indulgences and keeping its customers in the dark on how the magic happens. Instead, they invite people into the bakery for a small class fee, and share everything they know about their specialty. And it’s working – their class schedule is sold out months in advance. Follow their lead.
Get creative with your business model – there are more revenue streams in there than you think there are.
The presents I love the most are ones that are old, passed down through loving hands, and put to good use immediately.
Last Sunday morning I went to 
Christa Avampato 