An atypically sedate Friday night turned into a party. I was just watching the Pens, and then Bill and Jill and Jen showed up, and then they left for another party, came back with a bunch of other people, so I did what I normally do. I cooked. Made a marinara from scratch, broke out the mixer and made some some baguettes, and made a late night spaghetti dinner for drunks.
I like having my house as party central. It’s perfect for someone who does not want to go out (EVER). I have company, people come over and drink and party, I get to cook for them, and it is all on my terms and not me dealing with a bunch of drunken idiots at a bar somewhere.
And my baguettes were fucking amazing. In short order, I’ve really taken control of baking bread and feel really confident. I always loved cooking and felt confident with that, but was afraid of baking for some reason, which I think is really much harder than cooking.
I’m off to bed, because I have a solid 8 hours of cooking ahead of me tomorrow, because Wiley’s book launch is being held here and I need to feed 30 people at the celebratory barbecue. Night!
The prophet Nostradumbass
Yowza!
Gaffa
Baking is harder than cooking, though. You mess around with cooking, worst that happens is that something is a bit over-burnt, or maybe under-cooked, or some flavors didn’t mesh well.
You mess around with a baking recipe, and we’re not just talking “kinda weird tasting,” we’re talking outright disaster. No rising dough. Flattened cookies full of salt. Collapsed cakes. And so on.
And grats on your party!
I now return to my monthly lurking schedule.
aangus
I think that I ended up in the Spambulator.
:(
youtube.com/watch?v=yoWJFC_ock8
Genine
Yay, John! You’re socializing. :-)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@The prophet Nostradumbass: My comment edit didn’t work, so I’ll repeat…
If some people “left for another party, came back with a bunch of other people,” at my house, they’d be left looking at a closed front door.
aangus
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
:P
satanicpanic
Hell yeah, party at JC’s! +3
noodler
JC,
should be henceforth included in the rotating taglines. If I don’t see it by tomorrow I am never coming back here.
close second:
honorable mention:
fuck it, tagline them all.
you are a good friend.
you rock.
Home at 3 am after an amazing cooking/catering prep night as well. oh, the stories I could tell. Working in a kitchen blows the doors off.
Yutsano
@Gaffa: This is exactly why I do not bake. If I am cooking, I can almost always manage to do something to resurrect the final product. Baking you hope you’ve done everything right and cast your lot into the void. I’m just too much of a control freak for that.
Joseph Nobles
My experience with baking is mixed. I finally have a white bread I can make well. Wheat breads are still eluding me. I made the most incredible tasting flat loaf of rye bread I ever had a month ago, though. As soon as I get that stand-up thing happening, my rye will bring all the boys to the yard.
If I mix the wheat dough in the bread machine, the loaves are marginally better, but not enough. Practice, practice, practice. Maybe I can find a baking class at a local community college or whatnot.
isildur
Would-be bakers: My wife got The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and swears by it. Her bread is now really, really good, even though she’s kind of scatterbrained and cooks by the seat of her pants.
Groucho48
I picked up the latest book, by Robert Tannenbaum, in the Butch Karp series, Outrage, from the library, yesterday, and started reading it, today, in the hope that he had picked up a new ghost writer. (Wow, that is a lot of commas for one sentence.)
My hope was quickly dashed, unless Pam Gellar is the new ghost writer. Yes, though I only got about a quarter of the way into it, it is just that bad.
It’s a real pity, as, when Michael Gruber was collaborating (doing 95% of the writing), it was one of my favorite series.
BretH
Being a Caps fan only sharing your ups and downs with the Pens this year could make me do this, so…
GO PENS!
(About time we got back to some good ol’ Caps-Pens playoff animosity!)
Schlemizel
@Joseph Nobles:
I have the exact opposite problem – I can make any kind of bread I have ever tried but plain white. Lately I have taken to tossing a cup of spent grain from my brewing into my whole wheat or rye bread & everyone raves about the texture.
Schlemizel
I’m intrested in how you managed to whip up an entire batch of bread in an evening John. Usually it takes a couple hours (at least) for rising and resting then baking and cooling enough that it does not smoosh when cut.
Also – anybody here ever tried Julia Childs method for French bread? I keep thinking about it but its a day long process so I have not committed the time.
Chet
Levon Helm died? Aw, godmotherfuckingdamnit.
Joseph Nobles
@Schlemizel:
This is the recipe I found for white bread that worked like a charm for me:
allrecipes.com/recipe/grandma-vandorens-white-bread/
It’s for 3 loaves, but I just did two by switching the servings to 24. I think the sponge is what helped. I’m doing a sourdough starter now, and looking forward to keeping that going.
But wheat bread is my favorite bread from the store and I’ll get it right by hand eventually.
var
Of course baking is harder than cooking! You find out that your product is crappy the same time everyone else does. And there’s little you can do if you see it going wrong. Baking is science as much as art. Cooking means you get to taste, sample, adjust. There’s no adjusting when you bake. You are committed when you put it into the hot oven.
RedKitten
Good for you, John — that sounds like a lot of fun!!! Impromptu gatherings tend to be MUCH more fun than the parties you plan and sweat over.
WereBear
Very true. The violently purple plum bread I got when I was experimenting with my new breadmaker was so weird it was tossed out into the yard for the birds. Who wouldn’t eat it. To see it poking out of the snow the next spring like some kind of undead bread was a shock.
Montysano
“It’s perfect for someone who does not want to go out (EVER). ”
Mrs. Monty and I live in an older part of our small-ish city in the Deep South. Within 1/4 mile, we have a grocery, a pharmacy, and many friends. There are weekends where we never start a car.
It’s just too weird out there.
John Weiss
@Yutsano: If you use weight instead of volume to measure ingredients, you can get it right every time!
Get a copy of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The book is an excellent start to the craft.
Linnaeus
Dude, if I ever find myself in West Virginia, I’m totally partying at your house.
Mnemosyne
G is the baker in the family — I’m still waiting for him to crack open this book from a couple of Christmases ago. I can cook, but I get too impatient with baking.
Though, from what I’ve heard, John Weiss is 100 percent right and weighing your dry ingredients is better than measuring them by volume because local conditions (humidity etc) makes more of a difference than you’d think.
Also, too, I’ve had a surprising amount of luck using egg substitute instead of eggs in cake/cupcake recipes. I think it’s because the egg substitute is an exact measurement while the eggs can vary in size pretty considerably, so it’s more consistent. I made brownies out of a box using egg substitute that people freakin’ raved about.
karen marie
@Mnemosyne: I do not understand making brownies out of a box. The ingredients are so simple: sugar, eggs, butter, chocolate, flour, nuts, and a smidgen of salt — all of which should be in your pantry already because you can’t make anything else without them. Want chocolate pudding? Get out the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and milk.
Boxed mixes make me crazy! Especially because, in the case of puddings, it’s extraordinarily difficult to even find the non-instant kind. I’d rather stab myself repeatedly in the head and face with a fork than eat that crap.
Mnemosyne
@karen marie:
See, but I rarely cook and even more rarely bake, so I don’t usually have those things in my pantry (or, if I do, they’ve gone bad because I forgot they were there). So, for people like me, a boxed mix really is cheaper and more convenient than going out and buying a bunch of ingredients we’ll never use again.
I’m not even going to tell you about the dump cakes G makes with boxed cake mix and canned pie filling because you’ll be even more horrified. ;-)
ETA: My other defense of boxed mixes is that they let you try things out that you might not want to make from scratch. Sticky Fingers makes some good scone mixes that mean I can make scones every once in a great while without having to keep all of the ingredients on hand.
Irony Abounds
Cole has been in a rather good mood lately. He must be getting laid or something.
Linkmeister
@Joseph Nobles: Try Beth Hensperger’s bread machine cookbook. I’ve been using it for a year and haven’t had a failure so far.
Emdee
I’ve been reading Wiley’s book. Enjoying it so far. Mysterious.
Jenny
I make a couple loaves of sour dough bread every week and it is the easiest bread I’ve ever made.