I like to bake. I don't do it all that much, but I still enjoy it. A few years ago, I made a lot of bread. Nothing too fancy, just foccacia, pizza dough, cheese bread and a random things that came with the bread machine (though I generally just used the bread machine for mixing, and I liked to use the oven and pizza/bread stone for the baking part. This wasn't because I was elitist and thought I was better than the bread machine, it was just that I didn't like my bread to come out in that bread machine mold.
The other day, I had dinner at Venus in Berkeley, and they had some majorly yummy olive bread there. Inspired by that, and the fact that I had some extra olives that I needed to put to use, I decided to try to replicate their olive bread which was sort of ciabatta-ish. I've never made ciabatta before, but I figured I should give it a try. I consulted several online recipes and realized that you have to really give it a lot of time. It basically took me one and a half days to prepare the dough, which only needs to be baked for about 20 minutes. anyway, I do all this prep work, much of it by hand (even though I would have been much better off with a kitchenaid - note to santa) only to run into a major snafu.
My oven is hell bent on fucking me over. The oven is usually okay, but seems to just automatically shut off whenever I'm trying to make something that I'm really looking forward to. E.g. I made mac and cheese a little while ago, and it totally fucked me over when I couldn't pop it in the oven for that final browning step. It didn't really seem to mind cooking my cast-iron pan for an hour when I was coating it with oil or the other day when I baked my ravioli cake. but today, I'm trying to make my bread, and it decides that it doesn't want to stay on for more than 5 minutes. For those who don't know, if your bake time is compromised, it pretty much messes up whatever you're baking in the first place. (I'm going to try to make up the extra baking time in the toaster oven, but I'm not really holding my breath...)
To make things even worse, after all this effort and wasted time and energy, I realized I forgot to put the olives in my dough...
I may as well have just went to Trader Joe's and bought a loaf there.
The other day, I had dinner at Venus in Berkeley, and they had some majorly yummy olive bread there. Inspired by that, and the fact that I had some extra olives that I needed to put to use, I decided to try to replicate their olive bread which was sort of ciabatta-ish. I've never made ciabatta before, but I figured I should give it a try. I consulted several online recipes and realized that you have to really give it a lot of time. It basically took me one and a half days to prepare the dough, which only needs to be baked for about 20 minutes. anyway, I do all this prep work, much of it by hand (even though I would have been much better off with a kitchenaid - note to santa) only to run into a major snafu.
My oven is hell bent on fucking me over. The oven is usually okay, but seems to just automatically shut off whenever I'm trying to make something that I'm really looking forward to. E.g. I made mac and cheese a little while ago, and it totally fucked me over when I couldn't pop it in the oven for that final browning step. It didn't really seem to mind cooking my cast-iron pan for an hour when I was coating it with oil or the other day when I baked my ravioli cake. but today, I'm trying to make my bread, and it decides that it doesn't want to stay on for more than 5 minutes. For those who don't know, if your bake time is compromised, it pretty much messes up whatever you're baking in the first place. (I'm going to try to make up the extra baking time in the toaster oven, but I'm not really holding my breath...)
To make things even worse, after all this effort and wasted time and energy, I realized I forgot to put the olives in my dough...
I may as well have just went to Trader Joe's and bought a loaf there.
posted by Unknown at 9:54 PM
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