De Baking Psychopath

I love lazy weekend mornings. But even more so, I love lazy weekend morning brunches: Pancakes, waffles, French toast, herbed scrambled eggs, muffins, eggs over easy, sausage with maple syrup, cafe au lait, omlettes, donuts, biscuits, cinnamon buns....and on and on... Homemade brunch enjoyed slowly over a lazy morning. Yum. I've discussed pancakes before on this blog, but when I found these Oatmeal Pancakes on the blog Orangette , I knew it was time to switch up the usual pancake routine a bit. First there is an overnight soak of 2 cups of oats in 2 cups of buttermilk, to which you add 2 large eggs and 1/2 cup of melted unsalted butter/margarine the next morning. Whisk to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Then add the dry to the wet ingredients and whisk to combine. The batter will start bubbling and poofing, so hurry up and start cooking! Heat your nonstick sk...

Love during war? Through sickness? Lost love, found again after surviving trials and tribulations across sea and land? Not quite so dramatic, but a tale of two high school sweethearts who went to different colleges....and biscotti. I went to the College of the Big Buff Bird, and he went to the College of Corn Fields. The two colleges were hundreds and hundreds of miles apart. We ended up only seeing each other at most every half year, usually involving him making multi-legged plane trips to see me. In between those few-and-far-between visits, I wanted to send care packages to the boyfriend at the College of Corn Fields, something that would survive the shipping process and not go stale. Biscotti sounded like a good idea. I'd always liked the (expensive) ones in the coffee shops, so I figured it'd be good to see if I could make good ones at home. And they were dry and hard to begin with, so they could withstand some battering in the mail. I've been collecting (mostly ba...

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of posts lately. I have been baking but not really taking pictures and labwork has been happily productive so I've been a bit short on time to sit down and crank out the posts. But here are the pictures of the finished pizza using the No-Knead bread dough recipe I promised. After a few days in the fridge, the dough was so flavorful and chewy, and it smelled almost like we put beer in it! The last picture shows the beautiful bubble structure we got in the dough. Yum. It may be the best tasting pizza dough we've made at home EVER. Otherwise I've been baking some "healthy" things, although the ulterior motive is to get rid of some ingredients in the fridge/freezer. 1) Lemon Angel Food Cake Cupcakes. I am too lazy and cheap to go out to buy an angel food cake pan, but I wanted to get rid of the egg whites in my freezer from all those times I made chocolate chip cookies that called for one yolk. Finding this recipe that used muffin...

You know, one of those days. Where even though you have "more important" things to do (i.e. an application for research funding due by midnight the next day), baking seems infinitely more urgent, and important to your mental health. And you realize you have some pantry cleaning to do. On Sunday, I really wanted a chocolate chip cookie. And while flipping through a few cookie books and finding more chocolate chip cookie variations of interest, I was reminded that 1) I haven't in recent memory given either AB's CCC or the NYTimes CCC a try, and 2) I have some bread flour I really need to start getting rid of. Alton Brown's The Chewy: up close and personal The premise of Alton Brown's The Chewy cookie (and the NYTimes-featured cookie, although I didn't make that recipe this time) is that since bread flour has a higher percentage of protein (gluten) in the flour, the moisture you give it (in the form of water from melted butter) and the time you let it rest t...

Hope everyone had a warm and safe new year's weekend! Many things to look forward to this year: World Nutella Day--February 5 Research conference in CA in February Chocolate Chip Cookie Week (!) --March 7-15, during which happens to be my birthday! 9th anniversary of our relationship First trip back to the Motherland in 3 years in July, for the grandmother's 80th birthday And of course more baking to be done!! Most of what I've done recently is make this holiday snack mix by David Lebovitz over and over again, but it's sooooooo good.... And in other pursuits, I've picked up knitting again...only to be reminded why I don't knit much anymore (other than the fact I don't have much time to devote to it)--the cats love to play and gnaw on the yarn all day...