De Baking Psychopath

I forgot what I bought the bag of almond flour from Trader Joe's for, but nut products shouldn't sit too long so I decided to find recipes to use it up quickly. As I haven't done enough field testing of macarons to really have the motivation to make those, I decided instead to make some gluten-free type of chocolate chip cookie recipes that feature nut and oat flours. This is the first of a couple I am planning to try. This one has the additional benefit of being egg-free, for those of you who need to worry about multiple allergies in a crowd of youngsters. I ended up having to throw in a few handfuls of all-purpose flour to tighten up the dough (it was too wet at first), but one could just as easily throw in more almond flour, or oat flour, or even rice flour if the same problem is encountered. This may have been due to the fact I used the coarser almond meal rather than the blanched almond flour the recipe directs. These were really well received! The texture...

I made a recent trip to California, where I had the most wonderful English tea experience: My gigantic pot of tea and my finger sandwich spread with a side salad and one scone Condiments for the scone: clotted cream, lemon curd, triple berry jam Fully constructed scone heaven So you can imagine that when I got home, I was itching to make some more scones to enjoy. The scone is one category of quick rise pastries that I have yet to get over my apprehension for making, and yet I collect scone recipes like it's my job. The recipes look simple and seem to be so tasty, and the sheer romance of having scones with freshly brewed tea makes me search avidly for recipes, and yet I shy away from making them. Partly I think it's the problem that I have not eaten many scones in my lifetime, and few of those were from reputable sources, so I lack confidence that I would be able to recognize home scone-making success in a recipe. So this trip to CA and fateful l...

Ok, so I bought The Cafe Pongo Cookbook pretty much for the sake of this bread recipe. I picked up this gem of a cookbook during the used bookstore rummaging that occurred at Saratoga Springs on the Food-Filled Girls Weekend of yore. The cafe itself is tucked away somewhere remote in the Hudson Valley area, so the book was not only a practical purchase for all its great recipes but also a local souvenir for my trip to the area. Walnut bread and I have a long, complicated history. Back in Taiwan, there is a big Japanese bakery chain called Yamazaki that used to have THE best little walnut dinner rolls that were soft, sweet and with a tinge of whole wheat flour. This spring when I was in Taiwan, it was a little bit of a personal mission to find that bread again. Alas, we discovered that they had discontinued that particular product and introduced two different versions of walnut-containing breads in its stead: a light French-style bread studded with walnuts, and a sweeter, milk-brea...

I haven't been baking too much lately, most recently because of the summer heat (no A/C) and the fact I have been playing instead with my precious new ice cream machine(!). And when I have been baking this summer, it has mostly been bread. All of which I have been very very bad at taking pictures of, and thus the lull in writing, but I did get my act together recently to bring you one of my latest installments in home bread baking. While I've been flirting with the whole idea of trying out the natural starter/old-school methods of making bread for awhile now, I think I'm going to do a little more reading and research before embarking on such a commitment. In the meanwhile, I am pretty happy to continue playing with the many variations of no-knead breads that have developed over the last 5 years. The good folks over at Cooks Illustrated tried their hand at developing their take on the technique of no-knead bread. They made several interesting changes, including decre...