Lemon Sabayon Pine Nut Tart and Rosemary Bread

Why would I be making these delicious things when I'm in the middle of grant writing? Well, it was for supper club! Anything for the creation of food that will soon be in my mouth. mmm.

So I made the rosemary bread from "Amy's Breads" and the Lemon Sabayon Tart with Pine Nut Crust from French Laundry. The rosemary bread is delicious. I think I've posted it before but when I made it this time I subbed 1/2 cup of high gluten bread flour for the original whole wheat and I think it made the bread moist and chewy while maintaining the crustiness. Great with evoo and balsamic.

I enjoyed making the Lemon Tart. It was quite easy although the Sabayon took a while. But I got to use my new awesome foot long whisk made out of piano wires that I bought from the C-town resto supply store. I have to admit, though, that I have no arm strength and could barely manage that big whisk after the first 10 seconds. So maybe next time it'll be the hand beater...

People loved the bread and liked the tart. Some complained that they could not taste the pine nuts. I decided this was because they did not know what pine nuts taste like because the crust is very distinctly pine nutty. The sabayon was smooth and so tart. Lovely.

Whole Wheat Bread

A while ago I baked a whole wheat bread from Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." I had been getting loaves that were too moist so I baked this one for the maximum time and it came out a little dry. I later figured out that using high gluten flour (which wasn't called for in this recipe) seems give softer moist loaves so maybe that was the cause of wet bread before. The whole wheat made a delicious sandwich loaf. His recipes are super long so I'll just recommend that you borrow or buy the book.

Breads and apprenticing

I suppose it is a little dubious to be apprenticing from a book but I'm doing my darnedest to from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart and "Amy's Bread" by Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree. The two bread that I have been working on are Amy's Walnut Scallion Bread (delicious) and Peter's Ciabatta (hard to work with such a wet dough). The breads get a little better every time but I've still got to play around to get the right crust and coolness of the crumb. Anyways, here are some loaves I've baked.

Walnut Scallion:



Lots of bread (the left two are the ciabattas and the rest are walnut scallion (my roommate really loves walnut scallion bread so we bake lots of it).
Close up of the ciabattas