Catching Up: Baking

This post provides more evidence, if any were needed, that I'm more a cook than a baker. The photo above (Tuscan Walnut Bread) is the only unqualified baking success thus far in 2011, and even it I'm going to qualify a little: I liked it (hence success!) but I'm not sure anyone else was particularly crazy about it. It was salty and chewy and chock full o' (wal)nuts.

For the same January dinner I made Old-Fashioned Brown Bread. Arguably it should be called my only success--it worked and people seemed to like it--but when I bake I'm not aiming to duplicate the cottony bread sold presliced in plastic bags, and if I'm eating brown bread I like it to be the healthy brown of whole grains. Going by this recipe old-fashioned bread gets its color from of molasses.

What I loved about baking this bread was the excellence of my new Pampered Chef stoneware loaf pans (Thanks, Mom!)

February brought hugely disappointing brioche. I often can't stop thinking about a particular cooking gadget or cookbook, but find the obsession too often ends when I acquire the coveted item. Brioche pans were no exception: after finally buying them in a variety of sizes and materials I never made brioche. Noticing that the candied orange peel I'd bought to make the orange brioche recipe that came with the mini King Arthur brioche pans was nearing its expiration date was the impetus I needed.

I'm not sure if not baking it for a particular occasion was good or bad. Good because it didn't rise at all and was almost too damp and stodgy to call bread--I'd have been embarrassed to serve it; bad because it meant I had to eat it all (or throw it away and I'm anti-waste). It's horrible to eat something too sweet and too heavy knowing there are sticks of butter in it. But the fluting was pretty and I still look forward to making classic brioche someday.

The real disaster, heartbreaking because it showed even Cook's Illustrated can fail, was Boston Cream Pie for my mom's birthday. Not that every CI recipe I've made has been flawless, but this went wrong in the ways CI's obsessive testing is supposed to prevent. I followed the directions to the letter, but even after the proscribed night in the refrigerator the custard runnily overflowed.

The unattractive dripping of the chocolate was my own fault (how does one achieve artfully artless drips?), but it certainly didn't help. Hideous but delicious: luckily the celebration was family only.