Recipe #87 - Breton Biscuits

I received 13 number suggestions in total. I went to Random.org and plugged in 1-13. #10 was chosen.

See? Would I lie to you? Possibly, but not likely.

So thank you, Katy! You were response #10 and what recipe did you pick? Recipe #87: Breton Biscuits.

Are you wondering, "What the hell is a Breton Biscuit?" Yeah, I was too up until about 5 minutes ago. Here is what Martha has to say about Breton Biscuits:

"These shortbread-like cookies hail from Brittany, a region of France renowned for its delicious butter. Be sure not to underbake them or they will not be crisp enough. Scoring the lattice pattern on the top takes a bit of time, but it's easy to do and the end result is well worth the effort.

So honestly, these look pretty damn simple. The lattice work does look like a pain in the ass, but not difficult. If they taste anything like shortbread I will be quite happy. Who doesn't like shortbread?? I am thinking about making these this weekend and bringing them with me to book club for the ladies (and gents) to sample. As usual, I will keep you updated ;)

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In other, related, news. I made a lemon meringue pie this morning. It was baked and in the fridge cooling by 10 a.m. This either means that I am a baking rockstar, or I am insane. I haven't yet decided. What really matters is that this pie tastes like pure lemony heaven. Wanna see my stiff peaks?

Please stop looking at my dirty stove in the background.

EXTREME CLOSEUP! WHOAAAAA

Recipe #333 - Pissaladiere - The Verdict!

So it's done. The first recipe has been made. You probably want to know how it went, right? Well, I suppose I can oblige.
The first thing I will say is that I highly recommend you read your whole recipe before starting. Why? Because maybe your recipe will take upwards of 2 hours to make and maybe you wanted to eat before that! And what if your recipe turns out like crap? Then you spent upwards of 2 hours making a meal that was not good and now you have to make something else! That is exactly what happened, friends. Things started good. I got together my cast of characters.

These are the ingredients for the crust. Well, not the maple syrup with Quatchi in the background, that was just back there and I didn't remove it. I am not a professional photographer, people. Move on.

This part went well! Well, not extremely well or anything. I read through ingredients too fast and sometimes get ahead of myself. Let's just say I'm glad that yeast comes in three packs, because I needed them. Don't hold it against me, o.k.? I'm human. Barely. Most days. Once I got the yeast working and things started getting yeasty, I was feeling pretty good. I even took this picture to show you what yeast looks like when it gets all foamy.

Yesterday I made my away message on AIM to "It's getting yeasty in herr, so bake up all your breads." I'm not well.

So then you add the flour and whatnot to the yeasty goodness and you knead it out and voila you have a dough! It's kind of amazing actually. You let it rest in a warm place and then in an hour you have dough that is ready to be kneaded. We all want to feel kneaded, don't we? Or is it needed? I don't remember.

Don't hate me for these terrible iPhone photos. But look at that badass dough, don't you just wanna nom it already? Don't, it wouldn't be tasty at this stage of the game.

While waiting for it to rise, I got together the rest of the nasty mess. I'm sorry, I just can't fake enthusiasm here.

Do you see how I hid the olives behind the thyme? I think I was in very deep denial. Even the anchovies got premier placement over those vomit inducing olives. That other bunch of greenery is parsley. Which I think is very underused. It's tasty.

So yes, while my dough was a-risin' I went and chopped up all this stuff and get it ready to put on the dough. The recipe called for 3 medium onions. I think Martha is batshit crazy though. 3 onions would have been way too much, so I only used one. Did I mention that I will edit these recipes however I see fit? No? Well, I'm telling you now. I sauteed up those onions with the garlic and parsley and thyme. It smelled so good. I checked on my dough and it was rising perfectly. So really, I was feeling hella confident at this point. What could go wrong!?

Don't you wanna eat the shit out of these onions? Damn they are sexy. Good job, Kayla.

My dough was ready, so I started rolling it out. I have honestly never felt a dough like this before. It was so springy! It felt really good though. Am I the only freak who likes the feel of dough? It's not a fetish or anything, but it just feels so good underneath my fingers. Ok, you can seriously stop judging me now. This is my blog and I will romanticize the feel of dough if I want to. So, I rolled it out and put it in my baking pan. Now it's time to assemble. I have no pictures of this step, probably because my fingers were covered in greasy anchovy juice and I didn't want to get it on my phone. The anchovy part honestly wasn't that bad. It wasn't until I got to the olives that I encounter an issue. The first issue, being that deplorable brine smell. The second being that these were pitted olives. The recipe calls for un-pitted, or de-pitted or pitless olives. It was at this point that I started to panic. I went into Nate's room, where he is diligently trying to put together furniture for his office and looked at him, confused. The conversation went something like this:

Me: (In one sad angry breath) TheoliveshavepitsandIdon'tknowhowtogetthemoouuuuutttttt (end whine)
Him: Do we have a cherry pitter?
Me: What the fuck? Are you serious? Who has a cherry pitter?
Him: Well if we have a garlic press they usually have a pitter on one end and you just...
Me: Stop right there. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not even sure you're speaking english. You're just going to have to show me.

That's right, I made him stop what he was doing to show me how to use an olive pitter. Or cherry pitter. Whatever the hell it was. It would have been perfect, except these olives were god awfully tiny and almost went right through the hole of the pitter device. So most of the olives that went onto the pissaladiere were pretty damn mangled. Not like I care. I hope they suffered.

Now the bastard goes into the oven. Martha says to bake for 12 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for another 15. I say, "Screw you, Martha. I'm running an my weekly in WoW and I can't be arsed to get up to rotate a pan." (There is a geek reference in there, I apologize, sort of). But then of course halfway through I panicked that something would go horribly wrong if I didn't rotate the pan and went to check on it. Everything looked good (as it possibly could) so I didn't rotate. It was the principle of the thing. I could have rotated but I wanted to prove Martha wrong.

So after 30 something minutes in the oven the finished product was ready to pull out. I was absolutely flabbergasted to find that my end result looked strikingly similar to the picture in Martha's book!! I seriously almost died. I was expecting it to come out looking like a pool of miniature fish, gooey tomatoes, and hapless olives.

Look at that! It looks edible! Edible as hell, even.

But last came the ultimate test. The taste test. I cut it up and the crust crunched under my pizza cutter. Such a lovely sound. I barely waited until it was cool. I wanted to take a bite of my creation! My somewhat beautiful creation, even! In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit, my first bite had no olive or anchovy. I was a wimp. That first bite? So. Freaking. Disappointing. I'm pretty sure I could gnaw on my own fingers and it would have my flavor than this bite of Pissaladiere had. I yelled for Nate and shoved a piece in his face and told him to eat it. He was also not enthusiastic. He, being the ballsy one, decided that he would try a bite with the anchovy and olive. I watched his face closely, waiting for some sign of emotion. I got the "Not so bad" face. He lovingly picked off the olive (sorry guys, I couldn't do it) and told me to try a bite with the anchovy. He said the saltiness gave it much more flavor. So I did. While I will admit that the anchovy changed the overall flavor of the dish, it was not for the better, in my opinion. Maybe I'm just not meant to be a fan of anchovies. But I was left making this face for the next 5 minutes.

Can you imagine what this face would look like if an olive was involved? I shudder to think.

So I wound up making some pasta and meat sauce and scraping all the stuff off and dipping the crust in my canned sauce. Nate had another few bites but also wound up scraping off the anchovies. I won't call this a complete failure. It looked great, it smelled pretty good, it was simple to make, it just wasn't very flavorful, unless you ate it with the anchovies and olives, which I just wasn't keen on. Nate also made the observation that this dish was definitely meant to eat as an appetizer. Small pieces with a glass of wine or something. I agree.

So my final verdict?
I decided that I will rate everything on three separate criteria. Level of difficulty, appearance (in comparison to the book) and taste.

Level of Difficulty: 2 out of 5 anchovies

Appearance: 4.5 out of 5 anchovies

Taste: 1.5 out of 5 anchovies


Now I need your help. What is the next recipe I will make? Page #333 has been taken, so you'll have to pick another number. I want you ALL to leave a number in the comments. I will use a random number generator to decide who has the winning number. I was originally going to take the first number only, but this makes it more fun. So even if you aren't the first response, you're number still might get chosen! I will pick the "winner" tomorrow night. Comment away!

Recipe #333 - Pissaladiere - Shopping Trip

Well that was a traumatizing shopping trip. I usually enjoy grocery shopping. I relish it actually. I find it quite peaceful.

That was not how I felt on today's particular trip. Why, you might ask? Because I had to buy some truly miserable ingredients for this challenge.

Now, I have bought olives before, specifically black olives to put on skewers with tortellini and salami as appetizers. Even then, I won't eat the olives. I make them for other people. Out of the goodness of my heart. So I've never bought olives with the intent of me eating them. This was a new thing. I've also never bought Niçoise olives before. They are particularly ugly and smelly. Or maybe I am just bitter.

I walked into the store entrance closest to the olive bar. Might as well tackle it head on, right? Wrong! My nose was immediately assaulted with the scent of brine. So disgusting. I circled the olive bar, all the while trying not to breathe, trying to find Niçoise olives. Oh. There they are. Damn they are ugly. Here, let me show you.



Regardless of their stench and wretched appearance, I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was purchasing these badboys. There was a slight problem though. There was no vessel for me to put them in! This was a huge olive bar, shouldn't they have had some type of container for you to fill with these little bastards? Well I circled again trying to find something to contain my vile purchase, but to no avail. I decided to look and see if I could find them in a jar. I was not spending another minute next to these foul demons.

I was moving on to bigger and better things right? Wrong again, my dearest readers. Wrong again. I had to go find the anchovies. It was found in the aptly named "canned fish" area. I'm not really a fan of canned fish of any type (even tuna, it smells like cat food. Or cat food smells like tuna. Either way, I am not a fan) so this is also a foreign section of the supermarket for me. I had the option of flat fish fillets or whole fish. Martha was not specific, but I did not want to have to deal with the whole fish. I can maybe pretend they are something else if I don't have to look at their little anchovy faces.

No, my thumb has not been replaced with a poorly drawn smiley face. I do, however, bite my nails and didn't want to subject you to the sight. Next time I will get a manicure. I promise. Maybe.

But really, the most embarassing part of the whole trip was the tomatoes. I don't ever really buy fresh tomatoes either. I'm not a big fan of raw tomatoes and neither is hubs, so when I need tomatoes for something I buy them canned and then cook them into something. This recipe calls for plum tomatoes. Is it really sad that I had no idea what a plum tomato was? Thankfully, I have an iPhone and was able to google "Plum Tomatoes" and see what I was supposed to be looking for. But the store had no plum tomatoes! I had to think on my feet. I found that there is apparently some similarity between plum and roma tomatoes, so the romas came home with me.
The rest of my shopping trip was not nearly as scary or eventful. I did decide that since I am making this horrible recipe that I needed to bake something nom nom nom to make up for it. I snagged a ton of lemons off my in-laws tree yesterday and decided to make a lemon meringue pie. I am not using Martha's recipe since I'm assuming that one will get chosen for me. I'm going with Alton Brown's LMP recipe which also calls for a frozen pie crust (OH THE HORROR!!).

When life gives you lemons, give them to me so I can make you a pie.

I think the Pissaladiere is getting made tonight and the pie will wait until Wednesday. I will probably post my adventure with that as well, but it will not count towards my challenge. That will just be for fun and yumminess.

Look for my final post on Recipe #333 tomorrow!

Recipe #333 - Pissaladiere

You know what I call a bad sign? When the first recipe chosen is something you can't even pronounce. Some call this a challenge, I call it bullshit.

There are techincally TWO recipes on this page. One for the Pissaladiere itself (the filling) and the other is for the dough. The picture makes it look sort of like a pizza. Ok. I'm feeling it. Pizza is ALWAYS good. Right?



It was only once I begun to read the ingredients list that I felt a little squicky. This recipe includes two of my least favorite foods. Olives and Anchovies. It almost seems unthinkable that the world hates me so much to make my first challenge include both of these rotten, hellish, ingredients.


Keep calm and carry on, right?


This is what Martha has to say about PIssaladiere:
"Pissaladiere is a specialty of the southern French town of Nice. Named for Pissalat ("salted fish"), this tart always includes anchovies, either whole or pureed, which are spread over the dough before baking."

Oh Martha, even you couldn't make this sound tasty. Luckily, my best friend and husband like these things, so hopefully I will be able to pawn this off on someone when I make it.

So here we go, recipe #1 (also known as recipe #333). If I wasn't nervous before (I was), I definitely am now.

I'm thinking of making this Sunday night that way I have time this weekend to shop for ingredients. Does this sound tasty to you?

What is this? Why am I here!?

That is a good question. What IS this?! Why are YOU here? I know why I am here. So, I will start there and hopefully the rest will fall into place.

I love to cook. More precisely, I really love to cook. I long to bake. I long to bake like I was born to do it. So far, when I bake, it feels more like a chore. Like I'm climbing a mountain. A really really big mountain, covered in flour instead of snow.

I have recently toyed with the idea of going to school to become the baker I want to be. I'm not saying this idea is squashed completely, but until I decide for sure what I want to do, I decided to have some fun with my growing passion for all things patisserie.

While sauntering (like I do) around Barnes and Noble the other night, lingering in the cookbook section, I found myself standing in front of the baking books. My mouth slightly agape at all of the amazing things I saw in the pages of these books. As per usual, I lingered particularly long on one of Martha Stewarts books. It was her baking handbook. A heavy book, nearly 400 pages long. She is standing on the cover looking perfect (like she does) gently touching a cake plate with a towering strawberry shortcake looking thing (I'm sure I will learn the name of this "thing" in due time). She is smiling at me. Not a friendly smile, because that isn't how Martha rolls. It's more of a "You wish you could make something this freaking fabulous while looking as polished as me" type of smile. And dammit, she's right. I do want to make that towering strawberry shortcake thing! I have given up on trying to look as polished as she does, let's just be honest, I'm not Martha.

I wanted to buy this book. With a $40.00 price tag I knew that I would really have to buckle down and use it if I bought it. I needed motivation, besides my own burgeoning passion for the craft. Where else do i turn but the internet? So friends (internet friends and real friends alike), this is where you come in handy. This is where YOU get to help me shine. To keep me honest and to keep me motivated, you will be choosing what I bake. There are enough blogs out there about "So and So cooks their way through Famous Persons Cookbook." I didn't want to do that per-se. I didn't want to start at page 1 and work my way to page 400. I would wind up getting scared of a particular recipe and skipping it altogether, not once feeling guilty (ok, maybe a little bit). This way, we will mix things up. One week I might make cupcakes and the next week I might make bread! Who knows? The possibilities, while not endless, are quite varied.

Here are the rules (That I just made up):

1. As often as I see fit (this may be more than once a week, once a week, once a month), I will come here and ask you for a number. This number will correspond with a page in the book. If the number given does not have a recipe on it I will round up (like math!) to the next closest recipe. If I am at the end of the book, I will round down. See? Simple enough.

2. No skipping recipes! If you give me a number and I think the recipe that corresponds to said number sounds awful nasty and gross, that's just too damn bad. I'm going to do it anyway. It might get donated to an unwilling friend or family member though, just sayin'.

3. I will try to photograph this process as much as possible. I'm soooo bad about remembering to take pictures. But, for the sake of this "experiment" I promise to try my hardest.

4. I will blog about EVERY recipe, regardless of how terrible it might turn out.

5. I will make the recipe within 1 week of receiving the number (barring any natural disasters...flash floods....snow storms...tornadoes...you know, the typical for California).


I think that's it!

I already asked my wonderful Facebook friends to give me a number and the lovely April said 333. I have waited until the end of this blog post to look and see what 333 is. I am nervous and excited and I sort of feel like I want to throw up. Keep your fingers crossed for me as I begin to Bake Blindly!

-Kayla the Blind Baker

(To Bake Blindly is a culinary term, it means to bake a pie crust without filling. I am NOT actually blind.)