My dough for the Chewswise Bread Baking Challenge after the 12-18 hour rising stage
It’s another snow day in Baltimore! (Unless you’re my friend Ryan, who is sure he is going to have to go to work.) If you’re itching to get out of the house, What’s to Eat Baltimore? and the Baltimore Restaurant Examiner have been posting lists of open restaurants and bars on their blogs and on Twitter. Some places even have specials (ah, food and drink specials – there’s a benefit of the worst winter in Baltimore’s history).
But maybe you’re staying inside today thinking, ‘This would be a great day to catch up on ______.” If you’re inclined to fill in that blank with food projects, here are a few ideas:
1) Participate in the Snowpocalypse Bread Baking Challenge: I love this idea! We’re all stuck inside anyway, some of us with nothing but time to make bread. So Samuel Fromartz at Chewswise is holding a bread baking competition. Follow the recipe on his site – which thankfully contains minimal ingredients, and thus may not require a trip to the grocery store – and post your picture to his Flickr group. The person with the best-looking loaf of bread gets a copy of Jim Lahey’s My Bread. The picture above is my bread after the 12-18 hour rising stage.
2) Food Reading: If you read this blog, it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of The New Yorker’s food stories. So I was roaming the stacks at the library on Monday and my eye just happened to catch on Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink. What luck, right? I mean, how often does the perfect book catch your eye when you’re just roaming in the stacks? In Baltimore, the local libraries are closed today, but you can read many of the stories on the New Yorker website. I enjoyed “Good Cooking,” Calvin Tompkins’ 1974 profile of Julia and Paul Child that takes us through the publishing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Julia’s TV show. Other good reads: “An Attempt to Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing” by Calvin Trillin and “The Ketchup Conundrum” by Blink author Malcolm Gladwell.
Dump Cookies: Experiment with whatever you have in the house
3) Make dump cookies: Cookies are the perfect baking project on a snow day. I also think a day when you can’t necessarily get to the grocery store is a great day for experimentation (i.e. dumping in whatever ingredients you have in the house). Like last night, I wanted to make cookies but I didn’t have any butter, so I substituted oil; I also substituted honey and maple syrup for brown sugar. Then I dumped in the add-ins I had on hand: some chocolate chips, unsweetened coconut, and peanuts left over in a bag of trail mix. My cookie was cakey, but good and less sweet than normal. To make your own dump cookies, use Rosie Daley’s Orange Oatmeal Cookies as a base. You can substitute oil and/or applesauce for the butter; use white sugar, brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup for the sugar; and omit the banana and orange zest if you don’t have it. Then dump in dried fruit, nuts, chocolate, coconut, granola, etc. – whatever you have around. Have fun!
