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Hello my fellow Tuesdays with Doriers!!! (And of course a special shout out to all of the other Jennifers! There are what, like 10 of us?)

Right now I’m getting ready to hop on a plane to go on a superawesome adventure to someplace warm, but I am really looking forward to checking out everyone’s blog posts and getting to know you guys when I return. I’d love it if you said hello down there in the comments! =)

This week we’ve got White Loaves. I’ve baked bread before but not the kind with yeast and kneading and rising…so this was a little intimidating.

It starts here:

Flour, salt, sugar, yeast, butter, and water. Simple ingredients, really.

The party really gets going with this stuff:

Yeast! It is awesome! And I had no idea that it was a fungus. Do you know how the stuff we bake with is made?

1. Pick a happy, healthy yeast cell.
2. Let it reproduce in a test tube for a bit.
3. Mix it with wort (a growth medium).
4. Dump the mixture in giant tanks with more wort and let the yeast have a reproduction party. Because they reproduce asexually this party is probably not as fun as it could be. So sad! But basically from a tiny little yeast cell tons are created.
5. Wash off the party and then separate the yeast from the wort in a centrifuge.
6. Send the yeast off to manufacturing.
7. Tada! Yeast!

A more detailed explanation is here. Want to geek out some more? I got your back.

Anyway.

A bit of whirring in the mixer.

Whirring might not be the most accurate description. It was more like violent gallumping across the counter for 10 minutes. Am I the only one who felt like I was trying to contain a bucking bronco while the dough was kneading in the mixer? Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Whew. We did it.

And into the great pasta bowl for a rest.

Embiggened:

And after the second rise:

I think I didn’t have the temperature warm enough for the second rise. So about midway through I kicked the oven on for a few minutes and let it rise in there for another 1/2 hour. That improved things enormously.

Impatient slicing:

I needed this bread in mah belleh the second it came out of the oven. The first loaf did not survive three hours.

What?!? I had help!

This one actually made it to my mom’s house for dinner:

One loaf to rule them all.

White Loaves are amazing. Straight out of the oven is delicious. Toasted is even better — it tastes quite a lot like English muffins! And the recipe was really simple – I actually whipped up another couple of loaves a few days later with only a cursory glance at the book. It finally clicked what people mean when they say baking bread is a lot about understanding what is going on with the dough’s texture and appearance. And the second time around things came together a lot more easily and the bread turned out even better. The dough knew I was no longer intimidated, I think.

Want the recipe? Buy the book! It is also posted on our host, Jules’ blog. Our other host this week is Laurie . Yay!

Being elbows-deep in a mixing bowl full of dough makes me happy. Watching the mixer smoosh butter and sugar together into the beginning of a cookie dough is awesome. And there is nothing like that “I just baked something!!!” smell in the house.

I love making other people happy by sharing things I’ve baked. They’re usually pretty happy.

Unless there has been an epic flop (I’m looking at you, cake pops.). (People were still happy then, I was just persnickety about them.)

So I was listening to NPR a couple of weeks ago and heard this interview with Dorie Greenspan. She was talking about this blogger who got a bunch of people together and baked one recipe a week from her book Baking: From My Home to Yours. They all baked and posted their stories on the Tuesdays with Dorie site. And it took four years! Impressive!

So I thought, hey! I don’t have enough to do right now so it would be neat if they did it again and I could play along.

Surprise!

They’re baking through Baking with Julia starting in February.

So I signed up here and ordered the book. It was on my doorstep the next day.

Droooooool.

Yum.

Wow.

And whoa.

I spent hours reading through the recipes. I could barely put the book down. I carried it around with me and made it a little nest beside my bed so I could absorb its awesomeness while I slept.

Um.

Yeah. I have loved some cookbooks in the past…this one is just amazing. The photography is gorgeous. The recipes are clearly written. There’s lots of cool baking science stuff in there for me to geek out on.

LOVE!

So:

February 7: White Loaves.
February 21: Chocolate Truffle Tartlets.

I’m a little worried. I can bake cookies and cakes and quick breads. But these recipes…

Kneading.
Dough rolling.
Yeast.
Flaky layers.
Tart pans!
Intimidating.

So February is shaping up to be a very busy month because I feel like I am bopping around trying to do all of the things from all of the blogs and all of the pins and keep my own blog and projects moving along and I’m going on a funfunFUN!!!! adventure *pantpant* how will I ever find the time?!?! But I feel better going at this crazy-making pace.

I feel like I am Accomplishing the Things.