The little man dancing
a quick post to share a link to a video of the little man dancing that I posted on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAUDzyeu9FY
Grub
Bread. There is something so satisfying about a simple loaf or boule. In the past my wife and I have found ourselves wandering into adjacent neighborhoods on long dog walks with the underlying objective of getting a great loaf of bread. The last bakery that grabbed us was Almondine in DUMBO. Their french country bread is amazing. really. We read that it was voted best bakery in New York Magazine and at first we kinda thought “whatever. so many things in this city can be so overhyped.”, but then over time the allure became overwhelming and we trekked down to DUMBO with the dogs (I mean hey, they love the waterfront…). We have since made the trek for their bread repeatedly.
One weekend afternoon my wife brought home a baguette from the bakery around the corner from us, Betty Bakery . While the staff is oddly uncaring about your wants and needs the deserts and bread are well worth the unease of facing off with a combative employee. After a few loaves from Betty I discovered that they do not actually bake the bread (just delicious deserts) but have it delivered from Sullivan St. Bakery. This info led me down the path of internet searching and there it was! A recipe and a new baking technique! Lets just say I was intrigued.
For years I have been trying to bake a great loaf of bread. It all started with a bread maker in college. That served its function for my naive palate. Then I acquired a baking stone (I saw it in a kitchen drawer at my moms house. It was unopened. She let it go without a fight.). I let the breadmaker knead the dough and then I would bake it in the oven on the stone. Later we purchased a food processor and I put Mark Bittman’s recipes to work. Whoa. Life changing. I was now making a pretty decent loaf of bread. It required putting water in a preheated cast iron pan in the oven to generate steam. A bit inconvenient but well worth it. And now back to Sullivan Street Bakery… He has this recipe for no knead bread baked in a dutch oven. I gotta say, with a bit of practice this is a great recipe. The first loaf you make is actually pretty darn good. After a bit of experimenting the consensus around our house is that we like a combination of recipes. I make the boule recipe from Mark Bittman but cook it the Sullivan st. way.
So, as you can see I was not really joking. This is my new obsession. I have just rambled on and on about bread. Mmmmm… bread…
I will post pictures of my endeavors as I go. If you feel inspired, get to baking and send me some pics! I will post them! Or send me links to your site where you have your own pictures and you make fun of my weak loaf!
The Goods…
So, after 4 months of living with our new little monster I feel like I have a little bit of a schedule materializing! At the moment he is napping (yay!), so I decided to set up this spankin’ new blog. I feel the superhighway doesn’t have enough people writing about themselves and their lives… but really, we live thousands of miles away from our families and this kinda feels like a way to keep everyone up to date on our lives.
I am a stay at home dad (for about a month now! whoa.) in a small Brooklyn apartment with little master Ian and two dogs (Turbo and Rose) who are well aware that they have been knocked down a notch. My wonderful wife has returned to work because she has health insurance and, well, the state of the economy has sucker punched me (more of this subject in later posts). I plan on using this forum as a place to write stream of consciousness style ramblings about being a stay at home dad, post some pics of the kid and the dogs, talk about living in Brooklyn, and probably talk about my newest obsession – attempting to bake an AMAZING loaf of bread. I have come pretty darn close. A few loaves have bordered on greatness, but there is always room for improvement.
Sorta in conjunction with this new blog I have started another project, taking a photobooth (mac!) picture of little master Ian everyday and posting it to flickr. As of today I am doing pretty good, one for one!
So if you have stumbled across this page, you really shouldn’t be goofing off at work.
