Baking with Julia – Rustic Potato Loaves

These little beauties are the first things I’ve baked in two weeks. My oven was starting to have an identity crisis – does it actually turn on and bake things or is it just a storage space ala Carrie Bradshaw? I’ve been trying to make good choices with food so I haven’t been baking really at all since the most delicious cookies ever. I have eaten A LOT of salad and veggies with a protein on top and guess what – it hasn’t been all bad. I have to keep reminding myself that I do actually really like these things and they do taste great, it’s just when I think about what I want to cook or eat, a pasta that is smothered in cheese is usually what comes to mind. Good news – my pants feel looser. Bad news- I haven’t weighed myself or anything so this could just be an illusion. More good news (who wants to end on a bad note, really?) it is finally feeling like spring around here which means I can start running again. I went 3 times last week and it felt really good to get outside and get moving again.

But about this bread – I really didn’t know what to expect here. My potatoes were a little small so I used five and I decided not to peel them. The book said to leave the peel on and I was curious about how it would turn out so I went with it. After they had cooled for the allotted time I threw them in the mixer to get blended and was pleasantly surprised by how the peels broke up into little itty bitty pieces.

The rest of the ingredients were super simple and just got thrown in with the potatoes before a loooooooooooooooong 11 minutes of mixing. I was a little worried and the top of the mixer did get kinda hot and smelled weird but she made it through. The directions in the book were spot on because it totally did look too dry at first but eventually got really creamy and brioche-like.

Kinda just looks like mashed potatoes right? Trust me, there’s yeast in there. It smelled really delicious and yeasty and potato-y. After a short rise time I got to use one of my new favorite toys that my friend Susan brought me from France – my dough scraper! You might think it’s weird to get super excited about a smallish piece of hard white plastic but I love it!!

Shaping the dough was easy because it wasn’t sticky in the least and it just behaved really well.

And now we have some little footballs!

Um okay I guess they were more football-shaped in my head than they really were in real life. Another short rise later and these were ready to be transported to the hot oven with another one of my favorite things:

I baked them for about 50 minutes and they were ready to go. I liked this bread because it was the work of just one afternoon and it didn’t take three days to make. There’s something satisfying about being able to do something start to finish with relatively no downtime in between. I froze one of the loaves and have been snacking on the other one since Saturday. I can say that it makes pretty delicious toast and I’m going to make a ham sandwich with it for lunch today for sure. Will I make this again? Probably not, but I’m glad I tried it this time.

This week’s host is Dawn from Simply Sweet so check out her site for the recipe!

Baking with Julia – Mocha Chip Cookies

First of all I just want to say thanks for the nice comments on my last not-so-fun post. They really meant a lot to me and I appreciate you taking the time. I’m still thinking about everything and trying to figure things out but today I got to do one of my favorite things which is this – cream some butter and sugar, turn on the oven, turn off my brain, and bake some frickin’ cookies. Since winter is seemingly never-ending this year (that goddamn groundhog is a liar. A LIAR!) it was especially soothing to bake something warm and gooey and make the house smell nice.

Brace yourselves: I only had one stick of butter in the house. gasp! That’s how you know I haven’t been feeling like myself guys, one stupid stick of butter. I was kind of tempted to try a Greek yogurt substitution thing for the other stick of butter since I recently pinned something that tells you how to do all kinds of swaps to make things healthier but then I thought, do I really need 4 dozen cookies? Probably not. So I just halved the recipe and kept them nice and fatty. I’m trying to make really good choices foodwise these days and I think letting a cookie be a cookie and not a health food is a good choice. Sue me. This way I’ll probably only eat one or two instead of telling myself that they’re not that bad for me and eating like 6. Fact.

Look at that beautiful dough – the flecks of espresso powder in there are killing me. And it smelled amazing. I mixed the dough this morning and then baked them after lunch so it was definitely a less time-consuming project that our last recipe. This is the kind of thing that makes me love my stand mixer again. I know I get mad at her from time to time, but Candy is seriously my kitchen BFF forever and always. And you know what else I love? Cookie scoops! As Woody would say, “If you don’t have one, get one!”

The recipe called for dried apricots but I didn’t have any of those so dried cherries are what’s happening here. Love them, always have them, never gonna quit them. I don’t know that I could say the same thing for dried apricots. I was going to try to wait and not eat these until after dinner tonight, but how could I properly blog them without trying them? hehehehe

This is pretty much the ideal cookie for me – crispy, crunchy exterior + chewy, delicious interior = cookie bliss. When I was halving the recipe I accidentally still put in the whole tsp of baking soda instead of 1/2 so maybe that contributed the the amazing texture. Who knows? I’m not a scientist. What I am is a cookie connoisseur these get my two enthusiastic thumbs up!

To try these for yourself (cause I’m not sharing mine, sorry!) visit this week’s host Galettista for the recipe.