I am at Karen and Spanky’s house.  There are Street Fighter 4 sounds and egg beater sounds in the background.  We have had a Tea Party, limited in size but not limited in scope.  We don’t have pictures of our full spread, because food pretty much disappeared when it hit the table.  Also, the table was not large enough for all the food we made.  Also, our designated food photographer was too busy stuffing her face full of food (and thus taking care of our table space problem) to document all of our spread.

Drinks:

- Earl Grey Creme tea (from Teavana)

- Homemade ginger beer

- Storebought ginger beer

- I had a muthafuckin’ Vault. But that was just for maximum cooking power

Food:

- Cucumber, cream cheese, and whole wheat mini sandwiches

- Rosemary ham, cream cheese, and whole wheat mini sandwiches

- Bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapenos

- Cranberry scones

- Bacon and cheddar scones (see recipe below)

- Mumsy’s  buttermilk cake

- Vanilla cupcakes with strawberry whipped cream

- Clotted cream and blackberry jam from jars

The Baconator

The sandwiches ended up leaving us prematurely, and Gloria ate all of the cucumber, so I could not make more. The rosemary ham is delicious–I found it at my local Harris Teeter, so you might find some where you are too.  The bacon-wrapped jalapeno thingies were from a recipe I got from The Pioneer Woman, who has uncontrollably good taste in food.  Even people who couldn’t take the heat did not in fact have to get out of the kitchen.  Gloria’s bacon and cheddar scones rounded up the savory foods. We remarked later that they tasted a lot like the Asian pancakes Yulin posted about.  They would probably taste like a complete breakfast with a side of scrambled eggs.

Oh god... cupcakes...

I could comment on the cranberry scones and clotted cream and the buttermilk cake, but I couldn’t do them justice.  Not when my heart belongs to the queen of all desserts, the vanilla cupcakes.  Although I love cupcakes, I have never eaten one and been utterly consumed with the urgent need to eat another.  These cupcakes were like watching a hot chick happen to drop a quarter in front of you.  You watch her bend over, and all you want to do is throw another quarter out there, so it can keep bending over. And you know, because of the delicious whipped cream, that she will still be moist and not overpoweringly sweet and perfectly flavored and covered in strawberries again and again and again………..

Shit.

The point: I could eat a lot.  Karen has promised that she will post her exact demon recipe, to capture the hearts of men by singing them into the sea.

Quote from the room: “Oh god, he’s got a purple thong on. Oh shit.”

I think I have to go.

For bonus points, feed this bread to starving graduate students and feel particularly good about yourself!

Only things I changed: clearly I don’t have a fancy mixer so I hand-mixed (had to actually use hands, not a spoon, for a minute to get the dough all together); dried rosemary because I had no fresh on hand, and so I tossed in a bit more; olive oil for melted butter brushed on the top; and because I was still using up the instant yeast, I just let it rise 1 hour in the bowl + 30min after shaping while the oven heated.

You will need:

• 1 cup warm (c. 110-115 degrees F) water
• 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil; also some more olive oil later
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 Tbs dried rosemary (fresh is fine too; just use a bit more)
• 2 1/2 cups bread (or all-purpose) flour
• 1 1/2 tps (aka one packet)

So, a word about yeast. It comes in two principle kinds, ‘active dry’ and ‘instant’/'rapid rise.’ There is also non-dried (’live’) yeast, which is creepy, and … some other denominations that are confusing, but you probably only have to care about those. If you bake bread lots, you might want to get yeast in a jar which you keep in the fridge and measure 1 1/2 tsp out of whenever you want, instead of going through tons of those packets. Active dry yeast needs to be proofed to start it making delicious bubbles – that is, mixed with some warm water and let to sit for 5-10min until it turns creamy and foamy and starts smelling like, well, yeast. “Warm water” here means ~100-115 degrees F, or, according to the ancient lore of my mother, the temperature of ‘baby’s bathwater’ – also according to ancient lore, this temperature is defined as “feels nice and warm on the inside of your wrist but just shy of scalding” – a useful trick if you are like me and never have a thermometer.

Instant/rapid rise yeast, however, should not be proofed! If you do, because it rises so very rapidly, all the bubble-making potential will likely get used up during the proofing process before it even meets the flour and you will have dense, sad bread. (This happened to me last time. The Bronx does not appear to sell regular yeast, alas.) If you have instant yeast, just toss it in with the other dry ingredients. Also, with instant yeast, you don’t usually want to give it two long rises. A regular pattern for non-quick bread might be: knead, rise 1 hour or till double size, punch down and knead, another hour rise, punch down and shape or put in pan, 20min / while the oven is heating rise. So with instant yeast you would only do one hour-long rise, then punch down, knead, shape, and let rise only another 20min before baking. But the rest of this recipe will assume you have regular old active dry yeast.

ANYWAY. So take 1/4 c of your water and add the active dry yeast, stir till dissolved, and let sit about 7 min. If it gets frothy and creamy in this time you are good to go.

Meanwhile, sift together (read, for me: stir with a fork or pastry blender) flour, sugar, salt, and stir in about 1.5 Tbs olive oil in a big bowl. The original recipe called for 3 Tbs olive oil which is way too moist and dense in my opinion; 1.5 seems to about do it, but it’s a matter of taste. You can substitute whole wheat flour for healthier bread, but I wouldn’t substitute more than a cup at the most, otherwise (again) it gets to dense, since whole wheat is inevitably heavier. If you’re using all-purpose flour instead of bread flour a half-cup of wheat to 2 cups of white flour is a nice balance.

Add yeast mixture, the rest of the water (warm!), and stir till it’s more or less coagulated. It will be a mess, however. This is the sign that you need to stick your hands in it.

Skip this paragraph if you already know how to knead things. But because some of you were asking about it: first, flour your board / counter-top. A nice way to do this is sort of tossing flour across the surface. The dough will start out sticky and falling apart. Do not worry about this; dust your hands in some flour and accept that you will make a mess of yourself and your counter (aprons are good at this point, though). At first worry about getting it all in a ball, but then you’re basically folding the dough-lump in half, squashing it away from you with the heels of your hands, folding it in half the OTHER way, and repeating. The kneading is to build up strands of gluten which make the bread tasty and nutritious, give it an even crumb (aka a cross-section with lots of little holes), and help it be springy and resilient, so as you knead, the dough will start to feel less goopy and uncohered, and smoother and easier to handle. There is a danger in over-kneading, however, because it will make the dough too tough, so you want to quit when the dough starts feeling good. In most cases each kneading will go for 5-10min, at which point your forearms may be sad, but remember that it’s all in the name of science.

So knead the dough for a minute, then add the oregano, pepper, and rosemary, and continue kneading for another 5min or so. Kneading the herbs in instead of mixing them in with the dry ingredients can be a pain, but 1. it’s also kind of fun, and 2. sometimes it makes nice swirly patterns of herbs in the final product. Studies show, however, that you could have just throw them in when you sifted the dry ingredients and it wouldn’t hurt.

Shape the dough into a round, put in a greased (with that olive oil, ideally) bowl in a warm, dark place, cover it, and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in size.

Punch down, knead another c.5min, shape again, re-cover and put it back in that warm, dark place for another hour.

After an hour, start preheating your oven for 400F. At this point you must ask yourself two questions: 1. How much do I care about “oven lift”? and 2. Do I own a clean spray-bottle full of water? Oven spring is how much the bread puffs up in the oven, especially at first, and one way to encourage it is by putting the bread into a humid and extra-hot oven for the first few minutes. The easiest way of doing that is the noble spray bottle (also the most fun way). Another option is to dig out an oven-proof bowl, fill it at least 2/3 with water, and stick it in before you start heating the oven. Make sure you put it in when the oven is cold to prevent shattered glass (if you’re usuing pyrex) or other disaster!

Take your dough again and shape it however you want. For this recipe, I usually form it into a round or two smaller ones. If you’re doing that, make sure to tuck the edges under and pinch them together to make a smooth, unbroken top to the round. It will come out somewhat boule-like. It’s also nice to slice the top at this point. Take your sharpest knife or a razor blade if you have one around and make a couple parallel long, shallow, swift cuts across the top. This took me a long time to get down, because you can’t make them too deep, but you want them to go across the entirety of the bread or they won’t sort of swell outward and look delicious. Also you really do have to go fast or it won’t work.

Let your bread rise for another c. 20min while the oven is pre-heating, then slide it in. When you put the bread in, if you’re taking the spray-bottle approach, have that at the ready and squirt it furiously into the hot oven (this makes a good noise) before slamming the door shut. Wait about 10min, then turn the heat down to 375 and, if you went that route, take out the bowl of hot water (caution: REALLY disastrously hot). Let bake another c. 20min or until nice and brown.

Take the bread out and brush top with olive oil (or butter, if you’re a wuss) while still hot, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt for more ‘tastes like Macaroni Grill’ points.

Et voila! This bread is pretty dense and moist, but very flavorful, too. I make it when I want something more show-off-y than a regular baguette.

This account of it is long only because I included all the bread-making trivia one might want – it is actually not any more complicated than most bread. The original recipe, you may note, is for a bread machine, so I had to extrapolate the process, but armed with general bread-making knowledge you can make anything you’d like by hand.