Red, without question, my favorite color. Last week in the operating room I arrived at a robust hypothesis as to why I have always been irrevocably drawn to red. I think, evolutionarily, it has something to do with blood. In surgery, no matter how hard I try, I cannot fully repress my physical alarm to […]
Category: Yeast Breads
Pane Nero and Contented Melancholy
Having just seen the brilliant film Inside Llewyn Davis, I, as yet another unknown artist who also knows what it is to be told (again and again), “this won’t sell,” feel more contently misunderstood. Llewyn Davis, as a character, is good company to the starving majority of artists out there wandering the planet. Further, the […]
Pane Bigio and a Helmet for the New Year
For our soul is raised out of nature through the truly sublime, sways with high spirits, and is filled with proud joy, as if itself had created what it hears, or I might add to Dr. WC Williams, what it gets from Mom for Christmas, like a new shiny moped helmet. Though I can’t ride […]
New Years Resolution Oatmeal Wheat
Making a loaf of bread a day in 2013, okay, almost every day, was the best exposure therapy for my kitchen phobia. What began as desensitization to recipe-reading and basic ingredient identification has blossomed into near-foodie-ism. I now crave new culinary challenge. I now miss the kitchen when I’ve been out of it for several […]
Pane Siciliano
I love that I don’t know what day of the week it is. The holidays always do me like this. Blissfully disoriented and marvelously rested–reconnected to the core people in my life, mildly thawed. Sometime before we left on this trip, I made a loaf to gift to the person who made the one thousandth […]
Pan Giallo Sandwich Rolls
Maybe y’all have as much leftover roast as we do after myriad family gatherings. Might I suggest a post-Yule season of sandwiches? Pan giallo is a type of corn bread from Lombardy that doesn’t taste like cornbread—more savory than sweet. Not super yellow—great for au jus and beef. Pan Giallo Sandwich Rolls Adapted from […]
Christmas Eve Smorgasbord Limpa Bread
Christmas is the only day I don’t feel guilty taking a 5-hour nap after playing charades in my pajamas until noon. What a lovely holiday. Great to see our West Coast family, so many highlights, and thrilled to have a vacation for a few days. Charades by the tree–my brother trying to get us to […]
Sourdough and Spice Popovers
Popovers are the hollowest of muffins. The perfect bread-form soup spoons, or whipped cream receptacles. They look like a herd of mollusks perched on the cooling rack. I’ve made these before, to the smooth tones of Teddy Pendergrass crooning on about hot oils (key ingredient, here)—but never with sourdough starter, which is this month’s Sourdough […]
Pane Pugliese and the Stairs Epiphany
For the last few weeks, I’ve been enacting an early New Year’s resolution to climb stairs, as a rule, alternative to using elevators. This started when on my first day of the public health block, the classes for which perch up on the 18th floor of the Mayo Building, when I arrived, the wait for […]
Coccodrillo Bread and Kelly Clarkson
Today I galloped out of my medical school lecture hall, unable to quiet Kelly Clarkson singing Under the Christmas Tree, the Play button for which I accidentally tapped on my iPhone. I may also have been squealing Sorryeeeeeee against the cacophony of my classmates’ laughs and professors’ growls as I ran the many yards between my […]