therapeutical baking

Our stock of ciabattini was running low, so I decided I would make a new batch to keep in the freezer.



That is actually my grandmother's mangle linen the ciabattini are resting on. It had been part of her dowry and been hiding away for years in my cupboard, but now it is perfectly serving its new purpose of helping me making bread.

Also, my copy of Suas' Advanced Bread and Pastry arrived this week. Good god, now this is the first cooking book I really, really find helpful. If ever you wondered 'why' during baking, this is the book for you.

So I was eager to try some new things, and naturally I wasn't short of comissions. My dad-in-law asked me to try and make some Madeleines, as the ones he used to eat with his afternoon coffee in the office were no-where in the shops anymore. So, I bought a form and made some Madeleines -



They turned out marvelous. Only thing is that I will need another form with bigger and more Madeleines per charge. Well, we'll see how they keep, and if^^.

Also, I wanted to try and make croissants for my wife. So I did a batch of them as well.



Those didn't turn out that good actually, because the butter I used for layering was too thick and too cold and kinda messed up the whole process. So, the structure was way below optimal, though the taste already was pretty damn close to what I was looking for.

I learned a real damn lot today - especially
a) Madeleine dough gets better the longer it is cooled (the last batch 6 hours after the first one produced the best ones).
b) a triple batch of ciabatta is about the maximum I can comfortably bake at once in my kitchen, because the last ones were pretty overproof already.
c) I spent a whole day baking and I feel like I had a week of holidays. Talk about therapeutical baking - only my feet hurt.