Baking

I love to bake. Not so much cooking (though I'm learning to grill!) but definitely baking. I think it comes from my mom who baked a lot while we were growing up. I developed quite a sweet tooth and spending time with my extended family who also enjoy baked goods certainly didn't help. I think one of the reasons I'm drawn to it is that baking has a lot of order and precision to it, you can't just throw a bunch things together and hope it turns out. Cooking is fun, but I can't seem to get away from following a recipe. I don't like the gamble of adding new ingredients and not being sure of how they will work together. Especially not for dinner where if it doesn't turn out, which has happened several times when I've tried, you've got to last minute scramble to find something to eat. With a dessert, it is just an oh well, I probably shouldn't have been eating it anyways feeling. Hopefully someday I'll pick it up, and I know that will be a growing experience when it happens.

I primarily bake cakes and cookies, I'm not too big of a pie fan though I have made a few. This weekend I ventured into making something that I've never done before and have always wanted to try. I entered the world of baking bread! Last week Jamie got a recipe from a coworker for making homemade pizza dough (which turned out really great!), so we had to purchase yeast for that. Since we had it in the house, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try out making some other bread. I went with a rosemary and olive oil focaccia. I love focaccia bread, I think because it is flat and pretty airy, but also flavorful. It was a fun adventure proofing the yeast, making the dough with my KitchenAid (I'd never used the kneading hook before, which made it very easy) and then letting it rise. The combination of the rosemary and the olive oil smelled amazing throughout the whole afternoon. Overall it was pretty easy, though I had to let the dough sit and rise twice for an hour each time, so it wasn't a super quick recipe. The resulting bread was delicious though, I sprinkled some kosher salt over the top and it was a great finishing touch.

I finally entered into a realm of baking that I've been nervous of for quite some time and I was excited to find that it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. It provided a really fun side dish for our selection of grilled meats last night. We still have some yeast left so I'm pretty excited to try out some other breads. Any suggestions for good ones? I'm thinking a batch of cinnamon rolls could be really fun!