What does this bread look like?

For a couple days, I've been wondering what the shape of this bread reminds me of. Today, it hit me: it looks like Wisconsin!

Pregnancy

My sentiments exactly. Thanks, Nate and Kellie.

Perfect Peach Cobbler

We had 6 peaches sitting on our kitchen table. On Monday evening, they were just ripe, but on Tuesday morning they were quite soft. I generally prefer to eat fruit fresh—especially peaches—but I knew they wouldn’t get eaten otherwise. Pie crust is a hassle, especially on a humid summer day, so I decided to go with cobbler. It turned out wonderfully. It’s best if you serve it all at once, as the cobbles get soggy if you let it sit overnight.
The recipe is adapted from Cook’s Illustrated’s Fresh Peach Cobbler.

Fresh Peach Cobbler
1. Peaches
   • 6–7 ripe medium-sized peaches
   • ¼ cup granulated sugar
   • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
   • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
   Cobbles
   • 1 cup all-purpose flour
   • ¾ teaspoon baking powder
   • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
   • ¼ teaspoon salt
   • 5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch cubes
   • 5 tablespoons whole milk
   • 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
2. 1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 425°.
   2. Halve and pit each peach. Cut out any stringy flesh from the pit area. Cut each half into four wedges. Toss all the wedges with the ¼ cup of sugar and let them sit for 30 minutes, tossing them a few times. Drain them in a colander set over a bowl.
   3. Measure out ¼ cup of the drained juice and discard the rest. Whisk together the ¼ cup of peach juice, the teaspoon of cornstarch and the tablespoon of lemon juice. Toss the peach juice mixture with the peaches and transfer to a 8-inch square or 9-inch circular glass baking dish. Bake until the juices bubble around the edges of the dish, about 10 minutes.
   4. While peaches are baking (if you start sooner, the dough won’t rise properly in the oven), combine the cup of flour, the ¾ teaspoon of baking powder, the ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, and the ¼ teaspoon of salt. Scatter the butter over the top and use forks, a whisk, or a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour mixture until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add the 5 tablespoons of whole milk and toss with a rubber spatula just until it forms a cohesive ball. (Don’t overmix it or the cobbles will be tough!) Split the dough into 6 mounds.
   5. Arrange the dough mounds over the peaches, spacing them about ½ inch apart. Sprinkle the 1 teaspoon sugar over the dough mounds.
   6. Bake until the cobbles are golden and the peaches are bubbling, 16 to 18 minutes. Cool on a wire rack until warm, about 20 minutes, before serving.

What's wrong with what we eat

Mark Bittman explains what's wrong with what we eat (20 minutes long):

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

My mom doesn’t like tomato sauce. She likes tomatoes just fine, but she doesn’t put red sauce on her pasta or serve tomato soup with her grilled cheese. So I wasn’t introduced to grilled cheese with tomato soup until high school. I love it. This week, we decided to see if we would make it from scratch, and it was great.

The grilled cheese is really simple. You’ll need some good bread (we used Madison Sourdough’s White) and some good cheese (I’d recommend cheddar. Organic Valley’s Raw Milk Cheddar was a little too sharp—I think I’ll try the mild next time). Slice the cheese. Melt the cheese onto bread using your favorite method. I can’t seem to be able to fry a cheese sandwich without making it overly greasy or burnt, so I decided I would microwave them. (Yes, I realize it makes no sense to go through the trouble of making tomato soup from scratch and then microwave the grilled cheese, but after several failed attempts, I just wanted it to turn out well.) In 20 seconds, I had a couple open-faced cheese sandwiches, the chewy texture of the bread was maintained, and I increased the total soup-dipping surface area. Not bad!

Here’s the recipe for the soup. It’s much more complicated than combining Campbell’s and water, but it’s definitely worth it. Adapted from Cook's Illustrated's Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup.

Tomato Soup
1. • 2 28-ounce cans of tomatoes, packed in juice (not puree)
   • 1½ tablespoons dark brown sugar
   • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
   • 4 large shallots
   • 1 tablespoon double-concentrated tomato paste, which usually comes in a tube (you can also just use a tablespoon of canned tomato paste)
   • a pinch of ground allspice
   • 2 tablespoons flour
   • 1¾ cups chicken stock (recommended are boxes by Swanson, Better than Bouillon, and Imagine brands)
   • ½ cup heavy cream (we get ours from a local farm)
2. 1. Heat the oven to 450°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.
   2. Drain the tomatoes, saving 3 cups of the liquid. Use your finger to remove any clumps of seeds. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on the foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with the 1½ tablespoons of dark brown sugar. Bake until all the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes begin to color, about 30 minutes.
   3. Meanwhile, peel and mince the shallots. Wait until the tomatoes have about 10 minutes of cooking time left before you proceed. Place a nonreactive (that means not aluminum or cast iron) saucepan over medium heat and add the butter. When the butter foams, add the shallots, the tablespoon of tomato paste, and the pinch of allspice. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the shallots are softened.
   4. Add the flour and stir for about 30 seconds, until thoroughly combined. Whisking constantly, gradually add the 1¾ cups of chicken stock. Stir in the reserved tomato liquid. Peel the roasted tomatoes off the foil and add them. Cover and increase the heat to medium. When boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
   5. Strain the mixture and rinse out the saucepan. Add solids to blender and top with a cup of the liquid. Puree until smooth and add to the remaining liquid.
   6. At this point, if you are eating all the soup at once, mix in the cream and serve. For leftovers, keep the soup and cream separate until serving. After reheating the soup, stir in the cream.

What happened to spring?!

May starts in 3 days and this is what it looks like outside.

Pirate laundry day

We have plenty of fun when Rich stays home from work because he's sick.

The Superest

It's hilarious. Two guys (and some guest artists) draw superheroes, where each new hero must defeat the current champ. We spent a good part of an evening clicking through them and laughing. Start here. (Hint: don't forget to read the comments for each superhero - they can be pretty funny, too!)

The Puzzler

Our library has a collection of donated jigsaw puzzles, which you can take home to work on. Last year, we spent an evening at the library working on a difficult puzzle (the pieces were double-sided and the same puzzle image was printed on both sides, with one side rotated 90°). We haven’t seen that puzzle since, but I found this even–more–difficult puzzle on Thursday. It’s called “The Puzzler: The World’s First Circular Jigsaw Puzzle of a Jigsaw Puzzle” by Springbok.

We started Thursday evening, spending four hours to get the border completed. Friday afternoon, we decided to continue, but thought it would be fun to take a time-lapse video (with iStopMotion, which we got in this year's Macheist bundle). So we did. One frame every six seconds, played at 10 frames per second, means that a minute in the video represents an hour in real life. It took almost ten hours to finish the puzzle on Satuday, so the video is pretty long – almost ten minutes. Background music is “Black” by Ambient Teknology.

Hamburger Buns

So, last week we decided, for the first time in a long time, to start working with ground meat. We made a meatloaf which, while not as good as my old standby Lipton soup recipe, was decently tasty. The recipe called for a mix of sirloin and chuck, which proved to be slightly difficult to find in the correct proportions - I had to get 1/3 pound more sirloin than needed. What else is there to do with more sirloin than mix it with some ground bison (which I just happened to pick up) than make burgers, which I had been craving for a couple of days. Well, the problem with burgers is that we rarely have bread on hand, since we don't eat it on a regular basis, and when we have it, it disappears quickly, and what good is a burger without a bun? So, I searched and came up with this great recipe. Thanks to Charlene Kaunert for posting this recipe at AllRecipes

Tasty Buns
1. • 5 c flour
   • 4½ tsp bread machine (instant) yeast
   • 1 c milk
   • ¾ c water
   • ½ c vegetable oil
   • ¼ c sugar
   • 1 tsp salt
2. 1. Stir together 2 cups flour and the yeast. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, oil, sugar and salt to lukewarm in microwave. Add all at once to the flour mixture, and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes.
   2. Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, 2 to 3 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for about 10 minutes.
   3. Shape dough into 12 slightly flat balls, and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.
   4. Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Apparently the mixer thought the floor made a great surface.

I will say that these turned out extremely well - I didn't grease the pan, but instead used parchment paper. I probably would also try (when making these again) brushing the tops with egg or milk - they just didn't have the color I was looking for. However, they were extremely soft and pretty good as burger buns, though they turned out a little flat for me (maybe I didn't let them rise long enough, or maybe our yeast is starting to get old…).

So, though the burger recipe wasn't that great (sorry Elise, I just don't think rosemary, especially in that quantity, is all that appealing), the buns were fantastic.

One final note - when storing these, let them breathe. I stored in an air tight container on the counter, and apparently when Jess opened it up, the air inside was warm and moist - a great environment for growing moldy. Fortunately for us, Jess opened it the next day and these disappeared completely within a couple days flat.