steve's posterous - Filed under 'bread'

CA: Ciabatta! best bread so far... (in reverse)

This memorial day weekend, i made ciabatta for the first time. It was supposed to be for this meal with my parents, but they changed the time so i had to buy BUNS instead. ugh. anyways, this was a lot of fun- more work than other breads and the dough is SUPER wet, but its nice and light and fluffy- and the results were great! you can just eat this with a little oil (i used some truffle oil) - or- my favorite is a bit of goat cheese... which my wife hates. yum, more for me!

used the Cook's Illustrated version which was interesting- uses milk - not for flavor but to help manipulate the texture and size of air holes. this one uses a biga, which is a starter too, to get some nice sour flavor. good good stuff. highly recommend making this.

CULINARY ADVENTURES XIII: Stuffed Portobellos, No Knead Bread (also paella and salad)

For my dad's birthday, amy and i made stuffed portobellos, no knead bread, and salad. my brother and his fiance made paella, little panini's.

The stuffed portobellos were a surprising amount of work- however, this was compounded by the fact we were cooking in my parents kitchen. its a nicer kitchen than ours for sure, but its really hard to cook in a kitchen when you don't know where things are, don't have the same equipment!

but it was done, and very good! i did learn though, that with a broiler, you have to make sure your stuffed mushrooms aren't too high and don't ignite!
the bread was a show stopper as usual!

The paella was fantastic- my brother and his fiancee also added some korean chllli powder to give it a Korean twist for my folks!

pictures courtesy of my brother http://www.flickr.com/star5112