Exhibit A!
A photo of my recent foccacia style bread. Notice the vibrant green pesto that now looks like old tea leaves, and the mozzarella balls that now look like dough lumps. It may not photograph appealing...
Do you recall that I made up some bread concoction a while ago and saved a wad of the dough in the fridge?
As they say, the proof is in the eating, and this was one mighty fine piece of foccacia. The dough looked horribly deflated when I grabbed it out of the fridge at least five days after my initial bread baking flurry. My hopes were not high as I pressed the slightly dry dough out into a rough square. In the interests of seeing my experiment through to it's conclusion though we dressed the top with a variety of seasonings and tossed it into the hot oven to see what we would come up with.
Oh my...this was good. One half was chopped herbs, mozzarella and rock salt. The other pesto and mozzarella. I don't think there was a favourite side - hard to tell though as most of this was devoured within about 5 minutes of slapping it on the table. Mighty good indeed.
Sadly though, I don't have the commitment to become a decent food photographer. There were mouths to feed, there was much chitter chat around the table, there was too much else to concentrate on without me ripping out the camera and calling a halt to all things social and taking pics to upload here.
So yeah, you get a misshapen shot, taken in about 3 seconds flat, of a loaf that looks as appetizing as my left shoe. You're just going to have to take my word for it that bread making can be simple (especially for dough deaf people like me) and that you can put your dough in the fridge for a few days and whip out a wonderful starter when family comes around.
There are more photos too that should be on here but aren't due to appetites taking over. The shot of empty paper and a few crumbs just didn't scrub up well in photoshop!
Moving right along, the other day I ventured upon a recipe, on a site that makes my cook's heart sing with joy.
I've never eaten a soft pretzel, so have no idea what they should taste like, but the gorgeous brown knots of dough in her photos instantly turned me into a pretzel fanatic who must-bake-pretzels-NOW!
With only minutes to spare before my girls (and grandson) turned up to help me clean up for my big move, I had the dough mixed and rising in the corner of the kitchen. Remember I'm not a baker so this was a huge step.
Running backwards and forwards between the office computer (where the recipe was) and the kitchen (where the action was unfolding), the recipe was finally put together and the pretzels went into the oven. We had dramas, we had worries, we had to buy eggs purely for the eggwash.
And then...we had pretzels. A total of 18 pretzels. Brown, glistening, soft and so incredibly good it was not funny. The salt pretzels were incredible. At every bite there was this instant smack of incredible flavour. The sort of flavour that could see anyone polishing off 18 pretzels in one go.
But...my dear Sonny does not like salt OR sugar crystals on his food so we had to do some with poppy seeds and some with nanna seeds. (nanna seeds aka sesame seeds. My dad was poppy to all his grandkids - so what else would you call the other seed you find on bread?)
Daughter 2 loved the nanna seed pretzels, I loved the salted and I don't know who loved the poppy seeds but two hours later with only 4.5 of us eating they were all gone. We're talking pretzels as big as your hand. 18 pretzels that you would think should last at least until the morn. I think my one year old grandson actually ate 5 of them! We even gave a neighbour a taste tester and he thought we had bought them - yay to the newbie baker.
So if you are wondering where the photos are, wonder no more. Our mouths move faster than any camera's shutter speed, and you'll just have to believe me when I tell you this recipe was a success. In the meantime we are planning to cook more of these soon, and if we manage to get ourselves organised there may just be a photo or two to bring to show and tell. Then again there may not be.
PS: The process of making these pretzels involves many stages when you think you will fail. The rolled soft dough stage is the worst, as the pasty white puffy dough is none too glamorous and looks either phallic or a lot like some sort of animal turd. Don't let this put you off...once in the oven all is forgotten.
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