I have a niece who is interested in baking and I was going to buy her the King Arthur videos on Artisan Bread and Blitz Puff Pastry.  When I went to their web site I was sad to see that the DVD on Artisan Breads was unavailable.  I don't know if they will make some more and sell them again or if that's the end of it.  I sure hope they continue selling them because it was a really helpful video for me when I was starting the make hearth breads with wet dough.

One of the things I had a hard time with at first was being comfortable with gobs of sticky dough all over my hands.  I'm not such a neatnik (or so I thought), but having goo covered hands just didn't seem right.  Hearing that it was okay to make a sticky mess was one thing, but actually seeing Michael Jubinsky knead the sticky mess by slapping it around on the table and getting everything gummed up really helped me at least partially overcome wetdoughphobia.  He uses a poolish and makes baguettes and boules.  He demonstrates folding, shaping, slashing, and steaming.  This is a really good beginnig video for anyone who wants to start baking artisan-style hearthbread.  I still watch it from time to time when I want to enjoy watching someone else bake for a change.

The other King Arthur video that I have stars Jeffrey Hamelman and he shows how to make blitz puff pastry.  If you haven't tried this, you really should.  It is surprisingly good and it's also amazingly quick and easy to make.  We've tried it out and used it to make tarts similar to those shown in the video.  I'm not such a pastry expert that I can critique the fine points of this dough versus long-process laminated puff pastry, but as Hamelman says, it makes it possible to get up in the morning and say, "I think I'd like to have a puff pastry based desert for lunch or dinner."  I watch this one repeatedly, too...it always makes me hungry.

Here are the tarts my wife and I made after our first viewing:

Plums, almond cream, and blitz puff pastry.

Apricots, almond cream, and blitz puff pastry.

A BIG thanks to Pamela for posting this recipe previously!  I made this yesterday, and it was really good with dinner last night.  The recipe can be found here:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/11777/sunny-millet-bread.

If you like wholesome goodness, with 100% whole wheat (I used white) , and added nuts and seeds, this is for you!  It has a nice crunch to it, and my sister even asked it I had started chirping yet!  Anyway, just want to give this nice recipe a little shout out!  The dough did require some additional flour, than what was listed, but it was very nice to work with.

Highly suggest this one.

  As the story goes, Emily wanted a topsy turvy cake for her birthday party. If you haven't seen one, please google topsy turvy cakes and there are even cool video's that make it look oh so easy to do. I had called the bakery and they wanted $230.00 for one to feed 20 people. Not this year! So the Wilton pans come out and this is the result. Now I know it is not a $230. quality cake, 1. because I used frosting and  fondant only on the decorations (it taste like crap) and 2. it was a less than perfect job. The front I left flat for writing purposes, but the sides and back are very curvy. If you have ever worked with fondant, it has the exact same texture as Play Dough, so I let Emily and Quaid have a good time and cut out and apply all the dots.

Note to myself: Put the next extremely heavy cake I make on a solid board, NOT a cardboard cake board (they bend and will break the cake) this almost happened

   These are not that hard and I think that after making just 3 or 4 that anyone could make one with professional results. I did use dowels and corrugated cardboard to seperate when the layers changed sizes to help support the weight. And I can't think of anything I would have done differently. If you do one, follow the video, be sure to use a crumb coat and let it dry well. You should be able to smooth any rough spots because this layer gets sort of hard. Then you can frost away and not have to worry about any crumbs sneaking in. If its for kids, let them in on the fun. They will enjoy the cake more if they get to participate, and don't sweat it. It's just cake, if it flops, feed it to the chickens and run to the super market for a replacement and swear you just didn't have time to bake!

Yesterday I tried the ciabatta pizza that trailrunner posted about a week ago. I was very impressed with the results.

The pizza formula has a lot of yeast in it and went through bulk fermentation like a rocket (I had to put it in the fridge to slow it down.) When it had tripled (after about 3 hours in fridge--probably faster but I just let it sit there until I was ready), I heavily floured my counter, literally poured the glutenous dough onto the flour, and then sprinkled more flour on the top. I patted the blob into a circle about 1/2 an inch thick. Then the trick was how to get the blob onto the pan-sprayed parchment. I did the best I could but had to reshape it a bit after it landed. Didn't seem to hurt it any. I topped it with tomatoes and basil (topping basil was an obvious mistake at this point because it dried out in the oven--next time I'll put it on as a garnish; sometimes in the heat of the moment I do stupid things).

I baked it on a preheated stone on the bottom rack for 8 minutes. (Trailrunner had warned me that I needed to bake the moisture out of the tomatoes and that was good advice.) After taking it out of the oven with my peel, I removed the parchment paper, topped it with some of TJ's marinated rope-type mozzarella, and slid it back in the oven for another 8 minutes. It rose up real nice in the oven and produced a delicate, soft, thickish pizza crust. The pizza as a whole didn't have as much flavor as I was hoping for but my tomatoes weren't home grown (I used an heirloom supermarket variety), so I'm not surprised as the topping was so plain. Next time I think I'll reduce the yeast to 3 g (I used 7 g by mistake) so it will take longer to go through bulk fermentation and perhaps develop a little more flavor. But all and all I was pretty happy with the results. Thanks trailrunner for posting this great pizza!

Topped with tomatoes and ready to go into the oven.

After 8 minutes

After 15 minutes (TJ's cheese had some oil in it so that's why it browned; regular mozzarella probably wouldn't brown.)

Crumb (or is it slice?)

250 g AP flour

227 g water (I might reduce to 210 g next time)

3 g yeast (I misread the recipe and used 7 g by accident)

7 g salt

tomatoes, thinly sliced or halved cherries, or a combination of both

mozzarella cheese, grated or thinly sliced

fresh basil leaves, for garnish

olive oil

kosher salt

Put the flour, water, salt, and yeast in mixer bowl and mix with paddle to incorporate. Let dough rest for 5 minutes to hydrate. Knead with dough hook on speed 2 for 10 minutes. (My dough never formed a ball like trailrunner's so next time I'm going to use a little less water).

Put dough into a container and let triple.

Place dough onto a heavily floured countertop, sprinkle top of dough with flour, and pat into a round about 1/2 inch thick. Transfer dough to pan-sprayed parchment paper, top with thinly sliced tomatoes, and bake on a stone in a preheated 500º oven for 8 minutes to drive off the moisture from the tomatoes and set the dough. Remove pizza and parchment from oven, discard parchment and top with mozzarella cheese. Return pizza to oven and bake until done, about another 7 to 8 minutes.

Garnish with fresh basil leaves, and a light sprinkling of kosher salt and olive oil.

Makes one pizza (serves two people).

The original post is from LilDice.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3621/quick-rustic-ciabatta-pizza-recipe-full-howto-pics

http://hollosyt.googlepages.com/quickrusticciabattapizza

I also found another link to this pizza with pictures and discussion. NB: the reduced amount of IDY.

http://www.prurgent.com/2009-04-15/pressrelease36039.htm

--Pamela