I have a knead for bread

As previously addressed, I have been trying to experiment more in the kitchen. I mean, I always go back to my old standards of pasta. However, I wanted to go outside of my comfort zone.

Emily and Travis came to visit Albuquerque this weekend. It was so much fun. We did a lot of things, like take a day trip to Santa Fe, go up to the top of the Sandia Crest, go wine-tasting (addressed later in this entry), and also watched a lot of sports while drinking.

Before coming into town, Emily texted me that she wanted to cook using our Kitchen-Aid mixer. It's understandable. My mixer is God's gift to cooking. So, I decided to do something I had never done before. Bake bread.

So, on a leisurely Saturday, Emily and I started out early. We put on our aprons while hungover and started getting out the supplies. As if you can't tell from the photo, Emily was pretty excited to watch the dough form in the mixer.

Now, I had never made bread by hand before. So, I knew that it was going to rise. I knew that it was going to take a while. I knew that it involved yeast. I didn't know much about actual baking. I had to read a good bit of Julia Child's cookbook before I completely understood the chemistry behind it. Mind you, Emily helped a great bit in this process. After mixing the dough, we had to cover the bowl with plastic wrap. It turns out, in fact, that Emily is not only skilled at her job, but also at spreading plastic wrap without tearing/folding on accident. I find this rather amazing. I mean, you could bounce a quarter off that wrap.

After it rose for about an hour, we took the dough out and started kneading it. Now, I have never kneaded dough before. I didn't know if it would be hard, but luckily Emily helped me out a lot. She taught me to fold it, rock the dough and then rotate it. Then, repeat. I don't want to brag, but I'm a pretty talented kneader (credit all goes to Emily for teaching me how to do it). And, yes, that's a cherry pie behind me on the oven. I mean, it was my birthday.

After the kneading, it was time to let the dough rise in a bowl in a warm place. According to Ms. Child, you should cover the bowl with a towel instead of plastic wrap. Well, we were going to go to a wine tasting at a nearby winery, so we decided to let the bread rise while we were gone. However, Milo is a little meddling when it comes to food left out. So, we had to keep the dough bowl in our bedroom so we could close the door. Thus, we left the dough and went to another type of fermentation.

We had never been to this winery and it was great. We drank some really delicious wines and joined their wine club. For joining, we get two bottles of wine every-other month, 10% off all winery purchases, 15% off all cases of wine, a complimentary tasting for two on every visit, members-only events with free wine and food, discounts at local restaurants and access to the patio at the winery. Needless to say, we had a great time there. It took our winery chick a couple tries to take this photo, but we finally got a pretty cute shot. Yes. that big bag in my hand is three bottles of wine. What? ;)

The dough was twice its original size. It was crazy. We were making asiago bread, so we had already diced pieces of asiago. We shaped the bread into a loaf-shape and put it on our pizza stone. We cut a small slit into the bread to stuff the asiago pieces into. Mind you, the dough already had pieces of cheese in it. In fact, the recipe described the bread to have "cheese-filled pockets." Emily quoted, "I love cheese-lined pockets!" I love out-of-context sentences. So, we stuffed the bread.

After I stuffed the bread, it looked so gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. It smelled so delicious. I wanted to just eat the dough. However, Emily discouraged me and reminded me how delicious it was going to taste even better when it was baked. She was right. We plopped it in the oven and moved on to actual dinner. We were making something called "Mexi-Shells." We cooked some ground turkey in some salt, pepper, green chilis, chili powder, onion powder and a dash of red pepper. After we cooked the meat, we cooked some jumbo shells and filled them with the meat mixture.

After we filled the shells, we coated a baking dish with pasta sauce that we had seasoned. We placed the shells carefully on the dish. Turns out that this was more my strong suit than Emily's. After she had helped me so much with the bread, it was only fair that I help her with the actual execution of dinner. We spread out pasta sauce over the shells. After we took out the bread and let it cool, we put the dinner in the oven.

The bread was cooling on the rack and I nearly cut someone so I could just take off a piece. The diced asiago in the middle of the bread was delicious. However, it would have been much better if it were grated. Now I know. There are cheese-filled pockets. They were perfect. The bread had a bit of rosemary, which I think was the best part of the bread. We served up some delicious dinner and sat down.

With some delicious Casa Rondena wine, some rosemary asiago bread and our "Mexi Shells," That meal might be the best meal I have ever cooked in my household. We were so pleased with the meal, we just sat there...content. Afterward. We could barely talk. We were quite pleased.

So, Blair 1, Bread 0. I have conquered yeast-cooking. It was a perfect success. Can't wait to try it again.