Culinary Experimentation
I decided earlier this week to try out a few recipes from the blogosphere: Staci’s “Peanut Butter Balls” and that New York Times “No-Knead Bread” everybody‘s been talking about. Getting the bread started was easy; I just dumped everything in the bowl and mixed it together. I was worried that my dough wasn’t “wet” enough though, so I dumped in some more water. (Mistake.) After I had that covered and fermenting away, I went to work on the peanut butter balls. They’re basically the same as my Buckeyeballs, but with Rice Krispies mixed in. As usual though, I had difficulty getting the mixture stiff enough to roll into balls. I wonder if this is because I’m usually making these when it’s hot here, whereas in the Northern Hemisphere it’d be colder. I dunno. Anyway, those went into the freezer to set…

On Wednesday night, my dough looked suitably bubbly so I turned it out onto the floured counter and did the “fold and rest” thing. Then I gave it two hours for a secondary rise. Unfortunately… it didn’t. It was just way too wet and floppy. We decided to bake it anyway, and the result is the first loaf above. The crust was great but the inside was too dense and chewy. It just didn’t rise (and possibly bake) long enough. The peanut butter balls waited in the freezer til Friday night, when I dipped half of them using the leftover white chocolate from Halloween. I did the rest of them with milk chocolate on Saturday night. They’re not as pretty as Staci’s, but man they’re good! I’ve eaten about seventeen. Ugh. Saturday night we also started a second batch of the bread, this time obeying the recipe weights exactly. We put it in the office to rise (since the abundance of computers makes it warm in here). Today we turned it out… and again, the second rise was underwhelming. It’s supposed to double in size, and it just didn’t! This batch was much less wet though, and the resulting loaf was much less dense. The crust is incredibly crunchy though. Maybe I gave it too long with the lid off? I have a feeling we’re going to be playing with this process a bit.