Thursday, July 22, 2010

Bread debacle

Dough makes me nervous.  I'm not so skilled with batters, doughs or pastries.  I have a block I'm trying to overcome so I'm experimenting.  Turns out there are some quite simple bread recipes, but leave it to me to screw it up from time to time. 

Yesterday I attempted a french bread pizza bun.  It was a blend of recipes from those cooking mennonite girlsFrench Bread mixed with Swiss Cordon Bleu with a touch of Calzone thrown in. 

So many recipes blended together is bound to be a disaster but I just can't follow one recipe for the life of me. 

I made the dough as specified and attempted the swiss cordon bleu method of presentation -- but instead of ham/swiss etc. - I did pizza toppings. 

It was so pretty I had to stop and take a picture.  Classic pizza toppings on Tim's half.  Fresh mozza, tomato, basil and oregano on mine...
But then it all went wrong.  At this point on I sliced the dough from the filling to the outside of the pan in one inch strips with the intention of layering the strips from side to side over the filling.  Sounds simple.  Looked simple, but...

One of the recipes included parchment paper on the pan.  It might have been for the chicken I was considering making.  It definitely was not meant for the dough.  The dough stuck and the parchment ripped as I ungracefully tried to peel my dough strips off it to braid my bread.  I seriously wondered how much parchment paper we'd ingest with dinner as I peeled tiny bits of wax paper off of my pizza bread.  I considered starting over.  It just...could have been better.

What a mess.  My mothers kitchen would never look like this. 

But you know what:
It may not have been perfect, but despite the parchment fiasco, it tasted (and even looked) pretty good.   

5 comments:

  1. It looks good to me! Was that parchment...or waxed paper...you were using? There is a difference, you know.

    Just checking up on you...from Estes Park, Co.

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  2. different...eww...going to check...

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  3. Yup wax will do that to you.

    Else. Yum on the fresh mozza. Good choice.

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  4. haha, yes, I've found out the difference bewtween papers the hard way too...BUT, those look SOOO good! Can't wait to try it!

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