The purpose of my blog and failed bread.

Sometime in September I did an internet search for Potato Leek soup.  I found the recipe on a site called Pinch My Salt.  I soon found out it was a food blog.  I had no idea that food blogs existed.  It's not that I lived under a rock, but I just didn't know.  I started looking at tons of blogs, some immediately grabbed my attention, others not at all.  Then I started to think how much fun it would be to start my own blog.  I didn't want to start my blog because I have this great knowledge to share, because trust me when I say, I have no food knowledge. I wanted to start a blog because I wanted to become a better cook and just thought it would be fun to chronicle by food education journey. 


What I've soon discovered though, is the whole cooking, writing, photographing thing is hard!  I like the cooking part, I like the photography part but the writing is more difficult for me.  So here is what I've decided.  I'm not going to worry about it.  I decided to have this blog to journal by cooking adventure.  I am probably going to have more failures than successes and that's just the way it's going to be.  I'm going to write as though I'm talking to a friend and not worry about it.  As a cook, I'm okay.  I can get dinner out on the table (sometimes food is burnt, hence the title of my blog) but my goal is to try new recipes, new foods and hopefully please my family.


With that thought in mind, I recently tried two new bread recipes.  I actually have some experience making homemade bread, and for the most part, have had success.  However, not so much this time.  Maybe it was the new recipes, maybe it was the ingredients or I just didn't watch my dough closely enough.  They just didn't turn out quite right.  I know in retrospect, I simply followed the times in the recipes for rises and such, and after doing some reading, those are only guidelines.  Going forward, I'm going to look at the dough and not the clock.






For my first recipe, I tried making a french bread which I shaped into a boule.

Here's the dough....

Not bad, it felt a little off, but I had decided to use my trusty Kitchen-aide mixer instead of the food processor that the recipe called for.

While the oven was doing its job, I went out to the herb garden.  Yep, I have a herb garden.  I do love it and over the summer (after the bunnies stopped eating everything) I've come to rely on my ready supply of fresh herbs, so I thought I would add some rosemary on top of my bread for flavor.  Besides, I wanted to dig up my rosemary and bring it inside before the cold weather kills it.

Ta-da!  This is the finished product.  Suffice it to say, I went outside, dug the plant up and put it in a beautiful pot I received for Christmas maybe five years ago that I used for the first time yesterday.

That's a whole other issue......


Next, I washed, chopped and prepared the rosemary.  Which I must say it one of my favorite herbs.

Then put it on the bread.

The final product.

It didn't rise as much as I would have liked and as a result was too dense.  We all tried it and it wasn't a complete failure but wasn't what I would consider a success either.

I'm not going to list the recipe because I don't want it to seem like the recipe was the problem when in fact, I'm sure it was me.  However, I'll try the recipe again and if I have success, I'll post the recipe.

In my next entry, I'll write about my next bread attempt.