Baked Goods

Today it was just Addie and I; sitting at home, twiddling our fingers, wondering what we could possibly do to pass the time while Luc played at Disney World and Heather did her doctor thing. Heather gave me “The Way to Cook” by Julia Child for Valentine’s Day and today seemed like an opportune one to try out the french bread recipe. Right now the loaves are in the oven but here is what they looked like earlier:

French Bread

My favorite part of the process is throwing water in the oven to create the steam that gives the bread a good, crisp crust. The bread should finish while I’m writing this post. I will let you know how it goes.

Now french bread takes a long time to make but most of that time is spent waiting for the dough to rise. Clearly Addie and I had to find something else to do in order to pass the time.

My birthday is next week and we are going to Kalahari Resort (not for my birthday mind you, but for some “sisters who live east of the Mississippi River” reunion Heather planned over my birthday). Addie and I decided that if I was going to get any personal birthday shopping in then it would have to be today. “Daddy,” Addie said, “we must go shopping for kitchen gear.” She’s so adorable that I just couldn’t say no. Let’s jump right to the end result:

Cooking Gear

Starting from the top left we have:

* Alisa’s pan that made it into the picture. She happened to be on the phone with Heather during our visit to La Cuisine so she got a new jelly roll pan. She is a lucky, lucky little girl.

* The clear plastic things are molds for making little chocolates. I got one with frogs and another with Safari animals. 

* The festive container is Strawberry syrup from France. Like Kool-Aid but actually good.

* The shiny metal thing below the exotic syrup is a new dough scraper. Addison used my old one as a hammer and bent the corners. I was made aware of this fact when I tried to scrape dough from our wooden island counter and big gouges appeared in the wood. Oh child safety lock, whither hast thou gone?

* The long, white pouch is filled with coconut something. I’m not sure what I will do with it but I love coconut flavor and hate coconut texture. A pasty, coconut substance seemed like the very thing.

* To the right of white, coconut thingy we have chocolate for the heretofore mentioned  molds. I was told this chocolate has had the cocoa butter removed and thus requires no tempering before putting it into candy molds. I’m a first time chocolate molder so I went for easy. We will see how the flavor of the chocolate stacks up.

* At the bottom of the picture are les pièces de résistance – my new jelly roll pans and accompanying cooling racks. The last two times I’ve made pain au chocolate one of our pans has deeply browned the bottoms of my precious. This can not be tolerated and the pan was given a dishonorable discharge. I hear it is now living happily at the Fairfax county dump.

You are probably asking yourself, “Where did Trevor find all of these great items?”. Well after the old jelly roll pan was exiled I began searching for a replacement. First I turned to Cooks Illustrated for their reviews. They rated the Lincoln as the best so I started calling around, trying to find Lincoln but nobody I called carried Lincoln.

During my research I was directed to Fran’s Cake and Candy Supplies. They were currently out of jelly roll pans but are one of the larger stores in the area. Since it had been a few days since I called I decided to stop by to see what they had to offer. As it turns out they have lots of supplies for cakes and candies but no good jelly roll pans. Nobody wants to leave a cooking store empty handed so I picked up some molds and chocolate so Heather and I could amuse the kids on Sunday afternoon before church. There were so many delicious candies and chocolates to look at that I became a little overwhelmed. This is the point where I caved and tossed in the coconut yumminess.

Addie and I left, content with our spoils, yet still yearning to fill the void that was our lack of jelly roll pan. The lady who helped us at Fran’s had recommended two stores – La Cuisine and Restaurant Depot but it was time to get back home and prepare the french bread for the second rise. There was no time to waste and the jelly roll quest would have to wait.

After taking care of the bread Heather was home. I convinced her to come along on my pre-birthday shopping extravaganza. Since Restaurant Depot closed at 4:00 we headed to La Cuisine. 

From the moment I walked into the store I knew I was in heaven. It is a small space in old town Alexandria. I love the ambiance of old town and La Cuisine was filled with great cooking gear. I picked up two Chicago pans as well as two cooling racks, a dough scraper and the french syrup. I know that Cooks Illustrated didn’t rate the Chicago well but I’m also not sure which Chicago they rated. Mine was $13 (not $18) and when I asked what brand the pans were the knowledgeable sales woman told me they were the official commercial pans, not the “commercial” pan that is sold to the public through some distributor. I walked out a happy man.

Here is a picture of the old and the new:

Old and new jelly roll pans

I will let you know how the next batch of pain au chocolate turns out. I’m expecting great things.

French bread update: The bread is out of the oven and looks and smells tasty. I tried using a knife rather than a razor blade to cut the slits in the top of the bread. Bad idea. The knife was neither sharp enough nor skinny enough for proper slit creation. The crust isn’t bad and the taste is pretty good. All in all I’m happy with my first attempt.

Baked french bread