Terrifying Librarians and Lenny the Leprechaun

As many of you may already know, I am terrified of librarians...so, what does my husband aspire to become?

Yup.  A terrifying librarian!

 Maybe not as scary as this Conjured Ghost from Oblivion....

But, still, Oblivion cupcakes were totally appropriate! 

 I dare you to summon the Librarian Ghost!

 There are only three of these left today, I think (I made them yesterday!).

Breakfast today, a dreary, wet, snowy, rainy March Saturday.  

My Crispy Oat Cakes.  This may be my favorite recipe EVER.   

For lunch, a Saint Patty's Salad:

Organic Baby Spinach Chiffonade (raw), with Lemon Kissed Israeli Couscous and Garlic Mushrooms.  YUM. 

 A Recomposed Salad!  Hey, I think I saw Lenny!

Anyway, we also preserved some Meyer Lemons before the citrus season is over!

Preserved Meyer Lemons!

And I made a batch of Bucket Bread that will either become a Rosemary Focaccia or a Za'atar Flatbread or something else that is delicious in the morning...

It topped off around 4L (as usual) at the two hour mark, so then it went in the fridge until needed!

And I just ate another one of these...damn!

Scary Librarian Cupcakes*

*Isa and Terry's Chocolate Agave Cupcakes from VCTOTW with Betty Crocker's Creamy Vanilla Frosting (it's vegan!)

And, wait? What's THAT?

 A (washable) green hand print?

Who has been here?

Ollie saw him!

It was Lenny the Leprechaun! He peed (green!) in our toilet and left (washable) green hand and foot prints everywhere!**

**You can delight your child (or spook your spouse!) tomorrow morning by just five minutes of work tonight!!  Just take a washable green marker and draw little footprints on the floor leading up to and/or around the bottom of the toilet, I even drew butt cheek marks and little hand prints on the lid of the toilet and on the doorknob and door frame nearest the bathroom. Then, put a few drops of green food coloring in the toilet for green leprechaun "pee."  Lenny is a naughty leprechaun!  You could also leave a gift from Lenny like little Saint Patty's stickers or whatever you like near the toilet :-)**

Happy Saint Patty's Day!

Bucket Bread!

So, I'd seen these folks, an M.D. and a professional baker, hawking their wares on daytime T.V.: a "five minute" artisan bread recipe that you mix in a bucket and leave in your fridge for up to two weeks, swiping some every time you want to pop a loaf in the oven.  It marinated in my subconscious for months.  

Then, a chef I adore blogged about making their pizza dough from their newest book (which focuses on pizza), AND she shared that she used an amazing kitchen tool to mix the dough.  

*Subconscious trigger pulled, firing wildly in the conscious* 

OK, it's high time to give this a try.  The early birthday present to myself arrived on Friday.  My son was sick, so he napped all afternoon, and even though I'd been up since 5:00 a.m. with him I couldn't help myself.  

I opened the boxes.

Book, Danish Dough Whisk (this thing is awesome) and Big Buckets with Lids. 

 Danish Dough Whisk, Made in Poland :-)

I (quietly!) scrubbed the new buckets and the whisk, and readied the ingredients to make the "Master" dough, a Boule (artisan free-form loaf).

It only involves FOUR ingredients: warm water, yeast, salt and flour.  The Master recipe is here on the author's website!  

Put everything in your bucket (warm water and yeast first, followed by flour and salt) and stir with your Danish Dough Whisk (really, this is one of the best kitchen tools I have ever used!) The dough whisk really incorporates the dough so well with minimal effort and minimal sticking (if you used a plain wooden spoon, this very wet dough would have stuck all over it).

Mix dough until dry and wet ingredients are well incorporated.

This gloppy mess is correct! It is how you want it to look.

Now, cover and let it rise for 2-5 hours at room temperature.  The dough will rise high up!  Mine went up to the five quart line, which I think is standard.  It is really fun to watch it rise.  Here it is at about one hour:

It will come back down to this level once it's in the fridge for a while, too.

Once it's done rising, put it in the fridge.  Now you can make bread anytime you want, for up to two weeks!

So, since we got an inch of ice last night instead of snow, we were stuck in the house.  Time for a trial loaf of Bucket Boule!

You must let the loaf "rest" (this is basically your second rise, the first rise being the bucket rise) before baking.  This can be a long time depending on the loaf (min is 20 min, max is somewhere near 2 hours).

Both crumb and crust were excellent.  Tasted exactly like Whole Food's boule which costs $6 (or used to, I haven't shopped there for a long time! I'm engaged to Wegmans and gettin' some on the side with Trader Joe's.).  We ate the whole thing this morning! And, I have dough for three more loaves in the fridge.

The book will pay for itself in three loaves :-)  Or, it will be free from the library if you can find it!

P.S. Baking these breads obviously does NOT take five minutes (and I didn't expect that it would since I am familiar with traditional bread recipes, but other folks would have no idea!).  No part of it takes five minutes.  Mixing it was extremely fast, maybe about 10 minutes, and then you have that initial rise for the 2-5 hours.  But THEN when you want to make your bread, you still need to give that loaf time to rise once you form it.  And you still need to bake it (however long the recipe says).  The time you save with this technique is to remove the first two steps of bread making: mixing the dough and the first rise.  After you make the initial batch, you no longer have to do these steps, you just start with the bucket dough.  It's fantastic, but not five minutes.  At all.  Ever.  Just had to say that.

Oh, and I also made some other stuff today. 

XOXO