The finished pie, from above
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Monday, July 5, 2010
Blackberry-Blueberry Pie
I haven't posted any garden or food-related entries in a while, so here's one. Yesterday, C and I harvested some of the many blackberries, and the few raspberries, that were ripe, and then, for the holiday, I made a blackberry-blueberry-raspberry pie. I'd never made one of these before; in the past we've eaten the blackberries and blueberries for breakfast, used them in smoothies, made blackberry mojito sorbets, and so forth, but yesterday I thought, why not try a pie? I tried Mark Bittman's recipes for the crust and the filling from How to Cook Everything, and think it turned out well. C agrees! The blackberries were sufficiently tart that they paired well with the sweetness of the blueberries and the sugar in the recipe, and the buttery crust. Photos (all by C or I):
Harvesting the blackberries (on a ladder)
Putting them in the collecting cup
The blackberries and blueberries
The blackberries divided up
Making the dough and rolling it out
Putting it in the Pyrex pie pan
Pricking the crust
Adding the berry filling
Adding the top strips
The finished pie, before baking
Putting the pie in the oven
The finished pie, from above
The finished pie!
The finished pie, from above
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Ernest Hardy Interviews Sapphire + Tayari Jones & Breadmaking
Yesterday I mentioned the author Sapphire, from whose novel Push director Lee Daniels created his new film Precious. Journalist, critic and critical thinker Ernest Hardy posted an interview with Sapphire yesterday on his blog, Blood Beats. It's excerpted, he says, from a longer version that appears in LA Weekly, which he writes for, and from an extended conversation that he and Sapphire had. It's definitely worth reading.
***
Continuing on the Precious tip, Tayari Jones recently noted on her blog that the controversy swirling about the film had gotten to her so much that she decided to bake a 7-Up pound cake--and she posted the recipe on her blog. (I am going to have to try it.) It looks delicious enough to calm anyone facing anything.
(BTW, Congratulations to Tayari also for having her new novel picked up by Algonquin Books!)
I can't claim similar grounds for my baking, but I do look forward to any excuse to create a loaf of bread. I don't know what is going on with this bread-baking mania, but I really enjoy doing it, and it really calms me down. I did finally make one of the bread recipes Miriam sent, for Irish soda bread--and then turned what was left of it into bread pudding with chocolate that was one of the best desserts I've made in some time. But before I post that, I'm going to post the basic bread recipe from which almost any standard loaf can be made.
I should add that a number of people I know either can no longer eat bread--at least store-bought bread--or deign to for dieting purposes, but I wonder if this homemade bread has the same effect. Recently when we had gone through several micro-sized baguettes I baked C bought some bread from Calandra's Bakery, and it molded after about 4 days (!?), while other store-bought bread--baguettes, Italian bread, etc.--turns to stone if left out of the refrigerator. The bread I bake 1) usually keeps for a week without mold if not refrigerated; 2) retains its flavor for weeks, even if refrigerated; and 3) maintains its consistency as well. I wrote to Calandra's to let them know about their bread, but I got a very terse, robotic response from some PR person, so if you're in northeastern New Jersey and shopping for what you think is homemade-style bread, you've been forewarned.
The Basic Recipe
I adapted my basic recipe from Mark Bittman's New York Times "no knead" recipe. It's a better bet than his book, How to Cook Everything, which is excellent but unaccountably uses "pounds" instead of "cups" for the basic recipe, which causes unnecessary confusion. There are several keys to getting consistently good bread with this recipe, I've learned. First, you should always use rapid-rise yeast. Second, mix the flour in a glass bowl, then cover it with a plastic shopping bag (which increases the heat and moisture in the bowl and yeast growth) held in place by a rubber band--it's far more effective than a loosely draped tea towel, a cutting board, etc. Third, keep the covered bowl in a warm part of your kitchen. Fourth, always use a little olive oil during the second (even if brief) knead period. It is essential to prevent the dough from sticking or burning, and it adds flavor.
Okay, so here goes. You start with:
1 packet of rapid-rise/quick-rising yeast (VERY IMPORTANT)
2 teaspoons of salt (Bittman says 1.5, but 2 give more flavor)
3 cups of bread/unbleached flour/whole wheat/rye flour
1/2 cup of pastry flour (VERY IMPORTANT)
1 1/2 cups of water (you can often use a little less but adjust according to the dough's consistency)
C figured out the pastry flour addition. It is essential because pastry flour has LESS gluten and is lighter than regular flour, so when the dough rises, it adds more air bubbles. Do not use self-rising flour, cake flour, or other kinds of prepared flours. Some combos to try are:
1) 3 cups of unbleached whole wheat bread flour + pastry flour = French/white bread
2) 3 cups of unbleached general purpose flour + pastry flour = French/white bread
3) 1 cup of stone ground whole wheat flour + 2 cups of unbleached whole wheat bread flour + pastry flour = lighter whole wheat bread (hearty)
4) 3 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour + pastry flour = fuller whole wheat bread (VERY hearty)
5) 3 cups of whole rye flour + pastry flour = rye bread (and darker than rye bread that you buy in the store--EXTREMELY hearty)
And so on. The proportions are key, and the heavier the basic flour (rye, whole wheat), the more important the pastry flour.
To start, you pour the yeast and salt in the bowl, then add the flour. I either gently stir or whisk these together to ensure that everything is well distributed. Then you slowly add the water. It may not seem to be binding into dough at first, but keep stirring and folding it, with a wooden spoon (you could use your fingers as well), and you will see that it starts to become shaggy, then more of a ball. I suggest not adding all the water if you can; you don't want the dough to be a wet mess, just moist. If it's too wet, then add a little more flour. But if it appears too dry after you'd added the suggested amount of water above, then add a little bit more water so that you can at least pull it from the sides of the glass. Create a little ball, and then cover it with a plastic bag (the basic supermarket ones are great), holding it in place with a rubber band. You don't want any air to get in or out. Let it sit for 3-4 hours. You could create it in the morning before work, and it'll be ready when you get home. It also can sit for longer (6-7 hours, etc.).
NOTE: Rye bread does not rise as much as other kinds of bread. Bittman says it barely rises at all, but with the pastry flour, mine does expand a bit. So don't be dismayed if it doesn't puff up like wheat/white bread.
After the dough has sat for the necessary amount of time and risen (you will see it double or sometimes triple in size), you want to pull it out and on a clean, lightly oiled (olive oil) cutting board, press it down and fold it into itself several times. I always do this by hand. Do not overknead it, but perhaps turn it into itself about 10 or so times. This is the stage at which you can add raisins, nuts like pecans, walnuts and pignoli, olives, herbs like rosemary or chives, garlic, chunks of sun-dried tomato, anything. I have tried many of these. The key is to make sure they're not oily or wet (so wash the pitted olives well and dry them). When you've kneaded or added ingredients and kneaded the dough, form it into another ball and return it to the plastic bag-covered bowl. Let it sit and rerise for another 1/2 hour. (You could let it sit for longer if you like, but usually 1 hour max is great.)
Now comes another important step. As the bread is rerising, you should turn the oven on and set it to 450°. If it takes your oven a while to warm up, start as soon as you return the dough to the bowl. If it warms up quickly, you can do this about 15-20 minutes before you bake the bread. You want the oven HOT, though, when the bread goes in. About 10-15 minutes before you bake the bread, you should put whatever you're baking the bread in or on--an ovensafe covered crock/French pot, a baking sheet, a bread stone--into the oven so that it warms too. I either use a covered crock pot or a baking sheet, depending upon the bread I'm making. Neither needs to be oiled because you've already oiled the bread, and loose oil in a crockpot or on a baking sheet will begin to smoke...bad news!
When the bread has sat for at least 1/2 hour and rerisen, remove the plastic-bag cover. Then remove the crock pot/baking sheet/bread stone and set it atop your stove. You should carefully place the rerisen dough into the crockpot (and cover, to keep the steam in, which will make the bread light inside and hard outside) or onto the baking sheet/bread stone. Form it into a boulle or round loaf, or stretch it out if you want a longish loaf. (For baguettes, break it into two pieces and stretch them out. Put it back into the 45o° oven and let it cook for 30 minutes. (During the baking process, you can gingerly score the top with a knife if you want to be fancy.)
If you put it in a crockpot, remove the pot top (a palindrome!) after 30 minutes, and let the bread bake uncovered for 15 more. It should be light/golden brown on top. If you cook it on a baking sheet, it will also be golden brown, but the crust won't be as hard. The trick to getting a harder crust if you bake the bread on a baking sheet is when you initially put the baking sheet in the oven, to place a pan underneath it, let it heat for a little bit, then CAREFULLY add water so that it steams. You can also spritz (or use your fingers to sprinkle) water on the hot insides of the oven and on the baking sheet to create steam. This creates a hard crust, and is essential if you're making baguettes.
Also, be VERY CAREFUL when spritzing not to splash water on the oven's light bulb. Why? Because it explodes! I can attest to how difficult it is to clean up the broken glass, and to having to throw out the bread for fear it's been pierced by glass shards. Not fun.
Remove the bread after more 15 minutes or it's browned on top. You don't want it to burn. Place it on a cutting board and let it cool to room temperature. Don't cut it right away, but let the inside cool. After about 5-10 minutes, if you want to try some with butter or olive oil, or something else, you can sample it. To keep it for a week, you just place in the same sort of plastic shopping bag you used to cover the rising dough, and let it sit out at room temperature. If your home (apt./house) is really warm, then refrigerate it after a few (2) days, but if not, it should keep for 5-7 days without refrigeration.
And that's the basic bread recipe! I'll post one for semolina bread, and one to make pumpernickel bread, very soon. Both are similar but involve a few more steps/tricks.
Some bread photos:
Olive loaf
Rye bread, cooled and sliced
Pumpernickel bread (first time--I added too much molasses, so it was too sweet and crumbly. The second time I got the amount right. Recipe coming soon!)
Two mini-baguettes
My standard pecan loaf
Semolina loafs
Bread pudding, made with leftover Irish soda and chocolate
***
Continuing on the Precious tip, Tayari Jones recently noted on her blog that the controversy swirling about the film had gotten to her so much that she decided to bake a 7-Up pound cake--and she posted the recipe on her blog. (I am going to have to try it.) It looks delicious enough to calm anyone facing anything.
(BTW, Congratulations to Tayari also for having her new novel picked up by Algonquin Books!)
I can't claim similar grounds for my baking, but I do look forward to any excuse to create a loaf of bread. I don't know what is going on with this bread-baking mania, but I really enjoy doing it, and it really calms me down. I did finally make one of the bread recipes Miriam sent, for Irish soda bread--and then turned what was left of it into bread pudding with chocolate that was one of the best desserts I've made in some time. But before I post that, I'm going to post the basic bread recipe from which almost any standard loaf can be made.
I should add that a number of people I know either can no longer eat bread--at least store-bought bread--or deign to for dieting purposes, but I wonder if this homemade bread has the same effect. Recently when we had gone through several micro-sized baguettes I baked C bought some bread from Calandra's Bakery, and it molded after about 4 days (!?), while other store-bought bread--baguettes, Italian bread, etc.--turns to stone if left out of the refrigerator. The bread I bake 1) usually keeps for a week without mold if not refrigerated; 2) retains its flavor for weeks, even if refrigerated; and 3) maintains its consistency as well. I wrote to Calandra's to let them know about their bread, but I got a very terse, robotic response from some PR person, so if you're in northeastern New Jersey and shopping for what you think is homemade-style bread, you've been forewarned.
The Basic Recipe
I adapted my basic recipe from Mark Bittman's New York Times "no knead" recipe. It's a better bet than his book, How to Cook Everything, which is excellent but unaccountably uses "pounds" instead of "cups" for the basic recipe, which causes unnecessary confusion. There are several keys to getting consistently good bread with this recipe, I've learned. First, you should always use rapid-rise yeast. Second, mix the flour in a glass bowl, then cover it with a plastic shopping bag (which increases the heat and moisture in the bowl and yeast growth) held in place by a rubber band--it's far more effective than a loosely draped tea towel, a cutting board, etc. Third, keep the covered bowl in a warm part of your kitchen. Fourth, always use a little olive oil during the second (even if brief) knead period. It is essential to prevent the dough from sticking or burning, and it adds flavor.
Okay, so here goes. You start with:
1 packet of rapid-rise/quick-rising yeast (VERY IMPORTANT)
2 teaspoons of salt (Bittman says 1.5, but 2 give more flavor)
3 cups of bread/unbleached flour/whole wheat/rye flour
1/2 cup of pastry flour (VERY IMPORTANT)
1 1/2 cups of water (you can often use a little less but adjust according to the dough's consistency)
C figured out the pastry flour addition. It is essential because pastry flour has LESS gluten and is lighter than regular flour, so when the dough rises, it adds more air bubbles. Do not use self-rising flour, cake flour, or other kinds of prepared flours. Some combos to try are:
1) 3 cups of unbleached whole wheat bread flour + pastry flour = French/white bread
2) 3 cups of unbleached general purpose flour + pastry flour = French/white bread
3) 1 cup of stone ground whole wheat flour + 2 cups of unbleached whole wheat bread flour + pastry flour = lighter whole wheat bread (hearty)
4) 3 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour + pastry flour = fuller whole wheat bread (VERY hearty)
5) 3 cups of whole rye flour + pastry flour = rye bread (and darker than rye bread that you buy in the store--EXTREMELY hearty)
And so on. The proportions are key, and the heavier the basic flour (rye, whole wheat), the more important the pastry flour.
To start, you pour the yeast and salt in the bowl, then add the flour. I either gently stir or whisk these together to ensure that everything is well distributed. Then you slowly add the water. It may not seem to be binding into dough at first, but keep stirring and folding it, with a wooden spoon (you could use your fingers as well), and you will see that it starts to become shaggy, then more of a ball. I suggest not adding all the water if you can; you don't want the dough to be a wet mess, just moist. If it's too wet, then add a little more flour. But if it appears too dry after you'd added the suggested amount of water above, then add a little bit more water so that you can at least pull it from the sides of the glass. Create a little ball, and then cover it with a plastic bag (the basic supermarket ones are great), holding it in place with a rubber band. You don't want any air to get in or out. Let it sit for 3-4 hours. You could create it in the morning before work, and it'll be ready when you get home. It also can sit for longer (6-7 hours, etc.).
NOTE: Rye bread does not rise as much as other kinds of bread. Bittman says it barely rises at all, but with the pastry flour, mine does expand a bit. So don't be dismayed if it doesn't puff up like wheat/white bread.
After the dough has sat for the necessary amount of time and risen (you will see it double or sometimes triple in size), you want to pull it out and on a clean, lightly oiled (olive oil) cutting board, press it down and fold it into itself several times. I always do this by hand. Do not overknead it, but perhaps turn it into itself about 10 or so times. This is the stage at which you can add raisins, nuts like pecans, walnuts and pignoli, olives, herbs like rosemary or chives, garlic, chunks of sun-dried tomato, anything. I have tried many of these. The key is to make sure they're not oily or wet (so wash the pitted olives well and dry them). When you've kneaded or added ingredients and kneaded the dough, form it into another ball and return it to the plastic bag-covered bowl. Let it sit and rerise for another 1/2 hour. (You could let it sit for longer if you like, but usually 1 hour max is great.)
Now comes another important step. As the bread is rerising, you should turn the oven on and set it to 450°. If it takes your oven a while to warm up, start as soon as you return the dough to the bowl. If it warms up quickly, you can do this about 15-20 minutes before you bake the bread. You want the oven HOT, though, when the bread goes in. About 10-15 minutes before you bake the bread, you should put whatever you're baking the bread in or on--an ovensafe covered crock/French pot, a baking sheet, a bread stone--into the oven so that it warms too. I either use a covered crock pot or a baking sheet, depending upon the bread I'm making. Neither needs to be oiled because you've already oiled the bread, and loose oil in a crockpot or on a baking sheet will begin to smoke...bad news!
When the bread has sat for at least 1/2 hour and rerisen, remove the plastic-bag cover. Then remove the crock pot/baking sheet/bread stone and set it atop your stove. You should carefully place the rerisen dough into the crockpot (and cover, to keep the steam in, which will make the bread light inside and hard outside) or onto the baking sheet/bread stone. Form it into a boulle or round loaf, or stretch it out if you want a longish loaf. (For baguettes, break it into two pieces and stretch them out. Put it back into the 45o° oven and let it cook for 30 minutes. (During the baking process, you can gingerly score the top with a knife if you want to be fancy.)
If you put it in a crockpot, remove the pot top (a palindrome!) after 30 minutes, and let the bread bake uncovered for 15 more. It should be light/golden brown on top. If you cook it on a baking sheet, it will also be golden brown, but the crust won't be as hard. The trick to getting a harder crust if you bake the bread on a baking sheet is when you initially put the baking sheet in the oven, to place a pan underneath it, let it heat for a little bit, then CAREFULLY add water so that it steams. You can also spritz (or use your fingers to sprinkle) water on the hot insides of the oven and on the baking sheet to create steam. This creates a hard crust, and is essential if you're making baguettes.
Also, be VERY CAREFUL when spritzing not to splash water on the oven's light bulb. Why? Because it explodes! I can attest to how difficult it is to clean up the broken glass, and to having to throw out the bread for fear it's been pierced by glass shards. Not fun.
Remove the bread after more 15 minutes or it's browned on top. You don't want it to burn. Place it on a cutting board and let it cool to room temperature. Don't cut it right away, but let the inside cool. After about 5-10 minutes, if you want to try some with butter or olive oil, or something else, you can sample it. To keep it for a week, you just place in the same sort of plastic shopping bag you used to cover the rising dough, and let it sit out at room temperature. If your home (apt./house) is really warm, then refrigerate it after a few (2) days, but if not, it should keep for 5-7 days without refrigeration.
And that's the basic bread recipe! I'll post one for semolina bread, and one to make pumpernickel bread, very soon. Both are similar but involve a few more steps/tricks.
Some bread photos:
Olive loaf
Rye bread, cooled and sliced
Pumpernickel bread (first time--I added too much molasses, so it was too sweet and crumbly. The second time I got the amount right. Recipe coming soon!)
Two mini-baguettes
My standard pecan loaf
Semolina loafs
Bread pudding, made with leftover Irish soda and chocolate
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Weekend Notes
I saw today that President Elect Obama is backing the laid off workers who've staged a sit-in since the beginning of this weekend at the Republic Windows & Doors plant (here) in Chicago. The roughly 300 employees were told on Tuesday that because of financial problems caused by Bank of America's cancelation of a line of credit, they would be let go by the end of the week, which was last Friday; one problem is that they didn't receive severance or benefit pay. The article implies the union is working to resolve the issue, while the owners of the company are engaging in shell games and not responding to media queries about what's going. Local politicians are condemning Bank of America, which is an easy target since it's one of the few remaining banking behemoths, although it's doubtful that such posturing will have any effect. Meanwhile, the protesting workers are wondering when they'll get their pay and what will they do just as the holiday season is rolling around. Any bailout coming for them and the hundreds of thousands now out on the street?
+++
To add insult to injury, the parent company of the newspaper to which I'm linking, the vaunted Chicago Tribune, for decades the Second (now Third) City's leading, conservative paper, is on the knife's edge of bankruptcy. As in, it could come as swiftly as this week. The Tribune Company's owner, Sam Zell, took the company private for about $8 billion, an insane amount even factoring in the portfolio's sterling pieces, the Chicago Cubs, and the major league baseball temple, Wrigley Field, neither of which he can unload right now, and repeated decimating waves at the company's various units, including the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and the Tribune paper itself, haven't brought in the fantastical revenue needed to service the debt. As I wrote to some correspondents earlier, "the media entities under Tribune control are like those insects that are devoured from the inside out, leaving the appearance, though sickly, of being alive, while being utterly hollow on the inside." Well, not completely hollow, but they're getting there, and we can certainly thank greed and deregulation, alongside the technological challenges the newspaper industry is facing, for hastening these events. At this rate, the nation's second and third largest cities could find themselves with one less major newspaper by January 1, 2009, if things continue on the track they're on now.
(On yet another point, this grim news about the publishing industry came out last week. As James Schuyler once wrote, another day, another dolor.)
+++
On a completely different note, I found Marc Lacey's New York Times article on the muxe, transgender/gender-queering people and related social matrix in Oaxaca, Mexico, both fascinating and a bit confounding. Confounding because the article proceeds as if, despite the wealth of material on gender and sexuality among indigenous peoples and a great deal of work on global performances of gender and sexuality, and despite the extensive contemporary discourse in gender studies and queer theory, there were little context whatsoever beyond the notion there are gay people, there are straight people, and there are some men who don't exactly fit either category but many of them dress up like women, consider themselves women, assume important roles in their community and are mostly and widely accepted, yet how do we define them according to the very fixed rubric of gay/straight? (Of course the word "lifestyle" has to enter the picture!) Etc. I say this not to criticize Lacey so much as to note that for the umpteenth time I'm registering the vast gulf between how things are discussed within academe and outside it, here in the putative newspaper of record. What might an article that were graspable by most readers yet that took into account contemporary discourse on gender and sexuality look like? How might it read so that anybody could read and engage in and with it, and how might academics, and non-academics open up conversations even more to make this happen?
“Thalía,” who was named princess the night before at a vela, or community celebration, for the muxes, waits for a parade to begin (New York Times, Katie Orlinsky)
+++
I was going to write about how I've been baking bread of late, and how it deepened my appreciation first for anyone who does this regularly, for homemade food and cooking, for the felicities of the Internet as an archive and resource, for the simple and profound joy you can derive from successfully accomplishing a task of this sort, for C's marvelous examples as a cook, for my ancestors who had to do this sort of thing with far less at hand, for the delight of finding another way to be thrifty, for finding a way to take my mind of the mounting stacks of material to be read and my own glacially proceeding writing projects, and for the ending of Raymond Carver's famous story "A Small, Good Thing," which I regularly teach and which, despite its evident exemplary status in the contemporary, American realist canon, still carries a faint whiff of the ridiculous with its suggesting that devouring freshly baked bread might create an affective, emotional and social bridge between a grieving couple, parents who've lost their only son, and a crank of a baker whose isolation has led him to behave in an unconscionable way. But then, I made and baked and ate this bread--C. had already done so a number of times--and I realized that Carver might be on to something. I'm not saying that freshly baked bread is the best offering to patch up a broken friendship or any other sort of inimical situation, but the smell of the bread coming out of the oven, and the taste, with just a little butter, or olive oil, or olive tapenade, is enough to calm even pretty severe personal tensions. Or at least I thought so after this last loaf came out of the oven. It really is delicious. Since I've heard that a few readers enjoyed the mulled wine, I'll post a recipe for the bread soon. I need to try it a few more times to make sure I've got it right, and then I'll post it here. A photo, though, of the penultimate loaf:
+++
To add insult to injury, the parent company of the newspaper to which I'm linking, the vaunted Chicago Tribune, for decades the Second (now Third) City's leading, conservative paper, is on the knife's edge of bankruptcy. As in, it could come as swiftly as this week. The Tribune Company's owner, Sam Zell, took the company private for about $8 billion, an insane amount even factoring in the portfolio's sterling pieces, the Chicago Cubs, and the major league baseball temple, Wrigley Field, neither of which he can unload right now, and repeated decimating waves at the company's various units, including the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and the Tribune paper itself, haven't brought in the fantastical revenue needed to service the debt. As I wrote to some correspondents earlier, "the media entities under Tribune control are like those insects that are devoured from the inside out, leaving the appearance, though sickly, of being alive, while being utterly hollow on the inside." Well, not completely hollow, but they're getting there, and we can certainly thank greed and deregulation, alongside the technological challenges the newspaper industry is facing, for hastening these events. At this rate, the nation's second and third largest cities could find themselves with one less major newspaper by January 1, 2009, if things continue on the track they're on now.
(On yet another point, this grim news about the publishing industry came out last week. As James Schuyler once wrote, another day, another dolor.)
+++
On a completely different note, I found Marc Lacey's New York Times article on the muxe, transgender/gender-queering people and related social matrix in Oaxaca, Mexico, both fascinating and a bit confounding. Confounding because the article proceeds as if, despite the wealth of material on gender and sexuality among indigenous peoples and a great deal of work on global performances of gender and sexuality, and despite the extensive contemporary discourse in gender studies and queer theory, there were little context whatsoever beyond the notion there are gay people, there are straight people, and there are some men who don't exactly fit either category but many of them dress up like women, consider themselves women, assume important roles in their community and are mostly and widely accepted, yet how do we define them according to the very fixed rubric of gay/straight? (Of course the word "lifestyle" has to enter the picture!) Etc. I say this not to criticize Lacey so much as to note that for the umpteenth time I'm registering the vast gulf between how things are discussed within academe and outside it, here in the putative newspaper of record. What might an article that were graspable by most readers yet that took into account contemporary discourse on gender and sexuality look like? How might it read so that anybody could read and engage in and with it, and how might academics, and non-academics open up conversations even more to make this happen?
“Thalía,” who was named princess the night before at a vela, or community celebration, for the muxes, waits for a parade to begin (New York Times, Katie Orlinsky)
+++
I was going to write about how I've been baking bread of late, and how it deepened my appreciation first for anyone who does this regularly, for homemade food and cooking, for the felicities of the Internet as an archive and resource, for the simple and profound joy you can derive from successfully accomplishing a task of this sort, for C's marvelous examples as a cook, for my ancestors who had to do this sort of thing with far less at hand, for the delight of finding another way to be thrifty, for finding a way to take my mind of the mounting stacks of material to be read and my own glacially proceeding writing projects, and for the ending of Raymond Carver's famous story "A Small, Good Thing," which I regularly teach and which, despite its evident exemplary status in the contemporary, American realist canon, still carries a faint whiff of the ridiculous with its suggesting that devouring freshly baked bread might create an affective, emotional and social bridge between a grieving couple, parents who've lost their only son, and a crank of a baker whose isolation has led him to behave in an unconscionable way. But then, I made and baked and ate this bread--C. had already done so a number of times--and I realized that Carver might be on to something. I'm not saying that freshly baked bread is the best offering to patch up a broken friendship or any other sort of inimical situation, but the smell of the bread coming out of the oven, and the taste, with just a little butter, or olive oil, or olive tapenade, is enough to calm even pretty severe personal tensions. Or at least I thought so after this last loaf came out of the oven. It really is delicious. Since I've heard that a few readers enjoyed the mulled wine, I'll post a recipe for the bread soon. I need to try it a few more times to make sure I've got it right, and then I'll post it here. A photo, though, of the penultimate loaf:
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