Bread Success (Pretty Much!)!

I impulsively bought a block of wet compressed yeast from Rainbow Grocery yesterday and had to do something with it.This is my first western-style bread, using Mark Bittman/Jim Lahey's no-knead dutch oven recipe (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?_r=1).

Although the recipe calls for instant yeast, the internet tells me 0.6 oz of wet yeast is equivalent to 2.25 tsp of instant. The block I bought was 0.5 lb, roughly 8 ounces, so I said what the hell, I'll chip a small piece from the corner off and see how it goes. The recipe requires so little work and just a lot of time waiting around for stuff to grow. It was pretty successful, although my dough seemed a bit more amorphous than it should, and the bread didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (see photo). The inside is still very light and airy, the crust is crackling and beautiful, and the taste is divine- salty, and yeasty; I'd say better than most of the loaves sold in bakeries (gasp!). In the future I will play around with different amounts of the compressed yeast and different room temperatures to see if I can achieve a more normal looking dough and higher rise.

P.S. delicious with mimolette cheese at 10pm

Spain...On the Road Again and Asleep the Whole Time

KQED and KCSM started airing the first episode of "Spain... On the Road Again" in the Bay Area last week. The idea of two respected foodie personalities, Mark Bittman of the NY Times and Mario-need-I-say-more-Batali traveling the hottest food paradise in Europe right now, is, in theory, irresistable. I imagined the two men making countless visits to colorful outdoor markets and tapas bars, learning how to create vivid and mouthwatering dishes from Spanish cooks in their kitchens, and plenty of informative, witty banter about food. Alas, the first episode failed to bring its audience deep into the world of Spanish food, bringing us, instead, deep into comatose.

Where the show really mucks up is the addition of Gwyneth Paltrow and lesser known, but also pretty, Spanish actress Claudia Bassols. Although Gwynie may be somewhat of a foodie, her prissy comments about only eating birds that grew up in the wild and that were slaughtered naturally, and how she's going to gain 10 kilos on the trip were totally irrelevant. I'm not sure why the producers thought it would be a good idea to split Mark and Mario up for most of the episode, forcing each to participate in vapid chit-chat with one of the actresses while driving around the Spanish countryside in Mercedes convertibles. Neither actress had any opinions of value to contribute and watching either of them try to eat is quite painful. The two minutes Mario and Mark did get to spend alone together at a seafood market was unjustly cut short; I found myself grasping for more M&M time. All of this, topped by the constant musical interlude of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" (an absolutely inappropriate soundtrack for a Spanish vacation), in places where it seems they just couldn't find enough interesting dialogue to keep audio busy, made watching this show an utter chore.