"Baking With Julia" by Julia Child (2004)

[Dahomechef]

Devlin--Thanks for the informative post. I use King Arthur flours and have just started using malt as well as vital wheat gluten, both due to the recipes in RLB's Bread Bible. I've had good results with the malt and haven't noticed the off flavor yet. Perhaps I should experiment with other flours, thanks for the suggestion.

If there is only one good bread baker in your area, there would seem to be room for you! As you know, once the locals become used to a better bread, you could have yourself one sweet business. Never been to southern Indiana, only the north, which is stunningly unremarkable in my memory.

Semifreddi is the name of a local artisan baker--sorry for the confusion.

I'm pumped about trying the cocodrillo. The "wet" doughs have worked really well for me. What's the name of the Fields book? Can anyone post an egullet link for it?

Devlin, thanks again for all your input. There must be a "bread thread" around that we could move this dicussion to. Once I get the Fields book, I'll report back on my results.

[Dahomechef]

SethG, thanks for your thoughtful review of The Bread Bible. I have to say, I agree with just about everything you said. RLB can be insufferable, and when I read her whining about how it took her 2 whole weeks to perfect a recipe, I almost threw the book into the dining room. Jeez.

However, (you knew that was coming, right?) I still recommend the book for one reason--the recipes work really well for me. Everything I've made from it has turned out either really good or fantastic. Yeah, it's pretty irritating that her recipes are sometimes soooo repetitive, but I just skip that stuff. Try the prosciutto bread or beer bread for quick recipes you might like. Good stuff.

Ineterestingly, RLB seems the opposite to me of Peter Reinhart's (sp?) The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by a baker who has spent his life passionate about bread. I really admire his book, and his personality as it comes through the book, and love watching him on PBS, but I have had little luck with the recipes. Probably because I'm not a very good or well educated bread baker, who knows?

[SethG]

Click: The Italian Baker.

I think this is a proper eGullet-gets-credit link.

I think you're right about RLB, Dahome. And when I said there's lots of good stuff in the book, Devlin, I meant the reference stuff about how bread works, the conversion charts, and some of the recipes, to be sure. But I don't think someone of your level of experience will get that much from it. It's more for beginners like me.

As for Reinhart, I've been working with him a lot lately, and I think he's become my guru. I love the guy's later works. I'm glad he dropped the philosophy/religion/hippie stuff that's all over the earlier books. I don't know why you haven't gotten good results, but I'm sure it isn't because you're no good. Keep trying!

Back to this thread: I still owe you a galette. I'm making the dough tonight, I promise.

[devlin]

I'm going to need some help with conversions, that's for sure, so RLB would be worth it just for that alone. Thanks.

I've been dipping into the linked thread a few messages above, the one with the review and the sourdough (?) gone the way of "The Blob" , and I gotta say your breads all look very wonderful. But I would encourage you to experiment with other flours. The variations are pretty significant. One of the things that scared me most when I started playing with dough were the scary stories about yeast. I was surprised to learn that yeast has been the least of my worries. It's the flours and the techniques. Yeast schmeast. Flour's a big deal in my world.

The rest of this week I'm busy with dogs and horses and my mouth (dentist) and then making my husband a long-promised batch of cannoli, not to mention the much anticipated arrival of the new flour, so the bread's sort of rote and on the back burner for the next few days. But I'm hanging around hoping to catch some pics of somebody's croc!

[devlin]

Question: How do I append a photo as so many of you have under your names? I've got one loaded in my profile and thought it would automatically append itself. I reckon not. What do I do?

[foodie3]

devlin, here is a link to giusto's - shipping is expensive, though

http://www.worldpantry.com/cgi-bin/ncommer...&cgrfnbr=171236

i live in sf bay area and around here you can get just about everything in specialty stores, whole foods sells giustos flours in bulk.

i am making "the crocodile", i like the wet dough, it's fun to work with, the smell is quite sour, hope it will be ok.

[devlin]

Foodie, many thanks! I'd heard Giusto's was in the works to provide bulk flours to the public, but it's been many many months since I'd investigated that and hadn't checked back yet. The last time I checked (a bit ago), their web site noted they were on the verge, but not quite there yet. I'm gonna give it a try. Shipping tends nearly to double the price for flours. I'm tentatively driving just south of Louisville next weekend to check out a mill that carries some promising flour which will make the whole enterprise way more economical. Since moving from Chicago, buying many foods I've been used to or food stuffs I'd like to try has been a real pain in the neck. On the other hand, there aren't any wheat fields or mills handy in Chicago either.

Oh, yes, the smell for the fermentation of the croc. Yes, it will be, as you say, "sour" during the height of fermentation. It worried me at first too, but now it's a smell I look for. You're in for a fabulous treat. Because of the durum in particular, it's not a great keeper, and into maybe the third day or so will begin to be fairly hard. Let it cool completely before cutting. Don't butter it. It's not a bread that works well with butter. Or anyway I don't think so. I like it just as it is, or with a goat cheese spread topped with slow-roasted tomatoes (tossed with a bit of olive oil and roasted with thyme and garlic, salt and pepper), or just a simple olive oil dipping sauce with minced garlic or parmesan or both. At any rate, it makes a fabulous bruschetta or crostini bread.

Edited April 1, 2004 by devlin (log)

[SethG]

Here's my pear galette, finally. Tasted a lot like your average strudel. somehow messed up the rolling, big time. I ended up pasting back on a whole section of dough. This dough is forgiving, so that's okay.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Thank you seth g, alacarte, arbuclo and devlin for your responses. There are lots of stories attached to the making of Baking with Julia and, when I can and when the stories seem to match what’s up on the thread, I’d be happy to tell them.

Re Seth’s question about wanting to do things differently from the way the bakers did them or learning from the bakers – as I think you can imagine, working with the bakers/pastry chefs in the prep kitchen and watching them work on set was one long, fabulous learning adventure. Every baker/p-chef has his or her way of doing just about everything and there was rarely a day when I didn’t pick up something.

Seth asked if there were things I would have changed had the project been mine alone. The question reminds me of some of the circumstances that made developing and writing Baking with Julia so unusual.

From the proposal stage, the goal was to create a book that could stand on its own. Obviously, it had to work as a tv companion book, but we really wanted it to be usable by home bakers who weren’t familiar with the shows. (For sure, we never thought it would be used as it’s being used here.)

To put together a book that would hold up as a "real" book, we made a list of the "lessons" we wanted to teach on air, such as meringue, quick breads or pies. Then, we found chefs to match each area. When I spoke to the chefs about their topics, I asked them if they’d submit an additional recipe, a favorite that could – or could not – fall within their assigned area. This was how I was able to expand the books’ scope.

Seth asked if I changed or would have changed anything in the recipes and someone elsewhere on the thread commented that techniques are not consistent from recipe to recipe. Well, those recipes that aired – and that’s the majority of recipes – had to be written to conform to what was done on camera; “extra” recipes could be modified if necessary, but there was no way to make methods more consistent without running over the chefs’ styles, something I never wanted to do. In the end, I hope the differences made the book more interesting and more useful.

And, while I didn’t change methodologies, I did give the recipes a single voice and did try to reconcile differences and variations by writing additional how-to and why material and putting extra info in the headnotes. I also wrote a Baking Basics chapter with extensive information on terms and techniques.

Finally, of course, there were some things I was itching to change and, when I could, I did, but only when changes didn’t conflict with what aired -- and, if any change was substantial, only when the chef gave it the ok.

Hope this answers your questions -- Dorie

[Rhea_S]

eGullet just gets better and better!

What are we baking this weekend? I'm still behind a week, but I may be able to squeeze some baking time into this weekend.

[brngckn]

I'm back in the game this weekend and have purchased the necessary items to make Florentine Squares, including a new 9X9 pan. We are doing Petit Fours rights? I am also going to make last weekends berry galette.

[SethG]

I was most interested in the babas, proposed by Dahomechef, but I don't think we ever got any real consensus. If we do them, I'm likely to wait until mid-week, when my usual Passover bread capitulation occurs.

Thanks, Dorie, for your response and participation here!

[devlin]

Dorie, the book is wonderfully consistent in its voice. I hadn't really thought about it til you noted the challenge there, but it would be very difficult to channel so many very singular voices and methods into a single "grammar," as you've done. The book is one of the most consistently methodical books of its kind that I've seen and has a really fabulous clarity. It's one of my favorite books. And beautiful to boot.

Were you part of the filming process at all?

[Dorie Greenspan]

Devlin, I'm blushing. Thank you very much.

Yes, I was part of the filming of Baking with Julia. The series was shot over the course of 7 1/2 unusually hot summer weeks in Cambridge, MA, in Julia Child's beautiful old house. Julia writes about this in the Introduction to the book, explaining how her basement became the prep kitchen, her dining room the control room and her kitchen the set.

Each chef arrived a day ahead, so that while one chef was downstairs prepping another was up in the kitchen taping. The action would be taped in the morning -- taping usually took between 4 and 5 hours (I think I'm remembering this correctly) -- then we'd break for lunch -- everyone would eat in the backyard -- and then the crew would shoot the "beauty shots" in the afternoon. The beauty shots are the still life shots you see at the beginning of the shows, a composition of everything that was made in the morning. Of course, all the food that was shot for "beauty" was real food and, if anything was leftover, it would be served with coffee the following morning.

In the book, the black and white photos on the recipe pages are taken from the taping. The technology that allowed these "video grabs" was fairly new and it was very exciting to have this material available for the book. The wonderful color photographs were done in a studio in New York in the fall.

[SethG]

So I made the matzoh from BWJ:

These were a lot of fun to make and taste really great, too! Very crisp, unlike even the "artisanal" matzoh I've had.

Is anyone baking anything from the book this weekend (i.e., now)? Are we skipping a week? It seems like nothing really gained any traction. I'm still up for babas later in the week. Or something else.

Edited April 4, 2004 by SethG (log)

[devlin]

Dorie, I always wondered what the time frame for filming was, but it sounds way more complicated and arduous than I'd ever imagined. Watching, everything looks so effortless and sort of as if a couple of folks just got together to hang around in a kitchen one day. It's been a long time since I read the intro to the book. It sounds frankly exhausting, and I can't imagine opening my home to so many people in that way. JC must have more energy than you'd think. Here's a question. Is she as personable and engaging and funny as she comes across in filming? I find her so delightfully compelling and funny and smart. And were you there for the Silverton shoots? Especially the one that gets JC crying over the brioche? It's a thing I've saved on video. I showed it to my husband when he got home from work the day I taped it because I just had to share it with somebody.

[devlin]

Seth, your matzoh looks delicious, which is not a thing I ever figured I'd say about matzoh. I've been interested lately in trying some of the cracker-type recipes and such and want to start making my own pita because I'm increasingly unable to abide the store-bought stuff. I swear it's like eating cardboard. Godawful.

I made more ciabatta Friday and meant to take pics, but when I came downstairs the next morning my husband and three dogs had devoured nearly the whole loaf, so all I had left was the butt end, or I guess we call those heels, don't we . But I went ahead and sliced some of what was left and took a pic. Not sure whether I'll get the pic upload figured out, but I'm gonna try....

.... Oh heck. No luck. I'll try to figure it out later. But here's a link to the photo I uploaded on another board which has an easier photos thread, at least for me, for the moment:

http://groups.msn.com/WhatsNews/newplaceco...oto&PhotoID=596

[oops: Editing to note that the one round loaf is the ciabatta dough using pugliese shaping.]

Edited April 4, 2004 by devlin (log)

[brngckn]

Seth- your Matzo's are beautiful. Did you make the babas as well?

I've been busy trying to catch up this weekend - Berry Galette, Petit Fours, and Mixed Starter/Walnut Breads

What is in store for next weekend?

[SethG]

Seth- your Matzo's are beautiful. Did you make the babas as well?

Thank you-- I was thinking I'd make the baba (or whatever) later, during the week. I think Dhomechef and Rhea were also interested in the babas-- but I don't know if anyone is actually doing them.

Your petit fours (and other breads, too) look great! I missed your proposal of the petit fours the other day. We could have done those together, as it were. I'm not really wedded to anything, but this weekend seems to have passed without much of a group consensus.

So I'm just going to take charge and say that this weekend (the one that's almost over) the project was the baba. I'm going to catch up on it later in the week. As for next weekend, April 10-11, let's hear a proposal!

[brngckn]

I was flipping through the book earlier and marked a couple of things that caught my eye:

Ka'kat on page 150

Danish Pastry Pockets on page 200

Tourte Miilanese on page 423 (this one came up before as a possibility)

I also have a question. I bought a banneton for my Walnut Bread because I wanted my to look pretty like mdt's. Now that I've invested in this, how do I care for it? Do you wash it? shake it out? other? I'm afraid I don't know.

[arbuclo]

Hi guys! Sethg, the matzoh, look great. I wanted to make them but, as mentioned previously, my oven doesn't get hot enough.

I did the berry galette last week. Did apples and blackberries and decided to make it a bit wider by folding in less of an edge around the pastry. I love that pastry when it's crisp. Not as nice the next day but still tasty.

brngckn, well done on all that baking! I'm so jealous! I've not had time and when I do I'm gonna have to bake for a week straight to catch up with everyone! I won't be able to do anything until the weekend after Easter but I'm really looking forward to it. I'm anxious to try the mixed starter bread that everyone has done so beautifully.

<edited for weird typo>

Edited April 4, 2004 by arbuclo (log)

[mdt]

Everything looks wonderful. It looks like this was a free-for-all weekend. I ended up making the sticky pecan buns (will post pictures later) as I have had my eye on them for a while now.

[Ling]

Just wondering, what are babas?

I should be getting my book in the mail sometime this week. For the weekend of April 10th and 11th, perhaps we could try an Easter-themed dessert? Are there any such ones in the book?

[binkyboots]

</ delurks>

hiya,

I've been watching (and admiring) all the baking here but have held back from joining in because I don't have bwj, but I figured I might as well have a go.... anyhow, from a couple of weeks ago here's my attempt at challah.. the braiding wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, though it was only three strands

I'm up for an Easter themed thing next weekend, though I'd have to find a recipe for whatever it is online, lol, my cookbook fund is at low ebb (though my birthday is coming up, lol)

[mdt]

binky -- Nice looking challah. You can always try and find a copy of BWJ at your local library. That is what I did while I was waiting for mine to come in the mail.

I do not recall any Easter themed desserts in the book, but those chocolate truffle tarts would be killer for dessert!

Edited April 5, 2004 by mdt (log)