zucchini bread

Sometimes it's a late summer afternoon and you're one month away from your wedding and even though all the pesky details and questions about those details are finally starting to come to an end, you now have an onslaught of wedding presents showing up at your door every day that you really shouldn't have registered for in the first place because where the heck are you supposed to put them in your teeny tiny new york apartment? You're tired and hot and overwhelmed and kind of just want it all to be over but instead of having yet another meltdown you see a bowl of vegetables in your kitchen from a recent CSA haul gifted to you by a friend who was going out of town and didn't see the point in picking up a bag of food she'd never be able to use. And even though you should've been at the gym ten minutes ago (because, you know, the wedding), you start to bake. Eggs, flour, sugar, a little cinnamon and a whole lot of zucchini. You shouldn't be wasting time and calories on this bread, but you're pretty sure it's going to taste good and you're really sure you need this right now. Something to focus on. Something for your hands to do. It's quiet in your kitchen, save for the crack of an egg and the scrape of the zucchini across the grater (and the construction across the street and the crying baby next door and the helicopter flying overhead, but you choose to ignore those sounds as they do not positively contribute to your afternoon). And soon you find a familiar rhythm you didn't know you missed. Measure, pour, stir. Measure, pour, stir. You don't know why (and you're certainly not going to take the time to analyze why), but you have calmed down. A bit. There is still a stack of thank you's begging to be written and a pile of towels that need to be washed and a whole wedding you need to finish planning, but right now you've got a fresh loaf of bread begging for your attention. A bit of butter, a reheated cup of coffee, and a very deep breath for reassurance: you've got this.

for the curious and hungry: my go-to zucchini bread recipe

(new year's res) Baking Bread #1

One of my (many) new year's resolutions is to bake four loaves of bread in 2016. And since I love nothing more than making a brash justification and blurring the definition of what "bread" really is just to be able to check off another item on my personal resolution list, I spent an afternoon baking an Americanized version of an Irish bread shaped like a British pastry. Why, you ask? Well, it all started with a deep moment of nostalgia for the Irish soda bread I grew up eating at my best friend Terri's house at their annual St. Patrick's Day dinner. While my Sicilian/Italian family paid more attention to the following day's St. Joseph's Day celebrations, Terri's family was more than happy to indulge in their Guinness-drinking, limerick-making Irish heritage. And as a result, each year her mother would make the entire traditional feast - corned beef and cabbage, potato soup, and the heartiest soda bread this side of the Atlantic. I haven't been able to partake in their dinner in quite some time (thanks, work schedule), but I found myself thinking of those nights around her dinner table in anticipation of this year's St. Patrick's Day.

I had to work on SPD this year and knew that I wasn't going to be able to commit to the full menu - but the soda bread was something I could handle. This would be my first time making the heralded bread, so I took to the internet for guidance and inspiration - only to discover that there are about a million different "authentic" family recipes that each claimed theirs was the "true" Irish soda bread. Ok, so I'll just ask Terri's mom for her recipe, that'll solve my problem! But I unfortunately didn't plan ahead and decided to start looking up recipes about five minutes before I left for the grocery, and didn't have time to wait for a response. I started to fret. How was I going to pay my respects to the patron saint of Ireland?? Then I remembered the gold mine that is Smitten Kitchen. Ahh yes. That's where I'll find my recipe!

And find a recipe I did - one that looked delicious, not-too-complicated to make...and was for an Americanized version of Irish soda bread. In scone-form. But whatever. I've learned to put my trust in the wise words of Deb Perelman, and figured that if this soda bread was good enough for her, it'd be good enough for me (which, obvi, it so was). So there you have the story of my first of four loaves of bread made in 2016, even though the loaf of bread I made was neither a loaf nor a bread ;)

Tout le beurre

A few days into January, before I got consumed by a theater and when I still had access to things like "nights" and "weekends," I got a text from my friend Claire. It was a link to a recipe along with the message, "we should make this?!"

"Totally," I replied. "This weekend?"

"Yesssss" was her answer.

So on a moderately chilly and almost-snowy Saturday, I threw two cookie sheets, my French rolling pin, and two bars of dark chocolate into my bag and hiked the six blocks over to Claire's apartment. A fresh bag of flour, a half-drunk bottle of wine, and a laptop blaring a questionably sourced episode of The Great British Bake-Off littered her kitchen table.

"You ready for this?" she asked.

"Did you actually read the recipe?" I replied. "You know, we need to let these chill for like 18 hours or something."

"Yeah I just saw that. But I already bought all this butter, so we might as well just do it. Let's start!"

And with that, Claire and I set off on a two-day, 27-step, deliciously French and highly caloric pastry-baking extravaganza that would ultimately net us around 36 perfectly puffed croissants and pain au chocolates (I don't have the exact yield because we were too busy squealing in delight and stuffing our faces to count how many we actually made).

Neither of us had ever taken on such a complicated recipe before. I'd tackled a few multiple-course meals complete with homemade baked goods and I know that Claire can navigate a cake recipe like it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but these were authentic French pastries. From scratch.  However, we are two fairly intelligent women who like working our way systematically through complicated processes (it's no accident that in "real life" she is an opera singer and I am a stage manager), so we were able to find comfort and reassurance in following the recipe. And luckily, we work well together. I would call out instructions while she kneaded the dough for a while, and then I would take over dough duty while her arms took a rest.

Stopping only for church (her) and rehearsal (me), we floured, we rolled, we folded, we chilled, we rolled again, we proofed, we rolled some more, we folded some more, and we proofed some more - and by Sunday evening we had ourselves four pans of what looked like pretty good chocolates and croissants-to-be. Then came the moment of truth: it was time to bake the pastries. Following another seemingly bizarre series of steps that included misting the oven with a last-minute-purchased spray bottle of water, we put the dough into the oven and watched our little rolls puff into golden crescents. I don't want to toot our own horns of plenty, but they were wonderful - flakey, buttery, and so warm they practically melted in our mouths. We tore one apart and the inside revealed such perfect little nooks and striated layers that I immediately understood why we had to proof and fold so many times. It was a little slice of Paris in my mouth - a city I hold near and dear to my heart, and one that Claire and I had visited together just last fall.

Would I make them again? Probably not. They were truly and incredibly time-consuming, and she and I have other difficult baked goods to try our hands at next. But was it worth all the work? Without a doubt, yes. I experienced so much unexpected delight in making and eating and sharing the croissants that I nearly forgot just how many steps (and how much butter) it took to make them. While baking can be a solitary experience, sharing the process with a friend made it all the more fun - and now I am that much more excited to see what we bake up next.

Want to try your hand at croissants? We used this recipe for the dough and this for the pains au chocolates. Let me know how they turn out!