Dried wild fennel leaves, Lemon and Pepper crackers / Sfogliate di pane al finocchietto, limone e pepe

Lately baking disasters have been the norm, the uneasy feeling of not doing it right, of not being focused. Yet another batch of grissinis gets burnt, the ciabatte do not rise as expected and every single recipe and experiments turns into drama. Not good. To get back on the track and to push myself I turn to the easiest solution to soothe the wounds to my confidence: online challenges and contests. When improvising too much I often lose concentration, having to participate to contests is another thing…there are deadlines and a recipe can turn out bad once, maybe twice. I started with a quick and easy recipe, because as always I put myself in the position of squeezing my urge of baking between chores and appointments. Renouncing is not an option.

Spelt, wholemeal and wheat bran bread / Pane al farro-spelta, farina integrale e crusca di frumento

Few days ago I was discussing with Barbara, on a bread baker’s group on facebook , about dough hydration. Highly hydrated doughs scare the wits out of me, and I have disastrous memories of my first attempts at highly hydrated ciabatta. Barbara encouraged me to try and hey, there is nothing as a good challenge to get me going. Since I had been doing very little baking and feeling a bit down in the previous days I decided I needed a proper kick in my backside.

Pain de beaucaire, truth or dare? / Pain de beaucaire e le verità nascoste

I know I owe you all an apology and an explanation. My last post’s title was misleading, as pointed out to me by Barbara. Probably some of you, like her, expected some dark revelation about my personal life and got none. I talked about some secrets and shared none… My mind was travelling back in years, living those moments I would share solely with my mother and my mind went through what we considered our little secrets.

Cake is… all good things come in threes! / Cake é…non c’è due senza tre!

Yet another Cake is… Tuesday. Why did I choose Tuesdays to test my Cake is… recipes? Simple as one two three, Wednesdays are Ada (my niece) days. Usually me and my father go and take care of her whilst my sister works and I bring my baked goods, knowing they will be judged with no mercy by both family members.

Smiley bread / Il pane felice

Sometimes things go really bad, at least for a perfectionist like me. But sometimes you can laugh hard at things going bad, especially when you have a big fat loaf laughing at your face. That’s what happened to me last night.