Roasted Potato and Roasted Garlic Fendu, and the Holidays are Upon Us!

Last week and this weekend were great days for bread. Well, I like to think so, anyway! I like to source my ingredients as locally as possible. Nevermind the discussions/arguments about the moral/social/economic benefits of using locally produced foods...I just think it's rewarding and fun to take the time to grow or find locally-grown foods for my cooking, bread and otherwise. One ingredient I never figured to find locally-grown was wheat, but I was wrong! Abby and Jason at Three Sisters Farm in San Timoteo Canyon, just a few miles from here, grew some hard red wheat which we traded some bread for a sample of and milled. I replaced the usual portion of whole hard red winter wheat we usually use (from Utah) with Three Sisters Farm wheat and the results were delicious! I thought the flavor was noticeably different (and better) than our regular wheat's flavor. We'll be sprouting some of what's left to try that in some experimental loaves as well, and will report back on that test. Exciting stuff! Here's a video of the wheat being winnowed on some antique machinery. Top notch.

Hard Red Wheat from Three Sisters Farm

We didn't have enough of Abby and Jason's wheat to bake it into this week's loaves, but this week's Roasted Potato and Roasted Garlic Fendu includes organic purple stripe garlic from Three Sisters, and is also made with Red La Soda potatoes from Jacinto Farms, just a couple of blocks from my house. Jacino grows here in Redlands, or at least nearby, as they claim that everything they sell comes from within four miles of town.

Three Sisters Farm Garlic, ready for roasting.

Red La Soda Potatoes from Jacinto Farms

Baking and freshly-baked bread smell wonderful. You can imagine what the kitchen smells like every morning. It's fantastic. What could be better? Throw in some roasted garlic. If you scratch your screen, you should be able to smell the roasted garlic in this photo.

Roasted Garlic

The roasted potatoes and the very small amount of olive oil left over from the roasting of the garlic and potatoes conspire to make for a very tender crumb and a soft crust in this week's loaf.

Monday morning's Roasted Potato and Roasted Garlic Fendu

A bad cell phone photo of some tasty snickerdoodles.

This week's breadshare also includes a little Lagniappe...snickerdoodles! My first adventure in baking was snickerdoodles, and at the Diersen house when I was a kid, I was the defacto snickerdoodle baker. I dare say, they were pretty good cookies. The recipe I used then had Crisco as the fat, and I do think there's something to be said for that, but this time I used a new recipe that uses all butter. Butter's a pretty safe bet.  These came out pretty good, but I've had better. Our memory of how good a food was years ago is always skewed. There have even been studies to quantify this, I guess. In the bagel section of his book "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," Peter Reinhart discusses the debate over what's the best bagel, and theorizes that "...nothing can top the taste of memory, but it is quite possible to find and make bagels every bit as good as in yesteryear, though never as good as those of our memories."  I still think they're pretty good, and any snickerdoodles are better than NO snickerdoodles!

Everyone in the bread share will be hearing from us shortly via email about the Thanksgiving holiday and our plans to ensure that everyone gets a loaf for their Thanksgiving table.

It's going to be a busy weekend in the C&C kitchen.

As a parting shot, I can't resist sharing this pan pizza with you. It's Cam's creation and includes gorgonzola, mozzarella, caramelized onions, pears, and I'm not sure what else.  But it was delicious.

Pan pizza with deliciousness.