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Budding beekeeper Joe England: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?

By Addie Broyles | Friday, March 5, 2010, 05:12 PM

Joe England didn’t think about bees too much, let alone entertain the idea of raising them, until he saw a short film called “Every Third Bite,” which explained how Colony Collaspe Disorder is affecting beehives and what the implications are for our food system.

He’s started a group called Austin Urban Beekeeping, which is holding its first meeting at 2 p.m. on Sunday at Emerald City Press. (England says he’ll be screening the 9-minute movie, which I’ve embedded above, at the first meeting.)

England is also a member of the local band Minor Mishap Marching Band, whose many missions include raising awareness of environmental dangers such as a decrease honeybee population. The band will perform at the meeting on Sunday.

What three things are always in your fridge? White Mountain Yogurt, which is made in East Austin. Local produce, which right now includes a kind of kale that I’ve never had before, and local cheeses. (Right now, I have Blueberry Havarti from Brazos Valley Cheese Co.) What’s your favorite condiment, besides honey? A globe-spanning assortment of hot pepper sauces (some local, some super exotic)

What’s your favorite thing to do with honey? I mostly just sweeten cups of coffee and tea with it. Not exciting news, but it’s the only sweetener I use.

What’s your go-to late-night snack? I enjoy busting out one of my packages of frozen homemade soup. Living alone, it’s hard to eat up a whole pot of soup and impossible to make a small pot for one. On the other hand, it’s just great out of the freezer a couple of weeks later.

Photo by Joe England.

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Week of Eating In: Finding sweet inspiration online

By Addie Broyles | Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 09:37 AM

Since the week of eating in challenge ended Sunday, I’ve enjoyed a piece of Homeslice pizza as well as some Asian noodles from a nearby take-out place.

Both were good, but there’s a reason that has nothing to do with saving money or time why I made Smitten Kitchen’s baked rigatoni with tiny meatballs last night: Cooking feels good.

Making dinner for my family isn’t just gratifying, it seems to set the tone for the entire evening. On Monday night, when I brought home take-out, we’d finished eating by 6 p.m., so we flipped on the TV and proceeded to bicker for the rest of the night. (TV tends to do that to a family.) It’s hard to directly link eating food prepared by someone else to us misunderstanding and not being patient with each other, but I can’t help but notice how different things were the following night.

Sure, Smitten’s hand-rolled meatballs and bechamel sauce took forever, and Ian and I had to stumble over each other in the kitchen to work on the dish together (we still haven’t figured out how to cook together), but we all sat down for a homemade meal and everything just seemed right.

For the rest of the night, it seems I was rewarded for taking the extra time and energy to make a meal from scratch set; Julian and Ian were in good moods, I skipped “American Idol” and instead made time for yoga, and doing all those dishes didn’t seem to take near as long as it should have.

I tried to sum up rediscovering the art of eating in in a story in today’s paper, but the truth is, cooking is such a personal experience and my evolving relationship with it is undoubtedly different than yours.

One thing we probably all share is an occasional lack of inspiration for what to cook. In the story, I wrote that food blogs, more than cookbooks or television shows, are my primary source of new ideas and dishes.

Like the rigatoni, I stumbled upon this ginger pear crisp recipe while flipping through the blogs I read in my Google Reader last week. Blogger Brittany Darwell writes half of He Cooks, She Cooks, and always has nice recipes and photos (not to mention she’s blogging from my old college town of Columbia, Mo.).

I made the dessert for our weekly dinner with neighbors Buzz and Michelle Bakker, with whom I made croissants last week.

I love fruit crisps of any kind, but this one had something special in it. Not too long ago, Austin blogger Christy Horton of Epicuriosities gave me a plastic tub full of lemon sugar.

She explained that, similar to vanilla sugar, lemon zest combined with plain white sugar would made a lemon-infused sugar that you could use in just about anything from tea to desserts. (She’s a pastry chef, so she should know.)

After you use some of the lemon sugar, just add more sugar. It’s an never ending supply of something fragrant and sweet, an ingredient that itself can be a source of inspiration.

I passed along some of the sugar to the Bakkers and have now done the same to Relish Austin readers. Books, magazines and celebrity chefs are fine sources of new ideas, but my favorites come from people I know, even if I only know their screen names or blog titles.

Pear crisp photo by Brittany Darwell.

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New farmers market opening Thursday in West Lake Hills

By Addie Broyles | Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 11:24 AM

Central Texas has a new farmers market starting this week.

The Truck Farm Farmers Market will hold its grand opening from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursday at the northeast corner of Bee Caves Road and Loop 360 in front of the Pots and Plants Nursery.

Market manager Amy Ingram says local producers will be selling vegetables, fruits, eggs, meat, seafood and cheese, as well as flowers, honey and some specialty prepared foods.

The market, 5902 Bee Cave Road, will be open year-round on Thursdays no matter the weather, and look for fun events such as an Easter egg hunt in April, a watermelon-eating contest in July and pumpkin carving this fall.

Ingram also says that the market will be offering internships to students who are interested in working with farmers and learning about agriculture business.

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Week of Eating In: I’m a no knead bread convert

By Addie Broyles | Monday, March 1, 2010, 02:44 PM

I’ve been skeptical of this no knead bread trend that came about a few years ago.

Many bakers have praised Jim Lahey’s ridiculously simple no knead bread recipe that calls for combining flour, yeast, salt and water and letting it ferment on the counter for 12 to 18 hours. Lahey’s technique requires almost no contact with the dough before it bakes in the oven.

Last year, I waxed on about how much I love baking bread for its long and tedious process, at the heart of which is kneading the dough.

I wrote: “The rhythm of baking bread forces me to slow down, to think about how my great-great-grandmothers in Sweden made bread every day not because it was meditative, but because you couldn’t buy good bread that didn’t come in a plastic bag tied with a plastic-coated wire.”

But the truth is, even though I love the bread-making process, I rarely find time for it outside the occasional weekend baking fest.

Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York is one of the no knead fanatics, and she wrote so favorably about the technique in her book “The Art of Eating In” that I had to try my own version during last week’s eating in challenge.

I made Lahey’s straight up loaf instead of Erway’s famous cheese and peppercorn bread (recipe below), but I could not have been more impressed with the results.

The dough is much more wet than most bread doughs — food scientist Harold McGee explained how this works in last week’s New York Times — so I had to resist the urge to add more flour as I went.

After pouring the fermented dough onto a floured surface and sprinkling it with flour, you fold the dough on top of itself twice and then let rest for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, place the dough on a floured cotton dishcloth, cover and let rise for 2 hours.

After 30 minutes in a covered Dutch oven inside an 450 degree oven, this is what the bread looked like.

Another 15 minutes, I pulled this golden brown loaf out of the Dutch oven, but it wasn’t until I cut into it and found a rustic yet tender and airy center that I realized what everyone has been raving about.

It’s not that kneading the bread is a chore, but rarely does any loaf — kneaded or not — come out with this texture and flavor. The long fermentation time means that the yeast has had time to completely convert carbohydrates into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas, which gives the bread its wonderful air pockets and flavor.

I can’t wait to experiment with adding small amounts of whole wheat flour and herbs, spices and cheese.

Have you played around with no knead dough recipes or are you still skeptical? What are your favorite ways to personalize it?

Peppercorn, Potato and Parmesan No-Knead Bread

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
About 3 Tbsp. black peppercorns, cracked
1 5/8 cups water that was used to boil a potato, slightly cooled
Parmesan for topping

In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, salt, and peppercorns. Add the water and stir until blended; the dough will be shaggy and sticky.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest at least 12 hours (preferably about 18 hours or two days) at warm room temperature (about 70 degrees). The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.

Lightly flour a work surface and place the dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover the dough loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest about 15 minutes.

Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or your fingers, gently and quickly shape the dough into a ball, tucking the folded parts underneath. Sprinkle and gently pat the grated Parmesan across the top of the loaf. Generously coat a clean cotton dishtowel (not terry cloth) with flour, semolina, or cornmeal, and place the loaf seam-side down on it. Coat another cotton towel with flour, cover the loaf, and let the dough rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, the dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

At least half an hour before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to -8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enameled cast iron, or ceramic) in the oven while the oven is preheating.

When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Slide your hand under the towel and place the dough, Parmesan side up, in the pot. Cover with the lid and bake 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove from the pan and cool completely on a rack.

— Cathy Erway, “The Art of Eating In”

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Week of Eating In: A chance to dive into ‘Joy of Cooking’

By Addie Broyles | Monday, March 1, 2010, 01:35 PM

File this one under Kitchen Confession: Until this past week, I hadn’t cooked from Irma Rombauer’s epic “Joy of Cooking.”

For a food writer, this is one of the ultimate sins (right up there with not owning Le Creuset cookware and refusing to cook with celery, both of which I’m also guilty of). I’m a “How to Cook Everything” girl myself, but Rombauer’s book is a classic, having been in print continuously since 1936 and sold more than 18 million copies.

I found an extra copy of “Joy” in the Statesman’s cookbook stash recently, and last week’s challenge to eat in for a week gave me the perfect excuse to start exploring.

As soon as I started flipping through the book, I realized why it was so important to so many people. Mark Bittman’s might claim to show you how to cook everything, but Rombauer’s is probably a little closer to the truth.

On Sunday, Julian and I made pancakes, or flapjacks, as he insisted after reading a book that called them that. Instead of making the pancakes from scratch (thank you, Hungry Man), I opted to make blueberry syrup from a recipe from “Joy” that called for lemon zest and cinnamon sticks. I added a few blackberries to the mix because we had some in the freezer.

Everyone loved the results so much that no one even reached for the regular syrup.

Blueberry syrup

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup syrup
1 cup blueberries (or any kind of berries)
1 1-inch piece of cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zest
1 Tbsp. dark rum or port (optional)

Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Add blueberries, cinnamon stick, lemon zest and port. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes until thickened.

— From “Joy of Cooking” by Irma Rombauer

While digging around the bread-baking section, I saw a recipe for bread made with sprouted seeds, which lead me to an entire entry on all the kinds of seeds you can sprout.

Seed sprouting is considered as hippie as patchouli these days, but Rombauer must have known how tasty, easy-to-make and good-for-you sprouted beans and seeds can be. At her suggestion, I started sprouting mustard and fenugreek seeds that had been sitting in my spice cabinet and millet that has been gathering dust in my pantry.

After just two days, the fenugreek seeds had already sprouted and the mustard seeds were just starting to burst out.

It’s easy to find alfalfa and bean sprouts at the grocery store, and the sprouts you make at home, which of course cost a fraction of those in the store, can be used in the same way. I’ll be putting these sprouts on sandwiches, in stir frys and hopefully in a loaf of bread like Ms. Rombauer suggested.

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Beer blogger Lee Nichols: What’s in Your Fridge Friday?

By Addie Broyles | Friday, February 26, 2010, 02:24 PM

When he’s not writing about politics for the Austin Chronicle, Lee Nichols is drinking beer. Or blogging about beer. Or at least thinking about beer.

Nichols’ blog, appropriately called I Love Beer, is a must read for beer geeks in Austin. He reports on upcoming beer events, what new beers he finds in area stores and the latest buzz around the gazillion new brewers coming to town.

He took this picture of his beer fridge a few weeks back.

What three beers are always in your fridge? Because I’m always about trying something new, and I’m a seasonal beer drinker — winter warmers in December, crisp pilsners and wits in the summer, etc. - there is no beer that is ALWAYS in there. But I’m pretty partial to Real Ale Fireman’s Four, especially in the summer. I lean toward Texas breweries a lot: Shiner, Saint Arnold, and Real Ale especially.

What’s your favorite beer to cook with? My wife does most of the cooking. I think the last time I cooked with beer was in college, and I used to make beer biscuits with Anheuser-Busch Natural Light, because it was the cheapest thing they had in Wheatsville. My wife has a similar philosophy: Whatever cheap stuff people leave at our house after a party. I prefer the quality beer go directly into my mouth.

What’s your desert island beer? Sierra Nevada Celebration is probably my absolute favorite beer, but in that case, I’d need the island to not be tropical, because it’s a thick Christmastime beer that doesn’t taste as good in hot weather.

I’m always on the hunt for interesting refrigerators. If you want to show off yours, take a photo of it (please resist the urge to clean or rearrange) and send it to abroyles@statesman.com.

Photo by Lee Nichols.

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Week of Eating In: Backyard salad for deskside lunch

By Addie Broyles | Friday, February 26, 2010, 02:17 PM

Five days into this week of eating in challenge, and I’m still going strong.

Had a moment of weakness yesterday afternoon when my unappetizing lunch of leftover pork and rice left me eying Lulu B’s and P. Terry’s for quick bite on the way home from work. I resisted eating out and made pasta and broccoli as soon as I got home.

Eating food that only I prepare takes A) planning and B) a willingness to experiment with new cuisines. One of the things I’m missing most this week is ethnic cuisines that I haven’t quite mastered in my own kitchen.

One thing I have mastered is growing lettuce in my backyard garden. For lunch today, I had a salad made from hardboiled eggs, raisins, nuts, homemade dressing and greens I picked this morning before leaving for work.

In Central Texas, we’re lucky to be able to grow salad fixin’s most months of the year (it gets too hot around June), and lettuce is by far one of the easiest and most money-saving crops I’ve tried.

Making vinaigrettes and other dressings at home will also save you a bundle. Three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, mixed with a little salt, spices and marmalade for a hint of sweet. An old caper jar is the perfect size to store enough dressing for a salad.

I figure the salad would have cost at least $6 if I would have bought it at a restaurant or cafe. I haven’t been tallying how much money I’ve saved this week by not eating out, but I’m sure no matter which way you cut it, I’ve spent less than I normally would.

Eating in this weekend will surely be interesting, especially because I’ll be under deadline for a story for next week’s food section about this little experiment, so stick around and see what I come up with.

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TECHmunch food blogger workshop during SXSW

By Addie Broyles | Thursday, February 25, 2010, 01:16 PM

To harness the creative spirit of That Other Conference and infuse it with content that is specifically relevant to food bloggers, BakeSpace.com and Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen are hosting TECHmunch, a day-long workshop at Parkside from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 13. (Austin’s own Natanya Anderson of Fete and Feast is also helping put on the event.)

Babette Pepaj, founder of BakeSpace, says that the event aims to bring food bloggers up to speed on “all the latest tools and tactics for building buzz, improving SEO, growing your audience and making money from your hard work.”

The workshop will be broken down into sessions led by bloggers and Web specialists including Ben Huh of I Can Haz Cheeseburger, Nichelle Stephens of Cupcakes Take the Cake, Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York (and host of this week’s Eating In challenge), “Casserole Crazy” author Emily Farris and Hair, who has launched a food writing career from her Steamy Kitchen blog.

I’ll be talking about ethics with Sarah Evans, who created the #journchat live chats on Twitter, as well as how to make old media work for you.

Tickets, which include food at Parkside, cost $45 in advance and can be purchased here.

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Week of Eating In: Applesauce muffins

By Addie Broyles | Thursday, February 25, 2010, 11:24 AM

Breakfast habits are hard to break.

I go through periods where all I eat is yogurt. I’ve been known to eat three pieces of cinnamon toast every morning for a week straight. Then I’ll move on to eggs and toast, followed by a few weeks of steel-cut oats. (In fact, I ate so much oatmeal with raisins and nuts in college that I’m just coming around to being able to stomach it again.)

My two favorite breakfasts when I was a kid were waffles smothered in peanut butter and syrup and applesauce muffins.

There’s no way my metabolism could keep up with Eggos, syrup and peanut butter every morning now, but the clove-, allspice- and nutmeg-filled applesauce muffins will always have a place in my breakfast rotation. (I used to make them so much that I had my mom’s recipe memorized, but now I have to rely on the dog-eared booklet that it was printed in when I was in middle school.)

One of the hardest aspects of not eating out this week has been resisting the urge to pick up a breakfast taco on the way in to work. In Austin, breakfast tacos (erroneously called “burritos” in other parts of the country) are cheap and ubiquitous. Every coffeeshop and taco truck sells them, and without fail, they taste better than the ones I make at home.

But when you think about the fact that a single breakfast taco costs about as much as a dozen eggs, you realize that this daily habit isn’t so great on your budget.

To give me something else to look forward to in the morning, I made the muffin batter last night and enjoyed freshly baked pillows of sweetness with coffee this morning.

That’s the best thing about these muffins: You make the batter and keep it in the fridge, and every morning, you can easily make a small batch of fresh muffins, which are highly customizable. You can mix in blueberries, cranberries, raisins or nuts, depending on your mood. Plus, because they are made with applesauce (cough, and two sticks of butter, cough cough), you can pretend they are good for you.

How do you resist the urge to pick up breakfast on the way to work or school? Do you have a favorite family muffin recipe? (I admit that these are just about the only muffins I make, so I’d love a new recipe or two.)

Applesauce muffins

1 cup margarine, softened (I use butter)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. allspice
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 lb. can applesauce
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. vanilla

Cream together margarine, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add flour, cloves, allspice, cinnamon. Blend together and add applesauce, baking soda and vanilla. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. (The dough may be refrigerated for two weeks. [ed. note: I’d recommend keeping it for only one week.] Bake fresh as you wish.)

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Week of Eating In: Shrimp ‘n’ grits, beans in under 30 minutes

By Addie Broyles | Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 04:13 PM

After Monday’s epic croissant-making, I needed a less time-consuming meal for last night’s dinner in.

Rachael Ray’s entire career was made off the concept of making a meal in less than 30 minutes, so I gave it a shot. Making dinner of bacon-laced green beans, shrimp and cheese grits and toasted bread in under 30 minutes? No problem. Making dinner of any sort in less than 30 minutes with a grabby 3-year-old eager to “help”? That’s a little bit harder.

Julian loves to be a “counter bird” and help measure out ingredients and dig through the spice cabinet. Anyone with young kids knows that they want to be wherever you are, which doesn’t create an ideal cooking environment. With hot stoves, sharp knives and cutting boards covered in meat juice, you’re asking for an injury — or at the very least, a headache trying to prevent one.

But what are the options? Eating out certainly isn’t any easier. We had a quintessential disaster dinner out last week where Julian spilled water all over the table, insisted that the server bring him a hamburger (we were at a Thai place) and got antsy to go look at the fish tank after only a few minutes at the table.

Ideally, finding another activity for him while Ian or I is cooking would making cooking easier, but sometimes, it’s worth the extra effort to expose him to the process of preparing food.

When he was even younger, I was sure that involving him in the kitchen would help expand his palate, a theory I quickly found out isn’t necessarily true. He’s happy to help pour grits into a pot, but we were lucky to get him to take a single bite when they were done. (Not even me comparing it to the gold standard of mac and cheese could convince him it was worth eating.)

Sure, he dumped half the garlic salt on the counter when I wasn’t looking and almost did the same thing with the container of grits, but last night’s cooking-with-kid experience wasn’t too bad.

We finished the meal, including peeling the shrimp and prepping the veggies, in 30 minutes, which was my goal, not just for the video but for my sanity and starving stomach. It took another five minutes to persuade Julian to sit down to eat at the table with us (cue the fit that you’ll hear at the end of the video), but by 6:15 p.m. or so, we were happily eating dinner together and talking about how much fun snow is and how much better grits taste with cheese.

It was exactly the scene Cathy Erway had in mind when she pitched this eating-in challenge to me a few weeks ago.

What’s on the menu tonight? Tacos made from slow-cooked pork that should hopefully take even less time than last night’s dinner.

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Charcuter-what? Preserved meats never tasted so good

By Addie Broyles | Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 12:57 PM

For thousands of years, humans have been preserving meat.

In an article in today’s paper, I explore some of the ways we still rely on salt, smoke, fat and — most importantly — time to make things like sausages, rillettes, bacon and pate, which all fall under the umbrella of charcuterie.

Preserving meats long ago stopped being necessary (thank you, refrigeration!), but there’s a reason chefs and home cooks continue to practice this art: it tastes good. Many would argue that there’s no grilling or searing method that can even come close to matching the flavor imparted on meat when it is salted, smoked, cured or cooked in fat.

Larry and LeeAnn Kocurek launched their charcuterie business last fall, and Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club sells charcuterie like sausages and rillettes through his weekly mailing list. Daniel Hunt of A Noble Beast Charcuterie sells charcuterie to local businesses including Aviary and House Pizzeria.

Runkle, who was a vegan for 10 years, says he hopes to have Italian cured meats, all made from local meats, such as toscano and genoa salami, pancetta and sopressata available by the end of March at local farmers markets and some restaurants.

Check the Web site, which also features a pretty cool blog by Ben, for more information in coming weeks about availability.

If you’re not quite ready to make the jump to curing your own pork or sausages, consider salmon, which, according to “Charcuterie” author Michael Ruhlman, is one of the easiest charcuterie products to make at home.

Last night, I started my first batch of cured salmon by making a mixture of salt, white sugar, brown sugar, pepper and dill to cover a small piece of raw salmon. Ruhlman suggested covering the salt-and-sugar-covered fish with a piece of plastic wrap and then weighing it down with a brick or cans.

After just 12 hours in the fridge, the liquid from the salmon had turned the salt and sugar into a brine. I flipped it once, placed the plastic wrap and cans back on the fish and returned it to the fridge. Because it’s such a small piece of fish (only about a quarter pound), it will probably be done later today or tomorrow.

If this goes well, maybe I’ll snag some pork bellies and try my hand as the most beloved charcuterie of all — bacon.

Pancetta photo by Ben Runkle.

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Week of Eating In: Homemade croissants

By Addie Broyles | Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 03:56 PM

Making croissants from scratch isn’t exactly your average weeknight cooking activity.

Monday was the first day of the Week of Eating in Challenge, hosted by “The Art of Eating In” author Cathy Erway and the Huffington Post, and to kick off eating seven days in a row of eating only food that I have prepared, I hit both ends of the cooking spectrum: a lackluster sandwich for lunch and a dinner that included stuffed homemade croissants.

A few weeks ago, my husband, Ian, and I started a Monday night dinner tradition with our neighbors Buzz and Michelle Bakker. They both work in the service industry and love to cook, so they usually spend their day off on Monday cooking up something fabulous. I couldn’t let them do all the work this week, so I pitched in to make one of their favorite “trailer park” meals: speed bumps.

Every family in America has its version of speed bumps: that quirky, disgusting-sounding-but-delicious-and-easy-to-make meal that the kids downright beg for.

Michelle says she’s been making speed bumps — croissants or crescent rolls stuffed with a mixture of cream cheese and canned chicken or crab — ever since the day an old boyfriend’s kids asked her to make them. “I had no clue what they were talking about,” she says. “They finally explained that it was a dish their mother always made.” So Michelle had to buck up and call her boyfriend’s ex-wife for the recipe. “She reluctantly gave it up, and I’ve been making them ever since.”

Usually, when she’s using store-bought crescent rolls, speed bumps take about 15 minutes to assemble, but Buzz had been wanting to try them with homemade croissant rolls.

Buzz grew up in front of hot ovens. He worked at his father’s bakery in Aspen as a kid and ended up running his own bakeries in Utah and Colorado as an adult. Decades before Michael Ruhlman published his landmark baking book “Ratio,” Buzz kept the charts of all of his baking formulas, not recipes, in a now-yellowed three-ring binder that he still keeps on his kitchen shelf.

Loaves of bread were just the beginning of his love affair with food. He went on to work nearly every kind of restaurant job, which has turned him into a fabulous cook, but he’ll always be a baker, and not just because his last name says so.

He frequently dips into the 25-pound bag of bread flour in his pantry to make all kinds of homemade breads, but until yesterday, he hadn’t made croissants at home. (Probably has something to do with the thousands of them he’s rolled out by hand over the years.)

Here’s his recipe with step-by-step photos, followed by Michelle’s recipe for speed bumps:

Croissants

1 1/2 tsp. yeast
12 oz. bread flour (about 2 1/2 cups)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 cup milk (add milk slowly, you might need slightly more or less than this amount)
3/4 pound butter, softened

Buzz is faithful to his food processor. I usually made bread entirely by hand, but he makes a strong case for letting a magical Cuisinart do the work. Add yeast, flour, salt and egg to food processor and blend for a minute and a half with milk. “You have to know your textures,” he says, which is something you have to learn by doing, but beware that you’re looking for a softer-than-bread-dough texture for croissants.

Place the sticky dough on a floured surface, cover with flour and shape into a flat oval. Roll out dough into a large rectangle that is between 1/8- and 1/4-inch thick.

Using your hands, spread the butter over two thirds of the dough.

This is where the fun begins. Fold the unbuttered third over the middle, and fold the end third on top. Rotate the dough a quarter turn and roll out into a rectangle. Flour the surface as needed.

Now, mentally divide the dough into quarters and fold the outside quarters toward the middle and then fold in half. (Buzz calls this the book fold.) Roll out into a rectangle and repeat two more times, the final time leaving unrolled. Place in the fridge for 30-45 minutes to allow the dough to rest and butter to cool.

At this point, you have created layer upon layer of buttered dough, which give croissants their signature flakiness.

Roll the dough out into a rectangle one more time and cut in half lengthwise with a pizza cutter. Then cut out triangles with a slit in the short edge.

Taking the corners created by the slit, fold outward and begin rolling toward the triangle tip. An inch or two away from the end, pull gently on the pointy tip of the triangle to extend it and finish the roll. Tuck the corners together to create a circle.

Brush generously with an egg wash mixture (1 beaten egg mixed with a little milk) and let proof in a warm spot. (Buzz uses a dishwasher that has just been run.) Brush once more with egg wash and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Keep an eye on them, Buzz says, because they can burn easily.

Speed bumps

1 brick cream cheese
1 can crab (You can also used canned chicken or salmon.)
1 small onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, minced
basil
dill
white pepper
oregano
Greek seasoning
garlic
2 packages crescent rolls (or homemade ones, if you’re up to it)
asparagus soup for gravy, thinned with milk.

In a bowl, combine cream cheese, crab, onion, bell pepper and spices. (The amount of spices is vague, Michelle says, because it depends entirely on what you like. She never measures and just does a dash of whatever she’s feeling like.) Let sit in the fridge so the flavors can meld. Unroll the packaged crescent rolls and combine two small dough triangles to create a larger one. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Place a spoonful of the mixture onto the dough and roll up. Press the ends that stick out on the top of the roll so the mixture doesn’t melt out. Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes.

While speed bumps are baking, heat asparagus soup in a small pan and add any seasonings you’d like. Michelle likes to add white pepper, basil and dill.

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SXSW Eats: Bacon Takedown at Emo’s

By Addie Broyles | Monday, February 22, 2010, 05:07 PM

Let the food-for-all that is SXSW begin.

Sure music, film and technology get all the attention during the festivals that are only weeks away, but food has become as much a part of the South by Southwest conferences as the badge-holding attendees. Of course, there has always been a ton of free food at the official and non-official parties, but this year, we’re starting to see even more dedicated food events.

You’ll be reading details about IFC’s food events with chef Sam Mason and crazy Food Party host Thu Tran when I confirm them, as well as Rachael Ray’s famous party. Later this week, I’ll even be announcing the specifics of the second Austin360 Food Blogger Bash. (Last year, we held the event at Whole Foods. This year, it’ll be closer to the convention center.)

But if you like bacon — and let’s be honest, if you eat meat, you do — then you’ll want to know about Bacon Takedown, a throwdown hosted by Matt Timms of The Takedown.

Timms started hosting these cook-offs back in 2005, and now he’s taking the takedowns on the road. One of the first stops is at 4 p.m. at Emo’s on Sunday, March 14, where cooks will bring in their best bacon dishes for the audience and a panel of judges (including me) to taste. It costs $10 to get in, but if you sign up to cook, you get in for free and Hormel will send you all the Black Label bacon you need for your dish.

Timms says he expects to see everything from breakfast to desserts submitted to the Bacon Takedown, and that contestants have a lot of room to earn points for creativity. Think you have what it takes? E-mail Timms if you’re interested in competing. You can also buy tickets online or on the Emo’s Web site.

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