This is what my kitchen counter looked like on Sunday afternoon, before and after my baking session:
I tend to bake in batches, and since electricity costs less on weekends, my big(ger) baking day happens on Sundays. I've been baking in batch for years now (I wrote about it last year here), and I like this system not only because I save on electricity and time, but also because dedicating a big chunk of time to it turns that afternoon into a creative moment, where baking meets improvisation - which is my style of baking. Sometimes this produces wonderful results, though when it doesn't, my family ends up a little hungry after dinner. Fortunately, no one went hungry on Sunday (it must have been the beneficial effects of the first hints of spring that inspired me).
The theme for my batch baking this Sunday was determined by a branch that fell off my rosemary bush lost to the Siberian snow (luckily the rest of the bush made it - see how green it is?).
So I baked farinata, the traditional chickpea flower focaccia, which Rebecca loves, sprinkled with a generous amount of rosemary. Then I whipped up a dough of white flour, farro flour, and cornmeal, mixed in lots of rosemary, and made little polentini nests in the muffin tins that I filled with sauteed onions, porcini mushrooms, more rosemary, and goat cheese. Yum! These were a hit ... I wonder whether I will ever be able to reproduce them?!
Then I baked a big loaf of bread - no rosemary in our bread, but I added about a cup of poppy seeds to the concoction of whole wheat flour, farro flour, flax and sunflower seeds that I've been using to make our bread because, we found, that we really like the little graininess and crunch it adds to the bread texture. And then I made the classic dish of roast potatoes with rosemary and garlic, to go with sausages that my carnivore boy was cooking on the fireplace because in his opinion, a rosemary inspired dinner wasn't going to be filling enough. And on Monday? We ate leftvovers!
