Feelin' Fancy

I grew up loving Martha Stewart and I'm certain that a decent portion of my domestic knowledge and inclination could be attributed to her. Something about her old-fashioned, cut-no-corners way turns me on. And as I look back at my adult life, I realize that right about this time every year I get a hankering to make foods from scratch. I suppose the extra time and effort involved in making things the proper way (or at least the way people made them before TV) makes me feel accomplished and a little bit perfect.

My inspiration this year was the purchase of my very first food processor (which I have already outgrown). My partner has already made some wonderful bean dips and guacamoles! Not to be outdone, I set out to find the perfect food processor recipe. I quickly found a Cilantro Pesto recipe that sounded delicious. But would Martha serve homemade pesto on some store bought crackers? Hell no! So I found a food processor recipe for 'The Best Bread Ever' dough. Seriously, that's what it was called. I started with the bread so that I could make the pesto while the dough was rising.

My hopeful joy quickly turned to disappointment when I couldn't figure out how to use my food processor without making a giant mess. So I measured the ingredients for the bread again and then learned that my food processor doesn't like making bread dough. But after all that measuring and grinding (it called for fine sea salt and all I have is coarse so I actually used my cute little mortar and pestle) I wasn't about to throw in the towel just yet. I'd made bread before in a bread maker so I wasn't too afraid of just winging it. The dough was only half mixed so I just had to finish that part and follow the directions in the book from there. I was pretty nervous as I transferred the raw loaves onto the oven rack. The dough didn't really rise that much and I was afraid it wouldn't cook right. As you can see, the bread turned out great!

While my artisan bread was baking I began making the pesto. This was easy enough. Lots of parsley, spinach, and cilantro combined with some pine nuts and olive oil in the food processor until it's relatively smooth. But this pesto didn't look much like any pesto I'd ever seen before. It was bright green and nowhere near as oily as the store bought stuff. It tasted pretty good. But the piping hot crusty baguette that I made with my own two hands transformed the pesto into something magnificent! I know that sounds a little exaggerated but it feels so good to eat bread that you've made yourself. Try it yourself. The recipes are in the next post.