On my way back from downtown after the Giants World Series celebration parade, I ran into the Creme Brulee cart at the corner of Market/Sutter/Sansome.  $4 got me a yummy snack (honey vanilla bean).  The sugar crust is freshly made on the spot.  The creme brulee itself is stored in the chiller prior to purchase, so it is cold in the middle.

I had some left over oat dough from last weekend as well as the end of a batch of sandwich dough.  I made a couple of mini loaves to use up the rest of the dough.  The sandwich loaf on the right has some sugar and oil that the oat loaf does not which contributes to the color.  The loaves yield 5-6 slices each, depending on how thick we slice them.  That’s good for about three days of breakfast for one person.

The authors of “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” have a video of how they put together their dough.  More info is also available on-line.

On November 1st, the San Francisco Giants won the 106th World Series, beating the Texas Rangers four games to one.  Much partying occurred in San Francisco.

Today was the big parade for the hometown heroes.  The parade started at Montgomery and Washington Streets and ended at the Civic Center.  I had the opporunity to get out for a bit in the morning to catch the parade.  I watched the parade pass at Montgomery between Pine and California.

It was an awesome experience and perhaps a once in a life time event, not to be missed.

Images from today:

My friend DL came over to bake with me during the 3rd game of the World Series.  I worked on a sticky bun recipe and she worked on a white loaf bread.

The sticky buns I was working on were based a no-knead challah recipe from “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.”  The authors explain how you can make enough no-knead yeast bread dough for two weeks and remove what you need from the refrigerator.  Active time is given at five minutes per day, excluding the rising, resting, and baking time.

This method has allowed the impatient ADD person that I am to break up bread making into two phases.  I can mix up the dough, let it rise at room temperature for two hours, and then stick it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.  When I want to make bread, I pull out some of the dough, shape it up or dump it into a loaf pan, let it rest, and bake it off.  I don’t have to, nor expect to, have bread the same day.

I substituted Craisins for the raisins in the sticky bun recipe because I was out of raisins.  The buns smelled great as they were baking in the oven.  They looked and tasted great when they came out.

I used the extra challah dough to make a mini loaf.  I was also trying out an oat bran/oat flour variation of a white bread.  The photo on the left is during the resting period before they go into the oven.  The final product is on the right.

The challah loaf has egg and honey in it, so came out browner, sweeter, and lighter in texture than the two oat loaves, which were paler and more dense.  The mini loaf pans fit approximately 8 ounces of dough.  I am still on the look out for loaf pans that will take 1-pound of dough.  The standard 8.5×4.5 pan, commonly called a 1-pound pan, takes at least 1.5-pounds, up to 2-pounds if you want the bread over the top of the pan for a sandwich loaf.  I’m hoping for a smaller loaf, but still tall enough for sandwiches or toast.

DL’s conventional loaf, made all by hand (no machine intervention) looks like my goal loaf.

We split the loaf in half to share.  It had a real nice soft crumb and was great eaten as toast during the week.

After realizing that my yeast had expired over a year ago, I decided to try for better results.  Armed with fresh yeast, I decided to give another loaf of bread a whirl.

I also brushed up on how to shape a loaf of bread to fit in the loaf pan.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo after the bread came out of the oven.  It tasted okay.  I found I have little patience for waiting for a first rise, deflate, and wait for a second rise, which could take at least three hours, given the temperature in the house.  Too much babysitting for me.  I’ll have to try speeding up the time it takes to rise if I warm the oven or microwave and let the dough rise there.

After JT helped to break in the KA stand mixer with cookies, I decided to give yeast bread a spin.  I followed one of the recipes that came with the mixer.

The dough looked and felt good.  The results, however, left something to be desired.

The loaf to the left reminded me of a certain cartoon character the DH says comes from the animated series “Kim Possible”.  The loaves didn’t rise well and were rather dense.

On closer inspection of my ingredients, it looks like my yeast that was stored at room temperature expired in 2009.  Whoops!

We were able to see the Blue Angels Fleet Week 2010 air show on both Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday, we were along The Embarcadero, just at the Bay Bridge.  We had never been on this side of the City before so were curious to see what the Blue Angels do on that side of town.  After the end of the air show, we went to the Ferry Building to get some bread from Acme Bread, some salumi from Boccalone, and some cheese from Cow Girl Creamery  for lunch on Sunday.

On Sunday, we were at the Marina Green. It was quite crowded, but by perseverance, we were able to get a nice position by the edge of the water.  We were also listening to the Giants/Braves play off game on the radio.

During this year’s Fleet Week events, the USS Makin Island, a newly commissioned amphibious assault ship, was berthed at Piers 30-32.  DH and I went on a tour of the ship prior to the Blue Angels air show.

Friends have been good to me by helping me break in new cooking gadgets.  We had a baby shower in January which inaugurated our grill.  The Kitchenaid Artisan stand mixer has just been waiting to come out of its box since I bought it but had no place in the old kitchen for it.

Friend JT and her baby boy Simon came over to play and make cookies.  First, JT treated us to pumpkin cream cheese stuffed French toast.  Then we played with Simon for a bit.  He was easily amused by watching a pot of oatmeal simmer.  Ah, simple entertainment.

We decided to make chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with the recipe from the back of the Tollhouse bag.  This recipe yields at least 4 dozen cookies so we made some with and some without nuts (walnut or pecans? I forget which JT had).  We baked about 2 dozen and froze the rest.  JT took home some of the individually scooped, frozen cookie dough so her DH could have some too.

The cookies were baked for 10 minutes for chewy goodness.

We have gone back to Madison for a second training session at the Epic campus.  The afternoon that we arrived, President Obama was giving a speech at the University of Wisconsin.  This trip was a short one, just two nights.

It looks like the seasons are slowly changing in Madison.  Some of the trees are starting to change colors

At the Epic campus, the trees are starting to lose their leaves.  These trees were a lot leafier our first trip.

The weather was cooler this time around, but the landscaping was as colorful as before.

Epic once again was serving up its tasty bread at lunch.

I asked one of the staff if the bread was made on site or if there was a third party vendor who sold it to Epic (hoping that I could find out where to buy a loaf).  I was told that Epic operates two full size kitchens, one for the students and one for the staff, complete with pastry chefs.  The bread is made on campus.  It’s very good stuff.