Trip Through Zion and Bryce National Parks

We took a sort-of last minute trip to Utah for a family wedding.  I hadn't been to the national parks in Southern Utah since I was a kid, so we drove through Zion and Bryce National Parks on our way north.  It was a very brief tour and we only saw a few of the sights, but it made the drive up more interesting.  We left S.Cal. in the morning and arrived in Springdale Utah at about 4pm and stopped at Sol Foods Market to buy sandwiches and brownies for dinner.  We ate on-the-go so we could be in the park while there was still daylight and see the sunset on the red cliffs.

 One challenge we had was that we were traveling with the dog and there are very few places dogs can go in national parks.  They are only allowed on paved areas (not much fun for a dog), but there is a trail along the Virgin River in Zion NP that allowed dogs.  So we walked there.  Both Nathaniel and Patrick (the dog) enjoyed the river.  We had to spend time at an outside faucett at the visitor's center cleaning them both up before we could get back in the car because Virgin River + pink sand = red mud.

 Actually, I think Nathaniel (12) and Patrick (8 months) are developmentally about the same age.  Both love to romp and play, get dirty, climb all over you, bite, make funny squeek, whimper, growly noises, eat stuff, and neither is particularly concerned with hygiene.

 There are bighorn sheep in the photo above.  See if you can spot 5 or 6 white spots (rumps) along the ridge.

 OK, so we didn't exactly follow the rules with the dog.  But mostly.  This rock is kind of like pavement.

 In old family trip photos, there is always one of the station wagon loaded up.  Well, here is our car loaded for a trip with mountain bikes.

 We stopped for the night between the two parks in some little cabin-like motel and then headed into Bryce Canyon NP the next morning after breakfast.  It was lovely and cool at around 8K above sea level.  Again, not much for the dog to do, but he could go on the path between Sunrise and Sunset points.

 And, we extended that trail just a tiny bit to head around the corner from Sunrise point to see Fairyland rocks.  Doesn't it look like a castle behind Nathaniel's head (below)?

Short visits, but with minimal complaints, it was worth the detour on our drive up through Utah.  Next time I think we'll hit Kolob Canyon or Grand Staircase.

Davis is 16

Ready or not, here we go!

Nathaniel's Beginning Band Concert

Chris recorded (most) of one of the pieces from Nathaniel's band concert last night while I was driving home from classes.  They sound pretty good.  Nathaniel is on the right side at the end of the back row near the tympanii (sp?) with a red tie playing the trumpet.  Yay Nathaniel!

Baking with Julia, and about 300 other bloggers.

I've joined an online group. It's a baking blog group. I read the blog http://doriegreenspan.com/ and there is a group called Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com/ that was just starting to go through the cookbook Baking with Julia.

 Nathaniel had asked the week before if I could make homemade bread again.  I haven't made it since we moved into this house, partly because there is a Great Harvest Bakery right next to the grocery store and I've been buying bread there.  But, Nathaniel is having a hard time adjusting to his new braces-hardware (his lips and cheeks are tattered and swollen) and there aren't many things that he feels like eating.  So, I found a recipe I wanted to try on America's Test Kitchen's website http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/detail.php?docid=27410&incode=M**ASCA00
Check it out soon because they only have their current season available for free.
  I love America's Test Kitchen (ATK) because they go about testing recipes in a scientific way, trying to figure out what is the most desirable trait in the dish, what are the major pitfalls, and what is the most efficient way to meet their objective.  Martha Stewart always drove me crazy because she tried to make things more difficult than they needed to be just to prove she is fancier than anyone else. ("Don't use orange-flavored jello in a recipe when you could make your own by boiling down some horse hooves and adding sugar cane extract and blood oranges"). 
  Honestly, when it comes down to it, I didn't like Julia Child for the same reason.  When she was demonstrating french recipes, I'm sure her purpose was to show traditional french techniques.  But it always reminded me of the old story where the daughter asks her mother why it was necessary to cut the ends off the potroast before placing it in the pan... "I don't know," says mother, "that's the way my mother always did it."  When asked, grandmother replied that she never had a pan big enough for a whole roast and had to trim it down to make it fit.  So, I prefer recipes made to use modern ingredients and techniques that get the desired results in the most efficient way.  That being said, I like to make things from scratch and avoid cake mixes, jello, condensed soup, and the too liberal use of cream cheese.  I have dropped blogs from my watch-list for depending too much on these ingredients.  Too many ingredients that are unrecognizable as food go into the first three of those ingredients, and cream cheese is used so liberally in everything from desserts to pasta sauces that the purpose is just to mask a mediocre recipe.
  Enough of my rant.  I was ready to put ATK head to head with Julia (actually with Julia's guest baker).  Right when I was about to start, Chris' neice Amanda posted my sister-in-law's (Andie's) bread recipe, so I decided to start with it. http://minasmith.blogspot.com/2012/01/andies-bread.html

Kneading in the mixer.

Rising in warm oven.  They deflated when I moved them from the warm oven to the hot one to bake.  A delicate rise.

Awww... The bake time in the recipe wasn't long enough.  I should have tested the internal temperature.

Amanda/Andie's recipe came out doughy and undercooked.  I really should have tested it before taking it out because the thump-on-the-loaf-to-see-if-it-sounds-hollow method let me down on this one.  Onto Baking with Julia (BWJ)  You can find the recipe here (unless you buy the book or check it out of the library) http://someonekitchen.blogspot.com/2012/02/twd-bwj-white-loaves.html

Photo from book.  This is how it is supposed to turn out when sliced and toasted.

 The directions are a little crazy.  The dough is kneaded first, and then softened butter (a lot of butter) is added to the dough.  The dough becomes a greasy mess, but after awhile the butter is worked in and the result is a springy, silky dough.  Wow.  I wonder if having the fat in the dough during kneading slows gluten formation.  Why is the butter left out until after the kneading?  Is this a cut-the-end-off-the-potroast kind of thing?  The book provides no clues.  (I love ATK because it explains why certain steps are taken.)

Lovely dough, I used 1 cup of flour less than the highest range in the recipe

Beautiful and eaten within a day with the creamed honey Chris bought. 

BWJ white loaves turned out great, just as the recipe was written.  But I had saved ATK for last.  I was sure it would be the best one.   You have to start the night before by making a "soaker" with the whole wheat flour (King Arthur's white wheat), wheat germ and milk.  That is kneaded and left in the fridge over night to soften up the tough wheaty-bits.  A biga (bread flour and yeast) is left on the counter overnight to bubble and develop deep yeasty flavors.  Great.  Then they are mixed together with the remaining ingredients.

It took a long time to get the cold-from-the-fridge dense "soaker" to mix in with the warm, soft "biga", even when the soaker was pinched off into 1 inch pieces.

"Soaker" after spending the night in the fridge.

The dough finally came together and was very soft.  Recipe did not recommend adding more flour than went into the biga and soaker - so I decided to stick to the recipe.

Dough was so cold that I did the first and second rises in a warm oven in a warm bowl of water.

 How did ATK stand up to BWJ?  It really didn't.  To be fair, I wasn't comparing white loaves with wheat loaves per se.  I was comparing the success of following the recipe word for word.  BWJ gives a range of flour needed.  That means I could add just enough until the dough looked right.  ATK did not provide any sort of instruction for variation.  The dough was so soft that I wanted to add more flour, but I was sure their scientific method would have accounted for that and maybe soaking the wheat flour would make it a much softer dough.  The loaves turned out more like batter-bread: the crumb was coarse, very little elasticity.  It crumbles when sliced.  But the flavor is good and it's not as heavy as you might expect with the amount of wheat:white flour in it. 
  Conclusion?  BWJ recipes (at least this one) are written well for the home cook.  The white loaves are a terrific texture - light and springy, but a little dry when toasted.  I'm going to try ATK again, but allow the soaker to warm up before adding to the biga, and then I'll add bread flour to get a little stiffer dough.  I'll try Andie's again too and bake it longer this time (or maybe I'll divide the flour and make a biga and soaker the night before, combining Andie's and ATK's recipes).  What I really need though, is homemade jam (but that's another project for another blog.)

Result?  Squashed loaves.