Focaccia

Focaccia

Italian breads seem to be a recurrent theme with the TWD group over the last couple of months. First pizza, now focaccia. Not that we are complaining. Going back to our gluten eating days, we did enjoy focaccia on occasion, in fact, while living in Montana, a local health conscious baker, built his own wood fired oven, in order to do justice making some of the old style, rustic European breads. A lot of his breads were sourdough based, and focaccia was no exception. Usually only available on a weekend, unless you placed a special order, these specialty breads would disappear as soon as they emerged from the oven.  Since not everyone in our household shares our personal love for Italian food, focaccia is generally not at the top of the list, when baking bread. We do love a challenge, and never having tried focaccia gluten free before, we felt we couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Continue reading

Pizza with Onion Confit

Pizza with Onion Confit

Here we are, with our first recipe for 2013 with Baking with Julia/Tuesdays with Dorie: Pizza with Onion Confit. Delving into making pizza probably wouldn’t have been a personal choice to make, especially so close after the holidays. But upon closer examination of the recipe, it turned out to be a much lighter version as far as calories  are concerned and minus the excessive cheese. The type of pizza crust in this recipe reminded me of my travels through Northern Italy. Just out of college,  and traveling with several American students, we stopped by some local restaurants in the Northern Italian Alps, and all of them served pizza with a rather crispy crust, topped with delicious herbs, fresh tomatoes and very small amounts of locally made cheese – mostly goat cheese, or some type of mozzarella. Continue reading

Gingerbread Cake

Gingerbread Cake

This week’s TWD recipe heralds the beginning of the holiday baking season, at least for us. Anything involving gingerbread is a definite favorite in our house, invoking fond memories of baking with Mom and Oma – three generations in the kitchen, gathered around the table, cooking and baking together. Albeit a very rare occasion, made possible only during our not so frequent visits to Germany. Continue reading