I adore pizza. It’s bread, melted cheese, meats and vegetables (or fruit), all in a package you can hold with one hand while holding a cold beer in the other. I’ve been having fun with the daring bakers challenges up until now, but when I saw that this month’s was for pizza crust, I knew that it would not only be a challenge — it would be an event.

Running the risk of embarrassment and starvation if my crust failed, I invited a group of friends by to help me make pizza. I started the dough the day before and let the pizza dough rise in the fridge overnight. Everyone brought their favorite toppings, and took charge of one of the six balls of dough.

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The food sensation I find myself craving more than any other is crunch, that wonderful, teeth-shattering crack of fried tortillas and potato chips.

So I was particularly excited to try this month’s Daring Bakers challenge — lavash, using a recipe from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread.

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Another month, another challenge. After the danish braid, I was excited for another puff pastry challenge — Chocolate Éclairs. It involved a few techniques I hadn’t done before — creating a pâte à choux dough, using a pastry bag (which I didn’t have, so I substituted Ziplocs) and making pastry cream. Eeek.

I had some trouble with the dough: the recipe called for waiting until the liquid was at a “rolling boil,” and I waited too long for it to get past what I would call a quick simmer, so a lot of the liquid evaporated. I ended up having to add liquid back in at the end to make the dough soft enough to work, which probably explained the lack of puff in the pastry fingers. It was the prettiest end product, but the test would be in the tasting.

Since I can’t handle too much chocolate, I left the final judgment to my boyfriend. He declared them to be “Oh, Claire” rather than éclairs, because that’s what he kept saying as he ate them. I declare that a success.

Many thanks to this month’s hosts Tony Tahhan and MeetaK! You can see the complete recipe here.

My last few Daring Bakers challenge posts have been tales of woe—crushed cakes, broken batards, etc. But I am happy to report that this most recent challenge, one of my first forays into pastry, went exceptionally well!

The Danish Braid recipe from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, chosen by Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cookin’? was a laminated yeast pastry, meaning that it had yeast and needed to rise, but also that it has alternating layers—in this case, of dough and lots and lots of butter.
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Considering that I have an interest in the intersections of food and music, the latest Daring Bakers Challenge on Opera Cake should have been a perfect challenge for me. I loved the idea of a complex structure, a multi-layered and textured cake, and something that takes hours and hours to make being named after opera.

But I suffered the same downfall of so many a performer—lack of preparation. I started the cake two days in advance of the posting date, basically hoping that everything would go smoothly the first time out. I should have known better.

It was a series of mishaps—imagine a performance where the prima donna gets her braids tangled in her horns and the conductor is a bit tipsy. Too coarse almond meal made the joconde base far too crumbly. I tried to make a butter cream from a sugared syrup, which immediately solidified on the beaters of my hand mixer, turning them into enormous lollipops. I did manage to salvage enough for one minature cake, which at least looks good (even though it didn’t taste good). The critics would have panned me.

Ah well. I learned my lesson: the only way to get to (the bakery next to) Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice.

Check out some of the more successful attempts at the Daring Bakers Blogroll. If you dare to try the recipe for yourself, it can be found here. Thanks to the organizers, as always.

It’s the end of the month, and time for another Daring Bakers challenge. After last month’s French bread I was ready for something a little sweet. Lucky for me, Morven of Food, Art and Random Thoughts chose A Perfect Party Cake from Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking From My Home To Yours. Most of my cake baking experience had been limited to box mixes before this, but I felt I was ready to go at it from scratch.

I was fortunate that the cake turned out well with minimum fuss. The icing was another matter. I had never made buttercream before, and didn’t realize how much effort “6-10 minutes” of mixing, even with a hand mixer, would require. After five minutes of mixing my biceps went numb. I kept going, starting at the gooey mass of sugar and butter with sweat beading on my brow, wondering when it would come together. After three more minutes, magically, the goo became fluffy and I breathed a little easier.

The strawberry filled and topped version I made turned out to be the star of my Easter brunch. The fresh berries matched the lemony-light cake perfectly. It was a hit, but it was a bit too sweet for my taste. Next time I think I’ll leave out the buttercream and serve it with a little berry syrup, some fresh whipped cream and a sprig of mint.

Maybe now I can justify investing in a stand mixer.

I’ve become progressively more fascinated with baking over the past few months, turning out far more cookies and pastries than I ever should have in my house at one time (though my boyfriend’s co-workers now adore me).

So I joined the Daring Bakers, a collective of food bloggers with a passion for all things that come out of the oven. I thought that it would be a good way to push my boundaries a little, try some new things. After all, they’ve made lemon meringue pie, bostini cream, sticky buns…it would be fun!

But…you want me to bake bread?

The panic I felt at watching my printer spit out the 10 pages of Julia Child’s French Bread recipe surged upon reading note after note on kneading, rising, yeast, bread ovens. My head swam. I was sweating. What on earth was I going to do?

Well, I was going to try. And try. And try. And try again.

The first two batches of dough went with a resounding thwack into my garbage can. First thing learned: yeast from a packet apparently can be dead, even if it’s not expired. Go figure.

Batch three. Live yeast. More lessons. For example, don’t leave a 1 1/2-hour rise alone overnight, no matter how tired you are (don’t start a 9 hour process at 2 PM either). Also, when they say to let the loaves rise on “stiff floured canvas,” a floured kitchen towel does not suffice. Only one made it off the towel at all; the other was left to soak in the sink until I could scrape the dough off with a spatula.

But this is also where things got better. The one salvaged loaf, while probably the ugliest loaf of bread I’d ever seen, was still bread. It was edible, though one side was saltier than the other (thoroughly mix salt with flour — check). I was emboldened, excited. I would try again.

Batch four. It was rising fine, came together with the springy elasticity I had come to love when kneading. My biceps were still sore from batch three (no standing mixer in this tiny kitchen), but the thwack-thwack-thwack of the bread hitting the board moved me forward.

One rise, then two, then they peeled off the flour-coated parchment paper with only minimal sticking. I made my ragged cuts in the top with a shaking hand, and put them in the oven.

And voilà. Two loaves of bread.

Again, they wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests in the near future, but they were toasty and crusty and evenly salted. I’d done it. There was flour on every surface of my kitchen, in the pocket of my apron and probably in my ears, but I’d done it. I’d made bread.

I felt exultant. Triumphant. Exhausted. And daring.

Thanks ever so much to Breadchick Mary (The Sour Dough) & Sara (I Like to Cook) who hosted this particular event.