Short post today. I just wanted to link to the three recent book reviews I put up: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, The Writer Behind the Words by Dara Girard, and Soups & Salads for Spring and Summer Days. Upcoming: the Baker’s Odyssey cookbook, Bettie Sharpe’s Ember and John Karr’s Dark Resurrection.

Okay, okay, I admit that part of my lack of posting is a result of the Pirates of the Burning Sea pre-launch, which started Monday. Despite the mess that SOE made of the pre-order, the game itself is every bit as much fun as I’d hoped. I’ll post about it in more detail soon!

We have a printer box full of bread and then some. The whole wheat oatmeal rolls are delicious, and the Kachauri is so good it’s taking a supreme act of will to avoid hoarding it for ourselves.

We’re resting our feet for a few moments. Before long it will be time to get changed into fancy clothes and head to dinner. Full reviews to come next week, but I can already tell you how ‘Baker’s Odyssey’ and ‘Artisan Bread’ will fare. To put it simply: YUM!

We didn’t end up making saffron rolls, but I think we made more than enough, so I have no regrets!

The Cheese Sambouseks came out deLIGHTfully delicious. Now we’re making a quadruple batch of corn muffins (with whole kernels and chipotle cheddar), which actually only works out to 24 muffins since this recipe makes small batches.

We’re also baking batches of plain, crusty dinner rolls from the master recipe in the artisan bread cookbook, and they’re coming out beautifully. The whole wheat oatmeal bread has almost finished rising. We still have to decide whether we’re making saffron rolls, and of course we have to make the Kachauri. We ended up appropriating a printer box to put all the baked goods in because nothing else was large enough.

I wonder if our friends realized what they were in for when they asked us to bake bread. I picture Jervis finding out that his wife asked us to do so, looking at her with wide eyes, and saying, “Are you insane?”

Next we made Cheese Sambouseks, made from a batch of Kahk dough surrounding a cheese-and-egg filling (we decided to use a rather untraditional mix of chevre and maple-smoked cheddar). Those are currently in the oven. We’ve also made a batch of Kachauri filling, which is soaked and pureed split peas cooked with spices and such; that will fill a flat bread later. In another half-hour we’ll be able to continue the whole wheat and oatmeal bread recipe, and once we’ve baked all the Sambouseks we can bake the plain rolls from the batch of dough we made last night.

Good to get off of my feet for a moment, but soon it’ll be back to the wonderful smells of baking bread!

As previously mentioned, my husband and I are baking bread for 25 people for a friend’s Twelfth Night feast. Last night we made doughs from the ‘Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day’ book for a plain artisan loaf and a Limpa bread (minus the anise seeds since we couldn’t find any at the store and didn’t have time to order them). Last night we also baked Kahk—a traditional Iraqi recipe for round, crispy breads—from the ‘Baker’s Odyssey’ book.

We’re currently baking rounds of Limpa in roll form; we of course had to ‘quality-test’ the batch, and they’re awesome! Next we’ll bake rounds of plain rolls. We also started a sponge going for whole wheat-oatmeal bread, also from the Baker’s Odyssey book. We still have some cornbread mix from the Make-a-Mix cookbook that we plan to turn into muffins with the addition of some cheddar, whole corn kernels, and cayenne.

Now, back to baking with me!

Today’s Booking Through Thursday is all about anticipation:

What new books are you looking forward to most in 2008? Something new being published this year? Something you got as a gift for the holidays? Anything in particular that you’re planning to read in 2008 that you’re looking forward to? A classic, or maybe a best-seller from 2007 that you’re waiting to appear in paperback?

Oddly, the two books I’m looking forward to the most are the ones I get to use this week. My husband and I are going to a Twelfth Night feast this weekend at a friend’s, and we were asked if we’d be willing to make bread for 25 people. Willing? We’re psyched! As it so happens—and this is a total concidence—I just got review copies of two very appropriate cookbooks. One is A Baker’s Odyssey, a book of traditional bread recipes from around the world. The other is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. So we get to make a bunch of really great breads that we’ve never made before, share them with wonderful people, and test out two review cookbooks! It doesn’t get much better than that.

Speaking of cookbooks, I have two new book reviews up: Wild Game Cookery and Make-a-Mix. More to come—particularly those bread books!

Book reviews to come soon.

So how was everyone else’s vacation? What did you do? Where did you go?

My husband had the week and a half off from work, so it was quite nice. We did visit some friends in Virginia at the beginning, but after that we stayed home. We cooked a lot, went out to dinner a couple of times, played video games together, watched the first-season Heroes DVDs Jeffrey got me for my birthday (not quite done yet!), and fun things like that.

The only sour note was Amazon. We ordered a sewing machine from them (we had some gift cards to use) and ordered it via overnight so it would arrive two days ago (Monday). This was important to us because there are some things we want to sew for Saturday, when we go to a Twelfth Night feast at the home of some friends. Unfortunately, Amazon shipped it by ground shipping instead of overnight. Luckily it’ll arrive today because it shipped from only one state away, but the sewing will be a tad rushed—particularly since we’re making bread for 25 people for the same event. At least after I wrote to Amazon they did agree to do a partial refund of the shipping costs.

We happened to be asked to make bread just after I received a review copy of a cookbook of traditional breads from around the world, so I’m very much looking forward to taking advantage of that coincidence to test out the recipes!