6 and a half breads, 2 pizzas, homemade ricotta and one meeting – in 20 hours

I know you are waiting with bated breath, so let me assure you, the ciabatta was a success – despite the unplanned retardation in the refrigerator. And there is progress on the grant writing bit (towards the very bottom – not that I’m prioritizing or anything) But In all seriousness, thank to all my friends who sent good wishes and thoughts to my friend who lost her father. She is an amazing person and the way that she is taking care of everything – I couldn’t be more proud.

Since she was busy taking care of things, I returned to the kitchen. My ciabatta needed to be dealt with and I had a biga to do something with. And then I decided I should take pizza over to my friend’s house tonight. But there will be at least 5 of us and that pizza goes fast (real crowd pleaser, if I may say so myself) so that means 2 pizzas. But that was not decided until after I decided to try two breads from the Breads from the La Brea Bakery book. You could say I was a little eager to use my biga that I so tenderly cared for. 

Attempting a French Baguette, oui? Day 2

What do bakers wear? This is a serious question. When you are preparing dough for one thing and a mess is inevitable and you have the oven up to 500° to bake something else and you have your chef’s jacket on –  you are roasting. If you’re not wearing the jacket then you get dough on your clothes – at least I do. Anyone?

The nice thing about bread baking day for French baguettes is you don’t have to do anything until an hour before you want to bake. So, I job search. I have a few search engines (USAJobs, Idealist, Devex, etc) that send me a list of jobs everyday. I go through them, do a few other searches. All very exciting stuff. Then I read. Google Alerts on Chechnya, nonprofit newsletters…anything that would make me interview ready at the drop of a hat. If nothing else, I’m good for dinner conversation. Seriously, I am. Try me.