Baking Stone

It looks like this is slowly turning into a food blog, but as anyone who knows me can attest, if I made a "things I love most" list, food would definitely be in the top five.

We have been saying that we aren't allowed to buy any more kitchen gadgets until we move because our kitchen cabinets are already overflowing. However, Kelly expressed an interest in starting to bake bread so I jumped on the bandwagon and decided we needed to buy a baking stone.

Search around the net, and everyone and their brother will tell you to skip the expensive kitchen store stones and go buy "unglazed quarry tile" at home depot instead. Same stuff, but less than a dollar a square foot. $20 in gas later, we realized that nobody sells unglazed quary tile anymore - not Home Depot #1, not Home Depot #2, not Lowes, not "Tiles for Less", and not even the fancy tile place in town. We decided to cut our losses and pick up a nice 14"x16" stone, paying way too much for it.

I am leaving the bread making to Kelly, but I decided to break it in with our favorite garlic chicken pizza recipe. After the hour preheating, the near mishap with the pizza peel, and the 10 minutes of stone-top baking, I definitely have been converted to stone cooked pizzas. You can't argue with the not soggy, not burnt, crispy but not too crispy crust.

Kelly got second turn at the stone today. We spent a good chunk of the day making "The Best Bread Ever" (the actual title of the recipe). We learned something quick - making bread is one of those "you can't really describe it in a recipe, you need someone to show you what to do" sort of kitchen endeavors. Kelly gave it a noble first attempt and the results were quite edible, however it was definitely a learning experience. And in case I am coming across as sounding harsh - I fully admit that Kelly's bread was about a thousand times better than my previous attempt.

Why is this on Audrey's blog? It is a stretch, but Audrey did have her first bites of freshly baked bread tonight and Kelly got two thumbs up from our baby girl. She loved it.