A week ago, I promised an update on Diane Duane’s Tessinerbrot recipe (original recipe here). I’ve now eaten the whole loaf, which is at least one good sign. On the whole, it seemed like a fairly ordinary soft white sandwich bread, with no particularly noticeable or problematic flavors. However, I found that it was too delicate for my style of sandwich-making — at least as I managed to slice it — so toasting was required, and there a problem quickly arose (no pun intended): the loaf is simply too tall for my toaster! I probably would have had better luck baking it in a Pullman/pain de mie loaf pan rather than the one that I used; certainly something longer and squatter would have helped with slicing, toasting, and keeping the calorie count down. If I were to try it again, I might substitute some white whole wheat for the bread flour, just to rebalance the nutrition a bit.

Today, I started making Diane Duane’s Braunekuchen — which are really holiday cookies, but I didn’t let that stop me. (The big difficulty, it turns out, is getting candied orange peel after Christmas — my regular supermarkets didn’t have any. Apparently there is no supply of organic candied orange peel, either; if you want it organic, you have to make it yourself. I ended up ordering it from Amazon, of all places, and so ended up with nearly a pound left over after the tablespoon this recipe calls for.) This is a rolled cookie with a one-day rest for the dough, so I’ll complete it tomorrow and probably have another post with some results. I’m hoping that it makes enough that I can bring some in to work on Tuesday.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking for the Emile Henry two-quart souffle dish that was recommended in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated, but it seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. CI‘s cited supplier, Amazon, is now denying that it exists at all (and doesn’t seem to know the difference between a souffle dish and a gratin dish), and other online sources are all saying “out of stock”. I’m going to stop by some mall stores tomorrow to pick up some other kitchen tools; hopefully one of them will have it, but I’m not holding out much hope. (I actually want to make a cheese souffle. See, my cooking isn’t all about meat and baked goods!)

Finally, after a discussion on alt.usage.english last week, I decided that I wanted to make some split-pea soup. I decided to make the recipe from Joanne Chang’s flour, too after reviewing half a dozen other possibilities. I only ever get sandwiches for lunch at Flour, so I’ve never had it, but the recipe (which has some unusual ingredients including mustard and leek) sounded like the most interesting of the ones I looked at, while still being a reasonably plausible quantity for a single guy to make and eat. I’ll try to bring some of that into work, too, although it’s porky so the vegetarians won’t be having any. (I’ve had packaged vegetarian split-pea soup before, and it’s terrible; I don’t know why they bother. I’m sure you can make much better vegetarian soups by not trying to emulate a soup that gets its flavor profile from smoked pork!) Hopefully I’ll be able to find the requisite smoked pork product in my shopping tomorrow. I should have an update on that tomorrow as well.

UPDATE (2014-01-19): it took way too long to finish the pea soup, so I actually had something else for dinner. Full report on Monday after I’ve actually eaten a bowl (and computed the nutrition data).