Bacon Cupcakes and Crusty Bread

Short update:

1) I have had BACON on the brain as of lately. As part of some highly necessary research for my new job, I forayed into MORE, Chicago's newest cupcake bakery. I originally went into the bakery to say hello to the chef I interviewed for my story, but I walked out of MORE with a free Maple Bacon cupcake in tow. Half an hour later I was home; I poured myself a glass of buttery chardonnay, put Van Morrison on the record player, and enjoyed a lovely dinner of my Bacon Maple cupcake (What?! There is protein in bacon, and the flour is a grain, and there must be nutritional value in maple--it is from a tree after all). Complete with my glass of wine, I think that it was a perfectly balanced meal. Well, if not perfectly balanced, at least it was delicious.



The cupcake is a brown sugar cake with bacon bits mixed into the batter. It's topped with maple butter-cream frosting and garnished with a piece of candied bacon. The maple and bacon flavors mix marvelously--think pancakes with maple syrup and bacon for breakfast. It sounds weird, I know, but trust me...it works.



MORE is gorgeous. You walk in and it looks like a jewelry store. It is stark white with a big glass counter showcasing rows and rows of cupcakes lit perfectly by halogen lights. Unlike most other cupcakeries (I might have just made that word up), MORE is taking the plunge into savory cupcake flavors. At the moment they are playing with flavors like a BLT cupcake, a brie and red wine cupcake, a baked potato cupcake, a BBQ pineapple bacon cupcake, and an apple bacon cinnamon cupcake. They also, of course, have the classics--red velvet, chocolate, vanilla, and other more exotic sweet flavors like salted caramel and the bacon maple. I felt obligated to write about my bacon maple cupcake experience and post some pictures because it was just so good.

2) I baked bread! Ok, so this was a big hurdle for me. About 4 years ago I baked my first loaf of bread from scratch. It turned out perfect and beautiful--a whole wheat seed loaf with orange zest. Since that first loaf, every other attempt of mine at bread baking has been disastrous. My hot cross buns were like little cinnamon-raisin rocks, my whole wheat rustic loaf looked looked like a deflated football, and my a rye bread...well, let's just say that it was closer to ry-vita crackers than rye bread. I don't know what I was doing, but none of my breads would rise properly, no matter how close I followed the recipe.

So this past weekend I attempted Mark Bittman's recipe for No Kneed Bread, and it worked like gem. It worked so well that my second loaf is rising this very moment. My loaf turned out with a dense, earth-shattering crackly crust and a light, chewy, delicious interior. Seriously, it looked like I bought this loaf at an artisan bakery. I was so proud of myself. The recipe is genius...mix the flour, salt, and yeast; next add the water and mix into a shaggy sticky ball of dough; cover your bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for 18 hours. The next day, the dough is shaped and let sit for a second rise (only 2 hours this time), and then baked in a cast iron pot in a 450 degree oven. The cast iron pot (with the lid on) is key to the amazing crust.



I am making my second loaf (the one rising as we speak) with a higher protein bread flour as opposed to all-purpose flour, so we'll see how it turns out.

Anyway, sorry for the rather mundane and non-cerebral post. I will post tomorrow with my thoughts and response to Michael Pollan's new article in this weeks New York Times Magazine. If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend that you do. Pollan's work is incredible and probably some of the most inspirational writing for me, as an aspiring food journalist. Mark Bittman's piece , on why we should take food seriously, is great as well. Oh, and the pie blog will be updated again soon as well. I am running into some hurdles with having very limited kitchen equipment for the time being, but pies will be coming out of the oven in short order.