The Bake Off

While in NY for our BBQ competition, I entered Sayville's 1st Annual Bake Off.  There were four categories: 
1.  Cookies and Bars
2.  Muffins and Breads
3.  Pies, Tarts and Pastries
4.  Cakes

I am proud to say that I won 3rd place for my individual pumpkin layer cakes with vanilla bean tuile.

And 2nd place for my triple chocolate tartlettes.

Award winning brisket!!!

I love all things edible. I work as a Pastry Chef which is fantiastically fun, but also means I can get pretty sick of eating and making sweet things. To sort of counter balance all of this sugar, I am on a competitive barbecue and grilling team.  What started as a fun idea to hang out with friends (and get free beer) has turned into a borderline obsession for my boyfriend!  Which is why we drove 5 hours each way for a one day Kansas City Barbecue Society competition.

It was our second competition as a team (although we helped another team, Meat at Slim's, out at the Maine State competition in August).  We've learned so much since we started our BBQ team.  At our first competition, Scott and I were in charge of the brisket.  Perhaps because of that, it has a special spot in our heart. 

This was a tough competition.  The weather forecast had been looming over us all week.  And it delivered.  The rain and wind over night were insane.  And the thing about BBQ is that although the competition is Sunday, the preparations and cooking start Saturday night.  I have very little to do with the cooking.  My job tends to be more on the sauce and rub making and the presentation of our final product.  Scott was up every hour in the rain to check our meats progress.  I am still not sure how he did it. 

It was a long night.  We were both soaked for most of it.  But Sunday was a sunny day, and it was a great day.  We got all our competition boxes in on time and felt confident this was our best showing.  (Not hard- our first competition we were average at best)

Prior to the KCBS results being announced there was a small "celebrity judging" of ribs and chicken.  We were thrilled to win 1st place in chicken.  As a team we had never won anything!  It was a thrill.  We won $100 off next years entry fee.  We will be back! 

KCBS always announces the top ten teams in each of the categories- chicken, ribs, pulled pork and brisket.  With our celebrity judge win, I felt pretty confident we would at least make the top ten of KCBS in Chicken.  We didn't.  In fact our chicken was judged by the official judges to be 37th out of 45 teams.  Just goes to show that "regular people" and KCBS aren't looking for the same thing in the world of chicken...

We managed to pull a solid 20th in ribs, a lowly 34 in pulled pork (often considered the toughest category), and- drum roll please- a thrilling 4th place in Brisket.  We won $74 and a medal.  We officially have award winning brisket!

Pizza. It's what's for dinner...

I had every intention of stopping by Parziale's Bakery on my way to work yesterday to pick up some pizza dough. If you have never tried their pizza dough- you should. It is quite possibly the yummiest and most affordable pizza dough in the Boston Area. It bakes up chewy and thick and perfect. Be warned, however... if you are a thin crust lover this is NOT the dough for you.

I realized on my drive towards the bakery that I had forgotton my wallet. Since there are very few store bought doughs I find are worth the money, I realized pretty quickly that I would be making some pizza dough tonight.

It's remarkably easy and inexpensive to make pizza dough at home.

Jane's Pizza Dough
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/3 cups bread flour
extra flour to knead

Mix yeast and water.  Let sit for 5 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients.  Stir with spoon until it starts to come together. Then knead on the counter with a little extra flour until the dough starts to smooth out.  Place in a greased bowl to rise for 90 minutes.  Then enjoy!

The cookbook I am loving right now...

You will probably realize quickly that I love pretty much everything that comes out of America's Test Kitchen. If you aren't familiar with how they work, they basically decide on a recipe they want to develop and then have a team of very talented people perfect this recipe. It pretty much guarantees that the recipe they publish will be the best (albeit not always the easiest) version of whatever you are looking up. Equally as great is that they tell you WHY they do or do not do certain things.

So you can not only make a great recipe, but you can learn something in the process!

My favorite recipes in this book- Blondies and Banana Bread. Yum!