After my successful experiment with homemade linguine noodles over the weekend, I decided to make some spaghetti. Over the years, I’ve learned to experiment incrementally to see what my flavor limitations are. Like with bread, pasta is 95% flour. That means that you’d have to add a lot of another ingredient to be able to taste it. I thought I’d roast some garlic and mix it with some olive oil in lieu of an egg in the basic dough recipe. I figured even if we couldn’t taste the garlic, the noodles would be healthier.

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I’ve been wanting to make pasta noodles from scratch for a while. When we got a stand mixer for a wedding gift, we also got a ravioli attachment. I’ve always wanted to use it, but it seems pretty useless without a pasta roller. Since the pasta press attachment costs a cool $150, I thought I’d better buy a cheaper version first and make sure I’m using it often enough to justify the cost of going electric, so to speak. I picked up a manual pasta press for about $35 and decided to get down to business.

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This time of year, hard, sweet, green tomatoes are available at the market. I’ve blogged them before, so I usually don’t post the recipe anymore. This time we experimented with a new breading and a new sauce.

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I baked a couple of loaves of homemade bread over the weekend. I used Michelob Ultra Amber for both of them and they tasted great. The first loaf was my basic no-knead bread:

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I know what you’re thinking; you’re finally making pretty good no-knead bread but it’s getting a little boring. You’re wondering if there’s a way you can add flavors to your bread without changing the cooking method. I wondered the same thing. I’ve had much success incorporating various liquids and solids into my bread while maintaining a crisp crust and a light, airy center. As you might expect, there was a pretty steep learning curve. I’ve listed some of my hard-learned lessons below. If you’re using a method similar to mine, then these tips and tricks will work for you too. Check out this asiago cheese loaf:

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As regular readers know, I’ve been experimenting with homemade bread for months now. In retrospect, I handicapped my learning process by adopting and abandoning several different methods and recipes before perfecting one. After initial success with a no-knead bread technique, I decided to stick with it. Over time, I incorporated techniques and suggestions from several sources and ended up with a pretty foolproof recipe.

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I’ve been baking bread at home for a while now with mixed results. This weekend, I finally made some very good bread:

I used the no-knead technique made famous by Mark Bittman and Jim Lahaney (video here), but I incorporated some tips from America’s Test Kitchen.

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Like I’ve said before, I’m trying to get better at baking bread. Last week I tried a no-knead ciabatta recipe and was only somewhat pleased with the results. I decided I’d try again, so I made another batch of dough on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, the dough was ready for the oven. I know what you’re thinking; what kind of man spends all day in the kitchen when there are football games on? Well, I addressed that dilemma when we remodeled the kitchen:

Thanks to my new TV and my island on wheels, I can watch football and cook at the same time.

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