Adam Kuban: Kublog

my rest stop on the information superhighway

Category: food & drink

Tartine Bread, Day 2: Nothing to see here, people

Just putting this up out of a sense of completism. There is nothing to report today. There’s no apparent activity with the starter. Hence no photo. It does not smell like anything other than flour.

Starting a journey with ‘Tartine Bread’

I picked up Tartine Bread over the weekend after seeing my buddy John Wozniak rave about it on Twitter. I’ve been meaning to find a great book on naturally leavened bread, and this seemed a good candidate. After reading the first chapter and coming to an understanding of the recipe, I felt I could justifiably start the “Basic Country Bread.” To make it, you’ve first got to grow a starter.

Sparkling water on tap, a simple luxury at the Queens Kickshaw

Claire and I had dinner at the Queens Kickshaw for the first time last night. Preliminary report: great stuff. But what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that they have sparkling water on tap there — and it’s free.

Pizza experiment: Cook’s Illustrated dough, two sizes

From left: Crust not stretched thin enough, and one stretched just about right. Having finally found a couple dough recipes that yield great at-home pizza with no “hacks,” I kinda don’t need to experiment anymore. But what fun would life be without futzing with something that works?

1/19/2011: Experimenting with chile-infused honey

[This photo is part of my 2011 Picture a Day project »] I’m trying to perfect my recipe for chile-infused honey before posting it on Slice. Credit where due: It is 100% inspired by Mike’s Hot Honey, which is available online or from the bar at Paulie Gee’s. I’m playing with the spice levels. The [...]

1/11/2011*: Everything** you need to make pizza dough

From left: Instant dry yeast, flour, salt, sourdough starter, (water not pictured). My shipment of King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour came in yesterday, so I made pizza dough last night. I’m probably the worst at using the scientific method to find out what’s wrong with my pizza. I don’t really “control” for anything and end [...]

1/7/2011: Date night at Fresca Tortilla

To say that this is not the most glamorous Date Night would be an understatement, but Claire had a craving for Mexican. We tossed around the idea of doing Taco Night at home with a box-taco mix, but we were slow getting out of the house. So down to the local Chinese Mexican place we [...]

1/5/2011: Great grater!

OK … so I didn’t actually take this photo — but I art-directed it, so I think that counts. (Claire took it.) Plus, I took other photos today that I could have subbed in to this slot, so I’m still within the spirit of the project. Here, I’m using the mini grater that Claire got [...]

1/3/2011: Semi-dried grape tomatoes

Inspired by the semi-dried cherry tomato topping at Di Fara, I did a trial run of semi-dried grape tomatoes (my market didn’t have the former in stock). Lesson learned here? Shoot before-and-after photos under the same lighting conditions. Duh. The top photo is shot under our range’s built-in fluorescent cooktop light, while the photo just [...]

‘Squeak,’ a story in three photographs