Oh dear! First thing -- Ellie, of course I'd be happy to. If it's not too late, please send an email to my school address -- tawatts@loyno.edu.

Secondly, I'm finally attaching a pic of one of my fave things I did this holiday season, which was to bake a bunch of loaves of Anise Kuchen. It's such a fun bread. When it gets to its second rising, you oil strips that you've cut from paper bags and staple them over the kneaded individual rounds that will become your bread. As the rounds rise, they grow around the strips of paper, making a cloverleaf shape of dough that you can tie ribbons into once the bread is baked. I love to make these when school gets out and then give them to my aunts. I've tried giving them to friends too, but most of my friends don't really care. As my friend Polly says, she's "undomesticated." So I keep a bunch for myself too.

In fact, today I finally ran out. In addition to the anise kuchen, this year I made some sort of eggy bread that reminds me very much of a Jewish challah -- yellow, sweet and addictive. I got both recipes from my bread bible, Bernard Clayton's book of breads. In the years I've been acquainted with this cookbook (it came with Jesse when we first consolidated some years ago now), I've only tried a couple of recipes, and I've returned to them time and again, working to perfect the method. This is unusual for me. I usually flip through a cookbook with salivating ecstasy, like an impatient little gobbly goat, trying one recipe after another. I think the difference arises from the fact that bread-making is such a time-consuming process that I usually only do it when I'm off school, so I turn to what's most tried and true. Cooking dinner can be a more regular affair, so I tend to be more risky, more fly-by-night -- and I think that my cooking often suffers from this approach!

Comments

[Wendy]

That last comment is hard to believe...your cooking suffering from spontaneity? NEVER! I recall many a dinner at the Watts apartment...and I recall never being disappointed. :) And how cute are those bread "packages"?!?