Professional Baking cookbook - Week 0

 Ok I'm gonna do it!

I'm a fan of the idea of going through an entire cookbook in a year and making everything in it, a la Julie Powell in Julie & Julia. I wonder how many of foodies have done this since the movie came out?

Get this book, see this movie!

I picked the Professional Baking cookbook (5th edition) by Wayne Gisslen since that was from one of my classes at OCC.

There are 803 recipes, which comes to about 2 1/4 recipes per day. Some of them are things like sauces and glazes, so on those days I can make a few in a day. There will always be sick days, vacations with no kitchen, and such, but I am embarking on a journey that will leave me a smarter and more experienced baker. And doing my best to get done in a year. 

As Julie Powell tells us, it's a "loony undertaking". (See her original blog below)

I've decided since I already got my groceries and fruit/veg orders in for the week, we shall dub this week "week 0" and continue on with what I've already made and what I can make with what I've got. 

I also came up with a way to try a different category each day. Each week I will go down the list of each category until that category is exhausted. The first phase (Aug - Nov) is Cakes, Savory breads, Sweet breads, Special Diet, Quick bread, Pastry, Cookies, and Chocolate. 

Here is the plan for "week 0". Since we leave for vacation Sunday to Wednesday, I left out the chocolate this week. Hoping to gather some cherries from Traverse City to use in baking next week.  

Sunday: (Hubby's birthday) White Cake with a fresh Strawberry Buttercream - I kept this in the freezer since buttercream can melt outside, and we were having an outdoor barbecue. Turned out okay but the cake made a thinner cake than I wanted. It does call for an 8 inch pan, and I used a 9 inch pan. I had these recipes, probably the cake was from the internet somewhere. The buttercream was from a class at a cake supply company. 

Monday: Rosemary Sourdough Bread  - This is tasty but I think it needs to be in a pan to keep its shape, and maybe a bit more flour, it was a pretty wet dough and it flattened out to focaccia like bread. Still tasty though! I also had this recipe already, but cant remember from where, probably also from the internet. 

See the bread upper left, that's the one.
[Flat Iron steak and garlic sage potato and yellow beets] 

Note: you have to be careful with internet recipes, there's a lot out there and not all of them are good. 

For Tuesday: Keto brownies from a mix - I'm working toward being able to offer a special diet menu , so I'm trying out the mixes first, to get a baseline. 

For Wednesday: Almond tart  - This will be the first foray into the cookbook!

For Thursday: Orange nut bread

For Friday: Baked apple dumpling

For Saturday: Jam Tarts

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Since it's Monday and I want to bring something to the Tuesday Tai Chi class, and my instructor is on a keto diet, I'll make the keto brownies. 

Here we go!

Vicky

Reference: Julie/Julia Project blog, Aug 28, 2002: This is the first day of the blog where she cooks through Julia Child's cookbook. You can go to the calendar and click the 29th for the next blog and so on. 

  https://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html