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I don’t want to wind up spending my summer working at the bakery the same way I spent the summer a couple of years ago working at Blockbuster: putting in 30 or so hours at a place where I’m, in all honesty, not-so-well-versed in the product. While I most definitely enjoy seeing movies, the combination of not having much time outside work to make full use of my rental privilege of 5 free movies each week and the lack of someone to spend movie-watching time with made for a decidedly film-free few months of employment at an entertainment giant.

In order to encourage me to sample more of our options at the bakery, I’m declaring a new project that doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to myself. This idea will serve a multi-fold purpose: I’ll become knowledgeable about the tasty treats at my bakery, I’ll have something new to write about at least once each week, and I’ll encourage other people to be equally inquisitive with boulangerie-centered foodstuffs!

Guilty Pleasure Sundays will see it’s first entry on June 11, wherein I will describe at least one baked good sold by La Bonne Boulangerie that I have eaten that day. If I can possibly manage to try everything (that I’d actually like to try–and I’m not allergic to) by the end of the summer, I’ll consider it both a success and an invitation to switch it up to treats from other local eateries. :)

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of things I’ve already tasted…

Banana Nut Muffin
Our muffins are the standard, generously-sized hunk of quickbread baked by most American bakeries. Where they deviate from the formula is with their yogurt-enriched batter base. The result is an incredibly flavorful and moist muffin, with a slight tanginess to balance out any breadiness and the sweetness. I think it also has the effect of enhancing the flavors of the particular muffins–even though this muffin only has a swirl of fresh banana purée in it instead of all throughout, the taste of banana permeates the entire muffin with rich, real fruit flavor.

One peeve of mine when it comes to any baked good featuring some sort of “add-in” is a too-generous hand with the addition. Nothing can ruin a banana nut muffin faster than the presence of too many walnuts. The name of the food is banana nut–not nut banana. ;P Since nuts in general tend to be very flavorful and can easily overpower any dish, the line between “enough” and “too much” is very fine. Somehow our baker has perfected the art of balance with our muffins because the every-few-bites presence of a perfect walnut was enough to have a pleasant nutty flavor in the muffin and an intermittent hunk to delight my teeth with something to chew down on without being the least bit stronger than the banana flavor.

Overall, I’m not exaggerating nor am I patronizing when I say that this was hands-down the best banana nut muffin I’ve ever had. Between the surprisingly intense moistness and the wonderfully natural and fresh flavors, it’ll be extremely hard to top.

Low-Fat/Grilled Veggie Wrap
Yes, you read that name correctly; my bakery actually sells wraps. We also have (all homemade of course!) soups, salads, fruit bowls, focaccia and croissant sandwiches, yogurt parfaits, dips, fresh mozzarella, and other market-type goodies. La Bonne is actually both an authentic European-style bakery and a café. :)

Of all the sandwiches we offer–and there’s actually quite a few!–the veggie wrap was of course the first to catch my eye and hold it long enough for me to drop the $6.99 to take it home. After popping open the package to discover a hulk of a halved wrap inside, I actually think that while it sounds a little overpriced for a simple sandwich, the amount of food is truly rather impressive. At this point I’ve already had this sandwich twice, and being famished the first time after not eating a bite all day, I did actually eat the entire thing at once, but the second time I bought it, I found it was absolutely plenty for two meals for me.

What inspired me to have this wrap twice within a two-week timeframe despite having the option of trying many other different sandwiches is the mind-blowingly-delicious quality of the veggies. Seriously, whomever devised the recipe for the marinade our owners use deserves an award and already has my undying love. On top of being infused with fabulous flavors, the veggies were perfectly grilled–the zucchini and summer squash weren’t at all too mushy, the asparagus was pleasantly crisp, and the red peppers had incredibly sweet, charred flavor.

Even something as seemingly insignificant as the wrap itself clearly receives the same level of intense attention as the vegetables. Thanks to its immenseness, the sandwich is as I said, a substantial portion. It also holds up incredibly well: even cold, it doesn’t crack, tear, or break but rather maintains a level of chewiness that is really quite enjoyable and nicely conducive to wrap-consumption without wrap-disassemblage.

All in all, I’m willing to bet this sandwich will be gracing my table again sometime soon and many times after. It’s flavorful, satisfying, and definitely well worth the expense!

2 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Main Meals · No Photos · Vegetables

Looking over my Flickr account, I’ve eaten quite a bit of yummy things and not taken the time to write about it here! That’ll change right now, then.

A little over a week ago, my sister decided she wanted to make some garlic knots at lunchtime, so we ordered a pizza to go along with them from the only place near campus that was delivering that day, Cosmos Café. The timing wound up perfect, as the pizza arrived just as the garlic knots were coming out of the oven.

Garlicky dough-knots

While they were certainly fresh and delicious, my sister and I agreed they could’ve used a bit more garlic-and-oil topping. Next time, we’ll be keeping that in mind. At the same time, we found that her baking stone makes a wonderful difference with the texture of the bread. The outside gets a nice, dry crust while the inside stays perfectly soft. While lacking a little in the flavor department, these garlic knots had truly authentic dough.

Cosmos pizza with peppers and onions

The pizza was pretty comparitive. It did possess the thin crust, not-to-much cheese, and yummy veggies that comprise my pizza preferences in those areas, but the sauce was just good, not fantastic. It well-satisfied my pizza desires, though, and I would definitely order from Cosmos again.

I ate it–yep yep!

Here you can see that the cheese and crust are in balance. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when pizza has more cheese than crust. That’s plain just too much greasiness, ick. At the same time, I much prefer thin-crust pizza to Sicilian-style, so dramatically more crust than cheese is also in the Terrible Pizza section of my book. This pizza could’ve had less cheese and that would’ve put it into the Perfect Pizza section, at least with respect to cheesiness, but it was certainly far from disagreeable. :]

Hmm…I think if I don’t paginate this entry, it’s about to get excessively long, so continue on to the full entry page if you’d like to read more about what I’ve eaten and cooked and eaten again!

Read more…

4 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Drinks · Fusion Cuisine · Italian · Main Meals · Pasta · Photos · Poultry · Recipes · Thai

For some reason, I’ve apparently had a need for sweet bread-type things this past week. Last Wednesday, I made some sweet Indian roti, I mixed them up again on Friday, and today I cooked Portuguese sweet muffins. At this point, though, I can say that I am quite thoroughly breaded out. Oi. However, I did reach this point of sweet bread saturation quite deliciously, as you’ll see.

Happy little sugar-laminated breads

The roti is really nice to quickly satiate a sweet bread craving attack. Flour, salt, water, and sugar is all you need along with a little bit of time to mix the first three into a dough, roll them, sprinkle with the sugar, fold up, and roll out again before pan-grilling. They come out chewy and light, with fabulous layers of gooey sugar. For variation on Friday, I added a tiny bit of sugar to the flour and salt for the dough along with some oil before the water. The oil makes for a more tender bread that is easier to flatten. However, for some reason the sugar-laminating doesn’t work quite as well. Some seems to get…absorbed by the bread and it starts to brown before all of the sugar gets a chance to become melty. I think I like them without the oil better, though maybe if I’m particularly wanting a tender bread, I’d go with the oil.

As for other tender breads, today’s Portuguese sweet muffins were a fantastically fun and delectable adventure! I’ve had a packet of yeast lying around since I bought one from my sister over a week ago, and I just couldn’t decide what to make with it. Today, it came to me in a sudden craving for the Portuguese sweet muffins my dad used to regularly buy from Trader Joe’s (a natural foods supermarket chain). After searching high and low–or really, just a few minutes at AllRecipes.com–I came upon this recipe that, aside from a lack of lemon, looked like it would at least come pretty close.

No Portuguese were harmed in the making of this muffin

It surpassed Trader Joe’s by galaxies. While I would appreciate the addition of some lemon in these muffins, it certainly isn’t necessary. I can’t imagine it being removed from the Trader Joe’s version because it needs the freshness of the flavor to make up for the lack of freshness in the muffin. Seriously, now that I’ve gotten very confident in my bread-making ability with these muffins, I will never, ever buy packaged breads again. I so rarely get cravings for bread that it’ll be worth the time to spend baking my own. I get cravings for cakes and pastries much too often to completely exclude packaged stuff, though, as much as I prefer homemade. ;x

Soft and moist inside, firm and dry outside–perfect!

Being moist by nature, these muffins wind up with a completely different texture when packaged. The muffin becomes uniformly moist with tougher tops and bottoms in a package, whereas the fresh ones I made had a more extreme, pleasant contrast between the doughy, soft interiors and firm, dry tops and bottoms. Toasting is absolutely necessary for the Trader Joe’s muffins because the chewiness of the exteriors is just unpalatable right out of the bag, but I wound up eating my muffin sans toasting today. I think it could very well be enjoyed toasted, and at the same time, it isn’t a detriment to devour it as-is.

There’s nothing like sweet breads topped with maple syrup

I didn’t quite consume it “as-is,” though. ;) After tasting a small piece to see how it was plain, I had the sudden idea to top it with a little maple syrup and a pat of butter instead of my usual toasted-and-buttered treatment for the Trader Joe’s sub-pars. This concoction thus satisfied not only my desire for a sweet bread but also pancakes. While Portuguese sweet muffins are certainly not like a pancake, I almost exclusively have maple syrup on only either French toast or pancakes, so the association between “syrup” and “pancakes” is very strong in my mind. I’d never consider dressing a Trader Joe’s sad-excuse-for-a-muffin in this manner, though. I think I’ll stick to having those toasted-and-buttered.

So the moral of the story for all my bread-making recently is that if bread is on my mind, it’s time to whip out some mixing bowls, flour the table (the only flat surface large enough for kneading here–unfortunately), and heat up the stove or oven. Store-bought goods just aren’t worth it.

2 Comments Categories: Breads · Breakfast Foods · Food Musings · Indian · Photos · Portuguese · Recipes · Side Dishes