Pane! Pane! Pane! He's gone Italiano!

Oh my goodness! Has it already been 4 months?!? Where did the months go? What did I do with them? Has anyone seen my hat?

What a crazy ride this has been. Thank you all who have been sending supportive emails and posts. They truly meant a lot and help me through some of the tough times lately. Don't think for a moment I wasn't at least trying to read everyone's blogs. Can you tell I fell behind a little?

We have had such an incredibly challenging time getting things done in our new Italian home! I will tell you all about the nitty-gritty details later on but here is a spoiler about how long it takes to get things done in bella Italia:

• Electricity - 2 weeks (my landlord knew a guy who knew a guy)
• Phone - 6 weeks (apparently he didn't know this guy)
• Internet - 7 weeks
• Washer/Dryer/Refrigerator - bought in March was told it would arrive in May and now they are saying June - 'nuff said (we have learned to like the coin laundry and line drying)
• Our Furniture and other belongings - we were told a month. It's been two - I'm losing hope...

Of course living abroad isn't all bad. As it happens (and you will find this absolutely hilarious) My landlord is the following:

• Cousin to a baker (yes folks, you read that correctly - a BAKER!) Fortune loves my blog :)
• A natural born farmer and grows many things in our 'Villa'
• two Cherry trees
• a lemon orchard (seriously there's like five or six trees - that's an orchard in my book!)
• several Apricot trees
• several Fig trees
• Grape vines like crazy (no self respecting Italian family would go without these)
• Orange trees
• Tomatoes out the wazoo
• and several items I only pretended to understand when I was being told in Italian (shh don't tell my landlords!)
• and finally is married to one of the best cooks I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing in action. She makes a MEAN pasta and does it so effortlessly you sit amazed while shoveling pasta in your mouth.

But I must go now this was a quick 'I'm back' to let all of my blogger friends know I survived the move, well, mostly anyhow. I have so much to talk about, show you, and experience so stick around folks - THE FUN IS JUST BEGINNING!!!!

You don't think I would let you go that easy did you? Here's a shot of some bread we stumbled across in the little town of Vietri off the Amalfi Coast:

...more about this place later...

A cookie and a friend…

To start off I would like to thank all of you for your wonderful and constructive comments regarding the question of re-printing recipes on Blogs. This is obviously one of those topics that hasn't really been addressed in the blog world.

I agree to an extent with some of the comments made. I agree that proving you pioneered "1/2 tsp Sugar" would be a difficult thing indeed. Now for me all of this is really a pointless thing to argue. I am a book junkie. I just have to own the book itself. The question here pertains to what our behavior should be when we share our finished products. There is still a couple of more days left to vote so if you haven’t gotten your opinion in yet do so quickly before the poll closes!

Ok, now back to baking.

I was “blog browsing” the other day and came across this posting from Pietown . As soon as I saw the pictures of these wonderful cookies (which to me looked like a chocolate version of a Little Debbie’s Oatmeal cookie) I knew I had to try my hand at them. This recipe is actually from SmittenKitchen.

If you take the time to read the recipe comments you will find everyone commenting on how sweet these are. Let me correct their description somewhat. These are AMAZINGLY, CRAZY, DON’T EAT ONE BEFORE BED SWEET!!!!!!!!!!! I even left out a ½ cup of sugar as one of the other bakers suggested. Of course that doesn’t make them bad snacks with a cup of coffee!

As you can see I made them kind of big. I didn’t realize that the cookie part would actually come out the consistency of a cookie. (silly me) From the pictures I figured they would be a little softer so I made them big. I also didn’t realize how sweet they were. Did I mention the cavity I got from these? Despite the sweetness these cookies are AMAZING and I will definitely make these again. The recipe states that the batter will produce 25 - 30 cookies. I got about 10. Obviously if I would have made them smaller I could have probably made about 20.

…but I digress…

I have the pleasure of inviting one of my dearest friends to join us for our topic on reprinting recipes. Alex of 2Ciaos is a Fabulous IP lawyer who will educate us on the actual legal aspects of this question. This will perhaps give a more concise guideline on how we should be crediting the originators of our crafts and ultimately decide on how we here at TableBread post our efforts.

I hope you will all give a warm welcome to Alex as she joins us at the table for our discussion.

Grab a cookie, a cup of coffee, and your listening ears and give a warm welcome to Alex of 2Ciaos as she educates us on this sticky question.

Reminder: World Bread Day is October 16!

Sending out a reminder to all of my fellow bakers -

World Bread Day is October 16, so get out your dough mixers and timers and get ready to bake your heart out!

World Bread day is a chance for any and all bakers (old or new) to bake up their best recipes and post pictures of them so everyone can see your hard work! I believe it will be a smashing good time!

Welcome to the Table!

Bread

Pain

Brot

Pane

Xлеб

Pan

Growing up some of my greatest memories involved bread. Cornbread and chili, fried chicken and biscuits, spaghetti and garlic bread, steak and Texas toast, biscuits and gravy; the list goes on. Every culture has embedded in it’s society a love for this manipulation of ingredients. In Italy you commonly encounter slices of bread with your choice of olive oil or balsamic vinegar for dipping.

My intention is to chronicle my encounters with bread. I also enjoy baking lovely versions of bread. If you are a baker you will know that one of the hardest items to produce in a kitchen is in fact bread. Bread takes the most investment of your time. For example, it’s 4:30pm and you decide to bake a cake with dinner at 6:00pm – no problem. If however, you decide you need a baguette with that fettuccine; well, good luck with that.

What are some interesting bread encounters you’ve had?