There are a surfeit of cookbooks on the shelves, everything from pretty books that rattle off lists of ingredients whose duplication in the styled photos is next to impossible, to classic tomes that assume a complete apprenticeship to a master chef and years of professional experience.

I own both kinds.

Having cookbooks is a way to explore worldwide cuisine without leaving your reading chair. It mixes the exotic with the familiar and ignites the imagination. Cookbooks, for me, are a way to kick-start my creativity. I process kosher substitution in my head to see whether milk can be reasonably substituted or whether just plain water will do, or if veal or turkey can stand in for pork. It’s well past the point where I flip past a recipe simply because it’s not intrinsically kosher; anything can be kosherized. (more…)

Baking bread during the winter months in a cool, drafty kitchen is a particular challenge. Yeast likes a fairly warm environment to do its thing, and trying to proof dough on countertops that register 50°F are going to result in flat, dense loaves.

Proofing boxes are temperature and humidity-controlled walk in monsters found in professional bakeries. Home bakers need something a little less unwieldy.  As it turns out, a simple incandescent light bulb will do the trick, providing enough heat to proof  a couple of loaves worth of your favorite bread dough.

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