Artichoke & Roasted Red Pepper Focaccia

Located near Pittsburgh’s downtown core is a one half square mile area known as the Strip District. This landmark neighborhood is home to a wide variety of gritty independent retail shops, ethnic food emporiums and local restaurants. The place is not for those seeking to wrap themselves in the sanitized comfort of a suburban strip [...]

Easy Dipping Oil

Go to any fancy Italian restaurant and you are sure to be greeted with a basket of crusty bread and fruity olive oil. You don’t have to put on your Sunday best to experience the same pleasure of tearing chunks of bread and plunging them deep into a shallow bowl of goodness. I wasn’t planning [...]

Buttermilk Biscuits & Pittsburgh Storm Pt. 1

This is the first part to my Pittsburgh Snow Storm series. You can read the second part here. After growing up in northern Michigan, then living in Chicago for over five years and even in my current residence of Pittsburgh; I’m very accustomed to the glories of snow. But this weekend was ridiculous! Starting mid-Friday [...]

Parmesan Rosemary Breadsticks

Brent and I had an agreement to only spend $30 on two or more gifts this Christmas. It goes without saying that it was a challenge to find the perfect gifts on such a budget. But I pushed through and found what I wanted to give. While opening our presents, Brent pulled out a huge [...]

Dinner Rolls

I don’t make bread from scratch very often, but there are times when I crave the feeling of warm dough between my fingers. Fresh baked bread is a perfect way to add instant comfort to any home as the heavenly aroma from the oven glades through the house. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I [...]

Double Chocolate Swirl Bread

When I plunged my tense hands into the semi-dark dough, my frustrations began to melt away.  There was something wonderfully relaxing about kneading the dough when the only thing I wanted to do was scream at the stupidity that inspired me to bake bread in the first place. I rarely bake breads for the simple [...]

Pear Monkey Bread (Pull-Aparts)

Wonder why I haven’t posted or commented in the last few days?  Here’s what I wrote late last night. The pilot just announced we have reached 35,000 feet and are traveling at 125 miles per hour with little turbulence expected.  A comforting statement considering I’m only about 40 minutes into a five hour flight from [...]

Mini Bread Loaves

For some strange reason, the planets were aligned this weekend. As a result of such a celestial occurrence, I decided to bake bread from scratch. Of course it couldn’t be just any kind of bread. It couldn’t even be a normal sized loaf. I decided to pull out the same mini loaf pans I used [...]

Golden Pretzel Rolls

My entire body was engulfed with sound as I dipped a dainty slice of pretzel roll into the creamy Dijon mustard sauce.  I could feel the vibrations of a catchy jingle coming from the TV through the hardwood floor and up my bare feet.  I wondered to myself at that moment, “Should I have added [...]

Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread

I admit cornbread and I have not gotten along in the past. Every new recipe I try always seemed to result in dry, flavorless, yellow bricks. So like an incompatible relationship, my determination for moist cornbread began to fizzle. At first our interactions involved steamy greetings in the night. To heated arguments about how a [...]