Were I a professional baker, I probably wouldn’t end up with flat, under-risen loaves of bread on a near-regular basis. I probably wouldn’t have nightmares in my sleep of covering my entire kitchen in flour or burning forgotten breads to a crisp in the oven. I probably wouldn’t have daily ruminations like, “Did I OVERknead the bread or UNDERknead it?” while staring at my computer screen, and the mere thought of a sourdough starter wouldn’t send me straight to the grocery store, grabbing a pretty, freshly baked loaf in fear and exclaiming, out loud, to no one, “How do they DO it?!”

But, professional bakers probably think about these things, too, from time to time. You can’t tell me Peter Reinhart hasn’t had a few floppy baguettes or soggy bagels in his time, or that every loaf of bread that emerges from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s oven is absolutely perfect (Oh, who am I kidding? It probably is).

I’m just keeping it real here, friends. Sometimes, I just need to go back to the basics. And this archived post, one of my favorites that I wrote for Tablespoon, was the first thing that popped into my head when I decided I needed a refresher course. So, I’d thought I’d share it with you, too. Take a gander over there to learn some Bread 101 and bake yourself one seriously awesome basic white bread. It’ll change your life.

Annnnnnd here’s the recipe only, if you’re too cool for school:

Finally, I feel like I don’t ask for your input nearly often enough. So, that’s about to change, and I’m starting here, with a question for ya’ll:

What would you like to see baked and blogged on Girl Versus Dough? I’m game for anything, folks — difficult, easy, sweet, savory, creative, boring, weird, whatever. Let’s do this.

Hi dear friends!

I love you. I really do. I am so grateful for and warmed by your comments, and it just makes me even more inspired to get in the kitchen and bake up something else for you (now if only I could send a slice of everything to each and every one of you in the mail… I’ll work on that).

For now, I’ll share a little bit of what’s been going on at Tablespoon, my second (wonderful, awesome, amazing!) home. I just feel like spreading the love today (and I’m taking a minor hiatus from the kitchen to spend some time with my equally wonderful, awesome, amazing family).

Here’s what’s been cooking over there:

I made flan. And it was glorious.

Galettes galore! This one I heart in particular. It’s got plums. And almonds. And amazingness.

Mini meatloaves. To continue my love of all things miniature.

These here croutons came from this recipe. Resourcefulness is my middle name.

Oh, oh, also! You can find some of my recipes on Betty Crocker and Pillsbury, too. I still get giddy just thinking about it.

So there you have it. Some love to keep you cozy this Sunday. And thank you, again, for being here. For reals. You are wonderful, awesome and amazing.

My friends, it is officially summer. I know for some of you that might be stating the obvious, but for me, I feel as though I went to sleep one night in the winter and woke up to a hot, summer morning. Springtime had a fleeting presence, one dotted with subzero temperatures, a few rain/hail showers and a smattering of tornado warnings. And then, it was gone.

But I’m not complaining. I love summer. And to celebrate, Elliott and I are making a getaway this week to sleep under the stars, roast hot dogs over a fire, get our shoes muddy on trails, walk down sidewalks with ice cream melting over our fingers and eat in restaurants with goats on the roof. It will be lovely.

So, with that, I’ll leave you occupied with a few things I’ve been whipping up for the fantastically awesome Tablespoon blog, such as:

Mexican molletes. Pretty much the most amazingly delicious (and easiest) dinner you’ll ever make every night for a week. Yeah. That may or may not have happened.

Raspberry mascarpone pizza. Raspberries. Mascarpone cheese. Pizza crust. Perfection.

How to roast and eat a whole artichoke. Did you know you could do that? I didn’t. Now I do and I’m never going back.

Beeramisu. That’s beer tiramisu, friends. BEER. TIRAMISU. Drop everything and make this.

Mexican coffee popsicles. Coffee in popsicle form = perfect for a summer day. Or, every day.

I’m really excited to be creating more and more non-bread recipes over there (though a loaf still makes its way into the mix every now and again), and I hope you, too, are enjoying the adventure. Happy summer!

Hello my dears!

I’ll be honest — I am really nervous to host my first-ever giveaway. It makes me feel all professional or something, which we all know is not the theme of my adventures here.

But let’s back up. I’m going to tell you a story.

My 24th birthday is in a week and a half. People tell me the transition between 23 and 24 is huge — I don’t believe it. I have a hunch that the moment I turn 24, not much will change. Maybe I’ll have a little more old woman crankiness. Maybe I’ll find a gray hair, or discover another wrinkle on my incessantly furrowed forehead (my default face looks angry, I’m told — trying to work on that one). Whatever might happen to me over the course of the next year, one thing is for sure: I will still love baking, this blog and all of you. Fact.

So, instead of showering myself with gifts to celebrate what I’m considering just another birthday, I’ve decided that I’m going to give YOU a present. Coincidentally, my birthday falls on Mother’s Day this year, so you can call it a Mother’s Day present, if you wish. Either way, it’s for you, because I love you and gifts are fun. Especially when they’re these cute little measuring spoons from Anthropologie (aka THE BEST STORE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD).

So here’s the giveaway rundown. To enter, leave a comment below answering the following question: What is your favorite birthday memory OR What do you love most about your mother? (answering both questions in separate comments still counts as one entry — sorry)

Extra entries:
1. Tweet about the giveaway and attach this link: http://tinyurl.com/6g2vpl5 Tell me in a separate comment that you did so.
2. Share the link above about the giveaway on your Facebook wall and tell me in a separate comment that you did so (while you’re there, become a fan of Girl Versus Dough’s Facebook page!).

And that’s it! Contest ends on Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. CST. Winner will be announced Monday, May 2.

Happy giveaway!

Update: Patti J is our winner! Thanks for playing, everyone.

When I was little, I hadn’t a care in the world. I’d frolic around in sprinklers and on swing sets, and the biggest event of my day was making sure I pedaled my Tonka three-wheeler fast enough to make it home in time for dinner.

My favorite place to be was at my neighbors’ house. I was there often — my two best friends, a brother and a sister, lived over there, so why would I be anywhere else? Plus, they had cool toys to play with that were way more fun than playing alone with the Barbies I had strewn across my bedroom floor.

There was one toy at my neighbors’ house, however, that I hated. It was a video game, actually, called “Sesame Street 1-2-3″ or something like that. One of the settings brought you to outer space, where Grover, dressed in an astronaut’s uniform, would float in the air over a series of numbers. There also was a face in the moon. Whenever you got a math problem right, the moon face would shake its head in delight and make a happy noise. But when you didn’t get the problem right, well, all hell broke loose for me. The face would frown, and the sound the game made in response to the mistake was a fiercely negative — and for some reason, frightening — sound for me to hear in my young age.

Every time I heard that sound, I’d scream and run out of the room, tears streaming down between the tiny fingers that covered my face.

Recently, I’ve been receiving some negative comments on my work in other avenues (not on this blog, though, thank goodness!). The newspaper I work for is notorious for receiving a slew of nasty comments on its articles, even if it’s just about the local elementary school’s recent spelling bee. It seems everyone has something to say, and it’s not always positive. Though I’ve learned, at least in my profession, to stop reading the comments on my stories posted online, I still can’t help but read what people have to say on other people’s stories sometimes — and when I do, it makes me want to run away, hands covering my face, tears streaming down.

Why have we decided, in social media, that this is the norm? To put others down personally, just because we have the privilege of hiding behind a “mask,” or an anonymous screen name, gives us no right to treat others any differently than we would if they were standing right in front of us. There is little tact left when it comes to the reactive community, whether it’s on blogs, Facebook or an article in a newspaper. We’ve lost touch with the human being behind the words.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying we aren’t entitled to our opinions. Lord knows I have plenty of my own, and it’s wonderful to share them. That’s what fuels creativity and change. That’s what gets us to post new recipes, to meet new, interesting people, to open our minds to things we never dreamed we would. But when a comment becomes a personal attack on the writer, not a constructive criticism on the specific post itself, that is something with which I take issue.

I didn’t intend to write about this on my blog, ever — really, I know we’re all friends here and we just want to talk about bread. But when I see posts like this or this or this (Joy The Baker once had a nice response about some Negative Nancys trolling her blog, too), I know something’s up. This thing we call a blogging community is instead transforming into an ugly, offensive, unfounded roasting. Who wants to be a part of that? I know I don’t. All I want to do is write about what I love and share it with you; and I hope that you will only join in on the fun.

That’s why I’m preemptively instating a rule on my blog — no negative comments, ever. This doesn’t mean that if you have a problem with my recipes or a constructive criticism to make that I’ll delete your comment from my blog without question, but it does mean that if you feel the need to be snide, cynical or just plain rude, I won’t allow it. It breeds nothing but further contempt — plus, it hurts my feelings, plain and simple. And while there’s nothing I can do to change some people’s minds, I can ask that if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. My momma raised me right on that one.

I know that, as we get older, running around through sprinklers and playing Sesame Street video games while thinking all is good and right in the world is quite a stretch. But I also know that, despite all those negative noises out there, there’s a lot of positivity, too. Let’s do our best to focus on that, first.

Greetings, dear friends —

I apologize for a delay in recipe posting. I’ve been in a coma for a few days after eating my weight in bourbon bacon pancakes. You understand.

I also took a mini break from my daily obligations to visit my dear friend Ashley (see above) in her homeland. Which used to be my homeland. Which is really still only four hours away, barely far enough to consider it a “homeland,” but still far enough away that I have enough time to completely lose my voice upon arrival after all the loud, obnoxious singing I’ve just done in my car. True story.

But now, back to real life. While I have been busy baking, it hasn’t been for this here blog, but for Tablespoon, my second home. I’d thought I take this time to share with you a few things I’ve been conjuring up over there.

Doughnut holes. Any baked goods sugary and miniature warm my soul.

Whole wheat English muffins. Healthy. English. Perfect with a spot of tea after eating an entire cake.

Vegan Vanilla Maple Banana Bread. My first-ever banana bread (I’m allergic to bananas, so I don’t often make things I can’t eat. It just doesn’t make sense). My first-ever vegan bread, too. Good stuff.

Mini calzones. For the Superbowl. Or just because.

I promise to be back again soon with a new recipe for GVD, but for now, you should make these yummy breads at once. A very happy Monday to you all.

Normally, I’m not one to follow the trend of making New Year’s resolutions. This is mostly because I’m not so good at keeping them. There was that one year when I vowed never to procrastinate — then I procrastinated on my resolution to stop procrastinating.

Then there was the year I promised myself I’d keep a daily journal — my last entry was on January 21.

There also have been, of course, many years when I’ve written in permanent ink, on multiple sheets of paper, Word documents and all over my hands, that I WILL exercise more this year. And, more importantly, I WILL eat healthier. You can guess how well that resolution also has gone.


I’ve noticed a lot of other people have made the same resolution — it’s undoubtedly a common one after the (oh so delicious) gluttony of the holidays. In keeping with their “healthy eating” resolutions, I’ve noticed a few other bloggers are giving up, among sweets and processed foods, bread. Egads! As a bread baker and fellow blogger, you can imagine how this makes me feel.

For those of you out there who think you need to give up bread to be healthier this year, I’m here to tell you, you don’t. And though I am a teensy bit biased, I also am trying to eat healthier this year, and I won’t be giving up on bread. Instead, I’ll be focusing on healthier bread recipes, such as:

Though I’m all for cutting down on candy, chocolate (sigh) and processed foods, bread is the one food I cannot (and don’t need to) give up on in my resolution to be healthier in 2011. And with these healthy bread recipes under your belt, well, neither do you.

I know Thanksgiving is over, and all that remains of it is a handful of leftover dinner rolls, a broken turkey wishbone, some pie crumbs and a loosened belt.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not still thankful for so many things.

I thought I’d share them with you. And no matter how cheesy/cliche/commonplace this list may be, you know you feel thankful for so many things in your own life. Go on. Admit it. That’s right.

I am thankful for (in no particular order) –

Family.

Friends.

My husband.

Butter.

Vacations.

Holidays.

Sunshine.

My kitty.

Cake.

Beauty.

Jesus. (sorry, no picture for this one, but if I did have one, WHOA.)

A home.

Opportunity.

Flowers.

Biscuits.

Coffee.

Love.

And you.

Happy Sunday.

I’m taking a (short!) break this week from baking — but don’t worry, I’ll be back in the kitchen as soon as you can say… see, I’m already back.

I’m currently obsessing over non-bread related baking items, like homemade apple chips. Yum. SO good with my new-found love, almond butter. Yes please.

But when I get the chance to make another bread, you’ll be the first to know about it (besides myself, of course. And my husband. But after that, you’re the first, promise!).

For now, here’s what I’ve been working on for the Tablespoon blog over the past few weeks. Take a look and let me know what you think about my original recipes! I have a new post there every Friday.

Granola bread.

Sundried tomato basil bread.

Brioche hamburger buns.

Cheesy onion pita bread.

Chipotle corn bread.

There you have it. A nice smattering of recipes to whet your whistle. Happy Friday, you. And have a very blessed weekend.

In case you’ve been pining for more recipes in my absence, you’re not alone. The fact is, I’ve missed baking, too. But it’s been the craziest of weeks, namely for one reason: A wedding.

Don’t you just love weddings? They brighten my mood no matter how I’m feeling (Case of the Mondays? Gone. Smells like cat pee in the hallway? No probs. Nasty sunburn peeling off while I’m fighting off laryngitis and can barely speak? OK, that sucked, but a wedding would still make me slightly cheery.). And this past weekend, I was blessed to be a bridesmaid in my dear, dear friend Sarah Jean’s wedding in St. Paul, Minn. It was a lovely affair.

Aw, pretty bridesmaids. We were fun. And pretty.

That would be the bride, brush-a-brush-a-brushin’ her teeth minutes before getting hitched. Naturally. Still, she’s dang beautiful.

Not sure what I’m doing here. I planned to look diva-ish, but I ended up looking, well, not so diva-ish. I blame the non-diva dress. Sarah’s looking mighty nervous (but excited!) before the ceremony. Clearly I pay no attention to anyone’s feelings whence trying to look like a diva.

And finally, the lovely bride, Sarah Jean, and groom, Nate. They are happy. (Though it might be for the cake, I don’t know.)

So there you have it. My big fat excuse for not baking. Don’t worry, I’ve got thoughts swirling in my head and a loaf in the oven right now (a gluten-free surprise for Tablespoon, but that’s for another day). Things are happening, indeed.

P.S. First photo courtesy of Sarah Vande Kamp; Other photos courtesy of Ashley Moore