Moms Who Make It Conference Ticket Winner

Congratulations go to Catherine at Fahrenheit 350 who left comment #2:

Fahrenheit 350° said...

I'm grateful that my husband has a job. it breaks my heart to hear everyday of someone losing their job, or getting their pay cut!

BBA #7: Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns

For round 7 of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge I decided I didn't want to choose between making the cinnamon rolls vs the sticky buns because I really love them both. It was easy enough to just cut my log of dough into 12 pieces (just under 1 1/2-inches each roughly) and to bake six as cinnamon rolls and use the other six for sticky buns.

I then made a half batch of the caramel glaze mixture and placed it in the bottom of a 9-inch round pan, placed the rolls, covered, held them in the refrigerator overnight. All I had to do was get up a bit early the next morning and sit them out on the counter for a couple of hours to rise.

While this dough was delicious, and a joy to work with, I really preferred them as the sticky buns because I really didn't particularly care for the lemon zest in the dough. I liked it - but just ok. I wouldn't probably put it in again - though I WILL switch it to orange next time and turn these into orange rolls instead with an orange cream cheese glaze.

The dough was tender, easy to make, easy to work with and the sticky bun glaze was easy to make and really delicious!

Win Two Tickets to the Moms Who Make It Conference!

If you have been following any of the Backstage Bloggers (aka the Sexy Six) in the past day or so then you probably have already seen or heard that the mini-class tickets and all-day tickets for the Moms Who Make It Conference have SOLD OUT! Holy Cow! I can't begin to tell you how excited I am that I get to meet, mingle and get inspired with so many great women next week!

What you may not have realized is that you can still come to the afternoon/evening session of the conference and hear some amazing speakers and get really inspired to be empowered and change your life for the better. To be honest, as excited as I am about the amazing selection of mini-classes and being able to attend the conference all day, I am really looking forward to the afternoon and evening as well. The dinner is going to be awesome (let's face it - we all know I think about the food a ton!) but aside from that it is an opportunity to learn from some amazing women about how to take what life throws at us (which is a LOT) and not let our circumstances dictate who we are.

That is why I am so excited that the amazing gals at CreatedbyMom.com and all the sponsors of the conference are making it possible for us Backstage Bloggers to win a pair of tickets to the ENTIRE DAY OF THE CONFERENCE - meals included AND you get to attend the mocktail party afterwards as well. It is going to be amazing!

Obviously, you need to be able to attend the conference (in South Jordan, Utah on July 16, 2009) but other than that all I am going to ask is one thing enter to win the pair of tickets here. Just name one thing - simple, complicated, big, small, whatever - that you are grateful for right now.

It is really for me, because I know I have the most amazing, talented, passionate and wonderful readers and frankly, I can use all the reminders of why I should be grateful that I can get. So, please, make sure to leave an email address or way for me to contact you. You can enter until this Saturday, July 11th at midnight MST and I will announce the winner on Sunday. Oh, and by the way, if you already purchased tickets, they will reimburse you for them if you win.

Want to really up your chances? Check out the other Backstage Bloggers for more chances to win tickets from them! And if you don't win, remember - there are still tickets for the afternoon session available!

April at Sweet Life in the Valley
Lauren at SuperMom Central
Joanie at Keeping Up with MOM
Vanessa at I Never Grew Up
Evonne at Sell Party of...

BBA #6: Ciabatta

I made the poolish version first, found it delicious and easy to work with.

I did use some milk in the dough as well, as one of the options.

Sometimes life just happens in funny ways. Sometimes bread is just made in funny ways. Sometimes bread just looks kind of funny. In this instance, that is pretty much what this Ciabatta bread was all about for me.

The sixth recipe section in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is the Ciabatta, which had several different options for how to make it. I have actually made Ciabatta a few times in the past, but these recipes were vastly different than the one I used before. The funny thing about this for me is the fact that I am just now finally posting this bread. You see, I actually made this in week one - but the past few weeks have just been filled with other things going on and I am just finally getting around to posting this. Thankfully, I'm not the only one!

What is funnier to me is that I actually made this twice since we started the challenge. You know, sometimes things just work out that way. So, since it is very late at night and I just don't want to wait any longer before I get this going (because I have the next challenge all ready to post too!) I am just adding my rather weak thoughts and notes about the Ciabatta bread under each photo and hope you will forgive my total lack of writing prowess and wit tonight.

Perfect holes and beautiful texture - this tasted soooo good!

Ciabatta made with biga mixture - didn't go so well and didn't taste as good to me.

The loaves I made with the biga were more difficult to work with and didn't end
up with the proper texture at all - probably more my fault in not handling gently
enough or something, but I really didn't like this version.

Totally just personal preference for me here but I loved the version made with the poolish. It was easy to work with, turned out just right, tasted lovely and we really enjoyed it. The biga was not quite as easy to work with for me and I really didn't enjoy the results for all the extra steps that were involved.

We ate the first loaves from the poolish with butter and just scarfed it down. The other loaves we turned into french toast since the texture was already rather heavy anyway. I will definitely make the poolish version again in the future!