A couple of weeks ago, Brian and I saw signs downtown for a book festival for September 7th and wondered whether we might go. My tendency is to be quite lumpish so that when it comes time to actually doing things that in theory sound wonderful to me, I become resistant. So last night, when we discussed whether or not we would check it out, I reluctantly mumbled "yeah maybe" and unenthusiastically opened the program of events on my computer. I had no intention of reading it in its entirety (and I never did do that) so I consider it an act of Divine Providence (really!) that my eye caught the name "Peter Reinhart" on the list of authors who would be presenting. Peter Reinhart has long been a hero of mine--before we even knew we were moving to North Carolina (which happens to be his state of residence). He is a genius baker--one of the foremost in the bread scene really--and much of what I've learned about bread making is from him. When I had a sourdough crisis, I emailed him and he responded right away with a very thorough and helpful guide on how to restore my culture. I've often thought I'd like to drive to Charlotte and attend one of his classes at Johnson & Wales University.
So, when I saw that he would be in Winston giving demos of recipes from his latest book, The Joy of Gluten Free Baking, I was both excited and intrigued. We got up bright and early this morning, and left with enough time to find parking and walk over to the tent where he was presenting.
In the hour that he had, he made (all gluten and sugar free) pecan bread, garlic crackers, and blueberry pancakes. Sampling the pecan bread was what made Brian raise his eyebrows and say "we should get that book."
Peter was a lot of fun to watch baking. For one, I learned a lot about technique just by watching him. For another, he was pretty funny: he forgot the eggs in the pecan bread (it was rescued from the oven and appropriately egged), and when it came time to make the crackers, he started by following his cracker recipe and then mistakenly referring to another recipe, realizing this only near the end. And he would just laugh about these things and add more ingredients to fix his creations, and continue on in his cheerful way.
When the presentation was done, we bought a book and had him sign it, and got to chat with him for a little bit.
It seemed that baking would be our theme for the day because later in the evening, Brian and I made a lemon meringue pie together for a birthday tomorrow. I'm still quite impressed at his engineering of the meringue given that I accidentally only used one third of the sugar I was supposed to use:
I had a lot of fun baking with him. I had to substitute limes for lemons, and based on the sample of filling we tried, it was a very good substitution. It got me wondering about orange meringue pies. Does anyone know if they've ever been done? Or if they're any good? I'd love to know!
