I love bread and have to have it with most of my meals, but I never thought I would have the time or patience to make fresh bread. That changed recently when I discovered the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. The title sounds too good to be true, but it really does only require about five minutes of actual work. The secret is that you mix a batch of dough in advance (it only takes a few minutes) and keep it in the fridge. On baking day you grab a hunk a dough, quickly form it into a loaf, and then let it sit for about 40 minutes while you preheat the oven. When the oven is hot, you slide the bread in and about 30 minutes later you’ve got hot, delicious, freshly baked bread. It’s awesome and if you like bread I definitely recommend the book. You can also use the dough for pizzas, flat breads, cinnamon buns, and all kinds of other recipes.

The authors also have a new edition coming out this month called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free, so you may want to watch out for that.

Here’s a recent shot of some homemade chicken soup. It’s based on the recipe for Home-style Chicken Soup in Barbara Kafka’s excellent book Roasting: A Simple Art. This is my second attempt making chicken soup from scratch, and this time I think I made a mistake by making the stock in a slow cooker. The first time I did it I boiled the cut-up carcass on the stove as the book recommends, but this time I didn’t want to watch the stove all day and put it in a slow cooker on high for a few hours, then on low for about 12 hours. The stove-top method seemed to extract a lot more flavour from the bones, probably due to the higher temperatures.

The first time I also deglazed the pan and added the drippings to the stock, but the second time I used the drippings for gravy. So that probably made a big difference as well.

This photo was also an opportunity for me to try some new lighting techniques. It is lit entirely by studio strobes, but the goal was to make the light look as natural as possible. I think I succeeded and it looks very similar to broad window light, yet still has some directional qualities as evidenced by the soft shadows.

Here’s some recent images of coffee and crepes from a shoot at one of the Richtree Market Restaurants. Like much of my restaurant photography these images were produced on location with their chefs doing all the food prep and styling, while utilizing a small portable lighting kit. In fact, these images were produced entirely with natural light and a few reflectors. Working like this allows to us to produce quality images in a time efficient manner, saving the client both time and money.

It’s been awhile since I’ve made a post here. I think I got so burned out with the site overhaul and redesign that I need to take a bit of break. Here’s an image of a very tasty Corned Beef on Rye sandwich from a recent photo shoot at the Steeles Deli. This place gets a lot of great reviews and is hidden in a strip mall at 180 Steeles Avenue just west of Yonge Street. All the customers who were there that day were raving about the place, so it’s definitely worth a visit.

I’ve tried the frozen or refrigerated corn tortillas available from many Latin grocers, but they can’t compare to fresh and are only good for frying or baking. Fresh is so much better! La Tortilleria also sells a variety of tacos for take-out or eat-in (stools or outdoor patio), but I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have my favorite Tacos Al Pastor with pineapple and cilantro. Oh well… you can’t have everything.