I decided that I needed to branch out, breadwise. So far, all I have made are Italian breads, they being my favorites. I considered making pizza for dinner, but then, paging through The Bread Bible, I was filled with a desire for Bialys. These did not have to be started the evening before, a good thing, since I had been working and unable to do anything but plop into bed when I got home. The bialys called for bread flour which I did not have, so I used all-purpose with a handful of gluten flour. This made me nervous, as I would not be following the chemistry-lab precision of the recipe, but I took a chance. Then when I was about to put in the poppy seeds for the filling, there were none. I had been sure that I had some, but they seem to have evaporated. Rachael was relieved about this, as she has a disgust for tiny black things in her food. This was the case even when she was a baby. She wouldn’t eat the rice in the Indian restaurant until we picked all the seeds out of hers. So no poppy seeds was a good thing.

For dessert we had Mrs. Beeton’s chocolate soufflé – a yummy “fix in minutes” sort of dish. Four eggs – beat the whites, and then stir two teaspoons of sugar and one teaspoon of flour into the yolks, mix 3 oz grated chocolate into the yolk mixture, and fold it into the beaten whites. Bake it in a soufflé dish at 375 for 20 minutes and voila! Not too sweet, so you may want to sprinkle a bit of sugar on it, and maybe even some cream. We had the soufflé with some nice Balmoral tea, a gift from my friend Eileen. All in all, a New York dinner, and a Victorian dessert. Yummers!