Oh, lasagne… is there anything I won’t do for you?

For you, I would slave over the stove for hours to create the perfect ragu to lovingly spread between your silky layers.  I would whisk furiously to make a voluptuous bechamel to further your perfection.  I would squirrel away the best Parmigiano-Reggiano for you and you alone.  But, I have now come to a terrible realisation, dear lasagne.  All these years, all the stirring, the whisking, the grating, the love, and still I have wronged you.

Until yesterday, I have never made you your very own pasta.

I am so sorry.  You deserve better, lasagne *sniffle*

Fresh lasagna sheets from the supermarket simply won’t cut it any more, now that I’ve made my own and forget about dried, no need to cook lasagna!  My beautiful lasagne absolutely must have freshly rolled, home-made pasta.

Ahem.  I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to some crazy lady talking to her lasagne, so without further ado… on to this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge!  The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

This is the first time that I’ve made a lasagne completely from scratch.  (Well, to be fair. I didn’t mill the flour or make my own cheese, but you get what I mean, right?)  I’ll happily spend hours cossetting a ragu, throw together a great bechamel, but I’d never considered making my own lasagna sheets.  I have no idea why as I make my own ravioli quite a lot; making pasta isn’t difficult, just a little space-consuming in my little kitchen.  However, now that I’ve done it, and relatively successfully, I’ll certainly be making my own lasagna sheets.

I made the ragu and bechamel on Thursday; both straightforward once you get over the milk curdling scarily in the ragu.  Yes, this is normal. Yes, it’ll stop looking weird if you just let it do its thing on the stove.  And yes, you will find youself panicking even though you know it’s going to happen.

On Friday morning, while looking at the Daring Kitchen forums, I belatedly noticed that the posting date had been brought forward by two days.  I hate being late—you wouldn’t think so, considering how often I am late—so gone was my leisurely day of slowly and lovingly making pasta, then assembling the lasagne.  I was in a rush!

Making the pasta dough was fun, if a little messy.  I usually toss it all into the food processor until it reaches the bread-crumb stage, but being a good little Daring Baker, I proceeded to make a big mess on my worktop.  Like I said, fun   I had to add an extra egg and a few teaspoons of water squeezed from the spinach to get the dough to the right consistency, but I almost always have to add extra liquid when I make pasta.

Amazing what a difference kneading makes!

Lucas was fascinated by the creaking noise of the pasta machine and abandoned Peppa Pig for long enough to turn the handle and roll out two pieces of pasta.  I wish I’d been able to geta picture as it was really, really cute. Half-way through he turned round and said, “Mummy, I love making food!” He’s the sweetest little boy ever and was so proud to eat his pasta.

Following a tip on the private forums, I stacked all my sheets of pasta between layers of clingfilm which worked a treat and saved so much space.  I’ll definitely do that again.

I did take space-saving a little too far.  I decided that as my sheets of pasta were paper thin, I wouldn’t bother to blanch them in boiling water.  I just couldn’t picture getting my mountain of pasta drained properly on sheets of kitchen roll before assembling the lasagne.  And it was getting late, and someone else sait it worked out just fine for them… So, in they went, raw.

I think this would have been absolutely fine if I’d had a lot more bechamel.  I had to thin it a few times when reheating it as it just kept thickening even further, and I’m guessing that the lasagne soaked up plenty of the sauce when it was baking.  So, my lasagne didn’t have the gorgeously creamy white topping that it should have done, despite me holding back a really generous amount when I was building it.  It still tasted great, though.

I managed to use all the ragu, and all but three sheets of the spinach pasta, giving me eight layers. Wow!  It was really impressive to cut into it and see all the wonderful layers; the bechamel and ragu melted into the layers making everything was just so rich, voluptious and delicious.  How could it be otherwise?  It was lasagne.

I must thank our lovely hosta Mary, Melinda and Enza for a fantastic challenge.  We all loved the lasagne and I’ll definitely be making it, and variations, in the future.  How awesome would this be with roasted butternut squash?  I have to… after all, I have years of shocking neglect to make up to my lasagne…

Check out the Daring Blogroll to see all the other incredible lasagnes!

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Update 19/11/07: Apparently the Village bakery Forums have closed down, so I am reproducing verbatim the recipe for Stollen at the end of this post. Thanks for all the emails!

Also, I can confirm that going the extra mile and tracking down fresh yeast and making your own almond pste creates a far tastier stollen.

I’ve always adored Stollen. I think it may be my ultimate Christmas treat – sweet bread dough bursting with dried fruits wrapped around a wonderfully thick layer of marzipan. All of my favourite things (with the exception of chocolate) in one! Until I stumbled over a recipe for it on the Village Bakery Bread Forum, I’d never considered making it myself. The recipe looked straightforward enough, once I figured out that I should use fresh yeast, so I decided to give it a whirl. As its a baker’s recipe, everything is weighed, even the liquids. Fingers crossed…

My first disaster of the day was with the yeast my lovely husband had popped in the fridge to defrost. It had inexplicably turned to liquid by the time I woke up this morning. Most odd. All the bread books I’ve read say that you can freeze fresh yeast and defrost it successfully, so I don’t have a clue what happened. After rummaging around in the fridge, I found about 10g of yeast that I bought last week. It still looked like putty and smelt okay, so I decided to try it and see how it worked out. Mercifully the recipe started off with a sponge so I’d know pretty quickly if the yeast was dead. I’m still bothered by the liquid yeast – I wonder if anyone has any ideas why it melted/liquified???

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