My Paris Kitchen: Belgian Beef Stew with Beer and Spice Bread

On the one hand, I was looking forward to a nice long day of slow cooking. On the other hand, I'm admittedly not a huge fan of stews. Especially stews that require you to make a separate recipe, for pain d'epices, a day or two ahead of time. However, some of Dorie's recipes in Around My French Table have opened me up to enjoying stew--sometimes--and the honey spice bread sounded delicious on its own. The idea of slathering slices of it with mustard and stirring it into the stew? Odd.

I'm not sure that my bread turned out the way it was supposed to. The photo in the book is domed and looks like it has an airy crumb. Mine came out of the oven already sunk in the center, and it was dense and kind of chewy. It tasted good, but I kept re-reading the recipe to see if I had missed a step or an ingredient. Nothing jumped out at me.

I started the stew right after I ate lunch. It smelled amazing while it was cooking. I wish I'd followed my gut and crisped up the bacon a bit before adding the onions. I know perfectly well that any time a recipe tells me to add bacon and onions together, the bacon stays flaccid and fatty. Yuck.

Maybe I didn't cut my chuck roast into small enough pieces. After five hours, it was still not fork-tender.

I cut the difference on adding the spice bread to the stew, and only used two slices. I'm glad I didn't use the full four slices, because I think it would have made the broth too sludgy.

I ate a little. I didn't really love it. If the meat had broken down more, I'd have been happier. The flavor was okay. The meat was way too tough for me. I didn't have more than five hours to let it simmer.

Conclusion: Liked the spice bread, especially slathered with plum jam. Didn't really like the stew.