Jalapeño Cheddar Corn Bread

This bread instantly became the new staff favorite.  I combined spicy jalapeño peppers, sharp cheddar cheese and whole grain corn meal to make this lovely loaf.  The inspiration came from a traditional Portugese Broa which is a yeasted corn bread.  I've always enjoyed the levity the yeast brings to the texture of the cornbread.  It also lacks the overt sweetness most northeastern cornbread's bear.

The process begins with a polenta-like mixture of boiling water and corn meal.  This sits overnight so the corn can absorb the water and the mixture can cool to room temperature.  I also made a biga eight hours before mixing the final dough.

I tested a variety of different jalapeños: frozen, small diced, sliced, with seeds, without seeds...  I decided I liked the flavor of the fresh, whole peppers while I required the spicy kick obtained by using the seeds and ribs from the pepper's interior.

I cut the peppers in half lengthwise before slicing them into semi-circles.  When I mixed the dough, I combined the flour, biga, soaked cornmeal and water first.  I delayed the yeast addition by 5 minutes and I added the salt 5 minutes after the yeast.  After the dough reached it's full development, I slowly added the shredded sharp cheddar and the sliced jalapeños until they were evenly distributed through the dough.

I rolled the dough into squares, folded the corners into the center and proofed upside down on a bed of cornmeal.  After a couple hours at room temperature, it was ready to flip over and bake in the deck oven.

The interior is soft and flavorful.  This bread is the perfect compliment to chili but being as though it's 100°F outside and I refuse to make chili...I used it for my pulled pork sandwich and it was great.  It also makes a yummy fried egg sandwich in the morning.  Best of all, each serving contains 8 grams of whole grains because of the whole grain corn meal in the dough.  Good for you and tasty - - sounds like a winner to me!

I am submitting this post to Susan from The Wild Yeast Blog for her weekly YeastSpotting segment.  If you would like to know more about my recipe, please email me.

Doubled in Size

ciabatta dough on the rise

That's what she said...he, he, he.  Clearly, my new found love for 'The Office' has gotten the best of me. 

Almost every bread recipe you find will tell you to let the bread rise until it has doubled in size.  I let bread rise every day and this still baffles me.  How are you supposed to remember the original size in order to know if it has doubled?  If you're anything like me, ie impatient, you check the dough every five minutes to see if it is ready to go into the oven.  Okay, maybe I don't check it every five minutes when I'm making a couple hundred pounds of dough but if I'm just making a small batch...I check it every five minutes.  I actually tell my students to find something else to do for a couple hours when they are baking at home.  Forgetting about the dough is the best option, sometimes.

I find the best way to know if the bread is ready to bake is the finger poke test.  This is so easy and it works every time.  Simply poke a fingertip into the dough and watch it spring back.  If the dough immediately springs back and holds its original shape, it's not ready, not even close to ready.  If the dough deflates when you touch it, you have over-proofed dough that will not rise again.  If the finger dimple springs back slowly and still leaves a slight impression in the dough, it's perfect.  You can bake away.  This works every time with every kind of dough.  There you have it, doubled in size - demystified.

Don't worry if you don't get it right.  I still jump the gun.  As a matter of fact, just last week I grossly under proofed a batch of brioche buns.  The hotel next to the bakery wants brioche buns to use for their burgers.  They want them ASAP.  They have, after all, been waiting for a month for the bakery staff to return from winter break.  There was not much wiggle room for product development, just get the buns to the tables.

Last week I had sick babies and my husband's truck is in the shop.  I had to bake extra early in the AM so I could be home in time to get him off to work.  I was pressed for time.  Friday morning, I mixed a batch of brioche for the big bun test.  After 5 hours of poking and waiting, the buns still didn't seem proofed enough.  I should always trust myself but in this case I didn't.  I thought, gee these things have been in the warm, steamy, proof box for 5 hours, they've got to be ready, right?  Nope, they sucked!    I baked them off thinking, well, I don't know what I was thinking but they weren't light and fluffy.  They were dense and they split open because they were, drum roll, under proofed! Don't worry, they didn't go to waste but they weren't ideal either.  Apparently, someone from the hotel wanted to come talk to me about what brioche is supposed to be like.  I am so glad he didn't and I bet he is too.  I will be the first person to notice and the first person to admit when one of my breads doesn't turn out the way it should.  I will also be the first person to correct the problem and send out a stellar product the second time around.

Sunday morning, I mixed another batch of brioche.  I tweaked the formula a little so the dough would be slightly more forgiving than the very delicate brioche I normally mix.  I shaped the buns and let them do their thing.  Five hours later, my baking was done but the rolls weren't ready (yes, I used the finger poke test).  I tagged out and tagged Mark in.  Mark had, after all, proofed and baked thousands of rolls very similar to the two dozen I made, when he was responsible for the 2, 30 pan convection ovens at Amy's Bread.  I left a big sign on Mark's work station so he wouldn't forget the little guys.  Later in the day I got a text message saying that the buns were beauties!  Mission accomplished.

Baguettes

Just as there is a special place in my heart for brioche, there also lies one for a perfect baguette.  What makes a baguette perfect?  Well, the industry places certain standards on the baguette.  It must weigh 350g, 14 oz pre-baked.  It must be 22 inches long and it can only be scored or cut 5 or 7 times.  Easy, right?  Not on your life!

There are so many opportunities to screw up the baguette along the way.  I'm amazed and excited when mine turn out the way I hope.  It starts with a dough.  As I've mentioned before, I use poolish in my French dough.  The poolish is 50% water and 50% flour with a pinch of yeast (technically 1% of the flour weight).  This mixture sits for 18 hours before it is mature enough to use in the dough.  I know it is mature when I see big bubbles beneath the surface and there isn't too much resistance in the gluten network.  Each morning, the first thing I do is to dump my poolish tub (a rubber maid trash can) into the cold steel mixing bowl.  Then I add the appropriate amount of water and flour for the batch size I'm mixing.  These days my batches are about 60 pounds.  I mix these three ingredients at a very slow speed just until there are no big flour lumps.  I stop the mix, cover the bowl with a garbage bag and wait for at least 20 minutes.

Waiting....this is called autolyse.  Autolyse is a method developed by the grandfather of bread, Raymond Calvel.  He is a Frenchman who wrote 'Le Gout du Pain.'  'The taste of bread,' is a scientific approach to baking and one of my all time favorite books.  At any rate, during autolyse the protein in the flour starts to digest itself lending to a more extensible gluten network.  Extensiblity is important when you're striving for 22 inches! During the baking world cup, Team USA, autolysed their dough overnight.  I have to admit, I didn't think that autolyse was a needed step until I started using it.  My dough is much happier now that I take the proper time to let it do it's thing.

After the 20 minutes are up, I add the salt and the yeast to the dough and continue to mix on a slow speed.  My dough is only mixed on high speed for a minute or two.  I don't want to fully develop the gluten in the dough because I want to leave that up to time.  This method of slow fermentation will help to bring out the flavor and the texture of the bread.  Think- ciabatta versus bagels.  I then cut the dough out of the mixer with a sharp knife, into oiled tubs (again, gotta love rubbermaid).  If I were to pull off pieces of dough rather than cut it, I would be damaging the gluten network.  The dough sits in the tubs for about an hour before I fold it, punch it down, turn it...whatever the lingo, I'm simply stretching out the dough and folding it over itself.  This process evens out the temperature of the dough and gives the yeast a brand new source of food.  It is also a gentle way of developing the gluten a little more.

After another hour passes, I start to divide the dough into it's final portions.  Again, I cut off pieces with a sharp bench knife and weigh them out on a balance scale.  These pieces are then shaped into little logs that rest for 15 minutes or so before I start rolling them out into baguettes.  The baguette shaping is in line for the most difficult part of the process.  If I hadn't spent night after night, shaping thousands of baguettes at Amy's Bread, I would still be an awful baguette shaper.  The shape has to be a perfect line but the propensity to end up with a dog bone where there is less dough in the center, is very high.  Once I shape my perfect baguettes, I line them up on a wooden board, snuggled in a couche , or linen, to rest and rise.  'Coucher' means 'to sleep' in French.  This is where they stay until they've properly risen.

When they are ready to bake, I flip them onto my oven loader with a 'planchette.'  This board is a gentle way of moving the baguettes to a new surface.  I then score them, the other most difficult part of the process.  These five lines are cuts made with a straight razor called a 'lame' (pronounced like the beginning of 'llama' not like the word for 'uncool').  The cuts have to be a an exact 45 degree angle.  They overlap slightly and they run down the exact center of the baguette.  If I get this right, the baguettes 'ears' will open up, yielding a beautiful final product. 

I leave the soldiers in the oven until they are a a little darker than golden brown.  I'd say it's more of a mahogany.  The dark color is the 'Maillard Reaction' which is kind of like carmelization.  If the baguettes are light in color they will have much less flavor.  Think in terms of sugar...plain, white, uncooked sugar tastes sweet but once it is cooked, the resulting caramel is teaming with flavor.

That's it.  A day in the life of a baguette.  I have to mention, my son Keegan was exactly 22 inches long the day he was born.  Is this nature's way of telling me I chose the right profession?

Thumbs Up

I had the good fortune of visiting Sullivan Street Bakery yesterday.  Jim Lahey, of no-knead fame, is the owner of Sullivan Street.  He invited me to stay and watch how his operation works.  Of course I couldn't just stand by and watch so I jumped in and helped mix, divide and shape his bread.  The bakery is different from anywhere I've baked before yet still remains very much the same.  My afternoon started with Antonio, the mixer.  As far as I could tell, he is the longest running baker there.  After twelve years, he can do it all.  Every bakery has an anchor.  The anchor tends to be the person who mixes the dough.  The mixer has to be trusted above all others.  Yesterday, Antonio was mixing 200 kilo batches of dough...that's about 500 pounds.  Imagine if he forgot the salt or worse yet, added too much salt and he ruined 500 pounds of inventory in one swoop.  If the dough is properly mixed, it easily lends itself to shaping and it will have the flavor and structure that Jim, in this case, is striving for.  I tend to get a little bored with mixing (unless it's mixing brioche), shaping is more my game.  I don't know how these anchors can do what they do, day in and day out.

At Bread Alone, Alex was the mixer.  He came in at 5am every day and mixed away.  That was his only responsibility but he knew it well.  He knew when to add ice to the water and how much to add.  He knew when the flour was a little young and what to do to improve the dough.    Amy's Bread has several mixers.  There is actually a mixing team.  Amy mixes more varieties of dough than Sullivan Street or Bread Alone.  The mixing team is very strong and they too have an anchor.  Orlando has been at Amy's Bread for at least 10 years though I can't remember exactly.  He is the head mixer.   He mixes 6, sometimes 7, days a week as the mixers often do.  The mixing team works in the early morning.  Orlando was always the 'go to' guy if I had any problems over night.  Brioche didn't rise properly, challah was too cold, potato over-proofed....no problem, Orlando would fix it!

After I got to know Antonio, the first shift of bakers arrived to start shaping and dividing the dough.  A couple days ago, Jim had a contest to see if anyone on his team could divide dough faster and with more accuracy than he could.  The prize was $100 to match and $200 to beat.  Antonio's brother, Oscar became a very rich baker that day and Jim seemed pretty bummed that he let his speed slip.  Jim's method of dividing was totally different from mine and it difficult for me to get the hang of.  Oscar divides in much the same way in which I was taught.  Who knew there were so many different ways to achieve the same results?  When dividing the dough by hand, a balance scale is used to make sure all the pieces are the same weight.  It is important to try to get the proper weight on the first cut because it is easier to shape a whole, rectangular lump of dough than to try and shape lots of small bits that occur when the piece is too heavy or too light.  Jim told me the bits signify doubt.  If you doubt your ability to feel the correct weight of the dough, you end up with bits.

Once the pieces were divided, Jim showed me his shaping technique.  Again, this was new to me.  It's been a long time since someone showed me something new in terms of the baking process.  It was total brain candy!  I fumbled with Jim's method of shaping.  Normally, I loosely shape the interior of the loaf and tightly seal the outside.  Jim shapes the exact opposite way.  I use the outside edge of my hands, the lines created by my pinky fingers to my palms, to fold the dough over.  Jim uses the line created by his thumbs.  That being said, I was all thumbs and not in a good way, when I tried to shape like Jim.  It took a lot of effort and I loved it.  My hands had to think for the first time in years.  I didn't get to stay long enough to master the new-to-me technique but I did get to hang around and talk theory with Jim Lahey.  I dorked out with one of the biggest baking geeks in the business!  What a great day.

Artisan?

'What Artisan Bread Means to Me' by Rachel Renee Wyman....

Just kidding.  When conceptualizing this piece it just seemed to have that elementary feel to it.  I imagined myself back in middle school being instructed to write about manatees or democracy.  The difference now is that this word truly means something to me and I feel it is being misused left and right.  I started thinking about this essay a couple years ago when a Wendy's commercial touted the use of artisan bread for their new sandwich.  I must have let out an audible gasp the first time I saw the ad.  There is no way Wendy's is employing bakers to hand shape each roll before it is sent out to their franchises.  It is equally unlikely that each store has a craft bakery in the back, behind the microwaves and deep fryers, baking off crusty bread.  Wendy's ad was the first I noticed.  There were several to follow and they continually pop up here and there.  Subway uses artisan sub rolls, Panera sells artisan bread, Dunkin' Dounuts makes artisan flat breads....it's everywhere.

In France there are laws that determine how certain food products can be marketed.  If any part of the bread making process is automated, save the mixing, the store that sells the finished product can not be called a "patisserie" or bakery.  Sure people can call it that but the law states that the sign on the store front can not contain the word patisserie.  The same laws denote the weight, shape, length and scoring of a baguette.  The Food and Drug Administration issues laws about packaging and ingredients but in a different way.  Did you know that it is illegal to package a product as "whole" wheat unless it is 100% whole wheat?  Sellers get around this by using terms like 'honey wheat' and 'soft wheat.'  Maybe they'll move on to 'wheat-like' in the coming years.  The FDA also regulates the terms 'good source of', low fat, fat free and light.

The bread baking community is split on what can be called artisan bread.  Technically, artisan refers to the crafter not the craft itself.  I am an artisan baker who bakes artisanal bread, to use the proper grammar/semantics.  What makes an artisan baker?  If an industrial mixer is used and the rest of the process is done by hand, is the bread an artisan product?  What if the dough is divided by machine, then shaped by hand?  What about using a mechanized roller to shape the loaves but individually, hand loading the bread into the oven?  What if the dough is loaded into the oven on a conveyor belt but a baker scores each loaf before it bakes?  There are several lines that can be drawn and there really isn't any end all be all to categorize artisanal bread. 

Wikipedia feels artisan bread is defined by the water content in the dough, 60-75%.  This seems odd but somewhat understandable.  High water content makes for a more fragile dough that is much harder to work with.  This hydration level would make for a more open, airy inside or crumb and it could make for more fermentation which makes for more flavor.  It would be interesting to know how wikipedia came up with this standard.

My line is drawn after the dough is divided.  I don't think using a mechanized divider as opposed to hand weighing on a balance scale, takes away from the quality or outcome of the bread.  Mechanized dividers come in several forms.   I've used a 20-pocket hydrolic divider that gentley presses and cuts large masses of dough into 20 equal portions.  This one is best used for baguettes and loaves.   I've also used a 36 peice divider/rounder that cuts smaller lumps of dough into 36 equal portions and it can round them into rolls.  Both of these machines are quite common in the industry and from my experience, they both like to break down a lot making for very trying production.  I feel shaping the dough by hand is essential in the artisan process.  It is a difficult skill to master which makes it a defining part of the baking process.  If the dough is improperly shaped it will tell on the baker who shaped it.  Have you ever cut into a loaf of bread and found a hole running down the center of the whole loaf?  This is called a 'baker's grave;'  it happens when too much flour is used when shaping and the dough can't surge to itself.  If the loaf isn't shaped tight enough, it will loose its shape before going into the oven or if it is shaped too tight, the dough may start to pull apart and break open.  There are different ways to shape dough to yield different outcomes in the finished product.  It takes an artisan baker to know these rules and to consistently create beautiful bread.  Shaping bread by machine takes the soul out of the process.  For me, shaping loaf after loaf, baguette after baguette, is very cathartic.  Even though it seems monotonous at times, there's a whole lotta love going into each loaf I shape which puts my name, my mark on the bread I sell.

There is definitely an increased awareness of bread in America in much the way there is an increased awareness of organic, natural products.  As educated consumers, we have to be cautious about which products to believe in.  Is it labeled as artisan or organic or both to sell a product or is it labeled that way because it truly is organic artisan bread?

2-Day Poolish

When I was in Culinary school, I learned the right way to do everything...the right way to shape baguettes, the right way to mix a dough, the right way to treat starters....  For the most part, I still do everything right but the longer I bake, the more I push the envelope.  For instance, most bakers take the temperature of their surroundings everyday.  There is a complex equation for finding the proper liquid temperature to add to a dough in order to get the "desired dough temperature."  [WT= FF(DDT)-TTF] It involves finding the room temperature, the flour temperature, the temperature of the starters, and the friction factor which has to do with the length of time and force with which the dough is mixed.  The DDT is what will give you the best possible outcome for any given product.  Everyone's DDT is different.  I may be shooting for 80 degrees while another bakery is going for 75 degrees.  My DDT changes with every season.  I am currently trying to get my dough to come off the mixer at 95+ degrees.   This is difficult given my temperature constraints.  The thermal death point of yeast is around 140 degrees which isn't really that hot.  Also, my big, thick steel mixing bowl is freezing cold every morning making it difficult to get a warm dough outcome.  When I was a student, I always laughed at the other students who had their thermometers resting in the flour bags.  Isn't it obvious that the flour temperature should be the same as the room temperature?  Well, not so in my new world.  My flour is stored in a basement, two flights of stairs below the bakery (I'll get to the joys of lugging 50 pound bags up these steps another time).  The basement flour is always cooler than the room temperature in the bakery. [insert photo of me sticking my foot in my mouth here]

What does all of this mean in the real world?  It means that I come in somewhere between midnight and 2am, take my coat off and make a couple decisions.  First, I turn on my oven and decide if it's cold enough that I have to turn on the convection oven too.  If the answer is yes, I determine whether the ambient temperature is such that I need to turn on both convection ovens.  Last winter there were days  I had to turn on the gas burners in order to get the room up to a livable temperature.  After generating some heat, I fill a couple buckets with my desired water temperature.  I don't use a thermometer, I use my instinct.  I stick my hand under the running water and use my patented Goldilocks method...too hot, too cold, just right. 

I have to say that it is very important to take temperatures if you're just begining to bake bread.  I have a couple things going for me.  I've been baking bread for a long time and I've been baking the same breads in the same setting for a long time.  I know my dough!  I know that yesterday the French dough moved (rose) a little slow so today I will use slightly warmer water and maybe I'll sit the dough tub in front of the convection oven for a little while.  I know that the cheese bread is always a rapid riser so I put it in the coolest part of the bakery after it is shaped so it won't rise too fast.  I know that the seeded dough moves so fast in the summer that I have to cut the yeast in half if I want to avoid a disaster.  If I was mixing a new dough in a new setting, I would take the temperature to have a starting point.

Where does 2-Day Poolish come in to play?  Well, as I said, I push the envelope.  Sometimes I am successful.  Certain sourdoughs are made the day before they are baked.  This helps me to jam pack the oven for every second it is open from the time it comes up to temperature.   I have found that I can refrigerate my sour starters if I need to skip a feeding.  The poolish is much like the dough because it contains a small amount of yeast.  In the summer I mix poolish with ice cold water and I reduce the yeast.  I literally put ice in the water.  In the winter, I mix with room temperature water and I up the yeast a little.  The bakery was closed on Christmas Day.  Normally I would bring my poolish tub home and mix the goo 18 hours before I need it.   I really didn't want to think about the bakery on Christmas day so I decided to try 2-Day poolish.  I mixed a tub right before I left the bakery on Christmas Eve.  I used cold water and a tiny amount of yeast to balance the long fermentation time.

I arrived at the bakery on the 26th hoping to find a nice bubbly tub of poolish.  When I took the lid off the bucket, I found an over-fermented yuck.  It was clear from the water marks on the sides of the tub that the poolish had risen to it's maximum ability and then it fell.  Normally, I can stretch and hold the poolish in my hands to put it on the scale.  Not this stuff.  I had to scoop it out with a pitcher and pour it onto the scale.

How did this affect my dough?  My French dough is typically like a big fluffy pillow but with the 2-day poolish it was what bakers call 'slack.'  It was more clay-like and it lacked life.  Yes, it made nice baguettes and I'm sure the day to day consumers were not aware of my blunder but I was.  My ciabatta was more like a flip-flop than a slipper.  Again, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good either.  I'm sure it was better than I dough with no starter at all but that's about it.

If any of my fellow bakers out there want to try to push the envelope to see what you get, don't do it with the poolish.  2-Day poolish is a failure!,  another one to chalk up on the experience board.  On the flip side, 2-Day croissants seem to be a success!

The Power of One

Amy Scherber once told me you're not truely a baker until you've baked through all the seasons.  It's so true.  In the summer I have to move at warp speed to shape and bake all the dough before it eats me alive.  The heat/humidity combo is what yeast likes best.  On the other hand, in the winter I have to boil huge pots of water, turn on ovens and burners, mix with super warm water just shy of temperatures that will kill my yeast and wait...wait...wait for the dough to rise.  Based on the 15 degree temperatures and last Sunday's ice storm, we are in the throes of winter.

Some bakeries have a 'proof box'.  Proofing is fancy baker-speak for rising.  They yeast is prooving itself by making the dough rise.  Retarding is refridgerating or slowing the yeast growth.  Really fancy bakeries with tons of money to spend have one unit that can proof and retard the dough.  It's a really cool concept.  You can put dough in at the end of the day, the box keeps it cool then slowly warms it throughout the night so it is ready to bake as soon as you need it to be.  At Amy's we didn't have a proofer and bread was retarded in the walk-in cooler.  We didn't need a proofer because the quantity of dough was such that when the last of the baguettes were shaped, the first were ready to bake.

I could really use a proofer at the Patisserie because I bake small batches of bread.  Last winter it took me eight hours to accomplish what I could in five hours over the summer.  As I mentioned, there were lots of pots of boiling water and several hot sheet pans used to get my bread to rise.  I actually have a proof box but it is supposedly missing it's heating element which renders it useless.  It's not totally useless because it is air tight.  It traps the steam coming off those hot pots.

Last week I decided I had some time to tinker.  Working the night shift at Amy's gave me the opportunity to fix things I never dreamed I'd be able to, like giant ovens and roll dividers.  Not many people make service calls at 2am.  I read a lot of manuals, turned several screws and took some risks but I could get things to work most of the time.  Anyway, I thought maybe I could figure out what was wrong with my proof box.  I started by plugging it in and crossing my fingers in hopes that it wouldn't start a power surge or an electrical fire.  I waited for a few minutes and low and behold...steam!  Warm steam was filling the box!  The thing worked.  I went through an entire winter last year using a cold box that could have been warm if I'd only tried plugging it in.

When Mark opened the bakery, the box really didn't work.  A mechanic was supposed to fix it but he removed the heating element and never was seen again.  The previous owner of the box harrassed the mechanic in an attempt to get the heating element back but no one ever saw him again.  Apparently he either never took the element or replaced it stealthfully because my box works.  Let this be a lesson to never accept that something is broken until you've at least tried to plug it in but don't tell my daughter.  We're hoping she's accepted that the ABC singing toy is really broken and not just turned off!

Mommy's Helper

The bakery is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.  I have to take my sour starters home to feed them and I also take flour and yeast with me to mix the poolish.  Poolish is a 50-50 flour/water starter that I use for my French dough.  Just a pinch of yeast goes in the tub and 18 hours later, the mixture is bubbly and happy.

This isn't the first time I've had to babysit starters.  In school, I had to take the poolish home over one weekend.  It was in a five gallon bucket.  I followed all the instructions as far as water temperature and amount and time to mix, then I put the bucket in front of my door so I couldn't get out of the apartment without moving it.  This was my fail-safe method to remember not to leave the house without it.  When I woke the next morning, the bucket of poolish had bubbled over.  The blob had over taken my living room.  I scooped it up and cleaned it the best I could just to get out the door.  Some fail-safe!  The chef giving the instructions didn't plan on an apartment with no air conditioning in 90 degree weather.  The yeast got a little too friendly with the flour and the rest is permanently ingrained in someone's carpet in Poughkeepsie.

Tuesday morning I was mixing the poolish for Wednesday and Josie was looking on in delight.  I know she can't wait to get her hands in the gooey mess.  I can't wait until she's old enough to mix it for me.  Both of my hands were covered in muck and my glasses started to slip off my face.  I was certain Josie was going to snatch them.  She trys all the time only this time I couldn't stop her without making a total mess of my face and her hands.  She reached over to take them but instead of grabbing them and running for the door, as she does with everything else she isn't supposed to have, she pushed them back up onto my nose.  It was definitely a heart melting moment.  Then she proceeded to scream for twenty minutes because I wouldn't let her get her hands dirty but at least I had my moment.