Archives for category: food

Sourdough whole wheat bread

April 5, 2009 //

My previous at attempts to use whole wheat flour to bake bread were not exciting. I may have had one or two successes with a recipe from James Beard’s bread book. Wednesday night I decided to give a new recipe a try. Following the recipe for whole wheat sourdough Miche from Daniel Leader’s Local Breads, I was very pleased. The bread had a chewy, nutty crust, tasting just shy of burnt in a few spots (like pizza crust baked in a wood-fired oven) and a rich flavor. Pretty good for flour, water, and salt.

Saturday morning I baked my second loaf of bread from the same recipe, but I doubled it:

my son holds up the second Miche

right out of the oven, note how close it is to the full width of the parchment.

Because I moved the formed loaf from the colander to the parchment a little too early, it had a chance to spread. Next time I will be sure to preheat much earlier.

I learned a good bit about timing with this recipe. Not about how timing effects the results – more how bad timing makes the baker’s life harder.

I fed the starter Thursday night. By Friday morning it had more than doubled in volume – and I didn’t have time to make the dough and let it ferment before heading to the office, so I put the levain in the fridge. This meant I wasn’t able to start until 7 PM.

When I got home from work, I took the levain out of the fridge, made dinner and read for a while. The dough was ready to sit for its second ferment by 10 PM.

Our kitchen was rather cool, so I decided to just go to bed, and let the dough rise for as long as 8 hours if need be – I just didn’t want to stay up until 1 AM (at the earliest) in order to bake.

I woke up at 3 AM, and didn’t feel like dozing was very likely. So I got out of bed, went to check on the dough, and was glad I did. It was slightly more than double in size. So I decided to bake.

I drank tea and read Shelly Powers’ Painting the Web while I waited for the oven (and the pizza stone) to get hot. By the time the bread was baked and on the cooling rack, it was close to 5 AM. I slept well for a few hours. At 8:30 AM, I was tasting the bread.

I wasn’t as happy with the crust on the second loaf, but my wife and son preferred it. A softer crust is a little more acceptable to them – I prefer a crisp and crackly crust. I had tried turning the oven down to a lower temperature after 15 minutes of baking at 470 degrees. I won’t do that the next time I bake this recipe.

Categories DIY, food

Big Bread

March 16, 2009 //

Big bread

Originally uploaded by normnode

Mostly King Arthur Unbleached flour, but one cup of dark rye flour to add complexity and nutrition.

Categories food

Sour coffee – just the thing

January 18, 2009 //

As a rule, I prefer a cup of coffee at a Peet’s over just about any other. Rich and strong, my idea of what a cup of coffee should be. I hate to think how many pounds of coffee beans I have bought there over the years – probably enough to buy the best table saw in the world.

My “usual” is Sumatra. Years ago, when they sold a variety they called (simply enough) Java, that was my usual. When they stoppped selling that, I switched to Sumatra.

Stopping in the Belmont Peet’s yesterday, I succumbed to the point of purchase marketing of the extra special “Sumatra Blue Batak” and took a bag of the beans home. After brewing a cup with my Aeropress, for the first time in my life, I considered taking the coffee back. It just tasted weird.

This is the point where my ability to articulate the qualities of coffee fails me. If it doesn’t taste like something else, I can’t really do much more than shrug my shoulders or make faces. I like to put numbers to use where I can, so putting things in terms of 1 to 10 scales etc. is a temptation. But I don’t even know what I would call the scale.

The first word that came to mind after taking a big mouthful of the Blue Batak was sour. I think “astringent” is the word used by afficianados. It tasted like a good cup of strong full bodied coffee covered with the kind of “yellow” flavor I expect from canned Yuban or a cup of weak coffee from Denny’s. Weird indeed.

Anyway – I did not like the coffee. I decided to give it another try or two, since I had recently got over a cold and wasn’t really confident in my palate. Perhaps I was just deaf to some of the wonderful overtones other people hear?
I have had a couple of cups more, and with some sugar in it, I am starting to like it, at least enough to keep drinking it.

Starting to doubt why I even care about “better” coffee. Seems like if the coffee beans are reasonably fresh, I may be able to get used to just about anything. Not the observation of a gourmet, I know.

Categories food

2009

January 1, 2009 //

Happy New Year!
I think this photograph reflects what I hope for the new year – strength, simplicity, conversation, and a wonderful aroma.

Categories food

Crusty

December 9, 2007 //

The crust is starting to get there. I added about half a cup of Red Mills Gluten Flour to the recipe. I had been trying that in bagels, and I think it makes the crust chewier.

Even when an experiment ends with an imperfect loaf of bread, it is still rewarding. It almost always tastes wonderful.

I miss working on “real world” projects; my days are spent writing, talking, thinking, answering the phone, and generally putting out fires involving email. Lots of email. Baking is a chance to break out of the routine, enjoy the process, and simply do something different.

Tags baked, baking, bread, food

Categories food

More about Bread

November 15, 2007 //

Over the last few years I have been making bread using a slow-rise method I read about in the March/April 1994 issue of Eating Well magazine. The ingredients are simple enough – water, flour, salt, a little yeast, a little sugar. The result is a large loaf of French bread that tastes good, keeps well, is easy to make.

I have learned a few things about getting the most out of the recipe, in terms of texture and flavor.

Don’t let the dough rise quickly. You really do want 10-12 hours of fermentation.
Don’t under bake the loaf. Frankly, I have never baked the loaf so long that I wished I had removed it from the oven sooner.
Remember the salt.
Feel free to form it into whatever shape you like.

Tags baking, bread, food, pictures

Categories food

Book Greed

October 10, 2007 //

Since we live close to the public library, it is easy for me to pop in and find a movie or two, some cds, and a few books several times each week. Tonight, on the way home, I made my third visit in 4 days.

One of the books I brought home tonight is a coffee table book for foodies – BOUCHON by Thomas Keller. It is unlikely that I will ever get around to trying any of the recipes, but if I can stand to hold open the 7 or 8 pounds of book, I am sure I will learn a thing or two that will help my next quiche or pommes frites.

I may very well return the book after a day or two of mooning over the gorgeous images. The zinc bar with an ornate facia, the red raspberries. Then I will move on to the remaining stack – Laikoff’s book about Freedom, the graphic novel about an Israeli cab driver, Fred Tuner’s book about Stewart Brand. I am pretty free about picking and bringing home all kinds of books. Some of them I even finish reading. Most, however, I do not finish. Some I don’t even start.

Tags books, eating, food, libraries, quiche, reading

Categories books, community, food

Bagels

September 25, 2007 //

I have been making small batches of bagels about once a month over the last year, and they rarely disappoint. The recipe I like to use is in one of the Cooks Illustrated cookbooks. The recipe is designed for a stand mixer – which is what I will use when and if I ever get one – but my hand mixing techniques seem to work well enough.

Categories food