Sourdough Baguettes

Been using Silverton's starter lately for breads. A good friend developed it and gave me some. Tonight, in preparation for tomorrow's 4th of July picnic I took it out and started my feeding/prep (this is a combination of methods using a large fraction of starter and finally using a bit of yeast (1/8 t) for the final dough):

Sourdough Baguette (attempt) using Silverton's Starter
1. Removed the starter from the fridge and discarded all but ca. 150 grams of it.
2. Charged unbleached white flour (130 g) and water (130 g) and stirred it about 50 times or so with a spatula. The resulting blob was a thick batter. Within a couple hours the volume had increased to nearly double. I let it sit about 6 hours total (went and saw a movie).
3. Charged to the inflated mass water (140 g) followed by unbleached white flour (140 g); mixed as in step 2 and let ferment 10 hours. Ca. 2-3 fold volume increase and held.
4. Mixed starter (250 g), water (rt, 250 g), active dry yeast (1/8 t), unbleached white flour (400 g) in Kitchenaid and let mix for about 3 minutes and let sit (autolyse) for 20 minutes covered with towel.
5. Charged salt (9 grams) and continued mixing in KitchenAid for about 5 minutes and a few minutes hand kneading. Our KitchenAid sucks for kneading, wrapped around the hook. Should've used bread machine for kneading.
6. 1st rise at rt for 2 hours (1.5 - 2x volume increase).
7. Deflated and let rest ca. 30 minutes.
8. Preheated oven to 450F with clay tiles, shaped two loaves and covered with muslin towel.
9. Final proof, 45 minutes (pic on the left after proofing). They proofed sitting on parchment, placed in a baguette pan (to support the sides) and then placed on a peel prior to launching them into the oven.
10. Docked and onto the tiles with a steam shot and baked till amber (about 35-40 minutes).

Results
-They look terrible. Only a couple of the places where I docked them, did they give a nice open vent; the rest of the slashes look "unopened". They look as if they overproofed but I'm not sure. How could they be, I only used an 1/8 t yeast to assist the starter. My other suspicion is under kneading (as noted above). I'll break into them this afternoon. I'm a notorious underproofer but I'm not sure that was it. I'm still not sure what exactly it is I don't like about them. I guess I'll know after a sample.

-Results at the picnic today were quite favorable. They tasted much better than they looked. A pretty good crust,a bit chewey, nice interior, tender but not super airy. I was thrilled with the compliments but still think more kneading would've helped the texture.

We don't need tax breaks, just cheaper cheese.

If someone asked me how the economy is doing, I'd probably say it was ok. I'm employed. I should be happy about that. But a trip to the grocery store lately has nearly put me in a state of shock. I think it was just 6 months ago, parmigiano reggiano, a staple in our house, was $8.99 per pound. At that price I'd shop pretty carefully to get piece with a minimum amount of rind and make the guy at the cheese counter go cut another piece if I couldn't find a satisfactory one. NOW IT'S $16.99 PER POUND!!. What's the deal? I thought it was a local thing, but last month in Chicago, I noticed the same price.

The grocery store is becoming a pretty expensive place to go these days. Things are becoming tough out there.

Maiden Voyage for the New Oven

We finally got our new oven last week and this was the christening loaf.

Several weeks ago my good friend Gary generously gave me a starter culture that he had prepared according to Silverton's procedure. I've been keeping it in the fridge. Once in a while I take it out, dump some out and replenish it with equal quantities of flour and water. Observing it over the course of a day, I see it plump up in volume within a couple hours. It looks very happy despite my neglect.

Well, the oven was coming and two days before its arrival, I fed the starter in this manner twice over two days maintaining a thick batter-like consistency and using it approximately 12 hours after its last feeding. The dough I made used this starter (300 g), water (300 g), unbleached white flour (425 grams) and a mixture of wheat/rye flour (75 grams) and salt (10 grams). I plopped it all in my bread machine and did a 30 minute knead, a 1.5 hour rise, 1 hour rest and 1 hour final proof (no fridge retarding). Baked in abundantly pre-heated oven (450-deg-F) for about 45 minutes on clay tiles with a steam shot (ca. 60 mL).

Looks ok. Tasted ok. I think I have to do the fridge retarding for the final proof. I just get nervous over doing this. I never have a confident feeling when to cook after warming it from the fridge and get paranoid of over-proofing and having it squash on baking.

(ps I've combed this text looking for its/it's mistakes and believe I got them all; leave a comment if I missed any.)

Dom Perignon - We Are So Not Worthy

A kind neighbor came by the other day and offered us a bottle of wine. She and her husband don't drink. She gave us this!! bottle of Dom. We immediately went back to inform them of the value of the bottle they so freely gave us but it's still ours. The only problem, we can't figure out what occasion is worthy of this libation.

Sausage with Lentils

Lately, I've had a wicked urge to cook something with tofu. After suppressing this urge, I got back to thinking about something more dear to my heart, sausage. I modified this recipe after browsing a few suggestions from a google hack I found on ResearchBuzz.com. Put in a couple ingredients and it spits out some links to recipes. Kind of fun.

I put in sausage and lentils and eventually came up with this simple prep:

Sausage with Lentils
sweet italian sausages, 2 (1/2 lb)
olive oil, 1 T
onion, Vidalia, 1, sliced thin
lentils, green, 1 C (ca. 1/2 lb)
parsley, curly, fresh, a bunch
stock, chicken, 3 C
salt, pepper

Saute sausage and break up in chunks. Add some olive oil to pan and saute onion, toss in parsley, lentils and saute everything a few minutes. Then add stock, salt, pepper and simmer for about 30 minutes uncovered until most of the stock is absorbed. Serve. Yum.

The Oriole

When we moved in our house in Baltimore we discoverd an Oriole stove in the basement. It's a cast-iron, several hundred pound beast that I adopted for beer brewing. Sitting on top is my faithful 50-Liter, stainless steel vessel with bottom valve that I use for brewing beer. The oven portion of this is not easy to use however. It has a gas regulator but no thermostat. You turn it on, let the temperature stabilize and monitor the intermal temperature . . . adjust the gas, stabilize, measure, repeat. It can easily achieve 700-deg-F.

When we moved to Columbus, we took it with us to our new home. I don't often get possessive of material things, but this mass of cast iron is kind of special. Since the big lightning strike, we've been without an oven and have had to use this thing to bake. I'm getting better at it and have cooked a bunch of focaccias on it lately. Tonight I baked one for a big potluck next door. (It was eaten quickly, always a nice feeling.)

If I can stabilize the temperature a bit better, I'm considering doing some ultra thin pizzas. Stay tuned for the results.

mmmm . . . ribs

This past weekend, after our house nearly burned down, we were in a several-day long period of hysteria trying to get the roof patched, circuits rewired and figure out how to get the clothes washer to turn on. In the middle of this panic, I decided to slow things down a notch and take 6 hours to cook some ribs. I bought these half slabs at the local grocery store. Gave them a light rub with a ground mixture of:

Dave's Rib Rub
brown sugar, 4T
salt, 2T
black pepper, 2T
oregano, 2T
chili powder (hot one), 2t
paprika, 2T
cumin, 2T
dry mustard, 1T
parsley, 2T

Then I plopped them on the infamous Weber set up for indirect and cooked 'em at 250 +/- 25-deg-F for 6 hours. Gave them an hour rest tented with foil and served them up with a little sauce on the side.

I used to brine ribs, but these were fatty enough, I didn't think there was a chance of them drying out. I was right. They were tasty.

Carbs, Lots of 'em

In celebration of National Carb Awareness Day, we had a pesto dish. Not just pesto, but it had boiled red potatoes in it and we had, as usual, a crusty baguette with it. But seriously, I didn't make this up. It was leftovers from our semi-monthly vegetarian dinner we hosted the other night. I found this really nice basil at the market and just had an itch for pesto. Mario Batali had this recipe which was a pretty standard pesto, with pasta, french green beans and boiled potatoes. I was a bit nervous at the amazing amount of starch in it, but it worked. It was a nice combination. A good meal to kick off Summer.

Focaccia - a repeat

Another recipe of a focaccia I got from Artisan.net. This time it was a double size:
water, 350 g
unbleached white flour, 500 g
salt, 8 g
active dry yeast, 2 t
olive oil, 36 g
Straight dough, 1 long rise, 1 rest, 45 minute final proof as a 13 inch diameter disc. Docked just before baking at 430F for 35 minutes on parchment on clay tiles. Topped with fresh rosemary and coarse (La Baleine sea salt) salt.

To-Do List

1. I was buying some chocolate covered strawberries (yum) the other day at this bakery (Mother's day you know) and noticed a sign advertising their homemade scones FROZEN for sale. Said, just pop 'em in the oven at 350F for 45 minutes. I'm going to give this a shot. Make them the night ahead and put them in the oven frozen. Anyone have any luck with this?

2. I'm pulling out the most massive mortar and pestle ever to make a batch of pesto this weekend. I've heard there's actually a difference when it's made using a mortar and pestle vs. food processor. Any comments?

3. Jam packed weekend. Will not get to smoking ribs. Darn. Maybe next weekend.

Food Finds Columbus - Cedar's Bakery

A busy week prompted us to have take out last night. Believe it or not, I got some hummus, pita breads (fresh baked), baklava and some olives for $9 at a nifty place on the way to daycare. It's called Cedar's Bakery. This link is a bit old but pretty accurate. It's a Turkish place selling baba, hummos, stuffed grape leaves, etc. and they cook their own pita breads. They're only $1 for 10! It was quite a feast and pretty healthy too. Frankie even had some hummus.

Bootleg Bailey's

Trish asked me the other night if we could make Bailey's at home? Hmmm. Sounded like a great project that could be accomplished between diaper changes. Since I have MUCH less time for experimentation than I used to, I looked for an authoritative source for a recipe. Research Buzz is a great source for new developments in data sources on the web. A recent discussion regarding the redesign of About.com sounded encouraging. Despite the design/advertising complaints, the site bears human-generated content. Here, I found this recipe for a Bailey's imitation. Reproduced here for my convenience:

Irish Cream

1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk (14 oz.)
1 Cup Heavy Cream
1 1/2 Cup Irish Whiskey
3 Eggs
1 Tbsp. Chocolate Syrup
1 tsp. Instant Coffee
1 tsp. Almond Extract
Beat eggs, add rest of ingredients and whisk until thoroughly mixed. Bottle and store in refrigerator. Keeps up to one month.
(A month? Yeah right.). I'll update when I give this a shot. Hopefully tonight.

Results - 05-May-04
I whisked the eggs using an immersion blender for a couple seconds. Then mixed all the other stuff together and just before I added the alcohol, I gave it another quick shot with the immersion blender. Once the alcohol was added (total volume about 1 L), I stirred it and refrigerated it. I ran out of chocolate syrup and owe the batch about 2 teaspoons but I thought it was excellent. Bailey's is 36 proof. By my quick calculation, not correcting for any air incorporated into the final mix by blending, this concoction is about 34 Proof. I didn't do a side by side comparison because I was so tired, even Bailey's would've knocked me out last night. I thought it was a pretty successful expt. Even with the sinister Ohio prices of alcohol, it was about 35% the cost of store bought Bailey's.

La Baguette

Here's a recipe for our daily bread. It's not artisan, it's a yeasted straight-dough. It's got a wicked crust, tender interior and it's done in 3 hours. I usually program the mixing and first rise to be done by the dough cycle of my bread machine, but here, I present it using hand kneading.

There will be a separately published faq for this recipe. A repository of observations justifying just about everything. It's a special preparation and I repeat it often. This is the best I have to date. This recipe is basically Julia Child's baguette recipe from The Way to Cook with 3 critical changes:
i. The yeast is rapid rise; any brand seems to be just fine but it has to be fresh. I guarantee this by using individual packets. I've had good luck with: Fleischman's bread machine yeast, RedStar Instant Active Dry Yeast, a rapid rise SAF type and even Kroger makes a rapid rise yeast. They all seem to work with equal efficacy.
ii. I use 2.5-3 grams of shortening per 500 grams of dough; I currently use Crisco (it's a cheat but the results are worth it).
iii. I use a baguette pan as the cooking surface, NO clay tiles.

The baguette in 18 simple steps in under 3 hours.

1	2	3
4	5	6
7	8	9
10	11	12
13	14	15
16	17	18

1. Whisk unbleached white flour (300 grams or 2 cups + 3 T), salt (5 grams kosher or 1.5 t), rapid rise yeast (1.5 level teaspoons), vegetable shortening (ca. 3 grams, 1/2 t).
2. Add water (200 grams or 3/4 C + 1T, ca. 110-deg-F) mix with a spoon and let sit for 10 minutes, kind of a mini autolyse, it'll make kneading easier.
3. Plop dough on counter and knead at least 7 minutes.
4. This is the dough after 2 minutes kneading.
5. This is the dough after 7 minutes kneading, rounded.
6. Place the ball of dough in a container to rise for 1 hour 15 minutes. I use a 2.4 L (10 C) plastic container with a hole punched into the top. This allows the gas to escape.
7. This is the risen dough after the first rise. Do not coat the dough with anything!
8. Plop out the dough on the counter, round it and cover with a moistened lint-free towel for 20 minutes and NOW, preheat the oven to 450-deg-F.
9. We're going to convert it to a baguette form in the next 5 steps. First squash it into an oblong shape and press a groove into the middle.
10. Fold the bottom half to the middle.
11. Fold the lower half onto the upper half, should be a tight roll.
12. Repeat steps 9-10.
13. Repeat step 11, finish elongated baguette shape by rolling gently on the counter. I don't care what Rinehart says, it should be tight and dense.
14. Place the loaf into the baguette pan, it's 16-17 inches long.
15. Cover the rising baguette with a moistened, lint-free towel and let rise for 20-25 minutes.
16. Dust the loaf lightly with flour, it facilitates a clean slash. With a visciously sharp implement, slash the loaf several times along the top nearly paralell to the length of the baguette (I never bothered with a lame; I use a chef's knife).
17. Bake in the lower third of the oven and upon adding it spray the oven floor and/or sides with a squirt bottle of water for steam. Use at least 50 mL of water (ca. 2 ounces).
18. Remove from oven in 25-30 minutes, should be golden on the outside. Do not cut it for at least 15 minutes. As it cools it should crackle. It's awesome.
Printable version.

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Radicchio

Frankie's mobility coupled with her attention span (that of a gnat) place certain limitations on our food preparation. This dish satisfies our love of greens, adds a vegetable side to our much needed repertoire of veggies and can be prepared faster than Frankie can climb a couple stairs. I found it in the paper the other day and altered it a bit. I was surprised at radicchio's rich flavor when it was sauteed and the texture was pleasant, not too soft.

Sauteed Radicchio - serves 2
red onion, small one, finely shredded
1 head radicchio, coarsely shredded
olive oil, 2 T
balsamic vinegar, 2 T
sugar, 2 t
cran raisins, 1/4 C
walnuts, 1/4 C
salt, pepper

Saute onion in olive oil till translucent in wide frying pan. Add everything else and lower heat, stirring occasionally as all the radicchio wilts (steam comes from the rinsed radicchio and the balsamic vinegar). I heated the entire mixture about 15 minutes on low heat toggling between stirring and chasing Frankie. I served it with a couple fried pork chops and couscous. About 25 minutes total prep. Take that Rachel Ray.