Gravity feed fuel? (a mini minion alternative) with UPDATE

Cooking low 'n slow with lump or briquettes poses a challenge of maintaining a low temperature (ca. 225F) with a wood/lump/briquette-fueled heat source for, ideally, an overnight session.  A Weber Smokey Mountain handles this well by utilizing a really tight design allowing a controlled amount of air to give the long slow burn.  Doing this in a simple 22.5" kettle, the most awesome and ubiquitous cooking instrument on earth, is trickier.  Most use a the mini-minion method whereby a few lit pieces of fuel are placed atop a pile of unlit fuel and the kettle closed up with only a slight bit of airflow.  Most of the time this works, sometimes we wake to a kettle that went cold in the middle of the night.

Another solution was brought to my attention recently.  Stump's smokers are pretty awesome; at the heart of these brutish beasts is a gravity feed chamber in which a *covered* vertical chute of fuel permits perfect delivery of fuel.  Load it up, let it go.  The vertical chute has an opening at the bottom only.  The only fuel that burns is as high as the air can get in, the rest of the fuel does not burn.  This is in contrast to a open-top chimney many use to ignite a batch of fuel.  The only problem with Stump's Smokers is they're about $2,000 (and 2,000 pounds) on the low end.  I'm philosophically opposed to making pulled pork at that price and sought to find a cheaper alternative using this same elegant principle buried inside my faithful kettle.

Depicted below is a hacked up piece of stove pipe, only 4" wide and 12" tall, to see if I could get a working preliminary model.  This small rig took about 20 briquettes.  This was placed in an uncovered kettle.  The briquettes at the bottom burned for over 5 hours (then I went to bed)!  More later as this develops ...

NOW, the update: 12-May-2013

I used a chimney starter, covered all the holes on the side by securing some thin aluminum around it and charged it up with fuel.  It's been running all day with little maintenance and a bunch of observation and running steady at 240F in the dome.

Here's a typical chimney starter.  I shaved off the outside pieces that held the grate in the middle so the sides have holes in them but is smooth.  I found a curved piece of aluminum at Lowe's in the duct section, cut it in half and affixed them to the outside of the chimney and secured the already snug fit with a piece of copper wire.  The sheets of aluminum were slid most of the way down so only a little of the lowermost vents were showing.

Behold a cylindrical fuel cell for lump or briquettes.  

This thing is placed over a few lit coals, charged up (holds about 10 pounds of briquettes) sprinkled with cherry chips and a plate sitting perfectly on top of the cylinder so it snuffs the combustion at the top.  Place meat in, leave.  The vents in the kettle are all open, the combustion is completely controlled by the amt of vent at the bottom of the fuel feed chamber.  The temp at the exit vent of the kettle stayed at 240F.  I'll show a temp profile later.  I ran this rig about 8 hours before the meat went on, dead stable temp.  I think it should run about 8-10 hours on a charge of fuel.  

Finally, a tedious graph of last night's action!

Last charge at 6 pm, took off meat at 6 am.  Fuel to spare.  Dip in temp at the end, uncertain.  Click image to embiggen.

The only problem at this point is the dome temp at the exit is hotter than the cook  surface.  I think the cook surface is only about 200-225, need to redo this with the temp probe at the cooking surface and maybe expose more of the vents in the bottom of the cylinder to adjust the temperature.  Still looks promising. 

Update/Future (01-Sept-2013)

A commenter and others have asked about this.  I'm currently worried the temp is too low at the cooking surface.  These temp profiles are in the dome.  So, I need to redo a run, put the probe near the cook surface and if it's too low, figure out a new configuration or venting for the chimney of fuel.  Sorry no better news.

Ginger beer?

Light dry malt extract 425 g
White sugar 200 g
Ginger, finely sliced, 50 g
Munton's ale yeast
Dilution to OG 1.050, ca. 1 gal total volume
Intended backsweetening w Splenda.
What's left? (updates posted)
Fermented to 1.012 or so
Added potassium sorbate to kill residual yeast
let clarify
Currently waiting for it to clarify.
add some sugar back to ca. 5% by weight
bottle and force carbonate in pet bottles with this.
Right now??
It's perking along, I'll put it on ustream soon (haha).

Pita / Naan

My recent prep of stovetop pita remains my favorite innovation in bread from our kitchen in a long time.  The breads are soft, taste at least as good the 2nd day and are good clear into the 4th day.  Frankie is especially fond of using them for pizza.  In the initial runs, I used a minimal dough and made them super thin, about 40 grams each rolled to a 6-8" diameter circle.  This thickness is pretty great for pizza and general consumption.

But the other night, we had some takeout from Aab (mmmmmm).  I ate some of their naan and got to work on a variation of the recipe.  Even though I don't have a tandoor, the combination of dry heat and flame makes what I perceive to be a bread that resembles naan, but the recipe needed a boost.

Here's what I got, a little heavier, a little thicker, richer texture: water (180 g), unbleached white (300 g), salt (5 g), yogurt (30 g), sugar (10 g), vegetable oil (10 g), yeast (Fleischmann's fast rise, 7g).  Straight dough tossed together in the morning and let rise in fridge all day.  If I thought more, I'd have used milk instead of water too (next time). The yogurt (full fat Dannon) gave a nice richness.  I also rolled them thicker, about 80 grams and about 5-6" diameter.  Same cooking method as stovetop pita.  Enjoy.  Frankie couldn't stop eating them.

I'm pretty sure these will never come out right.

Vote for @CMHGourmand, 614's Best Blogger

One of Columbus' food ambassadors has been nominated for 614's Best Blogger.

Jim has been an integral part of the Columbus food culture long before the word sustainable was forced down our gullet.  His innumerable contributions include: writing for Taco Trucks Columbus, Alt.Eats.Columbus, and WCBE Foodcast, judging competitive cooking, organizing the Pizza Grand Prix I-VI at Wild Goose Creative, going to school for post graduate training in hot dog science. He scours every culinary niche of the city exploring the food, the experience and the historical context of that food for us to enjoy on CMH Gourmand.  Each post introduces us to good food and the inspiring people who prepare it.  He recognizes the good in our community and diplomatically spares us the rare disappointing experiences.   I don't take his queues only to find a good meal, but to learn more about Columbus through food.  We all benefit from Jim's past and continued efforts to educate us (there are also exhaustive pursuits of donuts and dagwoods).

CMHGourmand is bigger than any award, but this would be a nice way to express thanks for his efforts.  I hope you'll consider a vote (you need only your Facebook login to vote, he is under the category People & Community, which is apt, he's as much about community & people as he is food).

On Measuring Yeast Fermentation Rate for Slow Rise Doughs

Once in a while I get interested in slow rise/pre-ferments/poolish/sour dough, etc. type breads.  A small amount of yeast and long rise, there's a billion or so ways to do this.  The trickiest part of these loaves is the proof, the final rise prior to launching your work into the oven.  Too long a proof, the loaf crashes or comes out pale, too short and it comes out dense.

The duration of proof is dependent on the environment, especially the constantly changing temperature and humidity over the course of the day or from season to season. I wanted to find a metric to help me reliably determine the optimal proof time.  Any homebrewer who's nursed a fermentation along won't be surprised that yeast fermentation rates over time look generally like this, so I thought I'd try using a bubbler as a cheap gas flowmeter on a slow rise dough to try to differentiate the rate of CO2 evolution over time.  If successful, I could begin to make better predictions. The simplistic test of poking the dough with your finger and seeing how much it springs back is inadequate for a 1-a-day baker.  It works if you gain precision and experience from baking 2,000 loaves a day, if you bake 1 a day, you'll never realize precision.

Here's my apparatus and a video of it in action.  I'll refer back to this post as I gather results.

pita pizzas

Pita mania continues here at the ranch.  The soft and tender pita are lying around after the flurry of recent activity.  Today we took some of the leftover pita, those made from atta flour, and topped them and baked at 450F.  It is a most crisp and delicate substrate for pizza.  Almost as good as starting with fresh dough.

click to make bigger, they're beauties.

stovetop pita

After doing a bunch of chapati recently, I wanted to try the same cooking method for pita.  My pita dough: water 180 g warm, unbleached white 300 g, active dry yeast 5g, olive oil 12 g, salt 5g, sugar 10g. Mix, knead and stash in fridge until ready.  Can keep it in there for about 5 days and cook with it within an hour.

Tear off 40 g blobs of dough and round them, using scant flour to keep it from sticking, roll out as thin as you can, ca. 6" diameter.  Let rest a minute.  Preheat a dry pan, cast iron or any heavy bottom pan to a surface temp of about 400F (that's about medium on a big burner). Have some kind of perforated sheet pan on top of an adjacent burner.

Take the piece of dough and toss it in the dry pan for 40 seconds per side and then toss it on the perforated sheet until it puffs.  Flip and let it cook 10 seconds or so on the other side to get some charry marks.  Wrap the pita in a towel.  They'll stay nice and soft when cooled.

 First in the dry pan (400F surface)

Second side, about 40 seconds.

Toss over live flame that has a thin perforated sheet on it, until puffs, watch closely so it doesn't ignite.

Flip and cook the other side and get a tad of char on the other side too.

Final product.  Tender, soft, light, two layers, really nice.  I'm proud of these, much better than my oven baked pita.

pain au chocolat minis (nutella)

Tonight's the international pot luck at Frankie's school.  I tried my croissant dough for pain au chocolat minis.  I'm not entirely fond of the no melt dark chocolate that is conventional for these, I prefer nutella.  They came out pretty nice.  The dough (500 g) is lean and was folded 3³ x 2, or 54 layers with 114 g of butter.  I froze the dough overnight and left it in the fridge for 6 hours before rolling these.  Final proof about an hour. Whole egg glaze with a sprinkle of sugar.

Towards a leguminous snack

Scattered throughout my archives are a series of posts in which I take beans and boil them in (salted) water until tender.  The beans are filtered, rinsed and slowly roasted as a single layer at about 250-300F.  The texture is interesting.  They are not like the roasted chickpeas one finds in Mediterranean markets, those are vile chalky bits.  Cannellini, to this point, have been the best.  As they roast, they pop open and the frayed leguminous nuggets are left crisp.  It's fun to watch them during the roasting.  

Today I did black beans.  I often roast them with a skim of oil, but not this time.  So, salted water boil until tender, strained, rinsed and 2h roast at 300F on a sheet pan and there ya go:

Good snack?  They're pleasantly crisp and they stay that way.  They're not chalky, but were under seasoned.  I could have salted them while they were wet, prior to roasting, but I'm thinking bigger; how can I incorporate more and different flavors prior to roasting?

biscuits (layered)

Cut butter (80 g) into self-rise flour (240 g), add milk (160 g), mix together and dump shaggy mess on counter.

Gather mess together with pastry knife or spackle blade.

Fold mixture together using the blade.

After a fold with the blade, use hand to squish and flatten it out.

Repeat by folding with the blade and flattening with hand, fold in half about 3-4 times.

After folding squish into ca. 1" thick rectangle.

Cut into biscuits.

Place on parchment-lined pan and wash with whole egg.

Bake at 425°F for about 20-25 minutes. Eat.

120 gram micro scale pastry baking project.

I love dessert, but given the caloric density of carbohydrate snacks, I like them better if it's only a bite or two.  So, I've been doing a few small scale activities last couple nights making a very small batch of croissant dough.

My lean dough for this, before butter incorporation, is unbleached white flour (300 g), salt (5 g) water (175 g) and instant active yeast (Fleischmann's, 7 g).  This dough is mixed and tossed in the fridge.  After the first rise, I took 100 grams of it and rolled it into a 4" x 6" rectangle, similar (but smaller) to the folding procedure used in this post, and based on Gisseln's text.  I used 20 grams of softened butter and proceeded to fold it into 3⁴ or 81 layers.  After each fold, the dough went into the fridge to chill, not freezer - fridge.  This time, I wasn't going crazy to keep it arctic cold, that was the expt tonight.  Just chilled enough for the butter not to ooze and penetrate other layers.

The final dough was rolled to about 8 x 8" and divided.  I rolled in some apples sauteed in butter and sugar in the middle, pain au chocolat style (kinda). I gave them a long proof (another part of this expt), about an hour - thus relying less on oven spring for volume, and glazed with yolk (whole egg is a good glaze, but yolk is decadent).  They were baked on parchment at 375°F for about 25 minutes.

It's fun to be able to make a dessert like this in about 20 minutes plus baking. The rest of the lean dough is in the fridge and should be good for days.

Final Notes:

• I like this dough, it's acceptable and just about puffy enough with great texture.
• After my class at LaChatelaine and my practice, what's the "trick?" None, practice.  So far, I think the most significant part of the entire process is the final proof.  It needs to be pretty close to the final size before baking rather than underproofed and relying on the oven spring to take care of the volume.  
• The temperature of the dough during rolling is also a big deal. Moving in and out of the freezer is crazy hard to keep track of, using the fridge only, in my hands, seems more manageable.  Maybe when the dough gets to be a kg at a time, I might need greater cooling capacity, we'll see.

honey mustard glazed peanuts

Taking an idea from Ideas in Food I got some raw peanuts from Crestview Market, shelled a bunch, added some Marzetti's honey mustard dressing and salt and baked them at 170°F overnight.

 Before 

After, yum.

Wheat Crackers with toppings

The past several days, a few text-type ear worms got to me and inspired this preparation of crackers. It's good and it's general, have fun with it.

My ear worms
1. @Twixlen got Kitchen Aid dough roller attachments.
2. @Hungry_Woolf, when she was an innocent young blogger, used said rollers to make crackers.
3. My health-crazed most recent favorite writer, Martha Rose Shulman disclosed a cracker recipe as my jumping off point.

Dough
water, 100 g
vegetable oil, 30 g
salt, 3 g
atta flour (a fine whole wheat flour commonly found in Indian markets), 120 g
unbleached white flour, 80 g
Mix and wrap in plastic and let sit in fridge over night.  This is a dry dough, not slack; this should be dry enough to make it through the rollers without sticking.  The dough is unleavened, yet, when baked gives a tender and crisp cracker.

Procedure
Cut dough in thirds and flatten each into a squat, disc and run through rollers on the widest setting.  Keep shaping and reshaping and run through rollers repeatedly until you get a nice long rectangular shape; finish it by running through the next thinner roller setting.
See video below for a typical piece of dough, this takes a little practice to get a feel for the reshaping:

Take sheet of dough and place on parchment lined baking sheet, preheat oven to 350 (convection if you have it) and repeat with rest of dough.

Sheets misted with water, sprinkled with salt, pepper and sesame seeds and rolled lighly with a rolling pin to embed the toppings.  I also score the dough with a pizza cutter so breaking these crackers will be easier when they come out of the oven.  Bake these about 20 minutes, let cool a little and snap them apart whatever shape you used.

Probly coulda cooked these a little more, until browned, but they were still crisp and tasty.  A teaspoon of sugar in the dough would help browning without giving much sweetness.