I'm Sandra Lee for a night

In my tireless efforts to give the kid memorable lunches, I wanted to give her some special caramel dip for her apples.  I ventured into the deepest, darkest bowels of the corpus of internet urban cooking legends ... the potentially (as in potential energy) explosive transformation of sweetened condensed milk into caramel.

sweetened condensed milk + heat ------> caramel

This transformation is filled with challenges: search, finding authority, chemistry, processed foods, momblogger stories and visions of Sandra Lee obliterated all over her chiffon peach-decorated kitchen.  Irresistible.

Too tired to plow through the billion or so anecdotes, I did read two statements with great frequency:
boil the can - it doesn't explode, and
boil the can - it does explode

I chucked a can of generic sweetened condensed milk into boiling water COVERED BY ONE INCH, and covered the pot with a 3 pound cast iron lid and let it simmer for 3 hours.  Fearfully, I peeked once in a while to insure the level of water never went below the surface of the can.  This instruction is repeated as if it were the unpublished 11th commandment.  No one knows what happens if that level drops below the top of the can.  But, I think if it does, Nader is elected President of the United States (and Sandra Lee gets in a serious kitchen accident).  

During the 3 hours, the can bulged a bit.  Not good.  After 3 hours, I cautiously took the can and let it rest in the kitchen sink overnight covered with the several pound cast iron dome.  The next morning, I opened it and scooped out some heavenly caramel for my daughter's dip.  

I would never do this again if my life depended on it - and I won't hesitate to run my silly Firedome to 1100°F.  This is dangerous.  I feel lucky there was no accident last night.

Oh, and my daughter?  She likes the Marzetti caramel dip way better.  This transformation is one processed food to another, so, there's not one iota of virtue doing it.  I don't pull the phd chemist credential often, but as a "technically qualified person," this shit's dangerous.  If you must make this, pop open the can and cook it in a double boiler.  You'll dirty a bunch of pans, make caramel, and you'll feel like Sandra Lee.

In which I drag an accomplice in to help me embarrass my family

A nice day for a few hour holiday to break bread with a friend.  Thanks Bryant.

Pretzels

Really, go make these.  I regret having waited so long.  And, I'm sorry Alton, sodium bicarb isn't good enough.  Get the lye and do it right.  Use gloves (latex gloves are at Lowe's and cheap) to handle, it's not that bad.

Mix 40 g sodium hydroxide in 1 L water.

Cover baking sheet with parchment, this is what I'll bake the pretzels on.

A simple dough of water (200 g), veg oil (20 g), sugar (10 g), salt (5 g), yeast (rapid rise, 1 packet), unbleached white flour (300 g), let rise in fridge overnight (barely kneaded, I kneaded prior to 2nd rise).

Next morning, kneed dough ball a bit, scale dough into 6 pieces about 90 g each.  Roll each into little log and let rest.

Roll each lump into ca. 18" rope.

Twist the rope into one of these.  Find some kind of diagram on the net to teach you how.  Sprinkle with flour and let rest on the counter for about 10-15 minutes.

Darn, didn't get a shot of the last step.  Pour lye solution into a plastic bin [CAUTION: do this in sink, it will STAIN formica counters].  Dip the rested pretzels, couple at a time in the lye and let sit in lye about 15 seconds.  Remove from lye and set on parchment.  Sprinkle toppings onto wet pretzels.  Here is salt and cinnamon / sugar.

Place sheet in preheated 450F oven.

Remove when they look tasty (about 15-20 min).

I hung them on a chopstick to cool.  

The cinnamon sugar were weird, the salt were sublime (this is Baleine coarse sea salt).
These are a new staple in our home.  Get the lye on Ebay and make 'em.  Lye's not bad to handle.

Bread: School lunch edition

It's the new school year, and, another year of school lunches.

Frankie's bread preferences for school lunch aren't in sync with what I've given her.  She's currently in a PB&J phase and her bread of choice is the Giant Eagle "Italian."  It's a squishy white semolina loaf with, dare I say, a very nice flavor.

I'm no snob when it comes to bread.  I like my crusty artisan loaves and crackly baguettes, but I do love white squishy bread (and boloney and mustard).  However, white bread has always been an insurmountable challenge. I've never been able to reproduce it in my kitchen.  I dismissed it as an industrial process formulated with secret knowledge only Dick Cheney is privy to.

This morning, I studied all the labels in Giant Eagle's bread case and tried to identify the ingredients responsible for: volume, moisture retention, sweetness, texture and a preservative - although, if it's good, the preservative won't matter.  Any loaf, good or manufactured will last at least a couple days.  I was pleasantly surprised that I recognized most ingredients in the loaf she liked; my pursuit gained importance.  The toughest attribute to reproduce in a home kitchen is volume.  I've never been able to get that one.  Moisture retention can come from whole grains, even in a low concentration (bulgur, semolina).  Texture is usually tight, indicative of a fast straight dough process, also easy to reproduce.  Sweetness - also pretty easy, a handful of sweeteners are all you need to play with.

Formulating any new dough, I start with 600 grams grain : 400 grams liquid (my standard starting place = 67% hydration) and a notepad.

Recipe
water, 390 g, near boiling
white vinegar, 10 g
bulgur, medium grind, 10 g
semolina, fine smeed, 40 g
salt, 10 g
yeast, dried, 1 packet (contains ascorbic acid)
vegetable oil, 20 g
sugar, 10 g
dextrose, 10 g
unbleached white, Montana Sapphire, 560 g

Process particulars
Straight dough method.  Hot water and bulgur set until water cooled to 120°F.  Then added everything and spun it in a bread machine dough cycle for 7 minutes, dumped into a container to rise at room temperature for an hour.  Punched down and let rest for 20 minutes.  Shaped into a batard on a floured counter and covered for 20 minutes.  Slid whole thing onto my perforated stainless flat baking sheet.

Baking
Baked in preheated 425°F with 2 tablespoons water tossed in bottom for steam shot.  After 5 minutes, cooled oven to 400 and let cook 40 minutes.  After a few minutes, placed a loose foil tent over the top to prevent dark browning.  Pale is the kid's preference.

Removed from the oven, let cool an hour and sliced.

Giant Eagle                                              Mine

Conclusions
Texture inside looks spot on.
Crust: tougher and more crisp than store bought
Taste?  Kid will check it tonight at dinner.
Wife suggested cooler baking temperature and I think maybe a tad more shortening.
Any ideas?

Post mortem
Kid never got to taste it.  It was obviously not the squishy white bread I yearned to make.  I think the recipe was good, but the loaf was crustier, drier and didn't age well.  I'll be trying different baking methods and will report back if I get something closer.

todo

My culinary todo list:
1.  Harvest my rapidly growing basil and keep drying it for use in all things ragu (this is kinda done/in progress and not new but cool to me).
2.  My mother just made us a free form Challah that was amazing.  It reminded me that one not always braid said bread just because.  A free form boule took on a beautiful newness.  I'll be making it regularly for the kid's lunches.  Thanks Ma.
3.  As the weather cools down, I'll be cranking up direct grilling, i.e., roasted roots.
4.  Hunting for some good cucumbers to try out some pickling recipes found on Twitter (@1kitchen1girl).
5.  More Firedome pizza!  No new mods, far from perfect, but, it's done.  Despite the dearth of posts, I've been trying lots on it and I think I've got it as good as it'll go - and I'm happy with it (almost).
6.  Been watching pretzel making vids on YouTube and I'm almost ready to break out the lye.  I can't wait!!
7.  School's starting and the largely European teachers of my girl's school are in for some treats.  Overnight baking and all.

Ambitious list, stay tuned.

Alton's vid on pretzels using NaHCO3, he wimps out on properly using lye.

Baba Ghanouj on the Firedome (and some additional notes on the continuing saga of the Firedome development)

I'm happy with the use of this thing, but I need more experience.  A big problem I'm having is dome temps.  They're all over the place.  It may not be a problem, it just has to do with whether there is a live fire or if the fuel is smoldering.  

The objective I set out to acheive at the beginning of this project was evenness of cooking, crucial for a pizza.  With this rig, the only thing that will burn the bottom of a pizza is placing the fuel beneath the stone and not on the perimeter.  I've observed this several times.  

What keeps tugging at me is using wood for fuel.  After briquettes are started, this thing is pretty damn hot and new fuel catches fast - and burns fast.  Also, since so much of the perimeter is accessible with the hinged grate, removing the dome, charging fuel and regaining temps isn't such a big deal.  I do it routinely.  Now, I want to try to recharge with two logs on either side.  Once they catch, I'm curious about the temperature and the burn time.  So, that experiment's on tap.  I also have a few friends queued up who need some samples for tolerating my babbling about this thing.

Applesauce for 1 (guest blogger Frankie)

I'm hitting some wickedly cool milestones this Summer.

A week ago, while at the RPAC pool at OSU swimming with my papa, I tossed my kickboard aside and swam across the pool, watched a bunch of Bieber vids on YouTube,  sticking a few serious handstands and roundoffs in gymnastics and kicking my papa's butt in Connect 4.   In the kitchen, I've been dabbling in vegetables, decorating cupcakes under the watchful eye of my pastry chef mom and, today, my very first culinary creation.  Uncooked apple sauce!  I made it up; yet another data point for nature clobbering nurture.

Applesauce for 1
Core and slice a medium Granny Smith apple (from OSU's farmer's market).  Take each slice of the apple and shred it using a fine grater.  Eat the residual skin (big vitamins).  Take the resulting very fine apple pulp, add a single level teaspoon of sugar, mix, and then (my secret), clean your hands and squeeze a few cherries letting the sweet/tart juice into the applesauce discarding the pit and skin.  Chill a bit in the fridge, top with maraschino cherry - serve with demitasse spoon.

A crumbling meatloaf and wishlist

Summer, busy, really busy.

Prodded by the paying customers, Ross (hey man, go eat some Memphis bbq and stop reading blogs) suggested I post something to get those jars of jam below the fold.

Tonight was a special night, our dinner to commemorate Bastille Day.  This is our 10th anniversary of the day we landed in Columbus; it also marks another very special event.  Curious, aren't you?

I planned a meatloaf, a relatively rare and special dinner for us.  I usually add cracked wheat and then the usual suspects found in meatloaf (onion, fresh herbs, egg, a few bread crumbs, milk, some tomato puree, etc.) and then cook in the kettle.  It turned into a crumble - the whole wheat incorporation tastes great, gives a whole grain punch, but sometimes causes a less stable loaf.  Regardless, we had it with grilled asparagus and yellow squash.   Despite being a less than favorable texture, the smokiness was killer.

What's coming on weber_cam?
1. Eons ago, weber cam was intended to be a real webcam to watch my grill while I was in work (to check on it for safety's sake).  I'm contemplating this via ustream.tv to do some ribs for a weeknight.
2. More Firedome (Kate, I haven't forgotten you!).
3. Giada's limoncello recipe looks pretty easy and good, peeling the lemon looks like the tricky part.
4. Mac's merguez is killing me, gotta try it soon.  Merguez is heaven, I'll be scouting out some lamb shoulder at Mediterranean Food Imports for this.
5. Brining a pork shoulder?  This one I did.  I tried a 7 lb brined butt vs a 5 lb non-brined.  The 5-lber was actually better.  Brining provided negligible benefit.  I was surprised.  May try injection sometime.
6. Sweeet 'n sour pickled anything.

That's it for now ...

Black raspberry jam: for us, for gifts

1,950 grams (ca. 4 qts) Black raspberries from Mitchell's Farms

pectin, 2 little boxes

heat to boil

2,200 grams sugar, return to boil and let boil a minute

charge to clean jars, process 10 min in boiling water bath

listen to little popping noises on cooling

eat next day

Thanks to Mom and Frankie for picking berries in the brutal heat of yesterday.

Another tedious update where I torture my readers with annoying details

Dear Reader(s):  My recent attempt at saucisson sec bit it.  At the last minute, I decided to conduct my curing in a cooler where the humidity was >95%.  I did this because I feared rodents in the basement.  The run went bad.  Really, really bad.

The more I read, the more pissed I got.  Seems the 3 body problem of dry curing comes down to: humidity - around 70%, temperature - 55-60°F and air movement.  Getting all these things is tricky; any environment I tested changed drastically when the meat was tossed in, giving off a lot of moisture.

Some days later, I reported my dreadful failure to a friend at our daily coffee and brainstorming session.  He follows these efforts with great interest and provides good advice.  I was retesting spots all over the house, but was skeptical of finding the perfect environment.  My basement, during this warm early Summer is already up at a steady 68-70°F.  My friend suggested I just hang it in the basement.  Who really knows the upper limit of temperature for this curing?  The aging will just go a bit faster at higher temperature - right?   And the rodents?  He suggested I feed the cat less and make him stand guard.  I tossed my analytical gear to the side, stuffed a couple pounds worth and only used the thin (ca. 32 mm) casings giving myself a bit easier a task to dry out the sausage.  So, it wouldn't have the best final attributes, but it'll still taste good (if it doesn't kill me).

I made Ruhlman's saucisson sec recipe, no fermentation, aged 20 days at about 68-71°F, 70-85% RH and plenty of air movement.  Oh, and a spritz with a suspension of white mold.  Finished, really, really good.  But, I wait 48 hours before giving out samples.  I'm still alive at hour 1.

Firedome_2 dry run, about 1100°F steady state

    

The first Firedome pizza oven prototype progressed at glacial speed; I was pursuing the ancient fired pizza with a more common piece of equipment.  I was able to achieve around 700°F on most days.  I knew however, that a higher temperature wasn't merely a bragging right, but a hidden process variable that resulted in a better crust.  I forged onward.

The second Firedome is pictured above, the culmination of dozens of pizzas to date.  More air, better fit to the bottom and super combustion.  It was off the production line, edges polished and all in about 15 minutes.  I closed up the opening a bit, left the flange intact, and left a door on despite the fact that, when opened, it enabled much greater temperatures.  Keeping the door hinged on the dome allows one to lower the temperature if necessary.  It has come a long way.

Tonight, I took a chimney full of lit briquettes and used it to catch about 6 lbs of Trader Joe's briquettes and reached a steady state of about 1100°F for at least an hour and, at that temperature, it's trivial to charge on the fly.  Dry runs are frustrating, I didn't have any dough around, not even for a quick pita.  Could this be too hot for cooking??  I will be sure to keep both of you posted on the first real run.  I think it's a keeper and Firedome_3 should be the production model (minor modifications) and able to be fabricated in about 10 minutes.

Moo shoo pork

Busy day, desperation dinner night. Fast, reasonably healthy, different, fast are the requirements.  A glance through a fav from my goto person for good food, Martha Stewart.  Martha gave some shortcuts, I made the modifications for acceptance by a 7 year old.

Start with a huge polished aluminum fry pan.  Warm some flour tortillas in oven. Prep eggs by scrambling.  Prep boneless pork chops by cutting into strips and coating with a bit of cornstarch, s & p. Prep remaining: shred napa cabbage, thinly slice green onions, shitakes, mince ginger.  Get some veg oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar ... ready.... Go!  Oh, the kid accommodation, all cooked stuff must remain separate.

Heat and oil pan, scramble egg, put on serving tray, cook pork strips and put on serving plate, then, saute greens and shrooms and deglaze with soy and rice vinegar, cook til wilted and place on tray.  Serve dish in center with warm tortillas.  Fill tortillas, add some hoisin to these nifty little moo shoo wrappers.  Yum.

I still have all of my fingers

[lost image due to reshuffling on picasa]

Every good pizza starts at Lowe's.  I got an inexpensive corded Porter angle grinder and a couple metal cutting wheels ... like frickin' butter.  I'm only a couple cuts into it - then I had to go set up a tent for the kid's camp out/sleepover.  Maybe I'll have the kids sand down the rough edges.  In any event, we're in progress.   Keep you posted.

(Mrs. DavesBeer bravely took her finger off the SEND button for 9-1-1 to snap this shot, thanks my Love.)

Firedome_2 coming soon

For those two of you not too bored to get through the tedium that is my flatbread obsession, I made a couple observations  during the pita production to propel me into a few experiments which will inevitably lead to a new and simpler design for my Firedome pizza oven.  At the beginning of that video production, my thermocouple device was measuring 927°F with the door open and went as high as 987°F.  The entire few minutes was filmed with the door open.  I have to figure out if the top vent on the dome needs to be open or closed or if it makes a difference.  Basically, it seems that the open door really kicks up the combustion.

Because that hinged door required me to break the flanged bead of the bottom of the kettle lid, the lid fits sloppy, may be getting gaps that aren't thermally productive.  I may do away with the door; just cut in an opening big enough for a comfortable slide of the peel and big enough to increase combustion.  Dimensions of this will be a guess, but guided by a few more dry runs.  On the other side of the getting the temps up, is the rate of fuel consumption.  If I boost this thing to blast furnace temps, will I be able to cook longer than an hour?  It's looking like I might need a convenient means to do at least one charge mid cooking to get a couple hour feast in.  Not too worried about that.

Next couple weeks, I'll probably take another kettle lid as a casualty and also play around with placement of the pizza stone (it'll be placed away from the opening, not dead center), geometry of the firebricks beneath the stone which help orient the fuel properly and lots of measurements of the headspace temperatures and the cooking surface to make sure it's uniform.  Gonna be awesome!

Oh, and I'm probably going ahead with a plan with Fortin Iron Works to make a dedicated stand for this beast.  Should be a nice wrought iron simple stand; pretty much a 22" diameter and 3' high plant stand.  We sketched out one the other day and he quoted me about $100.

ps, To the locals:  I walk the alleys of C'ville all the time and I see what must be hundreds of pounds of these kettles everywhere - neglected (you bastards).  If you want, I'll take your lid and cut you an experimental design (usable on your existing bottom hemisphere).  You get a cool new pizza oven (which may not be optimal, but will be killer) and I get a data point.  Let me know if you're interested in the comments.