Clubbing Baby Seals with a Baguette

Had a bit of a breakthrough but not ready for any big disclosures / recipes. I actually have been playing around with bleached white flour. In many baking circles, if you use bleached flour, you may as well knead dough with one hand and beat baby seals with the other. Motivated by food-loving curiosity, I decided to investigate why bleached flour is so bad.

I read several patents from General Foods and found that bleached flour is not necessarily bad. In some processes, portions of the wheat kernel are lightened (bleached by various means) to remove unwanted bitter flavors. In many processes, this doesn't interfere with the health benefits afforded by the wheat kernel and in at least one instance enhanced the availability of anti-oxidant components within the bran. It seems there's quite a bit of demand for whole wheat derived flour without the flavors associated with the dark color. The problem most people have with bleaching is most of it is currently done with chlorine containing agents which may introduce unwanted by-products. Most processes now are trying to achieve bleaching using non-chlorine containing methods.

But in some recent tests in my kitchen, I've been getting some serious volume in my rises (a good indication of the outcome of a bread) using bleached flour. I still have a ton of comparisons to do but have narrowed down the flour, yeast, yeast charge and basic recipe I want to concentrate on for the comparison. Results eventually.

Country Wheat

This is a bread I made this weekend. I used Dan Leaders' Bread Alone book using a poolish method. The specifics were as follows:

1. Poolish was prepared from 75 grams water (2.5 oz), 75 grams white flour (1/2 C) and yeast 1/4 t (Fleischmann's active dry) and mixed like a batter and let set for 12 hours.

2. The final dough was mixed in a bread machine (for 10 minutes, use mixer of your choice) by mixing all of the resulting poolish, water (300 mL, 1 1/4 C), white flour (Pillsbury all purpose, 400 grams), wheat/rye flour (1:1 by weight, Pillsbury, 50 grams), additional yeast (1/4 t) and salt (8 grams, 1.5 t).

3. The first rise, 2 hours at 75-deg-F, punch down and rest 20 minutes, punch down again and shaped by placing into a banetton* and letting rest for 1.5 hours (while oven preheated at 450-deg-F).

4. Inverted on peel, slashed the surface and baked on clay tiles in oven (with shot of steam from a squirt gun on the walls) for 35 minutes. It could have cooked another 10 minutes, the center was a teeny bit under - this is a nearly two lb loaf.


I did the dough twice, the second time I made a baguette shape. I donated it to a friend's dinner before I got to take a picture but it was good and looked even better. I haven't used Leader's book in a while but was glad I did. I revisit old baking books to test out new flour and anything else I do differently to see how the loaf changes as my methods evolve. This one recipe (it's his most basic poolish recipe) never really seems to change. And that's why it's a good one to start with in case anyone wanted to try it. I recently saw his book for $10 used on Amazon.

*Note: A banetton is what's used to hold the final shaped dough in an inverted position while it rises prior to baking. They are available for a zillion dollars from King Arthur's flour but I use some cheap round basket from Pier 1 and line with a flour sack towel, liberally dusted with flour. the dough is placed in it and covered with the other half of the towel to rise.

Le Frickin Baguette

Our daily bread is a simple loaf but the most challenging. It is a basic french baguette made by a simple recipe using a straightforward process. The recipe is trivial:

200 grams water
3 grams active dry yeast
300 grams unbleached white flour
5 grams salt.

It is made by adding the ingredients, in that order, to the bowl of a mixer (or bowl of a bread pan - I like bread machine mixers) in what is called a straight dough preparation. Basically, a straight dough prep is mix everything together for the final dough (no starter, poolish, biga, etc.), let rise, punch, let rise again, punch again, let proof (another rise) in the form of the final loaf and launch into the hot oven for final baking. This simple recipe has been tackled by Julia Child (and many others) in some, but not exhaustive detail. The process is deceptively simple. Some of the factors diffcult to control are: flour (I hate King Arthur's), yeast (there is no rigorous and quantitative quality check for home bakers), kneading method, baking method (cooking surface, how to steam the over, type of oven, ...), etc. Even the way the final loaves are vented prior to baking can have a profound impact on the final oven spring and consequently appearance and taste of final loaf. But despite these and many other factors I can only try to control, I tirelessly pursue reproducibility. Another big problem is frequency of baking. While baking several times a week may sound like enough, baking several hundred times each day is probably the only way to observe reliable trands. So the infrequency of the method actually becomes a parameter to deal with. Very frustrating. I won't deny this is a total obsession but one of my more healthy and fun outlets. I only mention this in case someone asks "what's the recipe for your simplest bread?".

It's not a recipe, it's a lifestyle.


p.s.: Short of a full experimental design approach to finding a better method, I'm currently looking for a surrogate endpoint to make an evaluation of some of the parameters I now believe to be the most critical. I'll be considering the brand of flour, brand of yeast, yeast charge, kneading method and relating those to the volume of the dough after the first rise in a controlled environment chamber (probably the bread machine). I'll keep you all posted on the results.

The Most Amazing Scones on Earth

The Sunday morning ritual in our house is some kind of special breakfast. Waffles, biscuits, etc. This past Sunday, I made these oatmeal scones. The recipe is nothing I had anything to do with. It was perfectly worked out by the gang at Cooks Illustrated. They were unbelievable.

Bread # 1 / Country French - poolish: a comparison

First in a series of baking log entries:

5:45 am - poolish prep
To the pan of bread machine, added Pillsbury Organic Unbleached White (UBW, 150 g) and water (150 g) and 1/4 t yeast (RedStar dry active). Mixed a bit and let sit till this afternoon covered with a moistened cloth.

2:15 pm (7.5 h) - dough / first rise
To the same pan, charged water (150 mL, rt), yeast (1/4 t), UBW (250 g) and salt (7-8 g) and placed in machine for 30 min kneed (too long but out of my control - preprogrammed dough cycle) and 60 minute ramped temp rise (rt -> ca. 90-deg-F).

4:05 pm
Dough (barely risen) was removed from the machine, punched down, rounded and allowed to rest on the counter beneath and inverted bowl. The bowl keeps the moisture in without having to cover the actual surface of the dough. After this rest, it was punched down again and formed into a squat ball and placed into my version of a banneton (I'll define this later) lined with a muslin cloth liberally dusted with flour and covered with the other half of the muslin cloth. This was the final proof in the shape of a loaf. The oven was turned on to 425-deg-F and the loaf proofed for 45 minutes.

5:00 pm
Removed from banetton, slashed, baked on clay tiles in lower third of oven with a blast of steam for 45 minutes. Crap. Squat, dense, looks ok but I'm not optimistic it'll taste good. I'm only publishing the result because it will make a good run look that much better and my integrity forces me to.

Post-Mortem
A flaw in every scientist is not writing down EVERY OBSERVATION during an expt. All that is written is what seems pertinent at the time. I didn't record relative humidity because I didn't measure it and didn't believe it was important. Part of this is just practical (it's too hard to record EVERYTHING) and some of it comes from personal bias. So I'm going to reflect and try to figure out what went wrong and repeat the prep.

Reflecting on this prep, the poolish, at the end of it's rise looked pretty lame, not fluffy and voluminous like it usually does. I think it's because I didn't use a full 1/4 t yeast, I used old yeast or I mixed it in my bread machine pan where it's difficult to mix and I just kind of swished things around. So from the poolish on, everything was kind of small. Pitiful rises. I was relying on the final oven spring to come through and save me. It didn't. This loaf came out about 8" in diameter with barely a dome in the middle. It tasted ok and had good color, it's just the volume was pretty bad. Volume or more importantly, density, of final loaves is a critical outcome measure that I haven't been able to determine. To get this number, I'd have to cut a significant cube of the bread out and weigh it. It destroys too much of the bread. Ultimately we do cook this stuff to eat it. In the future, I may decide to bake double and use one loaf for measurements.

Voila! I repeated the exact same prep changing only the poolish prep. For the poolish I used Fleishmann's bread machine yeast (a reliable dry yeast) and a full 1/4 teaspoon and also mixed the poolish in a separate bowl and mixed it better (kind of like stirring a batter of brownie mix) and let it set for 8 hours and proceeded exactly as in the remainder of the procedure above. Note the new loaf! Although there's nothing in the photo to guage relative size, these loaves are almost exactly the same diameter, but the second one rose like a pillow. Also note the (what I call) stress fractures on top highlighted by the flour. These cracks in the crust arise from a rise in the oven and a contraction on cooling. I've observed them on all great lean crusty loaves (mine and others). And I think I could've cooked the second one a tad longer, I like 'em dark.



Side by side comparison of the profile of the dense vs. bigger volume loaf.

Couscous Salad

I like couscous salad but have never found one I like. In general, when I look for recipes, I like to gather many contributions and to see if there's some consensus on ingredients and methods. Once I see which sections are flexible, I set out to create my own version or a hybrid of what seems to make sense.

Most couscous salads start with preparation of the couscous by adding boiling water to the grain and letting it set for 5 minutes off the heat and then putting in the other stuff. This works for eating it hot (within 20 minutes) but for some reason, it just doesn't stop cooking quickly enough for purposes of a cold salad application. Maybe it's just me but I end up with mush by about the 30 minute mark. It wasn't untill a trip to my friend Marie's wedding last year (in the south of France) did I find a nifty trick. My french is horrible (speaking and comprehending) but I was able to find out that they made (the best) couscous salads using only room temperature liquids.

The crucial piece of information absconded from the conversation, I was off to find out the critical volume of liquid used to hydrate the couscous. After some playing around, here's a version of a couscous salad that can me ready to eat within 30 minutes (including a brief chill time) and can be made vegetarian or not. The only critical quantities in this recipe are the grain (couscous) and liquid. All the other goodies added are flexible.

Couscous Salad - a size good enough for a potluck

Step1
couscous, 1 1/4 cups (250 grams)
liquids (add these liquids to a 2C measuring cup sequentially):
    juice of 1 orange
    honey, ca. 1 tablespoon
    cider vinegar, ca. 3 tablespoons
    water, enough to complete the total volume to 400 mL (on the side of the measuring cup)

Add liquids to couscous and stir once in a while. Couscous will absorb all the liquid within 10 minutes or so. It's kind of cool to watch the grains plump up. It's almost exothermic.

Step 2
Add the following ingredients or your favorites:
pine nuts, lightly toasted, 2 T
fresh mint, 1-2 T
olive oil, up to 3 T (good stuff)
salt and pepper
green onion
finely diced tomatoes
raisins or apricots (plumped in boiling water and drained if too dry), 1-2 T
non veggie version: pan seared boneless chicken breasts, cooled and chopped into big chunks.

Step 3
Blend and refrigerate. I like it slighly chilled and served atop a bed of lettuce (with cheese and olives).

The Miracle Worker

Having restored world peace, Bush now tries to cure baldness.

I am the pickle god.

This isn't a food blog like the red kitchen; the weber_cam is an unguided forum with no focus or agenda, so I figured I'd add my recent culinary contribution.

Intro
I've always liked my pickles crunchy, sour, slightly sweet with a hint of garlic. Even though there are as many flavors of pickles as there are bad hairstyles on ranting baptist ministers, I can't seem to find my favorite. So, I decided to try to make my own. Being a bit busy lately, I didn't feel like doing as much work as the recipes I read demanded. Pickles require two things: a brine - a salty, usually acidic sometimes sweet aqueous solution and something to pickle.

The brine
Scanning my favorite sources for brine recipes (Joy of Cooking, Cooks Illustrated, FoodTV and Cooking Light - I think Epicurious rots), I noted reasonable consensus on salt, sugar and acid concentration. But they all boil the solution. There's a tendency, in cookbooks, when preparing any aqueous solution of a readily soluble substrate, to boil it. I guess it makes people feel more like they're doing something sophisticated. Boiling the brine and applying it to the vegetables would take too long and more importantly, would cook the item of our affection. I wanted a crisp pickle. Industrially, vegetables are brined, cooked and finally, calcium chloride is added to get the crispiness back. Aside from using the leftover brine to melt ice in the winter, this process was unappealing. Why not try to pickle the vegetables uncooked and just let the process go longer at a lower temperature?

Maybe another reason to boil the brine is to kill bacteria, but with such a high acid and salt concentration, I don't think much bacterial growth is supported.

Something to pickle
Eventually, I'll use an assortment of vegetables. For now, cucumbers. Although I don't usually care whether I buy organic or not - with cucumbers, it's important. Non-organic (or as my not-exactly-type-A friends at the hippy market call it - inorganic) cucumbers are liberally coated in wax prior to coming to market. I don't think a brine, or nuclear waste, could permeate the flesh of those babies.

My Lazy Recipe for Pickled Cucumbers - That hasn't killed me yet
cucumbers, organic (I like small ones), about 1 - 1.5 pounds
plain old vinegar, 2 cups
water, 1 cup
salt, 1/4 cup
sugar, 1/4 cup
garlic, one clove whole - NOT smashed
spices, 2T of assorted - I just used McCormick brand pickling spices

1. Mix the solution of vinegar, water, sugar and salt at room temperature; everything should dissolve readily.
2. Add spices and cucumbers.
3. I placed everthing in one of those disposable plastic containers that I filled to the top so when I put the lid on, everything was submerged. I guess it's important for the pickled items to be away from sources of oxidation and be submerged in the brine, do it anyway you can.
4. Age the mixture about two days (the cucumbers shrink a bit) at room temperature.

Observations - future plans

Had my first two about 48 hours after doing this and they were unbelievable. Crisp, slightly sweet, sour and a hint of garlic. I honestly will never buy another pickled cucumber again.

The sour component was a bit strong. I may play with the salt and acid strength a bit.

I'm going to recycle the brine with some cauliflower and eventually try other vegetables (carrots, green beans, etc.)

Should be interesting to see how they taste over time. I plan to store them at room temperature but I don't think they'll last long enough to fully evaluate a shelf life.

Can't wait to repeat the procedure adding fresh dill to the spice mixture

I don't get it.

My grasp of critical political issues is pretty weak. Maybe that's the reason I can't understand the jubilation surrounding the deaths of Hussein's sons. I think they were only in their late 30s. All I've heard is how positive this killing was. As if it were kind of high on the national to-do list. I haven't heard one expression of the horrible tragedy it was to have a corrupt regime composed of a father and his two sons.

I even thought McVeigh's death was tragic.

I admit to the possibility that these people should have died. But the deaths are a tragedy. Not acknowledging that, especially by a Christian, is wrong.

Ramming speed

Several years ago, I was going to work on a hot summer morning in Baltimore. I was in my portofino blue Ford pickup truck. It was a pain in the neck vehicle that had an intermittent stalling problem that could not be fixed by any Ford mechanic. But when it ran, it ran strong and felt good to drive.

That one hot morning, I was a bit irritated going to work (work-induced anger is common condition of mine) and trying to get some breakfast at a drive through on North Ave. If you're not familiar with Baltimore, North Ave isn't the best place in Baltimore for a caucassion in a pickup truck to lose their temper. As I'm sitting there waiting for the line to move, a hand extends from a big old 70s Cadillac Sedan de Ville to me gesturing for me to hold while they pull in.? They wanted to just cut in the drive through line. Stunned, I paused and they just pulled into and cut me off in the line. I don't know what came over me, but I jumped on the gas, my truck lifted a bit as it began to accelerate and lurched forward into their bumper.

I actually rammed the car because they cut me off in a McD's drive through window.

I sat there stunned as the two clashing machines came back to a resting postion. It was clear, no real damage was done. Two big vehicles with sturdy bumpers. The woman who was driving got out and looked at me. I sat there, still stunned. She said "God forgives you". She got back in her car and we all continued through the drive through and got our little bags of food.

It was a strange way to start the morning.