Local business, a consumer's perspective. (Columbus, OH edn)

When I visit the Starbucks on N Broadway and N High I sit at the bar and study the line that builds between 7 and 8. This line is profoundly different than any line at a McDonald's where customers stare at their phones while ordering rarely acknowledging the unfortunate soul behind the counter. Customers at Starbucks holster their devices 3 places out waiting for their turn to engage with their barrista with anticipation rivaled only by a meeting with the kid at the Genius bar.

My favorite employee, Jen, works mornings, the spirited and giggly Cia works nights, Shawn is friendly and polite, his father loves gadgets, the unshaven guy sometimes at the register got his skateboard backpack at a thrift store and a newly-mustachioed Jason plays at Wild Goose once in a while with his band. One young lady is delightfully pleasant and talkative when business is quiet. Annie is a little standoffish toward me, but I know she's a psych major who decided grad school just didn't do it for her, she enjoys her work. Kelly is diligent, damned efficient and knows how to run a shift. They all know things about me.

At a popular Short North cafe, I recently had a pourover that was lukewarm because the young lady, managing at least another customer or two, didn't care. I've been about four times: two visits were bad and two were mediocre. It's not where I'll go to consume my ration of caffeine or spend my limited funds. Oh, their coffee's outstanding and local and all that.

Something about the too oft-maligned Starbucks' employees is magic. They are the soul of the successful franchise because their coffee is insipid; I wish I had the nerve to bring my own and offer them a sitting fee. Yet, I go, I sip, I enjoy, religiously. I yearn for a social connection with my consumption - especially when I'm slapping down cash for food. Don't hate successful businesses, study them.

Dave is a frustrated amateur food scientist and former chemist who blogs about food at weber_cam and occasionally blathers at Dave's Beer. Today he provides unsolicited advice to local business owners.

Mom and the kid made me spaghetti!

Bread for the teachers (again)

The other morning, I made bread for the teachers at Frankie's school. It's a fun morning of baking which I've done once before where I make about 40 pieces of bread for our hardworking public teachers as a small tribute to their dedication.  This run was a little different than in the past and I learned a lot.

Testing yeast and flour on smaller scale is helpful, but nothing is like the real run. I used to cook on perforated thin sheets of stainless steel for convenience and other reasons but have turned back to clay tiles. The most significant factor in baking crusty loaves at home, I believe, is humidity in the oven. Anyone can humidify an oven with any "trick" they think works but I also believe most crust faults result from too much humidity. Anything else I say is without substance because measuring relative humidity in an oven at 400-450F requires a really expensive probe. Until I do some measurements, feel free to read Julia Child's famous recipe on how to make crusty baguettes. Her too many ways to humidify the oven convinced me none of them are very effective.

In this run, I tested no steam and relied on a pretty full oven full of bread to provide the initial moist environment. I cooked about 2 lbs of dough at a time in 75 g rolls using 450F and convection on preheated tile. The convection was a further attempt to dehumidify the oven in late stages of baking. 

Dough prep: I went with a basic lean bread dough: water 360 g, Fleischmann's fast yeast 1 pkt (7 g), olive oil 10 g, salt 10 g, unbleached white flour (Montana Sapphire) 600 g, and kneaded in a bread machine. I did this 4 times and set the blobs in a 15 qt stainless pot on my ca. 40F deck for the day. 7 hours before baking, I pulled in the pot to let warm up, when I woke up, it was 60F. The dough was portioned in 75 g balls (about 65 g after baking), rounded, let rest and shaped them into minis. I cooked 12 at a time for about 20 mins each. The total baking session was about 2.5 hours. The crusts were slightly crackled on the surface and the crust may have been the best I ever achieved. This is a sloppy post, I just needed to document it. Here's some action shots:

I made the dough about 24 hours before and left it outside at about 40F the entire day.

I took the pot in 7 hours before baking to warm up in a 60F house.

Merguez: three painful hours

The last time I endured 3 hours of French-related agony was in grad school when, in an attempt to convince my girlfriend I was all that, I sat through Germinal.  It was the longest, darkest movie I never understood.

Lucky enough to still have that woman in my life, I tried to make something she and I would enjoy to relive a past adventure to Paris.  I tried my hand at merguez.  A spicy, really red, greasy link sausage most perfectly served with couscous.  Despite SaucissonMAC's expertise and directed readings, I was overwhelmed  trying to find a recipe.  Having had it in Paris once long ago, I believed I could recall enough to alter a recipe that would reproduce what we ate so long ago.  I'm recording this less than successful episode because I'd like to try again.

Here's some details:

• Lamb, 2000 g, from a 9 lb halal shoulder from Mediterranean Food Imports, cut by the butcher into pieces, ground twice using a small die (yield about 3 kg, kept some for later)
• Pork fat, 250 g, (so much for the halal thing)
• Salt, 30 g (only 6 g/lb, but I was relying on getting some additional  salt from the harissa)
• Garlic, 25 g finely minced
• Paprika, Spanish sweet, 2T
• Paprika, spicy, 2T
• Cumin, 2T ground
• Coriander, 2T ground
• Cinnamon, 1t
• harissa, 60 g, a commercial preparation from the same market (this is where SaucissonMAC may yell at me), this was the brand I used.
• water, 60 g

See a few pics below of the process.  Should've been more images, but my hands were busy trying to muffle the f-bomb attack.

After mixing until slightly sticky, I fried a sample patty.  With $45 dollars of lamb on the line, I feared too much salt or too much hot (harissa) and I fell content too quickly.  The salt was perfect but (in hindsight) it lacked heat and it wasn't red enough.  I really, really wanted the blazing red color.  I now realize the signature of this sausage is harissa and I should've made my own, but the stuff I bought tasted good and  was smokin' hot; I think I was simply too light on it.

To this point, the prep was a delightful walk through the kitchen.  Then came stuffing into the sheep casings and I was immediately transported to the mines with Depardieu choking with black lung.  The casings were tough to thread on the stuffing funnel, they tore, etc.  I forged ahead for a few hours. I manged about 3 lbs of links and saved the rest as bulk.

While not a total flop, it's a darn good lamb sausage, but definitely room for improvement.

let rise until doubled in volume

Recently, I decided to measure the volume of the first rise of bread dough containing various combinations of yeast, flour, shortening, etc. in order to see if this volume had any predictable relationship to favorable  attributes in the final baked bread.  I conducted the test on a small portion and called it an assay.  The motivation was to try to gain some reproducibility in the final bread that has plagued my deceptively simple baguette.  The volume measured was not predictive of the success of the final baked goods,  but the method of measuring the volume of a small dough ball might still be useful.

The expression that titles this post is ubiquitous in bread baking texts.  It's a way of telling a baker when to toss the risen dough into the oven, in other words, how long he should proof the final pre-cooked loaf.  I don't know why the factor of 2 is significant, I'm guessing it was a more terse way to describe a complicated reaction; proof too long, the bread falls and is dense - under proof and the final loaf is equally ruined.  This doubling factor is simply the optimal rise time to get the best oven spring without it flopping upon exposure to high heat.

"Doubled in volume" is not an intuitive end point observation on something shaped like a blob.  Using what I learned on the volume measurements, one could take a small fraction of the dough, a small sacrificial piece, and measure its volume in a cylinder over time and use it as a type of indicator for the rest of the dough.  In the video, we observe the full range of the lump of dough over time in a narrow cylinder.  It actually rises about 3 times its original volume.  But, at the end of the rise, we see the curved surface of the dough leveling out, indicating the dough is coming to it's maximum volume.  This end of the rise also indicates the point in which the entire mass will collapse with a minor tap.  This was a lean dough composed of water 180g, unbleached white flour 300g, yeast Fleischmann's rapid rise 7g, salt 6g, canola oil 6g and from that 100 grams taken for the measurement.

I think it's an interesting diagnostic to run beside a rising loaf.  This dough ball is a sample of the bigger loaf; if it rises in the same conditions, it should provide an indicator how long to proof regardless of whether your kitchen is hot or cold, etc.  In this case, the loaf should be baked an hour into the rise.

ps Dear @Conagra, can I have a job?

A cast iron oven example boule.

I'm a little obsessed with the beauty of the cast iron bread cooking method.  This dough formula is pretty simple but scaled carefully for the cast iron dutch oven.  It's a straight dough from:

water, 210 ml

salt, 6 g

yeast, fleischmann's fast, 7g

honey, 6 g

unbleached white:wheat:rye (85:10:5) 350 g

The almost 600 gram loaf was given a final proof inside a covered 3L cast iron dutch oven, docked using a pair of scissors and placed, covered, in a 425F oven.  Again, the cast iron dutch oven was room temp!  It was baked 20 minutes covered and 10 uncovered.  No steaming the oven, no nothing.  It's good.

Next?  This is a nice resting spot for a daily bread boule.  For my upcoming pain au levain, I think this is a nice foolproof cooking method for my foray into levain-based breads.

couple petit baguettes from a starter

I hacked together a starter, a wild yeast culture worked up from Stutzman farms whole wheat and then shifted to mostly white starter over the past couple days.  I tried it out by incorporating some into a simple dough last night, prepped the rolls this morning and I'm about to dig in ... pretty tasty.  Definitely worth pursuing.

behold, the weber_cam (smoking poblanos real time)

{The feed of the weber_cam will return again someday ...}

 Before...

After...

Volume and little crispy boules that will eventually hold a meatball

Found a patent today I wanted to try to reproduce. The claim was a dough containing ascorbic acid, L-cysteine and xanthan gum produced a bigger volume bread than any single component. I've been trying little crispy boules because they're cute, they can be hollowed out to make a meatball slider and I can make a bunch of them quick if I want to feed the teachers.

Here's the comparison I did: 6 little crusty rolls on each side. These were made from 2 recipes varying only a few additives. Each roll started as a 40 gram ball.

Dough was made from water 90 g, unbleached white flour 150 g, sugar 5 g, soybean oil 1% rel to flour, Red Star active dry yeast 3.5 g, salt 2.5 g.

-added to Left 6 rolls' dough: vitamin C ca. 60 ppm
-added to Right 6 rolls' dough: vitamin C ca. 60 ppm, L-cysteine 10 ppm, xanthan gum (all nat Bob's Red Mill) 400 ppm.

click image to enlarge, the difference is a little more clear

The difference is tough to quantify (note: post baking weight average both sides 35 g). Finished bread volume is not trivial to measure, but the ones on the right look a little more full and they opened better at the slashed places. I'll let them cool until tomorrow and take a taste. While bread is warm, flaws are harder to catch, once cooled I can make some observations about taste, something to look forward to tomorrow.

Regarding parchment, on all but 1, I used a small disc in the bottom of the tin. It was plenty to prevent a blob from sticking. On the bread in the lower left corner, I used a cupcake liner and it stuck to the roll like glue. Those cupcake thingies are awful.

dried apple chips

I've never been quite sure what is in those packages labeled "dried apples."  This is what they look like when I make them - I do wish the images were better, but still tasty...

Slice apples thin.  I used a mandoline slicer and Galas (I think).  I put them on parchment in a layer with some overlap and sprinkled with some sugar and cinnamon.

Baked at 250°F for about an hour.  They don't get crisp, just dried and a little tough.  They'll continue to cook when out of the oven, so take them out and sample and put them back in until they are as dry as you like them.   But wait, there's more...

Ah, now that's more like it.  I popped the tasty, dried, but limp chips in a 200°F oven for another hour and voila, crispy apple chips.  This is the proper endpoint.  So, low temp and cook 'em a long time until they are crisp and delicate.

I've been making some many tons of dough lately, working on my silly VFR100 assay, I've got nothing blogworthy, but this is good

I've posted this before, but it's so wonderful and it's so good that Scoopy didn't eat it before it went in the oven, just a lame old pork shoulder from Walmart popped in the oven last night at 225 for 8 hours.  I had a little sugar, salt and pepper rub on it.  Let it cool a while and pulled.  It will supply at least a couple meals this week:
1. pork atop a bed of greens with asparagus on the side and bread
2. stuffed in tortillas
hooray pork!

Some menu items for the week...

First of an occasional series. I thought I'd share a few of our weekday menu items.  If lucky, I do some of the prep Sunday mornings:

Add your own in the comments.

1. Thai (well, not really) beef in romaine boats served with lentils on the side.  Just some seasoned beef (ginger, garlic, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, etc.) served in the sturdy portion of a romaine leaf.  Lentils or bread on the side.

2. Roasted butternut squash risotto.  Toughest part here is cutting the damn squash.  I got it cubed in the fridge.  I'll roast the fine dice till slightly browned and toss it in the risotto at the beginning of cooking just after the rice is sauteed in oil.[update]  This one is going to have bacon and the squash sauteed in the rendered fat.  That's what I prepped this morning.  Then I'll add it to the cooking rice half way through.

3. A staple.  Simple hummus and flatbreads.  Hummus made ahead (even quicker with immersion blender) and flatbreads made just before the meal in my plasma furnace.

4. I'm practicing my tortillas lately, so pulled pork tacos is a fun dinner and, cheating with the stove, too easy.  I'll cook the pork shoulder in a 225°F oven overnight the night before dinner, refrigerate it before work, pull and warm it briefly before dinner.  Pickled veggies on the side.  

VFR100 reworked assay

Another in a series of incredibly tedious posts guaranteed to scare away even the most dedicated of readers. To refresh your memory, this is to get an aggregate metric to characterize a combination of yeast, flour and any additive by the volume of the first rise.  Once analyzed it will be applied to see if this volume (VFR100) is predictive of final baked bread attributes.  See background of measurement in previous post.  I reworked my assay a bit.

1. add:
-salt as a 10% w/w solution
-vitamin C as a 0.1 g / mL solution
-qs to volume, 90 mL
-yeast 1/2 t (assuming bulk solid density for yeast is constant)
-soy oil delivered by pipette
-flour 150 g
2. knead 10 minutes via machine
3. scale a 100 gram piece and round it
4. let rise in cylinders like these, tall narrow to elongate final reading for precision, coated on inside with floured oil spray so the maximum height is marked after maximum rise falls, e.g., see typical final rise volume in image below.

click image for close up, left two are fast rise yeast and right has an extra 100 ppt shot of vitamin C

flour = Montana Sapphire unbleached white
C = vitamin C
yeast (charged at 2%):
salt for these 250 total dough runs, 2.5 g

fat (% v/w)	yeast	additive	V of 100 g rise (mL)
0.0 soy	RedStar	0	262 261 260 258 260
2.0 soy	RedStar	0	308 313 263 280 301
2.0 soy	RedStar-f	0	255 275 278 280 301
2.0 soy	RedStar	C 1000 ppm	338 320 320 310 333
2.0 soy	Fleischmanns-f	0	275 280 274 275 295
2.0 soy	RedStar	C 2000 ppm	321 326 338 345 360
Preceding runs anova=> R results Significant effects: -oil in the dough gives greater volume than no oil, consistent with literature for baked bread volume - may be worth evaluating more concentrations -Big vitamin C effect but not so much between 1000 and 2000 ppm -fast rise yeast bigger volume than active dry *Additional values added after anova tabulated below
2.0 soy	RedStar	C 1000 ppm, lecithin 1t	380
2.0 soy	Fleischmanns-f	lecithin, 1t	280
2.0 soy	Fleischmanns pizza	L-cysteine in yeast	296
4.0 soy	Ff	0	???

The sloppy discussion (by sloppy I mean I'll keep adding to it as I think about it) 

1. The volume effects, despite the unbalanced design, reflect a lot of what's observed in the literature. A low concentration of oil in lean dough is well-documented to result in bigger volume loaves and this is what's observed in the dough as well.

2. One of the biggest effects is the vitamin C (ascorbic acid)* added to dough.  Vit C addns. gave structurally sound, huge dough volume on rising.  As far as concentration, I killed it, 1000 ppm is a lot more than the more conventional 50 ppm seen in the literature.  However, I haven't yet found articles relating to the specific increases in volume of final baked breads as a function of vitamin C concentration.  In my hands, breads made with 1000 ppm (100 mg vitamin C per 100 g flour) have consistently crappy oven spring, it's a real bummer of a result.

3. Point 2 is leading me to believe the VFR100 just isn't predictive of the things I'm looking for in a final loaf.

4. This assay, to do with enough replicate runs is laborious, all the practice I did was interesting and useful.  I'm considering a way to make it a faster analysis.  That way I could crank many more effects and be able to see parameter interactions.  Maybe some pilot work and then take a look at reducing vitamin C/fat to try to figure out the interactions.

* Note: There are some who believe vitamin C and ascorbic acid are not the same.  They are, atom for atom, stereocenter for stereocenter, etc. etc. identical in every single way.

breadcrumbs

Obviously, there's no shortage of raw materials for breadcrumbs here. My need for breadcrumbs is primarily in the breading of smelts. I like the crumbs fine and uniform to give tenacious coating to the deep fried delicacies of the sea. Believe it or not, I usually buy my breadcrumbs because every method to make them sucks. I won't use the Cuisinart since it was designed to be irritating, 4 pieces that are difficult to clean isn't worth my time. Pounding the stale bread with a mallet is messy and often breaks the bag. Before going to the market to get some (Progresso), I tried this...

honest. I placed the crisp bread in a heavy plastic bag and made some use of the several ton piece of modern life in the driveway. I pushed the car back and forth over it about 5 times. Aside from a little fear that the neighbors would think I was insane, it was pretty easy. But, uneven particles. If they're not fine enough or uniform in size, the breading can fall apart in the fryer. Darn, another genius idea failed. I'm off to market.