epic holiday bread baking

This year for xmas I made my family bread, lots of bread. 7 sourdough loaves, 2 stollen, 32 butter rolls, and 6 pizzas (which sort of counts as bread).

First on the agenda was Rose Levy Beranbaum's butter dinner rolls from The Bread Bible. I made a dozen for Thanksgiving and everyone loved them, so I doubled the batch and made them a bit smaller so I could distribute them to more folks.

I had some trouble adjusting to my parents' electric oven and the rolls came out darker than I would have liked, but no one else seemed to notice.

Next up I made a double batch of bread mostly following Susan's recipe for Norwich Sourdough. I made boules and stuffed them with various things (as per my siblings' requests). I made 6 loaves in all, one with caraway, one with cheddar cheese inside and on top, and the rest with varying combinations of roasted garlic paste, kalamata olives, rosemary, and thyme.

I make the stuffed boules by rough shaping into a ball, then gently flattening the ball (seam side up), placing the ingredients inside about an inch from the edge, then folding the edges in like a letter on one side, rotating, and doing the same for the other, then gathering it up again into a ball and letting it rise seam side down. You have to be careful about slashing too deep, because if you hit the "pocket" of ingredients they ooze out everywhere.

This one has roasted garlic paste, olives, and rosemary.

I cut everyone's initial into the top to try to keep them all separate.

Here's the spread!

All wrapped and ready to go!

Then I made another favorite from last year, stollen. I followed Reinhart's recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, using raisins, apricots, and cranberries for the dried fruit (I always use dried instead of candied fruit).

Shaping the "blanket" folds.

Finished loaves.

Generously dusted with powdered sugar!

Everyone seemed to like the bread, so I guess it was a hit despite leaving my scale at home and using a strange oven! A little late but happy holidays everyone!

easy savory bread pudding

I've made this for breakfast a couple of times but it could easily be a lunch or dinner. It's quick and easy to make, simple but still tasty, and very filling! It's also a great way to use up stale bread, although fresher bread works too.
You'll need:
1-3 slices of bread cut into cubes (depends on the size of the slices, I often use the heels)
1c milk
2 eggs (you could probably use just one although I haven't tried it)
a bit of grated cheese (I usually use about a tablespoon of cheddar or gruyere)
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of nutmeg (optional)
pinch of your favorite herb (I use whatever's on hand, usually thyme or sage)

Put the milk in a microwave safe bowl, add the bread, heat for 2 minutes or long enough for the milk to get hot and soak into the bread (alternately, leave it soak at room temp, but this takes longer). Whisk two eggs in a (cold) small cast iron skillet (or other stove top/oven safe dish). Add pinch of salt, pepper, nutmeg, herbs to eggs. Mix bread into egg mixture, stirring well. On the stove top cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until the bottom is solid but the top is still uncooked. Top with cheese then switch to broiler for another ~5 minutes. Check frequently to avoid burning. It's done as soon as it's cooked through/not wet in the middle. I like to eat is right out of the pan!

Voila.

mushrooms!!

I picked up an oyster mushroom grow kit two weekends ago from Easy Grow Mushrooms at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market. I've been interested in trying an indoor mushroom kit for a few years now, after living in a house that had shiitake mushroom logs in Massachusetts. The logs were really cool but they only produce when the weather allows for it and I tend to use mushrooms year round. After ogling the kits at the farmer's market for several months, I finally got one. We put the bag in our bathroom, since it's the most humid place in the house. The bag exploded about a week after we bought it!

This is the first batch I picked weighing in at 550g.

We're trying to remember to weigh what we pick, just for curiosity's sake. My housemate and I buy heaps of mushrooms, so I'd like to see if it's more or less cost effective to buy these kits or to get them at the grocery store. If we get more than we can use, I think I'm going to try drying them out. The bag is supposed to keep going for a couple of months, and then we're going to spread it over some compost. We'll see how it goes!

The Sourdough Survives!

When I first drove out to the Midwest from the East Coast in June I forgot my sourdough starter. Gasp! I know, how could I? It's like a pet and I was very upset about leaving it and worried it would die before I could get back to MA to get it. Luckily for me I have a very good friend (and former roommate) who was kind enough to feed it for me. About three months later it made the 12 hour trip with me in a cooler in my car in the August heat. I had fed it a few times before leaving MA and lo and behold if it didn't perk right up! The long period of dormancy doesn't seem to have harmed it much. The first time I used it here in MI it doubled on the first feeding and more than doubled with the next. It smells a little different, so perhaps some of the microbes etc have died out. I'll have to make a few batches of bread to see if it tastes or behaves differently.

For my first sourdough loaf in the new place I made a seeded whole wheat sourdough from The Bread Bible. It was a really hearty loaf with a great texture and nutty flavour. I think I'm going to convert my starter to whole wheat next time so I can get even more whole wheat flour in it (I think the recipe is about 50% whole wheat).

I actually let the loaves proof for too long because I was ready to bake them but then had to put them in the fridge at the last minute (alas, life comes before bread), but they seemed to turn out okay anyway. I could detect some off flavours maybe from the dead yeast/overfermenting but my roommate couldn't tell. Overall it turned out well.

homemade pasta

My roommate visited a friend recently who had a pasta maker and loved making pasta so much that she bought one of her own! Needless to say, I was very excited by this decision. I had never made pasta before with a proper pasta roller and as much as I love the hearty thick egg noodles I can make with just a rolling pin, they're not really appropriate for most pasta dishes.

So this is the pasta machine from Italy. It's a hand crank pasta maker, which means it's much easier for two people to make the pasta than just one. D's working on the dough here.

We don't have a drying rack for the freshly made pasta, but hangers work fine for now. D made lasagna noodles first (and made some amazing lasagna the next day).

And then we switched to fettuccine. My involvement at this point consisted of turning the crank. After just a couple pasta making sessions, D's become quite good at getting a feel for the dough in terms of moisture content and thickness. I haven't tried my hand at it yet but I plan to soon.

We let the pasta dry then packed in in ziplocs and put it in the cupboard. It'll keep for a while this way, which is great.

For dinner one night my housemate made this incredible ragout. She grilled eggplant (we had some trouble getting the charcoal hot enough) and then cubed it and added garlic, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes and fresh herbs (I think that's everything). The eggplant had this incredible charred flavor and was really meaty without being tough or rubbery. I'm still learning to cook eggplant well and have had my share of mess ups.

Here's the fresh fettuccine in some boiling water. It took longer to cook than either of us expected, but that could have been in part the pot we were using.

We put the ragout on the pasta, added some grated parmesan, and a Bell's Oberon for an incredible summer meal!

great summer lunch

I made polenta for dinner the other day and (as always seems to be the case when I make polenta) was eating leftovers for days. I sauted some garlic, red onions, and red pepper in evoo, then added the water, cornmeal, & salt (whisking etc to keep it from lumping). I diced up a couple of tomatoes and various herbs and tossed them in (oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil). After the cornmeal was cooked I added about half a cup of grated parmesan then poured the mess into a lined cookie sheet to cool (put it in the fridge).

For dinner I cut the polenta into triangles and put them on the grill (very tricky but delicious) and my housemate made a summer veggie ragout (yellow squash, mushrooms, red peppers, greens, red wine & other deliciousness) that we put on top.

For a leftover polenta lunch I made a quick and light lentil soup that was a really tasty companion to the polenta. I sauteed some onions, garlic, and two jalapenos, then added 2-3 cups of water and about 3/4 a cup of red lentils (probably less, I didn't really measure). Brought the lot to a boil until the lentils were done, then added a handful of torn basil and sliced cherry tomatoes (they're super sweet). I actually spooned some of the soup onto the polenta, which was also quite tasty.

Ginger Beer!

This weekend my housemate and I bottled the first batch of beer we brewed in our new place! It's a ginger beer we brewed on August 16th. It's not technically beer because they're no grain in it so I suppose it's more of a fruit wine. But comparable non alcoholic ginger drinks (like Reed's) are called ginger beer so I think the name calls to mind the appropriate flavour.

We started with something like 1 kilo of ginger, 2 lemons, some cloves, cinnamon, and maybe nutmeg (my housemate did the recipe mostly off the top of her head so the details are sketchy).

We couldn't find a good brew pot in the area that didn't cost an arm and a leg so for now we're using a Ball canning pot that has about a 5.25 gallon capacity. It's working fine so far, but the size means we can't do any all grain brews.

All the ginger needed to be ground up. It was tough work for my food processor. The stringy ginger kept getting caught up in everything. The house smelled incredible though.

The lemons were sliced and tossed in water (about 2 gallons) with the ginger and spices and about 2 kilos of raw sugar.

We boiled the crap out of it for a while.

Then we strained it and brought the temperature down so we could add the yeast. We used a champagne yeast (another brewing first for me) so it could handle the high sugar content.

Then we let it ferment away! It bubbled quite a lot for two weeks. The lid on the top bowed out because of all of the air pressure that built up inside the bucket. We bottled it into 12oz bottles and I think we ended up with 55 bottles total, so the batch was a bit more than 5 gallons. We tasted some when we bottled it and it was really good (pre-bottling the beer is alcoholic but not carbonated or cold, so it doesn't taste quite like the finished product). It has a solid ginger flavour with a spicy kick to it. Definitely a good way to start the year.