joe-made: homemade (mostly) edible stuff

epic holiday bread baking

2011-01-06T07:24:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-06T07:01:00.001-08:00

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!!

2010-12-20T12:53:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-09-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-06T19:28:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-09-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

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.

pickles!

2010-07-31T08:52:00.001-07:00

My housemate brought back a bunch of cucumbers from a friend's garden so I decided to try to make pickles! I'm trying to do it via natural fermentation (lactic acid based) in a brine solution rather than canning them with vinegar. We'll see how it goes.

I used about 4.5 lbs of cucumbers, a bunch of fresh dill, black peppercorns, garlic, kosher salt, and some sliced jalapenos in one jar. So there's one jar of regular pickle slices, one jar of hot/spicy slices, and one jar of slightly spicy pickle spears.

It's been pretty warm and humid so I'm keeping the jars in a foam cooler with ice packs to try to keep the temp under 70 degrees (above that isn't good for fermentation). I can't find my food thermometer because all my kitchen equipment is packed up, so it's mostly guess work. I'm hoping the intense cold spots aren't a problem. I'm going to rotate everything around and swap freezer packs. Fingers crossed they come out tasting good!

homemade pesto and local pizza!

2010-07-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

I made a batch of pesto today with basil from my 4 plants and several handfuls from a friend's garden plot. I sadly had to use all of my basil right away because the basil blight had attacked my little plants, causing the leaves to yellow. I composted all 4 plants and salvaged what leaves I could. Since I'm in the midst of moving, my food processor is still in Ohio and my mortar and pestle are in a box somewhere, so I wasn't sure how exactly I was going to make the pesto. I happened up on this recipe however while googling that uses neither processor nor m&p. I used my own basil/cheese etc proportions, but I did try the chopping technique. It took a long time and I can honestly say that I can't taste a significant difference from how it would be in a food processor, but it worked just fine and was quite tasty pesto.

I decided to use the pesto to make a pizza! On Thursday I picked up a 1.5lb ball of fresh mozzarella at the Westside Farmer's Market in Ann Arbor and yesterday I bought a couple of local tomatoes at the People's Food Co-op. All ingredients that demand pizza, right?

so here's the freshly made pesto spread on the crust (I used the KAF recipe).sliced two medium tomatoes from the Co-op.added the mozzarella. (I was actually rather disappointed w/ this cheese. The farm packed it in way too much salt so even after rinsing it the cheese was way too salty. The outside was mushy and the inside was dense. It didn't string/tear the way mozzarella should. Sad face. But I chopped it up and it did the trick!)The finished pie fresh out o' the oven! It was quite delicious.

easy dinner: vegetarian hot dogs, sauerkraut, & beer

2010-07-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

vegetarian hot dogs, sauerkraut, & beer.

chopped onions (1/4 c)
sauerkraut (drained & rinsed if canned)
two soy dogs chopped
dijon mustard (1T)
black pepper (1/2 t)
caraway seeds (1t)
beer (1/3 c)
butter (1T)

melt butter in pan, add onions and saute for a few minutes
add all other ingredients and simmer in pan until most of the beer has evaporated/absorbed
taste and adjust seasoning
serve w/ a slice of rye bread

I used Arcadia Ales Sky High Rye, which seemed like an appropriate choice. It's a tasty, super drinkable summer ale, but a little lighter on the rye than I would have expected.The sauerkraut dish came out super tangy and yummy, a bit sweeter than I would have liked so I added more pepper and mustard. Definitely going to try variations of this in the fall. My homemade kraut should be ready in a few days. **Edit! I added more beer and let it simmer a little longer. This took care of most of the sweetness and gave it a nice bitter bite. Just goes to show you that the solution is always more beer.

Curried Red Stuff (but not a red curry)

2010-07-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

Curried red quinoa, red lentils, and a red apple.

This is a pretty simple one pot dinner that doesn't take very long to cook and is really delicious! In spite of many of the ingredients being red, the tumeric usually turns it an orangish-green color.

This was also the first time I used my new (to me) cast iron pot! The pictures aren't very good, but this is what a cell phone in a dim kitchen will get you.

Ingredients

Half an apple diced (should have cut this smaller). Minced ginger (1T), garlic (1T), chili pepper (1t), and chopped onion (1/2c). Red quinoa (3/4-1cup), red lentils (not pictured, 1/2-3/4c). Curry powder, tumeric, salt. As per usual, I didn't exactly measure things. Saute the onions in some veg or olive oil. Check out the cast iron pot!

Add the garlic, ginger, and chili.

Then the apples and spices.

I like to saute the quinoa briefly before adding water. Don't know why, just habit.

Add water and red lentils.
Cook partially covered until quinoa is soft and apples dissolve (if you use a different kind of lentil you might have to cook it longer, but red lentils tend to dissolve fairly quickly).

I served it with a scoup of greek yogurt (which was delicious) and on top of a couple of corn tortillas (not so delicious). Probably would have been better with rice or just by itself.

Cast Iron Pot Resurfacing Project!

2010-07-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

Right before I left Massachusetts a friend gave me an old cast iron pot that had seen better days. It was covered in rust and the surface was flaking in places. Since I was moving across the country and all, what better thing to acquire than a large heavy pot that needed to be refurbished? Right?
Stripping it down was a trial and error process but a lot of fun. I had a Dremel with an assortment of tips, a power sander, and another air compressor powered rotary tool of my dad's. The first few Dremel bits I tried were too harsh and cut into the pot's surface too much. The power sander was great for an even grind over a large surface, but I could only get at the flat parts with it. The air compressor rotary tool worked pretty well but I only had 2 attachments for it, one of which worked well and the other not. All in all I tried a lot of different approaches and you can see that in the finished surface, but now that I've done it once I think the second time around would go much quicker.

After resurfacing:

Thanks Mom!

2010-05-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day, mom! I just wanted to say thank you for being such a great cook and baker while I was growing up (not that you've stopped since then, but you get what I mean) and for giving me the tools and inclination to pursue cooking now that I have my own kitchen so many miles away.

It wasn't until I reached college that I found out how unusual it was for people my age to have grown up with parents who cooked most meals at home and sat down to dinner each night. I took it for granted that everyone knew how to boil pasta, chop an onion, and roll out cookie dough (not to mention doing laundry and cleaning one's room!). Boy was going off to a small liberal arts school on the east coast quite the wake up call! I can't even count the number of times I helped out housemates who were perplexed by a box of mac and cheese or a roll of premade cookie dough.

Now that I'm all of 25 I think I can safely say that knowing how to cook, eat right, and take care of myself is more important (and perhaps scarcer) than having a college degree. So thanks Mom! You taught me so much more than any of my professors, with or without a PhD!

roasted acorn squash and caramelized onion tart

2010-02-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

I had some leftover pie crust dough in the fridge, so I made a tart and a mini blueberry pie for dinner tonight.

Recipe

caramelized shallots (2 medium, thinly sliced)

roasted acorn squash (remove seeds, slice, toss w/ evoo, roast until soft)

1/2 c shredded gruyere

3 eggs

1/4 c milk

1/2 tsp thyme

1 T parsley

black pepper

salt

I didn't really measure anything, so amounts are an estimate.

I pre-baked the shell for 5-8 minutes at 350 before filling. I half tore/half smooshed the acorn squash and layered it on the bottom of the crust then layered the shallots on top.

Ground some pepper and sprinkled a bit of salt over the top along with 1/2 tsp or so of dried thyme and fresh chopped parsley.

Sprinkled the cheese on next.

Whisked 3 eggs with some milk then poured it evenly over everything. Topped it with an acorn squash round, put it all into the oven for about 20 minutes until a knife came out clean.

Cheese browned a little, topped with more parsley, let it sit for 10 minutes to cool and settle.

Had a slice with some sauteed kale and the blueberry pie for dessert. Super tasty!

Stollen: Holiday bread part I

2009-12-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

my stollen and my mom's nutbread

My older sister gave me two amazing books for christmas, The Bread Baker's Apprentice and The Bread Bible. I celebrated by making stollen this morning from BBA. I was going to make cinnamon rolls, but the stollen recipe seemed more appropriately festive.

It's an unusual recipe for me; I prefer savory to sweet breads and generally use levain instead of instant yeast, but I think these new books will be great for pushing me beyond my comfort zones.

Stollen has an interesting history and apparently a wide range of variations. I was amused and intrigued by the idea that the bread's shape references the baby Jesus wrapped in a blanket and the fruit/nuts represent the gifts of the wise men. My mom might not have been as amused however, as I kept dancing around the kitchen referring to the rising dough as my "baby Jesus bread". Anyway!

The stollen starts with a milk-based very short preferment of sorts, which is then mixed in with more flour, eggs, butter, citrus zest, and bunch of dried fruit. Oh, and the dried fruit is soaked in alcohol (I used dark rum). The whole thing smelled pretty intense while I was mixing it up! I was also nervous about the tackiness of the dough and thought there would be too much fruit+raisins in it. In the end both things turned out just fine! The loaf was really large; we sliced half of it for Christmas dinner at the grandparents' and kept the other half home.

Sunday night dinner party

2009-11-23T09:42:00.001-08:00

My roommate Lauren's best friend from home was in town visiting and I'm currently dog sitting in the middle of nowhere in a house with a much nicer kitchen than mine, so obviously we needed to have a dinner party.

For six people the meal plan was:

mushroom risotto
fennel, leek & cheddar frittata
steamed lemon asparagus
salad
and ginger green tea ice cream for dessert

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Dessert

I started the ice cream in the afternoon so it would have plenty of time to freeze before dinner. I read a dozen or so recipes for ginger ice cream and green tea ice cream, but could only find one that had both. I ended up half winging it and sort of following this recipe. In retrospect, I should have thought more about color. The tea turned it a little grey and the ginger turned it a little brown, which I think was saved by Tom's nutmeg addition. Here's how I made it:

Ginger Green Tea Ice Cream

Ice Cream

4 egg yolks (I saved the whites for the frittata)
1/4 cup coarsely grated peeled fresh ginger root
4 teabags of fresh green tea
2 tablespoons water
1.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cup heavy cream

Ginger Syrup Swirl

1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c coarsely grated peeled fresh ginger root

Instructions:

Whisk yolks in small bowl.
In medium pot cook sugar, ginger and water over medium heat, stirring until everything dissolves and most of the water cooks off
Add the whole milk and bring to a simmer.
Remove tea from tea bags (or use loose leaf) and add to mixture, let steep 5 minutes
Strain ginger and tea out through fine mesh sieve.
Temper in egg yolks, add vanilla and heavy cream and return all to pan
Bring mixture back to barely a simmer
Transfer ice cream to ice cream maker

Ginger Syrup Swirl

Crush the shredded ginger in the bottom of a small pan with the back of a spoon
Add sugar, water, honey, simmer until thick.
Gently swirl mixture into ice cream when it is nearly frozen

**Freshly grated nutmeg before serving. (Tom's addition. Really balanced the other flavors).

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Dinner

A note on timing: I prepped all of the veggies and eggs before cooking. Since everything I was making needed to go from stove to plate as quickly as possible, I waited to start the risotto until everyone was here and snacking on cheese, crackers, figs, & jam in the living room. Then I timed the frittata and asparagus according to when I thought the risotto would be finished. I turned out to not have enough hands and my friend Tom stepped in to do some of the final stirring while I took care of the asparagus and frittata.

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Fennel, Leek & Cheddar Frittata

Aside from the switch in cheese, I followed a recipe from the have a nosh! blog (she uses goat cheese, but I didn't have any on hand). (Sidenote: There are a ton of other great looking recipes on that blog).

I prefer to make frittatas in a cast iron skillet, sauteing the veggies in the same pan before adding the eggs and then popping the whole under a broiler. A good cast iron skillet evenly distributes the heat perfectly and the egg comes away from the pan edge cleanly and much more easily than any glass dish or other frying pan I've tried. The fennel in this recipe was totally a shot in the dark for me. I don't cook with fennel much, but there was some in the fridge so I thought I'd give it a go. I also used a New Zealand cows milk cheddar I picked up from Trader Joe's. It had a really rich flavor to it that I had worried would overpower the leeks and fennel, but luckily it turned out to be a great balance.

Mushroom Risotto

I followed this recipe for Mushroom Risotto, with only a few alterations. I used vegetable stock instead of chicken (duh I suppose, since I'm a vegetarian). I used a kind of buttery chardonnay for the wine because that's what was open (and it tasted just fine). I also used a different combination of mushrooms. Jay had a bag of some unidentified mushroom in the fridge. I'm 75% sure they were chanterelles, but they could have been something else. I also used about 4 oz of baby portabellos, 8 oz of white button mushrooms, and then the 1 oz of dried porcini mushrooms (which I always forget need to be wiped of grit... they're so tiny that I'm not sure how one would even go about doing that, but then I sometimes end up with a bit of sand in my risotto, which is so not the right texture). I also used dried thyme instead of fresh.

I really like making risottos. While they are time consuming, I always think that the heartiness of a good mushroom risotto is a great center for a vegetarian meal. This recipe made way more than we could eat. For six adults, I would cut it down in the future to 1 1/2 c rice if it's the main dish or to 1 c rice if it's a side (and adjust the other ingredients accordingly).

Asparagus with Lemon Butter

When I first saw the title of this recipe I thought it involved making lemon butter, but it did not. Delicious and simple anyway. I made this right before everything else was ready to go on the table. And I actually followed this entire recipe for once in my life.

1/2 lb asparagus, rough ends snapped/cut off
2 T butter
1 tsp lemon zest
1 T lemon juice
salt to taste

Steam the asparagus in a pan with some water, strain water and then toss with butter, zest, lemon juice, and salt.

Salad

Pretty much your standard salad. I think we used red leaf and green leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, scallions, cured black olives, feta cheese, and I made a mustard vinaigrette.

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All in all it was a super fun evening and the meal turned out well (aside from forgetting about the fritatta long enough to let the top get just a little too overdone).

pizzas & congratulations

2009-11-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

I almost dropped one of these pizzas this evening. I was taking it out of the oven when my sister called to tell me she was engaged (!!!!). I should probably have known better than to answer the phone while opening a 500° oven, but I didn't want the pizza to burn and, you know, it was my sister calling and all. I didn't drop the pizza, but I did have to wait to set it down before I could give a more enthusiastic response. Anyway. Dinner was delicious and my sister is engaged.

Pizza #1

sauteed onions + garlic, added cumin, oregano, lime zest, mixed in black beans and garlic tomato sauce. topped with cheddar cheese and avocado.

Pizza #2

sauteed onions, garlic, mushrooms, swiss chard (red and white), red bell pepper, added crushed red pepper, fresh basil and parsley, roasted garlic tomato sauce. topped with parmesan cheese.

Chicken pictures

2009-10-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

The chicken coop.

the run.

their first day in their new home!

inside the coop.

the ramp between the coop and the yard.

the nesting boxes!

chickens in the run.

I try not to play favorites, but if I did it would be this hen.

fierce.

chickens!

2009-10-30T09:16:00.001-07:00

We finally got the chickens! It took a while but it was worth the wait. I had wanted to get chickens last year, but my roommate Lauren thought it would be a bad idea. Imagine my surprise when I returned from India this summer and one of the first things she said was, "Let's get chickens!".

Plans: I spent most of August looking at plans for chicken coops and researching chicken breeds. My parents came to visit in early September and my dad was kind enough to bring me a bunch of tools that I don't have here in Massachusetts. We were able to get some of the wood and all of the chicken wire from freecycle and additional wood from a fencing company in Northampton that gives away scraps. We did have to buy some sheets of plywood, the insulation, screws, staples, insulation glue, and hinges.

Costs: The total cost for the whole project was $175.68. That's $10 each for the chickens, $11 for feed (which should last for 3+ months), hay for bedding and food, and building supplies. The eggs we usually buy from the store are $2.99 a dozen, which is $.25 per egg. That means the hens will have to lay 702 eggs for us to recover our costs. They can lay up to 3 eggs a day (one egg each) and have been averaging 2 eggs a day. So if they continue to lay 2 eggs a day, we should hit 700 eggs in just under a year. The hens will lay for 2-3 years, so in the end we should get back at least twice the cost we put in.

Food: We really didn't do this to save money though. I am increasingly invested in understanding where all of the food we eat comes from and knowing exactly what it is we're putting in our bodies. We've had a farm share for the past two years, which is really great for June through October. The winter months are harder, but we might get a winter farm share this year. Winter farm shares are primarily root vegetables and greens (lots of kale!). That's all an aside. I am a vegetarian and rely on eggs as a near daily source of protein. I hate standing in front of the egg case at the store and debating over organic feed, free range, hormone free, etc eggs. The fact that these labels aren't regulated by the FDA pisses me off. Anyone can put "free range" on their egg carton. "Cage free" eggs might just mean that the chickens get a few more inches of cage space than some of their less fortunate counterparts. Additionally, free range doesn't necessarily mean that the chickens are eating any better than if they were in cages.

The fact is that what the chicken eats, I eat. If the chickens are cramped into a tiny space eating manure and sawdust along with their hormone laced feed, then that's what's being transferred to the eggs I eat. I'm lucky enough to live in an area in which local eggs from farmers I can talk to are readily available. I could go see how the hens live and what they're eating before I decide to purchase their eggs. I'm incredibly fortunate to have that. However, those eggs come with an increased price tag, sometimes upwards of $5 a dozen (which is the case at our farm share). That's incredibly expensive to me! Even though I am an advocate of spending more money for quality whole foods and probably spend a larger percentage of my income on food than your average 24 year old, I'm not willing to drop $5 for a dozen eggs. Keeping my own hens requires a little bit of labor on my part and ensures that I know exactly what's going into my chickens, and thus into their eggs. I also know if they're healthy, happy, and being treated well. That and they're pretty fun to have around. So it seemed like a win win situation.

Work?: So how much work is it to take care of hens? Not a lot really. Building the coop took a while. We did it piecemeal, an hour here and there after work before the sun set. In the end, the coop we have may not look as fancy as some of the ones you can buy, but it was a lot of fun to build! And it works just fine. Comparable coops available online or from farm supply stores in this area start at about $1000 if you can believe it, with most in the $1500-$1700 range and some even more. That's insane. Insane. Day to day care for the chickens involves raising and lowering the ramp to their coop (optional really until cold weather sets in), collecting the eggs, refilling their water dish daily, refilling their food dish when it's empty, and cleaning out the manure/putting in clean hay. All in all, maybe 5 minutes a day and another 15 minutes every few weeks. Not much in the grand scheme of things. Way easier than having a dog or a cat. Also, cats don't lay eggs. Too bad.

Pictures to follow. The end.

P.S. Now I just need to work on convincing Lauren to move to a house where I can have goats!

2009-10-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

an orange + chipotle powder = surprisingly delicious.

Apple Onion Cheddar Thyme Bread

2009-10-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

This might be my new favorite bread.

I've been working on variations of this recipe for a while and I think that I might have finally figured it out. I wanted to put all of my favorite things into one loaf of bread. I've done onions and cheese, apples and cheese, thyme and onions, etc. but they often didn't rise well enough or I would put too much stuff into the dough. My most recent loaf turned out well and I think I'm going to stick with this combination in the future.

First I made a basic sourdough bread at 67% hydration. Then I kneaded the apples, onions, cheese, thyme, and salt into the dough.

After about two hours (with folds every hour) I shaped the loaf and let the dough rise overnight in the fridge. The next morning I pulled the dough out of the fridge and turned the stove onto 500 to preheat with a stone. I baked the bread for about 40 minutes.

The apple slices I put on top unfortunately burned on the edges. I think I'll skip that step next time. But the loaf turned out okay and the inside was really light and soft.

It was yummy.

delicious sandwich

2009-10-09T19:04:00.001-07:00

I posted about the Apple Walnut Sourdough bread I made the other day so I thought I'd post about the delicious sandwich I made for dinner after the loaf came out of the oven.

My carnivorous roommates frequently cook bacon in our house, for breakfast or dinner, and although it's been many many years now since I've eaten bacon, the smell always makes me crave that certain salty flavor that I've never found replicated in vegetarian fare. I've had the kind of vegetarian fake bacon that you can get at the store, usually by Morningstar or one of those brands, but they always have a strange plasticy texture and smell that reminds me of dog treats. Not appetizing. However, I once went to a vegan brunch my current roommate Liz's former apartment for which she made "vegan bacon" from tempeh. It was really delicious. It was crispy and salty and a little bit smoky, and while it was definitely NOT bacon, I loved it and immediately asked for the recipe. Well, that was nearly a year ago now and I've forgotten whatever it was Liz told me, but while the Apple Walnut Sourdough was rising and baking and the sweet nutty aroma filled the house, I began to think about how well apples, cheese, and bacon go together. Thinking back to Liz's brunch, I began to search for recipes that might replicate that smoky salty flavor I've long missed.

I came across several variations on what seemed to be the core ingredients: soy sauce and liquid smoke. Several recipes added nutritional yeast and a few threw in some heat by means of chili powder or hot sauce. I decided to start simple and complicate things from there. I sliced a package of Bridge Tofu (the best available around here, in my opinion) into inch wide, quarter inch thick slices, that I spread out on paper towels to dry off. I heated some vegetable oil up in my cast iron skillet. I used enough to coat the bottom, but not so much that it would cover the tofu. You want to brown it, not deep fry it. Once the oil was hot I laid the tofu strips in, cooked until brown and crispy on one side, then flipped and did the same for the other.

Once the oil has cooked off and the tofu is crispy, pour a mixture of soy sauce and liquid smoke over it while it's in the pan. Proportions differ, so do it to taste. I mixed 2T soy sauce, 1T liquid smoke, and 1/4c water. The water turned out to be a bad idea, but I had trouble seeing how 3T of liquid would evenly coat all of the tofu in the pan. The soy sauce/liquid smoke mixture should be absorbed into the tofu while the water cooks off (as I learned, if you use too much water, the tofu gets a little spongy and wet on the inside, which definitely isn't a bacon texture). Once the liquid is gone, pull the tofu out of the pan and voila!

For the sandwich, I sliced up some of the Apple Walnut bread, some Vermont cheddar, and put it all together with the tofu "bacon". I grilled it a little to brown the bread (the heat of the tofu mostly melted the cheese before I even put the sandwich in the skillet). I ended up adding mustard after I'd grilled it, which was tasty. I had also roasted some beets and cauliflower with garlic (all from the farm share!) while the oven was hot from the bread. Put it all together and my roommate and I had a really great dinner!

World Bread Day 2009

2009-10-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm going to bake something for World Bread Day. Thoughts? Suggestions? Favorite breads that I've made in the past?

Apple Walnut Bread

2009-10-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

This weekend I decided that the weather had cooled down enough that I could start baking bread again without driving my roommates crazy with 500 degree ovens. I pulled my starter from the fridge, where it had laid much neglected over the summer, and ramped it up with frequent feedings from last Friday until Tuesday, when I deemed it ready to use (more out of impatience than actual evidence from the starter). It took a bit longer than I expected, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised since I used it so little (no feedings at all in fact for 2 months!).

I had been eying two recipes from the Wild Yeast Blog for a couple of weeks because they seemed like the perfect breads for saying “Hello Fall!” I didn’t have everything to make either bread, but I did have walnuts so I opted for the Apple Walnut Sourdough instead the Apple Cider Sour Rye, which I may have to make next weekend.

With my starter ready to go, I did a final feed Tuesday morning and then set to making the bread Tuesday in the early evening. I halved the recipe to make one loaf and altered some of the ingredients. I didn’t have buckwheat flour, cider, or dried apples. I did have fresh apples though and rye.

Here's the recipe I ended up following looked like:

Ingredient	Weight	Percentage
Flour (KABF)	200g	100%
Rye flour	80g	40%
Water	140g	70%
Salt	8g	4%
Starter	240g	120%
Apples (fresh)	75g	37%
Walnuts	75g	37%

I followed Susan's directions, aside from rehydrating the apples. I was mixing everything by hand, which was tricky. Using fresh apples made the dough very wet and sticky and I began to wish that I had chopped them smaller. I had hoped for the bread to be finished by dinner, but I didn't end up pulling it out of the oven until 11pm. I probably should have let it rise even longer; Susan's directions call for a total of about 5 hours fermentation/rising time, but I suspect her starter was a bit more active than mine and that the dough wasn't as weighed down by the heavy apples.

I also wasn't quite as good at the apple stencil and ended up over-flouring the surface. Nonetheless, I think it turned out quite good! I cut into it today and made a delicious sandwich (post to follow). I had been worried that the crumb would be too dense/that it hadn't risen enough, but when I cut into it I was surprised to find that the crumb was just fine! This was also the first time I had used such large chunks of nuts in a bread and was worried about them being hard, thus making the bread difficult to bite into, but my fears were unfounded!

All in all, this was a delicious bread, perfect for a fall afternoon. Just what I was hoping for. Another excellent recipe from Wild Yeast!

Upon request, I'm submitting this post to Yeast Spotting over at the Wild Yeast blog!

Vacation Beer Reviews

2009-08-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend visiting my friend Kelly in Hollywood, Florida. It's a cute little town on the coast between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. While I was visiting I did my best to try as many new beers as I could, and Kelly definitely aided me in the process!

Knowing my great love of beer and being the wonderful friend that she is, Kelly got me an assorted six pack of local beers (save one from CA, which she picked out because the label was cool). I drank these over the course of the weekend along with a few other brews out at bars/restaurants. I took notes on a few. Nothing incredibly remarkable, the Monk in the Trunk was my favorite by far.

Holy Mackerel Special Golden Ale Ft Lauderdale, FL
A- opaque golden color, like cloudy honey. Thin head with persistent lacing

S- smelled like a hefeweizen, banana, slightly floral, alcohol aroma.

T- bit of a sharp/sour tang at first, but overall mild flavor in spite of the alcohol content. still put me in the mind of a hefeweizen

M- slightly viscous and heavy on the edges of my tongue.

D- pretty well balanced, and goes down easier than one would expect from an 8.5% abv, but not really one that I'd drink again.

Hurricane Reef Pale Ale Melbourne, FL
A- Poured a golden honey color with a thin head that quickly dissipated but left some lacing. Visibly highly carbinated.

S- Not a very strong nose on this beer, either that or my own was stuffy. Malty perhaps.

T- light, very mild hop taste, slight spice taste

M- light, again very carbinated, kind of thin.

D- very drinkable, goes down quick and easy, perhaps the only upside of an otherwise kind of boring beer. I wouldn't go out of my way to find this one again, but it was neat to try it.

Monk in the Trunk Amber Ale Jupiter, FL

A- pours amber with golden hues, thin head that lingered a bit

S - sweet, malty nose, faint hops and some alcohol

T - had a coppery metallic tang that reminded me of some copper ales I've tried, otherwise malty and sweet

M- crisp, not over or under carbinated

D- definitely could have had a few of these, and would drink it again. it was a good, solid amber and organic as well!

Heavy Seas Peg Leg Imperial Stout, Maryland

I had this one at a restaurant, served from a bottle. I was really not impressed and then I gave the bottle a better look over and noticed that it said to serve before May 2009. Since I drank it in August, I figured it was 3-4 months past its prime and will blame the restaurant for now instead of the beer for my underwhelmed reaction. Perhaps I'll get a chance to try it again sometime.

A-dark but thin pouring with ruby notes and little to no head
S-roasted smells on the nose, coffee and chocolate perhaps, but very faint
T-yeasty taste, alcohol-sweet with a kind of stale malty flavor that lingered after
M- thinner than most russian imperial stouts i've had
D-definitely wouldn't have had another, for the abv and the taste. i'll have to try this on tap before i pass final judgment, but overall i thought it tasted bad

Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

2009-08-20T18:54:00.001-07:00

In March I made sourdough cinnamon rolls following a recipe by Mountaindog on The Fresh Loaf.

The Fresh Loaf this really useful online community about bread and baking. It has a lot of great information on sourdough in particular. I converted the recipe to an excel spreadsheet to keep everything straight (it’s a 4 day process!). I’ll see if there’s a way to post the spreadsheet here, but for now I’ll just post the above link to the original recipe and tell you about any notes or changes I made and what did and didn’t work. It was one of the most involved sourdough recipes I’ve tackled yet and it was a lot of work, but the end result was definitely worth it. The cinnamon rolls didn’t last long!.

Day 0 (Thursday) 8pm, Freshen up starter

This was not part of recipe, but always needs to be done. I brought my starter to room temperature and fed it and tracked rise and fall so I had a sense of its peak rising time etc. My starter was at 100% hydration,.

Day 1 (Friday) 11pm, Build the levain

I fed my starter according to the recipe and let it sit at room temp until doubled, which was overnight or about 10 hours. The recipe calls for 850g of levain total, which is much more than I’m used to dealing with for a bread recipe. You can see here that my starter doubled and then some overnight.

Day 2 (Saturday) 10am, Build the dough and Bulk Fermentation

I made the mashed potatoes the night before so it could cool sufficiently and mixed the final dough Saturday morning. This was particularly difficult because I don’t have a mixer and was stirring everything in by hand. I also didn’t have any buttermilk, so I added a bit of lemon juice to milk, which has worked well for me in other recipes. I didn’t have a large enough bowl to let the whole thing bulk ferment so I split it into two bowls and left it on the counter at about 60°. I also made the filling that afternoon. I followed my mom’s recipe for cinnamon roll filling instead of the ingredients in this recipe, just because I like it better and it’s simpler.

Before

Rising

Day 2 (Saturday) 10pm-12am, Shaping

This was where I ran into a bunch of problems and diverted from the recipe’s instructions. The first step after the dough has doubled is to divide it into two pieces (check) and then roll it out into a rectangle. The recipe says that the dough should be sticky, which it definitely was. Then I spread the filling and rolled up the first rectangle.

At this point you’re supposed to be able to slice the logs into rounds and put them in a pan or on a cookie sheet to rise. The recipe says, “Slice each log into 8 or 12 rolls with serrated knife and place them just barely touching each other on baking parchment on sheet pan. Don't worry if log gets flattened as you slice each roll, you can straighten them out once placed on the sheet pan, and they should rise very high and straighten out when proofing”. No such luck. The dough was way too soupy and thin to roll. The first half turned into a cinnamon roll blob and was not even close to sliceable. I remedied this by putting the whole thing in a bundt cake pan, so that it turned out like a coffee cake kind of thing. It actually worked really well and it was nice to have both a cake and cinnamon rolls in the end. It’s a huge recipe by the way. I’d definitely cut it in half next time.

For the second half of the dough I chilled the dough before trying to roll it out so that it was at about 40-45° instead of 60°-65°. I also didn’t roll the rectangle out as thinly as it said I should and rolled the log tighter than the first time (the first time was sloppy I think due to my lack of skill and the slackness of the dough). The second batch held its shape much better and I was able to slice it into rounds. I think that I would chill the log again before slicing it next time to retain the roll's shape. You can sort of round them out once they’re turned on end in the pan, but the colder it is the easier it is and the less filling squishes out. They were also huge. If I made the full recipe again I’d split it into 3 logs I think. No one could finish a whole roll.

Okay so once the rolls are cut and on a cookie sheet they go into the fridge for an overnight/10-12 hour fermentation.

Day 3 (Sunday) 10am Bake

Bake the rolls right out of the fridge and make the icing while they’re in the oven. This part went just fine. In addition to the icing, I had some extra filling that we spooned on top of some of the rolls. Everyone loved them and I took a bunch to work to share. The bundt cake roll turned out well too.

Notes on the recipe: I think they have a noticable sour tang that I would like to avoid next time, although none of my friends thought so. It might go nice with the sourcream icing I guess, but I thought they should have been a little sweeter. I also don't think they needed to rise for as long as they did. I think next time I would bulk ferment in the fridge at 40°-45° instead of on the counter at 55°-65°. Then I would try to roll the logs, then chill again and slice them while the dough is cold. Mountaindog does suggest other ways of chilling the dough in the recipe, “(NOTE: I've not yet tried this, but it should also be possible to chill the un-sliced logs in frig overnight and slice just before baking, or freeze the logs for up to 1 month, take out the night before baking and defrost in frig. Next morning, remove from frig., slice, and let warm up at room temp about 1-2 hours before baking.)” So yeah, I think I’ll do something akin to that the next time.

Perhaps to cut down on the fermentation time and the sourness that develops I could also try a shorter fermentation on the counter instead of in the fridge once the rolls are cut. Or I could possibly play with my starter to get more lactic acid out of it than acetic acid. Who knows. They also required quite a bit longer to bake than the recipe suggested, even though my oven was at 400°. Overall, they were really tasty but difficult to shape, so their appearance wasn't quite as nice as I would have liked. It was a fun process and an interesting recipe!

a weekend of bread

2009-08-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

Back in February I was house/dog sitting for Jay out in Shutesbury and I decided to make use of Jay’s oven, which is much larger and fancier than mine, to bake some bread.

This was the same weekend that I decided to try making sourdough English muffins, which I wrote about previously. It was convenient to make the English muffins the same weekend that I was planning to bake bread, because I was able to really ramp up my sourdough starter and use the excess sponge for the muffins. I ended up making a dozen or so muffins that turned out fairly well. I’ve tried 3 different recipes at this point and haven’t really been satisfied with any of them. My muffins tend to be denser than I think they should be and the dough is always much stickier and difficult to handle than the recipe makes it sound. The first time I followed the recipe’s instructions and patted/rolled the dough out and used a circular cookie cutter to cut the muffins. This was a complete mess. No amount of flour or cornmeal could keep the dough from sticking to the cookie cutter and to the counter. I think the honey was responsible for making the dough particularly tacky. The second time instead of cutting out rounds, I rolled the dough into balls and flattened them into rough circles, then let the dough rise. This was much easier to handle than the cookie cutter technique. The only downside I discovered was that my English muffins weren’t exactly round, but they still tasted delicious so I didn’t really care.

So about the bread; I made four loaves of bread, 2 large and 2 small. I vaguely followed Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough Rye recipe, with which I have had much success. It was my go to recipe for sandwich bread this winter. I doubled the recipe in order to make four loaves and skipped the rye flour. I also made 3 of the four loaves with cheese, which is something I’ve only experimented with a few times. Jay had a bunch of cheese in his fridge that needed to be used right away, or a trip to the trash can in the near future. I used two soft cheeses, brie and camembert, for two of the small loaves and a big hunk of local cheddar for one of the larger loaves. The fourth loaf did not have any cheese in it. I wanted to try following instructions I had read for a torpedo loaf. The shaped turned out well I think. The technique created a lot of surface tension, which caused the loaf to split in places other than where I had scored it. I think next time I might need to score it differently, but the shape was roughly what I had expected.

I made boules for the two smaller loaves, folded the cheese into the center, and scored them in a cross pattern. The cheese melted as it baked and some of it bubbled out of the top of the loaf, which you can kind of see in this picture. The cheese on the outside of the loaves was crispy and delicious. The cheese on the inside caused the bread to have an uneven crumb with several large pockets where the chunks of cheese melted. It was incredibly good lightly toasted or just sliced plain. I confess I ate most of one of the smaller loaves myself almost as soon as it had cooled standing at the kitchen counter and just tearing hunks off. I managed to save the other one to share.

For the cheddar loaf I cut the cheese into cubes and worked it throughout the bread and put that one in a banneton to rise. Like the torpedo loaf, it split on the side in the oven even though I had scored it. I think that either the bread needed to rise longer or I didn’t score it well/deep enough. Or both! The crumb was a little denser than it often is with this recipe, but I think that actually worked well given the weight of the cheese. I definitely want to try cheese breads again, but I think I’ll find an actual recipe that calls for cheese next time instead of just adding it to a recipe that does not.

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I also made black bean chipotle bread at Jay’s once a while back, for which I’ll have to track down the recipe sometime. It was really tasty and had an incredibly interesting color and texture from the purred black beans. The chipotles gave it a really spicy kick that you don’t necessarily expect from a slice of bread!

To Do.

2009-04-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this here so that I can't back out. I haven't spent much time baking lately, aside from a mess of sourdough english muffins (easiest things ever!), mostly because work has been crazy and I'm dog sitting, so even the times I'm off work have been busy. But! I just turned in the last application/personal statement/request for funding thing that I have on the agenda until doing the whole grad app thing again next fall, so no excuses!

This week I will make Pain de Beaucair. I am reading a bunch of recipes, making sure my starter's hot to trot, and debating flour purchases. I will make at least one batch of pain de beaucair, preferably more than one in case I mess it up the first time, and I will take pictures and then post about it. If you don't see it here by Friday, please send me an email and ask me what I've been doing with my life that was so important I couldn't find the time to make bread. And then tell me that my answer isn't good enough.

The end.

Homemade Banneton and a Funny Story

2009-04-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

I was experimenting this winter with some high hydration doughs that were really tricky to handle and definitely not candidates for the free form loaves I had been making. Solution? Letting them proof in some sort of a container. Traditional wicker bannetons however, are pretty expensive and I didn't want to wait for one to arrive in the mail (because I'm super impatient and all about instant gratification. right). Another solution? To make my own!

I took an old undershirt (it was really clean! promise!) and cut out the center so that I had a roughly rectangular strip of cloth. I laid the cloth flat and rubbed a bunch of AP flour into the surface then used it to line a plastic colander. I dusted my ball of dough with more AP flour and put it in the make shift banneton and folded the extra cloth over the top. I figured that while plastic wouldn't necessarily wick moisture away from the crust like wicker, the holes in the colander would approximate the air flow that one might get from a more traditional set up. It actually worked really well! Hopefully you can see in the pictures that the cloth didn't stick to the bread and that the loaf rose in a nice round boule type shape.

Funny thing- I was talking on gmail with Laura and told her about how I was going to make some bannetons (I had originally planned on buying some cheap wicker baskets and sewing cloth linings, but forewent this option since it involved spending money) and she told me not to! I was really confused and couldn't figure out why she wouldn't want me to make this incredibly awesome thing! But she kept insisting, so I told her I would wait. I should perhaps mention now that it was January and that we hadn't seen each other for most of December. Anyway, the conversation was pretty funny because I was being super dense and just didn't get the hint.

me:

i was going to run to the store shortly

i need a food scale and some wicker baskets...

where do you think i could find those things?

laura: why wicker baskets?

s and s won't have those.

i would go to the nice food store or target

me: ah, the wicker baskets are for bread

laura: like

me: to make a banneton

laura: eeeeee

cough

me: it's like a floured basket for bread to rise in.

cough?

laura: yes

i know what it is....

me: oh, okay

laura: don't buy any.

me: you just said why wicker baskets...

laura: cough.

yes.

me: i'm not going to buy a banneton, they're super expensive

laura: yes.

me: i'm going to get a cheap wicker basket

laura: i know.

me: and cut up old tshirts and make one!

laura: yes

but

don't buy one yet.

me: okay.

but i want to use one today!

laura: well.

laura: uuughhhh

laura: you're killing this.

me: what?

okay fine

but i still need a scale

laura: okay.

what time are you going out?

me: don't know, before 3

laura: right.

me: do you need anything from the store?

laura: no, thanks.

laura: well

if you wanted to stop and get your xmas gift

on your way out.

laura: that might be wise.
me: okay, sure thing.

So, you might have guessed by now that Laura gave me a banneton for xmas, a real one made from wicker. It was a completely brilliant gift because I hadn't actually known what a banneton was until a few weeks prior and decided I really wanted one, but hadn't mentioned it to anyone. Laura apparently knows bread tools better than I do. I did end up making bread that day and used both the wicker banneton and the make shift cloth banneton, since the recipe made two loaves.

I like both methods but have definitely had trouble with dough sticking. I have tried using less flour, more flour, dryer area of the kitchen, more humid area of the kitchen, etc. I have since switched to dusting both the banneton and the cloth/colander contraption with a mixture of rice flour and AP flour on the advise of a thread on The Fresh Loaf. So far it has worked much much better than AP flour alone, but still not perfectly. I'm totally open to suggestions, if anyone has any.

Best Breakfast Ever!

2009-03-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not ever, but it was freaking delicious. Or frackin' delicious, as someone just said on NPR's Weekend Edition, "We have a frackin' good show today" and do we ever.
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Connie inspired me to try this recipe for whole wheat sourdough english muffins. A quick search turned up several other recipes for sourdough based english muffins that varied in the amount of starter, milk, sugar, and flour they used, but I figured I'd give this one a whirl first since Connie had success with it. I mixed up the starter, flour, and milk last night and let it sit on the counter. This morning I added the salt, honey, and baking soda and then supposedly should have been able to knead it a few times and roll it out.

I had some trouble with this. In spite of the recipe author's assurances that the dough would have thickened up by the morning, I still had a super sticky mass that stuck to the counter after I tried to cut out rounds for the muffins. I put the dough in the fridge for half an hour or so and then kept my hands wet while working the dough, which helped quite a bit. After cutting the rounds, dusting them generously with cornmeal, and letting them rise for a bit, I fired up the griddle!

Griddle you say? Well, if I were at home, I probably would have used the cast iron skillet Marge so brilliantly gave me, but I'm out at Jay's house in Shutesbury right now dog sitting for the week. One of the several perks of this house is Jay's superior oven (balanced by his complete lack of large enough bowls for mixing bread). My oven kind of looks like a tinker toy next to his, although I would argue that mine's probably much cleaner. Heh, anyway :D The top of the oven has a flat cast iron griddle surface that's pretty large and really awesome. I heated it up and then tossed the english muffins on! I cooked the first few at too high of a heat. They browned on the outside before they were cooked through. I split them open with a fork and toasted the insides on the griddle before buttering them and EATING THEM! Right. I turned the heat down for the rest of the muffins and had much better "griddle spring" as a result. The second batch puffed up nicely before browning on the outside. Success!

Funny thing is, I actually never really eat english muffins. It's not that I don't like them, but they're not my favorite thing and given the array of breakfast options usually at hand, I'm not inclined to reach for an english muffin. I made these for Meg though, because she loves them and often goes through a pack of english muffins a week! And I must say, they were delicious! And super easy! Unlike many of the times when Lauren will give me that look that says "you're going to make a mess and it's going to be way more effort and time than it's worth" when I say that I could just make some prepared food thing at home rather than buy it at the store, this is a totally easy and feasible alternative to the store bought thing.

Okay, so I have some english muffins, now what? Well, I made a few vegetarian sausage patties, tossed those on the back of the griddle, and then cracked a couple of eggs on the front to fry while the sausage heated through. While those were cooking I turned on the espresso machine (another huge perk of Jay's house) and made a cappuccino (my skills in this sphere could really use some work, but it was tasty). Flip the sausages, pull the eggs off the heat, toss a bit of Vermont cheddar on top and some freshly ground pepper, then add the sausage and some ketchup (I know... I was going to make a hollandaise sauce or something, but I ran out of time and was just hungry) and ta-daaaaa! A delicious breakfast!

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This afternoon Meg and I are going to watch the Met's live broadcast of La Sonnambula at the Cinemark in Hadley. I'll probably stuff some english muffins in my pockets :)

New Kitchen Toys and Pizza!!

2009-02-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

I was the lucky recipient of several new kitchen toys for my birthday this year.
My parents got me a Tovolo Spatulart flexible spatula, which should be great for gently lifting bread out of bowls or folding it over while it rises. I have a stiff dough scraper that's incredibly handy, but this one can bend itself to the curve of a bowl. Super cool!

They also sent me a new oven thermometer that measures accurately in the 50-100 degree range, which I really needed for controlling bread rises etc.

And! the fun just doesn't stop, a new kitchen timer (because I'm awful at remembering to set the timer on the microwave).

Marge and Lauren were also super heroes and gave me a cast iron skillet and a pizza stone respectively. I'm thanking them by giving the pizza stone a whirl tonight and cooking up two (hopefully) super tasty pizzas.

Toppings for pizza 1: roasted garlic, olive oil, roasted red peppers, shallots, blue cheese

Toppings for pizza 2: red sauce (organic italian herb), kalamata olives, mushrooms, baby spinach (maybe?), and fresh mozzarella

I can't decide which pizza I want to put the spinach on... We'll see! Both pizzas are (of course) on sourdough crusts that are partially whole wheat. Pizza shells are by far my favorite way to utilize extra sourdough starter. I'll let everyone know how the kitchen gadgets and the pizza stone work out and maybe take some pictures of the pizzas.

Candace and Meg were also wonderful and (separately, because they both brilliantly knew I loved chocolate) gave me an amazing box of chocolates and a chocolate bar that I'll save for a separate post!

pizza!

2009-02-26T14:30:00.000-08:00

A bunch of folks came over for pizza one night so that I could try out my new pizza stone (thanks Lauren!!). I made the usual sourdough whole wheat crust (which always seems a little dense for me, but I haven’t yet played with the recipe).

We made two pizzas, each one with different toppings on each half. The first had a slightly spicy red sauce with mushrooms, olives, onions, spinach, and fresh mozzarella on one half and red sauce, onions, spinach, mozzarella and parmesan cheese on the other.The second had an olive oil and garlic “sauce”, shallots, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, garlic, parmesan and blue cheese on one half and the same on the other side with the addition of spinach and olives.

Both pizzas were delicious! But I discovered a little late in the process that I needed something to function as a pizza peel to get the pizzas in and out of the oven. I ended up using an upside down cutting board, which worked okay. My friend Candace (who is an amazing cook) has had success using just a piece of cardboard, so I may try that next time. The pizza stone definitely made the crusts crispier and kept the oven hotter. I’m excited about using it more in the future.

Mustard

2009-02-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

I really suck at updating this blog. I’d like to pretend that it’s because I’m too busy doing exciting things in real life, but that’s really not the case. I’m going to try to play catch up with a couple of posts here and then we’ll see if I can commit to updating once a week.

In January I was rifling through my spice cabinet and wondered if I was ever going to finish the giant bag of mustard seeds I bought for making Indian food. A couple of days later I was flipping through Savour magazine (my mom got me a subscription… but it’s unfortunately mostly geared toward meat eaters) and happened upon a recipe for Spicy Guinness Mustard. Convenient? I thought so. I didn’t actually have any Guinness, but we did have a keg of BBC Coffeehouse Porter in the fridge, so I thought I would just swap out the beer. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. It was waaaay too spicy, both in terms of heat (and I like hot mustards) and in terms of the dominating flavor of the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. It also made a great deal more mustard than I had anticipated. So, I decided to experiment and add different things to the mustard to change the flavor, mostly just sweeteners. The results, according to my roommates and coworkers, were much improved. The mustard’s all gone now and they keep asking me to make more. I think I’m going to try champagne shallot mustard next. Anyway, here’s what I ended up with:

Spicy Guinness Mustard Take 2 (and 3 and 4)

12-oz. BBC Coffeehouse Porter
1 1⁄2 cups brown mustard seeds (10 oz.)
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1⁄4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1⁄4 tsp. ground cloves
1⁄4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1⁄4 tsp. ground allspice

Divide 3 ways.

To the first batch I added 3 cloves of garlic (minced and blended with the rest of the mustard) and 1-2 T of really sweet balsamic vinegar (I don’t remember how much, I just did it to taste). This one was by far the favorite of the three.

To the second batch I added molasses (1-2 T), brown sugar (1 T) and some cinnamon

To the third I added honey (1-2 T) and apple cider vinegar (1-2 T). This was the second favorite I think.

Pictures!

The ingredients assembled. It was actually way easier than I thought it would be.

Mixing everything together.

How it looks from the side.

You can see how much of the liquid the mustard seeds absorbed. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the finished product.

The end!

Polenta

2009-02-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

Perhaps surprisingly, I first had polenta in a college dining hall, which is definitely not the best place to try a new food. I might have eaten it when I was younger but I don’t really remember. Usually if we ate corn meal based things at home, my mom would slice the dough into rounds and fry it for breakfast, which made it much crispier than the polenta I later had in college. In the dining hall it was almost always topped with a black bean sauce and was actually one of the better things I’ve eaten at Smith. Prior to the consolidating dining/themed dining halls shift, vegetarian fare was often less than appealing. One of the few good things I can say about the many changes that have occurred at Smith in the past few years is that there is a great deal more vegetarian food available now than there was before.

Fast forward to now. I had a bunch of cornmeal sitting around the kitchen because I use it when I bake bread or make pizza, but that was about it. Then I was reading a food magazine and came across a recipe for creamy polenta. The creamy part didn’t appeal to me. I wanted something less like grits or cream of wheat and more like a patty, so I looked up some other recipes.

In the end I didn’t follow any one particular recipe, I just sort of put whatever I wanted in it, but it turned out well I think. All of the recipes called for what I thought was a huge amount of cornmeal (3+cups) and even after cutting back it still made more than I expected. I think I used a cup and a half of cornmeal, maybe 2 cups, not sure. I warmed a little bit of water in a pan on the stove and whisked the cornmeal into it. After it came to a simmer I stirred in some tomato sauce, garlic salt, and Italian seasoning. I brought it back to a simmer until the cornmeal was soft.

Next I spread it on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. It was really thick and a little tricky to spread. Then it went into the fridge to solidify while I sautéed some garlic, onions, spinach, beans, and crushed tomatoes.

When the polenta had cooled I flipped it out onto a cutting board, sliced it up, and topped it with the veggie tomato sauté. I thought it was really delicious but my roommates weren’t so keen. It did look a little weird and to be honest the texture is kind of strange at first. It does well if you fry it after slicing it or bake it in the oven with a sauce on top. I ended up eating almost all of the polenta myself over the course of a week. I was a little tired of it at the end, but it wasn’t too bad. The polenta turned out to be incredibly versatile. I put an alfredo sauce on it once, more plain tomato sauce another time, and I tried my hand at a spicy black bean sauce that was reminiscent of (but hopefully much better than!) the one I first had at Smith.

All in all I think polenta’s definitely something I’ll try again but perhaps in a much smaller batch.

Survey

2009-01-14T11:23:00.001-08:00

Is this white font on a dark blue background difficult to read? Should I change it? Does anyone actually read this but me?

:D

Sourdough and yay 2009!

2009-01-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

I celebrated this new year by baking bread, a whole lot of it. Last year for new years, one of my goals was to learn to bake bread, specifically sourdough. Toward that end, I began researching sourdough on January 1st, 2008 and mixed up my first sourdough starter on January 4th, 2008. It took a couple of weeks for it to get going and do its yeasty thing, but by mid January I was baking my first loaves of sourdough bread. A year of mostly frequent (but often infrequent) regular feedings later, along with the help of roommates while I was away in June, my sourdough is still alive and kicking and one year old!

I have mostly fed my sourdough with AP flour, usually King Arthur, because that's what I have on hand. I occasionally fed it with whole wheat flour, particularly when I wanted to give it a boost before baking or if I wanted to incorporate some whole wheat into a bread that didn't call for it in the recipe. I have also used rye flour recently, but more on that later.

I usually keep one jar or container of starter in the fridge as a reserve, that consists of just flour and water (and natural yeast of course). In addition, I'll often have another container of starter in the kitchen at room temperature that I'm building up for whatever kind of bread I'm next making. I'll also have separate containers for any other kind of stuff that I might want to add to the starter beyond just flour and water.

On the non-wheat front, I've added a few other things to the starter at various points to see how they would alter the resulting loaves. I have added potatoes (sliced thin) and potato water, I have added whey (leftover from making cheese), milk, sugar (never in a starter that I've kept), malted barley, and I think I'm going to try adding beer to one this week.

I sometimes try to let the water I use to feed the starter sit out so that the chlorine can evaporate and it can come to room temperature etc, but mostly I just use lukewarm tap water from the kitchen faucet. I know that there are sourdough purists out there who use only filtered spring water and stone ground organic wheat to feed their starters, but I don't really have the time, energy or money for that and my starter doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear because of it.

I also don't really regulate the water to flour proportions I use when feeding my starter. Many of the "authoritative" websites and books I've read obsessively monitor the different water to flour ratios they use to feed their starters and any effects each has on the bread. I honestly don't often measure when feeding my starter. There, I said it. I usually shoot for roughly equal parts flour and water (for a 100% hydrated starter), but that varies give or take a quarter cup in either direction.

The new reformed 2009 joe however, is trying to be much more scientific (read: anal) about his sourdough starter. I have been keeping track of the performance of my starter (how much it rises in a given time and at what temperature etc) as well as its hydration level. I started to do this for two reasons, the first being that the past year has had a great deal of ups and downs as far as my sourdough breads have been concerned and now that I've had my fun getting to know sourdough and playing with different things, I'd like to move toward establishing more control and regularity, so that I can consistently turn out good loaves of bread. The second reason is that I decided to celebrate the new year by attacking a set of recipes that specify certain hydration levels for starters as well as particular methods for activating and building up one's starter prior to actually using it in the recipe. They were all sourdough rye recipes, but I'm going to use a separate post to talk about those.

All in all, 2008 was a great year in which I baked dozens and dozens of loaves of bread, many of which were sourdough, a few of which turned out really well, and several of which were complete disasters. I was thinking of declaring 2009 the year in which I tackled some other baked good, both scones and muffins were in the running, but I haven't decided yet. For now, January has been a month of pushing my bread skills to the next level and actually taking the time to research and plan before baking and then learn something from the results of each loaf I make, as opposed to my the hell with it I never really measure baking is just for fun approach in 2008. So far, so good!

12 Beers of Christmas Wrap-Up

2009-01-04T20:11:00.000-08:00

Okay so I dropped the ball and didn't keep updating with reviews of the rest of the beers I tried over the holidays. I took notes on some of them if I was at home and bored, which I'll copy down here for the few I've missed, hopefully wrapping up the beer-themed posts.

Also, in beer news, Marge got our house a keg for Christmas! She's so thoughtful. So we now have the Berkshire Brewing Company's Coffeehouse Porter on tap. It's one of my all-time favorite beers and we had a pony keg of it last winter that went quickly. Having it on tap again is truly the gift that keeps on giving, for at least the next two weeks :D

12 Beers of Christmas

1. Thirsty Dog Brewing Company's Old Leghumper

2. Founders Breakfast Stout

3. Bell's Special Double Cream Stout

4. Columbus Brewing Company 1859 Porter

5. Moylan's Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale

6. Murphy’s Draught Style Stout

In a can with a widget for $1.80. I don’t know the official way to pour canned stouts with widgets, but I upended the whole thing into a pint glass and lifted it slowly out. It had a thick, cream tan head that stayed until I finished the beer. It had a very strong yeasty aroma and I could really smell the alcohol. The taste was surprisingly sweet and honeyed given the smell with sort of an oily mouthfeel that kind of coated and lingered on my tongue. Not entirely pleasant. It has a smooth, yeasty/bready taste and no hint of hops. A decent enough beer but probably wouldn’t get it again.

7. Bell’s Amber Ale

In a bottle ~$2. Poured a golden honey color with a thin head that left white lacing. It had a sweet, malty aroma with a hint of floral hops. Light mouthfeel, medium to high carbonation with a slightly bready aftertaste. It was a good, refreshing beer with a slight bitterniss of hops on the tip of the tongue balanced by an overall sweetness and lingering grainy taste. Very drinkable. I’m a definite fan of Bell’s.

8. Shiner Boch

Ew. I tried it because my dad brought it home. He had tried it because a coworker ordered it while they were on a business trip in Texas. It wasn’t any good.

9. Great Lakes Brewing Co. Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

I had this beer several times while I was home. My dad bought me a six pack and I had it on tap at the Vegiterranean http://www.thevegiterranean.com/, a vegan restaurant Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders opened in Akron, Ohio. (I should update about this lunch/place sometime). I’ve had a few of the GLB Co’s beers in the past couple of years and this is by far my favorite. I never took formal tasting notes, but this beer was consistently good.

aaaand! then i never finished this post. the holidays happened and then there was some traveling, and now i'm back in northampton and have moved on to other things, namely bread. so, the beer reviews will give way to some bread reviews for a while. hopefully completed posts.

On the 7th beer of... wow, I drink a lot of beer.

2008-12-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

I accompanied my parents on some holiday shopping yesterday, which included a place called the World Market, a sometimes creepy in a culturally appropriating the 3rd world kind of way store that nevertheless, has a really good selection of gourmet foods (especially chocolate, coffee, tea, mustard and spices). They also have a good selection of beer, but the best part is that they sell most of their beers as individual bottles as well as in 6-packs. There were so many beers I had never tried, so I put together a mixed pack to drink at home this week. Maybe I should mention here that I eat tons of fruits and vegetables and healthy things as well, I'm just using this vacation to focus on beer. After all, it's a vacation, right? So my mixed pack included the following:

Murphy's Irish Stout

Bell's Special Double Cream Stout

Bell’s Amber Ale

Abita Turbo Dog

+ 2 cans of other stouts that I can't remember...

updates on tastings to follow!

Friday night beer recap! On the 3rd-6th beers of Christmas:

2008-12-23T11:51:00.001-08:00

Last Friday I made the rounds of a few places in the Short North and caught up with several friends I hadn't seen in a while (this seems to be the trend for my Columbus visits: food, beer, playing catch-up with old friends). We went to Betty's for dinner, Jeni's Ice Creams for dessert, and the Surly Girl Saloon for drinks.

I had a veggie melt ($7) at Betty's, that was tasty and came with incredibly good garlic mashed potatoes. It was a lot of food for the price and my beer was tasty too! I had a Bell's Special Double Cream Stout, which I'm going to wait to review because I liked it so much I bought a bottle that's chilling in the garage.

Jeni's has really interesting and inventive flavor combinations that I haven't seen anywhere else (also super expensive). I have been adventurous the last two times I went there and was moderately impressed with the results, so this time I stuck to the good stuff and ordered the Dark Chocolate Gelato ($3.75/one scoop). It was delicious but the true surprise was the cone! I don't know where they get their cones or if they make their own, but the sugar cone was delicious, crisp and had a strong vanilla flavor. I heart ice cream. The end.

After dessert we met up with other folks at the Surly Girl Saloon. I really like the Surly Girl and have gone there every time I'm home since it opened (2005?). It's women-owned (same folks as Betty's in fact) and the menu tells you which beers are local, organic, and from women-owned breweries. They 24 beers on draft and in the past I've had a number of them. One that sticks out in my mind was Avery's Maharaja, probably because it was the first Imperial IPA I ever had. It was a very alcoholic, almost wine-like beer. I remember it being very hoppy, fruity and citrusy (can I make up words here?). Anyway, they didn't have that one on tap, so I started with the Columbus Brewing Company 1859 Porter ($5), supposedly based on a recipe from 1859. It was pretty much exactly what I think of when I think of a porter, very drinkable with earthy roasted aromas and a roasted malt and chocolate taste. It was good but not super impressive, so I switched gears and went with a more robust, stronger beer next. I ordered the Moylan's Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale ($5), which was good. It was really rich and a little sweet and heavy, but definitely more along the lines of what I was looking for than the CBC porter. The Surly Girl has always struck me as a bit expensive and I'm sure I could have found CBC on tap for less elsewhere, but the environment is fun and the back room is a good place to camp out and drink with friends.

All in all a super fun evening with several super fun people!

On the (insert number) day of Christmas-

2008-12-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

I met a friend for lunch yesterday at Bodega, a cafe/bar/restaurant in the Short North conveniently about a block from where I was staying with my sister (good thing too, as there was a -15 wind chill). I had been once before for lunch (but no beer) around Thanksgiving and had a glazed pear and onion panini, which sounded much better than it actually was (the pear was overcooked and basically became jam: good idea, poor execution). This time however, I avoided the long panini list and ordered a pizza with marinated portobellos, red peppers, and fontina cheese. The pizza was good, the ingredient combination was tasty, but there was very little cheese on it; when they first brought it out I thought I had mistakenly ordered a cheeseless pizza! It was a decent size for the price though, and of course, pizza is the perfect companion for beer.

I wish I had more time to explore Bodega's beer offerings, because they were substantial. I didn't count the number of taps but there must have been close to 50. The beer menu was 5 pages long and included a large number of bottles, which I didn't pay as much attention to. I wanted to try something seasonal and local, but out of the dozen or so seasonal beers, the only ones that appealed to me I had tried previously at the Surly Girl or could easily get in Massachusetts. I, like the sucker for advertising that I am, went instead with their most popular (and one of the most expensive) beers on draft, the Founders Breakfast Stout. It was $4 for an 8oz glass (pint glasses are 16oz, so it would have been $8/pint). I didn't take any tasting notes because I was busy catching up with aforementioned friend I hadn't seen in 2 years. This also meant that I didn't spend much time thinking about the beer as I was drinking it, because I was too busy talking/listening. A sad fate indeed :D I was expecting something great, since I rarely pay that much for a pint, but I honestly don't remember the specifics of the beer, which is a shame because it's supposed to be really good. All in all, I'll have to try it again to decide if it's any good and the moral of the story is that I shouldn't buy expensive beers that I really want to taste if I'm planning on ignoring them once they're on the table.

12 Beers of (insert holiday here)

2008-12-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

While I'm visiting my folks in Columbus, Ohio, I thought I'd make the most of the change of location and try as many local beers as I could. Ohio however, isn't exactly known as the beer capital of the midwest, so I've expanded my parameter to include beers that I haven't seen around Massachusetts.

I started with Thirsty Dog Brewing Company's Old Leghumper. I bought a six-pack for $9 to drink at my sister's Christmas Movie Costume Party this weekend (pictures of this sure to follow).

The Old Leghumper was a little light for a "robust porter", lightly carbonated with very little head that dissipated quickly after pouring. A lot of roasted malt and chocolate aromas, slightly sweet smelling but not too sweet tasting, which was nice (I don't really like sweet beers), not much on the hops front. It was a very drinkable beer; I had most of the 6-pack over the course of the evening, which at 5.70% ABV wasn't difficult to do. I drank one from the bottle, which accented the bitter chocolate and gave it a slightly metallic, bitter taste (possibly just from the cap residue). Overall a good beer but not super impressionable.

Food and Beer Blog!

2008-12-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

I finally found the time to sit down and make the food blog that I keep talking about. This will hopefully be the place where I share all of the recipes I make, pictures of food I take, and generally relate my gustatory adventures. I'll try to play catch up and post some of the (many, many) images I have of food and bread that I've made, but for now I'll start by keeping track of the beers I'm trying while home for the holidays. Hope you all enjoy reading as much as I do eating and drinking!