Bagels.

It's been a while since I talked about bagels. Since they are one of the staples of my baking routine even throughout the summer---which is a sure sign that they are something we must have on hand at any cost---I'm surprised at how little, or at least how unsystematically, I have discussed them here on my little corner of cyberspace. (Hah, flashback to 1999...)

Yesterday, per M's request, I gave the egg bagel concept another shot, and I baked them this morning. He had to leave before they were done, but I had the luxury of breakfasting on a fresh one. I used 3 whole eggs this time, cutting back the water to 6 oz (from 9) because irrationally I couldn't believe eggs really counted as that much liquid, but it was indeed too much. I had to add 3-4 Tbsp of extra flour to get the dough to the usual stiffness, and as I was shaping them I thought they weren't overly tacky, but the dough felt too soft. Last time, when I used all yolks, this yielded fragile bagels that were majorly lacking in chewiness. Nevertheless this time, though you can see below that the color is definitely not the bright yellow that some shops' egg bagels have, they maintained a proper chewiness and did not threaten to fall apart as I sliced them. They taste great. My next modification will be to add a couple of yolks to the 3 eggs and start out adding less water.

Note the impressive uniformity. Ha, ha.

Usually I double the basic bagel recipe (fully copied out here) in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Everyday. This differs from his previous version in that it does not require a sponge, but only a pre-mixed (and pre-formed) dough that spends the night in the fridge and comes out in the morning for a baking soda bath. Sounds like a fun little slumber party or something. Except then they get baked in a very hot oven and eaten in short order. Actually I have to prep and package them all for storage in the freezer---by far the only aspect of bagel-making that approaches tedium. Okay, sometimes it is downright tedious. But homemade bagels are not under any circumstances to be left out for more than six hours (in a tightly closed paper bag). I defiantly tested that rule once, and I'm just glad I still have all my teeth intact. For future use, it's best to slice each bagel as soon as it's cooled, wrap each half in plastic wrap or foil, and place the halves together in a large plastic freezer bag. I can't tell any difference between a bagel that's been out of the oven for half an hour or one that has been in the freezer (packed carefully) for two weeks, and toasted to order. So this is a pretty satisfactory system.

A note about doubling this recipe: it's a non-negotiable for me because the boiling and baking operation is something I'd rather do less often if I have the chance, and my fridge pretty easily fits the two large baking sheets needed for the double batch. However, I have a powerhouse of a Kitchenaid mixer (thanks Mom and Dad!) and even it struggled when I tried combining the two batches of stiff dough. I found the best and least inconvenient way to double the recipe is to mix each batch separately. Prep the water, yeast, etc. while the first batch is being mixed. Then while that dough is resting to hydrate the flour, mix the second batch. And it works out pretty well so that when the first batch is ready for its second mixing, the second batch is resting.  Then when they're both mixed and ready for the rise, I briefly knead them together to form one ball. That's not strictly necessary; you could just let them rise in two separate bowls. But that would be one more bowl to clean, which does not tempt me.

More random notes:

• I use the barley malt syrup. Yes it is $6.50 a jar at Whole Foods (that's expensive for me, to be clear), but it lasts a while and is worth the subtle complexity it provides. I am not a supertaster or anything like it, so if I can notice the difference, you will too. For the poaching liquid I do usually omit the malt syrup because I don't notice a huge increase in flavor by adding it there. 
• I use table salt and Pillsbury or Gold Medal bread flour---nothing special. 
• After trying both, my preferred shaping method is to poke a hole in the dough ball and then stretch it. (He notes that the other method, creating a rope which you join together at the ends, is the one preferred by professional bagel makers. Like this crazy guy.) 
• As far as toppings, the egg white wash as they come out of the bath is not optional: you will still lose a few seeds here and there as they get sliced later, but nowhere near the amount that come off if you skip the egg white. I do half poppy seeds (M's preference), half sesame seeds (my preference). I've tried the cinnamon raisin bagels and they were fine but the raisins tend to fall out in significant numbers when you are shaping, and I found that annoying. 
• I get obsessive about measuring out each dough ball to equal somewhere between 3 3/4 and 4 1/4 oz, but I let it go if one or two weigh in at 4 3/8 oz. For those mornings when we wake up ravenous. Right. These make a very reasonably sized bagel. None of this monster-sized nonsense where you're eating a cup of flour for breakfast.

So that's my little bagel review. They're really worth a try. As someone who is absolutely "below average," let's say, when it comes to shaping any kind of dough, yes it takes a little practice to get the bagels to look halfway decent. And I'm still not consistent with that yet (see photos above). But less than perfect shaping is not going to destroy your bagels. Follow the directions, and they will come out well.
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More rye news: I just found this deli rye bread recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum, helpfully streamlined at Smitten Kitchen, that uses whole grain rye flour (she doesn't specify in the recipe, but I skimmed through the comments and found that she used whole grain Arrowhead Mills like I have). So my plan is now to try this recipe before attempting to tweak the previously used CI one.

I must here repeat my plea that some tech geek out there invent a comment system for use on cooking blogs  that automatically categorizes and highlights comments from people who have actually made the recipe in question, so that one can more easily skim past all the "oh that looks deliiiish gurl" remarks. It could be color-coded for questions, useless flattering remarks (sorry, but especially on "celebrity" food blogs, why do people think the famous blogger, who has to weed through all these comments, needs their anonymous affirmation?), and helpful feedback/review-type comments that some of us really want to find sometimes. Sorry, I'm cranky and I think it's time for morning snack #1. (Just about 3 1/2 months to go, and then I will have to return to a normal person diet---it's nothing short of mysterious that I have not ballooned grotesquely. I guess the baby really is helping absorb the effects of all this snacking.)

all about rye

I still haven't gotten around to trying that rye bread again--which I just realized I never properly "reviewed" here. The verdict was that this was a fine first attempt with great flavor, but as expected (given my substitution of whole grain rye for the medium rye the recipe called for), it was noticeably more dense than usual deli rye breads. I was thinking next time I would try adding vital wheat gluten in hopes of giving it a little lift. But somehow "next time" has not rolled around yet. Laziness.

I did, however, make a great muffin recipe from the previously maligned Whole Grain Baking. As I said in the rye bread post, I marked about five more recipes that will determine whether I give up on this book or, at the very least, copy down the few recipes I found worthwhile and then pass it along to someone who might better appreciate it. It is a huge book and I hate to have it taking up precious shelf space if there are only a couple things I like or want to make from it. But I successfully adapted this recipe, originally ham and Swiss rye muffins, to help use up some of the massive amounts of kielbasa left over from Easter. (My in-laws brought down about 800 lbs of the good stuff with them from a butcher up north.) I so rarely think to make savory muffins, it's terrible; but with this one in my repertoire I think I'll remember the option more readily. Plus whole grains are healthy and all that, which is more than I could say for my (literally) sugar-coated, cakey blueberry muffin recipe, that's for sure...

Sausage and Cheese Rye Muffins
Adapted from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking, p. 47
Yield: 1 dozen

Note about the yield: I thought my muffin pan was standard, but with this as with some other recipes I've tried, it seemed like all the batter couldn't possibly fit into those dozen cups without spilling over. So I ended up getting another dozen mini muffins out of this. My "regular" sized muffins only took about 20 minutes to bake through, though the original recipe specifies 25-27 minutes. All that to say, your mileage may vary.

2 cups (7 1/2 oz.) whole grain rye flour
3/4 cup (3 1/8 oz.) bread flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1 large egg
1 1/2 c. buttermilk
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
4 oz. finely diced smoked sausage, such as kielbasa

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease a muffin tin with Baker's Joy, or use paper liners and spray them a bit just to make sure there's no sticking. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the 1 cup cheese and toss to mix.

2. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg, butter, and buttermilk, then add to the flour mixture, stirring just til evenly moistened. Fold in the diced sausage.

3. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan(s) (see note about yield above) and sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese over the tops. Bake muffins until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then remove onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve warm, or once cooled, refrigerate or (better yet) freeze the muffins. (I think these qualify as perishable because of the sausage.) They will keep wonderfully in the freezer for a couple of months.

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... as a P.S., since this is a very rye-themed post: last month I also made the rye seed crackers from Artisan Breads Every Day (pp. 133-36). I found them startlingly easy and surprisingly delicious. I'm not that much of a cracker person and I loathe rolling out dough of any sort, so I'm not even sure what made me try these, but I am certainly glad I did. They were so quick to make, and the dough was a dream to work with, which I did not expect at all. Highly recommend with cheese and fruit for a picnic-esque meal--- which is in fact how I used them, on our anniversary picnic. Given the "venue," this year's menu was considerably less fussy than last year's, and besides said crackers and cheese included shrimp cocktail (solely because I was craving it and Whole Foods had some fine specimens on sale), an ambrosia-style fruit salad, and a spinach salad with this (very anchovy-ish) green goddess dressing.

I am such a good wife.*

*Or, Rye bread, at long last.

Since marriage I have tried to make the vast majority of our breads and baked goods at home. It's one part the love of baking, one part the superior quality one (usually) gets when making breads fresh, and one part utter sticker shock when I calculate the mark-up on any bread that is bought at the store (let alone at the artisan bakery of your choice).  In my baking "career" I have more or less successfully made white and whole wheat sandwich bread, bagels, ciabatta, rustic Italian bread, baguettes, challah, babka, yeast rolls, biscuits, flatbreads, quick breads, etc, etc. And it only took me four years to get around to making my husband's very favorite kind of bread. Yes. I am such a good wife.

M has suffered through bad outcomes of whole wheat bread experiments for as long as we've known each other. The current (mostly) whole wheat sandwich bread I make, tweaked from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday, is plenty acceptable to both of us for toast and sandwich purposes, and finally we enjoy a  bread that isn't bitter and/or dense as a brick; but it's still not something we'd jump at if we didn't know it was healthier, and therefore a better everyday choice, than white bread.

On a couple of occasions when M was uncomplainingly eating this or less successful bread experiments of mine, he mentioned casually but directly that rye was his favorite kind of bread. Hint, hint. I would nod, and make a mental note to look into that, but forget. Rye flour is expensive (comparatively) and hard to find (comparatively), and frankly since it's not my favorite kind of bread, and I'm the baker here, it has been shoved to the back burner time after time. (So now you know for sure I was being facetious about the good wife bit.)

Over Christmas vacation, making our usual rounds to all the NJ diners he grew up with, M would order rye toast with nearly every breakfast. I started to follow suit and realized, hey, this stuff wasn't bad. When we got back home I determined it was time to find and perfect a rye bread recipe so that my husband wouldn't have to keep hinting and waiting for another however many years. Now, a mere three months later, I have found a rye bread recipe (Baking Illustrated's Jewish deli rye bread), I have made it once with minimal modification (halved to make one "small" loaf for the first trial, and used whole grain rather than light or medium rye), and the verdict? I think it's pretty darn good. But I'm still waiting for the real judge to get home and try a slice.

Jewish deli rye bread. (By the way, does this look like a "small loaf" to you? It's not. That's what the recipe authors call it, but it is not. Fine by me.)

This same day (albeit before the bread had come out of the oven for tasting!) I ordered Baking Illustrated with an Amazon gift card from Christmas (appreciate my restraint--holding onto even part of an Amazon gift card for three months is possibly a record for me). I checked it out from the library a couple weeks ago and have made the snickerdoodles (good), peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (goooood), and now the rye bread (with modification noted above), and given those results plus a strong desire to make probably 95% of the rest of the recipes immediately, I figure I can get my money's worth out of this cookbook in no time. Besides, my only other true baking cookbook, King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, was such a flop, I am sorry to say. (Maybe I will report more on that some time. I recently went through and marked about 5 more recipes to try, as sort of an ultimatum--- if they aren't worthwhile, out goes the book. I need the shelf space.) There are always cooking (and baking) blogs for finding new recipes, but they are never as thoroughly tested (or "guaranteed," if you will) as Cook's Illustrated's are, and the hour is quickly coming when I will have much less time and energy to devote to this or any other hobby. This is because we have a baby on the way, and I hear they are sort of demanding, particularly in the beginning... Check back in a year and this blog (if it's been updated at all) will be all about troubleshooting homemade baby food, and/or maternal diet fare for those postpartum months. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So... off to make some fried pickles for dinner. (Seriously. These. Will report back.)

a rainy day AND a sick day leaves only one option for lunch:

I feel like winter is slipping through my fingers all too fast, and I still have so many soups and oven-dependent recipes I wanted to be making. I keep defaulting to the tried and true, or to sandwiches (?? see below, it's a special kind of sandwich with Patak meat), and I've got to stop.

Though I don't feel like it, in the interests of hopefully, eventually blogging through Artisan Breads Everyday, I will post a picture and say a few words about the hoagie/cheesesteak roll recipe I tried with high expectations lat week. A couple of things went wrong on my end, namely running out of bread flour about halfway through the measuring, and making the mistake of using bleached rather than unbleached all-purpose flour in its place. So I'm not sure how much that had to do with it, but I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor of my custom (ahem) dough. I added the optional barley malt syrup since I keep it on hand for bagels anyway, but it still kind of fell flat. As usual, shaping is going to take some practice. Even so, they're decent rolls and I'd like to give them a try again with the right kind of flour. I'm not sure how much value this little review even has with that rather large variable being off...meh.

This is Patak's Black Forest ham, with plenty of spicy brown mustard and mayo and of course a pickle and cheddar cheese. I think I know why I fall back on sandwiches too much. 

Oh, and speaking of breads, a P.S. on the whole wheat ciabatta mentioned previously. It is too sweet for me. I understand you have to have a little sugar to offset the whole wheat flour's bitterness, but I will make a note to cut it by half next time. Otherwise, it's a nice bread. It looks pretty. But I will still always prefer the ever so unhealthy original white kind. I don't think it'll kill us to alternate between the two. 

Babka saga finale

Don't ask why I dragged this out into three installments, when it was an easy one-afternoon project. As I've observed with other eastern European delicacies, the dough itself is only slightly sweet (it's hard to taste any sweetness in it at all with a sugar-loaded American palate like mine). But contrasted with the chocolate it's wonderful. Peter doesn't give very specific instructions for baking for each way that you can shape the bread (loaf, coffee-cake style in a tube pan, or braided like this), so FWIW, my kranz-style loaf took 40 minutes (rotated once halfway through) to reach the desired 185 degree internal temp. Some of the edges burned just slightly, but nothing too bad. I am so glad I finally made this bread. Half of it did indeed go to the neighbors, so we'll see what the verdict is on authenticity/overall deliciousness from an objective third party. :) Next up (after moving!): Polish poppyseed roll. I still have to decide on a recipe for that one...

Babka saga part II

While the first rise was finishing I made the filling:

Herr Reinhart says to grind the chocolate in a food processor, or if you don't have one, chop it as small as possible. This was my best effort. (The lighter stuff is the cinnamon). We'll see how it works.

This is the chocolate I used. The price is right, and the flavor is oh so wrong. In the right way.

This is the filling once the butter has been added to the chopped chocolate and cinnamon. Do you know how much restraint it took me not to eat this as is?

And this is the soft pillowy dough rolled out to the size of a small car, ready to be rolled up jellyroll style and rocked gently to about 18" in length. Since my loaf pans are packed away I opted to make my bread kranz-cake (Israeli) style, which means braided. I think it's prettier this way too, even though my braid is a little too loose, so I'm hoping the chocolate doesn't start falling out of the bread and melting everywhere when it bakes.

I am now waiting on the second rise to finish, at which point I will bake the bread...

Just kidding!

Today, some nine days before moving, against the common sense which would dictate focusing my energies on things like packing, or even just sitting down and thinking through logistics, I was overcome with the need to make, at long last, Peter Reinhart's chocolate cinnamon babka. Why I have waited so long, having owned this magnificent book for two years, I cannot tell. If it comes out well it might make a proper goodbye gift to our Polish neighbors who have been the best neighbors anyone could ask for; if it comes out poorly, well, it will be preparation for when I move into a house with a gas oven. *mournful sigh* I seriously am not sure what effect that will have on my baking mojo (what mojo I have), because all I hear is that electric ovens are so much more reliable, so much better for bread baking (because the heat is less dry, which makes for better crusts), etc., etc. I have never had gas appliances of any kind and frankly gas scares me. I think of it as "the silent killer." No offense to heart disease which I think is what rightfully claims that title. I will probably have five carbon monoxide detectors in our 2000 sq ft house. I exaggerate, but the uncertainty of how things will go with this new oven makes me want to especially cherish this my last (for real---I am packing away the mixer this weekend!) baking project in the apartment.

And as a special last-baking-project-ever-for-now feature, I am going to take pictures at each step of the way like any self-respecting food blogger normally does.

Cream the butter and the sugar just til mixed.

Mixing in action. (I never promised the photos would be any good.)

Once the four egg yolks are added the dough becomes a lovely golden yellow.

And that is where we find ourselves: I kneaded the dough (what a dream to knead--soft as a pillow) for a couple of minutes after adding the flour, milk, and yeast to the butter-egg yolk mixture, and now I await the end of the first 2 1/2 hour rise. As an aside, the recipe calls for 2 Tablespoons of yeast, which is a huge amount for one (albeit large) loaf. I was a little worried about it being a typo and having the dough explode while it sits out for two hours at room temp, so we'll see. 

baking anticipation

While I'm at it, here's my list of desserts/baked goods that I will be making as soon as cool weather sets in:
1. Makowiec, per this Fresh Loaf recipe. It calls for the whipping of egg whites (my most dreaded baking-related task) but it seems it's just to lighten the filling, so I won't sweat it if (yet again) I fail to achieve stiff peaks. My husband has fond memories of his Hungarian grandmother making this bread for holidays. I've had bakery versions and am anxious to see if I can make a decent one at home.

2. Chocolate-dipped almond biscotti (recipe below). Besides the extensive oven time, they feel like such a fall/winter snack to me. These were one of the first successful things I ever baked. The recipe comes from a much-referenced copy of Gourmet's Casual Entertaining, Random House: New York, 2001. (Unlike many Gourmet recipes it is not on Epicurious so far as I can tell.)
1 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. grated orange zest
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 whole egg + 1 egg white
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. whole almonds, toasted then coarsely chopped
6 oz. bitter- or semi-sweet chocolate, for dipping

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees and adjust a rack to the middle level. In a medium bowl combine the flour, sugar, orange zest, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, beat together the egg, egg white, and vanilla to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat just til combined. Stir in chopped almonds.
2. Use floured hands to form the dough into a 12x2" log and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until pale golden, about 45 mins. (Do not turn off oven at this point.) Cool the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the log, peeling off the parchment carefully if it sticks, to a cutting board. Use a sharp serrated knife to cut diagonally into 1/2" thick slices. Place slices back on the baking sheet and return to the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn slices and bake another 10 minutes, until crisp. Transfer biscotti to a rack to cool.
3. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler, then dip the top (curved) edge of each cookie in the melted chocolate. Transfer them to a sheet of wax paper set on a large plate or baking sheet, then chill in fridge til chocolate is set, about 5 mins.
Yield: 18 cookies. If you don't dip them, you can keep them at room temperature for about a week. Once dipped, they can be held in the fridge for up to a day.

3. Gingerbread. I haven't yet found a perfectly moist, perfectly spiced cake, but I'm sure it's out there. This chocolate-chip variation is certainly a winner in its own right. I've been making it for several years. David Lebovitz's fresh ginger cake is also supposed to be fantastic.

4. Pumpkin "bread" (it's cake, let's be honest). Also a great Williams-Sonoma recipe I found years ago. I like making it into muffins, or just using a regular loaf pan (not their $30 specialty one) and watching the oven time accordingly. Pairing it with rich vanilla bean ice cream (this year I can make my own!) makes for an insanely good fall dessert.

5. Butter Rum Cake (from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor). I only make the cake and half the amount of glaze, never the rum custard sauce (as tempting as that sounds), and it's still a beautiful dessert with the most amazing texture. It's not greasy like pound cakes can be.

6. Dark chocolate & cherry bread pudding. This is a Pam Anderson recipe I actually have scribbled on a napkin stuffed into my recipe binder, though I'm sure it's online somewhere. I think I was waiting at the doctor's office and reading one of those women's magazines when I found this recipe and, knowing Pam's reputation, thought I should find some way to copy it. That was a while ago and I still haven't made it, but it is a priority this year.

7. Maple-Walnut Pear Cake. Another untried recipe, from David Lebovitz (Ready for Dessert). The flavors sound pretty amazing, so no explanation needed. It's also a smaller cake (one 9" pan), which is how I adjust most recipes for us, so that's a plus.

8. Sea salt caramels, recipe here: lacking true fleur de sel I used 3/4 tsp. coarse ground sea salt, and it worked. You just don't make caramels in the summer. After November they feel right.

9. Big apple pancake. We had this for Sunday "breakfast" (what we do for lunch after church) all the time last winter. It requires the same amount of oven time as a pan of bacon, so you put both in the oven and you have an easy, delicious breakfast 15 minutes later. It doesn't always puff up uniformly, so don't count on it being perfectly picturesque.

10. Biscuits. Cream, buttermilk, herbed, drop--it doesn't matter. To me nothing says a hearty winter meal like a fresh pan of biscuits, and I miss them.

"Focaccia? She's not here right now."

Today I came across this old (1987) NYT article in which the author recounts responses she got, like the one in this post's title, when phoning restaurants across the city in search of focaccia, which had just started to "make a dent" at the time. Funny to see her accurate prophecy about an increase in popularity. It reminded me I haven't yet made a single focaccia all summer, which should change this weekend.

This was bagel day, though, and thanks to a new baking sheet (actually old, just new to this purpose) that all but burned the bottoms of one batch meant to be given away, tomorrow will probably also be bagel day. Oh well. One of my experiments for this round was determining how many pans of bagel dough I can fit into my refrigerator on a normal day. Not really, but I did find that with some finagling I can do three batches at a time instead of just two.

The pan at the top is filled with egg bagels, which M had requested a while ago and I finally researched and made. Brown Eyed Baker, which is quickly moving to the top of my least obnoxious food blogs list*, has several posts on bagels, and the author actually had private correspondence with Peter Reinhart (I am starstruck) to find out what changes to make to his basic recipe in order to get egg bagels. Unlike BEB I used the Artisan Breads Everyday recipe I always do, but followed the same instructions for adding egg yolks and decreasing water. I had half of one while I was slicing and packaging the whole lot, mostly because I discovered too late that these were much softer and more fragile than regular bagels and so tore the first one apart while slicing. It didn't rock my world, but we'll see what the egg bagel connoisseur here thinks. That was really the only experiment; the other two batches are the same kind I've been making.


In other news, I think I found my heirloom tomato supplier for the rest of the summer at the Suwanee Farmers Market yesterday. I've never seen so many varieties of beautiful tomatoes. I only brought home a couple different kinds: the yellow brandywine I had in a salad was very nice, and I think Cherokee chocolate is the kind I found last summer and loved, so I also have a pound of those for tonight's dinner. Fresh tomatoes may just be worth suffering through a GA summer for. And that may be the most awkward sentence I have ever crafted.

* About food blogs and why I find them obnoxious: it's mostly because I can't simply handle them in their ubiquity and variety. Being as ADD as I am, if I read food blogs whenever I wanted I would a) never use the cookbooks I own, b) never use the cookbooks I check out from the library, c) never use the food I already bought for my "meal plan" (loosely so-called) that I meticulously map out with all sorts of frugal intentions at the beginning of the week, etc., etc. In short they are distracting and counterproductive for me because of my weakness. And I find that obnoxious. :)

R.I.P. Sourdough seed culture #2: 7/5/2011-7/12/2011

Well, I spoke too soon. I'm going to do some serious web-scouring research before undertaking this again, because sourdough is maybe not as straightforward as I thought. I was dissuaded from moving to phase 3 on Thursday night after realizing that the description it had to match was "active and bubbling" (whereas I only really had bubbly starter), and by means of Youtube I confirmed that active starter actually bubbles up and moves continually like a little swamp in a bowl. Alas, that was the last I saw of any bubbly action, because for the past four days I've been nursing a very flat and bubble-less mess, pinching my nose through the awful smell (it went from pleasantly acidic to filling much of the house with a sewage-like odor), to no avail. Once I can get that smell out of my memory (and fully out of the kitchen), perhaps I will try again, with the pineapple juice this time and a very clear idea of what kind of "activity" I need to be looking for.

On a happier note, M's birthday is this weekend, and I gave him a choice of "menus" for a nice meal. He chose the least adventurous (i.e. no cuts of meat I've never even purchased before), perhaps wisely. :P I guess the unifying theme would be French-inspired? For apps, gougères (Michael Ruhlman's ratio); first course, a summer tomato salad probably with green goddess dressing; filet mignon with a red wine pan sauce, sides of blue cheese baked potato fans (they sound a little kitschy but it's an ATK recipe and looks worth trying) and braised leeks (ATK). For dessert he just wanted a classic yellow birthday cake (Smitten Kitchen's, I've used this for cupcakes before and it was excellent) with CI's foolproof chocolate frosting and perhaps also vanilla ice cream. Since cupcakes apparently aren't manly enough, I will halve the cake recipe and slice one layer horizontally so it's still a layer cake, but more reasonable for two people. It remains to be seen whether I can pull all this off at once: I have at least made the pâte à choux, steak, and leeks before. I've also made a few cakes in my day, so no problems there as long as we don't have any unreasonable expectations as to the appearance... Should be fun.

miscellaneous goings-on

1) Sourdough bread is finally within reach after years of lazily wishing I could make it: I've captured wild yeast! This is my second go at Peter Reinhart's seed culture --> mother starter method for creating a sourdough starter, and unlike last time, it's going very well. I can't remember what happened with my attempt a year ago, except that nothing did: I didn't see much bubbling/activity at all, and so gave up after a few days. This time, however, things are looking bubbly and smelling pretty acidic, so I'll probably be moving to phase 3 of the seed culture tonight. I can't wait to try a rye loaf first.

2) Having grown up partly in Texas, I regard Mexican food with much fondness and would never turn it down, but I don't actually cook it much. Apart from a couple of good red and green enchilada recipes and the ability to make a decent salsa cruda, I don't actually know much about what goes into more complex Mexican dishes. I am very sorry that I did not "meet" Rick Bayless sooner. Several weeks ago I checked out one of his older cookbooks (RB's Mexican Kitchen), a very thorough treatment of all sorts of traditional Mexican everyday and "fiesta" food, and I still have it (renewed twice). Most recently I made the essential roasted tomatillo salsa with chipotle chiles (except I subbed arbol chiles per one of the variation ideas), and we liked it alright; it was sweeter than I expected, though I only added a pinch of sugar. For green salsas I prefer something more like the one in CI's enchiladas verdes, which roasts poblano peppers along with the tomatillos, and adds a fair bit of cilantro, too. But the smoky shredded pork tacos (tacos de picadillo oaxaqueño, on page 150) were out of this world. Exactly what I hoped for and then some. They were a "process" as far as taco fillings go, to be sure, but this was so much more than something to dump in a tortilla and slather with cheese and mediocre salsa. In fact, the meat with the picadillo (raisins and almonds) was so flavorful that all I served it with was a little cilantro. I'm very impressed and inspired by a lot of other recipes and techniques in this book.

3) In our household we have a special occasion coming up, and for it I'm considering flambéeing (steak Diane)... On the one hand, it could be really cool and help me overcome my pyrophobia, but on the other, it could, like, destroy M's birthday and our entire apartment building. :) Hm. Might be sticking with lamb chops instead.


4) On a whim I just baked some chocolate ice cream sandwiches (well, the sandwich part) from The Perfect Scoop, and they're cooling and making the house smell nice and waiting to be completed with the chocolate-peanut butter ice cream I made from the same book last week. I'll report on the outcome of those. Well, we already know the ice cream is good.

Burgers.

Last Christmas my grandparents bought me a food grinder attachment for my stand mixer, and this week I finally made plans to use it. I decided I wanted one after reading so much about the benefits of grinding your own meat, where you actually know what kind of meat is being ground up and ingested. Also "they" say the flavor difference is enormous.

So for the first try I used as a base this In-N-Out style recipe from Kenji Lopez-Alt, a former Cook's Illustrated cook. I think I may have erred in the fundamental matter of choosing a cut (or cuts) of meat to grind: he simply recommends a beef chuck cut with "lots of fat." Not knowing what exactly that meant, I chose a beef chuck (shoulder) roast that was reasonably well-marbled. The end result was a little bit too lean. Next time I'll try grinding in short ribs for about 1/3 of the meat. The flavor of the meat was fine, though when you're loading it with ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, and cheese, it's a little hard to pick out the nuances of fresh ground meat to compare it with storebought. Hey, at least our chances of getting E. coli are lower.

As for the whole grinding ordeal, it was a bit messy, but I expected that. I've got a couple issues to work out with the grinder---maybe I didn't freeze the meat long enough, because by the time I finished there was a fair amount of very slick meat stuck in the "chamber" or whatever the part before the die is called. That was a bit tedious to clean out.

Here is my Pulitzer Prize-winning cheeseburger photo. I like how it looks like I caught the mushroom in mid-air. Not the case.

Ah, a note about the buns: these were from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday, the soft sandwich bread recipe made into about a dozen 3 oz. buns. I loved the flavor and texture: not quite as fluffy as storebought buns, but not dense like recipes I've tried before, either. As usual, shaping will take some work; I guess I should have squashed the rolls a bit with my hand before baking them.

Honey-yogurt waffles, and a tangent on "healthy baking"

Recipe below. First, some (unnecessarily in-depth) background. Once upon a time I went through a phase my family probably remembers all too well, during which my supreme goal in baking was to drastically alter original recipes, the first time I made them, in order to make them "healthier." This included but was not limited to a) substituting whole wheat flour for regular "processed" flour as often as possible (i.e., as often as a recipe called for flour); b) using applesauce as a 1:1 replacement for butter in baked goods; c) adding ground flaxseed to e-v-e-r-y-thing, which consequently meant decreasing any fat in the recipe, since there is fat in ground flaxseed; and d) arbitrarily decreasing amounts of butter, sugar, or whatever other ingredients I deemed unhealthy. I may be forgetting some of my "techniques." It took a series of many more failures than successes for me to finally realize that baking is an exacting science. It is not forgiving of a novice's whims, certainly not when said novice is ignorant of basic points of culinary chemistry.

Now, of the aforementioned adjustments, some of them I do still use, in moderation. (The applesauce-for-butter one I do not, and I only have whole flaxseed on hand for a cracker recipe I've been meaning to try.) Moderation also happens to be the key to receiving a cake recipe just as it is, without one plea (forgive the irreverence), because three sticks of butter or not, it's dessert. You're not going to eat all three sticks of butter by yourself. Let dessert be dessert, for crying out loud. I did just today make a 50% whole wheat ciabatta that turned out fabulously---that is one area where I'm more than happy to use whole wheat flour, but I did it under the expert guidance of Peter Reinhart. (Love ya Pete.)

The reason I write all that on this particular post is because I recall making these honey-yogurt waffles (which I actually made into pancakes, cause heck, it didn't really matter to me what the original recipe said, even in the TITLE) at the height of my whole grains madness. No doubt because the title caught my eye as sounding healthy. I probably went ahead and used all whole wheat flour and omitted the butter and added flaxseed, who knows. Tonight, however, I returned to this recipe for the first time in years and made them exactly as the recipe indicated, in the wafflemaker. They were splendid. They did not taste healthy; they did not taste like a self-consciously "sugar-free" breakfast, and while it is unusual to see a handful of oats thrown in to a waffle recipe, it was clearly not done as some half-baked attempt to make the recipe "healthier," because you can always sense---well, taste---when that has happened. The flavor is subtly sweet and I think they're great waffles.

Honey-Yogurt Waffles
adapted from Williams-Sonoma.com, which cites it as adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Waffles from Morning to Midnight (did not realize that!)
Serves 2-3
These do get pretty dark because of the honey---at least mine did, though the picture on Williams-Sonoma looks very pale in comparison!

1 1/2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp. old-fashioned oats
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp. milk
6 Tbsp. plain yogurt (I used Stonyfield Farms whole milk)
2 1/2 Tbsp. honey
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your wafflemaker. Melt the butter and set aside.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together the milk, yogurt, honey, egg, and vanilla in a small bowl til very well combined (it will take some time for the honey to incorporate). Pour liquid ingredients over the dry and lightly whisk until combined. Fold in the melted butter. Pour 1/3 cup-fuls (or however much your wafflemaker manual specifies) of batter into the wafflemaker and bake til deep golden. You can hold these in a 200 degree oven for up to half an hour if necessary. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

weekend

Friday M worked from home, and for brunch I made us a diner-style omelet (From America's Test Kitchen 2009) that was quite good. I've made the basic recipe before, but concocted a filling this time based on what I had in the fridge: Black Forest ham, asparagus, and Swiss. I do love this omelet method: there are only 5 eggs in it (serving two), but after you beat the eggs to triple their volume and then fold in about 1/3 cup of whipped cream, it becomes quite an imposingly fluffy and very filling breakfast.

Friday night we were to have friends for dinner as they passed through on their way to the beach, but sadly they were stranded for several hours in the middle of Kentucky after their car broke down and didn't quite make it in time for dinner. It was hardly an inconvenience to put the extra chicken into the freezer and pare down the easy recipe I made to serve two. I really liked this method (from Daisy Martinez) of starting boneless skinless chicken breasts on the stovetop, then adding a sauce and moving them to the oven covered with foil to finish. Although the orange juice/lime marinade didn't knock our socks off, it added some interesting flavor. I would just be sure to season the meat with a little more salt and pepper before cooking it next time. With this I made the black bean rice from CI's Restaurant Favorites, and an intriguing new recipe, pandebono or Colombian cheese bread.

I should start a new paragraph for this. It's funny---I picked up a box of yucca flour (= tapioca starch) in the Hispanic section of the farmer's market a couple months ago because I remembered reading someone somewhere  raving about something called pandebono, but I couldn't for the life of me find where. I began to think I had dreamed about something plausible that didn't exist (as often happens with me), so I googled around, discovered that it does exist and call for the yucca flour I'd bought, and settled on this recipe, which people who commented had actually made rather than filling the comment box with absolutely useless remarks like "wow lol looks tasty!" (Sorry, pet peeve.) I used all queso fresco rather than feta, per other recipes I saw. Mixing this bread scared me at first, because one egg for that much dry stuff plus semi-wet cheese did not seem like enough moisture. It really didn't come together until I learned how to squeeze a handful of the mixture several times, holding for a few seconds and passing to the other hand---it's hard to describe, but sooner or later it would cease being a frustrating mass of crumbs and become a very tidy ball. For an incidentally gluten-free bread I was very impressed with the results. The flavor, while maybe a bit sedate to an American palate used to the sharp flavors of cheddar and a continual onslaught of sodium, is delicious and somehow pairs well with the chewy texture.

**Edited 4/14/12 to add: Since I've gotten a food processor I made these delicious cheese balls again, and realized how much less work they are to shape when mixed that way. Just wanted to note that; if you have a food processor, it's definitely worth getting out for this. And if not, I still think they're worth a little extra work. Yum.

The photo above was Saturday night's dinner in the making: another Daisy Martinez recipe. This was a creamy pasta sauce with basil and artichokes (I use one 12-oz bag of Trader Joe's hearts rather than the 2 9-oz boxes she calls for, which seems like it would be too much to me). I used pancetta instead of the prescribed serrano ham or prosciutto, and I daresay it worked fine. I liked this sauce a lot, and while M said it was a bit girly, he got seconds.

to set the tone...

This is my kitchen on a normal day.

1. Translucent plastic ruler left on a dark baking sheet (it blended in) and left to bake at 350 for about 8 minutes. I though it was going to stick but with some elbow grease I managed to pull it off AND not burn myself. If it weren't hot pink it would look like bacon, right? Kind of appetizing, except not.

2. Today I made Michael Ruhlman's sponge cake recipe (on the two optional elements, baking powder and butter, I used the former and used 5 out of the possible 16 [!!] Tbsps of the latter---I daresay it was the perfect amount). It looked great coming out of the oven, but after I gently poked a toothpick in to check for doneness, it started slowly sinking. And sinking. Until the middle was less than half the height of the rest. You see:

This is to say nothing of the obvious problem I had with the cake sticking to the pan. As a sure sign of growing maturity and patience, whereas maybe two years ago (okay last year) I would have thrown a Kitchen Tantrum upon beholding an hour of careful measuring, mixing, and baking result in that, today I took a deep breath and determined that all was not lost. No need to freak out. After trying a cookie cutter that wasn't tall enough, I started marking circles with it and then cutting them out with a paring knife. This way I got most of the spongey part of the cake---which did not require beating egg whites and is tastier and richer than the previous sponge cake recipe I tried---and they can still be halved horizontally and made into mini Boston cream pies. (The scraps from the cutting and some of the gooey middle part that sunk I crumbled and threw in the freezer in case I get the urge to make birthday cake ice cream or something someday.)

It's honestly good enough that even I, with my compulsion to add more sugar and/or chocolate to most anything cake-like, would eat it plain in a heartbeat. Thanks Chef R. (Sorry if you ever read this and it causes you shame and embarrassment to be associated with the near-disaster pictured above.)

Having my ciabatta turn out perfectly is becoming more and more of a normal occurrence. It's nice to have a constant in one's life when everything else is so uncertain and liable to failure. ;)

week(s) in review

Beef stroganoff

Saturday I made sort of a Russian-French fusion dinner that came out very well. The stroganoff, which I mixed two CI recipes to get, did not look great color-wise but tasted just fine with the egg noodles (and, by the way, now I realize there is a huge difference between real egg noodles and the No Yolks brand...). Probably the star of that meal was the braised leeks, recipe in my ATK 2009 cookbook: I had no idea what to expect besides a vaguely onion-ish flavor, but it was so much more. And so very easy and quick. We loved them. The cheese blintzes for dessert (CI Best International Recipe) were nice, even if I decided after a few bites that I just cannot do sweet cheese made with farmer's cheese (and I'm definitely glad I didn't substitute ricotta as the recipe suggested—it's like the texture of farmer's cheese times 10). The cherry sauce worked pretty well, and I'm just glad I have a good crepe recipe I can fit to any occasion or filling. Also make-ahead by definition.

Leeks to be braised---didn't get a during or after photo because they were so quick, and covered half the time.

 Sweet cheese blinchiki with cherry sauce

One night I pulled some split chicken breasts out of the freezer and pan-roasted them with a sauce. I love the concept of roasting a small amount of chicken and then making a pan sauce while it rests, even if my chicken seems always to take much longer than the original recipe indicated. I made a white wine and parsley sauce that night, then served with arugula salad and mashed potatoes. And bread. I do believe I am close to perfecting my ciabatta. Except for like every sixth time when the dough does that weird seize-up and becomes more like bagel dough, which it did this last batch. I just can't figure it out. I weigh both flour and water now (and realized that both my main liquid measuring cups are off by like an ounce or two if you go by the volume measurement!). But at least I don't do anything so stupid as throw the dough out in frustration...now I know that it still makes beyond decent bread, just not that light and airy delight that comes out when the dough is properly wet.

I made a lemon chess pie complete with a rolled out crust using 3 Tbsp shortening and 4 Tbsp butter, from an ATK cookbook I had out from the library. The filling was pretty good, if guilt-inducing even for me with another full stick of butter, tons of sugar and 5 eggs and blah blah blah. But the crust was not even remotely worth the calories. Don't know what the deal was there. Rachel gave me some lard that I will have to try in lieu of shortening the next time I'm up for pie...which may not be far off.

I made some delectable butter with the expensive but totally-worth-it pasteurized cream from Dekalb Farmers Market last week; put about 2/3 of it in the freezer as salted parsley butter for dishes, and we're about to finish the little roll I salted and put in the fridge for bread. Delicious.

One one class night, I made fried eggs and put them on toasted and buttered English muffins, serving with the warm spinach salad with bacon I've made so many times. It was good, though M does insist on having his yolks runny, which is not the safest...tsk tsk.

Last weekend I made Latin chicken and rice with roasted red peppers. It was okay. The rice was a tad crunchy, as it usually is with that dish when I make it—you'd think I could figure out how to fix that already! Probably should add a little more water and remove the chicken and let the rice cook longer. Duh. I also don't like using dark meat per the recipe because then you have to remove it from the bone, and with the dark red sauce you can't see exactly what you're doing, so inevitably some bits of nasty fat or bone get in and you have to spit them out and ahh, gross. But I used my birthday gift of piment d'espelette instead of paprika and it tasted pretty good in there. I sound like such an unrefined hick, yep. Avocados as garnish were indispensable; probably saved the dish, really.

I had to reheat the leftovers Sunday night but with them made a terrific corn chipotle soup, the only downside of which was having to throw out all the solids after I pureed it with my immersion blender, which maybe didn't get it finely pureed enough? I'll try the regular blender next time. But the strained liquid (i.e. the soup, hah) was extremely good, and went well with the chicken and rice. Recipe here.

Friday afternoon I cooked up beef shepherd's pie from CI's Best Make-Ahead Recipe for a family with a new baby. I thought it came out pretty well. I omitted the small amount of red wine that went in with the broth, because I wasn't sure about the rules on alcohol while nursing. I also used mostly Pacific beef broth, which I had just opened a couple days earlier, rather than chicken broth, since how could beef broth not work with a beef stew sort of dish? While making this I finally learned my lesson about making great mashed potatoes, and it goes like this: 1. Add cream. I never really knew what I was doing when I made mashed potatoes, messing around with sour cream which seeems to make them dry-ish, or adding sissy amounts of milk or maybe half-and-half. Forget it, you only live once. I'm making mine like this from now on. Also they had me mash them over low heat in the saucepan in which I had boiled them (3/4” slices of russets)---maybe that helped the texture be much smoother than mine normally are?  The best part was that I had a little bit leftover of everything the next day so I made it again for us for lunch. M was impressed, said it wasn't what he remembered shepherd's pie to be growing up, however he had it then. I'll definitely try it again following the recipe exactly with wine and chicken broth, though.

Monday after lunch at Emily's I went to the legendary Patak. It was pretty cool. We already polished off the smoked turkey breast for sandwiches, which I think was laced with some sort of green herb and just meltingly tender and tasty. We had half the smoked salmon tonight, which sadly has gone up in price to $10 from $4/lb (which was what their website says), but it was so delicious. With that I made creamed spinach, and it was fine though the last couple times I've made it the sauce has seized up on me before I add the spinach, so it never really blends right...I don't know what that's about.