Focaccia

I was about 12 or 13 the first time I tried baking bread. I produced two whole wheat bricks. I tried again a number of times over the following few years but without any great success. I did produce some decent English muffins — although nothing as good as those I made using the No-knead Bread Dough.

Then in 1981 I'd just gotten out of school and while I was trying to find a real job I decided to make sandwiches and sell them door-to-door at offices...

You can read the complete post at A Year in Bread.

Technorati: Food | recipe | bread | focaccia | italy

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No-Knead English Muffins

No-Knead English Muffins

I've been making English muffins for many, many years and although I've produced some superior muffins, I've never produced something as good as what I want. In fact, I've never produced something close to what I want. However, I'm getting closer and, in fact, I now know the characteristics required to achieve that ultimate goal.

You can read about my experiment and discoveries at A Year in Bread.

Technorati: Food | recipe | bread | english muffins | baking | no-knead bread

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Reuben Braid

Waiter! There's Something in My Bread!



We have been amazed at the response to A Year in Bread, the blog Farmgirl Susan, kitchenMage, and I started a month ago. We seem to have tapped into a deeply pent-up desire to learn how to make bread — witnessed by the number of comments each post generates. But it's not just newbies to the bread world, old hands at the baking game are also logging on and offering their thoughts, insights, and tips. I confess that the three of us feel like proud parents.

About the time it started up, I got a press release on About Professional Baking: The Essentials by Gail Sokol. The timing was propitious so I asked them to send me a review copy (albeit with no promise to review it, or that the review would be positive if I did). The PR agency decided to take a chance and sent me a copy.

Note: this is not the review I didn't promise to write. Instead, as I paged through the book I found a recipe for something called a Reuben Braid that captivated me. It consisted of rye bread dough, rolled out, and then folded over the standard Reuben sandwich ingredients. This I had to try. Then Andrew at Spittoon Extra announced that the next "Waiter, there's something in my..." would be about bread. Clearly the planets were aligned and a couple of days ago I made it.

It's good. Not great, the buttery crunchiness of a properly grilled Reuben is impossible to beat, but this would be a great sandwich at some sort of sporting event party such as the Superbowl. It's easy to make and one sandwich will feed six big appetites. Making two of them wouldn't be much harder.

I may yet review the book, and my impressions of it are fairly positive so far, but I need to make another two or three recipes first. In the meantime, here's the Reuben recipe.

Rueben Braid
Adapted from About Professional Baking.

Bread:
2 1/4 c warm water
3 tbsp olive oil
22 oz (4 1/2 c) bread flour
5 oz (1 c) rye flour
1 3/4 tsp instant yeast
2 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Filling:
1/3 c mayonnaise
3 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp finely minced onion
2 tbsp sweet pickle relish
8 oz thinly sliced corned beef
4 oz sliced Swiss cheese
1 c well-drained sauerkraut
Egg Wash:
1 egg
1 tbsp milk

In a medium bowl mix together 18 ounces of the bread flour, all the rye flour, and the yeast.

Combine water and oil in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, run the mixer at low and gradually add flour mixture until blended. Switch to dough hook and continue mixing, adding up to another 4 ounces of the bread flour until a soft dough forms. Cover the bowl and allow to rest for 10 minutes, then uncover, add salt, and knead at medium speed to incorporate salt. Continue kneading for a total of about 6 minutes.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead a few more times. The dough should be smooth and elastic, but not sticky. Form into a ball.

Clean and dry the mixing bowl. Spray lightly with cooking spray, set the dough in the bowl, seam-side down, and lightly spray with cooking spray. Cover and allow to rise until doubled in bulk — about 1 hour. Heat oven to 375F.

Punch the dough down, re-cover the bowl, and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Turn a half sheet pan upside down and coat the bottom with cooking spray. Turn dough out onto pan and roll out to a 15 x 10 inch rectangle.

Mix together the mayonnaise, ketchup, onion, and relish. Spread on dough lengthwise leaving 2.5 inches uncovered. Layer dressing with corned beef, cheese, and sauerkraut. Using kitchen shears, cut uncovered edges into 3/4 x 1 inch wide strips. Fold edges over the filling and braid together the strips. Slide bread onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Mix together egg and milk and brush on bread. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until nicely browned.

Technorati: Food | recipe | bread | reuben | sandwich | baking

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Cornish Pastie

A Handful of Delight



Pulled from the oven, the golden, pregnant crescents glisten with butter. The pastry is so flakey while hot it can barely maintain its shape. Savory steam escapes from vents filling the kitchen with the smell of onions and beef. I break a pie in half, engendering a new burst of steam and revealing pearly bits of onion, orange shreds of carrots, golden smudges of potato, and juicy browned beef. It's too hot to eat but, unable to resist any longer, I tear off a bite and blow on it before popping it in my mouth. Still too hot, but delicious anyway.

In "Sidewalk Meals" I wrote about my introduction to Cornish Pasties. I was addicted from my first bite and ate them frequently while I was in England. In fact, if I had pictures of my time in England you would probably have a shot of me at Buckingham Palace, pastie in hand; wandering up the lane at Windsor Palace, brushing pastie crumbs off my shirt; surveying Stonehenge, mouth full of pastie.

If the English can survive their food, they can survive anything. ~ Geroge Bernard Shaw

I did eat and enjoy other things. The fish and chips were good except for the chips (chips shouldn't be soggy, so dousing them with vinegar is just a bad idea). I liked Bangers and Mash. Spotted Dick isn't bad — once you get past the mental image. I ate lots of cheese, though I was seriously underwhelmed by the bread (having reached England from France). For the most part I ate pub food and for the most part it was fine, if not great — except for the pasties. They were superb.

Returning to the states, I attempted to duplicate my favorite English meal and eventually largely succeeded, if not in duplicating, then in producing something as good. But when it came to the crust I liked mine both more and less. What I had in England was usually tough and heavy, an industrial strength pastry suitable for carrying down into a mine, but not ideal under less stressful circumstances. I made a more typical American piecrust, something light and flakey. The texture was a genuine improvement in my book, but the flavor wasn't quite right.

Over the years I played with the crust, adding herbs (a good move), using just vegetable shortening without butter (a bad move), but there was always something missing. Then at a Cooks Bash I was discussing my efforts with an English friend and he said, "Lard. You've got to use lard." I tried lard (for the first time in my life) and he was right, that was the flavor I was missing. At long last I had a pastie recipe I was completely happy with.

So, in honor of St. George's Day (April 23) and dedicated to my two favorite English bloggers (Sam of Becks and Posh and Andrew of Spittoon Extra), I offer below my recipe for Cornish Pasties as part of Sam's Fish & Quips event.

Cornish Pasty
Pastry — click here
Filling:
1/2 lb ground chuck roast
1 c potatoes — 1/2" dice
1 lg carrot — shredded
1 c yellow onions — diced fine
1 1/2 tsps dried thyme
1 tsp mustard powder
1 1/2 tsps dried sage
3 good splashes of Worcestershire sauce
1/2 c beef broth
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cracked black pepper
Egg Wash:
1 ea egg yolk
1 tbsp milk

Heat oven to 375F.

Put diced potatoes and 1/2 inch of water in a covered microwave dish and cook in microwave until potatoes are just tender - seven to eight minutes. Drain potatoes and dump into a large bowl. Mash coarsely with a fork.

Add ground beef and all remaining ingredients to the potatoes and mix thoroughly.

Roll the pastry out to a 1/8 inch thickness on a lightly floured board. Using a five inch round plate as a template, cut as many circles as you can. The scraps can be combined and rolled out one more time. You should have nine to ten rounds.

Moisten half the edge of a pastry round and place about 1/3 cup of the filling in the center. Fold the round over the filling and press the edges to seal. Repeat for remaining pastry and filling. Arrange pasties on a pair of foil covered baking sheets.

Mix egg yolk and milk together and brush glaze over pasties. Cut two one inch slits in the top of each pastie and bake for 35 - 40 minutes or until golden.

These are wonderful for supper on a cold winter night served with potato chowder, boiled cabbage, and beer. If you're going to eat them hot then place a slice of cheddar cheese on top of each pastie that will be eaten that night about ten minutes before the pasties are done.

They're as good at room temperature as they are hot, so they also make great picnic fare. Cold hard cider is a great beverage for washing them down.

Technorati: Food | recipe | pastie | cornish pastie | england | fish and quips

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A Year in Bread

A Year in Bread



Today Susan, Beth, and I launched A Year in Bread. A Year is a blog dedicated to baking bread (and rolls and buns and even pizza). You can read the official story of how it came into being on the site, as well as what Susan and Beth have to say here and here. Please, go check out the blog, the three of us have been planning and working on it since the first week of January, and we're proud parents

I baked my first brick loaf of bread when I was 12 or 13 years old. Although not an outright disaster, the bread didn't rise more than an inch or two and had an atomic weight close to uranium.

I've no idea what I did wrong, but I tried a couple of more times with only a bit more success before giving up. You would have thought I'd learned my lesson. Nope. Some 18 years later, during a period between jobs, I decided to sell sandwiches make from fresh-baked croissants for a living — despite not having made anything more complicated than pancakes in the meantime. Oddly enough, although the business was an inspired failure, I managed to bake some extraordinary croissants — as good as anything I'd had in France.

Nevertheless I was relieved to find a real job so I could quit getting up at 4:00 in the morning to proof the croissants and then again at 6:00 to bake them and make sandwiches. Not to mention no longer spending every evening from 4:00 until 8:00 making the croissants so they could chill until 4:00 the next morning when I started over. That was 25 or so years ago and I haven't baked a croissant since. In fact, it was 10 years before I baked bread again.

Then I baked a loaf or two a year for a while until, in 1995, I bought a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. That made the difference. My time as a croissant baker had made me reluctant to spend the effort required to properly mix and knead bread. Keep in mind, for the croissants I was mixing and kneading enough bread — by hand — every day to make 50 or more croissants. (In fact, at Christmas that year I was making over 100 croissants on some days to fill special orders.)

With a stand mixer to do most of the mixing and kneading I started making more and more bread. These days I make bread about every three weeks. That serves almost all of my needs (except that I still like eating croissants and I'm still not making them) as well as bread I make for clients. These days I think nothing of making a loaf of bread, and I've learned enough so that even when I'm busy I can fit it into my schedule.

At the moment I have pizza dough undergoing its second fermentation (second rising) in preparation for my first post. We decided on pizza as the first thing to tackle because it's universally popular and an easy and forgiving bread. And because nothing so transforms this simple food as using good homemade dough.

Technorati: Food | a year in bread | bread | baking

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Sourdough English Muffins

Hiram Done Good



After reading the paper on Sunday mornings, I do my chores. For years this has meant vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, washing clothes, and watering plants. For the past year every other Sunday has included an additional chore -- feeding my sourdough starter.

Although I've occasionally gone as long as three weeks between feedings, every two weeks has proven ideal for my starter. I have to keep a reminder set in Outlook both because it's a bi-weekly event (meaning beyond my ability to remember) and because if I use the starter before scheduled feeding the schedule changes to every other Sunday from that point, whatever the previous schedule may have been.

Feeding involves mixing a cup of starter with a cup of water and two cups of flour and then returning it to the refrigerator in its glass canister. However, this means the base starter never warms up to vigorous activity.

When I pulled out the starter on Sunday to make the calzone I decided to completely refresh it by bring the entire mixture up to room temperature, feeding it, and giving it a day to work. While I was at it, I figured I'd make the sourdough English muffins I've been meaning to make in addition to the calzone dough.

So I did just that. I warmed up the entire batch of starter, fed it well, and gave it a day to revitalize. I made the calzone dough and the English muffins using a recipe I found at Annes Recipes.

Sourdough English Muffins Recipe

1 pk yeast
1/2 c lukewarm water (90F to 105F)
1/2 c basic sourdough starter, room temperature
1/3 c instant nonfat dry milk
2 1/2 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 c lukewarm water (90F to 105F)
3 to 3 1/2 c all-purpose, flour
Cornmeal

Proof the yeast in 1/2 cup lukewarm water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Thoroughly mix in starter, dry milk, sugar, and salt. Stir in remaining water. Add 3 cups flour and mix at low speed with paddle until smooth.

Swap paddle for dough hook and knead at medium speed for four minutes, adding additional flour as necessary. Dough should be somewhat moist and slack. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead another two to three minutes.

Transfer dough to greased bowl, turning to coat all surfaces, cover with plastic and let stand in warm draft-free area until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Lightly dust work surface with flour, punch down dough, and turn out onto surface. Roll to 1/2 inch thickness and cut into 3" rounds. Line a pair of baking sheet with wax paper and dust with cornmeal. Place rounds on baking sheet, dust tops with corn meal, and cover with plastic wrap. (Note: rounds should be at least 3/4" apart.) Dough scraps can be kneaded back together, rolled out, and additional rounds cut.

Let muffins rise until almost doubled -- about an hour.

Heat a griddle over medium low heat. Lightly brush with butter. Depending on griddle size, transfer four to eight muffins to griddle using a spatula. Cook muffins on each side for about seven minutes until browned. Transfer to a wire rack and cool. Makes about 12 muffins.

The muffins are great. Very chewy with a nice sourdough tang and although they weren't as holey as commercial muffins, they were much more so than any English muffins I've made in the past. Hiram done good.

Hiram? That's the starter's name.

Technorati: Food | bread | sourdough english muffin

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