Sourdough Obsession

Although I've been interested in bread making before, this time around it has taken a hold of my brain. It's like succulents were two years ago or dumplings a few months ago. Or that time I was making tempeh and everyone thought I was taking pictures of nougat and were distraught when they found out it was actually moldy, fermented beans.

This latest round of bread making has been concentrated into high-hydration sourdoughs and open crumb. Allow me to post some pictures to explain.

My neighbors and friends, at least the friends that don't make their own bread, have been getting loaves of bread since March. I even read an excellent 200+ page technical book on how to get that custardy, open crumb called, not surprisingly, Open Crumb Mastery. I've become a bread nerd who gives away bread with the condition that the recipient has to cut open their loaves and send me a picture. I have contemplated cutting the loaves open before gifting them, but so far I've restrained myself. Barely.

Because I was freezing so much bread and I didn't want to use plastic bags, plastic wrap, or foil, my friend taught me how to make these nifty waxed cotton cloths to wrap up my bread in the freezer. So kawaii!

I've also been experimenting with different scoring techniques.

I brought a couple of loaves to a party, and a French person said it was the best bread he's had in the US, and he asked for the recipe. It's funny how I know nothing about this person except that he's French, and I took his praise as a huge compliment. Like, anyone could say that to me and I'd be flattered, but the fact that he comes from France magnified that compliment times 10. Or maybe times 20. If I moved to a different country, on what food topic would I be able to talk about where being an American would give me more credibility? I can't really come up with anything because a lot of the foods associated with Americans are in the fast food category, and the last fast food I ate came from Amy's Drive Thru, an atypical fast food joint that has lots of vegan and organic food options.

Maybe I can add bread making to my list of things I'll do to make money during retirement. The thought of having a weekly or monthly bread club is pretty exciting, although I know the reality would be hellish, especially since I can only bake 1 loaf at a time in my oven. And I like to experiment with different flavors, so anyone in my bread club would have to be down with getting some funky breads.

As always, you can find more frequent project and pet updates on my Instagram account (@sungoldtomato).

Post Tidy Vacuum

Lagavulin and hipster ice 

It's been over a month now since we've reduced the amount of stuff in our house. Amazingly, it's still tidy around here despite both of us going back to our regular work schedules (and then some!), continuing Canine Circus School, and resuming exercise routines after the nasty colds both of us caught in January. Less stuff equals less stuff to clean and a place for everything. For our place, we can whip it into "company is coming!" shape in 15 minutes.

Because I knew that getting rid of stuff would create a vacuum that would pull us to buy more things, I decided that we shouldn't buy anything non-work related for a month so the house could equilibriate. The pull to buy things is huge right now, although it is diminishing as the month wears on. What do I want? A cast iron pan made in Portland that has milled cooking surface, stackable Japanese dishes that are uber modern and spendy, stainless steel chain mail for cleaning cast iron skillets and woks, a new fish spatula that's all metal, and a number of other kitchen things that I can't decide on. The boy is no help. He already cheated and bought gear to go crab catching ("it's for food!").

My urge to buy things was diminished when a Kickstarter campaign I joined months ago delivered the goods. I bought an ice cube maker, both spherical and cube, that makes crystal clear ice. Sure, I was called out for wanting hipster ice, but it's so pretty!

This time of year makes me restless, so I immersed myself in some kitchen experiments. The first was ginger beer using a ginger bug (the starter for the ginger beer). The verdict is still out on this one because I'm impatient and I drank 3 of the 6 bottles of beer I made already - they had little to no carbonation. I think I need to tweak my ginger beer recipe some more.

The second kitchen experiment turned out slightly better, although unsightly. After reading about Chad Robertson in Michael Pollan's book Cooked and trying bread that my friend made using Robertson's Tartine Bread, I wanted to start baking bread again, this time using Robertson's recipe.

With a dough hydration at a whopping 80%, it was the stickiest dough! It was so sticky that there was no need for a stand mixer since you stretch and fold the dough in the bowl while it's proofing. This dough required babysitting, especially since the recipe was fussy and I was unaccustomed to working with such a wet dough. Maybe if I surfed and meditated like Robertson I'd be more zen about the dough, but as the boy can attest, I was swearing up a storm whenever I had to interact with it. I was especially irritated when it was time to put the dough into the glowing hot Dutch oven. As you can see, it wasn't a clean release. I think it was when the dough plopped into the oven that I declare I was going to feed all of the bread to the dogs. Am I a little stressed right now? Perhaps, perhaps.

The boy intervened and insisted we let ugly loaves cool down and taste a piece before chucking it into the garbage (at this point, I thought that not even the dogs should eat it).

My, what an open crumb structure! It was delicious: slightly tangy (just enough to make it interesting, but not puckery), chewy, but not dense texture with a crackly crust. If I looked at the bread slice by slice, it was beautiful. When toasted, it was even better!

This week, I'm attempting the bread recipe again, but this time only making 1 loaf. And to prepare myself, I'll do yoga beforehand. Maybe that's the trick.

Thanksgiving is for Spent Grain

I know that Thanksgiving is supposed to celebrate abundance, but I get a kick out of turning things that would otherwise go to waste into something that is fit for a feast! After making the beer, we had two trays of leftover spent grain. I decided that the best way to use the grain would be to dry it, grind it, and use it to add a kick to my baked goods.

The flour tastes sweet and has caramel notes, so to accentuate those features, I made a slow rise bread with blackberry honey and spent grain flour. Bread flour and yeast were thrown in to help it rise since I didn't want to end up with a brick.

For the muffins, I spied a fantastic recipe for Spent Grain Applesauce Muffins from Brooklyn Brew Shop.  For my version, I added 1/2 the sugar, opted to use the butter instead of oil (splurge! it's worth it!), used 1 cup of our spent grain flour, and used apple butter that we canned an embarrassingly long time ago. I had to cook the muffins an extra 10 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes, because my batter was so dense and moist. The resulting muffins are sinful. No one will know that it came about from pantry scraps.

My folks are cooking the Thanksgiving dinner, and although I do love to host my most favorite holiday of the year, they are both fantastic cooks, so I'm content to sit back and enjoy everyone's company. My mom will make her famous turkey jook,  potstickers, and sticky rice stuffing, and my dad will make a juicy turkey and the best gravy ever. What's special and unusual on your Thanskgiving table this year?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Food Projects Galore

 Thank you so much for the lemon ideas! You are all so creative! So far, I've dehydrated lemons, made Indian lemon pickles, and have frozen lemon juice into ice cube trays.

Up next is lemon marmalade and lemon hard cider. I bought some ale yeast and yeast nutrient after doing a bit of research on what needs to be done to make yeast reproduce in an unfriendly (in this case,acidic) environment. Do you have any more ideas? Keep 'em coming! I love comments, especially because I discover more blogs to follow. Such a creative bunch!

After creating an ugly, dense loaf of bread using the no-knead method,  I went back to making pain au levain the way I outlined for the breadalong. I used rye, buckwheat, whole Sonoma wheat, and regular bread flour for this loaf, and it turned out beautiful! There are lots of pockets in this bread for jam, and it makes a lovely, chewy toast with lots of character. One of my favorite snacks lately is toast with a healthy smear of plain Greek yogurt and homemade guava jam.

Last weekend was a Chinese holiday that I only know as "Grave Sweeping" day, and this meant that I returned to my hometown to clean my grandmother and grandfather's cemetery plots. My grandmother made everything from scratch up until the day she died. Homemade noodles, though, are what her children remember the most. I was feeling a little reminiscent today, so I made a batch of noodles for tonight's dinner, a vegetarian chow mein. My crafty, creative aunts put together a book of Grandma's recipes a few years ago, so I can recreate the taste of her kitchen. Someday, I'm going to tackle some of her harder recipes, like a fermented brown soybean paste and salt pickled turnips.

After making two batches of Epsom salt tofu, I was sick of the grainy texture. I know some people can make tofu with Epsom salt as the coagulant with good results, but not me. My dad, upon hearing of my tofu failure, called his buddy who happens to own a noodle and tofu making manufacturing facility and asked what he used as the coagulant. The answer? Food grade calcium sulfate, otherwise known as gypsum. (When this tofu making guy heard that I was using Epsom salts, he decried my method by saying, "That's a laxative! It shouldn't be in tofu!" I never knew that Epsom salts were used for anything besides soaking sore body parts until recently.)

Anyway, by happy accident, I learned that the beer making supply store sold calcium sulfate, and it was cheap! 2-ounces for $1.50. Score! I immediately made some soymilk and turned it into tofu with out of this world results. The curds were big and creamy. This is what I was after! I think I'll eat this batch raw, sliced thinly with a scant amount of soy sauce, sesame oil, and green onions.

I tried to capture Fifty-Fifty and Mingus resting peacefully together, but as soon as Fifty saw me, she scrambled over for some head scratches. She looks like she's about to attack Mingus. She should attack him. He totally deserves it for always stepping on her.

The Ugly Loaf

Last week, I started another Bertha  so I could experiment with no-knead breads. Breads that lack a starter have no soul, so as tempting as the original no-knead bread recipe is, I opted to follow this variation instead.I used 6oz white bread flour, 3oz rye, 1.5oz buckwheat, and 4oz of Full Belly Farm's Sonora whole wheat flour.

The long lead time turned out to be more annoying than a traditional pain au levain, mostly because I timed it wrong and started at 10 in the morning, meaning that phase 2 should have been started at 4 AM the next day. That wasn't going to happen! I banked on the fact that the kitchen temperature drops dramatically overnight, thus slowing fermentation. At best, I was expecting a bread more reminiscent of American sourdough instead of a pain au levain, but I carried through.

True to all the warnings, the bread dough, measured and mixed in 5 minutes, was really, really sticky due to the high water percentage. The theory behind the no-knead bread is that the high level of hydration combined with the long resting time results in the gluten aligning, which is the same thing achieved by kneading traditional bread dough. When I woke up at 6 AM to shape the loaf, bleary eyes and lack of coffee made for a comical bakery session. Well, comical to anyone watching (the dogs), but not to me at the time.

The boy and I tag teamed the process, so he was in charge of baking the bread, and he got the enjoyment of baking bread smells (my favorite part) and being the first one to cut into it. I was pestering him all day while I was at work, asking about the crumb structure, the flavor, and the overall baking process. He emailed me back with one word responses ("good", "fine"), and finally stopped responding to me at all. I had to wait until I arrived home to judge for myself.

The crumb structure was holey and beautiful. That much cannot be denied. However, loaf was the exact shape of the bottom of my Dutch oven, and there wasn't much oven spring. This is due in part to the heavy flours I incorporated into the dough, but I have made beautiful loaves with dense flours before. The crust was almost scorched on the bottom, too, so this was one f-u-g-l-y loaf.

But how did it taste, you ask? Lovely! Slightly tangy due to my starter, slightly sweet thanks to the honey, and slightly nutty due to the whole wheat and buckwheat.  The boy was stoked that he had baked his first loaf of bread, and I was able to coax a few more words out of him about it. He'd probably make it again, although he did complain that the instructions I sent him were "a novel".

My conclusion is this: if you are intimidated by bread making, try this! If you aren't intimidated, try it once and see what you think! It's so nontraditional that you have to try it at least once to see what all the buzz is about. Will I make it again? Probably not. This has gotten my bread making mojo back, though, so expect too many pictures of bread in the next few weeks...

BFB

Books, food, bread

A rainy weekend meant that I had the luxury of standing still and reading a couple of library books. First, I inhaled The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love. It's one woman's memoir her bumpy transformation from Manhattanite to farmer over the course of a couple years. I highly recommend it, especially if you want to learn more about what it takes to roll up your sleeves and run a farm the old-fashioned way.

The second book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, got a lot of press a few months ago from an unfairly edited article that ran in the Wall Street Journal titled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." My poor mom got calls and emails days after that article ran from concerned friends asking if she raised my brother and I like Amy Chua, the tiger mom. Ha ha! I'm halfway through the book, and every few pages I start laughing out loud because some of her observations and beliefs are so funny and familiar to me. And for the record, Chua's book shows humility that was lacking from the WSJ article; she doesn't always think that her way of parenting was the best way now. Hoopla aside, it's a funny book and an easy read.

I made another paella this weekend, this time with asparagus, chorizo, chicken, and some lamb stock I made in the pressure cooker. (Meat stocks in the pressure cooker are a beautiful thing! If you haven't tried it yet, it's a huge time saver. You can actually make a stock after work that tastes as if you simmered it all day long.)

I haven't made a slow rise bread in ages, so I warmed back into it with a recipe for Cheddar-Stuffed Crusty Loaves from King Arthur Flour. This recipe is similar to the one found on the back of the bread flour bag. It's not that much work, but it does take a long time since the starter is made the night before, and then there are two risings about 2 hours apiece. Rolling up the cheese bread was fun!

Next time, I think I'll cut the loaves crosswise into smaller loaves.

I think making smaller, cross-cut loaves would have prevented this cheese barf from happening. Funny how I call it cheese barf, yet I scraped it all off and ate it... I guess having 4 pets makes me used to barf.

Regardless, this was fantastic; cheesy and crusty as promised. It went well with the simple chard, potato, and farro soup I made for dinner.

I finished my Aidez, save for a few ends to weave in. Hopefully, I can get a good picture of it before the sky opens up again.

Hope Realized

My 100% whole wheat bread, made from flour I ground last night, is a grainy thing of beauty. If I wasn't in a hurry (the boy is trying to teach Mingus to eat whipped cream from a spray can, and this isn't a habit I'd like that dog to develop), I'd write you a little poem to convey just how chewy and flavorful this bread is. It rates right up there with my pain au levains, which is a huge feat since I love that bread fiercely.

I named this loaf Peter, in honor of Peter Reinhart. I would have never of thought to make this bread in such an unconventional manner. Sure, I tweaked his hearth bread recipe a bit, the biggest change being using my whole wheat starter instead of a biga, but the results are all due to Reinhart's instructions and research on what makes a good whole wheat loaf. After Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor returns to the library, I am going to buy a copy for myself. In fact, I'll order it now so there won't be a time that this book is not in my possession.

Take a look at the crumb structure! Tears are coming to my eyes... I have been after this type of crumb in a whole wheat bread for a long time!

This is What Hope Looks Like

The whole wheat adventure continues. Although my previous attempts at making a 100% whole wheat loaf were successful, in the sense that the boy and guests ate it and liked it, I still was unsatisfied with the results. Part of my discontent stemmed from comparing my loaves to my homemade white wheat pain au levains - it's my showstopper bread. These dense, crumbly whole wheat breads were not inspiring or breathtaking. They were simply OK.


Some research showed that Peter Reinhart has already taking whole wheat bread to task, his motto being that first and foremost, whole wheat bread needs to taste good. Sure, there are a reasons, that we should be incorporating whole grains into our diets, but if it doesn't taste good, these grains won't effortlessly slip into our everyday eating habits. I checked out Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor from my library, and my first attempt with these new techniques is pictured at the top of this post. It's hope in the form of a wet, sticky mass of dough. Dough that was put together in a way completely different from my pain au levains. While kneading it, I could tell that the gluten was developing better than my previous attempts, which is making me wish I added the instant yeast Reinhart recommended. However, I wanted only use my sourdough starter as a leavener, so I have another 4 hours to hurry up and wait.

This dough is so wet in comparison to my other bread doughs - all the water for this dough was added the night before in the form of a starter and a soaker. I had to keep a bowl of water next to me while kneading, so I could dip my hands in and prevent the kneaded dough from sticking to me like glue.


Reinhart's book is not for the bread novice. You need to read three chapters explaining his techniques, discussing the chemical reactions in bread and the anatomy of a wheat kernel, before you get to the recipes. If you can do it, he promises whole wheat bread with full flavor and a chewy crumb. Here's hoping!

Whole Grain Adventures

This looks like a mild mannered cabinet. Perhaps some 10th grader's first woodworking project?


Opening up the top reveals evil grinding stones!


These stones punish the innocent hard red wheat berries...


... and turn them into flour for my bread.


The boy balked at my idea of a buying a grain mill, insisting that his folks had one we could "borrow" somewhere in their garage. Well, after telling me this for 13 years, he found it.

I think this is a homemade grain mill because it has some scary features that can take skin off if you're not paying attention, like the overpowered electric motor with its exposed shaft that made me jump back 10 feet when I flipped the switch. It's also scary loud. Subsequent motor runs have involved earplugs and a long handled spoon. It's like a grain mill on steroids.

Now, we can have flour that is freshly ground. Sadly, my bread starter won't be ready for duty until tomorrow morning, so I'll have to wait to see if this flour makes a huge difference in taste. I'll report back.

The Day of Roast

The kitchen has been chilly, so again I turned to my oven to warm things up. This time, I made sure not to burn my arm (ouch).

To get the party started, I heated the oven to 425 deg F. Then, once the oven had reached the set point and stayed there awhile, I popped in some bread. Since there are only 4 ingredients for the levain, the type of flour you use makes a huge difference. I used 8 oz of organic whole wheat flour (from bulk bin) and 2 oz of organic dark rye flour (Bob's Red Mill) for this bread, and the results were phenominal! Happily, I can find both flours at Monterey Market.

Next up were some delicata squashes and beets. The roasted squash pulp will be a soup, and the beets will probably be eaten with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

The beauregard yams were next in line.

Doing a bulk roasting of all these vegetables is necessary for making sure the boy and I don't eat junk. It is easy for us to avoid junk foods for dinner since we're used to home cooked meals, but snacks are a problem since we associate them with granola bars, chips, and cookies. Redefining snack as whole foods has meant making sure the fridge is stocked with fruits and vegetables that are already in an easy to eat form (peeled citrus, dried fruit, roasted veggies, nuts, and salads).

I'm avoiding processed foods because the more I learn, the more convinced I am that loads of health problems stem from the disconnect between farm/ranch to table, so convenience foods like chips and crackers are a no go over here. Be forewarned that if you eat chips or candy in front of me, I will snatch them from your hands, run as fast as I can, and eat them myself since I am in severe withdrawal. (Those of you who have dined with me know that I am not exaggerating.)

This week's salad was an easy to make celeriac remoulade. Ceriac is such an ugly root vegetable, but it makes the best raw salad.

I made a sauce out of nonfat yogurt, crushed garlic, salt, freshly cracked pepper, honey, and some homemade mustard. This sauce was mixed with grated celeriac and sat for over 24 hours in the fridge to let the flavors develop. It has been helping to quell my cravings for salty chips, since this salad stays crunchy.

I am happy that Spring is knocking on my door, because the green garlic, asparagus, and artichokes showing up at the market are a welcome break from the winter vegetables. I'm ready for change.

Local Bread

My ongoing personal eating challenge has been to eat local, naturally produced foods. I'm not super stickler about it - I won't raise my arms and form an X across my mouth if I'm offered something not locally produced - but if given a choice, I do choose the product with the smaller environmental footprint. I even go out of my way, relatively speaking, to make sure I have that choice.

Enter local flour. Especially when the temperature dips below 60 and I'm freezing (remember, I'm a wimpy Californian!), I bake bread. However, after reading articles like this, I wondered if I could hold my flour to the same standards that I hold my produce and meat. My flour of choice is milled locally, however the hard red wheat is not grown in California.

Yesterday, I was delighted to come across local flour from Full Belly Farms at a cool grocery store, Star Grocery. It's a tiny store, but it really kicks ass! The meats are top notch, the prices are reasonable, and the booze selection is swoon worthy.

The flour needed a bit of coaxing to become bread. It lacked a lot of gluten in comparison to my regular flour, one reason for this being that it is made from soft red wheat instead of hard red wheat. Initially, I tried making a pain au levain, but my levain didn't have enough oomph to raise the loaf. Consequently, I had to add some commercial yeast and honey to my dough. I also had to use a loaf pan since there was no way that my bread could be free form - I would've ended up with a pancake!


The results were good, although not what I initially anticipated. The boy has requested sandwich bread for awhile, and I've always been too intent on making the perfect pain au levain to oblige, so he was quite the happy camper.