Vegetarian Christmas

I love vegetarian christmas.  It's like a regular feast, but the vegetables are the main course instead of sides and filler - which means that they get the spotlight.  This year I ate christmas dinner with some friends in Portland, and we turned the traditional holiday dinner inside out.  We stuck to eating mostly seasonal vegetables, so the meal still had the flavor of the holidays, but we dispensed with any notion of fake turkey, or even of stuffing or mashed potatoes.  This year, we ate mushroom and cream sauce lasagna, beet, pear, and chard salad (with chestnuts!), rosemary rolls, and decadent chocolate cookies and Russian tea cakes.  The meal was delicious and colorful and still felt christmas-y, without all the heavy starches and meat (and requisite napping afterward). 

My best friend and hostess made the lasagna, with whole wheat pasta, creamy cheese sauce, and loads of mushrooms.  It was rich enough that it satisfied the holiday calorie overload requirement, without the holiday overload waistline.  I contributed the rolls - a delicious recipe that I got from my aunt Martha and which only comes out at the holidays. Otherwise we would eat bread all the time and completely ignore vegetables and other delicious goodness.  For the salad, I roasted beets and roasted and shelled chestnuts.  Then I tossed the beets and chestnuts with a chopped bosc pear, fresh goat cheese with figs, and chopped rainbow chard.  I topped it with an apple cider vinaigrette that I made with nutmeg and ginger, for an extra holiday kick.  Finally, my hostess and her brother made decadent chocolate cookies with semi-sweet and white chocolate chips (full disclosure, I didn't have one because I don't really like chocolate, but I heard that they were amazing!!)  They also made the most mouthwatering Russian tea cakes with grated orange peel and cardamom.  They were divine (and small enough that I didn't feel like I was overindulging).  We started the meal with mulled wine and topped it off with a glass of champagne - all told a delightful meal.

FYI - I gave my best friend a guide to cheesemaking for christmas, so expect to see cheese experiments appearing soon!

Gingerbears

When I was a kid, my parents always used to read me a Christmas book called The Gingerbears' First Christmas.  I loved that book so much that when I learned to cook I never bothered making gingerbread men or women (or even houses until more recently) but only gingerbears.  Gingerbears don't really need facial features made of raisins or little buttons down their fronts, but they do need cinnamon hearts if you're going to serve them on Christmas day (it's kind of a long story, I recommend that you read it).  The gingerbears I made tonight don't have cinnamon hearts, which either means that Santa hasn't visited yet, or that I forgot to buy them at the store.

This was going to be a post about how the gingerbread recipe from the Joy of Cooking isn't as user-friendly as the one I used to use in my parents' Betty Crocker, but now I think I'll just urge you to read about the gingerbears.  If you have kids, this is a magical book to share with them.  If you don't, I think it's worth a read to remind you how awesome being a kid was.  I eventually bought my own copy, and I still read it every year!

Christmas Baking is Here!

For me, winter is a season filled with time commitments.  But it's also a great season for hunkering down and cooking, and the holidays provide an excuse to make foods we know we probably shouldn't be eating.  The best part is that, after we've cooked all these decadent, starchy, and fattening foods, we can force others to eat them (if we happen to be watching our waistlines).  I've been so busy cooking and going to Christmas parties, that I haven't had a chance to post photos of or stories about my creations here.  Mostly, I've been churning out Irish Soda Bread and rosemary focaccia like my life depends on it, and adding sugar cookies and muffins to the mix whenever I have time.

However, I have had a few exciting cooking experiences this December that I thought were worthy of noting here.  Today, I opened my first can of the tomatoes I canned this summer.  (That would be my first can of my first canning.)  I ate them heated up over cheese tortellini for dinner, and I'm still alive!  This is truly cause for celebration.  I have also been making a whole lot of delicious soups and stews and various delicious pumpkin creations that I have neglected to photograph or share here.  Last weekend, I made a delicious buttermilk split pea soup of my own creation.  The roasted garlic and buttermilk flavors almost make up for the lack of ham (but not quite, nothing really can).

Next up: Gingerbears, baguettes, knitting projects, and an adventure into traditional cookies I've never made before.  I'd also like to make a pumpkin pie, which I just haven't been able to get around to yet.  The problem, of course, is that I usually bake for other people, and so I never find the time to bake something to keep and eat all by myself!

Here's a little Christmas cheer to kick off my favorite baking season:

I'M A WINNER!!

That's right, folks.  I'm a NaNoWriMo winner!  Quite a few times this month, I doubted that I would finish and I doubted that finishing would be worth it.  Now, from the end of the road (or, at least, the end of November) I can say that it was totally worth it.  Is my novel finished?  Of course not.  I'm about halfway through the plot, and the half I have written was written in a crazy rush based on an arbitrary deadline.  But the important thing is that I met that arbitrary deadline.  It has given me a huge rush of confidence that I can, in fact, finish this novel, and that it's worth finishing.  So, I have set a new deadline for myself.  I'll finish the novel by October 31, 2011. 

In the meantime, I should have more time for baking!  The holidays make me cookie-tastic, so I'm looking forward to many delicious posts in the upcoming weeks.

Cathartic Cooking

It turns out the main problem with working 12 hour days and trying to write a novel in a month is that I really miss cooking!  I kind of binged on vegetables and bread flour at the store tonight, then came home and cooked enough food for a small dinner party.  After making soup and a frittata, and around the time that I was shouting while banging the dough on the counter, I decided that I need to be cooking something every day.  I think that only shouting at bread dough could have made me feel better about my crappy day.

NaNoWriMo Progress

Usually, on a lovely, gray Saturday morning when I don't have anywhere to be until 1pm, I get up and make bread.  I get the coffee going and put on OPB and have myself a nice relaxing morning.  I'm usually starving by the time the bread is ready, and then I eat half the loaf, but the system works for me.  This morning, I got up and wrote 4,000 words.  I wrote them at the coffee shop down the street because I've been stressed out and I didn't feel like making my own breakfast.  I think I need to find some life balance!

November Break

I've started a new job and have had a few actual adult responsibilities (classified as "being more serious than deciding what to wear for Halloween") for the first time in a while.  So, to counteract all the grown-up-i-ness around here, I have decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.  Starting tomorrow, I'm going to try to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November.  This is so far out of my comfort zone, I'm embarrassed to even talk about my future "novel".  Anyway, this blog (and the associated baking) will probably be on hold for the next month (or until whenever I throw in the novel writing towel.)  Please eat lots of yummy food for me!

Beet Chutney

A few weeks ago I was singing the praises of Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills, but today I'm just scratching my head and wondering which skills Allen decided to leave out of her book and why.  The best thing about the book isn't actually that it teaches you forgotten skills, but that it makes you want to learn them and inspires you with its beautiful pictures of happy livestock and its effortless-seeming recipes.  However, Allen sometimes presumes a level of kitchen knowledge that I simply don't possess.  Take tonight's adventure as an example:  The beet chutney recipe was straightforward.  The peeling and chopping was kind of laborious, but then I watched a movie and worked while the chutney cooked, so it didn't feel too time consuming.  The resulting chutney was delicious.  However, as I was looking back over the recipe to figure out what I was supposed to do with a huge vat of delicious chutney, I realized that Allen was surprisingly vague about how to preserve it.  She mentioned sterilizing the jars - which I had already done (being a seasoned canner after my one batch of tomatoes) - but very little else.  She also failed to mention in the recipe that the salt called for was pickling salt.  I only noticed later that she mentioned the pickling salt at the beginning of the section on chutneys (which I had read previously and completely forgotten, of course).  In some ways I admire Allen's laid back, anyone can do it attitude.  It's an attitude that I possess in spades, and I wish that more accomplished people would act like anyone could do what they do.  But in a cookbook, especially one marketed to idiots (i.e. people under 40 who have never cooked anything from scratch), I think that a more direct, even lecturing, tone is required.  I have no idea whether my chutney will last more than a week or two.  While I welcome the experiment, I have 3 hours of my weekend and about $15 worth of food in those jars, and I would have liked to have been able to keep them for a while, maybe even give them as Christmas presents.  As it is, my friends and I will be eating really fantastic beet chutney with fresh baked bread and the Special Reserve Vintage White Extra Sharp Tillamook Cheddar I picked up at the Tillamook Cheese Factory today on my way home from the coast.  In fact, we'll probably be eating that every day for the foreseeable future, and I guess that's okay with me.

Crazy Cooking Weekend Recap

Here's all the fun stuff I did this weekend in picture recap form:

I made bread with my friend Beth.  She's totally a natural and will now (I assume) be making her own bread all the time.  Probably.

We used her stand mixer, which was really awesome!  WAY better than expected.  More on that soon.

We also cooked up a delicious casserole dish full of golden beets, apples, shallots, and onions, with a little salt and pepper and pumpkin pie spice (no joke, I have no idea what was in it!)  I got the idea from the awesome Darina Allen, whose beet and apple chutney I plan to tackle next weekend.

I canned up some beautiful heirloom tomatoes (see previous post).

 

I made a delicious (and pretty) apple pie!

And leftover pie crust cookies to go with it!  (I ate a bunch of 'em though).

And finally, I slept, a lot.  Whoever invented three day weekends is my kind of person.  A weekend full of hanging out with friends, cooking, and napping is pure bliss for me.  I'd like to take the time to wax rhapsodic about Beth's KitchenAid Mixer, but tonight is not the night for it.  I got an awesome new job, and now I have to put in some overtime to show how much I deserve it!

Oh my god, they POPPED!

Today marks my first ever foray into canning.  I have no idea if I did it right.  I have no idea if I'm going to poison myself trying to eat the fruits of my labor (although I'm trusting that I'm still sufficiently instinctually hardwired not to eat rotten food).  I canned a bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that I bought at the farmers market on Saturday, in the hope that I would reach for these to make pasta sauce this winter rather than my old standby Ragu.

Canning wasn't as difficult as I expected, but it was time consuming, especially in the "world's tiniest test kitchen."  Its title doesn't even deserve capitals.  With about six square feet of counter space, a chopping block on a rolling cart, and a kitchen table covered in old newspapers and fresh produce, there isn't a lot of room to work in here.  Because the kitchen is small, I tend to own mostly smaller pots, pans, baking dishes, counter-top appliances, etc., which makes it hard to do anything in bulk.  There's also not a lot of elbow room - two people have to know each other pretty well (and be skinny) to work in this kitchen together.  Luckily, I was on my own today, and had the gift of time from a surprise corporate celebration of Columbus Day (which isn't typically observed on the West Coast).  All told, it took me over three hours to can six pints of tomatoes, since I could only put three jars in the steam bath at once.  I have to say, it wasn't cheaper than buying four jars of Ragu, but it was a heck of a lot more fun.  Similarly, making my own bread pays me about $2 for three hours of work, but probably saves me $300 on therapy sessions.  As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I heard, over the running tap water, a low popping noise.  I was so surprised by the first one that I wasn't quite sure what it was, but after the second one popped I identified it as the sound of the seals sucking into place (meaning I'd done something right).  I was so excited I shouted to my empty house, "Oh my god, they POPPED!"

Spelt Bread and Fall Cooking

It always pleases me to see this . . .

. . . turn into this . . .

 . . . even though there's usually a lot of hard work in between.  Besides the fact that this spelt version of the River Cottage Break Handbook's basic loaf was wetter and absorbed a ridiculous amount of extra spelt flour during kneading, it behaved pretty much as expected.  I added a little bit of applesauce in place of some of the water, and the bread has a little bit of sweetness that goes really well with the nutty spelt flavor.  My only major miscalculation is that spelt isn't gluten free - of course it isn't!  You can't make bread rise without gluten!  So I guess I can't bring this lovely bread to work (where I would feel guilty parading the fresh baked bread in front of a gluten-intolerant co-worker).  Oh well, more for me!

Today was also a day for using the apples and pumpkins I picked in Hood River yesterday.  I ran out of time/energy after cooking and pureeing two pumpkins, making pumpkin butter, dehydrating some apples, making the spelt bread, and cleaning my house.  I feel about as worn out and used up as these:

I really thought I'd find the energy to make an apple pie tonight, but I'm thinking that maybe finding the energy to watch a movie is a more realistic expectation!

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

This ciabatta was good in practice, even though it was bad in theory - a welcome departure from my usual experiments.  I decided to try to make "healthy" ciabatta by changing the recipe from all white bread flour to 1/3 whole wheat bread flour.  In theory, because ciabatta is supposed to be very light and airy, the whole wheat flour should have dragged it down and made it less ciabatta-y.  In addition, part of the wonderful flavor of ciabatta comes from the semolina flour, which wouldn't come through if the semolina flavor had to compete with the whole wheat flavor.  In practice, this bread tastes excellent, retaining more than a hint of the sun-baked, homey flavor of traditional ciabatta.  It is a little denser than my last ciabatta effort and the dough wasn't quite as easy to work with.  It definitely tastes more earthy and whole grain-y than regular ciabatta, but the semolina flavor still comes through strongly.  I'm going to rate this effort a B+ for introducing healthy grains into a recipe without killing what was best about the original.

The Perfect Oregon Day

Today I started the perfect weekend.  Some friends and I drove over to Hood River - the home of Full Sail Brewery and many, many fruit farms - and stocked up for fall.  I bought at least 15 pounds of apples - about 2lbs for eating and the rest for baking apple pies, making applesauce, making apple butter, and drying for snacks this winter.  I can only imagine that this is just a dent in the amount of apples I'll really need to get me through the winter, but I was trying to be realistic (and also not freak out my friends by buying $30 worth of apples . . .)

I also picked up these lovely baking pumpkins, which I plan to puree and freeze for my future pumpkin needs.  I may have to make a little pumpkin butter, too, and I'll continue to buy more pumpkins throughout the season to make pumpkin pies and other treats.

Finally, because I can't resist anything jam or marmalade related, and because I've bought these marmalades before and they are completely addictive, I picked up some local Hood River pear marmalade and raspberry habenero pepper jelly, as well as Walla Walla onion mustard.

I'm tired, my feet are dirty, and my house is full of fruit and vegetables.  I have a ciabatta experiment rising in my kitchen right now, and I feel very content indeed.

Happy (Subway) Graduation!

My awesome friend Holly threw a graduation party for her boyfriend Cam, who not only was an amazing son and helped his mom buy a Subway franchise, but also attended Subway university with her.  Since I was pretty sure that 2 1/2 weeks of Subway college was more work than 4 years of liberal arts college, I decided to make a cake for him.  I tried to follow the spirit of my super cool and talented friend (from back in middle school) Treacy Silverstein, who writes the most decadent blog on the internet - http://treacycakes.wordpress.com/.  But, I also ended up following the method of Meggie - don't do anything too difficult or frustrating, because I don't want to show up at someone else's party in a huff.

I wanted to create a cake that looked like a Subway logo.  I started with two eight inch lemon cakes - made from a box mix on Wednesday night after work, no time this week to make vegan cake or bake from scratch.  On Friday night after work, I mixed up a big bowl of buttercream frosting.  I dyed most of it dark green and reserved two small bowls for decorating.  By the time I got the frosting green enough (it took almost an entire bottle of food coloring), it was nearly seven, and the party started at 7:30.  I made the executive decision that even with all the time in the world I would have a hard time drawing the subway logo in any medium, especially frosting.  So, I sort of hinted at the logo, and it was enough.  People liked the cake, Cam felt celebrated, and everyone ended up with green tongues.  Success!

So . . . this is embarrassing . . .

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's awesome Animal, Vegetable, Miracle over the past couple of days, otherwise I doubt this would have come up.  Or, at least, it wouldn't have been quite so shaming. 

I love pumpkin.  I would eat pumpkin all year round if it were available.  In fact, during pumpkin season I like to spend a weekend cooking and pureeing and freezing pumpkin and other winter squash, just so I can keep eating them all winter long.  There are probably better ways of storing them, but I like the convenience of having a freezer full of pureed squash that will quickly and easily add bulk and flavor to any meal.  Of course, none of this started until I realized that a pumpkin was an actual delicious vegetable, and not either a canned puree for pie-making or a jack-o-lantern.  I only figured that out about two years ago, and the first year I tried to eat my jack-o-lantern.  However, once I figured out cooking pumpkins - sorry, only ate frozen green beans growing up, it's a learning curve - I fell completely in love and used them in everything.  Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cupcakes and muffins, pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin pasta sauce, pumpkin lasagna, pumpkin soup.  If it's edible, I'll try to make a pumpkin version of it. 

Which brings us to my busy week.  The last time I was at a farmers market was ten days ago, and I didn't see any pumpkins there.  My neighbors don't have any pumpkins yet.  My freezer has been pumpkin-free for months.  But I was ready to cook with pumpkin.  So I fished around in my cupboard and pulled out a can of pumpkin puree that I had probably been there since before I "discovered" actual pumpkins.  I used it in the muffins on Sunday and thought it looked bizarre and too orange, but didn't really notice the difference in taste (especially with all the other fruit mixed in). 

Fast forward to tonight, after having read in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about how bizarre Kingsolver finds it that we would ever eat out of season or overly processed fruit and vegetables, since they don't taste nearly as good.  In general, I agree with her, but we all have busy schedules and sometimes quick meals are more important than "from scratch".  I needed something fast to make for dinner, so I pulled the leftover canned pumpkin out of the freezer and whipped it up with some shallots, peas, milk, and parmesan into a (usually tasty) pasta sauce.  Not only does it taste nothing like this dish usually tastes, it's also orange!  The pumpkin is weirdly mono-flavored.  My favorite thing about pumpkin is that it tastes earthy and rich without being overpowering.  This was simultaneously stronger and flatter in flavor than a real pumpkin.  I can't tell if I'm more sensitive to it because this book is reminding me of the value of fresh food, but if so I'm grateful for the reminder.  I knew when I grabbed the can off the shelf that I was letting convenience win out over common sense.  But I figured that I'd bought the can years ago, so the damage was already done.  It turns out the worst damage was yet to come . . . canned pumpkin ruined my dinner!

Grab Bag - A Slow Week for Baking

Apparently, being employed full time is quite a bit different from being employed part time and being a student part time.  The difference being that you can bake while you're studying.  When I was in school, it always seemed like I was keeping the craziest hours - the commute was long, plus, if I worked and went to class on the same day there was dead time that wouldn't exist if I just went to work for 8 hours.  Wow.  I was really mythologizing my old work schedule!  I'm still commuting nearly an hour each way to work.  I'm working a bit of overtime.  And, ALERT, when you have to wake up at 6am EVERY DAY (not just a few days a week or when you want to get a little extra studying in), you have to go to bed at a reasonable hour EVERY NIGHT.  I'm not claiming that I didn't work hard, or that I got very much sleep in law school, but I did have a bit more freedom to tinker with my schedule.  Since I've been temping, and also making an attempt to visit the gym, I've barely had time to cook a healthy dinner by the time I get home, let alone launch into a four hour baking extravaganza.  This weekend, I took a little much-deserved baking time:

I turned to a couple of old stand-by's.  One out of convenience, and the other out of my total love of fall.  On Sunday afternoon I whipped up a batch of Parker House Rolls.  Not the most thrilling, or even the healthiest, the Parker House Rolls have the advantage of being fast and providing me with sandwich bread for a week.  When I'm busy and hate to buy lunch out, the convenience of the basic sandwich can't be overlooked.  Still, it was probably the least thrilling baking I've done all month!

Luckily, I also had time to mix up a batch of my delicious (to the point of being weirdly addictive) fall muffins.  These muffins are most addictive (I think) because they don't taste nearly as healthy as they are.  I use a recipe of my own creation (although loosely based on a recipe for vegan zucchini bread that I found on the internet a year or so ago).  It's a little free form, so it's hard to write down, but here goes:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

• One mashed banana (I prefer them just ripe, but not overripe)
• Some quantity of pureed cooked pumpkin or squash - the amount depends on how much you have on hand and how pumpkin-y you're feeling.  I'm always feeling really pumpkin-y. 
• 1 cup (or less) of sugar (mixture of white and brown is tasty)
• about 2/3 cup applesauce and 1/3 cup vegetable oil - sometimes I use soy yogurt and skip the oil altogether, but watch out for the sweetness of the yogurt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix the first five ingredients, then add:

• about 3 cups of flour - this will change depending on how much pumpkin you used.  I also like to use a mixture of white and wheat flour, plus some oats and some ground flax seed.  All of this will affect how much flour you need.
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 to 3 teaspoons cinnamon - I like to just open the top of the cinnamon and shake until it feels right.  Sometimes I mix in a little nutmeg or allspice too, for fun.

Once you've got that all mixed together and feeling like a thick batter, or just wetter than a moist dough, mix in:

• about half of a large pear or apple, diced and roasted - I usually roast the fruit in the toaster oven while I'm mixing the rest of the ingredients and preheating the oven.  I wrap the diced fruit in tinfoil and set the toaster oven to 350 or 400 degrees.
• a handful of finely chopped nuts (walnuts taste best, I think)
• a handful of chopped sultanas

Scoop the batter into a muffin tin that you have greased or lined with muffin cups and bake for about 45 minutes, or until they're done.  Because they'll already be brown, it's hard to tell when they start to brown on top, but they typically get somewhat firmer as they finish cooking.  These muffins turn into hard tack when overcooked, so I always opt for taking them out earlier when in doubt.  If you've really undercooked them, they'll fall apart when you try to take the wrapper off, so I sometimes test one and then pop the rest back in if the first one disintegrates.  For reference, the muffins absolutely rise better when you use soy yogurt, but I personally like the taste better without it. 

The number one thing about these muffins (well, other than the facts that they're high in fiber and have a full serving of fruits and vegetables) is the way they make my whole house smell like fall.  Roasting pumpkin and cinnamon are two of my favorite aromas.  Adding a baking pear to that is just about the best thing ever.  Plus, making these muffins lets me get all the enjoyment from these scents and flavors without the guilt of eating pumpkin pie for breakfast for a week.  Although I would love that.

Taking my Ciabatta Out for a Spin

Today I made my first ever panini sandwich (or panino, if you prefer) using my own home made ciabatta.  I don't have a panini press or grill pan to make those cute little grill marks on the sides, so I just cooked the sandwich in a dry frying pan over medium heat, pressing down with my fingers and a spatula.  It worked pretty well (even the somewhat precarious flip) although I wouldn't have minded if it had gotten a little thinner and crispier in some places.  For the filling, I layered fresh mozzarella, shredded basil from my garden, and a sliced heirloom tomato from the farmer's market.  Then I drizzled a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the filling and dusted a little sea salt and black pepper on top and added the other slice of ciabatta.  Yum.

Ciabatta, mi amore

Bread this good makes me want to simultaneously toss out my law degree to open a bakery and never bake again.  On the one hand, I think that I have finally arrived as a baker par excellence and that I should share my gift with the world(!!!!!).  On the other hand, I despair of ever making a loaf of bread this wonderful again.  This bread is perfect.

 
For once, I have no words.  In fact, I'm having trouble even typing this because I'm so busy shoving slices of this delicious bread in my mouth.  With a glass of wine and a few slices of cheese, it's as close to paradise as anyone has a right to be on a Monday night. 

So first, let's give credit where credit is due:  The River Cottage Bread Handbook.  This recipe put me off at first because it looked time consuming and different from the other recipes I have tackled recently.  I was sure that the author couldn't mean it when he said to fold the dough in three "like a blanket" multiple times during the rising period.  Not only did he mean it, he was completely right about what it did for the dough.  The air pockets in both the dough and the finished loaves are divine.  My concerns about the time-intensive process proved unfounded, too.  To be sure, you need to set aside about five hours to follow this recipe, but I was doubly rewarded by the sheer amount of bread it made and by the gift of time broken up into 30 minutes increments - perfect for cleaning my house.  Moreover, the ratio of water to flour is perfect and kneading the dough didn't give me sore arms.  The olive oil and semolina give the bread a rich, farmhouse taste.  In conclusion, this is the airiest, softest, most subtly flavorful bread I have ever made.  I am in love.

Garlic French Bread II: Too Moist, Too Flat

Yesterday I made the same garlic french bread recipe that was the bane of my existence last weekend.  I really wasn't in the mood to spend half my life kneading unresponsive dough, so I added enough water to make the dough sticky and easy to manipulate.  I also dissolved the yeast in the water before I added it to the flour/salt mixture.  I don't know if this was my best idea ever.  I also let the dough rise for a really long time.  Like three hours.  Because I fell asleep.  Honestly, I helped my awesome friend Holly celebrate her 30th birthday on Friday night, and I really shouldn't have gotten up and tried to make bread the next morning.  The bread is surprisingly tasty (probably thanks to the eight cloves of lightly roasted garlic I added to it) but came out a little flat.  I like that it is moister than the last loaf, but maybe I should add slightly less extra water next time. 

The number one problem with this batch of garlic french bread was that it consistently expanded by oozing and spreading rather than by rising upward.  I think that this must be due to extra moisture in the dough.  So, I guess the moral of today's post is, don't add THAT much extra water.  And probably also: don't bake hungover.  Luckily, I get a redo.  Today I'm taking my first ever stab at ciabatta!

Parker House Rolls

When I'm short on time, but still want something delicious and home-made, this fantastic recipe from the Joy of Cooking will be my new standby.  It is essentially the same recipe that I used for the hot crossed buns earlier this week, but leaving out the sweet ingredients.  These dinner rolls would be perfect for Thanksgiving dinner, but would be equally excellent for making a tiny lobster roll.  They are as delicious for breakfast and lunch as they are for dinner.  The only danger is that, since they make such small sandwiches, you might end up eating five sandwiches for lunch, like I did today!

I learned my lesson from earlier this week and was careful about the length of time I kneaded these rolls.  In fact, when I looked back over the recipe, it merely directs to knead the remaining flour into the dough, not to do any additional kneading.  I kneaded until the dough had absorbed all the flour in the bowl and the dough was spongy and still a bit sticky on the inside, then tried to handle it as little as possible when forming the rolls.  Although the recipe called for the rolls to be cooked for about 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven, I cooked them for about 12 minutes in a 400 degree oven, and they came out golden brown and wonderfully soft.  I will definitely make these again!

Hot (un)Crossed Buns

I'm not sure I'd ever had a hot crossed bun before.  If I had, it hadn't made a huge impression on me.  I kind of had an idea that they were sweet rolls, although I also may have confused them with Chelsea buns, which I've also never had, although I think they're sweeter.  Anyway, after laboring all day on the garlic french bread on Sunday, I was looking around for something fun and easy.  Ideally, I wanted a cooking project that would taste yummy and satisfy my need to cook more without spiking my frustration level through the roof.  The Joy of Cooking, my old standby, came to the rescue.

I was flipping through the bread section, looking for a fast bread that didn't require lots of milk and eggs - items I am ambivalent about during the best of times and certainly can't afford at the moment (seriously, the only eggs I don't feel completely guilty about eating cost nearly half my weekly shopping allowance!)  As soon as I saw the recipe for hot crossed buns, I knew I had found what I was looking for.  It only required one rising period and 20 minutes in the oven, plus, it called for raisins, one of my favorite foods.  I didn't notice until I was almost finished making the dough that it called for one egg.  I'm not sure how I missed it, since the Joy is very clear in its ingredient lists.  I think I assumed that, as in the other roll recipes in that section, the egg was optional.  At any rate, I didn't have any eggs so I carried on without them.  The rolls turned out just as delicious as I had hoped, but a little dry.  I have two theories for this.  First, I would have let them rise a little bit longer if I hadn't had plans in the afternoon.  Second, I think that I kneaded them too much!  After working with tough dough all morning, I think I might have been a bit too excited to be kneading nice soft dough.  Finally, I have a third theory, that eggs help bread rise and would have added moisture.  The next time I make these I will remember to add the egg. 

Nonetheless, I'm happy with the result.  These buns are slightly sweet, the golden raisins are delicious, and they kind of remind me of Christmas with all the cinnamon and nutmeg.  They're excellent with a little butter and a cup of tea in the morning.  When I realized that the "crossed" in the name referred to actually drawing a little cross on the top of the rolls, I skipped it.  Who wants to do extra work for something that has no effect on the deliciousness of the food?  Which leaves me wondering what to call these yummy un-crossed buns.

I Stand Corrected . . . also, this tastes AMAZING!

I have to admit that, while I was waiting for the dough to rise this morning, I thought a number of not very kind things about Confessions of a French Baker by Peter Mayle.  The book purports to be a guide to baking loaves like a professional, artisanal French baker, aimed at an audience of regular people, like me.  Or maybe not.  Although the first chapters of the book linger over the romance of bakers arriving to work well before dawn to lovingly craft their loaves and the smell and feel of yeasty dough being shaped into perfect baguettes, batards, and boules, it does not give much space to what I consider the much more important aspects of bread-making: ratios of ingredients, kneading technique and length of time, and rising periods.  In fact, the recipes contained in the second half of this book almost universally call for both mixing and kneading the dough in an electric mixer.  I have always been of the opinion that anything that can be made with a mixer can also be made by hand (see Thursday's post), although sometimes it requires more effort, so I simply made these recipes the old fashioned way.  But I have never achieved completely satisfactory results. 

Over the past few months since I checked this book out of the library, I have been experimenting with its recipes, particularly the baguette recipe, and have come to the conclusion that the measurements did not survive the translation from French to English and from European to American measuring systems unscathed.  I find that I consistently need to add more water, and that my dough often doesn't rise nearly as much was one would expect from dough with such an obscene amount of yeast in it. (4.5 teaspoons? Really?)  Today, while I was waiting - and waiting - for my most recent batch of dough to rise, I began to wonder if it really did make a difference whether I mixed and kneaded the dough by hand or in a mixer.  Maybe I'm not strong enough to mix really stiff dough by hand, and that's why I'd been adding extra water.  Maybe, 15 minutes of kneading in a mixer is actually equivalent to more like 25 minutes of kneading by hand, which seems like a lot, but some of these doughs have been really tough.  I even formulated an experiment in which I would go to the home of a friend who has a stand-up mixer and make bread solely by machine for a day. 

All this is really just another way of saying that I was doubting Confessions of a French Baker and thinking that I would never get a really good loaf of bread from its recipes.  Today it proved me wrong. 

I decided to try garlic french bread, a variation on the traditional batard in which you add 6 chopped cloves of garlic to the dough before kneading.  The recipe was indecisive about whether the garlic out to be cooked first - in one section it called for sauteed garlic, while in the instructions it said simply to chop the garlic and add it to the dough.  I love roasted garlic and dislike raw garlic, so I decided to roast mine in the toaster oven before adding it to the dough.  I ended up needing about a 1/2 cup more water than the recipe required, plus a little extra salt, and there was so much yeast that the yeast was actually falling out of the dough as I was kneading it, although it slowly dissolved in.  Even though I had added a little extra water, the dough was very dry and very tough to knead.  I kneaded it for about 15 minutes, until I was completely sick of it, and put it in a bowl in the slightly warm oven to rise. 

Every rising period seemed to take ages longer than expected, and the dough just barely doubled in size.  In short, it had none of the fabulous airiness I've come to expect from dough that has risen multiple times.    Once I had formed the dough into batards, I decided to let it proof for as long as it needed to start to breathe a little.  At that point, I didn't really care if the loaves came out small as long as they weren't unbearably dense.  Really dense bread just isn't fun to eat.  I ended up letting the dough proof for over an hour on top of the preheating oven, and although it didn't double in size it did get noticeably fluffier.  I cut the dough into leaf shapes for fun, then sprayed the loaves and the inside of the oven and popped the loaves in.  About ten minutes in I sprayed the oven again.  After about twenty minutes, I turned the heat down from 450 to 400 degrees, afraid that the loaves were browning too much on top.

What came out of the oven were savory, not-too-dense, crisp-crusted loaves of french bread, with a strong hint of garlic.  They are absolutely delicious with butter slathered on top, and I can't wait to try them with cheese!  I'm not sure how these loaves came out of that not very promising dough, but I can only assume that that dough needs a much longer rising period (and possibly higher room temperatures) than others.  The loaves are still not as airy as I'd like them to be, but not nearly as dense as I'd feared.  I'm also completely sold on roasting the garlic first.  Although the taste is not as strong as it would have been if I had used raw garlic, the softness of roasted garlic allows the flavor to spread throughout the loaf, rather than being captured in pockets of garlic.  In the future, I may try this recipe again with more like 10 cloves of roasted garlic.  I am also going forward with the mixer experiment (if my friend agrees, and who wouldn't want someone baking in their house all day?)  More updates to follow . . .

The Stand-up Mixer Debate

What is it about stand-up mixers and marginally domestic girls in their 20s?  It seems like stand-up mixers used to be something that our grandmas had, and, if we realized how useful they were, we could look forward to inheriting them rather than tossing them out as relics or pieces of junk.  As far as I can remember, neither of my grandmas had a stand-up mixer, at least not during the time when I knew them.  My mom definitely never had a stand-up mixer.  I don't know if it was our consumer culture that placed "now" over "good" or a glitch in our understanding of feminism that made us think that any woman who got near a kitchen was betraying her ideals, but a lot of women my age grew up thinking that cooking was unimportant, boring, or someone else's job.  Or worse, we believed that we were cooking when we poured something frozen into a saute pan.  Regardless, we never learned to value cooking meals from scratch, and so we never learned how, and so we never wanted mixers.   At least, I think that's how the progression ought to go.

But this post isn't really about the cooking and life skills we've lost.  After all, we've seen a huge surge of interest in all things do-it-yourself, back-to-the-land, and crafty in the past ten or so years.  People are taking steps to slow down and connect with their families and with the planet by making more home cooked meals, growing their own fruits and vegetables, even canning fruit and raising chickens.  But, where, in all of this interest in "from scratch" does the resurgence of interest in products like the KitchenAid Mixer come from?  When I was taking my first steps toward a more "from scratch" lifestyle six or so years ago, I was focused on reinventing the wheel.  I thought that, to really be from scratch, my food had to be made by hand.  Luckily for me and my occasional dinner guests, I didn't extend this idea to its logical (if absurd) conclusion and start cooking my meals over a camp fire.  But I did start to think about where my food came from and then later tried to gauge how much energy input went into getting it from where it came from to my table ready to eat.  I figured out that you could make most things that called for mixers by hand (even meringues, though I wouldn't recommend it).  I also figured out that there are some things, like pumpkin, that really do taste better after a few minutes in the food processor.  At that point, it becomes a decision and a trade-off.  Is the improved consistency worth plugging in the food processor for a few minutes?  Can I make this dish in another way?  If it will taste the same, I try to go the non-tech route.  And I now own a couple of sturdy appliances that get me through the tasks that I have decided really are worth plugging in for.

Which brings me back to the mixer.  All of a sudden, this summer, I absolutely had to have a KitchenAid mixer.  I think it was a combination of the lingering euphoria from looking at friends' wedding registries (so much shiny cookware!) and soreness from all the hours I was spending alternately hunched over my computer and laboring in the kitchen.  There might have been whiskey involved, too.  I searched on the internet (purveyor of so much shiny cookware) and found a sturdy-looking refurbished mixer.  It was still woefully out of my price range.  I talked about it for weeks.  I tormented my mother, my best friend, and my roommate, not to mention my Bar study partner.  In the end, I didn't buy it.  A girl with no job who has never been able to afford a washer and dryer or a car shouldn't be purchasing fancy cooking appliances.  That was when I started to wonder what had happened to me, and why I felt so strongly about needing to own a stand-up mixer.

Which came first, our interest in cooking from scratch or our interest in shiny cookware?  The answer to that question is different for everyone, and I don't think it really matters as long as we're doing something that makes us healthier and happier.  If good marketing by sellers of beautiful cooking tools is getting more budding cooks into the kitchen and more home cooked food on people's tables, I think it's a win for everyone.  And yet, it frustrates me to think that our new-found love of cooking and living in a sustainable way has come full circle to once again support the consumer culture that a lot of us have been trying to get away from.  Why did I really want a stand-up mixer?  Was it because my arms were sore, or because everyone else had one?  I think that I was hugely influenced by the well-marketed idea that delicious food comes from a beautiful kitchen, and that people who have the "right tools" are able to accomplish more.  For me, this is a bad thing.  I turn to cooking for all kinds of reasons: to control the food I eat, to "vote with my dollar" at the grocery store, for the comfort that crafting by hand gives me.  I don't like to think that I do it for the shiny consumer goods, even if I can acknowledge that they're pretty.  I'm curious how other people feel about this issue, or whether I'm the only one who stays up at night agonizing over consumerism and its grip on me.

In the end, not getting the mixer was the right choice for me.  No matter how much I tried to use it, it would have been just another thing that took up unnecessary space in my life (and that I would have developed some form of guilt about).  At least for now, I have decided that I already have all the tools I need to be a great cook:  two hands, a bunch of cookbooks, a little ingenuity, and a lot of resilience. 

Brioche-la-la!

Stop the presses!  I just realized that bread was slaved over and enjoyed, and yet the blog was not updated!  Clearly someone was asleep at the wheel.

This little slice of heaven is my first attempt at brioche.  I LOVE brioche, in all its many variations.  This brioche had the right taste, but it was, like so many of my loaves lately, too dense.  The flavor was milky and bland, kind of reminiscent of store-bought challah, and would have been delicious if the bread had just been a little bit softer and moister.  Because the dough seemed moist enough, I'm going to chalk this one up to not enough time rising and a little too much time baking.  I made both the brioche and the fougasse pictured below after work on a Monday night, and multitasking in the kitchen isn't exactly one of my strengths.  I seem to remember running short on time and just wanting to be finished by the time I was prepping the brioche for the oven.  I think that the next time I make this bread I will be sure to let it more than double in size, and maybe allow it multiple rising periods.  I will definitely use this recipe, from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, again.  The flavor is there, now only the texture needs to catch up.

Luckily, my other loaf of the evening rose like a charm.  While my fougasse has been inconsistent in the past, I have recently had great success by applying the River Cottage techniques and by giving the dough more time to rise.  This fougasse with olives and herbs was chewy and soft and delicious.  I ate nearly half the loaf with pesto for dinner, then served the rest as an appetizer to friends the following night.  I consider myself very lucky to have friends who will rave over an "appetizer" that is clearly a half-eaten loaf of bread pulled out of a ziploc bag, by the way.

Back to Basics

It's been a while since I stuck my nose in The River Cottage Bread Handbook and came out with something delicious and satisfying.  Overall, I've had good luck with the recipes in that book, although I'm skeptical of their flour to water ratios.  I first attempted to make their basic loaf back in early July, and I decided to take another crack at it today. 

The recipe calls for 8 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon yeast, 4 teaspoons salt, and 2 1/2 cups of liquid.  That's it.  I first taught myself to make bread using recipes spiced up with herbs, olives, olive oil, and other add-ons that gave the loaves zip.  For a long time, I was so pleased with the flavor added by these additional ingredients that I neglected the flavor of the underlying loaves.  I love that River Cottage's recipes are so simple that they force me to focus on how kneading the dough for longer or letting it rise three times rather than two affects the flavor.  The other great thing about these recipes is that within the simple formula there is room for experimentation.  When the River Cottage Bread Handbook says flour, what it means is that I am free to choose between white, whole wheat, rye, spelt, etc., or any combination of the above.  When it says liquid, I can choose water, milk, beer, buttermilk, or any other liquid I think might taste good.  In addition, it gives helpful guidelines about when and how to add the add-ons that bring that little extra zest to the bread.

Today I mixed 3 cups of white bread flour, 3 cups of all purpose white/whole wheat mixed flour, and one cup of whole wheat flour.  Although this only added up to 7 cups of flour, I knew from past experience that I still might need to add more water, especially since the whole wheat flour seems to absorb more water than the white flour.  I added 1 tablespoon of yeast, 4 teaspoons of salt, two handfuls of rolled oats, and two generous pinches of ground flax seed.  Then I added 2 1/2 cups of warm water with about a tablespoon of honey mixed in it.  The dough was so dry and rough that I ended up adding about another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water.  Even then, the dough was torture to knead, but I worried that if I added more water the dough wouldn't rise properly.  After I'd kneaded the dough for about seven minutes, it began to take on a more uniform, less gritty texture. 

I let the dough rise twice in the slightly warm oven - I usually set the oven on its lowest setting for about 5 minutes, then shut it off while I knead the dough and clean the bowl.  That way the oven is warm and snug for the dough - rather than cold and drafty like my kitchen, even in August - but not hot enough to cook the outside layer.  Between the two rising periods, I turned the dough out onto my work surface and deflated it by poking it all over with my fingers.  I have been kind of religious about the techniques I learned from River Cottage, and will continue at least until I learn why they work so well.  After the second rising period, I formed the dough into two large, somewhat loose batards, and wrapped them in a damp towel to rise one last time.  I learned the last time I made the basic loaf that baking the dough in small boules made very dense bread unless I had all the time in the world to wait for the tight little boules to double in size.  I think that the two rising periods, combined with the shape of the loaves, helped me create much lighter, more manageable bread this time.

I preheated the paving stone while the batards were rising, then sprayed the batards and the entire oven with water to create steam.  After baking the batards at my oven's highest setting for 10 minutes, I turned the heat down to 325 degrees for the next 35 minutes or so.  Although the crust came out a little browner than I had planned, for the first time I got the contrast between crunchy exterior and soft interior that I have been searching for.  Some factors which I'm sure contributed to the difference: the two rising periods; I didn't crush all of the air out of the dough after rising; batards rather than boules; less whole wheat flour may have made it less dense; I sprayed the interior of the oven twice.  I think that my next experiment will be with three or four rising periods.  I'm theorizing that, if rising is stretching the glutens in the flour and allowing the yeast to develop, then it must have an impact on the flavor as well.  So the more dough is allowed to rise, the lighter, chewier, and more flavorful it will be.  Maybe. 

Regardless, this bread is delicious, has a decent texture, and even is fairly good for me.  I'll consider this a basic loaf win.

The Land of Flour and Butter

For the past two weeks I have been tasting the fruits of others' labors rather than laboring myself.  My mother took me on a trip to France to celebrate my graduation from law school, and we worshiped at the altar of all things bread and wine related.  We ate baguette with all kinds of goat's and sheep's milk cheeses, croissants, pains chocolats, quiches, and those wonderful french pastries with yellow custard and mini chocolate chips in them.  Every single piece of bread I put in my mouth in France (especially in rural France) inspired me to become a better baker.  I want to improve my crust, make lighter, airier baguettes, and make more flavorful bread without loading it with herbs and salt.  I suspect this may entail reassessing my flour options, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway.

It also inspired me to exercise some small degree of moderation in my baking and bread eating life.  I believe in enjoying the good things in life when they come my way, but even for me the amount of butter consumed in the past two weeks was appalling. Mostly in a good way.

Cooking again!

Dude.  It has been a rough couple of weeks.  During the last crunch up to the bar exam, I lost my will to cook (or really to do anything other than flip flashcards and watch Friends reruns).  Even after the last day of the test on Wednesday, I was too busy drinking, and feeling relieved, and buying myself possibly undeserved (and definitely not affordable) presents, to do much of anything.  But, there is good news.  My will to bake finally came back, and I made some decent baguettes using a recipe out of Confessions of a French Baker by Peter Mayle for a party I threw on Saturday night.  Then, because we ate them all on Saturday, and I was desperately hungry, I made another set on Sunday.  They taste excellent with pesto, or goat cheese, or really anything.

But, they still don't have the earthy flavor I'm hankering for.  I'm going to keep trying different recipes until I find it, because I know it's out there.  For now I"m content to sit on my patio, sipping cheap Pinot Grigio and eating baguette and cheese.  Life could get a heck of a lot worse . . .

Sourdough Boules

Last night I decided to make a second attempt at sourdough loaves.  My sourdough starter has been growing and fermenting for over a week, and I thought that it was time to try again.  This batch started off promisingly - the sponge grew quite a lot between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon when I started to work on the bread.  For the sponge (a mixture of starter, flour, and water that ferments and rises overnight), I used white bread flour, rather than all purpose flour.  For the dough, I used mostly all purpose flour, substituting about a half cup of rye flour and some ground flax seed for added fiber.  The loaves are delicious, but still not as airy as I want them to be.  The dough didn't rise as much as I had hoped it would during the initial rising periods.  Then, after I shaped it into loaves and wrapped it in towels to rise again, the dough expanded a lot on the sides but didn't rise up.  I think that next time I need to place the loaves in small bowls for the final rising period so that they are less likely to spread outward.

Don't get me wrong, the sourdough is DELICIOUS.  It is heaven slathered in butter (or in white bean spread for the vegans out there).  But I'm just not satisfied with the loaves.  They are too crispy outside and too spongy inside.  Oh well, better luck next time! 

Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanks to my wonderful friends - and to the Avett Brothers - for a fantastic birthday yesterday.  And a special thank you shout out to my roommate Brooke for making these delicious cupcakes.

Sourdelicious!

Even though I just created my sourdough starter on Saturday, and my recipe says that it won't be ready to use for bread for at least a week, I threw caution to the wind and started working on my first sourdough loaves yesterday.  From start to finish I failed to follow the recipe accurately and was generally acting like an enthusiastic incompetent, rather than the organized, disciplined person I'd like to become someday. 

I started by making the sponge from a ladle-full of sourdough starter and a whole bunch of flour on Tuesday morning.  If I had read the recipe accurately, I would have realized that I was supposed to let the sponge grow overnight, so I really should have started it on Tuesday night.  As it was, I didn't get around to working on the sourdough loaves until about 2pm on Wednesday.  During that time, my sponge had grown until it spilled out the sides of the bowl it was rising in, and then deflated a bit, and I have no idea how this has affected my bread. 

However, this has been a learning experience, if only about the amount of time and planning it takes to make a sourdough loaf, and I'm glad that I did this over the past two days, so I have an idea of how to budget my time in the future.  This afternoon, I made the dough and kneaded it by hand until it was smooth and stretchy and basically passed the windowpane test.  After ten minutes of kneading, the dough failed the windowpane test twice.  So when it mostly passed the test after about twelve minutes of kneading I decided to give up, for fear of overkneading the dough.  I theorized that it may have failed the test because the starter was so young and not enough yeast had grown yet, but I'm still not sure exactly how the amount of yeast affects the gluten in the dough.

After kneading, I shaped the dough into a round and let it rise for an hour.  My recipe - from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, more or less, since I subbed different types of flour - suggested letting the dough rise for four one-hour periods, reshaping the round between rising periods.  I did that, and the dough seemed to rise significantly during that time.

However, by the time I had shaped the dough into baguettes in anticipation of one final rising period before baking, it was seven at night and I was starving.  (I'm currently studying for the Oregon Bar Exam, and so I don't get out of the house much, especially not to buy food.)  That's when I realized that my recipe said to let the dough double in size, which could take anywhere from one to four hours!

I ended up cooking the first baguette after about one hour of rising, which was not enough to make it as light and airy as I wanted it to be.

I baked this loaf on my new baking stone (actually a paving stone purchased at Home Depot for $7.87, as opposed to $40 at a cooking supply store) in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then at 400 degrees for another 20 or so minutes, then at 350 degrees for a few more minutes.  I loved the golden brown crust, but the consensus (between me and my excellent roommate, Brooke) was that the crust was too hard after the bread had cooled.  The inside of the loaf also seemed a bit undercooked.

After I removed the first loaf from the oven, the other two loaves had been rising for nearly two hours, and had grown substantially (although I'm not sure they had doubled, exactly).  I decided to pop them in the oven while the stone was still hot, and hope for the best!  For this batch, I baked them at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, then reduced the heat to 350 for about 20 minutes.  After that, I reduced the heat to 300 degrees to prevent the crust from getting as hard as the previous loaf, and baked for a few more minutes.  Brooke and I both knocked on the loaves to test whether they sounded "hollow".  She said that they definitely sounded hollow, while I wasn't sure I liked what I was hearing.  We decided to take them out of the oven after about 35 minutes of total bake time.  They looked lovely.

This batch definitely didn't have as hard a crust as the first, and the inside was fluffier, but it still didn't seem cooked enough inside.  The loaves were also a little bit too salty.  I think that what I've learned from this is that: 1) I need to wait until my starter grows more wild yeast; 2) I need to let my dough rise until it is truly doubled in size, no matter how long it takes; 3) I need to use less salt than the recipe calls for; and 4) I need to follow my new temperature guidelines rather than those provided in the recipe.  I think that the main reason that my loaves don't seem well enough cooked is that they are too dense.  If I let them rise longer (and if the yeast is more active), I think that they will cook more thoroughly.  They'll also probably make a better "hollow" sound!

Finally, even though the loaves weren't perfect, Brooke and I were able to eat a fabulous (if bizarre) dinner of sourdough baguette, cheese, pepperoni (for her), artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and sliced melon.  And now that we've eaten all the food in the house, I think I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.