Peach-ginger-lime preserves
People go on and on about local foods, but this was the local-est. My coworker, who lives about three blocks away, has a peach tree in her yard that was about to drop all of its fruit. She very kindly climbed the tree and picked peaches while I caught them in a bag and fretted for her safety. In all, I took home about four pounds of peaches, and once I cut into them, decided to use about half.
I got the peaches home and tasted them. Not bad, but not truly outstanding in a way that I trusted them to be great on their own. So I added ginger to my recipe, and, since I was making lime curd that day anyway, some lime peel and juice. I was in the mood for Thai food, which took this jam in a weird direction.
It was a good experiment. The peaches actually cooked up better than expected, and the warm spice of the ginger plus the brightness of the lime seemed to work together with the fruit and make it somewhat better than the sum of the parts. Here’s how:
2 lbs peaches, diced small, unpeeled
8 oz. organic sugar
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 Tbsp. crystallized ginger
1 Tbsp. grated lime peel
2.5-3 Tbsp. lime juice
Ready to sit overnight
Cut up the fruit and put it in a large, nonreactive bowl. Stir in the other ingredients and then cover and let sit overnight to macerate. I usually do this in the refrigerator, but if your kitchen is cold, you could leave it out.
The next day, pour the mixture into a large (wide) nonreactive pot. Wider is better, because you want to cook off as much extra water as possible in a short amount of time.
At this point, you should put your canning jars (washed) into the oven at about 210°F. This, in effect, sterilizes them, especially when you spoon boiling jam into them. Beats the hell out of boiling, and frees up a burner on the stove. Everyone wins.
Get it up to boiling and then let simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally in the beginning, increasing that to “constantly” as the time gets short, to keep the mixture from sticking. As the mixture is cooking, taste occasionally to make sure things are going in the desired direction, flavor-wise. I began this recipe with only 6 oz. of sugar and 2 Tbsp. of lime juice, but during the cooking process, it became clear that the jam was on its way to being (a) sour and (b) muddy-tasting. Two more ounces of sugar (or “two small handsful,” more like) and 1/2 Tbsp. more lime juice turned the thing around.
As the 20-minute mark approaches, the mixture should thicken and the bubbles will become more (for want of a better term) crackly– smaller, sounding like crinkling plastic. At this point, once the excess water has boiled off (not pooling on the surface), turn off the burner and immediately get your jars out of the oven.
Now comes the key step in preserving, in which will prevent later bouts of food poisoning (or just icky jam). Set out the jars, lids, and a scoop or measuring cup to fill the jars. While the jars and jam are hot, fill the jar to within 1/4-1/8″ of the top. Wipe off the rim with a clean cloth, then screw the lid onto the jar. Let it rest, filling up the rest of the jars exactly the same way (less air means less spoilage, I’m told). Let it sit to cool, and the jars will vacuum-seal on their own, indicated by occasional pops over the next couple of hours.
This recipe yielded three 8-oz. jars of jam. One was given to my coworker, for her trouble. One has been devoured already. The last is going to make the dark dark days of December just a little bit brighter.
My taste tester gave this one a rave review. I would say that the skins did clump up a bit in the final product. They definitely had a presence, though small. Unfortunately, so much flavor resides in the skin that I would not want to peel the peaches before preserving them; besides, cutting up four pounds of peaches is plenty of work already. The two kinds of ginger add some warmth to the jam, and the lime was a nice addition, although I think it would have been about the same with lemon. The lime did not play a big role here.
And no fossil fuels were used in the transport of these peaches to my home. Cannot say the same about any of the other ingredients, unfortunately, but it’s a start.
Filed under: jam | 2 Comments
June Taylor, jam goddess
June Taylor preserves fruit. She has a space in Berkeley and makes jam* by hand in small batches (in large pots, not on an industrial scale). She uses local fruit (mostly), often organic, very simple, relatively low in sugar, no pectin. She also teaches classes on preserving at home, and I’ve been able to attend two, one for summer fruits (plums, peaches, etc.) and one for winter (marmalade!).
I first tried her preserves at the farmers’ market in SF, and was instantly hooked. It’s a habit that is slightly less expensive than drugs, although not by much sometimes. What I loved was that I could taste the fruit, rather than sugar. Plum preserves taste like plums, and marmalade is sweet and sour and aromatic and even just slightly bitter– a well-rounded flavor profile.
I made several batches of marmalade this winter (bergamot, Seville orange, Meyer lemon). I learned that with the sour citrus, the pectin balance is kind of difficult to achieve, i.e. very solid marmalade. Even when too firm, though, they still tasted reasonably good.
She does not work with recipes, specifically, relying on formulas based on years of experience and the flavor of the fruit. So, by weight, one type of fruit may require a 4:1 ratio of fruit to sugar, while others might be 5:1 or 3:1. She also cooks the fruit for a short period of time, and has a lovely technique for canning that does not involve a damn water bath.
Overall, she is an inspiration to a cook/baker looking for a new way to spend a lot of time in the kitchen making things that other people might like.
*Technically, what she makes is not “jam,” since the sugar content of her fruit preserves is much less than that for jam. But “jam” is a wonderful word, much nicer than the more accurate but less melodious “fruit preserves.”
Filed under: jam | Leave a Comment
Rebranding time…
Well, things have been busy for a few months now, and while I’ve had time to do some baking, I’ve had considerably less time to write up the recipes. And, I have a new obsession:
Soon I will need an annex to store all of these jars
This is a summer’s worth of preserved fruit, minus giveaways and jars eaten. So, in honor of one of my favorite childhood books, I’m adding small-batch fruit preserves to the short list of things to blog about.
In the interest of time, I may also be using bread recipes that I find on the web, i.e. those that I can link to and not need to type. With any luck, this will jump-start the blogging process again.
Plus, marmalade season will be here soon!
Filed under: jam | 3 Comments
Buns!
Spring is in the air, which usually puts me in the mood for hot cross buns. Little lightly-sweetened rounds of yeasted goodness, flavored with citrus and dried fruit, just bright-tasting little snacks. Yum.
I decided to concoct my own version of the hot cross bun. I had a recipe from Epicurious that I’d used for the past couple of years, but it was not completely satisfying– too sweet, too heavy. Ideally, this would be a rich dough with some sugar, but not a full-on brioche experience. The original recipe treated the buns like a regular enriched bread dough with some extra butter, so I thought I’d try to go one better.
In the end, I combined aspects of three or four different recipes. This picture represents the cookbook area of my kitchen when I am ambitious and working with several recipes:
So, chaos. I decided to combine some of the brioche techniques from Rose Levy Berenbaum with som eproportions from Peter Reinhart, using most of the ingredients from the Epicurious recipe, with some alterations. Without further ado…
Hot Cross Buns (or, Buns of No Particular Religious Symbolism)
Sponge
1½ c. soymilk, warmed to about 100°F (can substitute actual milk)
3 tsp. instant yeast
2 c. all-purpose flour
1 large egg
Combine ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and let sit one hour at room temperature.
Fruit, spices, and dough ingredients
½ c. dried sour cherries, chopped
2 Tbsp. candied orange peel, chopped
2 Tbsp. crystallized ginger, chopped
2 tsp. allspice
½ tsp. cinnamon
zest from one orange and one Meyer lemon (and substitute regular lemon)
2 large eggs
8 Tbsp. butter, softened and cut into 8 pieces
2-3 c. all-purpose flour
1¼ tsp. salt
¼ c. sugar.
Measure and process the fruits and spices. I couldn’t resist taking this photo:
Mix eggs, salt, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, and two cups of flour into the sponge with the paddle attachment of the mixer. Add the butter, one piece at a time. As the dough begins to come together, switch to the dough hook. Add flour to the mixture until the dough is sticky but mostly clears the sides of the bowl. Err on the side of a more wet dough– the dough will stick more at first but will clear the sides of the bowl as the mixer kneads the dough.
Add the citrus zests and the fruit, then knead with the dough hook for five to six minutes on a low-medium speed (three on the KitchenAid mixer). The full mixing time may be as much as ten minutes as you fiddle with the flour levels and whatnot.
Once the dough is kneaded, oil a large bowl and put the dough in it, rolling it once to oil the whole surface.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for an hour at room temperature. After the hour, refrigerate the dough for one to two hours to let it firm up (this chills the butter in the dough and makes the whole mass a bit more solid). Remove the dough from the refrigerator, deflate the dough by pressing on it (no need to “punch it down, be gentle). On a lightly floured counter, press the dough into a rough triangle. Fold the dough into thirds in the long direction (think of a letter in an envelope), then turn it 90° and fold into thirds in that direction.
Put the dough back into the bowl, oil it, and refrigerate for another hour.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide into bun-sized pieces (I got somewhere between 25 and 30 buns from this recipe). Roll them into spheres and place on the baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone equivalent. Cover and let rise one more hour.
During this hour, preheat the oven to 425°. Once the buns have risen, bake them for 10-15 minutes, until the crust is golden or light caramel brown:
And voilà. The title of this post comes from the exclamation of my friend’s 1½-year-old, who at first cried “Cookies!” when these arrived. Upon being told that they were not cookies but, in fact, buns, he immediately yelled “Buns!” and proceeded to eat them with gusto. Even without a frosted cross on them.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Testing the limits
A little while ago, I was reading in Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking that the notion of holding bread in the refrigerator (or some other cold place) was formalized by the Viennese bakers at the turn of the 20th century. They did this because (in a nutshell), working all night baking bread for the morning rush is tough, and if you can do it the evening before and then bake off in the morning, you are not kneading dough at 3am. I think that we can all get behind this concept.I wanted to make up a recipe, just to see what would happen. I decided that I wanted to make a potato-poppy seed bread, so, triangulating my ingredients between recipes by Reinhart and Hensperger, with input from McGee (for proportions and the why of it all), I created a new recipe. Now, granted, potato-poppy seed bread is hardly revolutionary, but I learned something along the way– namely, that you can use your refrigerator to adjust bread baking to your busy schedule.This had kind of occurred to me before, since Reinhart is such a big fan of the slow rise, but I was still always working according to his schedule. This time, I was making it up as I went along anyway, and my weekend got a little hectic, so I tried two new things at once. Usually, this results in some sort of mishap– flat bread (as opposed to flatbread), undercooking, random weird burns on my hands– but this time, things seemed to work out. Potato-Poppy Seed BreadFirst step: Boil a russet potato in unsalted water until soft. Save the water.Sponge:1½ c. potato water (room temperature)½ c. soy milk (You could substitute milk-milk, I just don’t swing that way. Or even more potato water.)½ t. instant yeast2 c. bread flourMix these ingredients together– the texture will be like a thick batter. Ideally, you would let it ferment for an hour or two at room temperature, then refrigerate. However, I got to this late at night, so had just enough time to mix and then shove the bowl in the fridge before falling deeply asleep. No matter, though.The next morning, take the bowl out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. If, like me, you immediately chilled it after mixing, let it sit for an hour or so to let the yeast do its thing. Then add the rest of the ingredients.Dough:1 russet potato, without skin, mashed or riced (a potato ricer is fab for this, leaving no big chunks of potato to mess up your bread’s texture)2 T. corn oil (you could sub melted butter)1 T. sugar (I added this because I was slightly panicked that my sponge looked a bit flat– probably didn’t need it, but what the heck)1 T. saltIn the mixer, using the paddle attachment, add these ingredients into the sponge, then add 2½ – 3 cups of bread flour and ¼ cup of poppy seeds. Switch to the dough hook when the dough begins to form. You want the dough to be tacky, not dry– it should stick to the bottom of the mixing bowl, but not really the sides. Knead with the dough hook for about five minutes, then oil a bowl and move the dough into it. Mist with oil and cover with plastic wrap.So, in an ideal world, you would let it rise again, then form loaves, another rise, and then pop it into the oven. Three hours, tops. This is where the involuntary experimentation begins. At this point, I was on my way out of the house to see a movie, which in San Francisco takes forever, even if you are driving. There is the getting to the theater either on foot or by the rarely-reliable Muni, or driving and finding a parking place, then arriving early because you are sure that people will be lining up to see There Will Be Blood on its third week of release (they weren’t), then the previews, ads, movie, and getting home. Then there was the unexpected early dinner (ramen) and trip to the Japanese hardware store to look at small saws and lathes. Even without the ramen-and-unusual hand tool addition, it’s still a solid three hours, maybe even four– we take moviegoing very seriously in this house.But I digress. I knew that I’d be gone way too long to let the bread sit out– bread that rises too much turns out flat in the end. So I stuck it back in the refrigerator with the idea that I’d come home after the movie, let the dough sit out and rise, then form loaves, let rise again, and then bake it off. No problem.Except that (1) hand tools are interesting, (2) ramen still takes a while to eat, and (3) the movie was pretty long. We arrived home after 7pm. Since I fall into a coma around 10, my rudimentary math skills told me that no bread would be baked tonight. A bread recipe that, in theory, could be finished in a day was now looking like a three-day affair.With this in mind, I let the bread sit out for about two hours (one hour to bring it to room temperature, another to let it rise), then formed loaves and, you guessed it, stuck it back in the fridge.The following morning I took the bread back out and let it once again sit out, come to room temperature, rise, etc. This took up another hour or two, during which I also preheated the oven (375°F)– multitasking is fun! After about 40 minutes I checked the bread for doneness, using my eagle eye and a digital thermometer. This was the result:
This was remarkably successful. The extra-long rise added flavor and a nice texture. I guess that the lesson was this– if you give the dough time to come to room temperature and rise, and you don’t go completely crazy with the chilling, and (most important) you have room in your refrigerator, you can make bread fit into your schedule. This extended rise actually improved the bread (at least, that’s my guess). And I got to see a movie and sleep and everything. Hurray!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: experimentation, long rise, potatoes
Cha-llah!
This week felt like a rich bread week, one without the trappings of good health (whole wheat) or specific purpose (pizza dough). I couldn’t bring myself to go for the full-on brioche– too much butter and eggs– but something along those lines seemed appropriate. I wanted something that would go well with marmalade, since I’ve been in a marmalade-producing frenzy since taking a class with June Taylor a couple of weekends ago. I could wax rhapsodic on the subject of bergamots and their delightful aroma, but thats not why I’m here. Challah, that’s the ticket.
I decided to veer away from Peter Reinhart this week and go for the third member (for me, at least) of the holy trinity of bread instruction. Rose Levy Berenbaum, this is your week.
Traditional Challah, from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum
This one takes only a day, but start it early– give the sponge time to develop. Or you can make the sponge the night before. It looks like it contains a heck of a lot of eggs, but this recipe makes a 3+ pound loaf.
Berenbaum gives measurements by volume (i.e. cups), ounces, and grams. For true accuracy, you should weigh all of your ingredients, but that’s tiresome to type out and adds value to the idea of purchasing her book. So I’ll give you the volumetric measurements, but, depending on how hard you dig in to fill a measuring cup with flour, your mileage may vary.
Sponge
1 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 t. instant yeast
2/3 c. room-temperature water
2 T. honey
3 large eggs, at room temperature
Mix the sponge ingredients together in a large bowl, then whisk them for about 2 minutes to incorporate air into the batter [I do this by hand]. The sponge will be the consistency of a very thick batter. Set aside.
Flour mixture
4 2/3 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (plus 2-3 T. for kneading)
1¼ t. instant yeast
1 T. salt
Mix these ingredients together in another bowl, adding the yeast to the flour first and mixing, then the salt, to keep the salt from killing the yeast on contact. Sprinkle this mixture on top of the sponge. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and let it stand for 1-4 hours at room temperature. During this time, the sponge will bubble through the flour mixture.
After letting the dough ferment [I went the full four hours for this step], mix into the sponge/flour mixture:
2 large eggs, cold
1/3 c. corn oil
6 T. honey
1 T. cider vinegar
Mix with the dough hook on medium speed (she recommends #4 on a KitchenAid mixer) for about 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and shiny. [Blogger's note: either the very wet weather or some kind of measurement mixup caused my dough to need about an extra cup of flour to get it to the "smooth and shiny" stage; it was "sticky and unworkable" without the extra flour. Needless to say, the mixing took longer than five minutes just to test and incorporate the extra flour, but that did not seem to harm the end result.] Lightly sprinkle the counter with flour and scrape the dough onto it. Knead the dough, adding a little flour if necessary [!] so that it is just barely tacky.
Round the dough into a ball [see video of my technique in the successful pizza dough post]. Place the dough into a 4-quart dough-rising container or bowl, lightly greased with cooking spray or oil. Lightly spray or oil the top. Cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, 1-2 hours. [She has a method of telling when it's doubled with a piece of tape on the side of the bowl, but I tend to just eyeball it. Maybe this sort of lack of precision is why I needed the extra flour, but, as I said, the result was really just fine.]
Gently deflate the dough by pushing it down [in other words, don't "punch" it down] onto the counter and giving it a business letter turn [like folding a letter into thirds, fold one third of the dough up onto the center, then the other side]. Put the dough back into the container, oil the surface again, and let rise a second time until doubled, about 45 minutes to an hour.
Flatten the dough by pressing it down gently, so as not to activate the gluten.
[At this point, she explains how to make a three- or four-braided challah. I borrowed a technique from Cooks Illustrated that makes a different, taller shape by stacking two braids (one large, one smaller) atop each other. You could simply make one braid, using all of the dough at once, if this seems to complicated.]
Shape the dough into a braid. For a stacked braid, use a bench scraper to divide the dough into two parts, two-thirds and one-third. Divide these two parts into three sections. Beginning with the larger quantity of dough, roll out out the dough pieces into ropes. If the dough is sticking to the counter, flour it, but only very lightly. It’s best if the dough has some purchase on the counter without actually sticking to it– dough with no traction at all will only slide back and forth on the counter rather than roll out. [All of this is my suggestion-- she is non-specific on the topic of dough traction] You will end up with three rolls:
I usually put them immediately on the baking sheet (side-by-side), since transferring a large braided mass of dough can be the stuff of stretchy, sticky nightmares. Cover the baking sheet with either parchment paper (always a good thing to have on hand for baking) or a silicone mat (I like Silpat for this, it’s a good investment). Then, beginning in the middle, form a braid. Once you’ve reached the end, turn the sheet around and braid the other end. I do it this way because, like Derek Zoolander, I can only braid in one direction. It will look like this:
When you finish one side, bring the ends together and tuck them under the loaf.
Once you finish the first (larger) braid, do the same for the smaller one– roll the dough into ropes, then braid them. Place the smaller braid atop the larger one.
Once the loaf is formed (getting back to Berenbaum’s directions), make an egg glaze out of 2 T. lightly beaten egg and 1 t. of water. Whisk the egg and water together, then brush the loaf lightly with the mixture. Cover the loaf loosely with greased plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about one hour. Refrigerate the egg glaze in the meantime.
Preheat the oven to 350°F 45 minutes before baking, placing the oven rack at the lowest level. Berenbaum recommends placing a baking stone or baking sheet in the oven. [My oven is small, gas-powered, and only heats from the bottom, so I put one shelf at the lowest level, place a baking sheet on that shelf, then put the second one a level up for the bread. This way, the bread is baking low in the oven, but not so close to the heat source that the bottom burns-- the other baking sheet below deflects the direct heat from the bottom of the pan. I learned this technique by burning things many times. Your oven will probably vary, and you may need to come up with your own tricks to get the appropriate amount of heat in the correct place. Probably by burning something.]
Glaze and bake the challah. Remove the plastic wrap (carefully), then brush the challah thoroughly with the egg glaze once again. Sprinkle with poppy seeds [or sesame seeds], if desired.
Place loaf in oven and bake 20 minutes. At that point, open the oven and place a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil over the loaf ["tenting" it to deflect some of the heat from the egg glaze to keep it from getting too dark; honestly, I forgot this step in my preparations]. Continue baking for 25-35 minutes or until the bread is deep golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, or an instant-read thermometer registers about 190°F [if you forget the tenting step, it takes a little less time].
Remove the challah from the oven, transfer to a wire rack to cool. If you can stand it, let it cool completely before slicing.
You can also bake this as two 9″ loaves, if you prefer, but bake only 30-35 minutes.
Once again, I veered off course during the process, but managed to make bread that behaved and tasted right. Berenbaum, like Reinhart, gives pinpoint-precision instructions. This method sends two messages to me: one, that this is a way for beginners to learn to bake bread, and two, that if you make a mistake, all is lost. I agree with the first part– if you follow her instructions to a tee (and I left some of them out of this post, to save space and my aching wrists), it would be difficult to fail. However, for some people this may create anxiety about the process. To those people, I say relax, you can make some mistakes and still create an edible product. Unless you forget the salt. Don’t do that.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: Challah, precision
Whole-wheat bread
Sometimes, what I crave is something grainy and substantial, and at that point, only whole wheat bread will do. There are quite a few variations on this theme, some seeming to be of the opinion that simply using some whole wheat flour makes a whole wheat bread. It’s true that only using the one kind of flour will result in a dense and chewy loaf. Again, substantial. And using a percentage of white flour will lighten up the bread and cause it to rise a little higher. But for this weekend, it was all or nothing.
I decided to try my luck with Peter Reinhart again. This one calls for both a pre-ferment (poolish) and an overnight soaking of some coarse grain. The result is a chewy loaf that has a virtuous feel to it.
I should talk about the pre-ferment. A pre-ferment is used to give the dough some extra time to develop the starches and glutens in the dough. One result is extra flavor. Those lovely artisan loaves you get in the bakery or in the specialty section of the grocery store? There is a good chance the baker used a pre-ferment. There are a couple of main varieties, the (Italian) biga, the (French) poolish, and or the (English) sponge. Some are wetter (poolish), some are drier (biga), but they all combine flour, yeast, water, and time. The handy part is that much of the fermenting can take place in your refrigerator, which also helps to hold the dough and prevent over-rising.
Anyway, more will be said on the value of a pre-ferment in later posts (I’m a believer). And now, for zee recipe.
Whole-wheat bread, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
Makes 2 1-pound loaves
Soaker
1 c. coarse whole-wheat flour, or other coarsely-ground whole grains [I used a quick-cooking 9-grain cereal]
¾ c. water, at room temperature
Whole-wheat poolish
1½ c. high-protein whole-wheat flour
¼ tsp. instant yeast
¾ c. water, at room temperature
Dough
2 c. high-protein whole-wheat flour
1 1/3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
2 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil (optional)
1 large egg, lightly beaten (optional)
The day before making the bread, make the soaker and poolish. For the soaker, mix together the coarse whole-wheat flour and the water in a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and leave at room temperature until the next day. For the poolish, mix together the high-protein whole-wheat flour and yeast, then stir in the water to make a thick paste. Stir only until the flour is hydrated, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to ferment at room temperature for 2-4 hours, or just until it begins to bubble. Then put it into the refrigerator overnight.
The next day, remove the poolish from the refrigerator 1 hour before making the dough to take off the chill. In the bowl of the electric mixer, stir together the whole-wheat flour, salt, and yeast [this step ensures that when the water is added, the yeast will not die an instant death from being in contact only with the salt, rather than with mostly the flour]. Then add the poolish and soaker, as well as the honey and (optional) oil and egg [I used an egg, but no oil]. Mix on low speed for about a minute with the paddle attachment until the dough forms a ball, adding more flour or water if needed.
Switch out the paddle for the dough hook, and continue working the dough at medium speed for 10-15 minutes. The dough should be slightly tacky but not sticky. It should pass the windowpane test [see below] and register 77-81°. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to it, rolling it once to coat the top of the dough [I just reuse the mixing bowl]. Cover with plastic wrap.
Ferment [let rise] at room temperature for approximately 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size.
Divide the dough into two equal pieces (about 18 oz each). Shape them into sandwich loaves [which means to pat them into a 5x7" rectangle, then roll lengthwise one section at a time, pinching the crease with every section to increase the surface tension. The sides should not taper, and the entire loaf with increase in width to the size of your loaf pan (8" or so)]. Lightly oil the loaf pans and put the loaves into the pans. Mist the tops with spray oil and lightly cover with plastic wrap.
Proof [let rise] at room temperature for about 90 minutes, or until the dough nearly doubles in size and is cresting over the lip of the pan.
Preheat the oven to 350° with the rack in the middle of the oven. Just before baking, you can garnish the loaves by misting lightly with water and sprinkling with sesame seeds [I didn't bother, but you could also try poppy seeds].
Bake the loaves for about 30 minutes, then rotate them 180°, if necessary, for even baking. Continue baking for 15-30 minutes longer. The finished bread should register between 185º and 190° at the center [a digital meat thermometer is fabulous for this job] and should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom [I've never understood this direction. I can't "thump" the bottom with my oven mitt, and I'm not burning my hands for this. I tap the top and see how things sound from that perspective]. The loaves should be golden brown all around and firm on the sides as well as on the top and bottom [since most bread pans are opaque, this is another puzzler-- I can't tell what things look like inside the pan]. If they are soft and squishy [direct quote], return them to the pans and continue baking until done [Yep. If the temperature, color, and top-thumping are correct, then you are probably covered without looking for "squishy" sides].
When the loaves have finished baking, remove them immediately from the pans and cool on a rack for at least an hour, preferably 2, before slicing and serving [this is a tough one, but really, the bread will not slice properly until it's cooled. You can just stand over it and inhale for that hour, if necessary].
And voilà, whole wheat bread.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: pre-ferment, whole wheat
Pizza dough, take two
Failure should be a learning experience, so I decided to tackle the pizza dough again. Things went seriously south on the first attempt (weak dough that held no air, general cracker-like result), and I needed to see why. For best narrative results, read about the failure first. Then the story seems more triumphant. Also, you get the recipe.
While browsing on Amazon for other Reinhart books, I went to his tome on pizza. I like to read user reviews. I just do. While paging through the many many reviews for this book, I ran across a description of the problems I had the first time. Same saggy dough, same flatness, and, to top it off, the same thing I’d done– halving the recipe. I’d speculated on this potential problem in the last go-round. The reviewer pointed out that the half-recipe does not have enough dough in the bowl to do more than spin around on the dough hook, resulting in way-under-kneaded bread that will not rise. Aha!
So I tried the full recipe, resigning myself to yet less free space in my freezer (o, tiny cold-box). And, by golly, it worked. Here is a picture of my first attempt at making this dough:
Bleh. Here is the latest attempt:
Much more dough-like. I also ditched the all-purpose flour and went for the higher gluten/ higher protein bread flour. I think that both of these changes made the difference, but honestly, this recipe should not be halved. Don’t just take my word for it, believe the Amazon reviewer.
So once you have this lovely dough on the counter, you divide it up and shape it into rounds:
Then the rounds sit for a couple of hours. Oddly enough, blogging an act of cooking can delay the completion of the act and therefore delaying the dining section of the evening. Reinhart says two hours, turned out to be more like 2.5. I think this is a fine example of the Heisenberg Principle, which states that the act of observing an experiment changes the experiment.
Shaping the dough:
The dough was pretty relaxed, so all of Reinhart’s anxiety about the strength of the dough was for naught (in this case, anyway). Observe the lack of thrown dough; it was still nice and stretched.
I wanted to make two different pizzas: pesto and tomato sauce + mushrooms + red chard. Green pizza and red pizza. I did not want to cook the pesto, so I baked the dough without any topping for that one. Amusing poofiness ensued:
I patted the dough down with the baking peel (no video of that, but it would have been rated P-13 for mild violence), then slathered it with delicious pesto. The red pizza was more normal, although I would not recommend using a lot of toppings with this dough. It will make it in and out of the oven, but it collapses when you try to eat it.
Yum. Shawn also added a thumbs-up.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: pizza dough
Pizza dough failure
Well, if all of the bread turned out perfectly, I would never learn a thing. Usually, I don’t experience catastrophic failure in the bread realm; I can generally make it work through some tricky bit. Not this time, however. I’ll give the recipe and point out the several possible points of failure. I’m pretty sure that the problems were mine, and not Peter Reinhart’s, since he is the expert here. Enjoy.
Pizza Napoletana, from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
Makes 6 6-oz. pizzas
4 1/2 c. unbleached high-gluten, bread, or all-purpose flour, chilled
1 3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
1/4 c. olive or vegetable oil (optional)
1 3/4 c. ice-cold water
Stir together the flour, salt, and instant yeast in the bowl of a mixer. Mix in the water and optional oil with the paddle attachment until the flour is absorbed. Switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for 5-7 minutes, or as long as it takes to create a smooth, sticky dough. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom. If the dough sticks to the sides, sprinkle in some flour until it clears the sides. If it’s not sticking to the bottom, dribble in a tsp. or two of cold water. The finished dough will be springy, elastic and sticky, not just tacky.
Sprinkle flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Prep a sheet pan by lining it with parchment and misting the parchment with oil. Using a metal dough scraper, cut the dough into six equal pieces. Sprinkle flour over the dough, and, with dry and floured hands, round each piece into a ball. Transfer the dough balls to the pan, mist them with oil, and slip the pan into a food-grade plastic bag.
Put the pan into the refrigerator overnight to rest the dough (or up to three days). You can also freeze the dough balls: dip them in oil and place each one in a separate zippered plastic bag. Keeps up to three months, and move the dough to the fridge the day before you want to use them.
On the day you plan to make the pizza, remove dough balls from refrigerator two hours before making the pizza. Dust the counter with flour, then mist the flour with spray oil. Place the dough on the counter, sprinkle with flour, and dust your hands with flour. Gently press the dough into 1/2″ thick disks, about 5″ in diameter. Sprinkle the dough again with flour, mist with oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rest for two hours.
At least 45 min. before making the pizza, place a baking stone in the oven and preheat the oven as hot as possible (usually 550° in home ovens, up to 800° if possible). If you do not have a baking stone, use the back of a sheet pan, but do not preheat.
Generously dust a peel or the back of the sheet pan with semolina flour or cornmeal. Make the pizzas one at a time. Dip your hands in flour (including the backs and knuckles) and life one piece of dough by gently getting under it with the pastry scraper. Very gently lay the dough across the backs of your fists and gently stretch it by bouncing the dough in a circular motion on your hands, carefully giving it a little stretch with each bounce. If the dough sticks, put it down on the floured counter, re-flour your hands, and continue to shape it. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss (as shown on page 208). If you have trouble tossing the dough, or if it keeps springing back, let it rest for 5-20 minutes so the gluten can relax, and try again.
When the dough is stretched to your satisfaction (about 9-12″ in diameter), lay it on the peel or pan, making sure there is enough semolina or cornmeal to allow it to slide. Lightly top it with sauce and then with your other toppings (less is more).
Slide the topped pizza onto the stone (or bake directly on the sheet pan) and close the door. Wait two minutes, then take a peek. If it needs to be rotated to bake evenly, do so. The pizza should take 5-8 minutes to bake. If the top gets done before the bottom, you will need to move the stone to a lower level in the oven before the next round. If the bottom crisps before the cheese has melted, move the stone up.
Remove the pizza from the oven and transfer to a cutting board. Wait 3-5 minutes before slicing and serving, to let the cheese set.
Sounds great, right? Difficult, maybe, but with plenty of explanation to ease you over the rough patches, although no power in the ‘verse will get me to throw pizza dough in the air when I’ve spent a day and valuable fridge space to get it to that point. I have enough trouble with volleyball, let alone something I care about.
So I made a half recipe, since I don’t have space in my freezer for lots of individually wrapped dough balls. In the long-ish pre-recipe commentary, there seemed to be a great deal of anxiety about how strong this dough was, and how well it would resist stretching. Knowing that high-gluten or bread flour would only make things worse, I chose to use the all-purpose flour. And, again, there seemed to be anxiety about not letting the dough get too dry (“sticky, not tacky”), so I kept it on the wet side. Here is how it looked in the mixer:
Okay, so maybe a little bit wet, but I figured that would be better than too dry, right? It was clearing the sides. After cutting and refrigerating, it looked like this:
Dough had not really risen at all, but I was able to convince myself that it was because it sat under the cooling element all night. At this point, I knew something had gone terribly wrong– the texture was all wrong, and I mentally prepared myself for a delicious dinner of wild mushroom pasta rather than wild mushroom pizza. Or, in the case of complete and utter failure, the kind that would flatten me spiritually and emotionally, I could always have some chana masala and naan delivered.
When I got it to the counter, dough rebound was not an issue. In fact, I could not keep it from spreading very thin.
This was just the “set on the counter and pat into a ½” disk” stage, not even getting to the stretching stage. And still, no rise. I began boiling pasta water.
Once I topped the thing (I was perhaps too stubborn at this point), I was not able to slide it off the peel and onto the stone. Toppings began to spill onto the stone, smoke began to billow, and my fluent cursing could be heard in the next apartment. I took a deep breath, moved the remaining toppings to a pan, and, after clearing the burning food from the stone, decided to try baking just the dough. I was still curious about what came next.
What came next was, essentially, a matzoh with mushroom and herb shreds on top. Very flat, not much flavor, but still worth eating. Certainly not ideal, or even particularly desired, but, well, edible.
So what went wrong here? First, halving the recipe may have caused some of the trouble. Sometimes recipes just don’t scale well. Also, I weighed my ingredients for the first time (new food scale! Hurray!). Not sure if this was a factor, but maybe. I’m pretty sure that all-purpose flour is probably not quite right for this recipe, despite assurances that it would be just fine– I’ll use bread flour next time. And I’m pretty sure that the yeast failed, since rising did not occur. Too much contact with the salt (salt kills yeast)? Not sure what happened there. And finally, I think I was a little freaked out by all of the tension over rebounding dough and let it remain too wet to make a decent bread. I should know better, but it just went badly this time around.
Anyway, the mushroom cracker/matzoh was still fun to eat, and I did not lapse into a deep funk over the experience, although there was much apologizing to my ever-patient partner (and blog photographer!), who also seemed to like it. End result? If the dough feels really wrong, it probably is.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Winter oatmeal bread
This sounded like a good recipe to begin with, since (a) it is winter and (b) this is a fairly simple recipe. Before introducing bread baking terms like “windowpane” and “pre-ferment,” I thought I’d try something easy.
One way that I think about baking is how much time the recipe will require. For me, the cut is made between “one-day breads” and “multiple-day breads.” One-day breads, like this one, use more yeast than the other kind, and often have some kind of flavor enhancer (fat, dairy, zippy sweeteners like honey) to boost the flavor. Multiple-day breads use a lot less yeast to begin with, but then are left overnight (or longer) in the refrigerator to develop more yeast and lots of flavor without extras. The overnight stay is called a pre-ferment, but that’s not what I’m working on today.
First, a picture of my bread machine.
It arrived in my kitchen with a paddle attachment for mixing, some kind of whisk (which I never use), and a dough hook. Best power tool ever.
Anyway, this recipe (included and annotated at the end of this post) featured milk, butter, and honey, as well as rolled oats. The oats give it a nice chew and extend the life of the loaf, since oats retain moisture after baking. I divided the recipe in half, replaced the milk with unsweetened soymilk, exchanged oil for butter, let it rise for longer than called for, and the loaf was still quite good (most bread recipes are pretty flexible, it turns out).
My source for this recipe, and a good introduction to bread baking in general, was Beth Hensperger’s Beth’s Basic Bread Book (sadly, out of print but still available used). Ms. Hensperger writes recipes that tend to work, and she gives pretty good descriptions of the process, as well as equipment lists and storage instructions.
The exciting part about making this loaf was, believe it or not, the day’s weather. Very rainy and humid, which made the dough very wet, requiring extra flour. And hey, it turned out well, according to the guinea pigs friends and coworkers I fed it to later.
Old-Fashioned Winter Oatmeal Bread
½ c. warm water (105-115°)
1½ tablespoons (T.) active dry yeast [I used instant yeast, and will explain its inherent superiority in a later post]
Pinch of granulated sugar
2 c. of warm milk [I used unsweetened soy milk]
½ c. honey
4 T. unsalted butter, melted [I used the same quantity of safflower oil]
1 T. salt [table, not kosher]
2 c. rolled oats [both regular and quick-cooking work here, but not instant oatmeal]
5-5½ c. unbleached all-purpose or bread flour [I used bread flour, and more than this due to the wet day]
Extra rolled oats, for sprinkling
2 T. melted unsalted butter, for brushing [I skipped this step]
Pour the ½ c. of n a small bowl or measuring cup and sprinkle the yeast and sugar over the water. Stir to dissolve and let stand at room temperature for about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl using a whisk or in the bowl of a stand-up mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the milk, honey, melted butter, salt, oats, and 1½ c. of the flour. Beat hard until creamy, about 1 minute. Stir in the yeast mixture. Add the remaining flour, ½ cup at a time, until a soft, shaggy dough that just clears the sides of the bowl is formed. Switch to a wooden spoon when necessary if making by hand [and switch to the dough hook once the dough begins to come together if using a mixer]. [You want this dough to remain moist, so it will not form the nice dough ball that you might expect. You won't be handling it that much, really, so try to err on the side of a moister, less cohesive dough, rather than adding more and more flour until it no longer sticks to the bowl. It should look more like the pictures below.]
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until soft and springy, 1-3 minutes for a machine-mixed dough, 4-7 minutes for a hand-mixed dough. [I skipped this step and just continued with the dough hook for a couple of minutes longer], dusting with flour only 1 T. at a time just enough to prevent sticking.
Place the dough in a lightly greased [I use spray oil] deep container. [Or move the dough out of the mixing bowl oil it, and then move the dough back in]. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until double in bulk, about 1½-2 hours. [I used instant yeast, which goes a little faster, but still let it sit a long time, at least two hours. My kitchen is pretty cold, so no harm done. Looks like this after this first rise:]
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface to deflate [in other words, no need to "punch it down." Be gentle.]. Grease the bottom and sides of a 8″ x 4″ loaf pan [again, spray oil makes this easier] and sprinkle with the extra rolled oats [skipped this]. Without working the dough further, divide it into two equal portions. Pat each portion of the dough into a rough rectangle and roll each into a loaf shape. Place the loaves, seam side down, into the pans. Brush the tops with melted butter, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise at room temperature until the dough is fully double in bulk and about 1″ over the rims of the pans, about 45 minutes. [These next two photos show my shaping the dough and the pan after the second rise.]
Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 375°. Brush the tops with the remaining melted butter and, using a serrated knife, make three pairs of opposing diagonal slashes down the top to form a herringbone V design, no more than ¼” deep. [Skipped both of these steps] Place the pans on the center rack of the oven and bake 40-45 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the loaves sound hollow when tapped with your finger [or when the interior reaches 210º on the instant-read thermometer, pictured below]. Remove the loaves from the pan immediately to a cooling rack.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: oatmeal bread, spray oil, wet weather
Search
-
Blogroll
Recent Entries
Categories
- jam (3)
- Uncategorized (8)
