Guess what's going on in the food epidemic kitchen these days

Bread. Lots of bread baking. I'm a little obsessed. I love the idea of creating something so delicious out of just flour, water, salt, and maybe some yeast. I stay up late reading this blog. And watching instructional videos on how to shape loaves of bread. And reading messages on the fresh loaf bread forum- Bread bakers are so nice!

So...outcomes:

 The bread I've been baking the most is the Tartine country loaf. This has been very much a success! The recipe and instructions are given on Martha Stewart's website. Pictured below is the whole wheat variety.

I have also been trying to make baguettes. These are not going quite as well. Somehow my baguette attempts always seem to end in an over-proofed disaster, which makes me grumpy.
First I tried to make baguettes using the recipe in the Tartine bread book. That was a COMPLETE disaster. I was very sad. Luckily, we were taking care of my sister-in-law's dog at the time, who managed to eat 1.5 of the baguette disasters that I baked. 
She's so cute I had to forgive her (see below):

Next I tried using this recipe. The latter mentioned formula was developed by Anis Bouabsa, who was recently named the baker of the best baguette in Paris. My first attempt using his formula was only half of a disaster. The baguettes still didn't shape properly. And I was still grumpy afterwards. Oh well.  
We still managed to make some delicious meatball subs with the bread (sorry, we ate the sandwiches before I could take a picture!). 

I want to try again. I am determined.

In other news, I'm obsessed with iced coffee. I have been using the Japanese iced coffee "on the rocks" method. 

I love this. It's so simple. I grind up 1/3 cup of coffee beans, place them in a filter, place the filter over a mason jar filled with a couple cubes of ice, and then pour approximately 1 cup of boiling water through the filter on top of the ice. It's so delicious. And I love being able to use a mason jar. It's super convenient. You can screw the lid on and you're set to travel.

Which reminds me: G. bought me a "cuppow." It's awesome. It's a drinking lid that you place on a mason jar.  It essentially turns a mason jar into a sippy cup!  Next I'm going to buy the straw-friendly version.

Alright, it's 11:30 and I am supposed to wake up early tomorrow. So that's all for now.

The great bagel search

When I was in high school I took one of those silly class trips to Costa Rica. Oh you know what I'm talking about: one of those trips that companies market to parents and teachers as great learning experiences for the young Spanish language student, but are in fact tidy commercial packages that involve schlepping said students from tourist trap to tourist trap, putting them up in 2 and a half star hotels designed for such tourists, and feeding them (awful) American friendly food. While the country was absolutely beautiful, I didn't learn a lick of Spanish and worst of all, the food was atrocious.

In fact, what I remember most from the trip is the day that my friends and I took a long walk down the road from our hotel and discovered a little cafe-again, obviously targeted towards the American tourist-and to our delight found that the restaurant served bagels. After having eaten horrible Costa-merican food (eg. lasagna layered with cheese and papaya sauce) for several days, we were delighted. The bagels were still awful but I guess the big ball of dough with a hole in its center was enough to please us at the time.

I was reminded of this story today. This morning I took a little spill off of my bike, and as I sat feeling sorry for myself I began to develop cravings for a bagel--a bagel and cream cheese are my comfort food. But alas, to my knowledge, there is not a good bagel option in the triangle area. And so I've decided: I'm making it my personal goal to find a descent Piedmont, NC bagel. I know, we don't have the NYC water, but whatever, despite this fact it seems like it should be possible to bake a descent bagel.

Anyone have suggestions for places to try?

Cinnamon Bread

Hey! Remember me? Yeah, I'm that person who used to post on here occasionally, before school became insane and took over my life.


These past few weeks have been so busy that I really haven't had much energy to cook. Instead, I've come home most evenings and either begged G. to cook something, resorted to eating restaurant food, or thrown together scraps of food that were lingering in the dark alcoves of my cabinets and/or refrigerator.


But enough whining already, right? Yeah, I know... Even though my life has been busy, I still live on a student's schedule. And that means that for the most part I make my own schedule.


Some days I have no reason to go to campus and I can work from home for the entire day. Such days are great days for cooking experiments that involve long waiting periods, since I'm home and the oven can be left on for long periods of time.


I had one such day recently. I was working, and I thought, "why not bake some bread?" The bread baking process was nice because it was a great excuse to step away from my computer to take breaks, and once the dough was in the oven I enjoyed the drool-enducing aromas of baking bread.


I baked Peter Reinhart's cinnamon raisin walnut bread, except we didn't have any raisins or walnuts in the house, and so the recipe devolved into cinnamon bread.

Overall I was really pleased with how this bread came out! After I'd started the process I read about the cinnamon swirl method, in which cinnamon is sprinkled on top of the dough before it's rolled up into a loaf. I really want to try that method next time, because the cinnamon flavor was relatively mild in the loaves that I baked.


Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread,
From Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice*, page 147

*note: THis is an awesome book, by the way! If you're interested in bread baking, I highly recommend it

Makes 2 1.5 pound loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
4 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 large egg slightly beaten
2 tablespoons shortening, melted or at room temp.
1/2 cup buttermilk or whole milk at room temp.
3/4 cup water, at room temp
1 1/2 cup raisins, rinsed and drained
1 cup chopped walnuts

1. Stir together the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and cinnamon in a mixing bowl Add egg, shortening, buttermilk, and water. Stir together until ingredients  form a ball. If dough is too sticky add some more flour, if too dry add more water.

2. Sprinkle flour on the counter. Transfer dough to the counter and begin kneading (or mixing on medium speed, switching to the dough hook). Dough should be soft and pliable, tacky but not sticky. Add flour as you knead (or mix), if necessary, to achieve this texture. Knead by hand for approximately 10 minutes. Sprinkle in the raisins and walnuts during final 2 minutes of kneading (or mixing) to distribute them evenly and to avoid crushing them too much.

Dough should pass water Peter Reinhert describes as the "window pane test," which is performed by cutting off a small piece of dough and gently stretching, pulling and turning it to see if it will hold a pater-thin translucent membrane. If dough falls apart before it makes the windowpane, continue kneading/mixing for another minute or so.
The dough should also register at 77 to 81 degrees, F.

Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough to the bowl, rolling it to coat it with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Let rise for about 2 hours at room temperature until dough doubles in size.

4. Divide dough into 2 equal pieces, form them into loaves. Place each loaf in a lightly oiled 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch pan, mist the tops with spray oil, and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

5. Proof at room temperature 60 to 90 minutes, until dough crests above lips of pans and is nearly doubled in size.

6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Place the loaf pans on a sheet pan, making sure they are not touching each other.

7. Bake loaves for 20 minutes. Rotate the pan 180 degrees so that it bakes evenly and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the oven. The finished breads should be 190 degrees F in the center and golden brown on top and lightly golden on the sides and bottom. They should make a hollow sound when thumped on the bottom.

8. Immediately remove breads from their pans and cool on a rack for at least 1 hour.

Yeasted sweet potato rolls

About a month ago I excitedly bought an entire bushel of sweet potatoes; we now have an overabundance. As a result, I have been seeking varied and creative ways to incorporate sweet potatoes into our daily eating. Sweet potato pie, sweet potato soup, sweet potato stew...there are so many possibilities.

When we needed a starch to accompany the soup that we cooked for ourselves and some friends this cold and rainy past Thursday, I thought I'd try my hand at incorporating the sweet potatoes into a bread of some sort.


After doing some research I settled on a sweet potato rolls recipe that I found here, on group recipes.com. Honestly, I chose this rolls recipe over the many others that I saw largely because it called for substantially less butter. I wasn't sure if the relative healthfulness of this recipe would negatively affect the taste of the rolls. Turns out it seemed not to, or at least not too severely from the perspective of my naive tasters, because these rolls were absolutely delicious. Each of us ate at least 2 that evening.



One thing that I feel inclined to mention is that these rolls are not heavy in sweet potato flavor. We didn't complain though since the rolls were light, airy, beautifully golden in color, and tasty. I am putting this recipe on my "prepare for thanksgiving" list for sure. The rolls are certainly worth remaking.



The recipe calls for regular milk. As I so often do these days, I substituted buttermilk, and the rolls came out nicely, indeed. I used all purpose flour and that worked nicely as well.

Mississippi Sweet Potato rolls, from "Group Recipes."

1 1/2 cups cooked sweet potato (reserve 1 cup potato water from cooking)
1 cup milk
1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup dry milk
2 pks dry yeast
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1tsp salt
5 1/2 cups flour

Wash and chunk unpeeled sweet potato and simmer until tender. Remove and peel immediately. Cool. Reserve potato water for later use. Mash potato meat.
Add salt, nutmeg, sugar and cinnamon.
Add one cup reserved potato water and milk and puree.
Add yeast to puree. It should be warm, about 100 degrees.
Let yeast proof.
Add melted butter and beaten egg.
Add dry milk and about 5 cups flour.
Knead until silver dollar pinch of dough stretches without breaking. Add additional flour if necessary to get right consistency. If using mixer, it should pull away cleanly from mixer bowl. Or if by hand, it should be elastic. Place in greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down and form into rolls. Size and shape is your choice. Place on greased backing sheet and let rise until almost doubled. Remember dough will rise again in oven. bake at 325 until lightly browned.

No-knead bread

Okay, I admit it. I have long been intimidated by the idea of bread baking. Perhaps my fears can be traced back to childhood. I have memories of my mother and sister making bread in our family kitchen-flour flying everywhere, the entire room being taken over by the task. This was no short-term job either; I remember my mom and sister devoting several hours of the day to the process. And when the bread finally came out... Well, the finished product was okay, but I couldn't help thinking, "Why not spend a few bucks, buy a perfectly okay loaf from the grocery store, save yourself the time and the trouble, and move on with your day?"

Nonetheless the craft of bread baking has maintained a certain mystique. The idea of creating something so potentially delicious from not much more than flour and water, the magic of using yeast to make the simple ingredients combine into a leavened, doughy, form... not to mention my idealized notion of creating that perfect, warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven, crispy-crusted and moist-centered loaf... that's what kept bread making in the back of my head.

And that is why the words "No knead bread" caught by eye on a recent visit to a food blog. Turns out this recipe has been hailed as a miracle, or if not a miracle, than at least pure baking genius. Writers claim that the recipe is so simple that a 4-year old can follow the instructions and yet so good that its product rivals any artisan bread that you might purchase from a well-respected professional bakery. You can find the original NY Times article in which food-writer Mark Bittman describes the bread: here, and the blog post that originally caught my eye is: here.

After reading these praises I thought, "hmm...even I might be able to do that." I was not disappointed (i.e. I did it! I did it! I baked good bread!). I highly recommend that you try this recipe. Trust me, if nothing else, it's a great way to boost one's confidence in the kitchen and impress your friends and family! You can find the recipe for this bread at the links above. Below I have written some comments and tips.

Comments:

When I first read this recipe, I ran around trying to find the appropriate pot in which to bake the bread. We do not own an 8-quart pot with a cover that is oven friendly. Finally, I found pot that was approximately the right size, placed a metal pot from another pot on top, baked away, and it seemed to work just fine. My mother also suggested that I could have tried using aluminum foil as a cover. I might try this next time.

The first time I baked this bread, I made the mistake of not completely pre-heating the pot. I probably stuck it in the oven 15 minutes prior to baking instead of the prescribed "at least 30 minutes before." The result was that the finished bread stuck to the bottom of the pot. I was able to scrape most the bread off, but it was still disappointing to have this otherwise near-perfection bread stuck to the pot.

This bread does not keep well after the first day. I recommend planning to eat it almost immediately after baking. We didn't finish ours and it molded after a day or 2 of sitting out. This bread is so delicious though that I imagine many won't have the problem of left-overs!

Salted Rosemary Flatbread

I'm obsessed with this recipe, which I found on my favorite food blog: www.smittenkitchen.com. Really, the recipe is genius, pure genius. Delicious, easy, and did I mention delicious? It's essentially a pizza dough recipe topped with olive oil, rosemary and salt. The bread makes a wonderful accompaniment to a tapas style dinner. We've been enjoying it with hummus (we'll have to share that recipe with you in another post), cheese, and spring vegetable salads.

Here's the recipe as published on the smittenkitchen blog (which the blog author adapted from Jim Lahey's Pizza Bianca recipe, which was published on marthastewart.com), with just a few extra suggestions and modifications.

Salted Rosemary Flatbread, a.k.a. Jim Lahey's Pizza Bianca

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon instant dry yeast
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Fresh Rosemary

1. Combine flour, 1/2 tsp salt, sugar, and yeast in a bowl and mix*. Slowly add about 1 cup cold water. Mix until a smooth dough-ball is formed.

[In the published recipe, she says to do all of this in a bowl using an electric mixer. I prefer to perform the mixing by hand.Therefore, I have found that a slightly stickier dough is better than a more rubbery one, and so it might be necessary to add slightly more water.]

2. Form a ball from the dough place on a floured surface and knead for ~10 minutes until smooth.

3. Place dough in an oiled bowl and allow it to rest 2 to 4 hours until it has doubled in size. Split the dough into halves and form each into a log. Place each on a floured surface and allow to rest until each doubles in size, again at least 1 hour.

(Note: Each time I have made this, I've skipped the second rise and it's worked out just fine!)

4. Put dough on a lightly floured baker's peel. Dimple dough by pressing it down with your fingertips. Work the dough outward toward the edges of the peel until you reach your desired size and thickness, about 1/4 inch. (you can also roll out the dough). Drizzle with remaining olive oil, rosemary and sprinkle with remaining salt.

5. Place a baking stone/pizza stone in the oven. Set oven to HOT (500 or so degrees). Slide pizza onto baking stone with the baker's peel. Bake until the bubbles range from golden to deep brown in color, 10 to 12 minutes.

*Note: Sometimes I add the rosemary to the mix at this point, along with the salt, sugar and flour, rather than sprinkling it on top at the end.