If I were a rich man

As I sit here among the aromas of cooking applesauce, cinnamon and vanilla drifting through the air, I contemplate the joys of the bread making up to now. The sauce will be another blog entry, even though it has nothing to do with yeast, but rather just the experience of new cooking itself.

This week, my challenge hat is tipped to my Jewish friends and friends who just like eating bagels. Whether it’s the nonchalant way we dismiss the store bought mass produced pucks that we call bagels, or the pile of freebies on someone’s birthday, which we arrogantly sigh “don’t you have one without sesame seeds on it” there is a lost art to these beautiful creations that we’ve forgotten.

It makes me long for the old country. (Ok, my old country consists of central Mexico, but I’m trying to paint a picture here.)

I can honestly say that I used to take bagels for granted, just picking the ones that had my favorite toppings on it, and spreading some kind of odd monstrosity of chive-tomato-onion-garlic-parsley-chive (wait I said chive already) cream cheese. I did not realize how great and fun it is to make bagels from scratch. They were..delightful.

Everyone I talked to about this, asked me if I was going to boil them. And to answer that question, yes I am and yes I did. From what I have learned, most of us, at least here in Wisconsin are blind when it comes to bagels, but I’m sure there are some of you who found that really truly great bagels are boiled, and not jet steamed. The recipe had me on the adventure to locate some malt powder. Not malted milk, but malt powder. Apparently this is what gives bagels their distinctive flavor and an edge over all those other lesser forms of bagels.

Alas my quest would prove not to be fruitful, and instead I had to rely on the backup of honey. Thankfully the author knew such was to be my fate and had graciously offered any number of substitutes. My only saving grace was the knowledge that had I an accessible home brewing supply store, my source of malt powder, or LME (that’s liquid malt extract to my non home brewing friend) would be limitless. I know I’m not a bagel former, so the finished product doesn’t look nice, but it serves its purpose well. I shaped and let them ferment overnight in the fridge, which is what helps develop the flavors. The next day I boiled them until done (just like a big noodle), topped them, here with cinnamon sugar, and then seed and salt mix and baked them until done.

Freakin awesome.

I am sad to say that the people at work will only get to enjoy bagel bites as I would like more than 12 to try them out. But I think this is a recipe that I will make again. I just think that I need a bigger fridge to hold more overnight.

Next week, Brioche.

Celebration time come on!

Greek Celebration Bread

Artos is the general name for Greek celebration breads, and they are given specific names for the shapes and/or occasions they are baked.This bread called for a number of special ingredients for just this master formula. A lot of fat, represented by the eggs, oil and milk, with plenty of spices to round out the flavor. From this recipe, you can make the following

Christopsomos – Christmas (also involves an elaborate shaping of the loaf with crosses, and dried colored fruits and nuts)

Lambropsomo – Easter (has hard cooked eggs in it, dyed red. What the hell? Hard boiled eggs?)

This bread was awesome to make. It required a lot of preplanning as the “barm” prepared four days before, takes a while. In order to create a barm, you essentially begin seed culture of Rye Flour and water to form a sticky goo. You let the goo bubble and ferment over a couple of days, each day removing a part of it, and adding water and more flour. With this see culture you make many of preferments and embark on your wild yeast culture. I won’t be going there right now, but sometime soon.

From the seed culture you can make barms, bigas, pate fermente and many of the sour doughs. Even though commercial instant yeast is used in this formula, the barm is there to present the bread with some help and great taste. The taste comes from the long drawn out flavor coaxed from the prolonged soaking of the rye flour.

This is the master formula that I did, by which all other Greek Celebration breads can be created. The bread turned out great, and I make two loaves. One by hand and the other entirely by mixer. If it hadn’t been like 80 degrees outside, this would have made the house all warm and fuzzy. I’m sure we would have been cuddled up with blankies watching a Charlie Brown Christmas. As it was, I was up early mixing and staying up late baking. We had Dozer Day, to get to, Church, Whitewater part, and all sorts of domestic stuff.

I believe I will be making this loaf again, and this time adding the dried fruits and nuts and giving my hands a try at shaping the complicated Christopsomos loaf. Shaped into a simple boule and glazed with honey water concoction, it was wonderful. A little sticky to cut, but it smelled great. Next week, bagels.

The taming of Anadama

I was indeed hesitant to start the whole bread baking thing again. Last time I tried this recipe it failed miserably. I don’t think I even posted about it, it was that bad. However, like Lewis and Clark in the face of starvation and the threat of attack, I perservered. (Ok a little over dramatic, but you get my point.) When last I tried my hand at this recipe, I recall something of either a hockey puck or door stop coming out of the oven.

Mmmm…fresh baked door stop. You know, the kind that is just a brick with some kind of needlepoint covering.

I reread the whole section on fermeting and the window pane test. Not that I’m going to stretch out my bread evertime like some kind of edible Stretch Armstrong (save that idea for another day) but rather to understand more what is happening with the bread in terms of glueten development.

The recipe started with a soaker a day before. A soaker is nothing more than taking some of the coarse, or whole grains and getting them soft by soaking them in water. This one called for coarse ground cornmeal soaked in water. Using corn will give this bread a heartier texture and more flovor. The next day, just after my morning run, I combined the soaker, ½ the flour, yeast and rest of water to make sponge.

A sponge will further develop the flavor and slowly coax out the shy natural sugars who from a long winters nap will be looking for a party. “Hey is that yeast? Holy crap! Man, it’s been ages, lets get down!” And did they. The sponge was to set until it started to buble, and that is the time we mix together the remaining ingredients, including 4oz of Molasses, Grandma’s Dark Molasses. I mixed everything together in the Kichenaid and when it formed a ball, I transferred the dough to begin the kneading.

One point that I read on the whole kneading front is that “the dough, not the formula, dictat the needs.” And I adhered to that adding nearly 1 and ½ cups of additional flour to the dough. The formula did indicate that you may have to add more and it would take longer to get to the right dough consistency. Holy gucamole did it ever take a long time, but I stuck with it until the dough was pliable, but not sticky. That is the key.

I let the dough rise (for a good three hours) while the family and I went off to a 5year old birthday party. When we got home, I nearly fell over with how much the dough had risen, and the boys were so excited they wanted to touch it. It was beautiful. I punched it down and shaped into the loaf pans. As indicated in the formula I put the pans in the fridge to retard fermentation until the next day when I wanted to bake it. Getting out the pans the next morning and proofing for a good two hours, I think as described in the book “they fully crested the pans.”

The bread turned out wonderful and it had a great hearty feel to it, and slightly sweet. While I don’t know if this would make a good sandwhich, I think it would make a great type of open face type meal, something with cheese and broiled perhaps.

Next week, Greek Celebration bread.

Week 1 - We start with Anadama

I’m starting over again and approaching this whole bread baking thing a little more methodically. I have had a couple of books on bread baking and have read many websites dedicated to the art of doing so, but I never really tackled it like I would a new subject in school.

I have to break this down, read, research, practice and plan. It should be treated much like my 5 credit lab science, Consumer Chemistry, without the Friday morning hang over preferably. This strategy will give me the background on the subject I need, while also allowing me to put the ideas into practice in my lab, the kitchen.

My inspiration behind this is indeed the concept from the move “Julie & Julia.” Snicker if you want my male friends, but this movie is entertaining and once in a while I like to watch these kinds. I will dedicate one week to a bread recipe until I have completed every single recipe and most every single variation.

Variants may be left up to interpretation and ultimately not completed, depending on if they are worthy. The reason for this is that I’m not sure I need to try all of the dried fruit options available to me in a stolen. I’m pretty sure there’s not much of a difference between raisins and craisins, other than a C. However, if there is a different technique or flour type, with a recipe I will try that in order to get the full experience of this experiment. It’s possible that on a given weekend I will try many variations, as long as my time and ingredients permit. I actually know already that two weekends will not permit me to bake (Aaron’s bachelor party, and a Green Bay Marathon.)

The textbook of choice for this endeavor is none other than the encyclopedia of bread making, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread”, by Peter Reinhart. Since this isn’t a Capstone (shout out to my Stritch Alum) I won’t be documenting proper APA style. A sturdy book with both instructions, theories, stories, formulas and recipes. It’s a virtual cornucopia of everything that you need to know about bread baking. In this book there are approximately 44 recipes (which he calls formulas), not including the pre-ferments. Pre-ferments are just the starters that are sometimes used to extend fermentation, tease out flavours (look I’m so cool I use an ‘ou) from the different grains. I would say most of you know the Sourdough starter as the classic pre-ferment.

As you may recall I haven’t had that much luck with sourdough starters, but I will trudge on. Yo Joe!

Here are the ground rules for my experiment

1. Only the book can be used for the formulas
   
2. No “weight watchering it up.” Some of you know that I lost 45lbs on Weight Watchers and I currently am a WW leader. It’s hard to not want to make things “healthier” or try and substitute another ingredient to add less fat, or more fiber. However, like my loving wife indicated, “follow the formula, no substitutions, no weight watchering it up.”
   
3. I will weigh out the ingredients rather than measure. The book makes it clear that the best way to bake, is to weigh ingredients because 8oz is 8oz, but someone’s 1 cup scooping is different from another one’s scooping method.
   
4. I will definitely have to plan things out if I am going to get this right. I will make a calendar to plan out any preferments, or soakings that have to take place before hand (especially them starters.)

That’s it. I will post most of my adventure on Sunday nights so that any one at work or Andi’s work can anticipate some goodies the next day. I will try and do a couple of batches whenever possible.

This first week, Andama Bread. Needs a soaker of cornmeal started the day before. Coarse ground if possible. Oh yeah, it’s possible. Sendiks FTW.

It has been many moons....

Kind of funny to be looking at my last post on this blog and now I'm longing for spring. Good news is that we tore down the Virginia Creeper on our purgola and Andi has given the go ahead to plant more hops. I just have to wait to buy the rhizomes and then plant some time in late March. Any way, on to the bread.

It's been while since I've baked, and I tried my hand at a whole wheat bread. This one started out with two pre-soaks. A soaker and a starter. The soaker was some water and called for some coarsely ground grain. All I had was some rye flour and since the recipe called for a grain, I figured this would be ok. The soaker sits with grain and water over night. That is supposed to start some natural yeast, coaxed from the air, as well break down the coarse grain.

The other was a pre-ferment, which consisted of the whole wheat, yeast and water. After the pre-ferment rose, you cover and stick into the fridget overnight (to retard the rising process.)

I didn't quit like how the pre-ferment turned out. Something about it didn't seem right and I should have listened to myself. The next day, I left the pre-ferment to rise and take the chill out while we were out to church. When I came back, I completed the dough, and again, something didn't feel right.

It was very wet, and none of the moisture seemed to be going away. Wheat breads, or coarse grains tend to take a little more water, but this was weird. I must have added close to a cup of extra flour and it didn't seem to help. The dough felt too dense and too wet.

As you can see, after a couple of hours rising, it failed to double in size, and I feared that it would turn out to be a brick. If you can't get the window pane test to pass, then the bread doesn't form the glueten strands to keep it taught, and therefore won't trap the gas bubbles to rise. This dough ball is cracking beacuse the gas isn't getting trapped. It was too wet, but I forged ahead.

I was hoping to get a spring in the loaves from the oven, and then perhaps they would rise. But alas, it was for naught. They didn't rise, and turnned out to be bricks. They didn't even make good croutons. Blech. Oh well, I'll chalk it up to one year old wheat bread, and sub par kneading. Andi is at the grocery store right now getting me some fresh whole wheat and some steel cut oats (one of the whole grains it calls for) and I'm confident that this loaf will turn out better.

Hey man, what you growing?

Here are my hops. Thank you honey for taking the pictures. The vine clippings that I planted are not doing anything, which is good. If this works, I think I use our light bench and grown some more rhizomes over the winter. Next year I'll construct some larger poles since even in most of the hop gardening that I have read, the poles are about 15ft.

Also, after poking around Amazon, there's a book I saw, that I'll probably buy, all about home brew gardening. That should be fun for next year. This year, we're sticking with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, parsley and chives.

After a bit

I think I sense two seasons approaching and how I will treat this blog. I think it's quite obvious that baking in the Summer time is just, well...dumb. Why would you want to turn on the oven anyway? So, in the Summer a young-old man's fancy turns to brewing (and gardening.)

I am tending to my hops in the back, pictures to come either tomorrow or Thursday. They are turning out wonderfully. They have grown tall and I've started to trim them back so that they will grow more bushy. There's already little buds on them.

Andi turned to me today and indicated that she was ready to give up on the Silverlace. That would be the piss poor excuse for a vine on the West side of our house. The vine is all on one side of the trellis, and the leaves are small and not pretty. To my glee she "told" me to order some hops. After all, they get really big leaves, grow bushy and do smell nice when blooming.

To my horror, I've discovered a world wide hop shortage. Not sure on what the deal with that is, so I think some more research is necessary. I then though to myself, "can I reclaim the rhizomes I have now?" I started to do some research and found little. But then, I did call my favorite gardener (Nana-M) and asked her what I could do? As I found the answer, she told me to try and root it from a cutting.

I had just trimmed a bunch of vines, so I cleared off the leaves, and buried the vine in a nice pot of fresh potting soil. If we're lucky I'll have a duplicate of my Hallertauer. This also brings up a bit of a problem for me. I have three types of hops, but I only know one of them, since the label disintegrated. I know which is the Hallertauer, but the Kent Golding and the Cascade are kind of a mystery. I found a website that has pictures of the cones, and it looks like there is a difference in the kinds that once ripe, I should be able to tell. Go to the bottem http://www.brewjobs.net/beer/hops-gardening.html

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, I got a kit and brewed it up on Monday. This is amber from Northern Brewer, in fact a Phat Tyre Amber. I'm going to come up with a name for myself, so we'll see.