Another one bites the crust

I may have mentioned this before, but in my Quest to learn how to make bread, I once spent an entire year never buying a single loaf.  If I had bread, it was because I baked it myself, and that was at a time when I had a sandwich for lunch pretty much every day, so I went through plenty of bread.  Different recipes, different shapes, different flours; I tried steaming the loaf with a pan of ice cubes under the baking sheet, and I tried different washes before baking (salt water is nice, and handy when you don't have an egg available for an egg wash).  It was a lengthy experiment, doomed to failure.

I wanted the loaves I could buy.  I wanted that stretchy, chewy crumb inside and that hard, crunchy crust outside.  I wanted a great loaf for sandwiches, and I wanted a loaf that was so good that I could just sit down with a slice of it and enjoy it all on its own merits, savoring the different textures and the contrast between that light, airy inside and the hearty crunch outside.  Instead, I got a lot of densely-crumbed loaves with weak, disappointing crusts.  If they were close to what I wanted when I first pulled them out of the oven, they had softened by the next day.  I was disappointed in my efforts and myself.  A year of dedicated work, and no progress to show for it.

I called my dad one day and admitted defeat.  He tried to console me with the fact that I still liked the bread I made; it was still good stuff.  "Yeah, but it's not what I wanted to make."

In Oregon, I mentioned the experiment once to a baker in, of all places, Safeway, and she told me that I'd probably never get what I wanted at home, because my oven just wasn't made for the temperatures required for those results.  I still toy with the idea of letting the loaf proof (a secondary rise after shaping) until it's really big then baking as hot as my oven can go, but I haven't tried it yet.  These days, someone else is buying the groceries, and I ration my consumption of them by eating much more conservative lunches.  The bread I bake now is for the Chief Taster's breakfast, and she likes it seedy, because she's one of those weirdos who thinks bread should taste like granola, and only be eaten as toast, and she won't eat a sandwich unless it's grilled, and full of cheese.

But I get bored making the same bread all the time, and I still want to find that crusty loaf, so I keep trying new recipes.  This one looked like it might satisfy both of us.  I'll give you the version from the book, and add some notes to show where I diverged.  As usual.

South African Seed Bread

unsalted butter, melted.  Maybe a tablespoon?
3 t dry yeast
1 2/3 C warm water
4 t honey
3 C whole wheat flour
1 C bread flour (unbleached all-purpose will be fine)
3 T each sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and chopped mixed nuts (Sometimes I decide that I want to bake, and also that I don't want to go to the grocery, so I have to make do with what I have on hand.  Believe it or not, I had plenty of flax, poppy, sunflower, pumpkin, and caraway seeds, but only 1 T sesame seeds.  All I had for nuts were pecans and some sliced almonds.  My version of this bread had 3 T each poppy, flax, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds, 1 T sesame seeds, and 1 T caraway seeds.  Don't use more than 1 T caraway unless you really like that flavor, because the flavor is STRONG.  I didn't use any nuts.  I'd recommend using unsalted sunflower seeds for bread.  Keep the salted ones for snacking.)
1.5 t salt
1 T milk (see note below)

• Melt the butter and brush it around the inside of an 8x4" loaf pan.
• Sprinkle the yeast into 1.25 C water and add the honey.  Stir it, then ignore it for 5 minutes.  I just eyeballed the honey as I drizzled it in.  Us untrained non-professionals can get away with delinquency like that.
• While you're ignoring the yeast, mix the flours, seeds, (nuts?) and salt in a large bowl, and make a well in the center of it.
• Are you done ignoring your yeast now?  Does it feel neglected?  Whisper soothing words of encouragement, give it a stir, and dump it into that well.  Start stirring in flour from the sides of the well.  For those of you who have your own copy of the book and are following along at home, you've probably read ahead (CHEATERS!!) and noticed that the book tells you to add the remaining water, as necessary, to form a cohesive dough that "just begins to leave the sides of the bowl clean," and that you won't have to knead it.  Maybe that'll work for you, but I'm calling bullshit.  I added all of my remaining water, but the mixing stick just wasn't doing the job, so I rolled up a sleeve, took off my watch, and stuck my hand in there.  SHIT GOT SERIOUS.  I had to work the dough a bit, squeezing and stretching (one might even call it "kneading") and turning it over to collect all the seeds and bits of dry flour that fell to the bottom of the bowl.  I got it all worked in, but it took a few minutes, and it looked a lot like that k-word we weren't supposed to do.  Whatever.  I like kneading, dammit.
• When the dough has gobbled up all of the seeds and dry flour bits through "stirring," you can put it in your buttery pan.  The book says to spoon it in, but I think the book ended up with a much wetter dough than I did.  Your results may vary.  No big deal.  Point is, I picked up a single doughball and squished it into the pan, patting it flat across the top as though I were following the book's instructions, then I covered it with a clean dishtowel and left it on a sunny counter to rise for an hour.
• At the end of the hour, have an oven preheated to 400F.  I don't know how long your oven takes to do that, so work it out on your own.  When the dough has risen above the top of the pan (it doesn't need to be much, but remember that oven heat kills yeast, so it won't get much bigger once you start baking), stick it in the oven.  After 30 minutes, reduce heat to 350F and bake for another 30 minutes.
• Remember int eh ingredients list, when I mentioned milk, then said "see note?"  This is the note.  When you get the loaf out of the oven, remove it from the pan and set it on a wire rack to cool.  The book says to brush the top and sides with the milk, but that will give you a softer crust, and we know how I feel about crust.  I didn't use the milk.  You can do whatever you want.  It's really not my business what you do with that loaf.  Personally, I sliced off a heel and ate it while typing these instructions but that's just me.

Live ferns and dead jokes

The Chief Taster is a big fan of the CW show Arrow. I watched a few episodes with her, but soon discovered I couldn't tolerate all the aspects which I perceived as tremendous shortcomings in writing, acting, and characterization, and which she perceived as not existing.  Now I generally go to another room to read while it's on, passing through only to get a drink of water from the kitchen, or when I remember that I still have dishes to do.  Occasionally, when she gets home late on a Wednesday, we don't get to have dinner until the show starts, so I'll sit in until my food is gone before going to do the dishes. (Clean dishes, much like hot meals, are one of those things she has come to assume "magically appear.")  That's how I learned that on any given episode, there is not just one, but up to four or five different archers.  Most of them are on the same secret vigilante team, hanging out in the same "arrowcave," which was spruced up with a live fern by the only person in Starling City who doesn't own a goddamned bow and arrow.

"Why did she buy a fern?" I asked.  The Chief Taster made the sort of noise she makes when I'm talking and she doesn't care, because she's trying to follow the intricate plotlines of who's giving whom the shaft (another joke I made which she refuses to add to her online forums of Arrow fans).  "She should have gotten a pet chicken," I added.  This apparent non sequitur broke her reverie.  "Wait, what?  Why a chicken?"

"Because then they could be Arrows con Pollo!"

Then she made the noise she makes when she heard me, but wishes she hadn't.  I told her to use the joke on her fan forums so I could gain Internet Celebrity and be really rich and stuff, but she has so far refused or forgotten.  I assume she's worried about losing me to my legions of new fans.

Every once in a while I make this as a reminder, but it doesn't do any good.  However, it is very tasty.

Arroz con Pollo

I use this recipe, because somewhere in my research I found something that said "true" arroz con pollo should be cooked with beer, and that seemed like a great idea, and this was my favorite recipe from the search for "arroz con pollo with beer."  I've made a few changes, though, so I'll go ahead and rewrite my version below.  Keep in mind that because I'm a gringo, it is unlikely to qualify as "true" arroz con pollo with the most exacting foodie in your life, but it's damn tasty, and you don't have to tell anyone you got the recipe from a white boy from Oregon.

4-6 strips bacon (I made it once without any bacon, and substituted some vegetable oil to saute the veggies with no problems)
8 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on (the three guys from Miami insist that if you use boneless skinless thighs, you will ruin the dish.  I tried it, because I like to challenge convention, and the results were still tasty.  Do as you will.)
salt, pepper, and cumin to season the chicken
1/2 C olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 chopped red or green bell pepper (I've never been able to find cachucha peppers)
4 cloves minced garlic
12 oz bottle of beer.  Any beer, but pick something you like, because then you can drink the other five with dinner.  Or, if you choose, share them with whoever's eating dinner with you.  Whatever.
3.5 C chicken broth
8 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 t Bijol powder (I've never been able to find this, either, so I subbed 1/2 t each of paprika and turmeric.)
1 bay leaf (following Dad's rule, whenever a recipe calls for one bay leaf, I use two.)
2 t oregano
2 t cumin
1.5 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3.5 C brown rice.  Wild rice.  whatever you have handy, really.
1/2 C frozen peas

This is where I diverge further from the Miami guys' instruction and end up just telling the story of how I made it, and why I did it that way.  If you've ever read any of my previous posts, you already knew that.

Chop the bacon into bite-size chunks.  Toss it into a good-sized skillet or saute pan.  I used something big and cast iron, because that's how I roll.  My original plan had been to use this pot for the entire process, but I quickly realized that it was nowhere near big enough.  For me, that was good news, because it meant I finally got to justify owning the enormous eight-quart stockpot that came with my original set of pans.  I'd used it a couple times for apple butter and pumpkin, but it usually just hides in the back of the cabinet, out of the way.  Now I use it for arroz con pollo and a Spanish chicken stew which I plagiarized from Panera.

Cook the bacon in whatever you're using.  We're using the fat to cook other stuff, so if you're one of those "microwave bacon" people, don't do that.  Skillet, dammit.  When it's starting to crisp nicely, transfer it to your Big Damn Pot (if you do not have a Big Damn Pot, consider reducing the recipe, or buying a Big Damn Pot).  While the bacon is cooking, season the chicken pieces with salt, pepper, and cumin.  Rub it in there good.  Then stick the chicken pieces in the hot bacon fat and brown them on all sides before putting them in the BDP with the BCN.  Keep that skillet hot, because now you're going to cook the onion, bell (or coocoocachoo) peppers, and garlic (you might want to add the garlic a little later than the veggies, so it doesn't overcook, but I've never had any trouble) until crisp-tender and the onion is translucent.  Guess where they go next?

...I hope you guessed the BDP.  Add everything else except the rice and peas.  Crank the heat, bring it to a rolling boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook it for 15 minutes.

Add the rice, bring it back to a boil, then reduce heat and cook it for 30-45 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed and the rice doesn't crack your teeth when you steal a bite.  When the rice is ready, stir in the peas and give it another 5 minutes of low heat.  Turn on the tube to your favorite archery-related program, open one or more of those five remaining beers, and enjoy.

Like, totally rad

I've been working my way through the Model Bakery cookbook, in no particular order.  So far, I have completely failed to find a recipe therein which does not meet with high praise, muffled by being spoken with a full mouth.  The book is outstanding, and not just for the full-page shots of food porn.  The recipes themselves are great, although they sometimes call for weird ingredients, or have directives I don't understand (I always work by hand, but the primary directions are for food processors. The oven temperatures are conveniently listed with three settings: Fahrenheit, Celsius, and "gas," which is always a single digit number.  I have a gas oven, but this digit means nothing to me.)

One of the recipes I've wanted to try since buying the book finally got its day this winter.  The picture of the Chocolate Rads shows an enormous, highly textured macro shot of a single cookie, whose diameter nearly spans the page.  I came to discover that this is a life-size shot.  Be warned: these cookies are not only very large, they are very rich.  They're not cookies so much as blocks of chocolate and sugar supporting a thin matrix of flour.  That's the good news.  The bad news is, I think they dry out too quickly.  My recommendation is to either bake them in batches as needed, or bake them for a large gathering.  The book says you'll get "12 large cookies."  I think my count was closer to sixteen, and they were still plenty big.

Chocolate Rads

2/3 C flour
2.5 t baking powder
1/4 t salt (the book says "fine sea salt," but I'm not that picky)
1 lb semisweet chocolate (55% cacao or less), chopped.  I used a bag and a half of chips.
4 T unsalted butter, room temp.
1 2/3 C sugar
4 large eggs (the Model Bakery is really big on using eggs at room temperature.  I usually forget that part.  Do as you will)
1 T cold brewed espresso, or 1 t instant espresso dissolved in 1 T boiling water, cooled
2.5 t vanilla
2 C chocolate chips
1 C chopped walnuts (I was out of walnuts, but we had some "white baking chips" left over from another recipe that I wanted to get out of the kitchen)

1. First thing is melting the chocolate.  There are many schools of thought here, but I think the prevailing method is some sort of double-boiler arrangement.  I don't have a double boiler, I finally succeeded in convincing the Chief Taster to get rid of hers to gain some room in the cupboards, and I've read that double boilers really aren't that good at double boiling, anyway.  If you have a metal mixing bowl that will rest over a saucepan of simmering water, use that.  If you don't (my mixing bowls are all glass), then wrangle something else.  I found that I can rest my smallest saucepan inside the next largest, and the protruding lip keeps it from resting a bottom edge in the larger pot, which would make a hot spot.  But I digress.  Melt the damn chocolate.  Stir occasionally, just until smooth, then remove from heat and stir in the butter.
2. Beat the sugar and eggs together.  Add the espresso and vanilla.  It should be pale yellow and a little fluffed before the bean-based ingredients, and darker after.  Stir in the melted chocolate, then the flour, baking powder, and salt.  When the batter is homogeneous (and honestly, kind of gross-looking), add chips and nuts.  Or chips and chips, if you're cleaning out the fridge like I was.  This dough is really soft, so let it stand 20 or 30 minutes so it can firm up a little.  By the way, I hope you  (I told you n're not excited to eat these bad boys right away, because...
3. Lay a big piece of parchment paper (about 1x1.5 feet) on your counter.  Spoon big globs of dough onto it in a line parallel to the long side.  Get it all on there.  Spatula your bowl clean, if you have to.  Wet your hands, then form the dough globs into a big smooth log, about a foot long and 3 inches in diameter.  Smooth the ends so it's a nice, neat cylinder.  I'm laughing as I watch you do this, because it will be a big, sticky mess, and you're going to do your best, but you'll have doubts about the entire enterprise by now.  Stick with it.  It's worth it.  Wrap the paper around your goo-log and twist the ends shut.  Put the log on a baking sheet and stick it in the fridge 2 to 24 hours. (I told you not to get anxious)
4. Heat the oven to 350F (gas 4, if you're curious).  Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Pull the log out of the fridge.  It will be a little flat on the bottom side, so roll it a little to smooth it and re-round it.  It won't make a difference in a moment, because the shape will get mangled when you slice the log, but just fight the good fight as long as you can, ok?  Unwrap the dough and wet a thin, sharp knife.  Cut 1" slices and arrange them on your baking sheets.  This is important, so listen up: the book says four cookies per baking sheet.  They are not fucking around.  I think I managed to get 6 on my sheets, but a couple of them became a mega-cookie, and these are already really big cookies.  You get four, maybe six to a sheet.  That's it.  Whatever doesn't fit on the baking sheet goes back in the fridge.  The sheets bake about 20 minutes.  The tops of the cookies will crack and the edges will crisp.  Swap the sheets top-for-bottom and rotate them 180 about halfway through to get more even cooking.  When you pull them out, let them set on the pans about five minutes before moving them to whatever cooling surface you prefer.  Repeat with remaining dough.
6. NOW you can eat.  Pace yourself.  It's really easy to make yourself sick by eating only five or six of these.

That's my hand for scale.  You probably haven't met my hand, so I'll tell you that the palm part is about 3" by 3".  The cookies were bigger.

to hell with Maryanne

The Chief Taster has this thing where she likes to have a slice of toast, an orange, and a soft-boiled egg for breakfast every day.  Except on weekends, when I'll sometimes make omelets or Dutch babies or muffins or waffles or... something.  Usually, the toast is from a loaf I've made, unless I've been lazy, and just bought her a loaf of multi-grain.  Therein lies my problem: she is a creature of unwavering habit, and I like to play with my food.  And, I guess, hers.  I mean, there are a LOT of bread recipes out there.  Why should I stick to just the one?

I tried something called black bread from one of her books last week.  It was terrible.  We were both unhappily chewing a piece for breakfast when I gave up and threw the rest of the loaf in the garbage.

I did much better this week.  I found a recipe (in one of MY books) called Gingery Whole Wheat Bread.  The doughball was really big even before rising, and (obviously) much larger an hour or so later.  After baking, I was thrilled to see that the loaves were big enough to make lunch sandwiches--and that was before I tried the bread.

I always slice off a heel and eat it fresh from the oven.  She doesn't like the heels (one of the many things about her I'll probably never understand--my brothers and I used to fight over heels.  That's why there's only two of us left).  I spread a little butter on it, intending to have that one slice, then go to the grocery for the berries I needed for dessert that night, but HOLEY MOLY, THAT BREAD.  There's only half a teaspoon of ginger in each loaf, but you can still taste it.  It's just sweet enough to be a great choice for breakfast, but not sweet enough to dissuade me from making sandwiches for lunch (I added lunchmeat and lunchcheese to my grocery list), and that ginger flavor is in every damn bite.  I had another slice, then left before I ate the rest.

Gingery Wholewheat Bread

2 packages (4.5 t) dry yeast
1/2 C lukewarm water
2 C milk
1/2 C molasses
1/2 C butter (I didn't realize until typing this post that I screwed up here; I read the recipe as "1/2 C," but it's really "1/2 stick (1/4 C)."  Also, they used margarine, and I won't buy the stuff.  If you want the bread I made, do what I did.  If you want whatever they made, do that.  Using their amount of butter probably would have kept me from adding the extra flour while kneading, but I'm happy with my choices.)
2 T brown sugar
6 C flour (when I say "flour," I always mean "unbleached all-purpose," unless I say otherwise.  Don't buy self-rising flour.  Just don't.)
2 C whole wheat flour
1 T salt (they said 3 t, because I guess they didn't do the math?)
1 t ginger

1. Combine flours, salt, and ginger in a large bowl.
2. Sprinkle the yeast into 1/2 C water.  Set that aside to dissolve while you put the milk, molasses, brown sugar, and butter (however much you used) in a small saucepan over low heat.  Stir constantly, until everything has melted and blended together. Don't boil it.  Besides making the milk go all funny, it will kill the yeast in the next step.  Most of the blending will happen by stirring, so the heat here is really just to melt the butter.
3. Make a well in the middle of the flour bowl and pour in about half of the milk mixture.  Stir that in, then add the dissolved yeast.  Keep stirring.  Add the rest of the milk mixture.  Things will clump together in big gooey globs (especially if you used twice as much butter, like me).  You can add more flour to get the right consistency, but I usually do that while kneading, so let's move the dough glob onto a clean counter (you can dust it with flour first, if you want.  I don't care.) and knead it for a few minutes.  This is when I added about another 1/4 C of flour, a little at a time, until I was happy with the dough.  If you're a bread baker, you'll know what I mean.  If you're new to this... I promise to make a generic "bread" post sometime, like I did with cookies.  For now, you want to be able to pick up the dough and handle it without it sticking to every damn thing it touches and leaving bits of itself behind.
4. When you're happy with the dough ball, put it in a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise until doubled in size (about an hour.  Mine went a few minutes longer, because I got caught up in something else.  No big deal.  Bread is much more forgiving than people think.).
5. Grease two 9x5 bread pans.  Punch down the dough, divide in half, and form it into two 9x5 rectangles.  Put 'em in the pans to rest under the towel while the oven preheats to 350F. (This secondary rise is called "proofing."  I let mine go about half an hour, until it looked like they were getting close to the tops of the pans, because I wanted nice, tall loaves.)  Bake for 35-40 minutes.  Brush tops with a little melted butter before removing them from pans to cool on a wire rack.
6. Try, very hard, to not eat all of the bread now.  It will probably make a good sandwich later.  Or maybe toast.