Chocolate mini pots

A few weeks ago I had this dessert challenge. I wanted to come up with a dessert that was fast, chocolaty, delicate, not too sweet, very rich, easy, small portions with nothing left over.

I had a recollection of something like this – and sure enough there were some inspirational ideas in America’s Test Kitchen.

But they weren’t quite what I wanted. Usually the amounts were too big, or they were too complex. What I had in mind was small ramekin sized chocolate pots to serve 3-4 people who are watching their weight, have just had a great dinner, and want a little dessert finisher at the end.

Here is what I came up with that will yield 4 – 3 ounce ramekins.

Mise en scene (not including the flour)

Ingredients

• 1 tbs all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• (you can happily make the recipe without the flour – it will be more moussy)
• 125g unsalted butter (about 1/4lb butter)
• 125g semi sweet chocolate (about 4 oz)
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup whipping cream with a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of vanilla. You only use 2 tbs in the dessert itself. The rest is for the topping or whatever else you want it for.
• 1 tsp liqueur – your choice
• 1 tbs whole milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Instructions

1. Melt the butter and chocolate together. Any way you can. Microwave is fine
2. Make whipped cream. The whipping is optional, but it will make a difference, as you are adding in air that will make it lighter and somehow silkier
3. Mix the flour and baking powder together – if you decide to use them. With them, the result is a little more like a cake and without, more moussy.
4. Whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla and liqueur
5. Blend in the melted butter and chocolate until fully intergrated
6. Blend in 2 tbs of the whipped cream
7. Fold in the flour/baking powder (if you are using them)
8. Pour into ramekins.
9. Cooking can vary. Essentially you need to get them to a temperature where the eggs solidify, and it does not matter how you do it. You can zap it in a microwave for 30 seconds at a time until it looks cooked & a toothpick comes out clean – about 1-1.5 minutes. Or you can stick it in a cooling down oven beginning at 375-400. Leave it and let it cook gently. Or you can push the oven to 375, put in the ramekins, turn off the oven. They should be done in 10 minutes. I imagine that 250 for 30 minutes will also work, though I have not tried that yet.
10. Cool the ramekins down to room temperature or lower.
11. Add topping as you see fit: whipped cream, icing of your choice, fruit, candied nuts, jam- whatever grabs you.
12. Other options: add a tbs of your favorite jam to get a fruit flavour.
13. Also your liquer can change or if you don’t like, omit it. I’ve tried bourbon, brandy, kirsh so far. The main thing is that it should have a distinct flavor. (So no vodka)

Making sourdough starter: the one day cheat

There’s been a lot of interest in breadmaking these days, and many people who would like to make sourdough tend to meet an initial barrier: the starter. Search it on the internet and sites say it takes 5-8 days. This blog explains a cheat that can take you from beginning your starter to first loaf in a day. 

Ready? 

Here’s what you do:

Mix ½  cup of filtered water (or 125g) add ½ cup (75 g) of organic whole-wheat and ¼ teaspoon of dry yeast. Mix thoroughly in a 1 litre glass jar put the lid on and leave for 6 to 8 hours at room temperature.

After the 6 to 8 hours it should have risen and bubbled. If not, leave it until it has. But it will. Add 200 grams of water (same weight as your first mix)  and  120 g of organic whole-wheat flour. Leave another 6-8 hours at room temperature.

At this point you should have about 500 grams of active starter that you can begin to use to make your own sourdough!

It won’t quite be sourdough at this point because the lactic acid bacteria won’t have had a chance to develop, and the yeast will still be derivative of the packaged yeast. But you can bake a very successful loaf with it. To do this, check out my blog on making sourdough.

A further note on this: At the same time I did this yeast cheat, I set up another starter with the same flour and water, but no yeast. In other words the usual process for beginning a starter. To my amazement, it too had begun to bubble away only 24 hours later. It too would need to go through the microbial processes needed to establish a true SD culture, but there would be nothing stopping you from using this to make a loaf of bread in the meantime, even though the LABs aren’t developed yet.

The ‘true’ starter all bubbly after 24 hours.

April 16 postscript

The starter made succesful loaves, but as predicted, the lactic acid bacteria (LABs) was not present and so I could not call it a true sourdough starter. It would more correctly be called a sponge.

After the initial bulk rise was prepared (April 8), I kept some of it aside in the fridge of course, fridge proofed it on the 15th, and baked it cold on the 16th. It had the beginnings of a sourdough tang, so the LABs were beginning to develop. The loaf splayed out a bit, what I would expect of a fridge conditioned bulk rise after a week.

This starter was refreshed today, 8 days later. We’ll see what happens. My prediction is that it will be able to be called sourdough.

So what does it all mean? 

• Even though the first day loaf isn’t a true sourdough, it will still make a great loaf
• The starter will become a true SD starter in about the same amount of time that  all the other SD starter recipes suggest.
• Yeast is a lot more responsive and fast to develop than LABs.
• You can get on with eating homemade bread right away, even while waiting for that starter to mature.
• If you totally mess up a starter, a new one can be just around the corner.

2 cracker recipes

With sourdough and non sourdough options

These two cracker recipes were both attempts of mine to replicate commercially available products. In both cases I have backwards designed them to attempt to replicate the original. I think I may have improved on them.

In the first case, we got these as a gift, and my wife really liked them. The milk, oats and sugar in combination give it a very pleasing and gentle mouthfeel.

The second cracker comes from a Toronto baker who’s claim to fame is that they use spent beer grains for part of their mix in both breads and crackers. These spent grains are interesting. When one makes beer using whole grains, they are roughly milled and then immersed in a 68C bath for an hour or so. In this way the fermentable sugars are extracted from the grains and eaten by the yeasts to produce alcohol in beer. The grains add fibre to the product, and roughage too, though the starch, sugar and protein has long left them into the tea. (I personally don’t by the nutritional claims made!)

Understanding that not everyone has a sourdough starter in the fridge, each recipe has a sourdough and a non sourdough version. My sourdough starter is 166% hydration – or 60g flour to 100g water.

Effies oatcakes

Sourdough version

Oatcakes

Ingredients

• 100g 166% starter
• 70g oats
• 70g oat flour
• 20g sugar
• 100g milk
• 48g melted unsalted butter
• 16g salt
• 8g baking soda
• 100g flour

Instructions

1. Mix and knead all items except salt.
2. Leave at room temp for several hours to get the yeast working, or refrigerate for a day
3. Add salt and thoroughly knead
4. Oven to 375 convection. If you do not have a convection option, check them after 15 minutes – some will be cooked while others won’t be. Remove the ones that are and keep the other ones in checking every 5 minutes or so until all are crisp
5. using a roller and parchment paper, roll out the dough until they are about 1/4″ or 6mm. The final rolling should be done on parchment paper which is transferred to a baking sheet so that the entire baking sheet has a flat sheet of dough.
6. Using a pizza cutter, cut the crackers into desired shapes
7. oven for 15 minutes, or until stiff. Let cool then package in airtight containers. They must be completely dry!

non sourdough version

Ingredients

• 165g flour
• 70g oats
• 70g oat flour
• 20g sugar
• 140 ml milk
• 48g melted unsalted butter
• 16g salt
• 8g baking soda

Instructions

1. Mix and knead all items.
2. Oven to 375 convection. If you do not have a convection option, check them after 15 minutes – some will be cooked while others won’t be. Remove the ones that are and keep the other ones in checking every 5 minutes or so until all are crisp
3. using a roller and parchment paper, roll out the dough until they are about 1/4″ or 6mm. The final rolls should be done on parchment paper which is transferred to a baking sheet so that the entire baking sheet has a flat sheet of dough.
4. Using a pizza cutter, cut the crackers into desired shapes
5. oven for 15 minutes, or until stiff. Let cool then package in airtight containers. They must be completely dry!

Beer Crisps

non sourdough version

http://spentgoods.ca/beer-crisps/

What’s cool is that they actually give their recipe on their website, calculating that few crazies are going to take the trouble to try to make them. My recipes below are not quite the same, and I prefer them.

Ingredients

• Original has used beer mash about 20% (replace 40g flour with 40g mash)
• 50g Kamut flour Other flours can be substituted: spelt, chickpea, rice, all purpose….
• 375g red fife or some whole wheat flour
• 60g butter melted unsalted
• 190ml water (or this can be replaced with beer)
• 7g sugar
• 14 g salt
• 70g sesame seed

Instructions

1. Mix and knead all items.
2. Oven to 375 convection. If you do not have a convection option, check them after 15 minutes – some will be cooked while others won’t be. Remove the ones that are and keep the other ones in checking every 5 minutes or so until all are crisp
3. using a roller and parchment paper, roll out the dough until very thin. The final rolls should be done on parchment paper which is transferred to a baking sheet so that the entire baking sheet has a flat sheet of dough.
4. Using a pizza cutter, cut the crackers into desired shapes
5. oven for 15 minutes, or until stiff. Let cool then package in airtight containers. They must be completely dry!

sourdough version

Ingredients

• Original has used beer mash about 20% (replace 40g flour with 40g mash)
• 250g 166% starter
• Kamut flour 50g Other flours can be substituted: spelt, chickpea, rice, all purpose….
• 220g red fife or some whole wheat flour
• 60g butter melted unsalted
• 44 g water (or can be replaced with beer)
• 7g sugar
• 14 g salt
• 70g sesame seed

Instructions

1. Mix and knead all items except salt.
2. Leave at room temp for several hours, or refrigerate for a day
3. Add salt and thoroughly knead
4. Oven to 375 convection. If you do not have a convection option, check them after 15 minutes – some will be cooked while others won’t be. Remove the ones that are and keep the other ones in checking every 5 minutes or so until all are crisp
5. Using a roller and parchment paper, roll out the dough until very thin. The final rolls should be done on parchment paper which is transferred to a baking sheet so that the entire baking sheet has a flat sheet of dough.
6. Using a pizza cutter, cut the crackers into desired shapes
7. Bake in oven for 15 minutes, or until stiff. Let cool then package in airtight containers. They must be completely dry!

Here are some pics and more technique explanations.

The dough will initially be quite stiff and patience is needed. Flour it to prevent sticking. Notice It is being rolled out right on the parchment paper.

Your goal is to make it thin, even and the same shape as your cookie tray.

Folding it over helps get that rectangle.

Once they are even and nice and thin, gently slide the parchment paper onto a cookie tray.

Only cut them with a pizza wheel when they are on parchment paper and in the baking tray. You don’t have to cut all the way – they will break easily when done.

Yes, there will be tasty morsels.

Bon Appetit!

Shortbread

A little background on this

Full disclosure. I’m Scottish, and grew up there for most of my childhood. Consequently there are some foods that are part of who I am, even if I only eat them a couple of times a year. Shortbread is one of them. One of my favorite taste memories is dipping fresh shortbread into custard and letting it all melt slowly in my mouth.

But I’m not talking of your usual christmas shortbread cookies all bejewelled in frosting and seasonal decorations, sweet and buttery beyond imagination, and almost crumbly to the touch.

No. The shortbread I grew up with is almost peasant like. Hard, but breakable, it will melt in your mouth, gently releasing its essential yet understated buttery bomb.

Until a few years ago, I had not been successful at copying what I remember of my grandmother and father’s magical creations. Too hard, not the right texture – not the right taste. I was told it was all in the kneading. There was too little, too much. Somehow I was not nailing it.

The investigation

A decade ago when I visited my parents, I was shown a slim and decaying cookbook: Reliable Cookery by Mrs. Lawrie (I kid you not. We shall never know Mrs. Lawrie’s first name!) This cookbook according to my dad, was published in the early 1900’s and functioned as a home economic textbook for ALL Scottish girls. (Think of the implications: it defines Scottish cuisine of that generation.) It was extremely practical,providing essential kitchen directions for future scullery maids and housewives, and simple recipes intended to provide an essential baseline of cooking expertise. I’ve uploaded and am sharing it here. I wonder what she would have thought of her modest book being shared in this way.

A little after this, I purchased Michael Ruhlman’s Twenty – an amazing book that shows how far we have all come in both embracing tried and true classical culinary techniques with a bold and new imagination. Along with Ratio, it is an essential cookbook by one of America’s most influential culinary teachers.

I then set about to figure out the definitive shortbread recipe. My usual M.O. when I set out to figure out a recipe is to research. I usually start with the print resources I have at hand. In this case I decided to look at the pdf printout I had made of Reliable Cookery and my two versions of the Joy of Cooking- 1949 and 1997.

The JOC versions seemed to me to be fairly typical butter cookies: 100% wheat flour, and also baking soda and vanilla (1949 edition). The 1997 version was more back to basics, with butter, flour, and sugar. Cream the butter and sugar, add in flour, roll out, cut, bake. Reliable Cookery differed in one important element, one I remembered from childhood: it included rice flour. (Strange, isn’t it. Rice is not a Scottish staple. Why would there be rice flour? And no explanation either.) In this recipe, the dry ingredients (including the sugar) are mixed, the butter is creamed, then they are combined, kneaded, rolled out and cut.

I decided to go with this latter recipe as I reasoned it would be the closest to what my Gran had made eons ago. Here it is. The ratio is something to take note of: 1 part each sugar and rice flour, 2 parts butter, 4 parts flour.

6oz. flour (188g)

2oz rice flour (62g)

4 oz butter (125g)

2oz sugar (62g)

Pinch of salt

1. Mix dry ingredients
2. Add butter and work in
3. Roll out
4. Bake in a ‘moderate’ oven for 1 hour.

Here is how it appears in the book.

With these quantities and process, it did not ‘roll out’ – it was rather a ‘press into the pan’ job. No surprise. After all there is no water to get the gluten going – indeed there are gluten inhibitors. I took the moderate oven to mean 325-375F. In initial experiments I used 375F (175C) following the JOC and watched it carefully but ultimately I prefer 350F.

As it was cooking, I decided to thumb through Ruhlman’s Twenty – looking for new ideas and new things to try. Lo and behold, there it was, his take on Scottish Shortbread. This was definitely interesting- especially as he noted it was a recipe that had come down through the family of a Scottish friend. No doubt a shared ancestry leading back to Mrs. Lawrie’s tome. http://ruhlman.com/2010/03/scottish-shortbread/

http://lethallydelicious.blogspot.ca/2010/06/scottish-shortbread.html

This recipe has a considerably higher ratio of sugar and butter, and uses a lower gluten cake flour. I appreciated the explanation about the gluten: that the unique crumb is achieved through lower gluten. His solution is the cake flour. Mrs. Lawrie’s was to cut in the rice flour.

My final go-to shortbread recipe

There was however a missing element in all of these recipes. The problem with shortbread is how to keep it firm, and not crumble away. You also want it to easily break apart in neat rectangles, approximately ¾” (2cm) in height. The fork pricks are important to release water vapour. The thickness too is important for the integrity of the biscuit. The key is the thorough and even compacting of the dough. If it is at all loose, it will crumble. Here is the solution, and my current recipe, somewhat modified from Mrs. Lawrie but with metric weights and a lot more specificity that should assure success:

Ingredients

180g flour
60g rice flour
125g unsalted butter
65g sugar

Equipment

• Mixing bowl
• Weigh scale
• Parchment paper
• Empty 500ml salsa or round mason jar
• 6”x8”/15x20cm (@ 50”2 /125cm2 ) baking dish for this recipe amount. This will yield shortbread that is an ideal thickness – about ¾” (2cm) thick.
• Knife and/or pizza wheel

Instructions

1. Let butter soften to room temperature
2. Heat Oven to 350F/175C
3. Weigh out and mix dry ingredients
4. Add room temperature butter and knead until the dough is fully integrated
5. Loosely press parchment paper into the baking dish
6. Press shortbread dough into all corners of the pan – compact it as much as possible
7. Lay another sheet of parchment paper on top of the dough and find a round jar that can fit into your pan (i.e. a 500ml mason jar or salsa jar) to use as a mini rolling pin.
8. Roll out and compress the shortbread until it is even. You will also need to press in dough that creeps up the sides with your fingers.
9. Using a knife or pizza wheel, cut it into desired sized pieces then poke holes with a fork all over. You can also sprinkle sugar on top.
10. Bake 35-40 minutes. It should be a little brown on the edges. As soon as you begin to smell it, it’s probably ready.
11. Allow to thoroughly cool before gently removing the parchment paper with shortbread from the pan. It will break cleaner if it is chilled.

Biscotti

Anytime is a great time for biscotti, but I’m doing this in December, and so it’s part of my holiday baking. Biscotti recipes are easy to come by, and so my purpose in presenting yet one more is to get across a couple of important and cool cooking ideas:

• Setting up a recipe
• Using a potato (yes, truly)

Setting up a recipe

People who know me know that I have kept an ever growing spreadsheet of recipes for over a decade now. Essentially there’s a number of tabs – like baking, dessert, vegetable mains etc. and within each tab, each recipe has its own column. This is really useful as most online recipes are all in a column format and if I want to send someone a recipe, its copy and paste ‘text only’. You can also easily expand or contract the column so it fits conveniently into your cell phone window. I’ve noted to my son that since just about everything he has eaten at home is on this sheet, it is in a way his culinary DNA.

Also those who know and follow me know that I always use weight measurements. The first thing I do with someone else’s recipe is to weigh each ingredient and slot that into my sheet.

Ingredients

In the case of the biscotti, there are 4 separate ingredient preparations, and they must be added in order. The original recipe here is from Healthy Home Recipes. Its here: Cranberry Almond Chocolate Biscotti. The ingredient list is ordered in no particular way – left up to the cook to sort it all out.

I prefer to see it carefully ordered by clustering similar ingredients together and ordering them in the order they are used in the recipe. In this recipe, there are four sets of additions: eggs & vanilla, butter, dry ingredients, and flavoring mix. What follows are my version of the ingredient list, followed by the original. In my spreadsheet, the groups of ingredients are colour coded as well.

3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla 4 g
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted 50g
2 1/2 cups flour 220g
3/4 cup granulated sugar 120 g
13g baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt 2g
1-1.5 cups of whatever flavorings you want: cranberries, currants, slivered almonds, chocloate nibs. This can go as high as 2 cups, but at the risk of the dough not fully covering it all and them breaking apart easily.

Here’s how the original ingredient list is laid out. Note the apparent randomness:

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup sliced almonds
8 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped

Here is the resulting mise en scene for a double batch:

Instructions

The instructions are not much changed from the original. What’s key is to precisely follow the mixing directions. As this recipe uses baking soda as its rising agent, the resulting batter must be minimally worked and shaped.

Here’s my version of the directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a stand mixer bowl, hand whisk together 3 eggs and vanilla.
3. Melt 50g butter.
4. Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
5. Prepare the 1.25 – 1.5 cups of nuts/fruit chocolate you want.
6. Put the mixer bowl on the mixer and turn to MIX or stir. Add the melted butter then the dry ingredients and finally the nuts/fruit mix. Mix only until well combined. If you don’t have a stand mixer it really is not the end of the world for this recipe. It can all be done by hand.
7. Turn the dough out onto parchment paper on a baking tray. Shape the log so that when cut diagonally it will yield biscotti of the shape profile you want. Use a potato cut in half for this. Keep in mind the log will double its width in cooking.
8. Bake 25 minutes or until firm and dry to touch. Remove from oven.
9. Reduce oven to 325°F.
10. Transfer baked log to a cutting board. and let cool for about 10 minutes. Using a serrated knife, cut the log diagonally into 1/2-inch-thick slices (or however thick you want your biscotti).
11. Place slices on their base so that both sides are open to the air, on the baking sheet.
12. Bake about 15 minutes or until dry and dark.
13. Transfer to racks to cool.
14. If you want them to be chocolate dipped: Melt the chocolate (white or real chocolate) in the microwave or over a double boiler. Dip each biscotti into the chocolate, at an angle, coating the end. Return to a cooled baking sheet and chill about 20 minutes or until chocolate is set.

Original instructions

Here is the original recipe text: Beyond the obvious change to using a numbered list, I’ve also prepared the ingredients in the order they appear in the recipe.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat liner. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and vanilla. With an electric mixer, beat the eggs and melted butter into the dry ingredients. Stir in the cranberries and almonds. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Flour your hands so that the dough won’t stick to them, and divide the dough into 3 equal 8x2x3/4-inch logs. Place one log on the baking sheet and bake 24 minutes or until firm and dry to touch. Remove from oven. Reduce oven to 325°F. Transfer baked log to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut the log diagonally into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Place slices, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake about 10 minutes or until dry and dark. Transfer to racks; cool. Repeat with the other two logs. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave or over a double boiler. Dip each biscotti into the chocolate, at an angle, coating the end. Return to a cooled baking sheet and chill about 20 minutes or until chocolate is set.

The potato??

This idea was presented on Food 52’s Chocolate Crocante recipe. This looks like a pretty amazing confection that is harder than it seems. The big idea here is that the potato’s moisture and starch provide excellent lubrication for sticky sweet bakes that would easily frustrate a spatula. Just cut the potato in half and use it to shape your log.

Finally, the pictures here show a double recipe. In one case I added currants and the almond sugar mix from my failed crocante recipe. In the other I went with semi sweet Camino chocolate nibs and dried cranberries, with a sprinkle of cocoa on top.

Final thoughts

When you first see a recipe that you know you want to make, I’m guessing the first thing you do is find the ingredients and assemble them all together. Does the order and how you set them up make a difference to you? Is there not some peace and satisfaction that comes with not only having all the ingredients, but having them set up in such a way that your procedure is logical and consecutive? Whenever I see a recipe where the ingredients are not clearly laid out and sorted, I make changes to it. I could also operate with an unordered layout – but prefer not to. Mis en scene: French for ‘put in place’ is a critical part of cooking preparation. It helps to ensure you do your recipe properly, and helps the cleanup too. Just as the physical layout helps my culinary piece of mind, I like it reflected on paper (or my cell phone) as well.

Perhaps this is a reason I pop all my recipes onto my spreadsheet. If they are worth doing, they are worth doing well, and worth repeating. Being able to retrieve them easily, and having them make immediate sense in its own way promotes great kitchen karma.

Homage to Mollie Katzen

Homage to Mollie Katzen

I’m fine doing a recipe, even creating and adjusting one. Where I fall down is that initial spark of creativity to figure out what to do in the first place. Unlike what seems to be the norm these days, I don’t head over to Pinterest and dial up some assortment of interesting recipes to browse through. Boringly I start by looking in the fridge seeing what is there, and figuring out something that can be made reasonably quickly.

My wife has other ideas. Not exactly heading to Pinterest – but pulling 30 year old fav cookbooks off the shelf she hasn’t looked at for a long time. It was essentially a message to me: “I’m getting a little tired with the same same. You need to broaden things a bit.” My reaction was “Sure, tell me what you would like.”

Three of the books were by Mollie Katzen: The Moosewood Cookbook, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Still life with Menu.

Mollie Katzen first came to prominence in the 1970’s with the famous Moosewood Cookbook – one of the best selling cookbooks of all time. It’s a vegetarian classic with pretty much any go to vegetarian dish that is out there. My humus and babaganouj recipes are right out of it. Back in my vegetarian days, her books were a constant go to reference.

Its interesting looking at the recipes now – 30-40 years later. So much has changed: all recipes show volumes – no weights. There’s a lot of cheese happening, and there is no mention at all of fermentation. These books were developed before the internet too. Moosewood is hand written and hand drawn. Over the years, our well used copies are getting very dog eared, with notes and stickies everywhere.

If you do not already have these two books, I would strongly recommend buying them. They are still unique, and still relevant in these faster moving times.

My idea here is to do something of an homage to Mollie and her superb work from a generation ago. Still life with Menu has an interesting concept: instead of a series of recipes categorized by type, a set of menus are presented. Also, she presents options for preparing parts of each meal several days ahead of time – the idea being that you are not scurrying about on the day the meal is served. Finally, each menu is accompanied by a watercolour showing some or all of the menu as a classic still life painting. So my project here will be to try out a number of these menus, and recording my thoughts in this blog.

Light tomato soup, Jewelled Rice Salad, and Yogurt scones

I didn’t have to prepare this one several days apart. It was pretty easy to pull together and I did take some short cuts. I’ll present the original recipe on one side and my variation and notes on the other: Generally I am cutting the recipe in half as there are but three of us eating.

Original ingredients: Light tomato soup	My variation
3 lbs ripe tomatoes in chunks	750 ml of my home made tomato sauce
4 cloves garlic, chopped	2 heaping tablespoons of homemade pesto
6-8 fresh basil leaves
2 tbs brown sugar	1 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp salt	½ tsp salt
Pepper to taste	Pepper to taste
Parsely and/or dill as garnish.	Parsely and/or dill as garnish.

Next up: Yogurt scones

These are, as promised, very light and airy scones. They are more like baked pancakes than anything else. This makes them quite tempting – they were definitely all consumed. As with other recipes I made a half batch, and converted volumes to weights. The instructions are as expected: mix wet, mix dry, & combine stirring as little as possible, bake – 400 12-15 minutes.

I made one addition to it: I added some sourdough starter, and left it all on the counter for about an hour.

Original Yogurt scones	My version (approximately half the recipe)
1.5c white flour	110g all purpose flour
1.5c whole wheat flour	70g whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder	1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda	1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt	3.6g sal. This is 2% of the flour weight and a much higher % than in the original.
6 tbs cold butter (unsalted) – interesting – back in the day salted/unsalted was not distinguished	45g unsalted butter
2 tbs packed brown sugar	13g brown sugar (when you weigh it, you do not have to be concerned with it being packed or not)
½ c packed raisins	35g currants
1 ¼ c yogurt	.75c yogurt
2 eggs (1 egg in mix, 1 beaten and brushed on top)	1 egg + egg white to brush on top
	I also added 2 tbs of sourdough starter

After an hour on the counter the sourdough was beginning to work its magic.

I think you will be able to read the original instructions in the photo below.

This recipe worked out quite well, and really was exceptionally easy. As usual I could not help weighing things. The scones turned out a little like pancakes as well – hardly a surprise as they are a batter dropped onto a cookie tray. One change I would recommend is to use parchment paper. This will guarantee nothing sticks. Was parchment paper a thing 30 years ago? Perhaps not.

Finally, a jewelled rice salad.

This was one recipe I did make some significant changes to. I’ve been making grain salads for years now – they offer almost endless variety with the array of grains to choose from and all of the wonderful stuff you can put into them. But in the ‘80’s they were a new idea, and in my opinion we owe a debt of thanks to MK and her collaborators for bring them to our tables.

That said, we have definitely pushed the envelope by 2018 s you will see when the original and my recipe are compared. We want a bigger bolder taste, and this was achieved with a ponegranate half. As in other recipes I cut the original in half.

Jeweled rice salad (original)	My version (half the quantity) I did not weigh these ingredients.
Rice: 2c rice, 3 c water	I had brown rice already cooked, so I used 2 cups of that
⅓ c olive oil	⅓ c olive oil ( felt it needed more oil)
6-8 tbs lemon juice	3-4 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp salt	1/2 tsp salt
1 large clove garlic	1 clove garlic
1 tbs honey	1/2 tbs honey
4-6 scallions cut fine	2 scallions cut fine
½ c finely minced parsley	½ c finely minced parsley. I thought it deserved more parsley
1 c toasted pecans	1 c toasted pecans. Likewise. I did not halve these
Fresh ground pepper to taste	Fresh ground pepper to taste
2 c red or green seedless grapes	I did not have these. Too bad. I substituted soaked raisins.
1 cup chickpeas	½ cup chickpeas
Toasted pecan halves.	Toasted pecan halves.
	I thought the whole dish at the end needed some additional strong flavors. I added in addition
	⅓ cup chopped granny smith apple
	2 tbs pomegranate seeds.

Directions

1. Cook the rice. MK has some very specific directions for the rice (which I did not follow as I already had some available):
   1. Bring to a boil
   2. Lower heat to lowest simmer for 35 minutes
   3. Transfer to a shallow platter and spread to let steam escape. This prevents it overcooking in its own heat
2. Combine olive oil, lemon juice, salt, garlic and honey
3. Add parsley, pecans and pepper.
4. Mix well in its serving bowl, add garnishes – pecans, scallions, parsley

And there is my first revisit of Still Life with Menu. Both it and Moosewood are still readily available, and I would strongly recommend getting them. They may easily become your go to sources for all that is vegetarian.

I hope you give these recipes a try – and as you can see, they are quite amenable to variation.

Yeast connection part 2

The Yeast Connection part 2

Sept. 18-19

This blog is a continuation of the previous one exploring various aspects of yeast in its manifestations in beer and bread.

• That beer bread where I used the last dregs of the recently bottled beer rose. It took a full 24 hours at room temperature to get itself sorted out. Its now been in the fridge for about 15 hours. I took off a little pinch to taste (heat a frying pan, a little oil, flatten the bread sample, cook, observe if it rises, eat) It also passed the stretch test
• I thought I’d like it as a boule – but realize I need a suitable rising container, so here it is in some parchment paper ready for its long fridge rise.
• The beer is now bubbling away, and the reconstituted yeast brew (right) is much more active than the basic yeast version.
• Meanwhile my apple and pear ferments are bubbling away nicely. I’m going to try a few experiments with them:
  • Cider: propagate a yeast slurry using organic apple juice in the same way I do a beer yeast refresh: (per gallon) 200g juice (hopefully at 1.035) and 20g of the yeast in the jar. Same for the pear.
  • Beer (why not?) same thing – but use my beer wort mix
  • Bread: 2 starters – Elaine at foodbod https://foodbod.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/fruit-yeast-water-bread/ suggests equal parts water and flour (which would yield a 100% hydration starter). Now this will definitely be interesting to compare with my ‘old faithful’ SD starter. Will I get hints of apple and pear?

September 20

I had to bake that beer bread today. It was just going too long in the fridge. I didn’t need to do it for bread – there’s already lots – but it really had fermented enough at nearly 48 hours. It rose, and did its yeasty breadish thing, but had I done it earlier it would more have resembled a bowler hat and not a volcano. The taste however was excellent. I’m glad I added the maple syrup. There was no bitterness as I tasted in the pre rise taste, but the taste was wonderfully rich and malty. In retrospect I should have made about 1.5 x the recipe using water as additional liquid. Or indeed not. This is a bread that is no shrinking background bread. Its the star of the show. I imagine it with roast squash, your thanksgiving turkey, a rich thick soup. And of course it will ideally suit the beer you brewed from it. That said it will be a month before you drink that and the bread will be long gone. It will NOT however a light summer salad. Here is what it looks like:

.

It is definitely worth doing this again next time I brew. Of course one can also use this last not full bottle for other things too – like marinating your meat, maybe cooking beans. Now there’s an idea!

Sooo…. In summary… if you are a brewer who has not made bread before:

• Weigh the beer/trub mix.
• Divide the weight by .6 to give the amount of flour to use. You can use whatever flour you like, just understand this will really affect the taste.
• Multiply the weight of the flour by 2%. This is the amount of salt to add.
• Mix and knead the flour and the beer until it is all well mixed. Place in a bowl and leave for 20 minutes
• Add the salt and knead until it is well integrated. Taste it – the hoppiness could make it too bitter. This can be countered with a sweetener of your choice (which will also aid the fermentation going forward.)
• let rise at room temperature for about about 24 hours.
• Stretch and fold – a kind of kneading – look it up on Youtube – and then shape to the shape you wish it to be. At this point you can add stuff – seeds, nuts, other grains, oil….. Taste it again using that ‘fry a little bit of dough’ method described above.
• Leave it at room temperature for a few hours or stick it in the fridge for about 24 or more hours.
• For baking – oven to 450F. Depending on how much you have, it will be anything from 30-60 minutes. But if you are a brewer you should have a digital thermometer on a long probe. Stick that in after about 25 minutes and wait until its over 190F but not over 205.
• Let it cool for about 20 minutes.

September 22:

Check out the apple ferment! Its in its glory now!

September 26

• Lots has happened, including my courses, which is why I have not been great about keeping this journal up to date.
• The brews noted above were bottled. The ‘control sample’ with regulare old Safale 04 yeast came in at 1.020, while the reconstituted yeast came in at 1.010!! Its clear to me now. I will be using active trub, strengthened with some 1.035 wort from now on.
• On September 24, I participated in Jan and Jim’s cider making process. My first time for this. Jim and jan are wonderful people who live off grid up in the Bruce Peninsula. Ultimate DIYers, one of their annual projects is processing their apples into all sorts of things, but mainly cider. I spent the morning with some of their city millennial friends, chopping and got to see the cider press in action. Here are a couple of photos of their set up:
• The apple chunks are first mashed in the masher, then placed in the press. A hand screw presses down the press plate squeezing the juice out. Jim notes that since none of the trees are cultivated and grafted, they are all their own individual species. I felt very honoured to take away a gallon, which I innoculated with my apple yeast, and placed in the crawl space to ferment for goodness knows how long. For the first time I made a connection between what Sandor Katz has said about apple cider – i.e. give it oxygen and time and things will happen vs. what I have found to be succesful: dropping some champaign yeast into it. I did wonder that perhaps I did not need to add my yeast – but we will see what happens. Naturally sweet, it came in at 1.043 OG. If it fermnents all the way it should produce a 4.5% hard cider.
• On the brewing front, I finally got to try the exbeeriment I made using sourdough starter. It was excellent and I did not expect that. What I have read notes that for sour brews one needs to think of lighter brews, pilsner and wheat malts, and light hopping. In this one I made a straight up ale with 2 row malt, and northdown hops. I was truly expecting sour, but did not get it. I’ve heard that the hops tend to kill off the lactic acid bacteria so if that happened it would definitely account for the lack of sour where it was present at the point I bottled it. Between the result noted above and this, I feel that I am much more in control and comfortable with my yeast situation and beer.
• I’ve pureed and added fresh apple juice to my apple yeast sample, and have taken some of it to make a bread starter. Haven’t tried it yet – family is not eating enough bread.
• I also was able to get a decent DIY stirplate going. Its super basic, and needs a lot more refinement, but I was able to use it to get a yeast happening for a 2 gallon brew. Since yeast needs oxygen in order to work well, stirring it is a good way to do this. In a stir plate, a magnet is on a motor spinning around. There’s another smaller magnet in your jar of yeast. The spinning magnet causes the other magnet to spin also. The trick is that you need to start things slowly and get it at an optimum speed for a whirlpool to happen.
• And to finish this blogging sequence off, my 2 gallon brew (I am trying to make a Kolsh but I have substituted so much that its likely turned out to be just another pilsner.) and its buddy, the apple cider. I can hardly wait until next week to see how they turned out. If I see any fermenting action I will just leave them there. You can see that the beer is already developing a nice Kreusen. The cider may take longer.

All of this goes to show how flexible, variable, and also powerful this microscopic fungi called yeast is. Its key to a significant number of foods and drinks we not just consume, but really enjoy. If anything, I hope these 2 blogs inspires people to experiment, to ask “what if….?” set up and experiment, and have fun with it!

Sourdough Bagels

Imagine: Fresh tangy  bagels right out of the oven for breakfast. Ones made by YOU. 

Sounds great?   You can do this and it’s not that hard.

This blog tells you how – and in particular bagels of the sourdough persuasion.

There are a few sites that will teach you about making bagels, but they are usually done by professional bakers, thinking of larger scale production. They also are yeast based.

I’m a home baker, not making any more than between 4-6 at a time. This is important as I am interested in both freshness and efficiencies of both time and ingredients. And sourdough is my baking medium of choice.

This blog is  associated with some of my other blogs on sourdough:

• Sourdough Bread – simple and delicious!
• Making sourdough easy and ‘just in time’
• Fun stuff to do with sourdough
• Backwoods Sourdough

 but bagels are a particular kind of baking process that requires a different treatment.

There is one really excellent instructional video you really ought to view before doing your own – Breadtopia’s bagel video http://breadtopia.com/how-to-make-bagels/ This one is a yeast based recipe, is considerably bigger scale, and with respect to the water in the oven, a tad complex for my liking. But its the one that made the most sense to me when I was developing my own technique.

Sourdough bagels can either take a really long time to pull together, or they can be relatively fast. The relatively fast version means that you already have a bag of dough ready to go in the fridge. The slow version means you begin with a starter, refresh, refresh again, make a bulk dough, THEN put the bagels together. I will describe both, beginning with the fast version.

The Fast Version

To do this version, you need to have at least a .5k or 1lb of sourdough bulk rise dough in the fridge.  Check out my Making sourdough easy and ‘just in time’ blog for the backgrounder on how you can set up a truly efficient sourdough regime. 

The night before  (best done when preparing dinner.)

Time : about 20 minutes

You need

• Bulk rise dough
• Weigh scale
• Parchment paper
• Plate or baking tray
• Wet (rinsed wet) cloth
• cornmeal
• Dry malt extract or sugar

Instructions

1. Check your dough’s hydration. You should already know this. Bagels require a 60% hydration. If your dough is different than that you can use my hydration change calculator to make the adjustment. If this is still a tad confusing and you just want to get on with it, bagels need a stiff dough – however you get there. 
2. Assuming 110g or 1/4lb per bagel, take out the dough needed to make the number of bagels you want.
3. Also add some sugar. This can be in the form of regular sugar, or dry malt extract. For these small batches I add about a tablespoon or so. The sugar encourages more yeast action in the bagels. Maple syrup or honey can also be used but if you do, you have to treat them as liquid and add flour to keep the hydration at 60%. For our small batch I would suggest 30g honey/maple syrup and 50g flour.  Knead the dough, the sugar and (if needed) extra flour or water until it is a well kneaded ball.
4. Separate the dough into balls of dough – one per bagel. Weigh them so they are all the same weight. Vigorously knead and roll the dough as you would plasticine to make each dough ball into a long sausage shape. [photo showing the rolling and twisting] 
   

     Bagels can be anywhere from 100g to 150g

   

   Bagels rolled and twisted in a sausage shape

   

5. Twist the sausage shape working to stretch the gluten in the dough as much as possible. Form it into the classic bagel shape crimping the ends together.
6. Prepare a parchment paper with a thin layer of corn flour, place the bagels on the flour, leaving lots of space between them. Cover with a damp towel and put into the fridge overnight. [photo of bagels ready for the fridge]
   

   Bagels ready to go in the fridge (with a wet towel of course)

In the morning…

Time: 40 minutes in all, 10 minutes of active work

You need:

• Cornmeal
• Baking soda and sugar
• Baking stone
• Widest frying pan you have, but should be at least 2” deep
• A slotted spoon
• A tablespoon measure
• Pizza peel
• Parchment paper
• Bagel toppings (egg wash, poppy seed, sesame seed, flax, other grains and nuts….)

 

Instructions

1. Make sure you have a baking stone in the oven, more or less in the middle, and enough space below to fit the frying pan with water. Turn the stove on to 480F/250C.
2. Using the widest frying pan you have, fill it ¾ full of water, add 1 tsp of baking powder, 1 tbs sugar (or if you have it, dry malt extract) and set to boil, lid on. Your timing on these two items depends on how fast your stove and your heating element heat up. Ideally the oven should reach 480F about the time the water is boiling on the stove. What you are trying to avoid is having the bagels ready to go into the oven before it is properly heated. 
3. Remove the bagels from the fridge and place them next to your frying pan of boiling water. Gently make any final shape adjustments you want (bigger/smaller hole, rounder etc.) 
4. When the water is at a rolling boil, place the bagels in it. You should be able to place between 4-6 bagels in a 12” skillet. It will initially go off the boil with the fridge cold bagels. Once it comes back to boiling, boil the bagels on one side for 30 seconds at least . Sometimes the bagels stick to the bottom  – if so gently pry them up about 10 or so seconds into this first boil. They should rise to the top once they expand and they must do this before they are turned. It’s important to note that most of their rising occurs in the boiling.  After 30 seconds, flip the bagels with the slotted spoon and continue to boil for another 30 seconds. 
5. While the boiling is happening, sprinkle more cornmeal on the parchment paper (or you can use new parchment paper if you like) and prepare the toppings and a spoon.
6. Working quickly, remove the bagels from the pan and place them on the cornmeal parchment paper.
7. Using a spoon, sprinkle toppings as desired 
8. Put the frying pan of nearly boiling water in the oven under the baking stone 
9. Using a pizza peel, slide the parchment paper with the bagels into the oven [photo of bagels ready to go into the oven]
10. Turn heat down to 450F/233C (it will likely be at that once the water and bagels have  gone in) and bake for 20 minutes. 
11. Remove and place in a basket – parchment paper and all. 
12. Enjoy! (and don’t forget to remove the pan from the oven too.)

So that was the short version: about 20 minutes in the evening and about 45 minutes the next morning. Here’s the longer version for a 6 bagel batch. I use organic whole wheat flour for the starter and a combination of all purpose organic and red fife flour for my dough.

The LONG Version

24 hours ahead (morning)

The timings for these risings are a little shorter than what I would usually do, and the compensation is rising them in a warm location. Alternately you could do the first refresh the night before (2 nights before the bagels are made), plan on about 8 hours per rising, and in a cooler environment of 20C/68F

1. Refresh 100g of starter with 100g water and 60g flour, and let it develop for 6  hours at a warmish room temperature around 24C/75F (e.g. 6AM-12 PM)
2. Refresh this starter again with 250g water and 150g flour, letting it develop for 6 hours. (e.g. 12PM-5PM)
3. Prepare a bulk dough with 120g of this starter, 360g flour, 170g water, and 8g salt.
4. Let rise for a further 5  hours or so before proceeding to ‘the shorter version’.

The following table shows how you would manage things beginning 36 hours ahead or 24 hours ahead.

Step	20C/68F	24C/75F
First refresh	10 PM (36 hours before)	6AM (24 hrs before)
2. 2nd starter refresh	6 AM (24 hours before)	12PM
3. Bulk dough	2PM	5-6PM
4. Shaping into bagels/refrigerating	8PM	10-11PM
5. Boiling	6AM	6AM

As you can see this is a day long project and a lot of attention to time, detail, and being available all to get only 6 bagels. It’s not even ideal, as it really is best to prepare the bagels around dinner time the night before. To accommodate this you would need to begin your starter refresh in the middle of the night.  That’s why I prefer to do the shorter version  – but you would need to be doing what I note in my “Making sourdough easy and ‘just in time’ “ blog.

Backwoods sourdough

Sept 10

This blog is going to be a process blog where I don’t know quite where it will end up.  I’m also going to try to do this entirely on my phone.

Here’s the story. On the last weekend in September,  I will be going on a backwoods canoe trip facilitated by my very experienced son. It’s the first time for me and likely the last as my various commitments sadly tie me down.  Needless to say I’m really looking forward to it.

Yesterday at breakfast I had run out of bread and had only a sourdough bulk rise ready to be made into a loaf.  About 4 hours away. (Proofing baking& cooling). I tore a couple of small chunks from the bulk rise, flattened them out, put a little oil in a frying pan and a couple of minutes later, fresh delicious sourdough hotcake.  My son had one too and wondered about the potential for doing this for our trip. I said ‘sure, easy’ and showed him my lump of dough. He said “Too heavy like this. Can you do it so we only bring the flour? ” I said I would work on it.

I posed the question on a couple of Facebook forums. While there was interest, no one  (so far) had tried what I am trying to do though a couple noted that this is what Klondike miners must have done so many years ago.

My vision is to get a low hydration starter going – something that can stay in a ball. At supper I would take half of it mix it with just enough flour water and salt for an overnight bulk rise; add a little flour and water to keep the starter going. Next morning flatten out the dough into buns and fry on the stove.  If there are large flat rocks I could use them.

I’m about to try it all at home first – beginning with the starter. So for 100g of starter at 166% I need 104g  of flour to make it 65%. (try my hydration change calculator) This should yield 200g of 65% starter.

Best internet discussion I’ve found so far… https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/87645/

And I’ll keep adding to the blog as this experiment develops.

Sept 11

Last night I prepared my initial stiff starter. (I am of course in my house experimenting with nothing on the line.) This morning I peeled off half of it, (100g)  added a pinch of salt, flattened it with my hands only and put it on a hot skillet. The remainder of the starter is back in its jar, room temperature,  to be refreshed tonight.

Hotcake in dry skillet

The dough barely rose and felt stiff. Clearly a lot of work to do.

 

Little rise. Sadly its not like the result from my big bag of dough in the fridge. Taste is ok but then again its hot. That’s the idea though- to eat it right away. I have to double check my formula as the dough felt a lot stiffer than 65%.

The crumb shot as such.

So…. a little later in the morning I decided that if I liked the dough I had in the fridge then I should use it as a starter base. So: 50g dough  (1g salt) 100g flour and 65g water. This is how it starts:

The new starter dough

Experiments like this lead to strange places. This is a “french toast fritter pancake”. Instead of soaking a bread slice in egg, egg is kneaded into raw bread dough then fried in a really light coating of oil. Next time I should let it settle / rise for a bit. I’d definitely try it again.

September 12

All is working as it should. Last evening I mixed more flour and water into my starter  (66%) and this morning tore off a chunk of it, added a pinch of salt and cooked it dry on the stove top.  My son’s analysis: “it does the job”.

Next task: scale it up so it can feed 3, but keeping the same amount of starter. What I like so far is that it’s flexible and quite predictable.  The caution: get your heat right.  Less better.

.Sept 13

First a shout out to Bud who seems to be the only FB reader to truly get what I’m doing. Thanks for all your advice!

On my jog yesterday I figured out my weight proportions: there are 3 of us which at 100g per person suggests a dough of 300g plus 100g starter. 200g flour + 130g water gives a 65% hydration dough and a little more than enough per person.  This dough is set up the night before and in the morning split 4 ways. 1 put back in the bag and 3 get a pinch of salt added and are cooked. How much easier could this truly be? Next task: figure these quantities as volumes and not weights. Also give it a final test run.

Sept 15

I tried my first effort with the volume needed for our trip.  I made 3 different sizes/thicknesses. Essentially if one is doing a thick bun it needs to proof just like a loaf of bread. Thin buns are a lot more forgiving.

The 3 bun shapes tried.

The thickest one definitely needed proofing!

Sept 29

We leave tomorrow.  I’ve been given interesting challenges here: pancakes and naan. Both feature oil or butter in the mix.

Here’s how the pancakes could work: a zip lock big  bag with the following little bags within: 100g dough and 9g skim milk powder; a second with 100g flour; a third with 1g flour, 7g sugar,  2g salt,  7g baking powder.

Night before: mix dough and flour with almost a cup of water and gently mix until everything is evenly hydrated. Next morning add the third bag,  and some oil. mix gently leave for 30 minutes. Batter should be ready.

Camping notes

September 29

The starter dough

I put up one of my big 2.8kg basic doughs.  Some of  this went into a loaf for the wonderful person taking care of things while we are away. From this dough I took off 2 pieces of  hundred grams and put them in 2  large ziplock bags.  I also made up of three other Ziploc bags each with 200 grams of whole wheat flour in 4 grams of salt. These would  be the hot cakes to be made on the trip.

Panini sandwiches

Panini sandwiches for the first day lunch had been prepared the day before and day of our trip.  I took the remaining eight to nine hundred grams of my older bulk dough from the fridge,  rolled it out and laid on slices of butter as one would do for a croissant: It was folded and rolled out several times to make a laminated dough. The final roll was approximately one quarter to three eighths inch thick. It was then cut into rectangles about 4”  wide and left them to proof for about an hour. While they were proofing,  I prepared the Panini fillings: BBQ vegetables, cold meats, pickles, brie and cheddar slices. These all went into a couple of bags for assembly early the next morning.

I BBQ’d them on a medium heat about 1-2 minutes per side until they browned and expanded.

September 30th –  we depart

Paninis

These were made for lunch on the first day.   

Before we left I did the final prep. The paninis were thick enough that they could hold together well enough to be slit open easily and filled without breaking up and without breaking the hinge at the back of side of the bread. The butter laminate and grilling method ensured that the outside would stay together and so be fully functional as a sandwich. The completed sandwiches were wrapped liberally in wax paper and labeled. (This is important for later on).

We arrived at our departure point about 12:00PM. We wanted to get going and weren’t hungry. We left the outfitters in a rented  3 person canoe around 1 o’clock and by 3 o’clock we had reached our first portage. Out came the greatly appreciated paninis. The wax paper was carefully folded and returned to the pack.

Hot Cakes number 1

I realized when we were eating the Panini’s that I had not set up the dough for the hotcakes that evening.  Standing beside the biggest beaver dam I have ever seen I mixed the hundred grams of starter dough, 200 grams of flour and salt and  then eyeballed approximately 120 grams of water from my drinking bottle. I set about massaging the dough through the plastic bag, and  realized it would be about 4 hours before I was to cook them for dinner – and they had just begun their bulk rise.  I needed to get them along quickly with their fermentation so in the bag went, under my shirt and next to my tummy for what was to be a fast rise. There they stayed  for a further three hours of travelling and a difficult portage. Once we got once we got to the campsite and began our dinner prep the first thing to do was to extract  the dough  now happily bubbling away.  This dough was divided into 4 equal pieces: 1 was put back in the ziplock bag with the next batch of flour and salt, and again the water was eyeballed. Massaged sufficiently, it was stuck it back in the food pack for consumption the next day.

I retrieved the wax paper from the paninis and use them to flatten out the dough without getting my cutting board dirty.  I put another layer of used wax paper over them to protect them from fire embers and dust. They then proofed while the  rest of our dinner –  guacamole, whitefish, roasted vegetables  and chantarelle mushrooms was being prepared. Once the fish was cooked, in went the hotcakes, soaking up the remaining lovely  oil and butter deliciousness still in the pan from the fish, chanterelles and barbecued vegetables. The result was excellent. They were hot nicely risen nicely browned and delightfully flavored with the pan drippings.  

October 1  – Hang out at the campsite day

Pancakes

it was determined on our first morning we would have pancakes with homemade jam and summer sausage for breakfast. When you think about it, pancakes are really like a super hydration bread with some oil,  sugar, and baking soda.

For the pancakes I decided to approach these separately from the sourdough hotcakes and it’s a good thing I did because I needed to get them started at the same time as the hot cake dough the night before. I calculated that enough pancake mix for the three of us with mean 100 grams of starter dough at 66% (this was the second bag of dough I had prepared)  Here is how I thought it through: 100 grams.of dough @ 66% + 67 grams of water would give me 166% hydration. 100 g  flour + 4 g salt + 166 grams of water would likewise also give me a 166% hydration dough. I’d need to add  230 grams of water to the dry flour and starter  to make it happen. But that is not all.  This pancake mix (according to my pancake calculator based on Theresa Greenaway’s sourdough pancake recipe)  would also needs 7g sugar 2g  salt, 7g baking powder, and 9 g of skim milk powder.  Putting all of this together I had 3 separate zip lock bags

1. 100g of 66% starter in a large zip lock bag
2. 100g whole wheat flour in a small zip lock bag
3. 15 g flour, 7 g sugar 3g of salt, 7g baking powder and 9g skim milk powder in  small zip lock bag.
4. At our fish dinner, bags 1 and 2 were mixed together along with 230g of water – about a cup – eyeballed!  

I wanted this to proof overnight but I did not  want to add in the baking soda, milk  powder sugar mix  and oil until shortly before cooking. My son was a little concerned about  leaving this freezer bag of yukky liquid, sincerely hoping  it would not explode in the night  while in the food bag slung up in a tree to prevent bears or other creatures getting to it. The next morning after a night of 10-degree temperatures the bag was looking the way it should:  a nicely bubbling ferment. In went the bag of remaining flour and other stuff and also added a shot of sunflower oil – pancakes do  need oil for taste, texture and to  avoid sticking.  I have to say I was apprehensive about this mix, based as it was on quite theoretical assumptions  but they turned out amazingly.

Hotcakes 2

The second batch of hotcakes was for  lunch on the second day as an accompaniment to tomato soup. Again the first thing was to extract them from the bag, divide into 4, and put one back in the bag for the next batch. This batch I felt was a little dry so I added more water before turning it out. All went well  – as it did the night before.

One problem though – after a thorough check I could not find our final bag of flour/salt! Yikes! This was going to be for breakfast the next and final morning. Was it left behind? Must have been! There are  worse things in life.

Our  starter’s final hurrah

Going into our final campfire dinner, I still had the starter. We had planned to have mac and cheese, with rehydrated dried vegetables. What I had forgotten about in making mac and cheese was that you need a roux. The only flour I had left was in that little ball of starter dough. Necessity is the mother of invention and thus I made a valiant effort to convince a little piece of my remaining starter dough that it would have to serve up its life as flour for a roux.  It worked, barely  – with deft and quick stirring, lifting it off the flame, making it as roux like as I could, working the added cheese so it did not become a gloopy stiff chunk.

October 2  – heading back

The next morning I cooked what was left of the starter dough, and it all worked out well in the end. After sausage and trail mix, our food bag nearly exhausted, and we were fuelled for the 5 hour portage and canoe back.

Some conclusions are in order

• Having hot fresh bread on your camping trip is a wonderful thing.
• Sourdough camping can be done fairly easily.   70 grams of flour per person per serving is required, along with the 2% salt mixed in. A  100g ball of 66% starter is all that is needed to keep it going.
• Camp sourdough it does not take a long time but it does need planning
• It really does need one person committed  to doing  it.
• Keep the starter in a large sturdy freezer bag and have a couple of other bags at the ready too.  
• The cooler the temperature  the longer you have to proof it, and   vice versa.  If you need it quickly then you need to find a warm body.
• There are lots of variations possible from pancakes to fritters to hotcakes. They can be fried or grilled or cooked on a hot flat rock. Cook it dry or in  butter, oil or  bacon grease.
• One objection from my son was that the extra cooking uses up more heat. In our case it wasn’t on account of the hot cakes that we consumed a lot of fuel –  I was making  cedar tea in large quantities for one of our party who was feeling a little under the weather.
• Next time (I hope there is a next time) I probably prefer to bring a whole bag of flour and dip into it as needed. That would have saved my bacon on this trip  There is also merit to having each meal laid out with its own bag of flour with the salt pre measured.

Making sourdough easy and ‘just in time’

How to make sourdough really easy

Going back over a year now I’ve been looking for ways to tame sourdough to my own schedule. Notably I wanted to have fresh hot bread for breakfast. Since then people in my sourdough workshops proposed other challenges : to make it fit into their busy lives.
In this latter case it was reasonably easy: find cool places in your house for a longer bulk rise including the fridge. But these answers still presumed time for a starter refresh, bulk rise, shaping and proofing, and baking. Controlling for temperature this could be anywhere from a 6 to 24 or more hour cycle.
Recently I’ve been trying something new. Instead of thinking of a whole process ending up with all the dough baked at once, I’m preparing a much larger base dough, letting it rise a couple of hours on the counter then throwing it into the fridge in a large freezer bag. That

The dough bag continues – slowly – to ferment in the fridge.

done, I take only what I need when I need it. That way I get “just in time and just enough” and its always fresh.
Not only can you do this at the bulk rise stage, you can also do it with the final proofing. A shaped loaf can happily be in the fridge rising for a couple of days.
For some of you reading this may bring quiet agreement – perhaps its what you do. For others you will be asking ‘Tell me more’.

Starting off….

As always with sourdough it starts with the starter. I like to use 166% starter. I keep a 100g jar (or so) from the previous batch. It begins with the refresh: 100g starter, 100g fresh filtered water, 60g organic whole wheat flour. 8 hous later I should have 260g of starter. I refresh a second time: 260g starter, 260g water, 156g flour. Now I have about 780g of really bubbly twice refreshed starter. This is something I do when it is convenient to do, and while I have both bead in the pantry and a dough in the fridge. That said, there is some planning and anticipation needed as you want to make the bulk rise when the starter is at its most vigorous.

The bulk rise

I now make a large base bulk rise of 66% hydration: approximately 500g of starter, 1500g of flour (3x the amount – or the starter is 33%), 808g water (66% hydration when the hydration of the starter is factored in). Autolyse as usual for about 20 minutes and add 33g salt (2% when starter flour is factored in). This yields a 2.8 kilo dough. Let it rise out of the fridge until doubled, but do not let it overproof. If anything cut it short. Punch down, take off a chunk for a loaf to be baked next, pack the rest of it into a large freezer bag, seal it up and stick it in the fridge. You now have a chunk of dough that is immediately available for whatever other bread you wish to do: dinner rolls, a baguette or two, burger buns, another loaf, bagels…. The bag can be in the fridge quite happily for a number of days, but I’d want to use it up within a week. You will find it continues to very slowly ferment.

The Loaf Proofing

Although I make lots of different kinds of bread, I always like to have a regular loaf available and fresh. My family varies on how fast it is consumed – a 20-some decides he’s hungry and its all gone, while someone else decides they are going on a severe diet can mean its consumption really slows down. But at the point its needed, I don’t want to have to knead it & let it rise for an hour or two. What I do is that shortly after – or even at – the time a loaf is baked, I set up another loaf – decide on the type of loaf, the various crust toppings, the hydration – and then I wrap it in a plastic bag or a wet towel, and into the fridge it goes. Fermentation is slowed right down and its ready to be baked at the point you want it. I bake it directly from the fridge as opposed to having it warm up first. This ensues it does not get overproofed, and makes scoring a lot easier. Baking it directly from the fridge means it needs to bake longer, so if doing this is new to you, keep a thermometer in it and take notes until you get your time down.

Burger buns: it seemed that we’d be doing burgers tonight.

An example:

On Monday evening I prepared 2500g of dough. It rose overnight. Next morning I took out 900g for a pan loaf, prepared it and stuck it back in the fridge. Somewhere mid afternoon on Tuesday, I decided to make some hummus as part of dinner. I took off about 500g of my dough, rolled it out to make half a dozen pitas. They rose on some parchment paper as I prepared the rest of dinner and heated the oven. The next morning (Wednesday) I baked the loaf I had prepared. Between the loaf and the pitas, no more bread needed for a bit. On Thursday evening I thought that bagels for breakfast on Friday would be a fine breakfast, so I took about 500g of dough, added flour and a little salt, along with diastatic malt to give me a 60% bagel dough. These were shaped Thursday night, and boiled/baked on Friday morning to the surprised appreciation of the family. About this point I refreshed my starter again in preparation for the next bulk dough. On Friday evening, everyone wanted pizza so that used up the remaining 600g of my dough. During dinner clean up I set up my next bulk rise, finding a cool spot in the house to let it go until first thing next morning. As you can see its a system that enables you to not have to worry about the start to finish span of bread making, nor do you have to predict days in advance what you will be baking and when. Much of it can be done when you are doing other kitchen work you would have to do anyway.

Messing around with it a little more

You will notice above that the bagels were 60% while the bulk rise was 66%. There may indeed be other situations where you want to change the hydration (like making a high hydration chewey baguette) or have a more specific flour mix than just your basic stuff. This can be done.
Using my hydration change calculator, you can add either liquid or flour/salt to your base dough to effect this change. In the case of the bagels, I needed to add 37g of flour and .7g salt to my dough. If had wanted to make a 78% baguette, I would use the calculator to find that I need 40g of water, or whatever other liquid.
Supposing you want to add in a different kind of flour – you want a rye loaf. Here you do have to work a little harder. Lets assume my base dough is 50% white all purpose and 50% whole wheat, and its at 66% hydration, and you want the rye flour addition to be the same as the other flours (the 50% weight). Lets say that the weight of all purpose is 200g and also is the weight of the whole wheat. If you wanted an equal part of rye flour, you would then mix in 200g of rye flour, 132g of water and 4g of salt. Now however you have created a condition where unfermented flour has been added to the dough, in a significant amount. You would therefore need to let this new mix ferment for a number of hours (according to your temperature), likely then shape it, wait an hour or so and then bake it. You are in effect using your base dough as a kind of levain, and if you are venturing into this area, it does require some planning. However, if you determine that your thing is to have 2 kinds of base doughs, you could then have one dedicated to rye, or a high hydration white, or whatever you would like.