The Upper Yeast Side

Sourdough Pancakes III

2011-05-08T20:07:00.000-04:00

On my long weekends of yoga school there is no breakfast quite as filling and delicious as Sourdough Pancakes. I have been using (and tweeking) the same day recipe that I made last April.

I am not going to re-type the recipe here (just follow the link) but here are some more specifics I have learned from making these pancakes many times:

Consistency of starter: The starter can be fed just before making these pancakes with the appropriate amount of water-to-flour ratio so that the batch looks like thick pancake batter. I wish I had a more scientific measurement technique for you at this point. If you are familiar with pancakes, this should be simple. Just go with your gut instinct.
Yield: Depending on the hydration of your starter you'll get between 9-12 pancakes 3 inch in diameter pancakes. I'd guesstimate that I use 1/8 of a cup of batter for each pancake. Again, nothing too technical.
Buttermilk: One morning, because I am more of a mad scientist than a baker, I threw in a tablespoon of SACO Cultured Buttermilk. It's basically powdered buttermilk. It made the whole batter bubble and bubble and the pancakes were so airy they were practically transparent! Since then I have been using 1/2 a tablespoon in the recipe and it gives the pancakes a light, fluffiness while maintaining their opacity.

Happy Mother's Day,

Sarah

Carrot Cake Muffins

2011-04-10T20:46:00.001-04:00

Andy and I just made these Carrot Cake Muffins from the NY Times. We halved the recipe and we added in a little grated apple with our carrots for some variety. Yum! We are thinking a bit of cream cheese on top would make these totally decadent breakfast. Sar

"I like Productive Lily" - Sar

2011-03-27T19:42:00.004-04:00

Morning's aren't really my thing. They never have been. My mom and I like to refer to ourselves as a pair of "night owls" - although, somehow my mom is also awake by 7:30am most mornings, so I'm positive that is at least one trait I did not inherit from her. I don't often see the AMs on the weekend, which is something that I'm totally fine with. Sleep is awesome.

Yesterday morning, however, I agreed to help Sar with preparing for a birthday party for a family for which she's been a long-time babysitter. We were in charge of putting together tea sandwiches for around 12 kids and 12 adults. Nancy, mom-extraordinaire, had everything ready to go and had decorated the apartment for the perfect princess birthday tea party for Ma'yan, her now-four-year-old daughter.

I love party prep - even when it means waking up at 7:20am and being out the door by 8:15. Even on a weekend. I was ready so sacrifice some sleep to join Sar.

At Nancy's request we made:
- puzzle-shaped cucumber & cream cheese sandwiches
- jam & ricotta roll-ups
- pitettes (mini pitas) stuffed with pomegranate guacamole (which was AMAZING - who'd have thought?!)
- cream cheese, smoked salmon, & cucumber sandwiches for the adults
- cucumber, carrot, & celery spears

I had assumed I'd go home and sleep some more because, hey, it was Sunday! But no! All of that rolling, spreading, cutting, mixing, and chopping had really got me going. I had morphed into Productive Lily - someone who hasn't shown her face on a weekend in God knows how long.

Productive Lily knew what she was going to do with the rest of the day - she was going to blog!

Enough of this third-person stuff...I was pumped to get baking again and had my eye on this recipe from the authors of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It shows you how to make enough dough to bake 4 loaves of bread over a 2 week period by mixing a master batch and letting it hang out in the fridge - a lot like sourdough. I went out, got a big enough container to make a 2-loaf batch of dough (that's all I could find), went grocery shopping, did the dishes twice, and cleaned my room. Oh yeah, I also mixed together the dough. Sar was proud to come back from yoga and find me making egg salad for lunch tomorrow. "I like Productive Lily", said Sar.

As I said, I halved the recipe, but also made a few other changes to the flours used. I love rye flour, and also wanted the bread to be a bit more on the whole-wheat side, so I used 1 cup rye flour, 1 cup whole wheat, and 1 1/4 cup AP flour rather than the full 3 1/4 cup AP flour that the original half-recipe called for. Consequently, I also had to add a touch more water (maybe 1/4 cup total) to make up for all of the whole grains.

After watching the dough more than double in the required 2-hour rise period, I popped it in the fridge for another few hours. It's definitely easier to work with cold because this is a wet dough. I took out a 1lb hunk of dough (measured on this scale, which I'm in love with), formed a boule, and let it rise for another hour. I slashed an X into the top and popped it in the oven. When I took it out, it took all of my effort to tell myself I wouldn't cut into it until this morning. Self-restraint is not my thing, so I naturally ate a warm slice and...let me tell you...this bread is THE bread. Let's weigh the pros and cons:

Pros:
- No kneading necessary
- One batch can last you 2 weeks if you make the full recipe
- It easily adapts to be mostly whole grain
- It tastes like heaven

Cons:
- None...how had I not found this recipe earlier??? GO MAKE YOURSELF SOME DOUGH!

I enjoyed toast for breakfast and my egg salad sandwich at lunch today. Sar and I have been known to have loaves last less than 2 days in this apartment...I'm giving this loaf 36 hours before it's finished.

Now, really, stop reading and make some bread. You're seriously missing out if you don't.

Here's to full-day Sundays!
<3 Lil

Oats + Sourdough making a comeback!

2011-02-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

Lil and I have no shame in doing/buying/wearing the same things. In fact, sometimes we go out of our way to do this... case in point: yesterday we went to Sephora to purchase the exact same makeup and the to Urban Outfitters and bought the same flannel dress. In high school we had a tradition of buying a matching pair of flip flops every summer. Whenever I discover a way that Lil does something differently than I might I make sure to state, "That's how we are different." The instances where I use this phrase are few and far between but it's important to note them when they do come up just so that we remember that we are, in fact, different people.

It should come as no shock that we have baked the same loaf of bread on separate occasions. Remember the Sourdough Oat Bread I made a while back? The loaf of Oat Bread that Lil made most recently comes from the same cookbook (Good to the Grain) just without the sourdough kick.

In the repetition of baking those loves I noticed a pattern. The oats were visible (little white flecks) but not detectable in terms of texture/taste. They didn't bother me at all except aesthetically. So, I thought why not try the recipe again and soak the oats before hand? I put the cup of oats into about 1 1/2 cups water and let it be for about 5 hours. Then, I proceeded with the recipe. It was a delicate balance to find the right moisture level since I had the wet starter and the wet oats. In the end I got it. Or so I thought...

But look.. No white oats visible in the bread. Success!

They are only on the crust where I sprinkled them just before baking. Beautiful. Almost... see how the upper right side of the bread is sort of. Um. Droopy? Yeah, droopy. Welllllllll I don't know how to explain this except to say that my loaf pooped.

The side of the bread fell off and onto the stained oven stone below. I have no idea why this happened. In the oven of all places?! I would have thought if it would happen it would have fallen off during it's second rise. My best guess is that the dough was still a bit too wet and fell off because it was too heavy.

Regardless, this bread makes a great breakfast spread with peanut butter, jam, or avocado.

Sourdough loves Oats (soaked).

Oh, and what became of the little dookie I found on the oven stone? I ate it.
-Sar

PS Lil and I are staging a comeback from our beginning of February blues. The new Amazonian illuminating clay serum and flannel dresses are just the beginning. Watch out.

"If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you knead"

2011-02-03T22:04:00.000-05:00

February has been a rough month thus far for Sar and I - I know, it's only the 3rd, but a lot can happen in 3 days. The gist of it is that my beloved kitty cat that I've had since I was 4 (which means he's 20 years old) has kitty lymphoma and is not going to make it much longer. Reality bites, as they say, and I'm pretty sad about it. Poor Sar also had a trauma yesterday: one of her 7-year-old students accidentally shot a small toy into her open eye, which resulted in a pretty painful injury from which she is recovering - hopefully quickly. Needless to say, we're a little depressed given our current circumstances.

Now, this post isn't going to be a sad one - I just wanted to give you some background into why this loaf needed (kneaded) to be particularly wonderful. Sar and I probably couldn't take another disappointment. Luckily, this was one of the most successful sandwich loaves I've baked - it's comforting to think how something as simple as a perfect loaf of bread can lift my spirits. The 15 minutes of kneading was also a pretty great way to work out some feelings...and my triceps...just sayin'.

The recipe I used was my own adaptation of Allison and Son of White on Rice Couple's adaptation of Good to the Grain's Whole Wheat Oatmeal Sandwich Loaf. I won't re-post the whole recipe, as Allison & Son do a great job of it on their blog, but I replaced the bread flour (of which we ran out a while ago) with a mixture of 1 cup light rye flour, 1 cup oatmeal flour, and 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten. I didn't replace the full 2 1/2 cups since both of these flours are whole grain, and whole grains soak up more liquid than non-whole grain flours. I did end up needing to add about 1/4 to 1/3 cup all-purpose flour as I kneaded in order to get the dough to the right texture. It worked out beautifully.

I made this loaf starting at 8pm, so you can imagine that the lighting in our kitchen was less-than-ideal for photography, so here are a very few, badly lit pictures:

Although it rose perfectly in the pan in under an hour, I was still not convinced that this was a good sign. I've had a ton of loaves rise perfectly to this point, and then just stop rising entirely when they get put in the oven...

...but WOW did this guy rise. I was so happy.

My mom will be happy to know that this turn of events reminded me of a song she would always sing to me when I was little and being particularly annoying and asking for a zillion things that I couldn't have: "You can't always get what you want" made it seem like the Rolling Stones had made a song just to give my mother ammo against my begging and pleading for extra TV time or whatever it was that I was begging for at the moment. But they were right - "If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need". I really needed a win, and this loaf was a definite winner. Silly as that sounds.

The morning light was a bit better, so these pictures aren't quite as awful as the previous ones. This bread toasts beautifully, makes a fabulous sandwich, and is all-around fantastic. It was the perfect pick-me-up breakfast.

Here's to getting just what you need - big or small.

-Lil

SOURDOUGH Pumpkin Raisin Muffins

2011-01-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

For these muffins I used the Pumpkin-Cranberry Muffins from Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen. I made some minor modifications...

Some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger) in with the dry ingredients.

Raisins instead of cranberries.

And some sprinkled sugar in the raw on top.

They rose beautifully. The sourdough is happy again.

Sometimes I get a minor sourdough aftertaste but other than that they taste like a pumpkin-y, raisin-y, sweet hearty muffin.

Looking forward to breakfast (as always),
Sarah

Rustic Sourdough

2011-01-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

Our sourdough did not have a very happy end to 2010 or beginning to 2011. While everybody was off on their winter vacations our sourdough got very, very neglected. A while back we had frozen the sourdough before we went on vacation and learned not to bake with the batch out of the freezer but to feed and discard at least once. This time around we did not plan so wisely. Left the sourdough to fend for itself in the fridge. And wow. The sourdough got upset.

I have been nursing it back to health for the past month and I am ready to let it go wild in this KAF Recipe. I modified it a bit by adding 2 cups whole wheat flour in place of the all purpose. I only ended up needing about 4 cups of flour total (since whole wheat sucks up more liquid). I also added 4 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten for fun. I baked a bit longer than 30 minutes - closer to 40 - because I only did one big boule on the stone:

And it grew up to be a beautiful,

delicious, round loaf.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to treat the sourdough starter with the love and respect it deserves. We're off to a good start.

XO,
Sarah

PS It turns out my signature baking move is dusting with wheat germ. Those are the specks you see on top. Makes a great upper crust.

Bagels for Dinner (and Breakfast and Lunch)

2011-01-17T20:09:00.006-05:00

This is a follow-up to our Bagels for Dinner post. I woke up and just NEEDED to make the bagels using more of the CD Kitchen technique that we linked to last night. I modified the recipe a bunch, so I'll post my version for you to try. Since we already posted about 100 pictures of what each step looks like, I'll save you the details of the process, but you've got to admit, these are some beautiful bagels.

In comparison to our original bagels, they were larger (the recipe made 8, not 10), sweeter (molasses was both in the dough and in the poaching water), and rose more (due to the added sugar - yeast really has a sweet tooth).

Bread Alone's bagel vs. our CD Kitchen adaptation

I prefer this recipe to the first, but can definitely appreciate what we learned making the first batch and am glad that we used Bread Alone as our guide. While molasses made a pretty solid substitute for malted barley syrup (or "balt" when Sar and I are saying it quickly without realizing...), I still think the malted flavor would make the bagels feel more authentic. After all this work, I can definitely appreciate the effort that goes into making bagels at H&H and other New York delis. They're probably not doing it all by hand, like us, but it's still quite a process.

Bagels

Makes 8 small-to-average sized bagels

Recipe adapted from CD Kitchen

Dough
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon dry active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar (we only have Sugar in the Raw left and it worked wonderfully)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon molasses (unsulfered)
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons vital wheat gluten

Poaching Liquid
3 quarts water
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 teaspoon salt

Toppings (optional, but highly suggested)
Egg-white (to use as glue for toppings)
Toasted sesame seeds
Dried minced onion
Poppy seeds
Wheat germ
Flax seeds

Steps:

1) Combine yeast, sugar, and water. Allow to sit for 5-7 minutes until frothy.

2) Add whole wheat flour and combine. Add 2 cups of the white flour, mix thoroughly, and turn onto a well floured surface.

3) Knead in the remaining flour as needed (dough should be smooth and elastic as you knead - not dry at all), and knead for 12-15 minutes.

4) Allow dough to rest for 15 minutes covered by a clean towel or plastic wrap.

5) Divide dough into 8 or 10 portions, roll each portion into a ball, poke a hole in the middle of the ball, and twirl it around your finger to stretch out the hole. Note: I've found that making them into rings this way is far more successful, fun, and less tedious than rolling the dough into ropes and trying to stick the ends together to make a ring.

7) Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees F.

6) Allow shaped rings to rest on parchment paper for 15-20 minutes until they've puffed up a bit. In the meantime, combine the ingredients for the poaching liquid and get it boiling. Reduce down to a simmer before poaching the dough.

7) Once the dough rings are puffy, drop them into the simmering liquid and poach for 30 seconds on each side. Drain poached bagels on drying racks lined with paper towel.

8) Use a pastry brush to paint the egg-white over each bagel and top it with whichever toppings you've chosen. Or just pop them into the oven plain. This is something we'd never do, but we don't judge.

9) Bake the bagels on the center rack for 20 minutes, turning the sheet around in the oven at 10 minutes to ensure that they cook evenly. We had to cook ours in two batches, but you may be able to fit them all into a large oven.

10) Allow to cool briefly and enjoy with eggs and cheese, cream cheese, butter, or just as-is, which is pretty awesome, too.

Next up for New York themed goodies is the bialy - or "broigel", if you're Emily A. Gafney.

Now go carbo-load, because you know we have been.

Love,

Lily

Bagels for Dinner

2011-01-16T22:18:00.001-05:00

Bagels for dinner! Really...what could be better? Only one thing - homemade bagels for dinner, that's what. Last evening we had a pretty standard Saturday: we went out to sushi for dinner with good friends, met up with some more friends for drinks, a cab ride back uptown, delicious pizza at 2am, and a long night's sleep. Something that goes along with a standard Saturday is a standard Sunday - being tired, lazy, and perpetually hungry.

We have not been able to stop eating today. We both knew we wanted bagels, but we wanted to make them...so bagels for dinner it is. We found a pretty straight-foward looking recipe in Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik. Since we're not bagel aficionados, we followed their recipe to the T, minus the one ingredient we couldn't get our hands on (malted barley syrup). If anyone knows a good place to find this stuff, let us know!

Making these bagels was a real learning experience. Bread Alone is a great reference for learning the basics of baking. It has a scientific formula for the temperature of dough and ingredients. The ideal temp is 74-80 degrees. Too cold and it won't rise fully. Too warm and it will over ferment. So, very important to mix your dough in this range. The gist of it is that Dan and Judy give a formula for figuring the temperature the water should be based on the other ingredients and the room. Fun fact: for every minute you knead dough the dough temperature goes up one degree. The friction factor. We really kneaded vigorously:

Once the dough was smooth and elastic, we kept kneading for the required 15 minutes more. After that was all over and done with, and we both had biceps large enough to flip small SUVs, we balled the dough up and took its temp.

It was a little warm, so we made sure to keep it covered in a not-so-hot part of the kitchen. After it sat for an hour and a half and Sar and I watched the latest SNL episode, the dough looked full and beautiful. We deflated it and cut it into 10 equal-ish sized balls.

Once the balls rested, they got shaped into the classic bagel ring, rested some more, and boiled. We used 1 tablespoon of baking soda in place of the malt syrup, and we missed the sweetness that the syrup would have given the bagels. The baking soda wasn't bad, though.

Poaching jump-starts the yeast's action and the bagels really puffed up while they were drying off:

They got an egg-wash:

And then got sprinkled with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, dried minced onion, coarse salt, wheat germ, or some combination thereof.

While the bagels baked, we whipped up some scallion cream cheese by stirring 1/3 cup of finely chopped scallions into 1 block of softened neufchatel cheese.

We took a lovely picture of the scallions mid-chop while the sun was still pouring into the kitchen. It would be a shame not to share.

The final bagels were delicious with the cream cheese, as well as with cheesy eggs - we both had two.

We highly recommend Bread Alone for any baker - novice to experienced.

Recommendations:
Turning bagels around in the oven
Adding 1 tablespoon of whatever sweetener you choose to the dough (this recipe doesn't call for any); whether it's the malted barley syrup, molasses, honey, or simply brown sugar
Slightly less salt in the dough - the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon, but 2 or 3 teaspoons may be enough

This recipe at CD Kitchen looks great - we'll definitely let you know how it compares to Bread Alone's recipe, if we get a chance to make them, too.

Enjoy MLK Day off (or not)!
Lil & Sar

Banana Cereal Muffins

2011-01-12T20:08:00.003-05:00

So, Lil set me up for this by mentioning the four bananas in the freezer. This recipe only (only?!) uses three. It's a good followup to the Anadama bread because there is also a stovetop element to this one.

I adapted this recipe from a cookbook the lovely Emeric Harney gifted our bread efforts. You can find Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce with Amy Scattergood at the new Harney & Sons tea shop in Soho (on Broome by Crosby).

Fair warning: this recipe calls for a half cup cooked hot cereal but asks you to start with a half cup dry and cook it. What I am telling you is that you'll end up with some extra cereal. Either plan your breakfast accordingly or put it in the fridge and warm for tomorrows breakfast.

Banana Cereal Muffins adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce
(Printable Recipe)
Yields 15 muffins
Prep time 30 minutes
Bake time 35-40 minutes

1/2 cup cracked-multigrain hot cereal (I used Bob's Red Mill 10 grain)
pinch of salt
1 cup rye flour
1 cup oat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 tablespoons yogurt (I used fat free French Vanilla because that's what we had around)
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 very ripe bananas
2 tablespoons unsulphured molasses
1 egg

1. Bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil on the stovetop.
2. Add 1/2 cup of hot cereal and pinch of salt. Whisk to avoid clumping.
3. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally until the cereal is tender (about 15 minutes). Cover and let sit until cool.
4. Preheat the oven to 350 and butter your muffin tins.
5. Combine the dry ingredients.
6. In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar and yogurt with a hand mixer or other electronic if you have it. Mix for about two minutes until it's really combined.
7. Add in the cereal, bananas, molasses and egg and mix thoroughly (about one more minute).
8. Add dry ingredients and continue to mix.
9. Fill muffin tins to the rim for a nice dome top. Optional: Sprinkle with wheat germ and sugar in the raw. And, about halfway through filling add chopped pecans to the batter and on on top for some plain some banana-pecan cereal muffins!
10. Bake for 35-40 minutes turning halfway through for even baking.

Delicious warm from the oven! I am eating one as I type with one hand..

That one.

Happy Snow Day!
Sarah

Anadama Bread...is it as fun to eat as it is to say?

2011-01-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

Dear Readers,

First and foremost, HAPPY 2011! I hope your holidays were fantastic. Mine certainly were.

Now, onto the next order of business: Please don't abandon Sar and I, although we understand if you feel as if we've abandoned you. You see, work has picked up for both Sarita and I and we've been dining on our frozen loaves. Those frozen loaves are now gone and it's time to get serious about bread baking...and blogging.

I got home from work this evening and thought - I'm going to make Anadama bread. This bread supposedly originated in Massachusetts and the name is derived from a farmers' exclamation to his wife: "Anna! Damn 'er!" I'm telling you that story from memory and can't recall why the farmer was so upset with his wife, but I doubt it was because she was making him delicious loaves of slightly sweetened bread.

I've been seeing this type of bread pop up on TasteSpotting and other food blogs that I follow, and today is the day The Upper Yeast Side joins the fun. I used the recipe posted by Margaret Polaneczky at The Blog That Ate Manhattan back in 2008 (recipe link here). I picked this recipe to use since I have a thing for supporting fellow bloggers AND it calls for honey in place of molasses. I absolutely adore molasses...probably more than most people....but Sar and I have about a half-gallon of honey to use and there's only so much honey you can add to tea, PB sandwiches, and pour over biscuits. *Actually, I could probably finish that honey by myself by pouring it over biscuits...but that is no way to trim down after all of the Hannukah/Christmas/New Years/Birthday indulging I've recently been involved in.*

This bread was pretty fun to make - it has a stovetop element, which makes it feel like you're cooking...not just baking. The cornmeal gets boiled along with water, honey, and butter. This makes something pretty similar to grits, as I understand them...and the resulting porridge is DELISH. I admit to eating a spoonful or two.

Once you've cooled the porridge to luke-warm, you mix in proofed yeast, salt, and the flour (whole wheat and all-purpose). Knead, knead knead, and then rise the dough 'til doubled. Once it's doubled, you knead a bit more, split it in half, and plop it into two bread pans. Let it rise again until doubled once more and it's time to bake.

I rose my dough in front of my little space heater to ensure that it didn't take a year-and-a-half to double in our wintry apartment. It looked so cute all tucked in during the second rise that I just had to snap a picture:

They rose beautifully before going into the oven:

...Not so much rising happened in the oven, but I assure you, the bread is delicious anyway. I tasted the first slice with some butter and it was magical.

Anadama bobana bananafana fofama me mi momamma...anadama!

Speaking of bananas - we have 4 frozen in the freezer (imagine, frozen things in the freezer!!?). Banana goodies up next? Yep, I'd say that's a fair guess.

- Lil

PS - today Sar and I laid our herbs to rest in the 2nd floor compactor of our building. It wasn't easy, but the herbs were dead - had been dead for a while - and our lettuce leaves were recently eaten by mice (*#!%in' mice...). The basil lived a long life of climbing tall and producing few to no leaves...apparently it was starved for sunlight. South-facing windows were not enough for that guy.

The oregano once was so strong and healthy that it looked as if it might grow over our entire apartment and choke me in the night. It promptly died of unknown causes. I never really liked oregano, though, so I don't think I'll miss it too much. I'm innocent - I swear.

Mark Bittman's crackers

2010-12-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

Who needs Christmas cookies? Christmas crackers!

Read the article and the recipe also.

FYI the crackers stayed on the table all night. Some Christmasers who were able to resist the biscotti, the cupcakes, and the homemade wine kept going back for more and more crackers. I made some variations with about 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, cheddar cheese, and garlic.

Merry Christmas and Happy Nor'easter,
Sarah

Sourdough Olive Bread II

2010-12-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

The first time we made Sourdough Olive bread it wasn't so....

flat. On record, no knead loaves should look a little bit wetter. This was a crisis/disaster/emergency loaf that ended up delicious. This rave review coming from the girl who thinks olives taste like slugs. So you know it was really a good one.

This was the second attempt. I hardly wrote anything down but this is basically what happened:

We used...

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup wheat germ

1 cup bread flour

2 cups sourdough starter

1 cup water

1 cup olives

3/4 cup olive water (because it was just salty/olive-y water)

maybe another whole cup of all purpose when we kneaded...

cornmeal for the dutch oven

We...

1. Put the flours, liquid and starter together.

2. Waited 20 minutes.

3. Folded in sat and olives.

4. Left it covered for 12+ hours. Went out to Indian, Ben and Jerry's for dessert.

5. The next morning we took it out. Discovered it's a little too wet and folded in some flour:

6. Placed it on a baking stone to rise for another two-three hours.

7. Came home from a date at Harney SoHo and find this:

Wannabe pizza??! Not on our watch! We popped that bubble in the front-center and transfered it carefully to the dutch oven where it had to become a boule. We turned the oven on it's lowest setting to get a pre-spring oven spring going and then turned it up to 450 for about 45 minutes until the center temperature was 200degrees.

I have no photograph of the final loaf because it's too delicious to photograph. Also, it's raining and the light in the apartment right now would do this boule no justice. Excuses excuses.

Olive you,

Sarah

Pie Resources

2010-11-24T19:11:00.001-05:00

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion is a great resources to start with but here are some other good online reads:

Butter Pie Crust at Epicurious

Peach or Apple Pie

My Wooden Spoon Perfect Pie Crust

I made a mess.

Gobble gobble,

Sarah

Honey Cake

2010-11-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

I made this Honey Cake from Epicurious with less oil and some applesauce instead. Minus the liquor.

This post is straight to the point.

-Sar

Banilla Banana Bread

2010-11-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

At school we always seem to receive more bananas for snack than the children (and I) can consume. I am totally okay with this and do NOT plan on informing the kitchen. I just carry the overripe bananas from Madison Avenue to York (very carefully), stick them in the freezer, and daydream about banana treats like the muffins I made before and this Mark Bittman inspired banana bread.

Banilla Banana Bread with inspiration from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

(Printable Recipe)

Prep time 15 minutes

Cook time 1 hour

1 cup pastry/cake flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar

8 tablespoons Stonyfield Banilla Yogurt (personal favorite flavor)

2 eggs
3 very/overripe bananas mashed with a fork until smooth
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
optional:
1/4+ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
1/2 cup shredded dried coconut** this is Mark Bittman's not-so-secret ingredient

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients (yogurt, eggs, bananas, vanilla) slowly, stirring. Once you have a somewhat consistent mixture (it's okay if there are some chunks) gently fold in the pecans, coconut, or other dried fruit to your liking.
Pour the batter into your well greased loaf pan and bake for 50-70 minutes. The classic toothpick test and nice golden browning will tell you when it's done. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing.

For the full fat version use butter instead of yogurt.

Due to some sort of oven malfunction I actually made this banana bread twice in a matter of 72 hours. Some of the center of the first batch was undercooked. Check out the area right in the center of the loaf:

By undercooked I mean to say that it was basically raw. Which I find rather bizarre because I cooked the second loaf for approximately the same 65 minutes at 350 and found it to be just right if not a tad overdone... Anyways, oven issues aside, here's a weird picture of the second batch spooning with two left over bananas:

Pre-baked and post-baked bananas living in harmony on the Upper Yeast Side.
The second loaf was much more successful. The best part is that I actually had enough bananas in the freezer, freshly, overripe brought-home-from-school bananas on the counter to have extra after two loaves of bread. Wild.

Do doo do do do bana-muh-nah
Do doo do do,
Sarah

Mexican Night: Seitan Tacos

2010-11-02T07:44:00.001-04:00

We have to start this post with a story. Once upon a time, Lily and Sarah made HOT enchiladas on the last day of the month. With the best of intentions, they vowed from that day forth to have a Mexican themed dinner night on the last day of every month. We have kept this promise a handful of times. The months we have missed have been due to travel, yoga, work, etc. More often than not we have make-up Mexican nights. We missed February all together but let's be real: February don't count for nothin.

Here are the tacos we made this month:

Seitan Tacos
(Printable Recipe)
Prep time 20 minutes
Cook time 10 minutes
Serves 1 Lily and 1 Sarah

For the seitan:
1/4 large red onion, diced
1/2 lb seitan
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, diced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder

Other topping suggestions:
1/2 tomato
Some chopped romaine lettuce
Shredded cheese
Salsa
Sour Cream

Start by sauteing the onion.

Add the seitan and saute until browned.

Warm taco shells in the oven.

Arrange ingredients buffet style to be assembled.

This Mexican night wasn't just any old Mexican night. This was Sarah's first homemade taco night. She had eaten out at Cascabel Taqueria recently, where she had her first taco ever (Lily still can't believe how absurd that is), but as a vegetarian growing up in a Kosher household she never had eaten a homemade taco. In fact, Lily had to teach her how to assemble them - it was a real learning experience.

There will definitely be more tacos to come since they're delicious and fun, but also because the taco shell package came with 18 and we only ate 5 tonight (a broken shell served as an appetizer).

Ole!
Lil & Sar

P.S. VOTE today! We have delayed this post in order to avoid inundating you with posts on Halloween.

Satan Stew for Halloween (Seitan Stew on the other 364 days)

2010-10-31T16:21:00.002-04:00

Two posts on one day!? It MUST be a holiday. First and foremost, happy halloween, everyone! I hope that you all fill your candy quota and have fabulous costumes. If you're not into the whole dressing up thing, that's cool too - but I do hope you get to enjoy some delicious pumpkin flavored foods at the very least.

Now, onto the subject of this post. Seitan Stew, which I continue to pronounce as "Satan" Stew, is so delicious it's scary. After Sar concocted a lifetime supply of seitan, my first impulse was to make stew. It's one of my favorite comfort foods, but since I've stopped eating meat for the most part, I haven't gotten to enjoy it. Tofu stew just doesn't sound right...and veggie stew is good, but it's missing that certain something (beef?) that makes it such a hearty and wonderful dish. Seitan has the right combo of flavor and texture to fit right into a vegetarian stew and the name makes it perfect for a Halloween post :)

"Satan" Stew
(Printable Recipe)
Serves 6

1 lb of seitan, cubed
1 medium white onion, finely diced
2 carrots, chopped
2 ribs of celery, finely diced
2 cups of mushrooms, chopped
1 turnip, chopped
1 sweet potato, chopped
1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, chopped
1/2-3/4 cups red wine
4 cups veggie broth
1 1/2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
2 teaspoons dried parsley (or a few tablespoons chopped fresh parsley)
salt & pepper to taste
1 teaspoon corn starch
2 tablespoons cold water
1 lb egg noodles, cooked and drained

What to do:
In a frying pan, saute the seitan until it's well browned. In a large pot, saute the onions, celery, and peppers until softened. Add the rest of the veggies, salt & pepper, and seitan and cook together for a few minutes.

Now pour in the wine and get the party started.

Add the seasonings and broth bring it up to a boil. Place the lid over the pot so that it's not fully sealed, but mostly covered. (I hope you understand what I'm saying there, because I forgot to take a picture of that part.) Allow the stew to bubble away for about half an hour, or until the veggies are all cooked. In a small dish, mix the cornstarch and water to make a slurry and then stir this into the stew. You should notice it thicken up a bit after a few minutes of cooking. This is optional if you're into thinner broth, for the record.

Serve over egg noodles immediately. Enjoy with a glass of the red wine, if you're feeling festive - which I always am.

This stew was delicious right off the stove, but it was even better the next day reheated for lunch because the flavors really got a chance to blend and deepen over night. If you're a vegetarian and tend to get made fun of at work for the "weird" lunches you bring (tofu-phobes are the worst...am i right??) this is the perfect solution. Two of my coworkers asked me if it was beef stew! Seitan is such a trickster.

Boo x 2!
Lil

PS - Sar and I like to eat ourselves out of house and home before grocery shopping (we've never been labeled wasteful or excessive) and one morning I found myself with nothing to eat for breakfast. No milk, no eggs, no cereal, no bread, no yogurt. Nothing. I heated myself up some of this stew and it was a fabulous way to start the day.

Halloween Pumpkin-Maple Rolls

2010-10-31T10:04:00.002-04:00

Live from Brooklyn: Halloween Pumpkin-Maple Rolls!

We (Emily, Yi and I) were inspired by this Tasty Kitchin recipe. We modified Lauren's recipe by using only a scant 1/2 cup of sugar in the dough, adding a little bit of pumpkin puree, Tazo Black Chai Tea concentrate, extra cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice to the filling.

All photos courtesy of Yi.

It was not the cleanest process....

Nor was I particularly accurate in cutting the rolls equally...

Pre-icing drizzle:

Drizzle process shots:

These sticky rolls were at least as good as they look in Yi's photographs.

Next time ideas include:

Adding more pumpkin to the dough and modifying the amount of liquid (water/milk) so that we get the right consistency
Rolling out the dough more thinly to get lots of layers.
And along with that, not trying to get all of the filling into the rolling process because it will just ooze out the ends anyways. Instead, saving what looks like it will ooze and adding it on top before baking.
Make less icing - maybe even half as much. We didn't use all and they were perfectly sweet and sticky.

Happy Halloween! Lily is going to post about some Seitan (read Satan) Stew soon so stay tuned. The pictures are half as good but the delicious factor is comparable.

Boo,

Sar

Seitan - the wheat meat

2010-10-17T09:56:00.003-04:00

For vegetarians/vegans and the people who love them - you may know of this mysterious chewy stuff called seitan. It is similar to your tofu or tempeh because it acts as a meat substitute in a lot of different dishes. It is NOT like tofu or tempeh (both made from soybeans) because this alternative protein is wheat based. In my mind, making it fair game for The Upper Yeast Side blog.

Seitan is basically just wheat gluten. Here goes a basic (and my first attempt) at homemade seitan...

Basic Seitan
(Printable Recipe)
Prep time 10 minutes
Cook time 1 hour
This recipe yields a LOT of Seitan - enough for 5-6 separate dishes that would serve about 3-4 people...

Dough:
2 cups vital wheat gluten
2 teaspoons onion powder
Season with about 1/2 teaspoon sage, and 1/2 teaspoon marjoram, or a "chicken seasoning" which will likely have both in addition to some rosemary and black pepper. I added a dash of cayenne because I planned to use it in a mexican style dish of Peter Berley's.
2 cups water

Broth:
6 cups water
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Bring broth to a boil.
Combine dough ingredients and knead for a hot second to get it all elastic-y. Cut into little chunks (about 2x2) and toss into the boiling broth.
Let it boil for 1 hour.
Drain.
Prepare as you need for your meal.
Store extra seitan in the freezer.

I bought that Bob's Red Mill bag of vital wheat gluten for about $7 at a UES health food store. Since a package of seitan in the store costs about $6 and I made roughly 6x as much with only a third of the bag... Safe to say it pays to make homemade seitan.

In the process of cooking this I legitimately thought this stuff was going to take over my stovetop. It expanded to fill the entire pot from it's original size just barely poking out from beneath the six cups of liquid.

As I mentioned, this recipe yields a LOT of seitan. Feel free to halve it or even quarter it if you aren't sure you'll love seitan. I could have made the Peter Berley recipe at least 5 more times with the leftover seitan. I wrapped manageable amounts of seitan in plastic wrap and put all of the bunches into one plastic bag and right into the freezer.

We made a black bean dish from Fresh Food Fast:

And we ate until we were extremely uncomfortable.

Here's the thing about vital wheat gluten. It seems to know just when you are looking for it. If you go to the grocery store specifically searching for this stuff, it won't be there. The other people in the store and store workers have never heard of it. However, if you happen to meander by the very same aisle you scoured without the intent of picking up vital wheat gluten it will magically fall off the shelf into your basket. True story. Not to mention, you'll start noticing this stuff in every grocery you checked previously. Just when you aren't looking for it. Get it whenever you can. Store it in the fridge or freezer. Brands I've used include: Arrowhead Mills, Hodgson Mill, and Bob's Red Mill. Tell us if you find any other good ones.

Good luck in your search for and cooking of homemade seitan!

Sar

PS The previous sourdough-oat loaf just got turned into French Toast and devoured. Thank you Andy Jack.

Oats + Sourdough (Oh my!)

2010-10-13T21:53:00.002-04:00

Nothing like a controversial national holiday to get me back into the bread blog. While I was not posting I made several sourdoughs that I just did NOT write about..Oops.

For this sourdough I decided to get a little inventive. I read a recipe in Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (Thanks Emeric!) and decided - why not add some sourdough to it?! Good to the Grain had been sitting on our shelf since Emeric lent it to me in July (laaame). Plus I have sourdough to feed.

Sourdough-Oat Sandwich Loaf Inspiration from Good to the Grain
(Printable Recipe)
Yields 1 loaf
Prep time about 10 hours
Cook time 40 minutes

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm water
1 pinch of sugar
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
1 cup starter
1/4 cup water
3 teaspoons vital wheat gluten
1/2 stick of unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons molasses

1. Proof the yeast in warm water with sugar.
2. As the yeast proofs for about 10 minutes, measure out your dry ingredients EXCEPT the salt and stir them together. Melt the butter while you are at it.
3. Add the yeast, butter, and sourdough starter and water to all the dry ingredients excluding the salt. Stir until you can't stir anymore and then let it rest for 20 minutes. This is called autolyse.
To learn more about autolyse click here or search "sourdough" on the top right and read up!

4. Now, add the salt and molasses.
5. Knead for about 10 minutes.
6. Allow the dough to rise for about 45 minutes in a clean, buttered bowl.
7. Shape the dough into a log and place it into a loaf pan to rise.

8. Let it rise for up to 6 hours, or until it has doubled in bulk. I went babysitting in the meantime. I would have loved to be available to punch the dough down but it's sourdough and it loves to retard, so I just let it happen.
9. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and brush the top crust with a little water/molasses mixture and sprinkle with bran or oats before throwing it in the oven.
10. Bake at 400 degrees F for 40 minutes. As always, allow to cool before slicing.

Entirely unrelated, but I made these impromptu banana-bran muffins the other day. There are four bananas in 12 muffins. Mathematically speaking, a third of a banana per muffin. I'd post a recipe but I didn't keep track or measure anything I did. Classic.

These bananas were practically making themselves into banana-based treats.

Happy belated Columbus Day and 10-10-10!
Sarah

PS This bread was okay. Like any good relationship, oats and sourdough have some things to work on together. I'll definitely revisit this medley. The to bake (and to do) list(s) are long and the time is always short.

Eating for Exercise

2010-10-01T10:41:00.000-04:00

Read up on eating for exercise:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/eating-to-fuel-exercise/

And sponsor us in Bike MS New York City!
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/spacelysprockets

Happy October,
Sarah

Pumpkin Coffeecake = Love

2010-09-27T22:42:00.004-04:00

In my heaven it’ll be pumpkin season all year. This weekend I rang in pumpkin season with a bang: pumpkin beer on Friday and TWO pumpkin dishes yesterday. I woke up craving coffeecake and realized that I had a ton of cake flour leftover from Dennis’ birthday cake, so it made perfect sense to get baking ASAP. I was also excited to use the oven with our brand-new knobs that Andy so skillfully grabbed off of a stove that was being removed from another apartment. Look at this beauty:

I wish you knew what the old knob looked like. Thanks, Andy!

I had found a recipe for coffeecake on Smitten Kitchen and it looked fabulous, but it was meant to be a rhubarb coffeecake and I had no rhubarb and wasn’t in the mood for a fruity cake. SK’s recipe did have a fantastic crumb topping that included cinnamon and ginger – both of which naturally go well with pumpkin. I had almost no choice but to make this a pumpkin coffeecake.

True to my pumpkin-loving ways, I have an entirely pumpkin cookbook (A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash by Lou Seibert Pappas) that has a delicious looking walnut-cranberry pumpkin coffeecake recipe (I haven’t tried that one yet). This recipe had no crumble, though, so I decided to go with a hybrid and take my favorite parts of each recipe and combine them. The result was to die for – this cake is truly fabulous.

Pumpkin Coffeecake

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Big Crumb Coffeecake & Lou Seibert Pappas’ Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Coffeecake

Crumbs:

1/3 cup dark brown sugar 

1/3 cup granulated sugar 

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 

1/8 teaspoon salt 

1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted 

1 3/4 cups cake flour

Combine and set aside. If you're like us and have no real kitchen and no real living room, you can let your crumbs hang out with the herbs.

I love our herb garden.

Although, now that I'm thinking about it, our kitchen/living room really is a living room...since there's not many other places in this apartment to do your living. That's neither here nor there - now on with the coffeecake!

Cake:

1 ¼ cups cake flour

1/3 cup yellow cornmeal

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

6 tablespoons softened butter

1/3 cup sour cream

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 cup chopped and dry roasted walnuts

To make the batter:

1) Roast the chopped nuts in a 350 degree F oven for 10 minutes until fragrant but not visibly browned. Leave the oven on for baking the cake.

I love our well-used cookie sheets.

2) Allow the nuts to cool on the cookie sheet while you combine all cake ingredients up through sugar and stir or sift to combine them.

3) In a separate bowl, do the same with the eggs through the pumpkin and whisk to make sure it's good and homogenized (SAT word).

I love our new couch with its weird cover.

I also love that the coffee table plays a large role in our cooking endeavors.

I also love my new computer - all the better for blogging.

4) Now stir the dry into the wet and mix only enough to combine everything - really try to restrain yourself. I love to stir, so I can understand why that could be difficult.

5) Fold the walnuts in gently so that they're evenly distributed throughout the batter.

6) Pour the batter into a buttered/floured 8"by8" or 9"x9" baking dish. Use your hands to crumble the crumb topping evenly over the batter. Make about 1/2 inch-or-so sized crumbs.

I've loved cooking in this pyrex dish since I was little.

Thank goodness my mom had two so I could steal one.

7) Pop the crumb-topped beauty into the oven for 40-45 minutes or until the top is nicely brown and a knife comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.

I don't love our tiny stove. But we make do.

8) Let cool for a bit...but only long enough so that you wont hurt yourself when taking the first, most spectacular, bite :)

I LOVE this cake!

I highly suggest eating a piece of this when it’s still warm – ice cream wouldn’t be a bad addition, although it’s very moist on its own. It was perfect for breakfast this morning alongside some vanilla yogurt (Sar’s suggestion) and coffee, obviously.

In case you’re wondering, the other pumpkin dish I made was pumpkin soup from Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way. It was outrageously simple and delicious: onion, celery, garlic, veggie broth, and the leftover pumpkin. As suggested in the book, I toasted some walnuts with a few dashes of salt and cayenne and enjoyed those and a dollop of sour cream with the soup. What's not to love about a pumpkin-filled meal?

Happy fall!

-Lil

Oven Alternatives

2010-08-19T12:52:00.000-04:00

For August oven alternatives see this NPR article on Shredded Salads.

Stay cool,
Sarah

Whole Wheat Pain au Levain

2010-08-11T12:20:00.004-04:00

This bread was divine.

I basically took the original Pain au Levain recipe and made it whole wheat-y.

Whole Wheat Pain au Levain
(Printable Recipe)
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup wheat germ
4 teaspoons vital wheat gluten
2-2 1/2 cups sourdough starter
1 cup bread flour (for kneading)
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 teaspoons salt

1. Combine the white whole wheat, whole wheat, bran, germ and vital wheat gluten.
2. Measure out the starter and warm water in a separate bowl.
3. Slowly mix the watered down starter in with the flour.
4. When the mixture becomes to difficult to stir, use the bread flour to dust a clean surface and dump the dough (carefully) onto the floured countertop.
5. Knead in the salt and use up to 1 cup of bread flour.
6. Shape the dough into a ball and place in an oiled bowl.
7. Allow the dough to rise for 12+ hours.
8. Shape the dough into a boule and place into a dutch oven. Cover and let it rise there for 2 hours.
9. Slash the dough. Preheat the oven.
10. Bake at 375F for 45-50 minutes. First 20 minutes with steam and uncovered and the remaining time without steam and covered. Internal dough temp should read 200F.

Au revoir
- Sarah

PS This bread (with peanut butter and honey) was great fuel for bike riding. CLICK HERE to sponsor our cycling team, The Spacely Sprockets, in Bike MS NYC. All proceeds benefit the National MS Society.

Beets < 3 Bread (it's official)

2010-07-18T09:38:00.007-04:00

This past Friday I went to the Union Square Green Market to work on an assignment for my curriculum class. Naturally, all work and no shopping make Sarah and Julia hungry girls. I bought lettuce, cucumbers, agretti, beets and a red onion. Julia bought sugar snap peas. Not that impressive compared to my list until she also bought a tomato that weighed in to cost 2$ but she only had 1$. And so that was all that she paid. One red, huge, fresh tomato at 50% off.

This is the new (to me) vegetable I bought:

Agretti is an Italian vegetable that sort of tastes like salty grass. In a good way. I tossed some into my salad and chopped some into my omelet. It is tasty, but a lot of work. Similar to kale, it is not fun to eat the stems. But different than kale it doesn't have big leaves to take off. The part you eat of this vegetable are those skinny little leaves growing off the tough stem. Taking those leaves off was unlike any food prep I have done before. Still not sure how I feel about the ratio of work to deliciousness with this one.

But look at how cute it is cuddling up with the beets:

The bread is going to get jealous.

Which brings me, conveniently, to the beets. Martha Rose Shulman published a bunch of delicious looking beet recipes in the NYTimes a couple of weeks ago so they have really been on my mind.

Lil made a couple of delicious beet boules back in February. So here we go again. Letting this "winter vegetable shine in summer!"

Sourdough Beet Bread
(Printable Recipe)

Prep time 1 hour to roast, cool, and puree the beets and about another 3 before it goes in the oven
Bake time about 1 hour
Yields 1 boule

1 cup sourdough starter

1 cup roasted beets, pureed

1/2 cup 8 grain cereal

1/3 cup warm water

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

2 cups bread flour

2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

1 3/4 teaspoon salt

First, roast your beets and let them cool before attempting to puree.

Then, soak the 8 grain cereal in the water for 10 minutes. While it soaks, measure out your starter.

Combine the beet puree with the starter and soaked cereal. Stir. The starter should bubble and burp with delight.

Add the whole wheat flour, yeast, and vital wheat gluten. The dough will still be wet. Before stirring in any of the bread flour or salt let the starter work for about 20 minutes.

Now add the salt and as much bread flour as you can stir in.

Once it becomes too difficult to stir, carefully dump it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead in as much of the remaining bread flour as you need to in order to be able to work the dough but still feel that it is slightly tacky.

Flour a clean bowl for the dough to rise in for about 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in bulk.

Shape the dough, flour a dutch oven, and place carefully. Let it rise for another hour or until it is doubled again.

Now, please note, the following cooking method was employed because it is over 90°F in NYC and our apartment does NOT have an air conditioner:

Turn on the oven to 400°F and place the dough, in it's floured dutch oven, inside as it preheats.

After it bakes uncovered for 20 minutes, open the oven door and cover it.

Bake like this for 20 minutes. Then turn off the oven. Do not open the oven door for 20 minutes.

Take the dutch oven out of the oven. Remove cover and take internal temperature to see that it is 200°F.

Let it cool before cutting.

For information on roasting beets or other fun beet facts please see Lil's previous post (linked earlier). One of the things I liked more about those loaves than this one was that the beet was more coarsely chopped leaving bright red flecks throughout the loaf. This loaf got a really beautiful crust though, nice and chewy, probably because of my brilliant and intentional baking method.

Beet and Bread = BFFL

Aww, makes my heart skip a beet.

- Sar

Lentil Burgers on Onion Buns, Etc.

2010-07-04T17:12:00.003-04:00

It's Independence Day!!

This has always been one of my favorite holidays. For the fireworks and for the weather and of course for being a proud American. But it is not such a good holiday to be a vegetarian. So, I did some research in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and decided to whip up some veggie burgers.

Lentil Burgers inspired by recipes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman

Yields 9 burgers about 3 inches in diameter

Prep time at least 2 hours

Cook time 30 minutes - 15 minutes on each side

1 cup dried lentils soaking in about 3 cups of water

1 cube vegetable bouillon

1/3 of an onion (we had white)

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup corn (frozen or canned works)

1 shredded carrot

1 egg

2-4 tablespoons corn meal

cilantro, coriander, chili powder, cayenne, red pepper flakes, curry powder, turmeric, salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic and onions in extra virgin olive oil in a medium saucepan until translucent.
Pour lentils and water into saucepan with vegetable bouillon cube.
Simmer until the lentils are cooked thoroughly and stick together.
Turn off the heat and add corn and shredded carrot. Other vegetables can be added as well just be careful not to overdo it or else your burgers will not stick together.
Add 1 egg and corn meal (I needed only 3 tablespoons to get my burgers to be the right consistency - sticky but handleable) to help the burgers stick together.
Add desired spices.
Shape into patties and place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Chill in fridge until you are ready to bake.
Remove burgers from oven and let them get back to room temperature as the oven preheats to 425°F. Bake 15 minutes on each side.

But what is a burger without a bun?

Onion Buns adapted from King Arthur Flour

Yields 8 buns

1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup bread flour

1 tablespoon yeast

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons melted butter

3 tablespoons dried minced onion

1 egg white

poppy or sesame seeds optional

The instructions via the KAF link above are very comprehensive.. essentially:

Combine dry ingredients and mix.
Combine wet ingredients and whisk.
Mix together slowly.
Knead.
Rise.
Shape.
Rise again.
Egg wash and top.
Bake.
Enjoy.

Some process photos:

In the process of making the buns I realized we would definitely want some barbeque sauce to moisten/flavor them.

Barbeque Sauce from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

1 cup ketsup

1/4 cup dry red wine

1/8 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 tablespoon minced onion

1 clove minced garlic

cloves, salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients.

And once you have a great BBQ sauce, you'll remember other things you like to dip...

Sweet Potato Fries

Prep time about 45 minutes

Use:

Sweet potatoes/Yams

Salt, pepper and rosemary

Do:

Chop up two medium sweet potatoes into your favorite fry shape.

Drizzle about 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and toss with your hands.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper and some fresh rosemary.

Spread evenly on a baking sheet.

Bake at 375 for about 20-30 minutes until you have your desired crispiness.

Happy Forth of July!!

- Sarah

PS I am red (see blood), white (see helmet and shoes) and blue (see jersey and bike).

How hardcore American are YOU??

Hearty Whole Wheat

2010-07-01T20:26:00.000-04:00

My very first post to The Upper Yeast Side was about a basic whole wheat sandwich loaf that I made for Lil's birthday. Since I am still feeling awesome from my success with the sourdough sandwich bread I made recently I tried to recreate it minus the sourdough. Essentially, another whole wheat sandwich loaf. I'll do some of the things the same, some of the things different and try to figure out what made that loaf so phenomenal. Here goes.

Hearty Whole Wheat
(Printable Recipe)

What I Used:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup wheat germ
1/3 cup wheat bran
1/3 cup bread flour
3 teaspoons nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons melted butter (salted)
4 teaspoons vital wheat gluten
2 1/2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons yeast

What I Did:

Proof 2 teaspoons yeast in 2 tablespoons warm water and with a dollop (yes a dollop) of honey.
While the yeast proofs, measure out all the dry ingredients and mix together in a large mixing bowl.
Add the yeast to the dry ingredients along with 1 cup water, 2 tablespoons melted butter, an 2 tablespoons honey. Stir slowly until it becomes too difficult. Then let it rest for about 20 minutes.
After the dough has rested, turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead for 8-10 minutes.
Flour mixing bowl and move dough to the bowl.
Wait about 1 1/2 hours until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Shape your loaf and place it into a greased loaf pan. Punch it down.
Allow the dough to rise until it comes above the edge of the loaf pan.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Prepare a water-honey wash of about 1 tablespoons water and 1 tablespoon honey.. Brush the upper crust with water and sprinkle with wheat germ or wheat bran or eight grain cereal or any combination.
Bake for 45 minutes. 20 minutes with a cast iron pan of water and 25 minutes without.
Let it cool before removing from the pan and definitely before slicing.

Bring a slice to the Dennis for your couple of laps around the Park. Just kidding, that's not a direction, but sharing is caring. These are the slices we ate:

This loaf came out pretty well- I wish I was a little more patient on it's second rise because it didn't really get bigger in the oven but I got a great texture again (I think it might have to do with the steam in the oven) and nice upper crust from brushing with the honey-water.

I am definitely going to try this loaf again but wait longer for it to rise fully.

- Sarah

A Mediterranean Feast

2010-06-28T18:19:00.003-04:00

Joe and I were on the rooftop of the Met cerca 5 30pm when I threw out hummus as a dinner plan. Then, the dinner menu turned into the pages of a children's book. Because if you tempt Joe with hummus, he's going to want a pita to go along with it. And if you suggest baking pita, he'll remember that he also fancies babaganoush on pita bread. And with tabbouleh on the side.

And so, that is the beginning of a two hour journey to a Mediterranean Feast (Printable Recipes): Whole Wheat Pita, Lemon-Garlic Hummus, Babaganoush, and Tabbouleh.

Whole Wheat Pocketless but Puffy Pita Adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
Yields 8-10 pitas

2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 1/2 teaspoons honey
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat bran
3/4 cup garbanzo flour
1 1/4 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

Combine the yeast, water, and honey. Allow the yeast 10 minutes to bubble. During this time, measure and mix the dry ingredients (except for the salt) in a large mixing bowl. Then, add the salt and olive oil to the yeast. Mix together slowly. If it becomes to tough to stir, turn out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead gently. I added about another 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour as I kneaded. Place it into a oiled bowl and turn to coat evenly. Let it be for about 50 minutes or until doubled in bulk.
Punch the dough down and divide it into 8-10 pieces. Preheat the oven and baking stone to 475°F and roll the dough into disks no thicker than 1/4 inch. Let them rest for 5-10 minutes and then bake for about 12 minutes until puffed and golden brown. Remove from the oven and cover with a dish towel to help them deflate.

Lemon-Garlic Hummus
Prep time about 20 minutes if you are skinning the peas
Yields about 12 healthy servings

1 can chick peas
1/2 cup tahini
1/3 can of reserved chick pea water or tap water
Juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons garbanzo flour
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2-4 cloves of garlic
salt and parsley to taste

Remove the skins and rinse the chick peas*.
Blend it all together. Serve garnished with parsley.
*The skins are the part that make you fart. So, removing them makes your digestive system quieter and the hummus creamier. If you like the farting or just want to save time, leave them on.

Babaganoush
Or babagannouj
Or roasted eggplant dip
Total prep time about an hour and a half
Yields about 10 servings

1 medium sized eggplant
1/4 cup tahini
juice and zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons water
3 cloves roasted garlic
1 clove raw garlic
salt, pepper, and parsley to taste

Quarter the eggplant and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast the eggplant and whole garlic cloves for about 30 minutes. Let it cool for at least 15 minutes. Plop it all into the blender along with tahini, water, a little more oil, a raw clove of garlic and some parsley. Blend until smooth.

Tabbouleh
Traditionally I've had tabbouleh with cous cous but in doing some light reading it is usually served with bulgar and lots of mint. So, turns out what we made is a variation of a tabbouleh, but I can assure you that it was delicious nonetheless. Without the grain, this dish is more of an Israeli salad and awesome. Options include: diced red pepper, a clove of garlic, dash of cinnamon, coriander and mint.

1 cup (uncooked) quinoa
1 large cucumber
1 large (home grown) tomato
1/4 of your favorite type of onion
as much parsley as you can handle
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Start the quinoa in 2 cups of water. Some leave the quinoa out until the water comes to a boil, some throw it in from the get go. Either way, when your water is boiling and your quinoa is in there, turn down the heat to a simmer, cover the pot, and let it cook for about 20 minutes or until all the water is gone. It cooks very similarly to rice.
While the quinoa is cooking, chop your vegetables and juice your lemon. Put everything into a big bowl.
Make sure the quinoa is cool before you stir it into the vegetables. Season and serve!

And so that is how we got from 5 30pm at the Met to 9pm eating a Mediterranean feast!

I have some research to do on Pita pockets... I'll get back to you on that one. With shakshuka and falafel and stuffed grape leaves. Mediterranean feast round two is definitely on the to do list. But first we need a break so that we don't turn into garbanzos.
- Sarah

Egg Salad Should Not Be Feared

2010-06-23T20:09:00.001-04:00

Egg salad just sounds weird. I'll admit - I hadn't tried it until about 6 years ago (yikes! okay so maybe it was a while ago, but now I feel old so lets pretend that's not so long) when miss Emily Ann, one of the most wonderful people on this planet, picked me up to go to a DMB concert in Saratoga. We were rising seniors in High School. This was going to be a great road trip. And Em brought the snacks - they were typical high school fare: Cheetos, Tostitos, and...egg salad???!!!

It freaked me out. Em was sitting there, happily dipping her chips in the egg salad, when I said "hm, if Em can do it, so can I." And it was love ever since.

As someone who's keeping to a semi-vegetarian, mostly pescatarian (and sometimes just plain omnivorous, but that's only sometimes) diet, I love that egg salad is a viable sandwich option without being only veggies. It doesn't need to be creepy and smooth, either. Celery adds a delicious crunch and keeping the mayo to a minimum lets the egg flavor shine - whatever that means.

Anyway, here's the recipe you'll need to make the perfect egg salad sandwich:

Egg Salad
Makes 2 sandwiches
(printable recipe here)

5 hard-boiled eggs (cold or room temp)
1 tablespoon mayo
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2-1 rib of celery, diced
salt and pepper to taste
optional (but recommended in any combination):
dash of curry powder
dash of paprika
dash of cayenne

Place the whole eggs in a mixing bowl. I prefer to use 3 whole eggs and 2 whites because the texture of hard-boiled yolks doesn't necessarily tickle my fancy, but that's entirely up to you. Don't worry - when I'm at home I feed the yolks to the Boofer and the Doofer (my dogs, Breeze and Knight respectively), because yolks make their coat nice and shiny. Here I feed them to the compactor, which is slightly less economical but it's two yolks, okay? Give me a break.

Add in the rest of the ingredients and get to chopping and mixing with a fork. Keeping the eggs whole at first allows you to keep chunks in the egg salad so it's not so smooth. Refrigerate the salad until cold and then serve it on a slice of Sar's amazing sandwich bread (toasted if you're not bringing it to work!). Adding a leaf of lettuce would complete the sandwich, but I ate all of our lettuce last night soo...my sandwich was 100% pure egg salad. And, I'll say it. It was "egg-cellent".

Disclaimer: The egg salad sandwich photo is NOT of my sandwich...in case you were confused. It's of a sandwich that Sar made weeks ago on another loaf of bread and with cucumbers. But I'll have you know the egg salad was just as delicious that time as it was this time...and I gobbled it up so quickly this time there wasn't a moment free to take a picture. I figured a Blackberry photo from work during lunch wouldn't cut it.

-Lil

Loafing about...

2010-06-23T06:47:00.000-04:00

Lil's egg salad is whipped up and only needs to be photographed and then posted. Here is some light reading (Bubbles, Bread and Beer by Olivia Judson from NYTimes.com) for while you wait.
- Sar

Sandwich Bread Narrative

2010-06-19T19:01:00.001-04:00

I have not been able to bake (nor post) much because of my summer class schedule. This morning, I was in the middle of reading for my children's literature course and I decided to start some bread, even though I have enough reading and writing to keep me busy all weekend, why not break it up a little? The thing is, I didn't waste time looking in any cookbooks. I just took out the sourdough starter and got started. This is what happened:

I measured 1 cup of sourdough starter and poured it into a bowl. I looked at it. The sourdough is not happy with our mistreatment lately. Lil used it last week but I feel like it still knows that I neglected it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it's just my conscience.

So, I decided to get out the yeast too. In a separate bowl I mixed 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon yeast, and 2 tablespoons warm water. While the yeast proofed I added 1 cup white whole wheat, 1/2 cup bread, 1/2 cup rye, 1/4 cup whole wheat flours along with 1 cup warm water. Oh and 4 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten and 2 teaspoons salt. The starter burped with delight. This was getting exciting.

I added the yeast to the sourdough. A tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, three tablespoons honey... and then I remembered something weird I had read in my dads "El Molino" cookbook. In their basic sourdough bread recipe they called for some freaky things. I figured, since I am not playing by any rules, I might as well try them. They are the secret ingredients. They are two things that I would never think to put into a loaf of bread. In they went....

The dough was pretty wet but I waited about 1 hour before attempting to knead it. I added in about 1 1/2 - 2 cups of white whole wheat flour in my kneading. I am not kidding, the dough was real wet. However, I didn't knead for more than 3-4 minutes until the dough was incorporated. Then, I plopped it into a well-oiled bowl, did some more reading, went to yoga class.

Fast forward 2 1/2 hours. The dough more than doubled. I wasn't sure if I should make it into one loaf or two but I decided on going all in on one loaf. That way, if it came out horrible it wouldn't feel like such a failure. I oiled one bread pan let it rise again for about 45 minutes. Then, I turned on the oven to 375 and put a cast iron pan of water in the bottom just as a brilliant idea struck me. Why not a sweet honey-water wash to help some wheat germ stick to the top of our loaf? I mixed up a little bit (but too much) water with some honey and sprinkled wheat germ on top. I put the extra watered down honey into my Kava tea.

I put the bread in before the oven was up to temperature and let it warm with the oven. I only left the water in there for 20 minutes. It baked for a total of 40 minutes. It cooled. I ate a slice. Success! The secret ingredients are phenomenal! So good, in fact, that I made a little peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
My dad eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch everyday. Alongside a tall glass of coffee and a cup of yogurt.

This is what I made:

Happy Father's Day (and thanks for the El Molino cookbook) Dad.

Love,
Sarah

P.S. Stay tuned for Lily's famous egg salad sandwich recipe!

Whole Wheat Rye Pizza Crust

2010-06-08T21:36:00.001-04:00

It was Sar's birthday a few weeks ago (I KNOW I'm a terrible post-er...I'm busy...please try not to judge me) and, although I didn't make her a birthday loaf, I gifted her something a bit more lasting and still bread related, obviously. I gave her a pizza stone! I'll be honest - I'm definitely going to enjoy the pizza stone, too, especially if we continue to make delicious pizzas like the one we made May 22nd. Please do not check your calendars and think about how long ago that was. Please.

This pizza was epic. The battle we fought against the smoke detector - also epic. For some reason our smoke alarm detects not only smoke, but also heat in general and apparently our frustration, as well. The worst part is that the alarm is 9 feet up on the ceiling and Sar and I are both short individuals. There was no getting up there to dismantle the thing, so we had to resort to swatting at it with a towel while jumping wildly in the air. Eventually I defeated the alarm by rigging a fan on high stacked on top of R2D2, our human-sized, portable pseudo-AC. He's yet to pay rent, but he certainly played a solid role in defeating the smoke detector. Anyway, the battle was won, but I'm guessing the war is not over.

Back to the pizza. The pizza stone really made the difference in the crust - it was both crunchy and chewy, and it held up against the toppings even after sitting on the counter for a bit. Dennis, Sar, and I downed a whole pizza - not too shocking, but definitely a positive indicator. The combination of whole wheat and rye flours in the crust was fantastic.

Here's the recipe:

Whole Wheat Rye Pizza Crust
Makes 2 medium sized pizzas

Ingredients:
1 cup dark rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup bread flour
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon maple sugar (which we actually had! if you don't, syrup is fine)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

What to do:
In a large bowl, combine the water, maple sugar or syrup, and yeast and let sit for about 10-15 minutes until the yeast gets foamy and active. In the meantime, mix the flours and salt in another bowl until they're evenly combined. When the yeast are nice and lively, mix in oil and then start adding the flour a bit at a time until you can no longer mix the dough in the bowl. Stop adding flour if you notice the dough is getting dry or stiff - it should be soft, but not quite sticky.

Turn the mixed dough and any loose flour that hadn't quite combined onto a clean surface and knead for 5 minutes until the dough is well combined and elastic. If it still feels dry while you're kneading, drip (and I mean one drop at a time) some water onto the dough and knead it in.

Once you're done kneading, clean out one of the bowls and oil it lightly. Place the dough into the bowl and cover with a towel. Allow the dough to rise until doubled. This took about 45 minutes for me in a warm kitchen - it could be a bit longer, depending on the kitchen temperature. After it's doubled, dump the dough onto the kneading surface again and gently deflate it. Knead again for 1 minute and then return the dough to the bowl to double again. Bread is a waiting game, what can I say?

After the second rise, you can then turn the dough out onto a surface and get it ready to be topped. It's pretty easy to handle, as pizza dough goes, so be careful not to stretch it too thin. That's exactly what I did here and we had to split it into two halves and then halve one of the halfs and make an accidental calzone. I'm telling you - things get weird when it's too thin.

[Bigger than our oven]

While you're shaping your pizzas, pre-heat the oven (with the pizza stone in there if you have one!) to about 525 or 550 degrees F.

Top the pizza with our red or white sauces (recipes here ) and some fresh mozzarella, basil, or any other toppings you'd like. We used broccoli florets sauteed with minced garlic.

[Half of that beast being topped by Sar's beautiful hands]

Transfer directly onto the pizza stone as best you can. Having a pizza peel would make this a million times easier. It would have also helped us avoid this:

[Strangely-shaped blob]

Or this...

[Accidental, yet delicious, calzone-ish thing]

Bake for about 15 minutes or until nicely browned around the edges, as seen above.

Warning: I suggest having at least 4 people around to eat this pizza because you will finish it. Or maybe make sure you don't have anyone around, if you're feeling greedy :)

Happy birthday, Sar. You ask for it, you get it.

The Geography of Whole Wheat RAISED Waffles

2010-05-30T11:00:00.026-04:00

Yeasted is not a word. But let's not get nit-picky. Let's talk geography, not grammar.

What American's know as a "Belgian Waffle" in Belgium is actually called the Brussels Waffle. Belgian waffles, like Belgian draft horses, are different from your average breed of waffle in that they are super tall. The trick to a true Belgian waffle is that the bread-er uses yeast to raise the waffles. I don't think that's what the breeder uses to make the horses over a ton but who knows. Everything is bigger in Belgium. (?!) This Belgian, Maurice Vermersch (I don't know how big he was. Probably huge if he went along with the horses/waffles trend), introduced the waffle during the 1964 NY World's Fair and decided to call it the Belgian waffle upon observing the poor geographical skills of Americans.

The world according to The New Yorker (and perhaps even an understatement of how New Yorkers see it):

AND Manhattan is getting BIGGER according to this NYTimes article on the new subway maps!

Whole Wheat Raised Waffles Adapted from Orangette - who got the recipe from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book

(Printable Recipe)
Yields about 4-5 batches of waffles (depends on size and configuration of waffle maker)

1/2 cup warm water

1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups whole milk

1 stick unsalted butter, melted*

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

2 large eggs, beaten

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

The night before, mix the water, yeast and sugar and let stand for 5-10 minutes.

Measure and mix the milk, butter, salt and flours.

Combine with yeast and let stand overnight. Use a large mixing bowl since the batter will double in size.

In the morning, preheat your waffle maker.

Just before cooking, beat 2 eggs with baking soda and mix into batter.

Cut fruits (we used banana, blueberry, strawberry and apple) can be added on top of the batter after it has been poured into the waffle iron.

Fruit is optional, but highly recommended. It's your thing, do what you wanna do. If you get some fruit stick-age to the iron just let it be part of the next waffle if you cannot remove it gently.

*The next time I use this recipe I will substitute 3/4 cup apple sauce and use only 1/4 stick (2 tablespoons) of butter. They were delicious and crispy BUT we don't need need to raise cholesterol for raised waffles.

We bought a new waffle iron for my dad as an early fathers day gift. I had read the Cook's Illustrated waffle iron reviews without consulting my mother. Both of us went out shopping without communicating and fortunately, only she was successful. Worst case scenario, we would have had to make space for a waffle maker in our tiny UES apartment. God forbid.

But anyways, my mom found the Food Network Signature Series waffle maker. So Aaron and I presented it to my dad, because we love him, and so that I would have an excuse to take the maiden voyage with the waffle maker. Much of making good waffles is in knowing your waffle maker. The first few came out a little bit soft to our liking and so we learned to ignore the first "beeeeep" for the second. There was some talk about how perhaps the trick is when you stop getting steam and that if you are adding fruit, be sure to leave the waffle on (without peeking) for a bit longer. It's hard to ignore, especially for notoriously impatient New Yorkers, but well worth the wait.

New Yorkers are so rushed that tourists get their own sidewalk lane:

This post is happening from my country home on Freund's Farm in Connecticut. Although we live in New York now, Lil and I were both raised in the beautiful Northwest corner of CT (aka the NWC). I think at least part of our patience for bread can be attributed to our country roots because it definitely has nothing to do with trying to squeeze onto the 6 train at 8AM (the 2nd avenue subway is coming!!!)

For those loyal NYC reader(s), just wondering, do you know about the Wafels and Dinges truck? (And is it weird to ask a question to cyberspace?) I see it up by 116th on the West Side occasionally. Just smelling the waffles is at least 2000 calories. The owner makes them so authentic that he even spells them "wafels" instead of waffles. Pretty legitimate. For my melting pot taste buds, these buttery whole wheat raised waffles were fantastic.

Thank for sharing your waffles, Belgium. Sorry American's tend to not care where in the world you are. I suppose if you wanted us to know, you should have kept the waffle to yourself so we'd have to travel for them. No going back now.

- Sarah

P.S. Belgium borders the Netherlands, Germany, and France. The capital city, Brussels, is essentially due East of London. Start at home and practice your USA geography:

Play Games at AddictingGames

Sourdough-Oat Scones with Cherries and Dark Chocolate

2010-05-27T11:37:00.005-04:00

Scones vs. Biscuits
Both are quick breads with baking powder as a leavening agent. The basic dough of both is quite similar - the difference is in how they are baked and served.
Scones are sweet, served with hot tea (Harney strongly recommended) or coffee. They often (and in my opinion, should always) contain fruit, nuts, or spices.
Biscuits are typically unsweetened and best served warm with butter or honey alongside a meal, like Vegetarian Chili, for example.

I was inspired to bake a sourdough scone after reading this recipe on Wild Yeast Blog's YeastSpotting. Some of the ingredients were measured in weight (fortunately, we have a kitchen scale) and so I changed them to volume (cups, teaspoons, etc) along with my modifications to the recipe.

Sourdough-Oat Scones with Dried Cherries and Dark Chocolate
(Printable Recipe) 
Yields 16 scones
Bake time 23 minutes

3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1/3 cup oat flour
5 tsp nonfat milk powder
1/4 cup sugar
5/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon lemon zest
8 tablespoons (one stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dark chocolate chopped
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup sourdough starter
milk
coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In a large mixing bowl, blend the flours, milk powder, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and lemon zest.

Press in cold butter* until it is in pea-sized chunks.
Mix in the dried cherries, dark chocolate, and rolled oats.
Add sourdough starter and mix lightly until the dry ingredients are incorporated.
Turn dough onto a floured surface and pat into a long rectangle.
Cut** into four squares and then cut X's into squares to get four triangular scones, each. Sixteen scones total.
Place scones on parchment lined baking sheet - brush with milk and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
Bake 23 minutes or until golden brown.

*Why cold butter? And freezing scones/biscuts...
Cold butter makes biscuits flaky. Fat coats the proteins in the flours preventing them from forming long gluten strands. In this way, the butter buffers the layers between the flour-liquid matrix -- as the biscuit bakes in the oven, the butter melts. Ta da, flaky texture!
Scones/biscuits that use the combination of flour, liquid, baking powder, and solid fat can be frozen for 30 minutes before baking. After shaping and placing on the cookie sheet, freeze for 30 minutes. You get a flakier texture because the fat stays solid longer in the oven, holding together the structure as the biscuit rises and bakes.
**It is important to cut biscuit and scone dough with sharp dough cutters. Cutting with dull knives or glasses destroys "side walls" that freely expand as biscuits/scones bake allowing them to rise to their optimum height.

A side note, directed at my father, on white whole wheat flour. My dad said, "White whole wheat doesn't make sense to me." So, here's an explanation: White Whole Wheat flour is made from an albino wheat rather than a traditional red wheat. It is a milder, lighter 100% whole wheat flour and in recipes it acts a lot more like all-purpose (i.e. you don't need to add as much liquid to compensate if you are substituting). It's a great compromise between taste and nutrition because it doesn't get a whole-wheaty texture/taste yet it supplies the nutrients of 100% whole wheat.

In my scone research, I found that The Wandering Eater posted on The Best Scones in New York City in 2006. It's been four years and these Cherry-Dark Chocolate Scones could at least give Eli's a run for a place in the top 5.

- Sar

Buttermilk French Toast on Challah

2010-05-15T12:38:00.033-04:00

Holla! French Toast!

Buttermilk Challah French Toast

(Printable Recipe)

Yields 9 slices French Toast

9 1/2 to 1 inch slices of Challah Bread

6 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 heaping tablespoon orange zest

Pinch of cloves

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

First slice up the bread in about 1/2 inch slices

Whisk together all ingredients either in a low, flat pyrex, or transfer the liquid to something that you can fit slices in to soak.
Let them soak for up to 5 minutes.
Cook over a medium-low flame.

If you don't have a griddle, like us, you can turn the oven on really low and keep the slices warm until they are all cooked. They like to be cozy in a pig pile of French Toast.

Top with Strawberry-Orange syrup, fresh fruit, and a drizzle of maple syrup and brunch is ready!

Strawberry-Orange Syrup

(Printable Recipe)

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon maple syrup

3/4 cup cut strawberries

Put it all in a pot and cook until it looks like mush.

- Sarah

Challah with Poppy Seeds

2010-05-14T03:11:00.110-04:00

Challah bread is a braided, eggy loaf eaten by Jewish people on Shabbat and other holidays. I would argue that it also makes the best bread for French Toast.

I adapted this recipe from King Arthur Flour to be more whole wheat-y. Partially because we ran out of all purpose flour and partially because whole wheat is healthier anyways. "Whole wheat" means that the entire grain was ground with all parts intact - the germ, endosperm, and bran. All-purpose white flour is ground from endosperm only. When all parts of wheat (whole wheat) are ground to become flour, there is significantly more nutritional value (i.e. antioxidants, fiber, etc).

We love a good grain in this apartment.

Braided Challah Bread with Poppy Seeds

Yields one huge loaf

Time about 3 1/2 hours

Sponge

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup warm water

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Dough

1 cup bread flour

4 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour

3 tablespoons water (or milk if you are not going parve)

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 whole eggs and one yolk

3 tablespoons whole wheat flour

Wash

1 egg white

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon water

Poppy Seeds (Poptional)

First, whip up the sponge.

Let it be for 45 minutes.

About 30 minutes after the sponge has been sitting, start to combine your dry dough ingredients in a large mixing bowl (with the exception of the 3 tbs whole wheat flour). Stir them together. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients. Slowly add the sponge to the dry, stirring, and then add the wet ingredients to the sponge/dry mixture.

Dump onto a whole wheat floured surface (use the 3 tablespoons*use more/less if you need* on your surface, the dough, and your hands).

Knead until the dough comes together. Make sure you wash your hands and the surface well afterward since we are dealing with raw eggs. This dough feels smoother on my hands than a dough without as much egg/oil.

Shape the dough into a ball. Lightly oil a bowl and turn the dough around so the whole surface gets oily.

Let is rise until doubled about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Whip up your wash at some point while the dough rises.

Now, for the braiding. What to choose? Fishtail, french, topsytail?

I went with a fancy four-braid. If you are doing this with as a three-braid your rope will be longer.

Divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll the dough into long ropes-- over a foot and under two feet. About 16-18 inches if you are making a four braid, longer if you are only using three.

Braid your dough. One way to make a four piece braids is to take the left-most and go over the strand directly to its right. Then take the right-most and go over the two middle strands. Repeat, left-most over one to the right (KAF four-braid technique description). Right-most over two to the left. If that is confusing try these ways until you figure out what works for you:

Weaving

1-2-3-4: 1 over 2, 3 over 1 and 2

Once you're all braided, wash with egg wash, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 375°F during this time. Right before the challah goes in the oven give it a second go with the egg wash (this is what gives you that nice shiny crust). Add poppy seeds now if you'd like.

Bake at 375°F for 35-40 minutes. Always let bread cool completely before you cut into it.

Shabbat Shalom

- Sarah

Sourdough Drop Biscuits with Vegetarian Chili

2010-05-11T20:24:00.000-04:00

This week I didn't know if we would use or discard the sourdough starter for it's weekly feeding.. until I found a recipe for Sourdough Biscuits that takes only 10 minutes prep time and about 15 minute in the oven! To go along with the biscuits we made an original vegetarian chili.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate vegetables.

Vegetarian Chili

(Printable Recipe)

Yields approximately 5-6 servings

Cook time 1 hour

Ingredients*

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 can of diced tomatoes, unsalted

1 can kidney beans

1 can black beans

1 zucchini

1 yellow squash

some corn

1 yellow onion

2 cloves garlic

2 carrots

3 stalks celery

1 red pepper

1 bunch scallions

greek yogurt

paprika

chili powder

cinnamon

cloves

dried jalapeños

cayenne pepper

cumin

maple syrup

salt

*Ingredients are flexible. Use your favorite vegetables and beans. Without the greek yogurt this recipe could be vegan. I wouldn't understand not using some dairy. And as you'll see, I didn't include measurements for the spices. The most significant spice is the chili powder but other than that, it's to taste. I wouldn't go too heavy on cloves. Godspeed.

Start with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and saute the garlic and onions until translucent. Then, add carrots and celery for a couple minutes. Then add the zucchini, squash and red pepper and saute for a couple more minutes. Add the can of tomatoes, corn (drained if it's canned), and beans - one can drained, one can with all the juice. Add the spices. An idea of our spice ratios is: 2 tablespoons chili powder, 2 tablespoons maple syrup 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoons cayenne, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, 1/4 teaspoon dried jalapeños, dash of paprika.

Simmer for 30 - 45 minutes depending on how hungry you are and how homogenous you want your chili. If you are antsy to get eating more homogenizing will happen in the fridge overnight. Your leftovers will always be more stewed.

Top with greek yogurt and scallions and serve along side a warm Sourdough Biscuit. These biscuits are superb with the chili -- the garlic and cheddar is delicious on its own and the flavors compliment the spicy veggies. Plus they are quick and easy to boot!

Sourdough Drop Biscuits with Garlic and Cheddar Cheese Adapted from this Tasty Kitchen recipe

(Printable Recipe)

Yields millions of biscuits

Cook time 25 minutes

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic

8 tablespoons butter (cold but smooshable)

1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 1/4 cup sourdough starter

1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Blend flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, garlic.

Smoosh in butter with a fork (or a pastry cutter if you have it)

Stir in cheese (reserve some for the tops if you want a cheese-y topped biscuits)

In a separate bowl, combine starter and buttermilk

Add the buttermilk-starter mixture to the other ingredients. Stir until it's obvious that you need to incorporate with your hands.

Scoop rounded tablespoons onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Adding extra cheese to the tops of biscuits now if it suits you. Also optional, brush the tops with melted butter.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until the tops are a pale golden brown.

Chi-chi-chi le-le-le VIVA CHILE

- Sar

www.dennispkramer.com

Birthday Pretzels! And I'm baaack!

2010-05-09T14:40:00.004-04:00

I know that it's been a while since I (Lily) last posted. Sar's really been holding down the fort. Work took over my life for a few months there (not that I'm complaining - hard work pays off), but now I'm back in action. I hope you didn't miss me too much.

For my first post since forever ago, I'd like to tell you a love story. This love story is about a boy and his pretzels. Once upon a time...

...Dennis Paul Kramer was born on May 6, 1987. From there he grew into a small boy that loved soft pretzels. I've heard many stories recounting this love - particularly for the huge soft pretzels sold on the street in New York. He also dabbled in the frozen make-at-home soft pretzels, but later decided those weren't as delicious as their fresh counterparts. (I agree completely).

Somewhere down the line Dennis grew into a not-so-small boy and met me. As luck would have it, he stuck around long enough to watch this blog grow. Since day one he's requested that we make soft pretzels. Winter just didn't seem like the right time to bake such a Summertime staple, so we made him wait. It's been 5 long months of waiting, but finally May 6th rolled around and I couldn't think of a better present than some homemade soft pretzels with his name on them. Literally.

I had planned to surprise him with the pretzels, but anyone that knows Dennis knows that he loves to guess anything and everything that may be a secret or a surprise until he's eventually figured it out. Naturally, he guessed that I was going to make him pretzels. Rather than lying and saying "Nooooo" like I usually would, I gave up and admitted that that was the plan. I did have a few tricks up my sleeve, though. He didn't just get pretzels - he got pretzels spelling out his name with homemade honey mustard sauce. Take a look!

Making soft pretzels is a bit of a process, but they are completely worth it. It was a labor of love - and I think that made them taste even better. I came up with this recipe after doing some extensive online research to determine some general guidelines for baking pretzels. While it incorporates parts of probably 10 or so other recipes, I'm proud to say this one is all mine.

Homemade Soft Pretzels
Makes 8 medium sized pretzels
Printable recipe here

You'll need:
2 cups warm water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 packet yeast

3 cups bread flour

2 cups white whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/2 cup baking soda

1 egg

Large crystal salt (or Pretzel Salt if you're feeling fancy)

Sesame seeds

What to do:

Combine water, 1 tablespoon of the sugar, and the yeast in a bowl. Mix until the sugar and yeast are both pretty well dissolved. Let that sit for about 10 minutes until the yeast have really sprung to life and you've got some good foam forming on the water.

In a large bowl, mix the flours and the salt together. Pour in the yeast/water mixture along with the melted butter. Stir to combine and then get in there with your hands. Since the water should still be warm, this is fun dough to play around with - warm and soothing. Once all of the flour is incorporated, you can turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes. I'm sure Sar and I have mentioned this before, but kneading dough is a fantastic stress reliever. You can really work it all out.

Once you've kneaded the dough, let it sit on the counter while you clean out the bowl and then oil it with about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Place the dough in the oiled bowl and roll it around in there to cover it completely. Let dough rise on the counter until doubled - about an hour. I didn't cover the dough since it was pretty hot and humid in the apartment that night, but on a cooler or dryer day I would have thrown some plastic wrap over the bowl. It's up to you...I don't think it makes too much of a difference in this recipe, honestly.

Once the dough has risen, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and bring about 8-10 cups water to a boil in a large pot. Dissolve the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar in the water. Once the water's boiling, turn it down to a simmer and add the baking powder. This is really fun since it bubbles and causes a real scientific reaction. The baking soda in the water is what gives the pretzels that yummy pretzel taste on the outside. Traditional pretzels are boiled in a lye mixture, but since I love Dennis and want to avoid poisoning him, I think baking soda was a better choice. I'll tell you the story of how pretzels began being dipped lye at the end of the post - we're really getting into the action now and I don't want to distract you from your pretzel making.

Let the water simmer while you turn the dough out onto the counter and very gently deflate it. Cut the dough into 8 equal chunks and then roll those chunks into ropes about 18-20 inches long. It's best to do this on a non-floured surface because the tackiness of the dough helps you with the rolling and stretching. I did some pseudo-jump-rope motions with the dough to help get it to stretch out. Pretzels are pretty forgiving, but just be wary of rips or thinner sections of the rope. I shaped 6 chunks into letters spelling Dennis' name, but also made 2 traditionally shaped pretzels. They were pretty cute:

After you've shaped the pretzels, put them two-at-a-time into the poaching liquid and leave them for 30 seconds on the first side and then flip them for another 30 seconds. This was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, so don't be frightened. Once you take them out of the water, just put them on a cooling rack to dry off a bit while you do the others.

At this point you can beat up the egg with about 1 tablespoon of cold water and then use a pastry brush to paint the pretzels and then sprinkle a little salt and some seeds over the egg wash. Since the pretzel dough is salted, you really don't need to add too much to the outside. The sesame seeds are delicious, though, so add as many as you'd like. Dennis specifically requested that these be sesame pretzels, and I think he was really on to something there.

Once the pretzels have been egged and seeded, you can place them onto sheet pans lined with parchment paper. Make sure to space them 2 inches apart so that they don't grow into each other while baking. Bake for 15 minutes or until they turn a deep golden-brown color and really look like pretzels. You can wait 10 minutes to eat them, or keep them in a dry, uncovered location for a day or two. Covering them will make them soggy, and leaving them out makes them stale, so just eat them as soon as possible, OK?

As for the honey mustard, I'm not even going to give you a recipe. All I did was dump about 1/3 of a new container of run-of-the-mill spicy brown mustard into a tupperware and stir in enough honey until I thought it tasted right. If I were to guess, I'd say it was about 1/2 cup mustard and maybe 1/4 cup honey.

Now that we're all done, I can tell you about how lye became a typical glaze for pretzels in Germany. Apparently in the 1800s at some point someone was making pretzels and accidentally dumped them into the lye trough that was used to clean cooking utensils. For some reason, the cook decided that it was totally cool to just continue on with the pretzel baking. I don't know how costly flour and water were back then, but I'm assuming they were extremely expensive if they didn't want to pitch that batch even though they were essentially covered in a harsh cleaning solution that's pretty much straight poison. Or maybe they were really into a "waste not, want not" phase. Either way, the pretzels turned out beautifully browned and somehow had a distinctive and yummy taste. Lye has been used in pretzel making ever since. I think baking soda gave the exact same "pretzely" taste, so you wont need to fear any pretzels that come out of our oven. If you're in Germany, though, that may not be the case.

-Lil

PS sorry for the lack of pictures - I was in a rush and not on my A-Game for blog posting. I promise to step it up for the next one.

Griddled Olive Oil Salt Bread (with Rosemary)

2010-05-05T22:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a long day.

Andy worked forever and I was up to my neck in the final paper for my Observation and Recording class. So, we tag teamed this quick bread from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. I love this cookbook, this recipe, and everything Bitten. Minor detail that the ingredients list forgot to include the 1 cup of water but the instructions are so clear that it wasn't a problem. I love this cookbook.

Case in point: after I went grocery shopping for the soup and salad that would become dinner Andy asked if we could make bread. 6 P.M. on Tuesday before my final is due and we are starting bread? Save us, Mark! I opened How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and read:
"There is no quicker, hassle-free way to get fresh, warm bread on the table, especially if you make the griddled version."
Okay, fine. Sign us up.

I took sneaky photos while Andy tried to keep me on task

(the task being my paper, not the bread).

I am not posting the recipe since I didn't change anything about it (aside from halving it and letting it sit for like an hour only for purposes of letting the soup and salad operations catch up). Andy, in all of his no-rules cooking, added rosemary to one of the rolls. It was divine. Or so I heard, since I didn't get to try a bite. Divine enough to not share with your girlfriend better be pretty delicious. It's on my "To Bake" list to perfect an adaptation of these griddle breads and post it in the future. Stay tuned.

The moral of this post is: Bread doesn't have to take a long time. Especially after a long day.

- Sarah

P.S. I got my copy of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian at Strand -- one of my all-time favorite bookstores. I have a thing for books.

Basic Whole Wheat Pizza

2010-04-28T22:42:00.002-04:00

NYC is famous for it's wide slices of thin-crust pizza. I've heard the crust is so fantastic (and this is likely a myth) because of the minerals present in the tap water here. But I think I believe the myth and ummmm I used water straight from our Upper East Side faucet for this recipe. And this pizza was pretty baller. That's not to argue with the fact that nothing beats a slice of New York pie (except maybe a bagel) but there's not nothing to making homemade pizza. Double negative. There's something to it. So keep reading and try it!

Basic Whole Wheat Pizza Crust
(Printable Recipe)
Yields one small, thin-crust pizza. Double this recipe if you want a thicker, bready crust OR if you want a bigger, thin crust pizza.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the dry ingredients, including the yeast.
Add the water and olive oil.
Knead on a lightly floured surface for 2-3 minutes until it comes together.
Oil the original bowl (a little goes a long way) and plop the dough back in there -- making sure to roll it around so that the top is oily too.
Let rise for 1-2 hours until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to it's hottest setting.
Stretch into a pizza crust. I really can't offer much advice on this but be patient and not too aggressive. If you get frustrated let the dough rest for 10 minutes. You'll relax and so will the gluten.
Once you have a good shape (and you'll see ours is a rectangle because we do not have a pizza stone- hint hint **wishlist**) pop your dough in the oven for 2-3 minutes. No toppings. Naked.
Take it out quick and spread the sauce, cheese, and other toppings to your liking. Always remember if you are topping with veggies they have to be pre-cooked. This dough only needs about 8-10 more minutes and that is not long enough for your broccoli to cook through. No way. Blanche that brocc!
Anyways, cook about 10 more minutes until it's just oozy and perfect.
Let it sit for about 5 minutes after it comes out so you don't burn your life and get melty cheese everywhere.
Slice and eat up!

I topped my pizza with a simple sauce of canned tomato, salt, pepper, oregano, sugar, onion, garlic similar to the one from the Sourdough Pizza post and fresh mozzarella cheese and a little windowsill cultivated basil.

It was a hard winter on our herb garden.

- Sarah

Simply Seedy Sourdough

2010-04-25T21:55:00.012-04:00

Open Sesame!

I baked a sourdough loaf. With seeds. Lots of seeds.
It's an Ali Baba and the Forty Seeds Sourdough.

Seedy Sourdough
(Printable Recipe) Yields 2 loaves

Ingredients:

2 cups ripe sourdough starter

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups bread flour

about 1/2 cup of all purpose flour for kneading

1 teaspoon active dry yeast (and a pinch of sugar and about tablespoon warm water to proof)

2 cups water (warm)

2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup flax seeds

1/4 cup sesame seeds

oil for greasing loaf pans

First, combine the starter with the warm water. You sort of have to chop it up.

Combine the flours in a separate bowl and once the water and starter are mixed up start to slowly add the flours.

Let it be for 15-20 minutes. While you wait, proof the yeast.

Combine and toast up your seeds (you'll know they are toasty when they smell like bird food, but bird food you'd eat).

Add the yeast, salt, and 1/2 cup of seeds and knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it's all incorporated. Use as much all purpose flour as you need while you knead. My dough was pretty sticky at first so I used about half a cup to knead.

Grease a bowl.

Form a ball of dough.

Place dough into greased bowl and make sure you spin it around in there so the top gets oiled too.

Let it rise overnight in the fridge.

In the morning, take the dough out of the fridge. Let it warm up for 30 minutes before dumping it onto a floured surface.

Divide the dough in two.

Shape your loaves and place them into their own well oiled bread pans.

Use some of the remaining toasted sesame and flax seeds on the top of your loaves.
Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes. Let cool for 15-20 minutes in the pan. Carefully remove loaves from pans and let cool to room temperature.

Although it will smell a little like bird food this bread is definitely NOT for the birds. Flax and sesame are both very valuable nutritionally speaking...
Flax is rich in omega-3 fats and an excellent source of both soluble and insoluble fiber. "Flax is known as a 'blessed plant' that can bring good fortune, restore health, and protect against witchcraft " (from 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life! by David Grotto).
Sesame is not just good for getting into magical caves of treasure but also a great source of lignans and phytosterols which have been proven to fight cancer and heart disease.

Since you, loyal reader, must be wondering how Lil and I go through so much bread, I'll disclose our secret: it's a combination of boyfriends and the freezer.

We share with everybody we can -- boyfriends just happen to be the must willing and readily available samplers. And when we make a couple of loaves at once, as in this seedy sourdoughy example, we freeze one.

When you freeze a fresh loaf of bread make sure it is totally cool before you seal it tightly in a ziplock and put in into the freezer. When thawing your bread, just be patient and let it come to room temperature out of the ziplock. If you are feeling impatient, nuke it in the microwave on it's defrost setting. Again, no plastic (clearly).

Close Sesame!

-Sarah

End note: When I try another seedy loaf, and if you are ambitious enough to try one yourself, I highly recommend doing something to the seeds on the top -- maybe an egg wash or just brush with some water. They need some glue to hold them down onto the bread and keep them off of the entire apartment.

And also: It was fantastic to have a successful sourdough after that black bread experience that came out more like a hockey puck than bread. Those loaves were for the birds.

Sourdough Pancakes II

2010-04-18T16:59:00.007-04:00

A while ago I made my first batch of Sourdough Pancakes. They were awesome and I have craved them several times since. Unfortunately, my craving usually strikes early in the morning.. and then I am all deflated when I realize the batter needs to sit overnight.
So, after several disappointing pancake-less mornings, I realized I should just look up a recipe for same-day Sourdough Pancakes. This Joe Pastry recipe caught my eye because it doesn't call for any additional flour or water -- it's all stater!

I adapted the recipe a little bit because 2 cups of starter would make a huge tower of pancakes for two people. Even halved, this recipe could potentially serve 3-4 people especially if you make a hefty portion of scrambled eggs and strawberry syrup.

Same-day Sourdough Pancakes topped with Strawberry Syrup and served with Scrambled Eggs
(Printable Recipe)

Use:

1 cup ripe sourdough starter

1/2 egg (+other half and extras for scrambled eggs on the side)

1 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon baking soda combined with 1/2 tablespoon water

1. Measure starter into a bowl.

2. Combine baking soda and water and let sit while you mix together all other ingredients in a separate bowl. Reserve the other half of the egg separately for some scrambled (or your favorite style) eggs.

3. Fold the sugar, salt, oil, and 1/2 egg mixture into the starter. Then, stir in the baking soda water.

4. The mixture should bubble/foam.

5. Fry and serve!

Don't forget to scramble up your eggs while the pan is still hot!

Simple Strawberry Syrup
(Printable Recipe)

Use:

Strawberries

Pinch of sugar (optional)

1. Cut up as many strawberries as you can eat and pop them into a saucepan over medium heat.

2. Add a pinch of sugar if you feel so inclined.

3. Stir occasionally about 5 minutes. You'll know when it's done. HINT: do not use strawberries in photo above to determine done-ness. Use your other senses.

Top with whipped cream if you are feeling feisty.

Happy Sunday!
- Sarah

Nobody's Perfect Homemade Breadcrumbs and Three Cheese Macaroni with Broccoli

2010-04-12T20:08:00.003-04:00

I love raisins. Somebody along the line taught me that raisins are candy. I suspect it's the same person who taught me sweet potatoes are ice cream.

I mention raisins not only because I adore them but also because I baked the Dark Pumpernickel with Raisins from Bread Alone this past weekend. The recipe called for 2 cups of the little sundried grapes! And the longest part of the whole process (aside from having established starter) is the 8 hours prior to any dough mixing/kneading that you need to soak the raisins! The best part is that the recipe calls for 1 cup of said raisin-soaking water AND a cup of strong coffee. Andy is a perfect combination of hilarious and disgusting and so he said this to me as I read him the recipe, "Skip the middle man and just dump it down the toilet!"

Everything was lined up for this bread to be awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I didn't bother halving the huge recipe. Look at all of the loaves I yielded:

Note the two different colors happening...

The color disparities are not the least of the problems with this bread. The color is actually quite interesting. What happened is I baked two long loaves on a cookie sheet, uncovered and the boule in the dutch oven, covered. So, in the future I know to get a deeper color to leave the bread covered. Valuable lesson learned. What's not so desirable about these loaves is the density. The sourdough starter I used had thawed from the freezer. I let it warm up in the refrigerator for 48 hours, stirring when I could. I saw that it smelled and appeared active to I used it in the recipe. Unfortunately, I think it was too tired to give the bread any lift. Another lesson learned, don't debut starter that has been frozen for weeks until you discard and feed it AT LEAST once. That being said, these loaves taste delicious and I am going to try this recipe again without a doubt once my starter is more eager.

In slightly older news, I ruined the Multigrain Bread with Sunflower Seeds that Lil baked once before. Slowing that bread down in the fridge didn't work so hot and we wanted to try it again to get a better rise. Lil and I were both busy bees so we tag-teamed this bread. It starts as a sponge and then you add more ingredients and it becomes a dough, basically.

The recipe unintentionally adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

1 cup uncooked multigrain cereal (we use Bob's Red Mill)

1 1/2 cups hot water

1 cup buttermilk (or faux buttermilk = milk + white vinegar)

2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast

2 tablespoons honey or malt syrup

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 cup sunflower seeds

4 cups whole wheat flour

See that part where it says 2 1/2 teaspoons? Well, I didn't. I read tablespoons and threw them in before rushing off to yoga. Is rushing to yoga counterproductive?

Anyways, the bread came out VERY saltly. We turned it into breadcrumbs. You can make breadcrumbs with any type of bread. I'd recommend a basic bread -- more of a whole wheat or multigrain instead of a dark raisin pumpernickel, for example. Breadcrumbs are a practical alternative for dry on-the-way-to-stale bread. Plus, you can use them to enhance many dishes i.e. macaroni and cheese!

How to Make Homemade Breadcrumbs

1. Slice bread.

2. Lay out in a single layer on a cookie sheet.

3. Toast in a 300°F for about 10 - 15 minutes.

4. Tear dried bread into smaller pieces and blend in your food processor. Or, if you are us and do not own a food processor, get chopping! Either way, leave them coarse so that you have the option to go finer.

Store in the freezer!

Sarah Style Three-cheese Macaroni with Broccoli

This is Sarah Style because it was impromptu and there are a million different variations.

You need:

pasta (I use 100% Whole Wheat chiocciole from bionaturae)

cheese (I have a personal bias toward Cabot)

butter (unsalted)

milk (2%)

all-purpose flour (unbleached)

vegetable (I had broccoli in the fridge)

and breadcrumbs.

You whip it up like this:

Cook the pasta al dente and blanche your vegetable (like I mentioned, I used broccoli, but cauliflower, peas, or a combo would work here).

While the pasta cooks, melt a tablespoon of butter. Add about a half cup of milk and a teaspoon of flour. Then, add LOTS of cheese. Cheddar doesn't melt all that great, but it tastes good. If you use it I recommend pairing it with a cheese that melts better. I used Cabot's Horseradish cheese. Sounds weird, and it kind of is but it's good in mac and cheese.

Pour it all (vegetable, pasta, cheese sauce) together in a casserole dish.

Top with breadcrumbs and loads of parmesan cheese.

Bake at 350°F for about 30 minutes.

Mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food so I figure it goes well with the dense black bread and the over-salted multigrain turned to breadcrumbs mistake post.

Nobody's perfect. Except raisins.

- Sarah

P.S. Youtube "nobody's perfect doglover199709" if you need a pick me up and don't have time to make macaroni.

Sourdough 101

2010-04-04T16:34:00.005-04:00

To leaven means to lift or lighten. As I mentioned in the Matzah post, leavening agents include: yeast, baking soda, baking power, and lactobacilli (sourdough) bacteria. All basically work by producing tiny bubbles (carbon dioxide) that are trapped within the doughs glutenous structure and therefore making the dough rise.

Sourdough, or in fancy French levain, does not rely on domestic yeast in order to rise. Some recipes call for yeast because it helps sourdough along and (arguably) improves flavor.

Since sourdough is essentially Pâte Fermentée or fermented dough you can go about it with shortcuts or through the whole rigmarole..

Some Sourdough Shortcuts

Route 1 - Dirt Backroads

If you bake a lot of bread you'll love this option -- Don't wash your dishes. Scrape down dough, hydrate if needed, and incorporate into the new dough. The only exception is if you are using dishes from an eggy bread (i.e. Challah). Clean that up. But seriously, you can use up to 2 cups of old dough in any new batch.

Route 2 - Drive Slow

You can sort of make any bread into a faux-sourdough by mix together the flour, water, and yeast (if applicable) and allowing it extra time (at least overnight) to ferment or retard.

Route 3 - The Super Highway

Almost anybody who is awesome enough to maintain their own sourdough starter would gift a batch to you. If you live in the NYC area - we'd love to share.

Whole Rigamarole of Sourdough Starter (An Overview)

I am not going to post any proportions because I simply haven't tried enough starters from scratch to endorse one or another. Scroll the to bottom of this post for a short list of resources. For our sourdough mother dough/starter/sponge we used the 7-day plan in The King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion.

What you need:

Basically, all other recipes I read have you starting with flour, water, and a tiny bit of sweet (sugar, molasses, honey). Sometimes yeast.

What you do:

Every 24 hours after your initial mix, you discard a portion (usually half) of your starter and feed it a mixture of all-purpose flour and water. Be on top of feeding every 22-26 hours. Don't let it go much shorter/longer than a full day because it is young and immature. Be patient!!! Some starters may take more than a week to become established.

What you are going for:

Established starter has a predictable rise and fall pattern. It smells winey. There are bubbles that break the surface. If you check on your starter and see creases, this means the starter recently achieved it's greatest volume and is deflating. To the touch, you'll find that gluten has developed -- the starter will feel elastic-y.

Once your starter is established:

I recommend baking a Pain au Levain to start and going from there. Every loaf will be more flavorful as the starter ages. Whole grains bring out the twang in sourdough. I have also read some recipes (in the future I will try them) that call for vinegar or other acidity to vamp up the vavavoom of sourdough.

Where to store starter:

Maintain your starter either on your countertop, feeding daily. Or in your fridge, feeding weekly.

You can also freeze the starter if feeding once a week is too much. When you are ready to pick up caring for the starter again you must let it thaw in the fridge for 24 hours before discarding half and feeding it. If you store starter in the fridge it's good to let it work outside the fridge for a couple of hours before baking. Always allow it at least two hours to work after any feeding.

What to store starter in:

Store your starter in a nonreactive container -- like stainless steel, glass, plastic, ceramic. These materials are nonreactive because they do not react with acidic ingredients the way copper and aluminum do. I recommend a clear one so that you can watch your starter grow. If you don't mind donating a whole tupperware to your starter (as we have) you can mark the rises and falls, highs and lows. Especially in the first weeks it's super exciting to watch.

What to feed starter:

Feed starter whatever you last fed your starter (usually equal parts, by weight, all-purpose flour and water). You can increase the volume of your starter for a special recipe or to gift some to a special someone by feeding it extra but stick with the same proportion of flour and water. If you feel the urge to feed your starter a different type of flour (say, rye or whole wheat for example) resist that temptation and just bake a sourdough rye loaf. If you want your starter to thrive you have to be predictable and reliable in when and what you feed it.

If your starter becomes dormant/neglected:

You'll see a clear, dark liquid where you usually see bubbles and creases. It will smell very strong. Don't worry -- the starter is not dead it is just suffocating! Stir the liquid on top into the starter, pour off all but 4 ounces and feed it twice a day until it is revived. Healthy, bubbly, and active. If you have any sign of pink or reddish mold (VERY rare) and your starter smells putrid throw it out. Dangerous microorganisms have, against all odds, begun to take over the lactobacillus bacteria. Start from scratch.

Inheriting or gifting a sourdough starter is very special. In my opinion, there is a pinch too much value placed on generations old sourdough cultures. It's romantic, no doubt. But, your mother's-father's-uncle's century old sourdough starter is no more authentic than the one sitting in my fridge right now.

Not to get too deep into the history of it, but San Francisco claims the oldest sourdough starters in the U.S. dating back to the Gold Rush. The prospectors didn't have the dough ($$cashmoney) to feed themselves so when they baked bread they reserved some of the dough for the next loaf. Over time, the dough fermented more and more into the modern sourdough flavor we all love.

Somehow, the heirloom-nature of sourdough makes it intimidating but the amateur-home baker should NOT be discouraged by sourdough starter and all of it's rigamarole. All the fancy French words don't help make it seem easy either. But really, it is flour+water+sugar and time. Starting your own sourdough starter is almost as good as having a pet. I admittedly have a nostalgic attachment to my starter. It's a little weird... so now that I've opened up to you about my love for the starter currently frozen for Passover, you should try making your own!

Resources to get you (and your starter) started:
- The Fresh Loaf

Details day-by-day procedure for making a starter using rye flour and juice!

- Yumarama Bread Blog

Uses The Fresh Loaf method above and goes through the process step-by-step comparing it to a water-based starter.

- Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik

Gives "A Gentle Introduction" for a 4-day starter into a rye loaf. Their starter begins with yeast.

- The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion

We used the KAFlour 7-day plan that starts with rye flour and eventually uses all-purpose.

- Or if you really don't want to read, this guy does a good job of explaining the basics and moving his lips to other words:

Comment here or email theupperyeastside@gmail.com and we will try our best to help you through it!

- Sar

Whole Wheat Rye Loaf Revisited

2010-03-30T15:34:00.001-04:00

This post exists solely to let you know how delicious the Whole Wheat Rye Loaf was. 4 days later I baked a second loaf (since the first was long gone) and it came out just as wonderfully, if not even better than the first due to the extra time in the fridge. I'm definitely going to revisit the recipe and play around with it a bit, so I'll post the full recipe once I've made some changes. In the meantime, go get Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and make yourself some of that rye bread.

-Lil

Homemade Matzah: Flatbread Not Cardboard!

2010-03-29T20:01:00.003-04:00

On Passover, Jews do not eat bread (or anything that rises for that matter). Long story short, we do this because indecisive Pharaoh released the Jews (only after all the convincing of the 10 plagues) and they high-tailed it out of there. In their haste, they whipped up a crude dough but they did not have time to allow it to rise. Jim Lahey's no-knead technique was a no-go. And it's a good thing they didn't wait around -- Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his men after the Jews. Then, the miraculous scene we all know with the Red Sea parting, allowing the Jews to run to safety and (spill some wine) swallowing up the Egyptians chasing after them. For thousands and thousands of years thereafter, all Jews everywhere would suffer through eating cardboard-esque Matzah, or flatbread typically consumed on the Jewish holiday of Passover.

As a Jew with a bread blog and Pesach fast approaching, I was both relieved and excited to try Mark Bittman's recipe for Olive Oil Matzah. We modified the recipe a bit by using white whole wheat flour and adjusting the liquid slightly to compensate.

White Whole Wheat Matzah
(Printable Recipe)

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 cup water (and a little extra)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt

Preheat oven to 550°F
Stir together flours.
Add oil slowly as you mix with a hand blender or food processor.
Help dough come together with hands.
Divide into 12 equally sized pieces.
Roll out as thin as you can.
Arrange on baking sheet and either make little holes with a fork, or don't.
Bake for two minutes on first side.
Flip, and bake for another minute until golden brown.
Let cool and top with haroset, horseradish, or some cream cheese and enjoy!

Leavening Agents: A short list of culprits on the rise...
Yeast
Lactobacilli bacteria (Sourdough starter)
Baking soda (like in Irish Dairy Bread Buns)

A leavening agent is anything used in a dough or batter that causes it to rise thereby lightening/fluffing the finished product. In bread, when the water mixes with the flour a matrix supported by gluten is formed in the dough. This matrix traps the bubbles from yeast/lactobacilli/baking soda leaving behind the beautiful holes we all see in our loaves. For the eight days of Passover anything that rises is a big a no-no. My chametz (sourdough starter) is living in the freezer for the time being.

“If that’s moving up then I’m moving out.”

Disclaimer: The kosher-ness of this Matzah is questionable. From what I understand, to get the little U in a circle you need to finish the cooking process in 18 minutes flat. Our first batch was out of the oven by then but since we have a tiny oven we had to cook the 3-minute flatbreads in shifts.

Chag Sameach
- Sarah

Luck of the Irish Soda Bread Buns

2010-03-23T20:59:00.001-04:00

"I want another piece!"

"I love Irish Bread!"

"It's still warm. It tastes warm and yummy warm!"

The critics agree, Irish Soda Bread is awesome! Now, I am sure you are wondering who these tough critics are.. So I'll tell you: they are the four-year-olds in my UWS nursery school classroom.

As picky eaters go, nursery school children top the charts. In this infamously picky crowd, it is almost unbelievable that every child present in school today ate (devoured) their portion of Irish Soda Bread. Not all, but most, requested more. This cooking project supports my belief that if you allow children the opportunity to take part in cooking and food prep they are more apt to try (and love) foods.

With all of this bread baking in our UES apartment I have been looking for an opportunity to bring it crosstown into my classroom. I feel that cooking is great for kids and that bread especially is therapeutic -- the kneading is a perfect outlet for movement.. and in a productive way! So, as Saint Patrick's Day approached I planned to make Irish Soda Bread with the classroom.

Children "folding and smooshing" aka kneading:

I modeled kneading and asked them to describe what I was doing. I threw in the word "kneading" and gave equal (if not more) emphasis to "fold and smoosh." Some children wanted to shape their dough "like playdough" which is perfect. They played and kneaded for about 5-10 minutes and rolled the dough into a ball as they were ready to put it onto the baking sheet.

A soda bread is a term that encompasses a everything from your basic baking soda-flour-salt bread to a sweeter, raisin-filled, more dessert-like soda "bread" (in quotes because it may be more cake-like than bread). American's are more familiar with the cake-style and the Irish are more familiar with the basic, bread. It is a quick bread which means there is less wait time because the recipe doesn't call for any yeast -- the rising agent is the baking soda.

Luck of the Irish Dairy Bread Buns (adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion)
(Printable Recipe)

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375°F.
Combine dry ingredients. Blend thoroughly making sure to press out any lumps in baking soda.
Add butter.
Use fingers to rub in butter.
Make a well in the center.
Count to 20 while slowly pouring in buttermilk.
Stir gently.
Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until dough comes together.
Divide into 6-8 equally sized pieces.
Knead and shape individually.
Bake for about 20-30 minutes** until golden brown.
Let cool and finally, ENJOY!

**If you bake this as a whole loaf of bread you'll need to adjust the cooking time to be longer, about 40 minutes.

I will spare you most of the teachable moments this recipe provides.. counting to 20, digging the well, etc. I could go on and on. Lil can testify. I would like to note the fourth step, using fingers to rub the butter into the flour. It was a fantastic tactile experience for the children with the exception of one child who had a sensory hesitation so I invited him use a spoon. Even he participated in the kneading. Both kneading and stirring with the hands provided awesome, joyful learning experiences.

Happy belated Saint Patrick's Day!
- Sarah

Whole Wheat Rye Loaf and a Lesson in Economics

2010-03-21T21:52:00.001-04:00

OK, so I won't really bore you with a lesson in economics. Supply, demand, equilibrium, free trade yadda, yadda, yadda. I was an Economics major in college, so I know exactly how dull that all can be. There is a very important and relevant theme throughout economics, though, that I think we need to talk about - saving money.

Here's a condensed version of Microeconomics 101 (I lied; I am going to bore you): Consumers won't pay above a certain price for a good simply because it's in their best interest to save money so that they can keep as much of it as possible. Suppliers, on the other hand, demand that consumers pay above a certain price for that same good because they, too, would like to get their hands on more money. Everyone's really looking for the same thing - to keep as much money in their own wallets as possible.

The bread market is no different than any other economic market out there. Suppliers, be they large manufacturers or small local bakeries, need you to buy their bread for far more than the cost to make it in order to make money. You, on the other hand, would like to keep that money, right? Luckily, there's an easy and delicious solution here:

Make your own bread!

I'm not saying that the little old woman down the street is diabolically planning to chip away at your life savings by charging $6 or more for a loaf of her wonderful bread, because she also needs to pay the bills. What I am saying is that, if you can't afford to pay the lovely woman down the street for her healthy, natural, and scrumptious loaves, making your own bread is a far better alternative than buying cheaper sandwich loaves from the store. I'm not saying that's the worst thing in the world either, but why not avoid the preservatives and processed ingredients if you can?

Sar and I recently took Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois out from the library. Not only is the book filled with delicious recipes, it proves that baking bread is not inconvenient. Additionally, I'm here to prove to you exactly how economical it is to turn your kitchen into a pseudo artisan bakery. For the Whole Wheat Rye that I made from the book (I won't post the recipe, since I didn't really make many changes, so please check out the book or the authors' website) I needed the following ingredients:

White whole wheat flour, dark rye flour, bread flour, yeast, salt, and water.

This is what they cost here on the UES:

King Arthurs brand white whole wheat flour - $5.69 (5 lbs)

Bob's Red Mill brand dark rye flour - $3.24 (1 lb 6 oz)

Gold Metal brand bread flour - $4.89 (5 lbs)

Fleischmann's brand active dry yeast - 2.69 (3 packets)

Salt & Water - basically free

Grand Total - $16.51

To make the bread I mixed all of the dry ingredients together and then added the water and mixed it until just combined - no kneading in this recipe! This is what it looked like in the bright afternoon light of our kitchen:

I let this sit, covered with plastic wrap and out of the sun, for 5 or 6 hours until it looked like this:

Once the dough reached that stage, I took half of it it out and shaped it into a boule. This was extremely challenging given the stickiness of the dough, but some extra flour on my hands and sprinkled on the dough made it possible. I sprinkled some corn meal over the top and let the boule rest for another 40 minutes. Here it is looking very controlled:

Once the boule finished resting, I quickly slashed the top with a serrated bread knife and popped it in a 450 degree F oven for 30 minutes. Ta-da!!

Now, if you breakdown the prices shown above into the amount that you spend on just one of the two amazing loaves the recipe made, the total cost per loaf is only $1.47! This would probably be even less if you live somewhere that grocery prices aren't as absurdly high. The cherry on top is that this bread took less effort than navigating the narrow aisles of Manhattan supermarkets and schlepping a sub-par loaf back to your apartment. Alternatively, the price should be enough for you to graciously say "good-bye!" to that kind old woman at the bakery down the street.

-Lil

PS - I'm here to tell you that caraway seeds are NOT a necessary part of a good rye bread. Since Sar and I are officially done with our feud, I'll say it loud and proud - I absolutely hate caraway seeds.

Don't Yuck My Yum Sourdough Olive Bread

2010-03-14T14:18:00.002-04:00

This Sourdough Olive Bread uses White Whole Wheat flour!

I made it because I promised Nell I'd have a fresh loaf of Sourdough Olive Bread upon her arrival to New York. However, this is also a retaliation post.

In a previous post, Lil confessed her dislike of raisins. It used to be a much stronger hatred but I can give her some credit for letting raisins grow on her. Fortunately, somebody taught me from a young age that raisins are candy.

Our all out war over who was pickier started many many moons ago. We were young and hot blooded. I was upset that as a vegetarian I was treated as a picky eater. Meat aside I eat most everything else. I have never met a fruit or a vegetable I didn't love. Except olives. And mushrooms (but they're a fungus). Both olives and mushrooms have a gross, slug-like texture. I've never eaten a slug but if I did I am sure it would be just like a salty icky olive. I can enjoy them when they are chopped up in a sauce or soup and (sometimes) on a pizza. Otherwise, no thank you. That is, until I met olive bread.

For this olive bread, I set out planning on doing the Pain au Levain (the first sourdough experience) again and folding in olives. I read that when you add nuts or olives to a sourdough loaf you need to compensate the waterworks. For nuts, add a little extra water since they tend to dry out dough. And for olives, use a little less water and salt because they are wet and salty. Makes perfect sense.

While measuring the flour, I realized we only had only enough all purpose to feed the starter... This is like the Nes Gadol Haya Sham (Chanukah miracle) of Sourdough breads:

Sourdough Olive Bread

(Printable Recipe)

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

2 cups white whole wheat flour

2 cups sourdough starter

1 3/4 cups water

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup kalamata olives (although next time I would probably use a full cup)

Combine flours, water, olive oil and starter. Stir well and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
Carefully dump out onto a floured surface (I used bread flour).
Fold in the salt and chopped kalamata olives. I've learned that you don't really knead sourdough in the typical way. Folding and patting the dough into thirds (sort of like you were folding a piece of paper to go into an envelope), rotating 90 degrees and repeating is the way to go so as to prevent degassing the good lactobilli bacteria.
Shape into a boule and let it rise for one hour in a olive-oiled bowl. Be sure to turn the dough in the bowl so that the top gets oily as well.
If you'd like, now is the chance to retard your loaf. Either, pop it into the fridge overnight or proceed to step 6.
Preheat oven to 450°F and let it rise for another hour outside of the fridge. Remember to preheat your cast iron pan and dutch oven with the oven. Also, have your water boiled on the stovetop and ready to turn your oven into a sauna.
Shape, slash, brush with olive oil, and bake for 20 minutes steamy and uncovered (resist opening oven door) and an additional 25 minutes steam-less, covered until the crust is richly colored and the internal temperature** of the loaf is 200°F.
Let it cool in dutch oven for 10 minutes.
Resist cutting into your bread until it is completely cool. Listen to it sing (crackle pop noises of water escaping out of the crust). It's worth the wait.
We recommend this bread with hummus, dunked in olive oil, or topped with a slice of brie cheese.

**Internal Thermometers are relatively inexpensive and very helpful in bread baking. We have one similar to this... It's a foolproof way to know if your bread is cooked through.

So, Lil can eat raisins and I can eat olives. Which is good because olives are really a miracle fruit. They contain heart-healthy monounsaturated fat and natural antioxidants.

I am over this "who is pickier" war and I am ready to sign the treaty. I will eat the cilantro and Lil will eat the mushrooms. And of course, I'll finish the milk. All in all, our "No Thank You" lists are relatively short and complimentary to each other.

What started out as a retaliation post has turned into a peace-making post.

☮ - Sarah

Naan (Yogurt Flatbread) with Cauliflower Lentil Dal

2010-03-10T22:26:00.019-05:00

This is getting serious. We need a bigger oven.

I had to bake this bread in two shifts because we can only fit one cookie sheet at a time in our oven.

I'd like to introduce The Upper Yeast Side to Flatbread. Naan, meet The Upper Yeast Side. UYS, meet Naan.

Naan is a type of flatbread originating from Central Asia.

How exotic. It's glutenous, almost like a small, thin pizza crust.
If you've ever gone out to Indian food and wondered how to make that awesome warm, thin bread they served you... Keep reading. Disclaimer: I hope that I in no way butchered classic naan bread (if so, please email me privately to discuss). To my melting pot taste buds this bread turned out awesome -- next time I am going to try brushing the top with herbed olive oil and garlic.

Naan (Yogurt Flatbread) with Cauliflower Lentil Dal
(Printable Recipe)
Prep time: About 1 1/2 hours
Yield: 10 naan breads and a big pot of dal!

For Naan (recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison):
1/4 cup warm water
2 1/2 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast
3/4 cup hot water
3/4 cup plain yogurt (low fat or whole milk)
1/4 cup butter or ghee**
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat bran
1 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
**I used olive oil because I forgot two things: to replenish our butter and to look for ghee.

For Dal (recipe inspriation from Bitten Blog -- his "Spiced Red Lentil Dal" specifically):
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup dried lentils, rinsed
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 3 cloves)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric or curry powder
4 cups cauliflower florets
Cayenne pepper (optional, but recommended), black pepper and salt to taste
5 tablespoons plain yogurt
Chopped fresh parsley or cilantro for garnish

Game plan:
About 12 hours before you want to embark on this Indian journey, rinse and soak 1 cup of your favorite dried lentils.
Start by proofing the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. Give it 10 minutes to bubble. While you wait, combine all other ingredients EXCEPT the 3 cups of white flour (1.5 bread 1.5 all-purpose) for the naan. By the time you've measured and combined, the yeast should be bubbly.
Add it to the hot water, yogurt, butter, salt, whole wheat flour, and wheat bran. Slowly stir in as much white flour as the dough will absorb. Then, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead in more flour until it feels wet-tacky but doesn't stick to your fingers (this may mean washing said fingers).
Now, your dough needs to rest in an oiled bowl for about an hour. Turn the dough in the bowl so that the top gets oiled also.

No time to waste -- get going on the dal! Heat the vegetable oil in a pot. Add the onion first followed by the ginger and the garlic. All should be chopped to your liking -- I recommend the onion diced and the ginger and garlic minced. After about 3 minutes (or once it smells awesome), add the lentils and enough water to bury everything underwater about 1inch. Add the spices of your choice -- I highly recommend turmeric and coriander (or curry powder which is really the combo of turmeric+coriander+some other spices) and as much cayenne as you can handle. Simmer for about 20 minutes.
While it's cooking, chop up cauliflower. Set cauliflower aside and check on your Naan.

The dough should be doubled in bulk by now. Preheat the oven and a pizza stone (if you have one) or a cookie sheet to 450°F. Then, dump dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Cut dough into 10-12 equal pieces. Shape into balls and let it rest, covered with a cotten dishtowel, for 10 minutes.
Take this time to check on the dal. Pop cauliflower in there. Stir it up. Cook until tender until there is little to no water. Turn off heat and stir in 5 tablespoons of plain yogurt. Serve garnished with parsley or cilantro.
Flatten the naan with your fingers -- poke it in the shape of a sand dollar with your fingers. You want a bumpy surface so you achieve the perfect combination of crispy-chewy. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

I used flat leaf parsley as a garnish -- Lil thinks cilantro tastes like soap.

naan naan naan naan hey hey hey goodbye

- Sar

P.S. Add to Wish List: A pizza stone (assuming it would fit in our oven).

The Inevitable Stuffing Post

2010-03-09T21:25:00.003-05:00

Here it is, folks. Stuffing! I know, most people don't even think about stuffing unless its the last Thursday in November, but this dish is something I think about weekly (at least). My best friend Emily once delivered a 10 minute speech to someone I've never met detailing my love for stuffing. It's the stuff that legends are made of.

Savory herbs paired with moist bread - I have no idea what about it is so fabulous, since it really doesn't sound too great in print. Oh, well. I love it and you should, too. Here's all you'll need:

Savory Cornbread Stuffing
(Printable Recipe)
Serves 8

1 loaf of this cornbread (or your favorite bread), cut into 1/2 - 1 inch cubes
1 medium (or 1/2 large onion), diced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoon dried sage
2 teaspoon dried parsley, or about 1/3 cup chopped, fresh parsley
1 cup veggie broth

What to do:
First, saute the onion, garlic, and celery until translucent and soft. Add the herbs (except for the parsley, if using fresh) along with salt & pepper to taste. In a large bowl, toss this mixture with the cubed bread. Slowly add 1/2 to 1 cup of the veggie broth until the bread is moist. The amount of liquid you use is completely up to you - I prefer my stuffing to be pretty moist, but you may like yours to be a bit more dry.

Let the stuffing sit with itself so that the flavors can meld while you heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Once heated, transfer the stuffing to a greased baking dish. If you're using fresh parsley, toss it in with the rest of the mixture right before baking. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the top is golden and crunchy.

We ate the stuffing along-side Brussels sprouts that were tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt & pepper and then roasted until they browned around the edges. Both of these dishes would be perfect for Thanksgiving. If you're like us, though, you're thankful enough on any night of the week - at any time of the year - to enjoy some of the holiday's classic flavors.

-Lil

Basic Whole Wheat Sourdough Boule: Isolating the Variables

2010-03-06T12:32:00.018-05:00

The following recipe is an The Upper Yeast Side original with inspiration from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion (as always). It takes a full 24 hours.

Basic Whole Wheat Sourdough Boule
(Printable Recipe)

Baking time: 40 minutes Yield: One medium-sized boule.

Use:

2 cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup rye flour

¼ cup bread flour

¾ cup water

¼ cup oil

1 cup sourdough starter

A little semolina flour for dusting

Do:

Combine flour. Reserve ½ cup whole wheat for kneading.
To the flour, add liquid and starter (straight from the fridge)
Stir well. Get your hand in there until it’s all combined.
Autolyse. Let it be for 20 – 30 minutes.
Then, knead in salt and an additional flour (as needed). The proportion ends up being 2.5 cups flour:1 cup liquid (water+oil):1 cup starter
Let it rise, covered, for 2 hours.
After a couple hours, move it to the fridge. Retard over night.
First thing the following morning, remove dough from fridge. Allow it to warm at room temperature for at least an hour.
Preheat oven to 450°F with cast iron pan and dutch oven inside. At the same time, boil water on the stove top. Let your dough be on the stove top so it can warm up slowly with the oven.
Dust pan and boule lightly with semolina flour.
Cook in a steamy oven, uncovered, for 15 minutes. For details on how to turn your oven into a sauna, click here and scroll toward bottom of post. After 15 minutes, open oven door and let steam escape. Quickly (and carefully), remove cast iron pan. Lower oven temperature to 375°F and bake for an additional 25 minutes, covered.
Turn off oven and open oven door. Allow bread ten more minutes just where it is, door open and all.
Remove dutch oven from oven. Remove bread from dutch oven. You can close the oven door now. Let cool. Enjoy!

My boule came out with a moist crumb and a soft crust. It rose slowly, but surely -- whole grains slow leavening.

Variables: So, this week in my Science for Teachers class we had an open-ended, free investigation of pendulums. Without any explicit instruction we encountered all the different variables affecting the path of our bobs. Granted, we are graduate students. The idea is that this happens when you allow third graders free exploration as well. It got me thinking on the crosstown bus ride home: What variables have Lil and I discovered that affect bread-baking in our kitchen?

Hydration of Starter

The hydration of starter refers to the consistency (thickness/thinness) of your batter. My batter is 100% hydration because I add equal parts (by weight) of flour and water. Every week when I use starter in a recipe and then feed it I add 8oz. (1 cup) water and 8oz. (2 cups) all purpose flour. This makes a wet, dough-like consistency. Some recipes I have read call for a wetter starter and others a drier starter. In both cases, I would modify the liquid in the recipe rather than worry about disrupting my happy, established starter. It's really matured since the days when it was exploding all over our apartment.

Wild Yeast: Let's rage!

Wild yeast is mysterious. Wild yeast is…

…the bread knowing that other bread has been baked here before. Areas that bake bread regularly have a high level of wild yeast in the air. Bread knows when other bread is around. The more bread you bake the more wild yeast lives in your kitchen.

…the difference between rotting and fermenting. Wild yeast is what keeps our sourdough starter from becoming infested with strange mold and bacteria. Wild yeast brings starter to life, in a good way not a scary way.

...the reason we can bake a delicious sourdough bread without "domestic yeast" (instant or dry active packets).

Forecast and Elevation of Bakery: What’s in the air?

Location affects bread. Bread depends on the interactions of flour, leavening agents, and liquid to do it’s thing. Throwing atmospheric pressure into the mix is not in the recipe. Bread and different baked goods require different types of adjustments. For yeast breads, The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion says:

· Decrease the amount of yeast in the recipe by 25% and use your own judgment to make (slow, careful) water/flour proportion adjustments to get your dough to be the right “tacky” texture.

· Allow your dough a longer, slower rise.

· If you have sourdough starter, supplement a small amount in place of the liquid in your recipe.

Beside elevation, the weather also affects bread. The Breadcast: Moisture in the air affects dry ingredients. On humid days, flour will want to absorb less water than on hot, dry days. It’s not as thirsty because there is already water in the air. In addition, yeast loves a warm, wet day. Rainy days are perfect for baking! When it’s wet outside, your flour will want a little less water so just be aware of the texture of your dough.

Crust and crumb shot:

After having just tasted it, I feel this bread would be delicious with some extra-sharp cheddar Cabot cheese. When I meet my parents in Larchmont later tonight, I will barter with them -- trading this loaf for replenishing our cheese. Fair trade.

- Sarah

Such Good Cornbread

2010-03-05T22:58:00.003-05:00

I'm the kind of person with a million different favorites. It's impossible for me to pin down my favorite color (purple? coral? blue?), I've always had more than one "best friend", and I cannot, for the life of me, pick my favorite food. I am obsessed with pumpkin pie, I drool over Goldfish crackers, and my love for stuffing (OH, stuffing!) is epic. Cornbread is another one of my favorites, albeit this is a lesser-known love of mine.

I've never had success in making my own cornbread from scratch. I've only made quick, cake-like cornbread recipes and have always shied away from the amount of oil or butter necessary to make them moist and delicious. This recipe (adapted from 101 Cookbooks) really spoke to me since it's a yeast bread, but it still contains the aspects of classic cornbread that make it so delicious - juicy corn kernels, sweet honey, and toothy cornmeal.

Incidentally, I've changed the original recipe quite a bit. Not necessarily on purpose, but these things happen. The largest change I made to the recipe is to include semolina flour in addition to corn meal. Semolina, which is most often used when making fresh pasta, is more fine than cornmeal, but still gives more texture than run-of-the-mill wheat flour. Dennis' mom generously donated the semolina to Sar and I to use in our bread-baking adventures.

Flour Power:

Whole Wheat flour, Corn meal, Semolina flour, Bread flour

Yeasted Cornbread
(Printable Recipe)

More loosely adapted from this recipe at 101 Cookbooks than planned

Makes 2 standard sandwich loaves

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

1 cup semolina flour

1/2 cup corn meal

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup warm water

1 package active dry yeast

1 cup corn (fresh or frozen - thawed, if frozen)

3 tablespoons honey

1/4 cup olive oil

2 eggs

Start by mixing the flours and the salt in a bowl. Just so you know right now, you might not use all of this. Accept it now - we hate waste as much as you do. But overly dry bread is no good either.

In a large bowl dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Once it's had a chance to dissolve for a few minutes, stir in the honey, eggs, corn, and oil. Once combined, add about 2/3 of the flour mixture and stir until combined. Once totally combined, add half of the remaining flour and combine. When it becomes too difficult to stir, turn the dough out onto a floured (use the bit left in the bowl) surface and knead it until combined. You can add some water if the dough seems too dry - it should be tacky. Knead for about 7-10 minutes.

Once you're done kneading - what an arm workout, right? - oil a bowl and place the dough in the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, until doubled. This should take about an hour. Next, cut the risen dough in half and place each half in an oiled/cornmeal lined bread pan. Allow this to rise until doubled again (another hour, or so). It's a good idea to start pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees F after about 30 minutes and to place the dough on top of the stove while the oven heats...dough loves a warm place to rise.

Once doubled in the pans, bake the loaves for about 45 minutes in the pre-heated oven. The internal temperature of the loaves will be 200 degrees F when they're done.

By the time the bread comes out of the oven you're going to be CRAZY over the smell that it fills your kitchen with - I'm practically dying as we speak. But WAIT! It hurts bread to cut into the loaf before allowing it to cool for at least an hour. I know, it's hard, but baking bread is a constant lesson in patience. Oh, and ENJOY (with some pear, butter, and a drizzle of honey)!

- Lil

PS - As you can probably guess, I'm going to turn the second loaf into stuffing. And it's going to be awesome. So watch out for that post.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Loaf (Low-Knead)

2010-02-28T20:03:00.007-05:00

This loaf is dedicated to the entire country of Chile, where they bake some of the most marvelous bread (pancito) in the world. For Chile:

...Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,

te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:

así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera...

P. Neruda

I think that Pablo often wrote in green to symbolize hope. I would hope that that's true but all of my hope is with the Chilenos right now.

This loaf was inspired by the recent New York Times article and video featuring Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery. While this loaf is not NO-knead, it is low-knead with minimal kneading and longer time to rest, rise, and ferment.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Loaf
(Printable Recipe)
1 cup warm water

¾ teaspoon active dry yeast

½ teaspoon sugar

1 cups sourdough starter

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ cup wheat germ

¼ cup wheat bran

½ cup bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

A little oil or butter (to grease bread pan)

First, take your starter out of the fridge.

Proof yeast in 2 tablespoons water and ½ a teaspoon of sugar.

While the yeast is proofing, combine 1 cup of whole wheat flour with the wheat germ, wheat bran, and bread flour. Spoon out 1 cup of your sourdough starter into a large mixing bowl. Add flour mixture, water, yeast (which should be nice and bubbly by now) and stir.

The dough will look wet. Let it rest like this for about 15-20 minutes. While it is resting measure out ½ cup of whole wheat flour and 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix them together and add to the dough.

Don’t be ashamed to get in there with your hands and give it a little knead to incorporate it all.

Once all the flour is incorporated, let the dough rise for 3-4 hours. Take time now to feed your starter and let it work outside of the fridge for at least 2 hours. When you come back to the dough it will be doubled and you’ll see some bubbles like those throughout sourdough starter.

Oil a bread pan.

Flour your surface generously using up to 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour as you knead the dough for no more than 5 minutes.

After you knead, place the dough into the bread pan and let rise for another hour.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Before you pop the loaf into the oven, slash the top about 1/4 inch down.

I slashed three diagonal lines.. as you can see.

Finally, cook for 40-45 minutes until bread sounds hollow when you tap it with your finger and the internal temperature is 180°F.

This is by far the most sourdoughy sourdough loaf yet! I think we got a nice sour loaf because of the maturity of our starter and the use of whole grains, which brings out the twang.

I concocted this recipe entirely in my mind. This dough turned out as wet as I would want it. Next time, I will use a little less water -- definitely using the 2 tablespoons of yeast-proofing water from a pre-measured cup of water rather than adding an additional 2 tablespoons on top of the cup.

The crumb came out super moist.

Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey say that "a 6-year-old could do it" in the NYTimes video (linked earlier in post). I believe that not only could a 6-year-old use Jim Lahey inspired methods to bake bread but a 6-year-old should have the opportunity to bake bread. And said 6-year-old must take part is as many kitchen experiences as are safe and reasonable for the grown-ups facilitating them. Check out the children's book Everybody Bakes Bread by Norah Dooley. Learning to cook is cooking to learn.

Besitos,
- La Saritah

Beets - They're the New Spinach, You Know

2010-02-27T11:29:00.003-05:00

On August 4, 2008, the New York Times published an article glorifying beets (check it out!). I couldn't have been more excited. You see, I absolutely love beets. My obsession began in Australia during Spring 2008 while I was studying abroad in Sydney. The Australians absolutely love beets (or, as they say, "beetroot") - on their burgers, in their salads, everywhere. It was fabulous.

I was a little upset to return home to the US in May only to find that beets were not everywhere I turned. The only thing worse that summer was my internship.

[Long story short, I'm not meant to be an investment banker.]

Enough about me, let's talk about BEETS! They're the new spinach, after all. That fact is something that Sar and I like to remind each other of often. Here's why:

- Beets are a fantastic source of folate (a b vitamin), potassium, magnesium, and iron.

- Not only does their red hue make them beautiful, the pigment contains powerful antioxidant compounds called betalains.

Aside from being extremely nutritious, beets also contribute to the world's sweet tooth. 1/3 of sugar globally comes from sugar beets, which have a particularly high sugar content.
The idea to bake Beet Bread came to me on Valentine's Day when Dennis and I were discussing good Valentine's lunch options. We settled on Beet Risotto, but found a recipe for Beet Bread that I knew I would try in the future. The future came on Wednesday evening and Dennis was kind enough to come over and help out with the process. Beets are a totally romantic vegetable.

Beet Bread

(adapted from this recipe from TheKneadForBread.com)

Starter:
1/4 tsp yeast (Active Dry)
1 cup bread flour
1 cup warm water

Mix these together in a large bowl and allow to sit at room temperature, tightly covered, for 12-16 hours. If you're planning on making the bread in the evening after work, it's a great idea to wake up at 6am, stir together the flour, water, and yeast, and then go back to bed for another hour. That's what I did. It was magical. It's also why I don't have any pictures; 6 am is far too early to be a photographer.

The Rest of the Ingredients (for lack of a better word):

1 cup roasted, peeled, and pureed beets

***I took care of this the night before. Here's how to roast beets:

- cut large beets in half

- place beets on aluminum foil and drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper

- optional: roast 1 or 2 whole cloves of garlic along with the beets

- wrap the beets in the foil and place in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes

- peel cooked beets after allowing to cool

- place beets in a blender and give 'em a whirl

If you don't need all of your beets to make the 1 cup of puree, eat the rest on salads drizzled with olive oil and vinegar ***

1/2 cup 8 grain cereal mix (we use Bob's Red Mill brand)

1/3 cup warm water
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups bread flour *as needed
3/4 tsp yeast (the same type used in the starter)
1 3/4 teaspoon salt

When you're home from work, uncover the starter and take a look at it. It will be nice a bubbly. Dump the beets in and stir it up until it's all combined. In a small bowl, combine the 8 grain cereal and water. Stir it up and let it sit for 10 minutes to hydrate the grains.

Meanwhile, add the yeast and whole wheat flour to the beet mixture and stir until completely combined. To the left, you will see that Dennis took on this task. Stir in the multigrain mix and let the dough rest for 10 minutes. These 10 minutes give the yeast some time to munch on the sugars in the beets and flour before the salt is added.

This resting period is the perfect time to clean off the surface where you'll knead the dough. It's also a good time to get started on dinner because you haven't eaten since lunch and you're hungry. So get going on that - no one likes a grumpy bread baker (especially not Dennis).

Once everyone, including the dough, has had time to settle down, start stirring in the bread flour one cup at a time. When you can no longer stir the dough with a spoon (after adding the first cup), dump the entire contents onto your kneading surface and knead the flour into the dough. You'll think it will never happen, but the dough will get sticky again and you'll need to add at least a half cup of the remaining flour. I didn't need the full 2 cups, so you should just go based on the texture of the dough. Mine remained sticky, but relatively easy to handle. I kneaded it for about 7 minutes or so, until everything was evenly incorporated.

Oil a bowl and roll the dough around in the bowl to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rise until doubled - about 1 1/2 hours. Continue eating dinner, watching Jeopardy, etc.

Once the dough has risen, take it out of the bowl and cut it in half.

[Sidenote: When I make the bread again, which I will, I'm not going to do this part. I'm going to punch the dough down, let it rise again, and then bake it at high heat in a covered pot in the oven. I'll let you know how that goes.]

Shape each half into a ball and place on a piece of parchment paper dusted with cornmeal or semolina flour. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for another 1 1/2 hours, or so.

The dough will look like boobs. Embrace it. It's okay to giggle.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and place a baking sheet into the oven to heat it along with the oven. Additionally, place a cast iron pan on the bottom of the oven - we're going to use this to create steam so that the bread is nice and chewy. Boil some water on the stove while the oven pre-heats.

When the bread is ready to bake, slide the parchment onto the baking sheet and pour about 1 cup of the boiled water into the cast iron pan. Close the oven door and allow the bread to bake for 30-35 minutes. If you have an instant-read thermometer, check that the center of the bread has reached 180 degrees F.

The crust will still be beautiful and pink and inside of the bread becomes a warm carmel color with specks of beets running through.

It's absolutely delicious toasted with PB for breakfast. I also suggest using it to make a grilled cheese sandwich with sharp cheddar and maybe a bit of apricot jam, just to shake things up a bit. Go bake some - even the most hardcore beet-haters wont be able to resist this bread.

- Lil