Returning Reinhart

So, tomorrow I will return Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everday.  I tried to renew it but it is on hold and library late fees are embarrassing.  I ended up making two different loaves from his book.  The first was his version of San Francisco Sourdough.  He offers an option (not "purist") where you add in instant yeast.  It was superb.  

Sourdough starter

Mixed dough

Kneaded dough

 The nice part about it (for a household of two, especially) is that you can divide the dough in half and cook part that day and the other part up to three days later.

half to rest in the fridge

half to rise at room temp

I would be lying if I said I did everything according to his recipe.  We were almost out of bread flour so I used 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat, 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour and 4 T vital wheat gluten.  I ended up kneading the dough with about 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour.  The other ingredients were just water, salt, instant yeast, and of course, 1/4 cup of mother starter mixed with 1 3/4 cups bread flour and just over 1/2 cup of water.  That initial starter ferments overnight (6-8 hours) before combining it with the other ingredients to form the final dough.  I hadn't ever used bread flour for the starter before.  I was thinking that's what made this bread so phenomenal...  

Then, I tried his Pain au Levain.  Oh my god.  Oh mon dieu!  And ay dios mio too.  The Pain au Levain also called for bread flour (which we restocked) and whole wheat (also restocked).  I don't have a single photograph to share because this bread was eaten with soups and as toast and made into sandwiches with unprecedented speed.  It was gone within days.  It was amazing.  Absolutely amazing.  I did the same drill of halving the dough and baking some on the first day and retarding the other half.  The other halves definitely have a more developed taste than their younger versions but the texture of the bread seems to suffer from the prolonged rising period.  While eating his first slice of Pain au Levain Andy announced, "This is bread.  Wow."  And decided we could enter it in some sort of bread baking contest, if there ever was such a thing.  (I am sure there is).  This cookbook is officially on my wish list.

Now for another 8PM bedtime.  I miss my appendix.

-S 

The Library: March comes in like a lion and out like an appendix

Today I walked to the library.

This might not seem like a huge feat since the library is all of 3/4 mile from home and it's, well, the library. But I had an appendectomy on Sunday night and this was my greatest venture out into the world since surgery.  I picked up three books: Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Everyday, Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and Tracy Kidder's Home Town.

Perusing Ree Drummond's book prompted two actions.  The first was a shopping list for a vegetarian version of her pot pie.  Andy is at the store fulfilling the ingredients list as I type.  The second action is this - me typing a blog post after a long, long hiatus!  Although blog posts have been few and far between, rest assured that I have been baking bread and LOTS of sourdough pancakes.  I know Lil has baked at least a few loaves in her many cooking endeavors.  No longer in the quaint and cozy Upper East Side tenement building we called home for two years, we both lost the lust for bread blogging, definitely not baking/cooking though.  Unfortunately, I had to lose my appendix to remember how fun this blog was... but here I am, sitting up and typing a return-to-blogging-post!

Like I mentioned, sourdough pancakes are a regular weekly treat.  I also got in the habit of baking something I, very creatively, named "Northamfrancisco Sourdough" inspired from a Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik recipe for San Francisco Sourdough.  I don't have any photos of it today but I have baked at least a dozen loaves/variations of this recipe.

Northamfrancisco Sourdough
Recipe inspiration from Bread Alone
Yields two loaves

Established sourdough starter
Water
Oil
1 1/2 cups All-purpose flour (and more for kneading)
3 cups bread flour
2 cups rye flour OR 2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
1 tablespoons sea salt
caraway seeds or rosemary (optional, but why not!?)

Start the poolish by combining 2/3 cup starter, 1 cup water, and 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour.  If you have a scale (like Lily), 8 ounces of each.
Allow the poolish to ferment, covered for 24 hours.
For the final dough, combine 3 cups bread flour, 2 cups rye/whole wheat flour, 2 tablespoons ground flax seeds, 1 tablespoon sea salt, and caraway seeds or rosemary to your liking
Combine the poolish with the dry contents of the large mixing bowl.  A lot depends on the consistency of your starter, but you will likely need to add water (room temperature) here to create the final dough.
Once your dough is impossible to stir, place it on a floured countertop and get kneading!  16 minutes!  "The dough is ready when a little dough pulled from the mass springs back quickly."
Shape the dough into a ball and place it into an oiled, large bowl.  Turn once to coat with oil.  Ferment the dough for 2 1/2 hours until doubled in volume.
Deflate and transfer the dough to a floured surface to rest for 30 minutes.  Honestly, I sometimes skip this step if I am impatient.  The Bread Alone recipe actually does this twice.  That's an hour more wait time for bread!
After 30 minutes, or an hour, or no time at all, divide the dough into two long torpedoes.  "The torpedo is the classic San Francisco sourdough shape."  If you prefer to be rebellious, shape the dough into boules.
Proof the loaves for 1 hour (until they are 1-1/2 times increased in volume), covered with a clean, damp cloth or plastic wrap.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Before baking, spritz the loaves with water and add more rosemary/caraway seeds on top.
Bake the loaves for 15 minutes, decrease the oven temperature to 425 and bake an another 15 to 20 minutes.  Total bake time will be about 35-45 minutes.
Try to cool completely on a wire rack before tasting.  I have never been able to wait...


So, besides blogging, I actually started a loaf from Artisan Breads Everyday - it's Reinhart's version of San Francisco sourdough bread.  It's just a baby "wild yeast starter" now (aka poolish) but in 6 to 8 hours it will be bigger!

Here's the sourdough mama, happy and farting little "hello" bubbles to you, Lil.

Your turn,
XO S

PS No pressure.  If nothing else becomes of this attempt at re-energizing the bread blog, I now have recorded instructions for that Northamfrancisco bread in a safer place than a yellow post-it!

Sourdough Pancakes III

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

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

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