recent meals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomatillo Salsa

 

Rice and beans, Broccoli, and my daughter’s recipe of breaded chicken breast

Rice and bean salad

Fresh bread, all purpose, spent grain, and rice flour combination

Chicken vegetable soup with sausage dumplings.

 

Eggplant, meatball and mozzarella

 

dough n’stuff

just some recent baking from the holidays….

King Arthur

a varation

table side

Each roll has a rye, wheat, and white flour component…

the recently purchased silicone covers meant to replace the the plastic wrap.

dense crumb,, soft with full crust

been baking a high hydration sour style dough lately in a crock heated  in the oven before baking

Dumpling maker tryouts, cost about $.46 ,( 46 cents USD) yes, delivered Pie dough with a veggie filling, going to try it with noodle dough, steamed buns, makes a uniform size. maybe not worth the bother…? 

L8TR

Malted barley sourdough bread

Linking through several gravitars, lead me this site , The Zero Waste Chef(Link)https://zerowastechef.com/2015/09/17/sourdough-bread/

Recent reading on sourdough technics gave way to this loaf. Milling grains for beer, or more accurately crushing malted barley, I tightened up the Victoria mill for a fine grind of barley , that being 120 caramel/crystal malt. This mix will lead to a dark gold color as the barley is roasted, 120 being the color scale measurment of the malt. Just as a side note, this is how your red, porters and stout beers account for their color. The dark roasted grains may be an aquired taste.

https://www.morebeer.com/products/briess-caramel-120l-malt.html

Now I didn’t get the exact measurement of barley in addition to the 1 kg all purpose flour , probably around 1/2 cup, the new technics were to age the soughdough starter AND what’s know as a leven by soaking the grains, the all purpose flour, with water. Sour dough bread is a non yeast bread relying on the starter to provide the fermentation. 

OK, if time is on your side, as this is a long process, that being, the proofing, and temperature plays into the completion of the bread. Experience is the best teacher in this type of baking. My process is harvesting some starter from the crock in the fridge to start, feeding the crock ,before returning into cold storage. 

Now I fed the starter with the barley flour and water and prepared the leven as well. The very active starter didn’t take long to bubble and from prior failed proof of concepts, ( that’s a literal “proof”) with the additive of barley, an overnight soak sounds like a good idea for fussy grains like whole wheat and fresh ground barley malt who seem to take their time absorbing liquids.

The sourdough barley malt starter.

After an overnight stay, Now it’s a simple matter of mixing the starter and the leven. You can see the roasted barley bits in the dough.

Runny very hydrated dough , pre globular !

It’s Alive ! The organism starts to grow and pick up a cohesive texture, turn every hour or so, I find that tilting the bowl to the horizontal and utility a spatula dipped in water will easily fold the entity.

I used the floured towel and bowl method to nest the slow ferment the globular organism.

Several points to consider, the dough stuck to the towel when moved to the Dutch oven, being a pottery one versus cast iron with the bumpy top as result. Internal temp at the finish is 200 degrees Fahrenheit.  The next loaf will be either a lower oven temp or less cover off baking time. 

Several hours later, in the Dutch oven, the result.

A dark crust, crunchy right from the oven the apparent dark grains has a part to play in the finish color.

As apparent by the white dough spots (I split the main ferment into 2 bowls) the leven and starter did not fully mix in some areas, the dough was mixed in kitchen aid bowls and had a flour ball at the bottom, I just let it go. A marble loaf possible using 2 different color dough. The crumb airy and light not like other sours that I have baked that were the dense variety. (Small green fleck is from broccoli 🙂

One trait I notice with the sour ferments is that the crumb has a slight rubbery texture even though no oils were added, not like a slightly grainy finish from yeast/all purpose flour mixes or those with semolina additions.

“The toast test” , nice caramelisation at the edge, tender crunch. I need to improve storage as a plastic bag storage yielded a soft crust the next day. (Actually broiled both sides)

One other ferment  was placed stasis refrigeration, warming up to be nest fermented and baked. 

Taste is a earthy barley background clinging dark malt aftertaste. Do you taste your ingredients? That’s how to become familiar with the different flavours. Taste and smell the flours and grains that you use in recipes. Always have some ferment going on in the house. Fit in the mixing , fermentation, and baking to your schedule and it will become an aquired skill. 

thick crust pizza with cheese, greens and herbs

Just a quick pizza with some greens and herbs from the hydroponic garden added at the last few minutes of baking

pizza

Haven’t blogged in a while !  Catch up time! A lot of pictures and now  on to blogging them, some meals of usual and some unusual. Just have to reassemble the pictures with the recipes if possible !The typical pizza recipe here. Utilizing the King Arthur semolina flour. Mid November meal.

The semolina provides lightness and flavor to the dough, a background of corn meal light flavor is what it reminds me of. Thin crust shells here , haven’t done deep dish in a while.

 

fruit pizza tart strips

by using your favorite recipe for yeast dough, don’t be limited to the traditional pizza topping

press out the dough on parchment and use granulated sugar sprinkled on the paper to give the bottom crust color and crunch when baking.

add your favorite fruit topping, this recipe is very sweet, I’ll post it in a future posting.

It’s a combination of apples, raisins and cranberries

Bake in a moderate hot oven about 380 degrees

Carefully remove from the parchment, let cool and slice. Easy cleanup when using syrupy type ingredients

When cool, the topping congeals, nice snacks for the day or wrap in parchment and give away to friends and family.

Coffee pairing ?

dough head again

Once the repetition of making bead dough becomes commonplace, it’s hard to not use the dough for other forms other than bread. So many types of snacks on the market, flatbread types of bread and bread sticks formed from freshly mixed dough, are my go to snack if time permits, for card nights or other gatherings.

This mix used a small amount of whole wheat added to the white flour, and salt. I contemplated adding various seeds to the mix but I had prepared dips to accompany the bread sticks. (the dips did not make it to the card game location).

Two batches of white/whole wheat rising with white/cornmeal mix for chips resting.

The morning sun streams through the kitchen window as the bread sticks are rolled

corn chips, easily made in a tortilla press, and baked in a 400 degree oven

Flaky bread sticks dipped in butter and then rolled in toasted hemp seeds for a taste test

At the game ! The chips made an excellent scoop for the torpedo meat, made by Diane, and the bow tie salad, a home brew stout to celebrate the fall season, don’t forget the candy corn for the table!