sourdough trinity

My daughter has been saying "oh my god!" about stuff lately. It came on suddenly, as though picked up from a friend. (My guess is that this happened somewhere between 9am and 3pm last Friday; the last day of school before I first remember hearing it.) The first few times I heard her say it, I busted up a bit, then had the inkling to somehow correct her. It made me think of growing up and having my grandparents correct me, saying "you mean: oh my gosh." Not being hung up on words involving a deity, I chose not to engage in any "correction" and went back to laughing. My partner mentioned having the same response to hearing this little phrase out of her. We were witnessing a sort-of birth of irreverence. Sweet. With it now being Fat Tuesday and all, and inspired by my daughter, I thought I'd indulge myself a bit and document a bit of my own irreverent behavior. So on with it.

Never before have I made english muffins, baked a loaf of bread AND brewed, all on the same day. Three creations from the same mother. It made me think of a triptych. Then I felt myself being pulled down an irreverent road. If it were the holy trinity, just who would be the father, son and holy something-or-other then, huh?. It should be more like mother, daughter and etherial spirit if you ask me.....Then I snapped back to and posed the yeastie offspring for a group photo. If only they looked more like panels, and had hinges connecting them together, maybe then I could claim triptych.

Then, satisfied with this, I went and had myself a beer in my favorite new glass. (Thanks once again sis) Irreverent as hell, it makes me laugh heartily. I especially enjoy it when I'm having a dark beer such as this one in it, and a different "reason" becomes revealed with each new glug. Yeah, that shit busts me up you might say.

Go tie one on, get schnockered, dance all night, run around naked, whatever. Eat lots of meat, fatty sugary things and indulge. Come tomorrow, depending on your culture, you just might have to pull your shit together.
And if not, remember, it is still a school night.

Where 'yat?

doughnation

I'm a breadbaking fool, living in a nation filled with bread. To justify my madness, sometimes I just gotta give it away. It's nice to get feedback in the form of deep moans, grunts, lip smacking and chewing sounds. I also like the blurted out "you made this?" That one always gets me. But enough said.......

It was my friend M and his mention of a Fermented Food Feast that would benefit City Slicker Farms here in Oaktown that was the recent reason for a big give away. So, I spent a few days building up the starters to mammoth amounts and then commenced doughing. From left to right in my kitchen, the morning of the event.......

Let's see here. That's two 1/4 whole wheat, free form loaves doing their final rising under the glass bowls. Well, the one on the right should be. Oh, and three sheets of english muffins rising in anticipation of the griddle. These will turn out being part of Shuna's birthday present and represent batch number two of the day.

Over here we have one huge bowl of sourdough starter. It was fed recently and is not yet looking like a madly bubbling cauldron of chalky goo. That will come soon enough. The jugs are soon to be 1.5 gallons of starter for give-away. The red bowl and mostly hidden green covered casserole are focaccia doughs doing their first rise. 1/4 whole wheat and an herbed all white version respectively. The glass bowl contains a free form white sourdough loaf.


Damn, like will it end? How about two all white baguettes in my favorite loaf pan. The tub of muffins is from round one earlier. The bags of flour are empty for now but will contain muffin give-away six packs. Turning further to the right and taking another picture revealed the dirty dishes and my filthy floured self, so I'm stopping there with the kitchen tour.





I took advantage of some afternoon light to take a picture of what came out of the oven. I especially like the golden hues on the crust. It made me think of the spring currently popping out in the desert and how I'm missing it. Content with the loaves, I packed them in the car with the other goodies and made my way down to the party.



To round out the yeast gift, I included a three pack of fermented apple cider. Two of them were from farmers' market produce, the third from store bought for comparisons sake. All of them are equally dry and bubbly. Not exactly a wild fermented item like much of the other items at the fundraiser, including the sourdoughs, but I figured everyone like a little hooch. All in all I was very pleased with my output and proud of my wares. Looking at it now, it appears like a photo of my yeast repertoire.

The following day I still had a quart or so of active starter and I just couldn't see it go to waste. Those poor little cultures of bacteria and molds needed my help. They needed to go out burning up feeding my family. I made up a huge batch of herbed foacaccia, cornmeal laden pizza dough, and a sourdough version of Tea's Russian Black Bread. It was another few rounds of mincing, mixing and kneading but most of the time I couldn't be happier doing anything else.

The pizza dough worked out very nice for pesto with mushroom and jack cheese calzones. The black bread formed a nice dense looking brown bomb. It smelled of absolute delight before baking. During, I almost tore off a piece to burn the shit out of my mouth with.......and then thought better about it and decided to preserve my taste buds for enjoying it for the next few days. I started thinking of how it would pair with salmon and cream cheese.

So if this looks good to anyone out there, and you have a sourdough and a hankering for a nice earthy dark rye loaf, well then feed the starter and get some ingredients because this one will become an instant favorite. Dark, molasses, rye and yum. Just add some fish and cow extract and you're in business.

Thanks for the recipe Tea! I'll go ahead and add my own, scaled down sourdough version of it, based on what was in the house if anyone feels like playing around with it. Enjoy!

SOURDOUGH BLACK TEA BREAD

make 1 cup of strong ass coffee with a moka pot or espresso maker.
drink half, you'll need it.
in a large bowl add:
1/4 c molasses
3 T butter
2 T cocoa powder
nuke it, or heat it up in a pan and transfer back into the bowl. add 1 T apple cider vinegar and the remaining half of your coffee. when this is just warm or near room temperature add about 2 cups of sourdough starter.
in another big bowl add:
2 c rye flour
2 c all purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour
1/4 c cornmeal
2 t salt and give it a mix
add bowl of mixed flours to the dark liquid starter combo bowl or vise versa, depending on whichever bowl is big enough to contain the flour you will inevitably start throwing everywhere while mixing it up. make a huge mess until the dough comes together, then knead it for about five minutes. then let it rest a bit. let yourself rest a bit too. maybe make yourself more of that coffee or crack open a nice dark beer. maybe a homebrew.
when you feel like it, mince up:
3 T of onion
then measure out:
1.5 T caraway seeds
1/2 t of fennel
incorporate these into the dough and knead for about five more minutes or until the dough is nice and smooth.
let rise in a well oiled bowl in a fairly warm spot and punch down when doubled.
form into a large round and let rise (I do mine on parchment paper) until nearly doubled.
place onto a pre-heated baking stone at 475 degrees for about twenty minutes, making sure to turn halfway through. if bread ain't sounding hollow yet, take off the stone and bake at 425 degrees for another 5-10 minutes.
wait until it's most the way cool and then eat it for the next two days with just about anything, like butter, fish, beer, cheese, chutney, coffee, air...........

windborne grains

Know of any California farms that use draft horses these days?

Or one that grows teff, amaranth, millet, or flax?

How about any who use a biodynamic approach to their land?

Well, if you are drawing a big blank, then consider yourself now informed. One such place that answers yes to these questions is Windborne Farms, located in Fort Jones, California.

This past Sunday we received our first delivery of grains from Windborne. It included a sack of millet, rye flour, hard red wheat flour (in the metal can, the bag was torn before the picture), pancake mix and a hot cereal mix. I am ecstatic! (Sorry for not opening the others and showing you, I didn't mean to tease.) Everything smelled so nice, but particularly the wheat flour. It smelled so sweet, almost like it had honey in it or something. Floral. I couldn't wait to try it out, so as soon as the grains came in the door I took the starter out of the fridge and fed it in anticipation of a fluffy loaf the next day.

I began with well over a cup of starter (probably closer to two) and then added a cup of warm water. After mixing these together well, the older monkey measured out two cups of whole wheat and then two of bread flour. Adding a little over a teaspoon of salt to finish it off, we got down to pounding and squishing. I let this rise in the oven with the pilot light heat for a few hours, then beat it down. I repeated this rise and beat procedure, then shaped my loaf for the final rise.

I didn't know the gluten content of the wheat, but having a name such as hard red wheat gave me a clue. I suspected it would be higher than the wheat from Full Belly I've been getting, and if not, it was at the very least a finer grind that gave me the confidence to start off with making a loaf with at least one third whole grain. I didn't have the patience to let the dough ferment for a full day, and I really wanted to taste the flour without too much sour taste. Okay, so maybe too sour is not really possible in my book. What I mean here is that I wanted to downplay the sour component of the bread's flavor and let the whole wheat component shine through.

I gave the loaf a spiral cut and doused it with plenty of water before putting into my oven, cranked to the max. Meaning: 550 degrees and on a preheated baking tile. After two minutes I sprayed water all over it again. After 7 minutes I rotated it 180 degrees. 15 minutes in and I turned the oven down to about 400, repositioned my lower rack to be on top of the baking tile and put the loaf on it. At 20 minutes I turned off the oven and let it sit in there for 3 more minutes. Finally done I transferred it to a cooling rack and put it near a drafty window, hearing it crackle while it cooled.

This was one hella-tastalicious loaf. We waited long enough to get to that still a touch warm where it tears a bit while cutting stage. We slathered in butter. We made lip smacking and moans of content sounds. We went through half the loaf before dinner. Then I ate another quarter of it while mopping up the rest of my favorite soup in the world, minestrone. This morning we finished the loaf as toast with fried eggs. I made sure to take a picture of it sliced open in order to properly "show you the love" as Biggles would say right about now. It's a good thing I make a lot of bread around here because it disappears quickly.

I was nice and surprised at how well the dough came together and held its shape during the rise and baking. Apparently this whole wheat has plenty of gluten and is ground fine enough to give you access to it. Next time I'll go ahead and attempt a loaf that is at least 1/2 whole wheat, I was that happy with the results. And thinking that this is only the first time I have used anything from this CSA "box," I look forward to receiving each new delivery of varied grains and trying my hand with some new recipes in the coming year, in what looks to be my own personal year of grain exploration. Mmmmmm, grains. Windborne grains.



If you act fast, you can still sign up for a CSA bag from Windborne Farms that will be filled with tasty grains that vary during the year. Write Jennifer Greene an email at: windborne3csa (at) yahoo (dot) com for more info. It is $325 for 10 deliveries during the year starting in March. Please sign up by February 20th if you are at all interested.

sometimes, a baguette is just a baguette

I was in need of feeding the beast. It had been well over a week. I pulled it out of the fridge, mixed up some bread flour and water, and combined it all in a new bowl. I covered this for the night and left it out on the counter. I was jonesin' to make a loaf. All the summer fruit and veggies we've been consuming has me craving fluffy bread products. In the morning I asked the family if they had any special requests, because the beast was ready to do some work. "How about a nice plain baguette. Maybe even seeded?" was the response.
"Sounds good!" I pulled out the ingredients and got to work.

With everything in order on the kneading board, a strange calm came over me. It was somewhat like slipping into a dream, or maybe that moment in the dream where you realize that you are dreaming. Then it hit me. It has been far too long (like what, 2 months?) since I have made a baguette. As the dough came together and I turned it out onto the board, I found myself looking forward to being with nothing but the dough for the next five minutes. A return to nothing but kneading was what I needed. It turns out. Weird how life is really like dough.

After the dough rested for a bit, I added the salt and finished the kneading. A smooth satiny ball was awaiting fermentation. I oiled the big green casserole, plopped the dough in, and put it in the oven to rise. After punching it down about four times over the course of the day, it was ready for some shaping.

I wanted to make two baguettes so I left the baking stone in the cupboard and cut my dough in half. I took one piece and gently tugged it into a rectangle, then placed this on the floured board and rolled them lengthwise. After repeating this with the other piece I put them on my nifty little non-stick perforated pan dealie. Three slashes with a razor before putting in a 450 oven and my mouth started salivating. I was a mere 25 minutes from hot steamy bread. (By the way, that's approximately 16-17 minutes to bake, 1-2 to remove from oven and set on the rack, and 6 more to wait to cool under the "loss of skin when handled" threshold.)

Mmmmm, homemade sourdough. This and a stick of butter, and my life is complete.
Okay, my family, homemade sourdough and a stick of butter.
And water.
And.......oh crap! I was so excited about putting the bread in the oven, I forgot the seeds.

So they really ended up being just plain 'ol baguettes. I reached for the butter and then figured wheat bread, so why not wheat beer. Luckily, the latest batch was a hefeweizen, so I cracked one open.

Yeah......summertime and the livin' is. Well, here in the northern latitudes it's summer. For y'all up in this hemisphere I say stick to the simple things and enjoy some bread and beer. With veggies all around it's a nice change. Besides, you can make a toast to the first of August. That crazy month when the tomato plants are quietly taking over your garden. Now's the time to show them that you eat other things too, to keep them jealous and producing fruit like mad. Then in a few weeks, raid them and get to saucing. You're gonna need something to dip these baguettes in.

Or, if no tomatoes are running rampant in the yard, go get some salami, cheese, and mustard and go make yourself one of these. They're really yummy. Even when served on a plate contaminated with fruit.

100 mile solstice toast (almost)

The longest day of the year gives me fits. All that sun makes me want to get it ALL done that day. I managed an early morning walk, gardened and watered things, brought the elder monkey to go rent a cake pan (H was baking two wedding cakes, with two layers each so this alone would take most of the day) and brought her to see what my chiropractor does to my "skelekin." All before noon.
Then we came home and did some laundry, picked berries for making ice cream, had some family drop by, had a little rest, rode my bike to the farmers' market (with a 37 pound monkey, small cooler and panier, a set up I refer to as my "truck") and then came home and cooked a nice dinner. A busy day indeed, but I just had to squeeze in the time to make some bread. It seemed that if I'm going to keep a starter (or three, but who's counting?) then the longest day of the year should have ample time for a big loaf.

I started early in the morning (ok, like 9) and set the dough out to rise a few times. We poked around our garden, rubbing up against tomatoes and getting all resiny and stained optic green on our tips. With our garden looking pretty happy, our smiles and the sun beaming, spunky-monkey and myself went on down to Spun Sugar for treats: ma's cake pan and a bit of fudge, pa's new english muffin rings, monkey's fat iced cookie.

On the way home we stopped by my chiropractor. She has a terrific set of hands and much knowledge of how the skeleton should be, which is where mine is currently not at. My assistant escorted me into the room and proceeded to squash my ankles with her little hands, saying "uhhhhh, oohhhhhh, yeeaaahhhh right there daddy. Doesn't that feel good?"
When the doc walked in and saw my daughter she asked if she was here to help.
"Oh yeah, and I ALREADY put his skelekin back where it belongs!"
"Well why don't I check on that too!"
The adjustments started and doc saw a book the monkey brought from home.
"Is that Madeline I see?" she asks while my squeal machine fire up.
From under the table, as I am belly down with my face in the head slot, I manage: "In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines....."
"Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines," doc picks up "In two straight lines they broke their bread......"
"And brushed their teeth and went to bed!" (giggle, squeal, giggle-snort) the monkey is pure glee.
Feeling two inches taller, I brought us home.

Before munching lunch, the monkey and I paid visit to our neighbor S, who happens to have a black raspberry bush in her yard, just LOADED with fruit this time of year. We had already picked a small basket the week before, so when we went over this time I certainly didn't want to get too greedy. The S/Monkey team picked darn near a pint! I remarked on how I should do something special with them, like make ice cream or something. S's eyebrow shot up - "Really? well, if you want to, I'd eat that!"
Sounds like a handshake to me.

We brought the loot home, rinsing these and combining them with sugar and a splash of balsamic, a pinch of salt. I whipped up a custard base with some extra egg yolks from H's cake recipe. With thickened yolky sweet cream and tart sweet berry base, I put it in the freezer to chill while we rode to the market.

The market was filled with tons of ripe ripe ripe fruit. Including the most amazing white nectarine I've had this year. After wandering for an hour or so, running around to find someone to pinch or tell about how "our butts have bumps on them from the bumpy road!" said with a warbled emphasis on the butt and bumpies part, searching for permission from me with a cautious glance the whole while. Shadows creeping in, overtaking the middle grassy strip; fish, fettucine, fruit and monkey aboard, we rode on home. Me, rejoicing that it is primarily a long coast down hill. The monkey adding "I sure wish we were home already."
"Yeah, me too honey."
"Why?"
"Because I could rest and relax. It's hard work riding this bike all weighed down."
"Why?"
"Well, because right now it weighs about 70 pounds more than it usually does."
"Why?"
"Because......."
"Why?"
"I, uh.....because."
"Why, why, why daddy?"
Maybe the longest day of the year does have its downside.

When we got home and unpacked, I added some uncooked heavy cream to our custard base and berry syrup. Tossed it into the electric jobber still on loan, then set to work on dinner. Fish needed slicing and powdering. Pepper and onions to slice. Lemon to halve. Olio californio to splash and heat. Wine to pour down oneself on the way to the pan. Salt for rubbing out some flavor.

The fresh egg fettucine cooked during the last minute of the fish cooking in a wine reduction. Doused with a last splash of lemon juice, wine and fresh cilantro, finished on the plate with some dry jack shavings......damn, it was good. It was a fairly quick and easy fancy little meal. Local too. I figured it was worth writing down.

We were quite full, and the day was done. The solstice bread baked late (10 pm) and it had to wait for the next to longest day of the year to be enjoyed. Solstice toast almost, so be it. Monkey had meltdown that didn't warrant much treats for the lateness of hour. So, no ice cream either. Sometimes it's really hard being three. I mean, three and a half.


This morning we awoke to the loaf. I made a piece of toast and took a little stroll for coffee. After returning, three pieces of toast for myself later, it was coming on lunch. So I sliced some more and made grilled cheese. Now that is comfort. All I needed now was some of that ice cream to drag me down into the land of food coma. Luckily, that was only as far as the freezer.




The black raspberry bombs find their peak for me as a flavoring. Out of hand (off the bush really) they have a great flavor, but slightly mushy and seedy for me. Now, sugared, cooked and pressed through a sieve, made into syrup. Yeooooww! I like that! Add it to a custard base, quick! For the ultimate in creamy, add more heavy cream while churning. Mmmmm....can you say MOOOOO!


"Why?"
"Beacuse it tastes like cream sweetie."
"Oh because its from a cow?"
"Uh huh."
"Why?"
"Like I just said, the milk is from a cow."
"Why?"
"...........it's time to get ready for a nap honey. And its real important we all get some rest, ok?"





"Why?"




So, the solstice bread incorporated some local whole wheat flour, hence the 100 mile tag, although 3/4 of the flour used is not local. All but the sugar and dry spices seen above are from the farmers' market. Toast and grilled cheese don't need a recipe, do they? So although the title deals with the bread, I'll give you the recipes for the fish dish and the ice cream, if you ask nicely. Sorry, but I'm tired and have to stop typing and go to bed.

the golden state

There are many reasons to call my home state golden. Whether referring to the gold rush, the golden gate, the golden hills waving with dry grass, or the fields of eye candy that grace our outdoors this time of year. Like these ones:



Or maybe these. These were nice. It was taken from about the same spot, but looking up, back toward the road and it's destination farther uphill.



Both shots were on Hwy 180 this past friday, at about 3,500' on the way to Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. The poppies were amazing. The lupine too, as well as countless others that I don't know the name of. I love flowers, so I stopped at a few points, got out of the car, and tried not to tumble down the hill while taking a few pics and beaming with happiness at being in a field of wildflowers.

In the park, I headed toward Grant Grove, to see one of the largest trees on earth. The third largest to be exact. With a base over 40 feet wide, and well over 300 feet tall, this tree is immense. Stop and think for a moment about how big that is. It's frickin' huge.



Remember how you do that calculation for circumference of a circle? C=∏d right?
Then that means that this tree is near 120' around!
At these dimensions it is a building. But a really cool one.
I like to think of it as a 1700 year old building that is nearly fire proof, solar heated, and home to an enormous community of critters. How's that for sustainability of a living community? I'd call that pretty golden too, wouldn't you?



I did say this was the third largest, not tallest, so that means it will help if we talk volume to wrap our heads around how hugemongous it is. Something like, if you stuffed the trunk with ping-pong balls, it wouild fit 37,000,000 of them. Or if you had a car that got 25 mpg, and started driving it using this tree as a gas tank, you could drive around the planet something like 350 times without refueling! That is one hell of a tank.

Now think about the reality of this community, and how being a living entity it's mainly water. Lots of players, but it's being managed by one living creature. Thriving. Did I mention it doesn't have a brain, or a nervous system? That some call it of a lower "order"? With considering all that, I just can't see them as lower, in any way. I'd call these giants smart. In fact, way smart. Smarter than you or I will ever be. It humbles me when I'm in the presence of such creatures. I have much to learn from them.

I know, this is primarily a food blog. And none of this is about food right?

But it is. It's about my food. It's about the food I share with others. It's about the things that inspire me. The entities that bowl me over with their very existence. Whether it's the intense golden hue in those flower petals or the enormity of such a single creature that functions as a sustainable high rise community. It's the micro and the macro and everything between. It's the images and sensations of living here, that are swirling through my mind as I create food for my family. To put it another way, if when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, then this is some of the stuff that I hope passes before mine as I check out.

Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I just had to share. In fact, when I was baking this bread last week, knowing I was going to my in-laws soon, I started getting images in my mind of what would be near their home. How within an hour, I could drive through the foothills awash in wildflowers, on my way to walking amongst true giants. I had imagined that I would see these very items before I did. I knew the redwoods would be there, and was pretty sure the flowers were too. Their colors inspired me to incorporate gold and red in bread.

So two of these loafs had the golden cheddar and red bacon combo. Really killer cheddar from Springhill Dairy, paired with super tasty bacon from Highland Hills, all wrapped up in dough that includes my favorite whole wheat from Full Belly Farms.

Cooked to a nice.......golden color.

I'm sure a few of you intuited that I'd eventually work that whole golden state thing into talking about sourdough. I may love them argonauts, and that big bridge thing that spans the gate. I love the sere hills of summer, and of course those poppies. All those things are wrapped up in my head. Which means they're wrapped up in the bread. The bread of my life.

plain jane bread (or re-inventing the wheel)

Last Tuesday the monkey was in the throes of a nasty stomach virus. Poor thing. She yakked for quite awhile and it was early in the morning when she stopped. H slept with her that night, and I wondered what else I could do to help. I could feed the sourdough right? Yeah, bake a loaf of plain white bread for the delicate recovery into eating food, that always accompanies such experiences. And for Z, I know that she just loves bread, in just about any form, so at the very least, I could get some bread in her in the near future.

Wednesday morning H went to work and the monkey lay around. She was on the couch watching "Wonderpets" and was saying she was cold. "Wrap me like the burrito daddy, with the blanket." What was that honey? "I'm cold daddy. Wrap me up!" I commenced tucking the edges of the folded blanket around her. She enjoyed it enough to pull it off so that the process may be repeated. She wasn't really smiling though, so the sicko-meter was still reading at least half. Can I get you anything sweetie? "No." How about some orange? (citrus has been a big hit lately) "No, I'm not hungry"

I pulled out the starter, fed from the night before, and it was bubbly and happy. I gave it a thorough stirring and measured out about a cup into another bowl. I added 1+ cups of water and about 2 1/2 cups of bread flour. I mixed it quickly and left it to get all spongey.

See, believe it or not, I have read about doing sourdough as a sponge first, but have never attempted it myself. Well, actually this isn't totally true, I've done it for english muffins and it is quite tasty, but for just a big loaf or baguette, no. I have been playing with a sourdough starter now for 9 months, basically unsupervised, so my experiments, though based in the published world of sourdough technique, are really me re-inventing the wheel of dough and learning the hard way, by repetitive motion, how to produce a good bread. I am an apprentice, with only my senses as master.

The sponge did its thing for around five hours, until it was threatening to vacate the bowl it was in. I stirred in a few more cups of bread flour, a little over a teaspoon of salt, and tablespoon or more of a nice green-hued olive oil. After mixing by hand brought the dough together, I put it onto the board and got down to thumping, slapping, and twisting it into a fluffy white dough, appropriate for a plain jane loaf. All white flour, salt, water and oil.

Hey sweetie......."Yes dada?" Can I get you anything, maybe some applesauce or something? "No." You sure, maybe we could have a little chocolate afterwards? "No, It's okay, I'm not hungry right now." She is DEFINATELY still sick. Well, the bread will be awhile more anyway.

After the dough had risen once, I split it into two baguettes and a free-form loaf. Before going in the oven, the dough had at least doubled in size. This stuff was going to be very light. Only one thing, after turning on the oven, the power went out. First a small on/off flicker, then maybe 5 seconds of on. Hmmm. What was that abou?[DARK] We fished out our flashlights, lit a few candles, determined that the heater wouldn't work, or the hot water heater (what was in the tank hot, but cooling despite its protective insulation I'm sure). But the old gas stove, dating to a time when electricity was not standard in most homes works just fine when the power is out. It contains no technology that involves an electrical spark. In fact at this point in time, the now common sparking lighters on gas ranges were some 50 years out. In short, my oven worked fine.

I baked the baguettes first, as they rose faster. I was using a head lamp when judging during my first oven intervention. They were looking rather dark, I thought at the time, so I turned the oven down to about 375 for the last ten minutes. When these were removed, I placed them on a rack to cool by an open window for a draft. I was going to try these tonight, torturing myself until after they cooled completely so I could judge the moisture content as it would be in an intact loaf. At this point, the monkey had brushed her teeth, after eating the tiniest morsel of a dinner, and would have bread in the morning. I'm sure about it. About half an hour before the loaf went in the oven the power was restored. I looked at the baguettes and thought: "self, you could have left the heat up for longer on them, try it with the loaf okay?"

On Thursday morning, the monkey woke up in a pretty good mood, ready to try the bread from the night before. I'm not saying she horked down a ton of it. She was just starting to eat a little something. But toasted, with butter or raspberry jam (or both as she prefers sometimes) seemed like something worth trying to eat.

Since then, our whole family has experienced some form of this little stomach enemy of ours. And we have been living off of bread. You see, with the nice fluffy results from my first sourdough involving a sponge, I just had to make it again the next day, in a half whole wheat form. Turns out that works great too. And when you are not feeling like eating much, or need it to be nice and plain, then my vote is a plain jane loaf. White, or whole wheat will satisfy, although the whole wheat probably has a higher nutritive value, that maybe we should think about leaning toward after a few days of not eating much.

When this weekend came around, we were all looking forward to some fruits and veggies (and hoping for some fresh live crabs, but without luck). This morning the monkey and I wandered over tho the Farmers' Market and blew all the cash we had on us. I was looking at the individual booths, seeing the span of region that it reprsents, and had a smile of contentment. We had our goods, likely the bulk of the veggies for our week, and it came from areas that either have a special place in my heart (Northern reaches of the Sacramento Valley) or in my family (Fresno County) or in my blood (my Californio connections to the Central Coast). It is a priviledge and an honor to talk to the purveyors at our market, and support some more of our local* scene. We rode the bike back, unloaded the loot on the table and took a photo as a means of archiving what was available this first week of December



So do I title this picture "Still life with morning market bounty" or simply "37 bucks, Dec. 3rd, 2006, Temescal Farmers Market"........

P's backyard olive bread

This is a picture of happiness in my life. A few simple ingredients, worked by hand, involving only starter, flour, water, oil, olives and salt. (Or to look at it another way, only flour, water, olives and salt if you consider their sources and ignore the microscopic stuff that seems to come from the "ether" to inhabit our starter - but more on them later)

I think I have gone over some sort of hurdle when it comes to making bread. The tedium of kneading has changed, it is a joy to fold and squish away, nurturing a live mass with tough love until it becomes food. Don't get me wrong, when the monkey is at my leg, not able to give me 10 minutes alone with my dough, and I'm trying to finish it up quickly, it's not really fun or relaxing. That said, the process is now a sort of meditation (of course, that is if I enter the task aware and intentioned, and with cooperation from the three foot tall forces at hand).

It is a delight to gather ingredients, and contemplate where they came from and how they lived. I like to think about the olives growing on a sunny slope, within view of the majestic lady Pele in her Shasta form. How some of these were pressed for their oil while others relaxed in a brine, maybe with some herbs, after being tended by folks who care about them deeply. I like to think of the high plains that the wheat was grown on. Probably a hard winter kernal that makes this such a fine bread flour. Hard beacause you need to be tough in winter, to deal with taking more time to grow while the elements try to keep you down. I like to think of the salt evaporated from the sea, and the water that came down from the Sierras (actually bringing that salt into the ocean, as has happenned since the first days that water ran over rocks). I contemplate how a mixture of mold strains, constituting what some call "bloom" on the surface of grapes, can be used to create a live symbiotic mass, a balance of saccharromyces and lactobacillus in a wet flour medium, that tended just right and used often enables my family to enjoy a satiny-dough that is fluffy (thank you mold world) and tasty (love them bacteria).

Why backyard? Or even more suspiciously and specifically P? Well, I have mentioned in a past posting of a sourdough starter derived from grapes, grapes from a certain brother-in-law's golden ratio'd grape arbor. That is the same starter used here. It has acclimated well to its life in and out of my fridge. It has a spot on the second shelf, usually in a container labeled "P's Starter - Do Not Open!" (The uninitiated may well throw it out, for their good intentions of ridding the icebox of the stuff that may be a bit fragrant, and shall we say not too appetizing to look at.) After creating the dough from our elements seen above, and setting aside in an oiled bowl for a few hours, we have a notion of how alive and gaseous the creature is.


This represents the dough at maybe 80% of capacity, as this picture was taken during an interim, don't over-rise period.


After three rises the dough was put into an oiled ten-inch round cake pan. When it formed a nice dome above the rim of the pan I gave it a four slashes like slanted spokes, only reaching half way to the center of the sphere. This seemed to give the center a nice loft when baked at 425 for about 18 minutes, and then removed from the pan and left in the oven, now turned off, for another 10 minutes. Baking bread takes some paying attention and a little time, but the satisfaction granted to my mouth as I splurge on slice after slice is splendid.


Even the next morning, after half being consumed, it was springy and soft (okay it spent the night in a plastic bag).



After eating so much of the bread plain, or with generous portions of butter, it was time to mix it up a little and try it with something else. What better than to go back to the fruit source of the bread. I believe the folks over at Olio Olinda will agree that this is definately a nice way to enjoy bread, fresh or leftover, and a nice way to contemplate what we eat. From thoughts about the dependance upon the sun for our sustenance, and the water coursing down the rivers to nourish the olives and wheat, all the way to "should I really have had that 17th piece?"




May the dough (and a high-quality source of olive products) be with you.......

various breads from the past month

Can you say Death Valley? There is nothing like a fresh bread in the morning, especially when the backdrop is like this. This was looking East/Northeast from our camp at the southern end of Hidden Valley in mid October. The day before I made up a pizza dough and we went on a gnarly hike, returning a little too spent to have too much for dinner. The dough became a pizza the night before, and morning rolls the next. They were white and fluffy on the interior with a nice matured sour that blended well with the grated parmesan in the dough. Considering that we were about forty miles from any paved road, they were pretty damn good if I say so myself. In fact, a bit of starter has now made it on about half dozen camping trips and is becoming a nice way to bring some "home" out doors. My friend's mom would call it my zinger.





Whole wheat with soy flour based on sourdough. This became a plain baguette and a little something called sharkie bread (the San Jose Sharks need a new mascot, what better way to blend our food with sports?) It had a light coating of seeds and a few slashes to augment the overall shape. Too bad it didn't make it long enough to be intact for the photo shoot.

I had just pulled the various breads from the oven and I spotted her. Fae Fae the lover of meatballs. She is a kenyan bread hound and is therefore seldom from sight of the kitchen. She can be seen with a few experiments based on a whole wheat with rye flour dough, sourdough of course. The S-shaped loaf is a contorted baguette roll that is stuffed with a celery-onion-mushroom and blue cheese mixture. The calzone is the same mix, minus the cheese, with some meatball pieces and a touch of red sauce. And then there is the pizza. It had the above mix, plus the cheese and meatball. All of it turned out nice, but I think I liked the calzone the best.



The last two days were filled with bread so I couldn't decide which to have the next morning. So I toasted a piece of the onion-celery-mushroom with blue stuffed baguette and then slathered it with butter, and toasted a piece of the plain baguette and put rasberry jam on top. The blue cheese contrasting with alternate bites of rasberry was like doing culinary calisthetics from sweet to savory and back again only to be repeated several more times.




After several days of sourdough I was hankerin' for something else in the bread department. So I worked on it by deciding corn bread would do the trick. I went out and purchased some organic blue corn meal to go with the eggs from the farmers market and straus milk in the fridge. I just HAD to double the recipe, so it became a round dished loaf and some muffins. With melted butter it hit the spot. And just because that last one was a bit crooked, I thought I should end with another, but make it from DV for some kind of symmetry to this one......

pumpkin moon fun (blasphemous, please be warned)

I have been wanting to feature a guest for some baking fun and the other night complied with my wishes. This guest has been invited several times but has a very tight schedule so he did this one on a fill-in from a previous cancellation. You may know him from his other work as a carpenter, but some of the information lost with unknown gnostic texts revealed him to be a baker, with how do we say, that "special touch." Considering leavening agents are a more modern invention, it is my theory that the J-man must have been a sourdough master, so when he agreed to drop by for a guest appearance on such short notice, I was floored. I thought "holy s___! the big heavy himself!" The timing was a little weird, being Halloween and all, but also being El dia de los muertos, it seemed perfect. So I cleaned up the kitchen and tried to look like I've had it together lately, and fed our grape starter in anticipation of his preferences (rumor has it that JC actually prefers his sourdough on the sweet side, go figure).


When he arrived (a touch late, he complained that the URW coalition {ultra-right-wing angels} had recently passed legislation that cut into the saviors promptness, despite being designed to do precisely the opposite), he gave us his trademark greeting and we soon got down to work. Flour, starter, water, oil, salt. He likes it simple, and employed a gentle kneading technique (involving throat singing) that he admittedly picked up from some zen buddhists on his last trip to the bay area. I thought it was pretty cool that even he sees room for improvement, and that in the working with the dough of life, he is willing to learn from other master bakers. It only makes sense. Mankind was making bread long before there were ANY saviors or the like.

After 20 minutes of kneading (no toddlers at home, so J-man is used to taking his time), we put the dough in the oven to rise once, and then shaped them into baguettes. I asked his opinion on fennel versus anise as a topping and he said something like "split the dough and I am there" which indicated to me that our selection of spice in life is special for its similarity, not its differences, which to me also implied that if the meal in question is savory then you usually go with fennel, sweet........definately anise. This settled, we painted the loaves with melted soy garden and seeded one of the baguettes with sesame, fennel and celery seeds.

I slashed the loaves when we went to put them in the oven, closed the door and heard a strange buzzing come from somewhere inside his tunic (which seemed synthetic when I was close to him; do today's use of animal products disgust him? Is he vegan, right down to his clothing, I thought at the time) He put his elbow up to his mouth and mumbled something that sounded like "thanks Cynthia, I'll get right on it" then turned to me and said he had something important to go attend to. "What about baking our bread, our shared dough of life," I whined. He made for the door, flashed his departure greeting and was gone.


I was honored to have the sourdough tutorial, however brief it was. I turned for the oven door and saw something strange, or didn't see something that is. The oven was empty, save for a 425 degree baguette pan, one side lightly sprinkled with seeds. I was pissed. All that work, and all I get is a few lousy pictures of him coming and going. No warm, fresh bread and the intoxicating aromas that come with the baking. Wait, something was different when he left, besides his hair being pulled up from the work in the kitchen............I have the technology, let's investigate.


There they were. Baked (now how did he do THAT?) Looking great I might add, with a nice color and shape. I felt a smile break across my face as I thought about whoever was now enjoying them, probably under the impression that HE, not I actually had performed most of the labor involved in their creation. I laughed as we went trick or treating as planned, and scored plenty of nasty corn-syrup filled candy, that seems to be the norm for today.


When I awoke on Wednesday morning and went down to the kitchen, it looked like someone had been there. I looked at the bread board in front of our toaster in response to the lingering burnt smell. A morning-after note from the man himself, how pathetic. Have a good x-mas, cheee-yaw..........I BETTER, after that stunt he pulled last night. Now, what to do with this loaf?

Smoke some salmon, get a good cream cheese, and get on with it. Like granny always said: when life (read JESUS) gives you lemons, you can choose to make lemonade, or you can mope.



Or in this case, you can brew some coffee to go with that fish and cream cheese, and get to constructing yourself a killer breakfast to go with that loaf, brought to you by our lord, of sorts.......