What with the yeast shortage, I decided to attempt sourdough again! The last time J and I tried, we managed to make an acceptable loaf of bread, but we baked all of the starter into it D’:
The final starter! It only took 2 or 3 weeks to get to this point… Apparently you know it’s done when the bubbles have the appearance of those in a root beer float 🙂Bread!! I made the cuts with a straight razor and even remembered to reserve some starter.
We’ve made 2 loaves and 2 pizzas with this recipe so far with local, mostly-whole wheat flour! In a fit of emergency food-buying, we got a bunch of flour from Castle Valley Mill, a local historical flour mill (located in Pennsylvania, about 100 miles from NYC). Their bolted (big pieces of bran sifted out) hard wheat flour is amazing for making bread – lots of gluten!
During social isolation, J and I have been cooking a lot. We’ve been trying to make more unusual dishes, since we can’t get cravings satisfied at restaurants or work.
J’s been eating bagels for breakfast, but we forgot to get them last grocery order, so we made them! We have a ton of cream cheese and lox, so it was either this or cheesecake (that might still happen 🙂 We used the bagel recipe from ChefSteps.com (which seems to be a teach-you-to-cook website). (The bagel recipe got paywalled; this other site has a copy with more detail.)
Gotta boil the bagels first! There’s baking soda and honey in the water.Very flat bagels. They taste like pretzels, though 🙂
350 g water
250 g + 400 g bread flour
3 g yeast
25 g sugar
25 g malt powder
10 g salt
25 g malt syrup or honey
10 g baking soda
Make the sponge: Combine water, 250 g flour, and yeast. Let proof until doubled in size (about 2-3 hours).
Combine remaining flour, sugar, malt powder, and salt. Add the sponge. Knead until the dough is stretchy and smooth, and holds together. Divide into bagel-size pieces of dough (~65 g for 4″ bagels).
Form the dough portions into bagels. There are various methods. Proof for about half an hour. Cover and put in the fridge overnight (optional).
Boil some water with the malt syrup and baking soda. Boil each bagel for 60 sec on each side. Put toppings, if using, on bagels. Bake at 425°F for 14 min.
Improvements to the recipe:
Put flour or cornmeal on the bagel bottoms. They stick really badly!
Oil the tops before covering with plastic wrap. They stick moderately badly…
Another way to use up lingering wine. Eat with pasta, omelette, crepes, toast, etc.
Recipe
3 cups sliced mushrooms
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
Parsley to taste
Cook onion and garlic in butter until translucent.
Add mushrooms and cook until they release liquid. Add salt and spices.
Add white wine and cream, and reduce by half.
We didn’t have cream on hand, so we substituted macadamia nut butter mixed with water, which worked quite well! Macadamia nuts are super oily, so the richness was a good replacement for the cream.
I’ve been trying to use up some white wine (originally found on the sidewalk when walking back from the train station). Thanks to Reddit, I made a couple of really good and quite novel (for us) dishes in the last few days. The first was Swiss fondue, recipe courtesy of half-Swiss friend S! Thanks~
Fondue
40% by weight Gruyère
40% by weight Emmental (can substitute with Jarlsberg or similar American “Swiss” cheese)
20% by weight Appenzeller (can substitute with havarti)
50% of the total weight of the cheese of dry white wine (e.g. Sauvignon blanc) (1 cup ≈ 0.5 lb)
When melted and bubbling, add cornstarch dissolved in kirsch, lemon juice, and spices to taste.
Simmer for 2 minutes to thicken.
Exact measurements for garlic, cornstarch, and lemon juice are meant to serve 4 people. Adjust to taste/number of people/amount of cheese. The experts tell me Trader Joe’s has most of the requisite cheeses for cheap.
I can’t say the presentation is great, but it was good! We ate the fondue with homemade ciabatta (in background) and kimchi.
As so often happens, J and I had nothing in the fridge to eat. No greens, no leftovers, no beans soaked and ready for boiling. Fortunately, we were able to scrape together some lingering and more robust ingredients to cook.
Korean glazed potato side dish from Maangchi.Korean-style mapo tofu, with some substitutions made (as always)…The final desperate meal. I do believe the avocado half was our last fresh veggie.
Aaaaand we got our produce delivery today, so we’re back to having fruit and leafy greens!
Although I’ve been buying (second-hand!) accessories for our stand mixer, we don’t have a dough hook yet and haven’t been able to make pizza dough. As a substitute, Imperfect Produce recently had “imperfect” pre-made pizza crusts. Maybe they were short-coded? They were some sort of fancy, too, multi-grain with sprouted wheat, I think (although they were essentially big tortillas… Not very fluffy at all).
Imperfect Produce has recently expanded into non-produce items, so we’ve been able to get pasta, cheese, butter, and even goat milk from them. They have a “perfect” line, but I avoid that.
Broccoli and other random veggies. Both pizzas had Italian cheese mix and some Gruyère.Pepperoni and mushroom. The pepperoni was a free leftover from a recent wedding! We also got about 3 quarts of paella, a pint of mini macarons, and some appetizers.
One of my favorite, exceptionally tender cookies! Fatty nuts (pecans) make them even better, but other nuts also work. The recipe is from The Joy of Cooking (my mom said it might be from Betty Crocker).
Mexican wedding cakes/Russian teacakes
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup finely chopped nuts
Thoroughly mix butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add flour, salt, and nuts. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 10-12 minutes at 400°F until set but not brown. While warm, roll in powdered sugar. Roll in sugar again once cooled.
Halve eggs lengthwise, removing yolks and mashing with a fork. Stir in mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, and salt. Fill eggs halves with mixture, garnishing with paprika or parsley.
I got a free baguette from somewhere a few months ago. It’s been sitting in my freezer since then, desiccating, apparently. I got it out to make banh mi yesterday and discovered that it was rock hard. I would’ve given up on the whole idea except that I’d already bought all the other ingredients.
To attempt to rehydrate the bread, I… steamed it. It mostly worked. Soggy on the outside and still pretty hard on the inside = delicious, right? Fortunately, panfrying got rid of the sogginess.
Bread down, onto the hacked-together filling! The main components of banh mi are some protein (I used fried tofu and scrambled egg), cilantro, mayo, fish sauce, and marinated veggies. I had trouble with the fish sauce (don’t have it) and the marinated vegetables (don’t have vinegar), so I made some wild substitutions like usual.
Julienned carrots and radish are supposed to be marinated in a combination of rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. I didn’t want to buy a whole container of vinegar (and it’s not available in bulk) just as I’m about to move out, so my plan was to use lemon or lime juice in place of vinegar. Lime would be especially fitting – it’s commonly used as a topping. But… the grocery store didn’t have either 🙁 The closest alternative I could find was grapefruit. I still don’t know if that was a good choice.
I added bonito flakes to the marinade to substitute for fish sauce.
The final banh mi-like sandwich. (This nice plate was a bulk-trash-pickup-day find 🙂
The sandwich was actually pretty good, considering. The vegetables only have the faintest hint of grapefruit-bitterness flavor… 😀
