I have previously mentioned Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread (posts here and here and here. I’ve continued to make this at least once a week since those early days of experimentation. I thought I might include a few notes about how I’m makind and refining the process that I use.

My early loaves kind of reminded me of the experience I had when first taking drawing classes. When I first started drawing classes, my improvement was immediate and dramatic. Childish squiggles gave way to portraits which were at least recognizable. But after that initial rush, you become more discerning, more critical of your own work. It’s that way for this bread as well. Initially, it’s amazingly good. But then, you begin to notice a few things which are perhaps not as good as you imagined. After a few weeks of that, I decided to try to be somewhat more methodical in trying to figure out what I was doing right or wrong, which approaches yielded better results, or worse results, and try to refine the basic recipe into something that is repeatable.

The recipe is so simple (flour, salt, yeast and water) that simple experimentation wasn’t difficult. The most obvious thing to vary was the ratio of water to flour. Jim Lahey’s book suggests a 2:1 ratio by volume (three cups of flour to one and a half of water) but when I tried to do that, I didn’t get repeatable results. Sometimes, the dough would appear to be fairly dry and it was difficult to get the flour to integrate, other times, the dough would be wet, and the second “rise” would look more like a “relax”: the dough would spread out rather than rise up. “Real” bakers will tell you that you need to weigh your ingredients to get an accurate measure, so I went ahead and bought a simple mechanical food scale that I could use.

Okay, but what amounts to use? Three cups of flour doesn’t really have a consistent weight, but it probably weighs a little over 4.5 ounces per cup. That would make for 13.5 ounces for three cups. Water is easier: a cup and a half is 12 ounces. So, I started experimenting. To make things easy, I decided to keep the weight of flour constant, and only vary the amount of water to
try to find the appropriate hydration ratio. My early experiments were all with dry yeast (1/4 tsp) and one teaspoon of salt.

I was a bit surprised. I’m using slightly more flour than the recipe would normally recommend, but it turns out that 12 ounces of water was ample to hydrate the flour. In fact, it appeared that the final dough was too wet: it spread out a lot during the second rise, and the final loaf was quite flat. A few more trials over the next couple of weeks (I can only eat so much bread) revealed that decreasing the water to eleven ounces gave a nicer result.

So, here’s my first rule of thumb: weigh your ingredients, sixteen ounces of flour, eleven ounces of water seems good for basic bread.

Secondly, I was concerned that my oven wasn’t coming up to temperature. I purchased an oven thermometer, and verified my oven was having a difficult time getting even to 450 degrees. Even with 30 minutes of pre-heating, it seems to reach a maximum temperature of 430 degrees or so. By 45 minutes, it seems to be more or less at 450 degrees. If I do a long preheat, I end up with nicer deeper color on the crusts, and the bread seems nicer overall.

Second rule of thumb: don’t rush your preheat, especially if your oven might have a hard time getting that hot.

Third, the depth and crispiness of the crust seems to be dependent on the humidity in the Dutch oven. Some have suggested spraying the bread with water as it goes into the oven, and I’ve found that to be helpful. When I take the time to spritz the loaf, the loaf seems to expand a bit better, and the resulting crust forms more nicely (more tender). But when you remove the lid during cooking, it also appears to be helpful to let the oven vent for thirty seconds or so: if you are too quick, the humidity in the oven can remain high, and when you pull the loaf out at the end, you may still feel some wet steam. That prevents the “singing” crackling crust that you want.

Third rule: spritz it with water when it goes in, when you remove the lid for the last fifteen minutes, vent the oven pretty well.

Fourth rule: let the bread cool before you eat it. My wife loves it when it’s hot, but frankly, some of the starches inside still seem fairly gelatinous to me when you cut into it, and they need some time for the steam to redistribute water inside the loafs. Just like resting a steak, the bread will be better when it’s rested for a while. After an hour or two, I put the whole loaves into paper bags and store them in our bread box until they are ready to eat. I don’t recommend plastic for whole loaves, especially if the loaves are not completely cool: the residual steam condenses inside the plastic, and wrecks the crust. Once you’ve cut into the loaf, plastic might be useful to store the bread to keep it from drying out.

I’ve just begun experimenting with similar ratios for using sourdough. My first tests have been with the same amounts of flour and salt. Previously I would use one and a half cups of water and 1/4 cup of starter, but again, I found that to be a fairly wet dough, creating a fairly flat loaf. My current experiments have centered around the ratio that I found for my yeast loaves: I take 1/4 cup of starter, and add enough water to make eleven ounces. I’ve made this twice, and the resulting loaves are nice and round, but perhaps a bit dense, with fairly even but small bubbles inside the loaf. I think I’ll try to add a very small amount of additional water (11.5 ounces total weight) to compensate for the small amount of additional flour that is in the starter. More experimentation is clearly called for.

I also have begun to wonder if I’m “overrising” some of my dough. Leaving this dough for 24 hours may be too long. I like to make the dough when I get home after work, and then bake it the next day, meaning a full day for it to rise. I suspect that (especially for the bread made with commercial yeast) it may be better to cut that down to 18 hours or so (make the dough just before going to bed, but bake it when I get home from work). I’ll be experimenting some more over the next few weeks.

Anybody else having fun with this recipe? Any tips you might want to give this budding baker?

I have fond memories of In-N-Out. In fact, one is fairly near my house, so I don’t need to go deep into my past: I can simply go over there and get one whenever the mood strikes me. I recognize that the burgers themselves aren’t (to the truth be told) particularly all that good. I suspect that my fondness for them stems from a memory of the first time I had one, when the In-N-Out in Pinole had just opened, I was in the process of hunting for my first house. Carmen and I stopped in, and had a couple of them, and whether it was the stress of the day or whatever, I thought they were the best thing on earth.

Some others seem to have similar notions. This article was interesting, because a fanatic went to the trouble of dissecting their burgers and making them at home. That he used mathematics and their nutritional information as clues is just a bonus. Check it out:

The Burger Lab: The Ins-n-Outs of an In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal-Style | A Hamburger Today.

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that it wasn’t always about ham radio. It’s really about whatever I happen to be thinking about and doing that I wish to share and talk about. Tonight’s topic was simply this: applesauce.

I was watching America’s Test Kitchen, where they were making homemade “shake n’ bake” style porkchops and applesauce. I didn’t really feel like having porkchops, but because I’ve been eating poorly lately (too many restaurants because of visiting son and his wife, and my own visits to my brother) I had a bit of a sweet tooth, and the idea of making some homemade applesauce sounded really good, and much better for me than the ice cream which I’ve been indulging far too often in lately.

If you buy applesauce in a can or jar, far too often it suffers from a number of problems. It can be made from apples which just aren’t very good. It’s often far too sweet, with lots of high fructose corn syrup. It can have preservatives or other additives. Often it includes overpowering spice elements like cinnamon. Yuck.

America’s Test Kitchen suggested a very simple recipe. Take 4 pounds of apples. Wash them, core them, and dice them into coarse chunks (skin on). Put them in a pot. Add 1/2 a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a little water. Cook for around 15 minutes, until the apples are soft, and then put them through a food mill to remove the skins and even the texture.

They suggested a number of different apples that could be used. For my experiment, I used eight of the Pink Lady variety. They are related to the Golden Delicious, but have a nice rosy color to them that’s pretty. Eight of them was about 3.5 pounds uncored. I chopped them fairly coarsely, added a splash of water, a pinch of salt, and just a little sugar (no, didn’t measure, but probably less than 1/2 a cup, maybe just two table spoons). I set this covered on medium heat.

After a few minutes, you could smell a cider-like smell, and the apples began to boil and liberate a lot of water. I thought that maybe I had too much water, but after a few more minutes, the apples began to break down and lots of the liquid was reabsorbed. After about 15 or 20 minutes, the apples were soft and smelled delicious.

I don’t have a proper food mill, so I just took a potato masher and crushed ’em. Yep, skins still on, but as I mashed them, they lent their rosy color to the mash, and I actually liked the textural element. I added a very small amount of cinnamon, stirred it in, and then let it cool for a couple of minutes.

It was delicious. What’s really great is how the fresh complex flavor of the apples really come out. They are sweet, and tart, and clean tasting. Next time I make pork chops, I’ll have to make some of this applesauce. I think it would also be good with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream, or maybe with a cobbler like topping of oatmeal and brown sugar and maybe some cold cream.

We don’t appreciate these classic foods very often, at least in the way that they used to be made. Thanks to America’s Test Kitchen for motivating this delicious culinary experiment.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I like cooking, and I’ve begun to read a bit upon the subject of so-called “molecular gastronomy”. I was also watching Iron Chef America, and saw (not for the first time) a chef use the “sous vide” technique of cooking: where a protein is sealed in a vacuum bag and placed in a temperature controlled water bath to cook. This is an interesting technique because it prevents eggs and meats from being overcooked, even with very long cooking times. The temperature simply never rises high enough to cause the chemical reactions which overcooking typically causes. You can (for instance) place eggs in 148 degree Fahrenheit water for 75 minutes, and they won’t overcook. If you place an egg in 135 degree Fahrenheit water for at least 75 minutes, you can pasteurize an egg (it won’t solidify).

Anyway, there is a lot to this, and I’d been thinking I should look up more details on this technique. And of course, the Internet delivers.

A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.

Lots of interesting stuff here, including instructions on cooking beef, pork, fish and eggs, and important food safety considerations.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to radio stuff soon.

Carmen and I have reached the point in our lives where buying stuff for each other at Christmas is kind of superfluous. Stuff we need, we already buy, and stuff we don’t need aren’t the greatest gifts. What’s really valuable is the time we spend together. Toward that end, my wife Carmen used her own creativity, and signed us both up for a cooking class at Kitchen on Fire, a little place next to Chez Pannisse in Berkeley.

From their website:

Founded in 2005 by seasoned restaurateur and author Olivier Said of Cesar and popular chef instructor and caterer Chef MikeC.of Party Lifestyle, Kitchen on Fire® is located in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Kitchen on Fire® is located in the Epicurious Garden which is an expansion and continuation of the gourmet cuisine legacy started by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse more than 30 years ago. Our classes offer a range of real skills for entertaining from learning how to throw a party on a budget to uncovering the mysteries of baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie. We also offer kitchen design consulting, corporate teambuilding workshops, in-home classes, classes for kids , private parties and events.

Our class was entitled “A Chef’s New Years Feast”, and included:

• Spinach and Smoked Salmon Salad with Soft Cooked Egg, Radish, and Lemon Dill Dressing
• Winter Vegetable Tarte Tatin
• Truffled Three Cheese and Seasonal Mushroom Cheese Gratin
• Maple Glazed Ham with Root Vegetable Puree
• Spiced Poached Pears With Almond Brittle

The class was three hours, with the first spent just discussing the menu, and the last two hours spent prepping and eating the food. Each of the dishes was just a little bit more elegant than the version that I would attempt. I’ve done salmon and spinach salad, but typically don’t make my own dressing from scratch. Their vegetable Tarte Tatin was very similar to the ratatouille that I’ve made a few times, but over puff pastry dough. The gratin is dressed up mac and cheese (very tasty). The ham was cooked over a bed of apples, tangerines and oranges, and was scented nicely from the fruit. And the poached pears were awesome, served with a little almond brittle, some pomegranate molasses and a scoop of vanilla gelato.

We had a great time. The class wasn’t intimidating at all, and the resulting dishes were delish. We’ll probably go back for another class sometime in the future.

Here are some camera phone pics:

ReadyMade Blog has a nice article on making your own butter, ricotta cheese, or cottage cheese.  I may give the ricotta a try sometime, fresh cheese like this have a mild creamy flavor that I really enjoy.

[tags]Recipes,Butter,Cheese,Ricotta[/tags]