Chews Wise

#Snowpocalypse Baking Challenge!

 
With schools closed, the house a mess, and a constant stream of play dates for the kids, what better time than now to bake bread? I've been baking up a storm -- and now it's time for you to start too. So I'm launching the Snowpocalypse baking challenge. 

If you haven't baked bread before, now is the time to start -- because time is probably what you have if you're snowed-in. If you want an easy recipe, try the no-knead bread below. Mix your dough, let it rise for 12-18 hours, then bake it. 

Then, post your pictures to this Flickr group and I'll pick a winning bread. The prize: Jim Lahey's recently published book, My Bread (donated by his publisher). His no-knead recipe is the perfect starting point for beginning bakers and I've modified it just a bit below.

Here's what you'll need:

• A medium bowl
• 4.5 to 5.5 quart pot to cook the bread. A dutch oven or even a pasta pot will work.
• 3 cups (400 grams) white flour. Preferably bread flour, but all purpose flour will do. Avoid cake flour.
• 1/4 teaspoon instant or rapid rise yeast
• 1-1/4 teaspoon (8 grams) salt
• 1-1/3 cups (300 grams) water
• Olive oil
• Wheat bran or cornmeal (optional)

Stir together the flour, yeast and salt. Add the water and using a spoon or your hands, mix until you have a wet, sticky, mass -- about 30 seconds. If using your hands, rub a little olive oil on your fingers and palms to keep from sticking to the dough. It should be sticky to touch, if not, add a couple of tablespoons more water. 

Cover bowl with plastic wrap, or a plate (I use a plastic tray) and let sit for 12-18 hours. If your kitchen is cold, put it on a high shelf in a cupboard. The surface will be dotted with bubbles and it will have doubled in size. 

When the fermentation is complete, rub 1 teaspoon of little olive onto your counter. Use a scraper or spoon to move the dough onto the counter in one piece (the bottom of the dough in the bowl is now the top). Though sticky, do not add any more flour. Rub your hands with more olive oil. Slip your hand under the edge of the dough and then fold the edges toward the center to make a round shape. It won't be like a ball because this dough is too wet. It will have a flatter shape, and don't worry if it's uneven. 

Place a cotton or linen towel on the counter and generously dust it with wheat bran, cornmeal, or flour. Gently lift the dough and flip it over so that the folds or seams are face down on the the towel. Fold the towel loosely over the dough and let sit for 1-2 hours. The dough's ready if you gently press your finger in the dough 1/4 inch and the dough keeps the impression rather than springing back. 

One-half hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475 F. On a rack in the lower third of the oven, place your 4.5-5.5 quart heavy lidded pot. 

When ready to bake, using pot holders carefully remove the pot. Take off the lid. Unfold the tea towel, dust the loaf with more flour or bran and quickly invert it and place it the pot (the seam side is now face up). Be careful -- the pot is HOT. Don't worry if it looks uneven. Put the lid on the pot, jiggle back and forth and place back in the oven. 

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the top. Bake for another 15-30 minutes until the top is a dark chestnut color. When done, use a spatula or spoon to remove it to a cooling rack. 

Wait at least 1 hour before cutting into it. The bread will continue to cook during this time and if you cut into it too early, the crumb will be gummy.  

Post questions in the comment section and pictures to the flickr group. Happy baking!

Seven Tips for a Home Baker

Seeded sourdough loaf with white, whole wheat and rye

Baker Dan Lepard writes a rare baking column in the Guardian newspaper in the UK, has an active web presence, and has written an engaging baking book, but here he visits with a serious home baker, Jack Lang, who lays out seven principles of baking. This quote caught my eye, because it's really true. Everyone thinks baking with sourdough is hard but it's actually more forgiving than instant yeast.

"...naturally leavened breads are very easy to manage, especially for the home baker, as the dough matures more slowly and the point when the loaf finally gets to the oven is less critical. I am convinced that naturally leavened breads, like sourdough, are great for the home baker and less problematic that other quicker yeasted breads."

Now onto the seven principles (with my comments in italics). 

1. Use a naturally-leavened starter. “Using a sourdough starter is easy,” says Jack. “You keep it in the fridge from one month until the next, and simply refresh a small amount when you need to use it.” (If you refrigerate it, refresh it at least two times before using it).

2. Keep practicing your ‘baking routine’ until you find a method that suits you. “It was the constant baking that improved my breads”, says Jack. (Really true, it's like music. The more you practice the better you get, especially because the craft is tactile).

3. “For many of the breads I bake”, says Jack, “I make the dough the night before and leave it overnight in the refrigerator”. This is a great help in managing your time when baking at home, when there are always other things to do. (I do this too. It improves the flavor of the bread and works with your schedule, so if you mix a dough Friday evening you can bake 8-24 hours later -- whatever works by your schedule). 

 4. Do keep a record of the temperatures of your flour, water, dough and room when you bake. “Temperature control is very important when you bake”, says Jack, “but don’t go overboard with it”. (Yes, and use a bit more sourdough in the winter and less in the summer, as higher temperatures speed fermentation -- the ideal though is 76-78 F). 

5. “Food processors are great for mixing bread, just remember to use the steel blade”, says Jack. My co-author on “Baking with Passion”, Richard Whittington, swears by the food processor and finds it much easier to use than the upright mixer. (I've used a food processor quite successfully to make dough, but I don't use it regularly.)

6. Remember that when you bake brown, mixed wheat, rye or wholemeal loaves, you will not get the same volume in the finished loaf as you will achieve with white flour, nor as open a texture to the crumb. Just remember this and be content. (True to a point, see picture above. If you make a very moist dough with whole grains you can achieve a less dense crumb but moist doughs are hard to work with -- go back to point 2). 

7. And finally, “Bake the dough from cold”, says Jack, who lets his dough prove overnight in the refrigerator at 4ºC (39F). This, he feels, gives a better result. (Sugars develop in a long slow rise, so the bread flavor will improve. The sour acidity in a dough also increases with lower temperature, so if you want higher sour notes by all means refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Depending on the degree of fermentation, though, you may need to let the rise continue at room temperature).

Addendum: I just got Lepard's book, The Art of Handmade Bread: Contemporary European Recipes for the Home Baker, and am happily reading through it. Many of the recipes are unusual, from Scandinavia, Scotland, Russia, Germany and the Ukraine, incorporating age-old methods (such as soaking grains in wine, using ale, making your own malt). It reminds me a bit of Elizabeth David's approach in her classic, English Bread and Yeast Cookery , since she too paid serious attention to traditional home made breads. I'm excited to try these methods soon.

What to Do When Alice Waters Calls, Seeking Bread

By Samuel Fromartz

I was leaving the gym when I checked my messages. Alice Waters' office at Chez Panisse was calling -- yeah, right. Who was this really? 

When I called back, it turned out Waters was calling and looking for a baker for her charity dinner in Washington, to replace one who had dropped out. Barton Seaver, a friend and chef at Blue Ridge,  suggested me. "We hear you make the best baguette in DC," said Sarah Weiner, Waters' assistant. "Well, yeah, I won a contest," I stammered, "but I just bake at home. The most I've baked was for Thanksgiving dinner." 

They needed to feed 40 -- at a $500 a plate dinner at Bob Woodward's house. Could it be done in my home ovens? I said I'd call back. I went home to figure out how much bread I needed to bake and realized I could probably do it -- 5 big loaves and several baguettes. I then called Peter Reinhart -- the renowned baker and author I've known for a couple of years -- to see what he thought. "That's not a lot of bread," he said, and he encouraged me to give it a whirl.

So began my first gig as a professional baker -- at an Alice Waters' dinner.

I quickly settled on breads I made time and again and eat at home -- a pain au levain made with sourdough and a mix of white, whole wheat and rye flours; a pane casareccio di Genzano, an airy white big loaf crusted with wheat bran that I picked up from Dan Leader's Local Breads; and of course, my baguettes. 

I've never baked this much bread before, so I worked out a timeline -- and good thing too, since I would need to begin Friday to have the breads ready on Sunday. I started by feeding 50 grams (about a quarter-cup) of sourdough starter Friday morning, building it to 150 grams. On Friday night, I fed it again to take it up to 450 grams. Saturday morning, I refreshed it a third time. By Saturday evening, when I needed the ripe starter to make my doughs, I had over 1500 grams (3.3 pounds) of the stuff. With that steady feeding every 8-12 hours, the starter was bubbling, itching to impregnate the dough. It's pictured at left, and below, in the big bin on the right.

I measured out the flours and began mixing the dough. I don't really knead or use a mixer. Rather, I combine the ingredients by hand until they come together. Then I let the shaggy mass rest so the flour slowly soaks in the water, then fold it over every hour or so to develop the gluten. By the end of the process, the dough glistens with moisture. If you pull away a small piece and stretch it, you should be almost able to see through it -- the so-called windowpane test that shows when a dough is done. This folding technique is a cousin to the no-knead method, since you just fold over the dough and let time do its work. It works beautifully, especially since my home mixer couldn't handle the volume of dough I made. 

Now the magic began -- the first rise, the source of all flavor -- and luckily it was a chilly night. Why was that important? Because I let my sourdoughs rise in an unheated basement storage room that is about 55F. That's the perfect temperature for a languid fermentation, when the sugars in the bread develop. Bakers buy proofing cabinets that cost thousands of dollars to get this temperature with refrigeration. My solution was less precise, but it worked fine. The genzano and baguette doughs rose in the refrigerator, since they contained instant yeast as well as sourdough and I wanted a slower fermentation.

At 7 the next morning, I took the pain au levain dough out and let it warm up for about an hour. I then shaped three boules, letting them rise for 2-1/2 hours. In the meantime, I heated up the baking stones in my double-oven. Then I repeated this with the Genzano loaf, about an hour later, and then the baguette. 

The rise went well, full of oven spring. I attribute that to the levain, which you'll recall had built over a 52-hour period with successive refreshments, including the last one in the dough. (Pictured below are the pane casareccio di Genzano - Genzano Country Bread).

I finished baking at about 2 p.m. and let the breads cool, then delivered the loaves for the dinner. Jean-Pierre Moullé, the chef at Chez Panisse, was there to greet me. We talked briefly about the breads and I mentioned I was a home baker, not a professional.

"I know, but you did not bake these at home," he said.

"Yes, I did," I countered -- and I noticed his eyebrow rise a bit.

Later that evening, at a party preceding the dinner, Alice Waters took me aside, bread lover that she is, and thanked me warmly. It was a nice moment.

For a home baker, there's always the moment of anticipation when the bread comes out of the oven and you wait for it to cool before tearing into it. Alas, with these loaves, I didn't get a chance to cut into them, to evaluate the flavor and aromas or assess the interior crumb or the density of the crust -- all crucial to a decent loaf. But I trust they were fine. 

The thing is, I don't bake for a living. There is no daily pressure, no waking at 1 a.m. to get to the ovens, no staff, no orders. It's just me and the bread. And until yesterday, I've only given my breads away to friends. Now I've donated them for a worthwhile cause. Maybe I've just widened the circle of people who eat my bread. And that's just fine.

What's in that School Lunch Anyway?

There's been a lot of talk lately about school nutrition, but what do kids actually eat? Ed Bruske, a former reporter who blogs at the Slow Cook, spent a week in a DC public school to find out. He came away with a cheese-filled six part series that is well worth reading.

Really Easy Potato Pizza From Jim Lahey's "My Bread" ... Trust Me, It's Great

By Samuel Fromartz

One of the challenges for a home baker is to try and figure out how to make a great bread once you've tasted it. Like encountering the Platonic ideal, you recognize it, reach for it and try and duplicate it -- and then you fail miserably and often give up.

Jim Lahey, the founder of Sullivan Street Bakery, was like a culinary Plato for me. Every bread he turned out was amazing and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find a way to make the airy, light, wonderfully tasteful bread at home. To learn more, I actually visited his bakery in New York several years ago and did a story on him. And while he gave me a few generous tips in an interview (and critiqued the sample I had in my backpack), it wasn't enough. I had to learn on my own and like most bread, I later realized success was less about the recipe than the technique.

Lahey, of course, later caused a storm on the Internet with his no-knead bread recipe, courtesy of Mark Bittman. Then, he spun those recipes into My Bread published this past fall, which ranks as a perfect starting point for an aspiring baker.

Less known than his bread, however, are his terrific pizzas, which he also includes in the book. These aren't the round pizzas he serves up at his New York restaurant, Company, but rectangular sheets of exceedingly thin-crust pizza, topped with onions, mushrooms or just tomato sauce. They are sold by the slice in his bakery.

The big secret about these crispy gems? Like no-knead bread they are dead easy and fast to make. For the effort, you get great results. 

Atlantic Writer Blames Arugula for California's Failing Schools

In the media world, the hatchet job has long been a profitable one. It involves finding a major figure, uncovering a supposed flaw and then showing the world how it is a symptom of everything that's wrong with -- fill in the blank -- politics, business, schools, etc. 

Caitlin Flanagan's rant about Alice Waters qualifies as a glowing example of the genre. In the piece, she argues that Water's school gardens are doing everything to disenfranchise poor, undereducated kids by making them work outdoors rather than hitting the books. She leads off with a supposed child of a former migrant worker who goes to school -- only to do migrant-like work at the Berkeley middle school garden that Waters organized.

The child is a figment of Flanagan's hyperactive imagination. Did she go to the school, talk to the kids or parents or teachers, ask if any kids felt they were being exploited, or even wasting time -- in a school garden? Why bother because she already knew the answer. 

I don't think anyone would dispute that schools are in trouble, especially California's with its famous budget troubles. A piece looking into those schools -- something that Flanagan's colleague Sandra Tsing Loh, for example, has done amusingly well in these same pages - would be welcome. And in fact, in the same Atlantic issue, there is a very worthwhile piece on what really makes students excel (hint: it's the teachers). Flanagan, however, fixates on little seedlings and argues not only that the gardens are misplaced but suggests they are the cause of said educational failures. Blame the arugula for school dropouts.

The purpose of this argument is to skewer a person Flanagan viscerally detests. But finding Alice Waters' precious local foodie proclivities distasteful is one thing. (Even I found the bit where she poached an egg over an open hearth on 60-Minutes a bit much). Pinning the ills of the state's educational system on school gardens is something else again. What's next? Blaming the deep recession on Michelle Obama's White House garden because it takes the president's attention off more weighty problems at hand?

It's long been known that adequate nutrition has a direct relationship on children's achievement in school. Whether gardens would have a bearing on this equation is a question Flanagan chooses to ignore. (Oh wait, she does explore this issue by traveling to a grocery store in Compton to get her answer. She decides poor people can get good food, but they mostly like junk and nothing but upward mobility will change that). 

Maybe the gardens can help with the nutrition equation. Perhaps they won't. But you can't get anything to grow without diligence, attention, planning and hard work -- all qualities that can be applied to other endeavors, even farming. (She never considers that a kid really drawn to the garden might end up owning a farm business in the state's $39 billion agriculture industry, rather than being a migrant -- not a far-fetched path in California). Whatever the case, it's clear that the gardens are a minor sideshow in the issues facing the California school system. As she writes:

I have never seen an entire school system as fundamentally broken and rudderless as the California public schools, a system in which one out of five high-school students drops out before graduation, and in which scarcely 60 percent of the African American and Hispanic students leave school with a diploma. These young people are cast adrift in a $50 billion system in which failure is almost a foregone conclusion.

In that universe of problems, she focuses on ... gardens? Frankly, I think her imaginary migrant parents would probably spend more time worrying about Sacramento gutting meager school resources and teachers' positions then about the 1-1/2 hours a week their kid spends tending the arugula. And they should.

Considering Local, Financial Sustainability

Something to consider as we enter the New Year: Is there really any reason to keep your money with a big bailed out bank?

Politics of the Plate -- a Notable New Blog

Barry Estabrook was the food politics writer over at Gourmet, where he uncovered some notable stories. Since the demise of that publication, he's launched his own blog that features his writing and reporting skills. Barry's old school. When he has a question, he actually gets on the phone -- what a thought! -- rather than just Googling.  But then again, he's also on Twitter.

The result? Solid stories with quotes, such as this recent one on the controversy over San Francisco's biosolids compost. The city says it's safe. A couple of public interest groups don't think so. 

For the full post please visit politicsoftheplate.com

Twitter Food List to Chew On

Kim O'Donnell has gathered a go-to list of people to follow on Twitter from the sustainable food world. Many are my Tweeps. She writes:

For those in the social media know, Twitter has unveiled a beta version of its “Lists” functionality, which allows you to categorize Twitter accounts however you wish.  The list is an interesting way of distilling feeds by theme or topic, making it easier to keep tabs on news, particularly if it’s breaking or timely.

...I’ve just scratched the surface, but already I’ve got 25 (or maybe 27) folks and groups worth considering a follow or at least a quick Twit-peek. Check it out, and feel free to weigh in and share some of your favorites.

via See the full post at trueslant.com

Farmers Who Do Right by their Workers

The Fair Food Project has launched a series of slideshows highlighting farmworkers, often a silent or ignored component of the food chain. I'm including the second of three slideshows here which shows companies and farms with a social mission. For them, food isn't produced at the expense of workers.

With GE Crops, Pesticide Use Rose Dramatically Over 13 Years

Despite industry claims to the contrary, the adoption of genetically engineered crops has led to dramatic increase in pesticide use over 13 years, according to a new report.

The report, released by the Organic Center, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Food Safety, put the increase at 318 million pounds, even taking into account the 64 million pound reduction in insecticides for GE corn and cotton. The report was written by Organic Center chief scientist Charles Benbrook. 

Farmers, who have planted ever more acres with GE crops, are also battling a rising tide of herbicide-resistant superweeds, which is leading to rising pesticide applications, new seed development, and higher costs.

The price of GE seeds has risen precipitously in recent years, and the need to make additional herbicide applications in an effort to keep up with resistant weeds is also increasing cash production costs.As an example, corn farmers planting “SmartStax” hybrids in 2010 will spend around $124 per acre for seed, almost three times the cost of conventional corn seed. In addition, new-generation “Roundup Ready” (RR) 2 soybean seed, to be introduced on a widespread basis next year, will cost 42 percent more than the original RR seeds they are displacing.

The full report can be read here and a further summary at Civil Eats blog. 

The Mess in the Corn Belt or "Turkey on the Combine"

By Lisa M. Hamilton

This fall has been a mess for farmers in the Corn Belt. Rain this spring meant planting dangerously late, then cool weather delayed crops’ development. By September there was fear that corn across the Midwest wouldn’t finish the growing cycle before the first killing freeze. Most corn and soybeans are now safely mature, but seemingly endless rain has made that almost irrelevant. For most of the fall it has been too wet and muddy to get into the fields; when the combines do make it out, often the crop is too wet to harvest.

On the chat group Crop Talk, farmers who were incredulous that they might be harvesting past Thanksgiving started joking about “turkey on the combine.” As the rain continued through October, the jokes spread. “Turkey on the combine for sure,” Michigan’s 7810greenmachine wrote, “and maybe I hang some christmas lights on it too...I have a feeling its going to be a long harvest.” By November 1, Illinois had only 19 percent of its corn harvested, compared to 86 percent in an average year. And it was the same story across the region—Iowa had 18 percent harvested, Indiana 28 percent

So, who cares? Really, why should this matter to non-farmers, particularly those who want to change the commodity-focused food system? Well, it’s true that the corn and soybeans at issue are neither locally sold nor organic; their growers are not people you’ll meet at the farmers market. And yet, with wheat, they are the basis for an overwhelming percentage of the calories consumed in this country. Likewise, the majority of family farms in the U.S. are part of this business. If you want to change the food system, this is it.

To my eyes, the disaster unfolding in the Corn Belt is further evidence of a dangerous lack of resiliency. To run properly, our current agricultural system relies on a precise set of conditions: cheap fuel, ample water, stable climate; tweak one of those conditions and the system derails. In the meantime, the industry continues its narrow focus on yields. Nearly all season the USDA has been breathlessly forecasting record-breaking yields in corn—but with virtually no mention of the extenuating circumstances that might make that big, fat crop unharvestable.

Now, across wide swaths of the Corn Belt, farmers are finding their corn covered with molds called aflatoxins, which can be harmful to cattle and so are causing some buyers to reject the crop. In the mid-South, Kansas State University economist Rich Llewelyn reported a different problem: crops there matured earlier, but because rain left them sitting in the field for weeks, both corn and soybeans have begun sprouting while still on the stalk. Though Midwest skies have been clear this past week, most crops are still too high in moisture to be stored for any length of time. They could be dried down mechanically, but in many cases the high cost of propane is making that prohibitively expensive. Instead, those farmers are leaving the crop in the field and hoping that, somehow, their luck will change.  

In an article this spring I wrote that part of the solution to challenges like these would be to increase diversity, from the crops’ germplasm all the way up to the wholesale markets. Amidst the muddy debacle taking place this fall, I would underscore the emphasis on using diversity to breed more resilient plant varieties. Rather than focus solely on yield or specific items such as drought-tolerance or herbicide resistance, we need varieties that can flex along with whatever conditions they encounter. With climate change afoot, it may be that turkey on the combine will become an annual affair. We need to be ready for that, and whatever else Mother Nature sends our way.

Lisa M. Hamilton is the author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness

Fresh and Organic But Are They Local?

One Farmer Parses Organic vs. Local Costs

At a panel I moderated yesterday for Woman Chefs and Restaurateurs, Jim Crawford, an organic vegetable farmer in south-central Pennsylvania, made an interesting point.

He said growing crops organically did not add to cost on the farm -- what added to cost was location, since smaller eastern farmers have four disadvantages compared with produce farmers on the West Coast. 

• First, economies of scale. Since eastern farmers operate on a smaller scale they cannot match the cost advantages of larger operations.
• Secondly, labor costs. His costs are higher than on the West Coast, where labor is often outsourced to crews of migrant workers.
• Third, seasonality. Since the growing season is shorter, he can't get as much productivity out of his land as a California operation producing 10 months or more a year.
• Fourth, weather. He marveled that one strawberry farmer in California told him it hardly if ever rained during the growing season. A couple of heavy rain storms on Jim's strawberries fields and they might be lost to plant disease.

That said, he noted that Tuscarora Organic Growers -- the farm co-op he helped start 20 years ago and which now has over 30-farm members -- was making strides in extending production into the winter months, especially with greens. It's doing nearly $3 million in sales in the mid-Atlantic region. 

- Samuel Fromartz

Whole Wheat Sourdough with Orange, Fennel and Raisin

 

Last week, the NYT magazine had an article about Jeff Ford, a well-regarded artisan baker in Madison, Wisconsin, rhapsodizing about the benefits of sourdough bread. But the companion recipe amazingly featured a loaf made with yeast. 

Now I've got nothing against commercial yeast -- I use it -- but to write a whole article on the glories of sourdough and then ignore it in the recipe makes as much sense as talking about the extraordinary qualities of wild salmon and then providing a recipe for tilapia. 

I know why the editors did it -- sourdough isn't instant or easy. It's about commitment, and it takes time and most people don't have a vat of wild bacteria and yeast sitting out on their counter that they feed everyday like me. Mind you, there's not a lot of work involved in making sourdough bread, but like all bread, the process unfolds in hours and days, not in minutes. You don't work during those hours. The sourdough does.

Luckily though, the Times web site did include sourdough recipes from Ford, including an unusual orange, fennel, raisin whole wheat and rye loaf that was very intriguing. Usually, whole grain recipes sweeten loaves with honey to temper the assertive and bitter bite. This recipe used orange juice, orange zest, and raisins instead. (He calls it Raisin Rye Bread, but I don't because I taste very little rye in it.)

Making sourdough can be challenging, and making whole grain sourdough doubly so. In the past, my 100% whole wheat sourdough experiments were brick-like, so I gave up in favor of a pain de compagne that had about 25% whole wheat and 10% rye in addition to the white flour.

But I gave this recipe a try and was pleasantly surprised. It had a very complex but not overpowering flavor and the sweetness of the raisins and the slight acidity of the orange juice lightened the loaf. 

My only significant modification was to bake the loaves at 460F instead of 500F. Why? Because I am used to baking at that temperature and it works for me. I feared the higher temperature would overcook the crust before cooking the interior, but maybe next time I will try it. 

One other note about this recipe: follow Ford's suggestion and let the dough rise overnight in the refrigerator (or outdoors, as I did, since the temperature was around 50F -- ideally you want 45-55F but a refrigerator works). That long rise adds immensely to the complexity of taste. 

- Samuel Fromartz

Here's a slide show of the process. And check out yeastspotting on Friday for this and other great breads.

Created with flickr slideshow.