Refrigerator Humor

Attempting balance, with a mid-life metabolism.  Doesn’t one cancel out the other?

Celebration Bread

I’m terribly excited!  I just returned from taking some of my Artos bread to the owner of our neighborhood Mediterranean restaurant and grocery.  He gave me so many compliments that I actually blushed!  However, I had to give all the credit to Peter Reinhart for making the instructions fail-proof, since I had no idea what I was doing. Abe (owner of the store/restaurant) especially couldn’t believe the texture and color.  Apparently, when this bread is tried in a home oven, the interior is often under-done and the top is over-done.  He said he was a bit stunned that this didn’t come out of a bakery, because I got it just right.  It was nice to get an expert’s opinion, as one downside to a web-based group (like the BBA Challenge Group) is that we can’t taste several of the other bakers’ breads and compare.  We can only share photos and tasting notes.  And I have never eaten a bread like this, even when I’ve been in Greece, so I have no idea what it should taste like!  Okay, now, enough of my victory dance, and on to the details.

This week our BBA Challenge focused on the pictured Greek Artos Bread.  There are plain versions, but it’s essentially a celebration bread, changed up for different holidays like Easter and Christmas.  I made the Christmas version, which is called Christopsomos and features dough placed in the shape of a cross on top.

Despite the fact that we’re about to celebrate Memorial Day, making us seasonally-challenged for a Christmas bread, the bread was so much fun to make.  (However, if you aren’t extremely interested in the process of making bread, just skip to the next paragraph so that your eyes don’t glaze over.  I promise I’ll post something other than bread soon.  On the other hand, if you’re crazy to make some starter, and have questions, then leave a comment and I’ll get back to you!)  I began making a seed culture a couple of weeks ago, mixing pineapple juice with dark rye flour, and each day after that adding liquid and flour to the mixture until I had the beginnings of a sourdough starter.  Next, I made a “barm” or starter with that seed culture.  I wanted my barm to be old enough to have some good flavor by the time I baked with it, so I waited until I had refreshed it a few times before beginning this bread.  However, it’s still young, in terms of starters, and the flavor will continue to develop for a long time.

Next, I went to Abe’s store, Alhana, and purchased Mahlab spice and Greek orange blossom honey.  (May I mention how grateful I am to have a store like that within walking distance of my house? And the restaurant is really, really good, too, if you’re ever in the area and you’re needing falafel or kufta kebobs or something like that.)

I decided to use the authentic Mahlab (ground from the pits of Santa Lucia cherries, who knew?), since I could easily get it, in place of the cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.  However, I had to use the suggested ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves, since mastic was nowhere to be found, and sounded like something used to set tile, anyway.  I chose to use grated orange peel instead of extract, reasoning that the flecks of color would be additionally festive.  I added a mixture of chopped dried figs, cranberries, raisins, and toasted walnuts during the last two minutes of kneading.  Which was weird for me – because I don’t like much “stuff” in my bread – but stretching a little is part of this journey, right?

I’ve also never done a decorative loaf before, so I had no idea what to expect.  Cakes, yes; bread, never.  Since many of my baking buddies had trouble getting the curls to stay put during baking, I thought I’d try to use toothpicks and see what happened.  I think it worked pretty well, but I felt really, really guilty poking holes in the bread and was scared (yeah, that’s how seriously I’m taking this whole bread thing) that by breaking the surface tension of the boule, I was going to go to a special bread-making hell.  So far I’m still in Belmont.  But keep an eye out for me, okay?  I have no idea what the statute of limitations is on messing with bread dough.

Truthfully, by the time I took this giant loaf out of the oven and brushed it with the lemon-honey glaze, I was already giddy in love.  The house smelled exotic from the mahleb, almond, orange, lemon, honey combination.  Heck, my hands smelled exotic, too.  I was a little disappointed that droves of relatives weren’t on their way to celebrate a major holiday with us.  I ate some in place of dinner.  Then I had some toast with it this morning.  I’d say that I’ll make it again soon, but I’d be lying.   There are still 40 or so more breads to go in this book, and each is a new adventure waiting to happen!

Lonely Avocado

Last week, two loaves of Anadama Bread, no avocados. Really wanted to make one of these great-looking sandwiches (look near the end of the post).

This week, one avocado, no Anadama Bread.

Life can be cruel, that way . . .

And, no, I can’t just make another loaf of Anadama, are you nuts? I’ve got an Artos loaf on the way, and there are only so many times I can convince myself that my jeans are tight because they shrunk again.

Breadies Unite For BBA Challenge

Bubbling Sponge

Damp Dough

Too Sticky, Not-yet Tacky

Shaped, Ready to Rise

Rising Beautifully

I’ve been keeping a lot from you.  This past year, I’ve been seriously baking a lot of bread.  Not just bagels.  It started with No-Knead Bread.  It got worse when I purchased Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  And, don’t get me wrong, the bread I made was fine.  Just fine.  But I live in one of the great bread areas of the world.  And, yes, you can definitely make acceptable bread in five minutes a day.  It’s just that there’s really no point in making acceptable bread, when I can run down to the store – 2 minutes from my house – and buy Acme bread.  I love that the authors of that book found a way to bring the joy of bread-making to busy people. I applaud them.  It just wasn’t superb bread.  I craved more depth of flavor.

So Smitten Kitchen has had a couple of Peter Reinhart recipes on her site.  And I’ve made them: the bagels I shared with you, and some light wheat bread.  I knocked the bagels out of the park.  But the light wheat bread was lacking.  Okay, but not stellar.  I knew I needed to learn more.  And here’s the ugly thing, hard to admit, but true:  I’ve had a bad attitude about Peter Reinhart.

I lived in Sonoma County, previous home of Peter Reinhart, for over 20 years.  I rarely made bread when I lived there, in fact, because there were so many great bakeries producing world-class bread.  Peter Reinhart was one of the co-founders of Brother Juniper’s Bakery there.  The mere mention of his name makes breadies swoon.  In spite of the fact that I sometimes purchased his bread, that bakery brought one thing to my mind: hippies.

You need to believe me.  I have nothing against hippies.  One reason I lived in Sonoma County for so long is because I loved living with hippie-types.  But I myself am not a hippie.  Never was.  Occasionally leaning toward earth-mother perhaps, but not hippie.  No self-respecting hippie would even want me to be confused with one, either.  Because I am way too uptight to ever be a hippie.  I weigh ingredients.  I measure pie crusts with a measuring tape when I roll them out.  Simply not relaxed enough to be a hippie.

In my ignorant state of mind, I thought Peter was a hippie, playing with whole grains and smoking god-knows-what and turning out some rather dense loaves of bread.  Except that more recently, I realized that my favorite pizza-dough recipe is his.  And those darned bagels were totally amazing.  And that light whole-wheat thing, well, I knew it was my shortcomings that made it less than great, not his recipe.  I started thinking it was time to buy one of his books, but I never quite did.  Until now.  And now I have committed (and probably should be committed, for doing so) to spend almost a whole year of my life baking his bread recipes.  That’s cosmic justice, I’m sure.

The first week was Anadama Bread, a bread I’ve never made or eaten before.  Again, attitude adjustment was clearly needed.  I don’t love, love, love cornmeal, so why would I ever make a bread, other than pure cornbread, that had a lot of cornmeal in it?  Because it’s freakin’ amazing-tasting, with a wonderful crunch, that’s why!  (Obviously, my path to spiritual enlightenment has already begun.  Relaxation can’t be far behind.)

It’s a rather damp dough.  You have to soak polenta-grind (coarse) cornmeal in water overnight.  Then you make a sponge with that and let it sit a while.  When you’re ready to make the bread, you get to struggle with the terms “sticky” and “tacky,” because you want to add flour until it is tacky but not sticky.  Yeah, seriously.  I even ditched my Kitchen-Aid for this one and kneaded it by hand, because I desperately wanted to find the difference, and touch was the only sure way.  My dough never reached the prescribed temperature during kneading, even though I kneaded much longer than suggested, but I knew when it was ready.  I had added quite a lot of flour, but managed to find a balance in there somewhere.

As you can see, the loaves turned out great.  It’s flecked with the crunchy bits of yellow cornmeal.  Toasting brings out the light sweetness of the golden molasses.  (I didn’t even know there was such a thing!)  We finished both loaves within a few days – bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, peanut butter and jam, toast – we came up with any excuse to have another slice.  It was that good.  My family is already asking when I’ll make more.  And I never would have picked this bread to make if I hadn’t joined the challenge.  I’m a much better bread-baker already.  I have 199 teachers/co-learners posting comments at the speed of light, sharing their knowledge freely.  Peter packs so much instruction into the first third of his book, that I already have taken a quantum leap toward bread-brilliance.  And by the way, he’s an instructor now.  At the world’s largest culinary academy, no less.  So establishment, huh?

P.S.  I really need volunteers to eat some of this bread I making all the time now, because we still need to fit into our clothes this time next year!

P.P.S.  I don’t think Peter was ever a hippie, but I could be wrong.  However, I may be the first person ever to mistake an Eastern Orthodox Christian for a hippie.

(A note:  There will be no recipes posted for the breads I make from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  I mean, how would you feel if you spent forever and a day on the process of writing and publishing a book, and then 200 crazy people posted every single recipe in their blogs?  Exactly.)

Bread-Crazy

The first time I ever got on an airplane, it was to fly from LAX to Rome.  No little jaunt to see a relative across the country for me.  Nope.  I flew all the way to Rome by myself.  I was 19, in love, and out of my mind with happiness to be going to a foreign country.

That trip changed my life, of course.  Among other things, I had some of the best bread in the world.  Since bread was an “extra” in our household growing up, I rarely ate sandwiches and never had bread with dinner.  I’m not sure I’d ever thought much about bread.  I mean, I knew it came in plastic wrapper with a twist tie, but since it didn’t taste very good to me, why would I spend time thinking abut it at all?  Italy changed everything, as it has a way of doing, no?  When I came home 3 months later, I was completely appalled that I was expected to eat the bread here. Being 1980 or so, the artisan bread movement was just beginning to hit Southern California.  I was completely ignorant of the food movement in Northern California, or anywhere else in the U.S.  But within a year, I delightedly discovered Il Fornaio Bakery, which hadn’t yet become anything other than a great place to get European-style breads.  I was so unbelievably happy to have found good bread near home, but I was horrified at the prices I had to pay!  And they were closed on Sunday!  (Yes, that qualified as despair for me.)  Yearly trips to Europe did nothing but fan the flame of my new bread passion.

Not too long after that fateful first trip, Sunset Magazine did an article on how to make artisan bread – the kind with big holes, with a real crust.  Of course, I tried it.  Not knowing anything about making bread (and I mean anything), when the loaf finally came out of the oven later than midnight, after what seemed like the longest day of my life (dealing with a very wet dough that ran all over the place when I tried to knead it), I was so equally proud and tired, that a Polaroid picture had to be snapped of me – in my nightshirt, with circles under my eyes – holding that giant loaf of homemade bread.  I still have that picture – hopefully it will never be made public – documenting the beginning of my long obsessionromance with bread dough.

Today, after making more loaves than I can count or even remember, I still search for the best way to make amazing bread.  I have so much more to learn – bread dough endlessly fascinates me, and often perplexes me.  I’ll catch you up more later, but this is what I need to share now:  I joined the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge!  Nicole, of Pinch My Salt fame, sent out a Twitter message, and the rest is history in the making.  You can read about it here.  I’m delighted to be part of a group of 200 bread-crazy bakers from all around the world who are baking their way through Peter Reinhart’s book – every recipe!  Last week I made two loaves of the best Anadama Bread I’ve ever tasted.  (Okay, to be fair, the only Anadama Bread I’ve ever tasted!)  But right now, I’ve got to go.  My levain is calling!

Lost in Hawaii

View of the VOG during a walk, Captain Cook, Hawaii

Okay, so I’ve been quiet for a while.  What happened was this: we went to Hawaii.  We had a wonderful time.  I can’t even show you any great pictures, however, because the Big Island had a terrible layer of VOG (the volcanic ash “smog” from the latest eruption) while we were there, making the ocean-view home we rented turn more into a see-that-gray-down-there-that’s-where-the-ocean-is kind of view home.
On our last day, the clouds and VOG lifted, and we suddenly had the very impressive view that had been there all along.  But we were too busy rushing through the checkout checklist and loading up the car to get to the airport to even snap one picture.  Isn’t that always the way?  How many times have you heard that story?  Ahhh, the tropics.  That’s part of why I love them.  Completely and utterly unpredictable (okay, maybe I could have guessed there was going to be a VOG problem, since this last eruption started a year ago), thus making the times when the tropics hit that delicate place between too hot/wet and blissful perfection something of a Holy Grail for me.

I used to be in the travel industry, meaning I spent lots of time in places during the “off-season,” the only time anyone gave great deals to industry people – supposedly to make up for the lousy pay.  Which means I’ve waded, in hip-high water, across brand-new parking lots at fancy resorts, passing overturned palm trees on my determined way to find breakfast during a monsoon.  I’m somewhat of an expert on the size of flying cockroaches at resort areas on the coast of Mexico during August.  And let’s just say that the rainy season in Costa Rica is really, really, rainy – they aren’t kidding.

That’s why a little VOG didn’t scare me, people.  The air index said the air was “good” quality.  But then again, I don’t have asthma.  I wish my spouse didn’t either.  But my spouse does, which nearly necessitated a flight home on the second day.  Fortunately, the inhaler worked pretty well if it was taken twice as often as normal, so no one flew home early.  Unfortunately, the inhaler lowered my spouse’s immune system, thus giving all the airplane germs a wonderful place to play.  And now, three weeks later, we are all almost well again, from what we are convinced was something as bad as the swine flu (no drama queens here, at all).  Yup, one, two, three, we all had our day (okay, many, many days) of play dates with the germs.

Add that to all the craziness that one must put up with after taking a vacation, all those things that lined up waiting for my return, doubling or tripling in size and certainly urgency, and you have me, no blog posting for a month, wondering when I will ever have the energy to attempt coming home from a vacation again.  (It’s not the vacation that kills me, you see, it’s simply coming home from vacations that is harmful to my well-being.)

I relaxed enough in Hawaii to have that wonderful, gee, why is my life so complicated at home feeling upon my return.  Why is there so much clutter?  Who needs this many clothes?  Why do I live somewhere where a heater is necessary? Doesn’t that happen to you, too?  I love that feeling!  Other than the fact that of course one pays a bizillion dollars to stay in a gorgeous ocean-view 4 bedroom house with tons of windows overlooking banana, mango, papaya, and breadfruit trees that somebody else is paid to take care of – just a little detail, I assure you – I’m sure I could make my life that simple here, too!

The point is, well, I don’t really have a point, as I’m sure you could tell.  But I’m back, diving deeper into the craziness of it all.  And tomorrow, I’ll tell you about a very exciting piece of that craziness!