A Christmas Breadmaking Miracle

The husband's inability to follow simple instructions continues to astound me.

--The Faudie
Inspired by The Faudie's recent success baking cinnamon bread without the assistance of a machine, I thought I'd attempt to make my own handmade bread. King Arthur's savory Christmas cheese bread* seemed to be a good recipe for a beginner such as myself--a pure quick bread requiring no yeast should be simple to prepare, shouldn't it?

Yeah, right.

Here's the recipe, copied-and-pasted directly from King Arthur's website, not hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper as I did on Christmas morning (an important plot point we'll return to later):

Savory Christmas Cheese Bread

3 C unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 1/4 t salt
1 C fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
1 C shredded sharp cheddar, mozzarella or the cheese of your choice
4 T softened butter
4 large eggs
1/2 C whole milk or half-and-half
3 large garlic cloves, crushed (optional)
1/2 C finely chopped scallion tops or chives, lightly packed; or green bell peppers
1/2 C finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, lightly packed; or diced red bell peppers, or diced pimientos
1 teaspoon pizza seasoning (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9" round cake pan or 9" round casserole.
2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, cheeses and softened butter until well combined and crumbly.
3. Mix in the garlic, scallion tops and sun-dried tomatoes.
4. Whisk together the eggs and milk (or half-and-half). Set aside 1 tablespoon of the mixture to brush on the top of the loaf.
5. Add the remaining egg mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring just until everything is thoroughly moistened.
6. Turn the stiff batter into the prepared pan. Using your wet fingers, smooth it to the edges of the pan. Make it slightly concave, so the edges are slightly higher than the center.
7. Brush the top of the loaf with the reserved egg mixture. Sprinkle with pizza seasoning, if desired.
8. Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, until it's a light golden brown on top and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Remove the loaf from the oven and run a heatproof spatula or table knife around the edge of the pan, to loosen the sides. Turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool.

Yield: 1 9" round loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided.

The Husband's Futzings
The recipe offers some flexibility with the ingredients, so I used a hot pepper jack cheese in place of the cheddar or mozzarella, and I used red bell peppers and green onions as the red and green ingredients.

The recipe does not, however, suggest using anything but half of a cup of milk or (in this case) half-and-half. Somehow, though, in my aforementioned handwritten copy of the recipe, I wrote down that I needed one-and-a-half cups of half-and-half, not half a cup. I've never been great at math, but even I know that's three times more half-and-half than I needed. The result, I discovered, was a very wet mixture that was clearly not going to bake properly. (For one thing, it wasn't even going to fit in that single 9" round cake pan.)

It's moments like that when I'm really, really grateful for my significant other. I'm not always the best at swallowing my pride and asking for help when I need it, but in this instance, I sooooooooooooooo needed The Faudie to come to my rescue.

With her guidance, I added three-quarters of a cup of white whole wheat flour and a full cup of additional pepper jack to help thicken the gooey mess I'd made. Crossing my fingers (figuratively, of course, as it's hard to cook with your fingers actually crossed), I poured the mixture into two 9" cake pans, put 'em into the oven and waited to see what would happen next.

Okay, okay, maybe calling the result a Christmas miracle is a bit of hyperbole. But still. Against all my expectations, the two loaves came out looking perfect. I even have the photo to prove it:

Merry Christmas to me!

The bread tastes good too, though not exactly the way I'd expected. I think the flavor of the cheese and the bell peppers and the green onions gets overpowered by the taste of the eggs. I can't complain, though--I'll happily take a fine egg bread over the disaster I thought I had on my hands. And it was a perfect accompaniment to our holiday lunch of jambalaya and the 598th showing of A Christmas Story on TBS.

*Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what this bread has to do with Christmas other than the fact that it's red, yellow and green. Don't worry, though--if you want to make it on some day other than December 25th, you could always call it "savory traffic light cheese bread." Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

I Make Bread From Scratch Without a Machine!

The King Arthur Baker's Catalog is really good at making a person think she can work wonders in the kitchen with baked goods. And why not? At your fingertips are most of the tools and ingredients you need, not to mention a few recipes to get your juices flowing.

Of course, what King Arthur doesn't sell in its Baker's Catalog is competence. Competence doesn't come cheap either, especially if you're working your way toward competency with King Arthur's tools and ingredients. But to tell you the truth, Gentle Reader, sometimes the expense is worth it because using quality ingredients improves your chances of success and thus improves your likelihood of achieving competence. You can also trust the recipes from King Arthur because the company has its own test kitchen with bakers and cooks who are committed to keeping King Arthur's good name intact.

So despite my sad history of massive failures when it comes to working with yeasty baked goods without the assistance of a bread machine, I endeavored to make the Easy Cinnamon Bread featured in the Winter 2010 Baker's Catalog because the husband seemed so excited by it. Yeah, I know, Gentle Reader, every now and then I can be kind.

Easy Cinnamon Bread3 C (12.75 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 C (3.5 oz.) sugar
2 t instant yeast
1 t cinnamon
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1 C (8 oz.) warm milk
1/4 C (1/2 stick, 4 oz.) butter, melted
1 large egg
1 C (6 oz.) cinnamon chips
Cinnamon-sugar blend (optional)

1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon, NaCl and baking powder.
   
2. In a second bowl, whisk together the milk, butter and egg.
   
3. Combine the liquid and dry ingredients, beating until smooth.
   
4. Stir in cinnamon chips.
   
5. Cover and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hr.
   
6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
   
7. Prep an 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pan.
   
8. Stir the batter down, and then spoon it into the loaf pan.
   
9. Optionally, sprinkle the top of the loaf with the cinnamon-sugar blend.
   
10. Bake the bread for 35-40 min. or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
    
11. Remove the bread from the oven and let it rest in the pan for 5 min.
    
12. Transfer the bread from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Do not attempt to slice the bread while it's hot.

Yield: 1 loaf with an unknown number of servings.

Nutritional Info
While King Arthur does provide nutritional info for the recipes it publishes in The Baking Sheet, it doesn't do the same for recipes in its catalog.

The Faudie's Futzings
Never try to prepare a "quickbread" recipe while also making risotto and sauting chicken, especially when you decide to take on the brand-new bread recipe at the last minute. Rapidly bringing to room temperature flour, an egg, yeast and cinnamon chips isn't fun. It's also a tricky thing to warm milk in the microwave without accidentally scorching it while also trying to keep risotto cooking with a combo of milk and water from scorching on the stove. Multitasking has its limits, Gentle Reader!

Despite my lack of more active preparation, I muddled through somehow:

• I did my best to measure the dry ingredients by weight rather than volume. I've got a kitchen scale, so I might as well use the damn thing.
  
• I ran out of unbleached white flour, so I had to add about half an ounce of white whole wheat flour, which I didn't bother bringing to room temperature. Always make sure you really have enough of the ingredients before you start the recipe, Gentle Reader.
  
• The recipe doesn't specify what type of milk to use, but I only have skim (aka, fat-free) milk in my home--and only for special purposes such as this one. I don't know if the lack of fat affected the finished product the way liquid egg whites can make runny messes of cookies that need full eggs to hold them together. These are mysteries I'll leave to other people to explore.
  
• The bread needed 50 minutes to get to the point of yielding a clean toothpick poked in the center. After a first check at 35 minutes, the center was still gooey. At 40 minutes, the center was still gooey. Throwing caution to the wind and risking a burned mess (burnt cinnamon smells terrible and is totally inedible, in my highly esteemed opinion), I let the loaf bake 10 more minutes...and got a baked-through center.

I'm not sure if the longer baking time was necessary because of the cool, dry weather, because the ingredients weren't all at room temperature before I started the recipe or because I screwed up somewhere so that the dough didn't rise at all during its resting hour. Yeah, that's right--the dough didn't do squat. Obviously it's supposed to since step 8 instructs you to stir the batter down, implying that the dough should have risen some because of the yeast. That didn't happen for me, but I didn't get my faudie panties in a bunch. I just...well, chalked it up to my string of failures with yeast breads not made with a bread machine. I must not have fed the yeast the right kind of food or not mixed the yeast and the food in the right way for the feasting and growth and rising to take place. I gradually added the dry ingredients to the liquid ones, believing that's the way Christopher Kimball says is the way to do it to yield fluffier cookies and breads. My memory could be faulty on that point, but I also reasoned that when I put ingredients in the bread machine pan, I put the liquid in first and then add the flour, the salt in one corner, the sugar in another and then the yeast on top, thus adding the dry to the liquid would sort of follow that scheme. Eh, maybe I was wrong.

I followed the cooling instructions as best I could, but I have to confess, Gentle Reader, that I'm a sucker for warm carbs. The loaf could be a total disaster, but if it's warm I have an incredibly difficult time keeping myself from devouring the whole damn loaf. And that's what happened last night: I pretty much devoured half the loaf. The husband had three-fourths of the half I didn't eat, which meant he got to enjoy a smidge of it this morning for breakfast...

...and reported the bread was much better warm. That's not to say the taste was off, but the experience of eating the bread--the emotional fulfillment and culinary satisfaction of eating the loaf was diminished by its lack of warmth. So if you plan to make this one, Gentle Reader, take that whole "Don't slice the bread until it's completely cool!" advice with a large grain of salt.

Royal Treat

For about a year now, we've been receiving The Baking Sheet, the bimonthly baking publication from King Arthur. While each issue has been filled with temptations galore, the husband and I have tried only one recipe from its pages--and I absented myself from that task, aside from prepping the mise en place for the husband's nuts.

Until today. I had some time on my hands, and the cooler weather had me itching to bake something. We'd already targeted the peanut butter squares in the Holiday 2010 issue as something the husband and I both would love to try, and I had gathered most of the ingredients I didn't already have over the past few weeks. When I found I didn't even have to turn on the oven to make these squares, I was sold.

Peanut Butter Squares1 C (9.5 oz.) peanut butter, crunchy or smooth
3/4 C (1 1/5 sticks, 6 oz.) butter
1 t vanilla extract
2 C (7 oz.) graham cracker crumbs
3 C (12 oz.) confectioners' sugar
2 C (12 oz.) chocolate chips
2 T (0.75 oz.) vegetable shortening
Sugar decorations (optional)

1. Melt the peanut butter and butter together. If you have a large microwave-safe bowl, use it and save yourself some dishes.
   
2. Stir in the vanilla.
   
3. Add the crumbs and sugar, mixing until evenly combined.
   
4. Press the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan (lining it with parchment can make removal of the bars easier).
5. In a 2-cup microwave-safe liquid measuring cup, melt together the chocolate chips and shortening at medium power in the microwave, then stir until smooth.
   
6. Spread the chocolate over the peanut butter layer.
   
7. Place or sprinkle the decorations atop the chocolate before it sets.

Yield: 8 dozen 1-inch squares.

Nutritional Info
Calories: 75
Fat: 6 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Protein: 1 g
Carbs: 6 g
Na: 25 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
As I mentioned earlier, I already had on hand some of the ingredients for this recipe:

• While the recipe doesn't specifically call for milk chocolate chips, that's what I used--Ghiradelli ones, to be precise, which have less fat and cholesterol but a smidge more sugar than the Guitard I like.
  
• The graham crackers I had squirreled away in the deep freezer turned out to be low-fat cinnamon grahams. Did that deter me? Hell no!
  
• I have both hormone-free regular stick butter and light stick margarine on hand, and I opted to use the light stuff. I know its higher water content can make a mockery of many dessert recipes, but in this case, I was hoping the higher water content might help me out if I found the peanut butter-butter melted mixture not willing to absorb both 3 cups of powdered sugar and 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs.

The recipe could not have been easier to put together. I suspect a less-fastidious person who isn't obsessed with getting every last speck and every last crumb and every last droplet incorporated could do it in less time than I took, so I highly recommend this recipe should you need a quick treat for some event, Gentle Reader.

As for the tastiness of the final product, the boys and I both heartily endorse these squares. The cinnamon grahams gave the bars a nice surprise, the husband and I thought. The boy was a bit skeptical at first when he saw me cutting into the big chunk, but when I told him basically I'd made a big-ass Reese's peanut butter cup, he was game. He took one bite and was sold. The Faudie scores a hit!

I suspect my use of the light margarine not only gave the peanut butter layer a slightly oily texture (not a heavy, oil, greasy feeling, mind you) but also didn't give the base layer enough "glue" to stick together forever, for when I started cutting into the product, several hours after I'd made the squares and after it had had maybe 30 minutes to warm up a tad after spending most of the day in the 'fridge, they didn't cut cleanly so much. To be fair, even the topping split and fissured like the crust of California during the earthquake in Superman. Did that dampen our enjoyment of the squares? Hell no. I majorly blew my commitment to tightly constraining my daily calorie intake once I had my first bite of these squares. So if you are anything like me, Gentle Reader, and trying to maintain a certain health regimen, perhaps you might not want to make these squares.

Nuts

The husband took over the kitchen Sunday morning. Here's his report on the morning's activities.

--The Faudie
As you may have noticed, daylight saving time ended last weekend. Circadian rhythms were disrupted, clocks were adjusted, nightfall now begins depressingly early in the evening and people on the Internet got something new to complain about. (My favorite take on the whole thing comes courtesy NPR: "How Bush Ruined Daylight Savings." Surprise, surprise: He changed it in such a way that it helped no one except big business interests.)

Personally, I think we should ditch DST altogether and let nature be nature, but no one really cares what I think of DST. I must admit, however, that this year's "fall back" and the resultant extra hour weren't entirely unappreciated. We'd received the Autumn 2010 issue of The Baking Sheet quite a few weeks ago. I'd been wanting to make the recipe pictured on the cover but never really had the time--at least, I never had the time until DST ended. A 25-hour Sunday may defy all laws of nature and time and space, but it's convenient if you want to bake something.

The recipe was appropriately seasonal and perfect for marking the end of DST:

Butterscotch Acorns

Dough
1 C unsalted butter, melted
3/4 C brown sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 C pecan meal or finely chopped pecans
2 3/4 C King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Topping
2 C butterscotch chips
1 1/4 C finely chopped pistachio nuts
1/2 C extra butterscotch chips, unmelted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla and pecans.
3. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; add to the butter mixture, mixing until combined.
4. Scoop batter by the teaspoon and place flat-side-down on greased baking sheets. Pinch tops to a point to resemble an acorn.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.
6. Melt two cups of butterscotch chips.
7. Use a dab of the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip on the flat end of the cooled cookies.
8. When chip has set, dip the flat end (tops) of the cookies into the melted chips, let the excess run off, then coat with the chopped nuts.

Yield: 60 cookies (serving size: 1 cookie)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 104
Fat: 6 g
Carbs: 11 g
Cholesterol: 8 mg
Sodium: 40 mg
Protein: 1 g

The Husband's Futzings
I don't have any significant changes to the ingredients to report, but the method of preparation...well, I found The Baking Sheet's instructions to be a little nuts, if you'll pardon the expression.

The cookie part of the acorns (steps 1 - 5) came together without major incident. I do think the guidance to use only a teaspoon's worth of dough for each cookie is an underestimate; the boy and I found that by using more than this amount, we were better able to shape appropriately acorn-ish acorns. And even with the larger acorns, we were able to make some 72 cookies by the kiddo's somewhat shaky count. The real fun, though, came when it was time to make the acorn "caps."

In my world, butterscotch is a flavoring, not an adhesive. I don't think melted chips can do what the recipe says they can do. I had zero luck using the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip to the flat end of the cookie. (Which just begged the question: exacly what purpose was that glued-on chip supposed to serve? Neither The Faudie nor I could figure that one out. I suppose it was supposed to help form the cap of the acorn, but I would have appreciated it if the recipe had been more clear on this point.) Also, I had zero luck dipping the cookies in the melted chips and then getting the chopped pistachio nuts to stick. So instead, I futzed.

Recalling our near-fiasco with the midnight mice, in which we were forced to hand-coat each cookie to obtain the desired effect, I combined the melted butterscotch chips with the pistachio pieces, resulting in a compound I could use like modeling clay. Each acorn cookie received a carefully sculpted cap...or maybe a not-so-carefully sculpted cap as my patience started to wear thin after the first 50 or so cookies. Suffice to say, some of the cookies came out looking a lot more like acorns than the others.

We made 72 cookies, and these were the only ones that actually looked like acorns.

To be fair, the cookies on the cover of The Baking Sheet didn't bear that strong of a resemblance to real acorns either, so I don't feel too bad about the way mine turned out. Appearance, after all, is second to taste, and these acorns taste pretty good. They're similar to pecan sandies (or, as The Faudie pointed out, besan ladoos), albeit with a funky butterscotch-pistachio topping.

Switching back and forth from DST still sucks, but at least I was able to do something productive with the extra time!

Eat Your Heart Out, Papa Murphy's

About the only time I see "normal" broadcast television programming is when I'm running at the gym between those family-friendly hours of 7 and 10 a.m. The national morning news/infotainment programs of the former Big 3 are as incredibly inane as ever, nor have the commercials really changed since the time I was a kid. "Convenience" is the label they give so many of the products advertised, and now that no one apparently cooks from scratch, the morning commercials love to flog the latest in convenience, "almost homemade!" meals.

Thus we get from Papa Murphy's the jack-o-lantern pizza for the low, low price of $6.99. (At least that's the price in the Central Texas market.) Nothing says Halloween like a crappy pizza with oily cheese, oily pepperoni and a token pair of black olives. Woo-woo.

Yeah, I figured the boys would love it.

But there's no way I'm paying $6.99 for something anyone with a few functional brain cells can do. Someone with a whole lot of functional brain cells and a penchant for getting crafty can really improve on this concept. See what I mean:

Now that's a pumpkin pie!

Seriously, when I get this crafty, I kind of make myself sick. And with pepperoni of all things....

I have to admit that I'm rather impressed my improvised pita stem browned nicely in the oven to look even more like a stem. I didn't expect the cheese to run everywhere since it's low-fat cheese and typically doesn't do that, but I was nevertheless pleased that Pumpkin Face didn't come out looking like Pizza the Hut:

Battle of the Bread Machines, Day 7

As promised, here's the husband with the latest installment of the Battle of the Bread Machines.

--The Faudie
Yes, I know we haven't played this game lately. But you don't think we'd be continuing our little bread machine contest unless we had a really good reason to, do you?

Well, we do.

Competitor #7: The Zojirushi Model BBCC-X20

The Faudie has already profiled today's contestant, the Zojirushi BBCC-X20. Go ahead and read her post about this double-paddled lil' wonder. All that I can to add to what she's written is: A $240 bread machine for $14? Daaaaaaaaaaaamn. Thank you, Goodwill! From out of nowhere, the Zo has become the machine to beat in this competition.

Anxious to get started with the Zo, I didn't spend a lot of time deciding what kind of bread to make. I just went with the first reasonable recipe I came across, which happened to be:

Homestyle Whole Wheat Bread

1 1/2 C water
3 C whole wheat bread flour
heaped 3/4 C white bread flour
1 1/2 t salt
2 t sugar
2 T butter, diced
1 t instant dry yeast

1. Add ingredients to machine according to manufacturer's directions.
   
2. Use Whole Wheat or Multigrain setting, if available.
   

Yield: 1 lb. loaf

Nutritional Info
This particular recipe came from Anne Sheasby's The Bread Machine Bible, which has the Donna Rathmell Germanesque quality of not including nutritional information.

The Husband's Futzings
None to report other than the addition of three teaspoons of vital gluten.

As The Faudie mentioned in her post, our Zo came complete with its original instruction manual (helpfully titled "How To Enjoy Your Home Bakery Supreme"), and thank goodness it did. The BBCC-X20 is capable of a lot, but it's almost impossible to use the controls using intuition alone. For example, to bypass the preheat process, you have to press the "TIME" and "CYCLE" buttons at the same time for three seconds. I can safely say I wouldn't have known that without having the manual on hand.

Official Results for Competitor #7
I'm guessing there's a reason Zojirushi bread machines sell for north of $200, and that reason is because they're awesome. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the loaf of homestyle whole wheat our Zo produced.

The Zo made it so.

The loaf came out perfectly cooked, the crust was the right darkness...I even love the shape of the loaf, which simply looks more "bread-like" than the carbohydrate cubes most of our other machines produce. I couldn't have asked for more. (Since then, I've also used the Zo to prepare a sourdough pizza crust, and the machine continued to perform like a champ.)

By now, we've tested a lot of different appliances over the course of the Battle of the Bread Machines, some of which have found a permanent home in our kitchen. But the Zo has jumped to the front of the pack. I'd hate to think this is the end of our competition, but I have a hard time believing we're going to find a bread machine better than the BBCC-X20.

And yes, it scores extra points for being a $240 machine picked up for just $14. (When was the last time you got a 94% discount on anything?)

It only cost us $7 a paddle!

A Tale of Two Starters

The problem with having two sourdough starters is that they take up a lot of space in the refrigerator...and, of course, you can't use a sourdough starter for much beyond making sourdough. Here's the husband with an update on how he's trying to put those starters to good use.

--The Faudie

I find it interesting how our two sourdough starters turned out. As I noted in my last sourdough post, the one made with molasses formed a dark brown hooch fairly quickly; in comparison, the one made with sugar has never developed anything more than a pale, almost clear liquid that may or may not be hooch. This observation led me to believe, based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of such matters, that the molasses-based starter developed better than the sugar-based starter, but it's hard to tell. Both had a distinctively boozy aroma, which I gather is a good sign. And while the sugar-based starter didn't have the appearance I was expecting, it did have the appropriate texture when stirred, similar to the consistency of pancake batter. The molasses-based starter, in comparison, was more silt-like underneath the hooch, and the two portions didn't seem to mix well.

Fascinating, isn't it? I've decided that, when the time comes for the boy to begin participating in science fairs at school, I want him to research different ways to make sourdough starters. Which, no doubt, would result in the same problem my experimentation has gotten us into: too many starters taking up too much room in the fridge. Thus, I've moved on to stage two of my experiment, which involves finding new ways to use these starters.

Donna Rathmell German's always-reliable Bread Machine Cookbook offers plenty of sourdough recipes, including the following:

Sourdough French Bread

1 C starter
1 1/2 t sugar
3/4 t salt
3 C bread flour
1 1/2 t yeast
1/2 to 2/3 C milk

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
2. Select the Basic option on the machine, then start the cycle.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided, because Donna Rathmell German's books are also always-reliable for not including such information.

The Husband's Futzings
I didn't see any need to change this recipe. I included only half a cup of milk, as the starter seemed to be providing plenty of liquid on its own.

I won't lie to you--I chose this recipe because it was simple, an easy way to get rid of part of the sugar-based starter. Fortunately, I was pleased with the results. The sourdough French bread was a nice, crusty loaf, admittedly fairly nondescript in taste, but enjoyable enough with raspberry jam. And it served its primary purpose of giving me an excuse to use a good portion of my starter.

Note that I prepared a one-and-a-half-pound loaf, whereas normally I'll only make a one-pound loaf. That was a decision made solely because it allowed me to use up more of the starter.

Did I mention these starters take up a lot of room in the fridge?

As you can probably imagine, I was more excited about the recipe on the following page of the book:

Sourdough Pizza Crust

1 C starter
3 T olive oil
1 t salt
4 C all-purpose flour
2 t yeast

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
2. Select the Dough option on the machine, then start the cycle.
3. Add water as needed.
4. When cycle is complete, roll out dough, then cover and let rise about 30 minutes.
5. Place in a preheated 500-degree oven and bake until crust is brown, about 5 to 10 minutes.

Yield: One large pizza crust

Nutritional Info
Not provided, and you should know why by now.

The Husband's Futzings
I added some of King Arthur Flour's Pizza Dough Flavor--a must-have for pizza-making, IMHO.

I've actually made this crust twice, once using the molasses-based starter, and once using the sugar-based starter. To tell the truth, I couldn't tell the difference between the two in the results. Both resulted in a dough that was almost clay-like, much easier to roll into shape than any of the other pizza dough recipes I've tried.

The unusual consistency of the dough, predictably, resulted in crusts with an unusal consistency, at least in comparison to my previous attempts at pizza-making. The sourdough crusts seemed denser, chewier. Their consistency was almost like that of a Bisquick biscuit, of all things. They boy didn't seem to enjoy them much, but Angela and I liked them well enough. Flavor-wise, they were pretty tasty (I'm glad I added the Pizza Dough Flavor), and they certainly weren't the worst I've ever made. And they were quick to prepare, which is the whole point of using a bread machine to make pizza dough.

A delicious chicken and meatball pizza...

...and a delicious sausage and pepperoni pizza!

Having used up a good portion of our starters to make the sourdough French bread and the two sourdough pizza crusts, but still not knowing which of the two was the better starter, I decided to combine them into one. (If nothing else, that allowed me to go from having two containers to only one taking up room in the refrigerator.) I haven't used the combined starter yet in any recipes, but I'll be sure to let you know when I do.

Purple Zucchini Bread?

It's been a crazy couple of weeks at Chez Boeckman-Walker, and we haven't had much time for posting. Here's the husband to reassure you that we haven't disappeared.

--The Faudie

Angela recently gifted me with a subscription to The Baking Sheet, King Arthur Flower's bimonthly newsletter for all things carb-related. As a nifty bonus with that subscription, we received a CD-ROM containing PDF versions of their 1990 - 1999 newsletters. I cannot describe to you how much fun it is to peruse a full decade of this company's early desktop publishing efforts--just look at all the lame clip art!

Of course, in addition to the painfully dated design work, these newsletters have recipes. And even though I've only skimmed through a few years' worth of issues, I've already flagged several recipes that have caught my interest. Here's the one I tried last weekend:

Zucchini Spice Bread

1/2 C water
2 t vanilla extract
3/4 C cottage cheese
3/4 C grated raw zucchini, lightly packed
3 T butter
2 T sugar
1 t cinnamon
1 1/2 t salt
3 T chopped walnut pieces
1 C 100% white whole wheat flour
2 C unbleached bread flour
2 t instant yeast

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
2. Select the Basic and Light options on the machine, then start the cycle.
3. Check the dough's consistency about 7 minutes after the kneading cycle begins, adding water or flour to form a smooth, soft ball of dough.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Calories: 1411
Fat: 4.2 g
Protein: 5 g
Carbs: 21 g
Cholesterol: 8 mg
Sodium: 241 mg

The Husband's Futzings
I didn't mess with this recipe, other than adding vital gluten.

I don't think we've used zucchini in a bread recipe since Angela made chocolate chip zucchini bread way back in our pre-bread machine days. What struck me most about this recipe, though, was the odd assortment of ingredients in addition to the zucchini--what exactly was this bread going to taste like? I needed to find out.

The aroma coming from the bread machine as the ingredients began mixing was promising, with the scents of vanilla and cinnamon combining quite appetizingly. By the time the loaf finished baking, however, it didn't smell much like either of those ingredients any more. And it didn't taste like vanilla and cinnamon, either. In fact, the finished bread has a rather indistinct taste, with only the walnuts really having any flavor. Don't get me wrong--the bread isn't bad at all. Despite the fact that the loaf fell about 30 minutes from the end of the bread machine's cycle, it has a nice texture and a good chew. (And I do like a bread with a good chew.) It's just that the taste is surprisingly plain. Unremarkable, even. Maybe all of the flavors are just canceling each other out.

Ummm...should zucchini bread be purple?

As for its color--what can I say? Neither Angela nor I can figure out what combination of ingredients might have turned the bread purple. This bread is so confused, it doesn't even know what color it should be.

Wild Thing, You Make My Heart Sing

Here's the husband with the second part of his sourdough story.

--The Faudie

So we'd made ourselves some starters--now all we needed to do was leave them out long enough to catch some wild yeast and become suitable for making sourdough.

King Arthur Flour's sourdough primer notes that "keeping a sourdough starter is somewhat like having a pet because it needs to be fed and cared for." Well, I have three cats (plus several freeloaders), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the reason felines are higher up on the evolutionary chain than yeast is that when a cat needs something, it will tell you so. Our yeast, on the other hand, was not so communicative. By day two, any activity in the starters had ceased.

Science factoid! The brownish liquid that had appeared by that point on the starter to the right (the one that was made with molasses) is called hooch--it's the alcoholic byproduct of the fermentation process. You're supposed to stir the hooch back in or drain it off, depending on whether the starter is looking to dry or too wet. I'm not sure why the starter on the left (the one made with sugar) never developed any hooch. Maybe it was the molasses in the one starter that did the trick, or maybe it was because that starter had more surface area exposed, or maybe it just managed to catch more wild yeast than the other one. Heck if I know.

Anyway, back to the conundrum of the inactive starters. Most websites I checked regarding sourdough starters call for you to "feed" the starter one cup of flour and one cup of water each day, but King Arthur's site only instructs you to feed the starter after you've removed some of it to make a loaf of bread. Concerned about my inactive starters, I decided to go ahead and feed them--and sure enough, they both bubbled and grew again...only to go inactive once more the following day.

Understand that this was about mid-week, and I wasn't looking to bake any bread until the weekend. Realizing that I didn't want to keep feeding two starters each a cup of flour a day, I decided to refrigerate the starters instead. I would have preferred to leave them out to continue catching wild yeast, but we can't afford to go through that much flour. Remember, I have cats to feed!

Friday morning I removed the hoochier starter from the fridge to let the yeast get warm and active again, then I gave it a good feeding before going to bed. That's a picture of the starter post-feeding at the left. See how bubbly it is? From everything I've read, that's the look of a happy, healthy starter. Which meant that the next day it was (finally) time to make some sourdough. I'd planned on using a King Arthur recipe since I'd followed their instructions to make the starter, but since they didn't seem to have any recipes that use a bread machine, I had to look elsewhere.

Sourdough Bread

3/4 C starter
1 T margarine or butter
1 1/2 T sugar
1 t salt
2 C bread flour
1 t yeast
2 T to 1/3 C milk

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
2. Select the Basic option on the machine, then start the cycle.
3. Adjust the consistency with the milk while the dough is kneading.

Yield: One 1-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
This recipe came from one of Donna Rathmell German's books, so no, it was not provided.

I have to admit, it was a little odd to be baking with something that had been sitting out in the kitchen, bubbling away for the better part of the week. But hey, if it's good enough for the early pioneers, it's good enough for me! (Does anyone know what model of bread machine the early pioneers used?)

Want to know how it turned out?

It turned out freaking fantastically!

Isn't that a great-looking loaf of bread? I think that may be the single most attractive loaf we've produced. I've got many more pictures in addition to the ones I've posted here, just because that loaf was so darn photogenic.

It gets even better though: the bread actually tastes like sourdough, and a decent sourdough at that! Which is good, as we now have two starters taking up space in the refrigerator, and there's nothing to do with them but bake more bread. Good thing our cookbooks have plenty of variations on sourdough to try.

Where the Wild Things Are

The husband is trying something new. Here he is with the first part of his story.

--The Faudie

For all of the bread-making we've done since we bought our first bread machines last summer, there's one type of bread I've shied away from: sourdough. It's not because I don't like sourdough--because I most certainly do--but rather because every chapter on sourdough in any bread cookbook has an opening such as this one from The Bread Machine Cookbook:

As the early day pioneers traveled west across the United States, they carried a mixture of flour and milk or water which was used to leaven bread.

And it gets worse from there. Here's what King Arthur Flour has to say about that mixture--known as a "starter"--on their sourdough primer page:

To the early prospectors, a starter was such a valued possession (almost more than the gold they were seeking), that they slept with it to keep it from freezing on frigid winter nights.

Excuse me? I bought a bread machine because I want my bread-making to be easy. I don't want to hear about the labors and sleeping habits of early pioneers!

But recently, my curiosity got the better of me, and I set out to explore the strange and amazing world of sourdough. And that journey began with a better understanding of the mysterious starter. For those who don't know, to make a loaf of sourdough bread, you'll need to use a portion of a starter. No other bread we've prepared needs a starter, but sourdough does. Most of our bread cookbooks include a recipe for making one (all slightly different from one another), but King Arthur had me hooked when they said this:

The easiest and most successful method of making your own starter is to combine water, flour, and a tablespoon (or packet) of active dry "domestic" yeast which is available at any grocery store. By letting this brew sit for several days...the domestic yeast will go "wild" and develop the familiar tang of its truly wild cousins. You'll probably catch some wild yeast in the process as well.

Oh, yeah. The opportunity to create anything that can "go wild" is not one to be passed up. This was an experiment I needed to try.

Here's the full recipe for the starter, from King Arthur's site:

Sourdough Starter

2 C warm water
1 T sugar or honey (optional)
1 T active dry yeast
2 C King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1. Pour the water into a two-quart glass or ceramic jar or bowl.
2. Add and dissolve the sugar or honey and the yeast in that order.
3. Stir in the flour gradually.
4. Cover the jar or bowl with a clean dishcloth and place it somewhere warm. By using a dishcloth instead of plastic wrap, you'll allow any wild yeast in the area to infiltrate and begin to work with the domestic yeast which itself is beginning to develop "wild" characteristics and flavors.

Yield: One starter

Nutritional Info
Not provided, because who would want to eat this? Yeeeech.

The boy readily volunteered to be my lab partner for this particular experiment. Once he understood the basic functioning of yeast--or at least, once he got hold of the idea that the yeast eat the sugars in the mixture, then "fart" out gases in return--there was no way he was going to be deterred from making a starter too.

Thus we ended up preparing two starters, different only in one regard: for one, we used sugar (evaporated cane juice, specifically, which Angela had picked up for us earlier that day), and for the other, we used molasses (an ingredient suggested by other sources).

King Arthur warned us it wouldn't take long for the mixture to start bubbling and brewing, and they were right. When we checked on the starters a few hours after we'd prepared them, there were plenty of bubbles rising to the surface. (The kiddo, in particular, was delighted with this by-product of the "farting" yeast.)

In fact, the starters were so active that the one in the smaller container quickly began outgrowing its habitat.

Time for a larger bowl!

We switched this starter to a larger bowl...which it outgrew by bedtime.

Time for an even larger bowl!

That was yesterday. When we checked the starters today, expecting them to be huge by that point, we were surprised to find that they'd actually shrunk somewhat overnight. Even worse, they didn't seem as active as they'd been before. I was worried at first, but King Arthur's sourdough primer assures me that everything is proceeding normally (I think). Apparently, a starter begins to separate after a day or so and needs to be stirred to blend it back together and to help distribute the yeast evenly. See how much I'm learning about sourdough? This is the best science lesson ever!

Now we're just waiting--we're supposed to let the starters rest at room temperature for two to five days, catching wild yeast until the bubbling ceases and a yeasty, sour aroma has developed. And then (finally!) it will be time to use a portion of the starters to bake some loaves of sourdough. Check back in a few days to see if we can tame these wild, farting yeast!

Lifting Risotto's Veil of Mystery

Last summer while reading Bill Buford's Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, I learned quite a bit about a dish I'd never eaten and didn't have that much interest in: risotto. While hanging out in Mario Batali's kitchens for various purposes, Buford himself learned quite a bit about risotto and passed along that education, in part, to his readers. The message I came away with is this: Risotto is fussy, temperamental, needy, time-consuming, high-maintenance and will turn on you if you don't devote yourself to it while preparing it.

Or maybe that was his education about polenta. Or maybe it was both. Sorry, Gentle Reader. Last summer was a long time ago.

Anywho, I like my rice pretty simple: Join the right amount of water to the desired quantity of rice, bring it to a boil, cover, reduce heat and leave it be. I'm also somewhat suspicious of shorter-grain rice varieties since I find they get gluteny and sticky and clumpy and mushy at the drop of a hat. I like my grains long and fluffy, thank you very much. The rice variety used most frequently in 'merica for risotto, arborio, looks a lot like the grains sold as Japanese sushi rice--short and somewhat squat. Not for me, thanks. I'll pass.

But then a few weekends ago, the boys and I were at the big HEB scavenging through several bins of deeply discounted clearance items. The big HEB, unlike our regular HEB, has a few long aisles of imported stuff from around the world--good-quality imported stuff at that. We found some really nifty pastas, but they were still a bit pricey, along with some roasted tomato and basil spread that's worked quite nicely on a pizza and some roasted red bell peppers, which I know I'll put to good use eventually.

We also found a few boxes of risotto allegedly imported from Italy. The price was nice--$1.50--and the boy's eyes lit up when I held up the box. He's a huge rice fan, plus he likes his pasta. For a buck-fifty, I can give my boy a cheap (literally!) thrill.

I yanked the box out of the pantry on Monday, for I didn't want to have leftovers for supper (which we often do because we need to make space in the refrigerator, plus they're easier to serve as a staggered meal if the husband gets delayed at the plasma donation center after work) but didn't want to make pasta (another easy meal to serve staggered). The recipes printed on the package seemed easy, and I had the ingredients--but they just didn't seem all that exciting. So I do what I often do when I have ingredients I want to use but not an exciting source of inspiration: I seek out Madhur Jaffrey.

Off the shelf came my copy of World Vegetarian. Sure enough, Ms. Jaffrey included a handful of risotto recipes with very clear instructions for their preparation. Add the broth one ladleful at a time? Well, I've got nothing better to do on a Monday afternoon. Stir constantly? Again, I've got nothing better to do.

Risotto With Spinach, Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts4 C light vegetable stock
3 T olive oil
2 T pine nuts
Half of a smallish onion (about 1 oz.), peeled and finely chopped
1 T golden raisins
10 oz. fresh spinach, trimmed, washed, patted dry and cut into fine ribbons
1 C unwashed risotto
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/2 C grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 T unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1. Heat the stock and keep it hot over very, very low heat.
   
2. Put the oil in a large, heavy, preferably nonstick frying or saute pan, and set it over medium-high heat.
   
3. Toast the pine nuts in the olive oil until golden brown, then remove them with a slotted spooon.
   
4. Add the onion to the pan, stirring and frying it for a min.
   
5. Add the raisins, stir a few times and then add the spinach, stirring and frying 3 to 4 min.
   
6. Add the rice and cinnamon, and stir and fry for another minute.
   
7. Pour in a generous ladleful of stock, reduce heat to medium and keep stirring the risotto.
   
8. When the stock has been absorbed, add another ladleful.
   
9. Repeat step 8 until all the stock has been used and the rice has cooked for at least 22 min. By this time, it should be just done.
   
10. Cook the rice another minute or so to absorb the last of the liquid.
    
11. Add the cheese and butter and stir until they have melted and disappeared in the rice.
    
12. Turn off the heat, let the risotto rest a min. or two, stir and serve, sprinkling the pine nuts over the top.

Yield: 3 to 4 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
I can't tell you what's in the finished dish, but I can give you the lowdown from some two standout ingredients:
Delallo Superfino Arborio Rice (quarter-cup per serving)
Calories: 170
Carbs: 41 g
Protein: 3 g

Il Villaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (1 oz. per serving)
Calories: 110
Fat: 8 g
Sat fat: 6 g
Protein: 9 g
Cholesterol: 25 mg
Na: 180 mg

It's not the most healthful dish in the world, but it's not the worst either.

The Faudie's Futzings
As you probably know, Gentle Reader, I tend not to futz with a recipe for a dish I've never eaten before or for an ingredient I've never worked with before because of my inexperience. However, with this risotto recipe, I felt confident enough in my previous (and prodigious) culinary misadventures with other forms of rice that I could futz a little:

• I used the Central Markup low-sodium chicken broth I had on hand. Sure, I stopped at the big HEB Monday after my workout to buy the special cheese and the pine nuts (I wasn't sure if I had any left from the bunch I'd bought for the highly intoxicating tequila bars I made ages ago) and could have easily bought some Central Markup veggie broth, but I didn't. I figured I'd save two bucks--at least on that trip to an HEB.
  
• I used a teaspoon, maybe a teaspoon and a half of olive oil. Three tablespoons just seems like overkill to me, and my gut can't take that much oil.
  
• My spinach was frozen and already chopped from a bag I'd bought in hopes of one day making some creamy chicken and spinach for the boys. I'm not sure if this one really qualifies as a futzing because in her notes for the recipe, Ms. Jaffrey writes, "If you wish to use frozen spinach, defrost and drain it first." See, Gentle Reader, Ms. Jaffrey recognizes that not all of us have ready access to, can afford or like to work with fresh spinach. And as much as I suck at draining previously frozen spinach, I gave it my best shot--and wound up with unsightly clumps, not graceful fine ribbons. Oh well.
  
• I didn't serve the risotto immediately after it had finished cooking.

That last futzing might qualify more as a massive mistake, but it was one I couldn't avoid. I'd put off making the risotto as long as I could while still allowing myself enough time (as I'd estimated I'd need) to finish it just as the husband was returning from the plasma center. Of course, The Faudie plans and the FSM laughs: The husband was about half an hour delayed.

By the time I served the risotto, I'd committed a cardinal sin: I'd let it become clumpy. So for all my careful stirring and fussing with the heat as I'd added ladleful after ladleful of broth, I got clumpy, mushy risotto.
To be fair, with all that melted cheese in it, the risotto tasted really good. The mouth feel, though, left something to be desired. That didn't prevent me from eating a good deal of it, nor did it turn off either the husband or the boy. They both seemed to enjoy it tremendously.

Lest you think I only served risotto that night, I paired it with a leftover ginger and rosemary–brined pork loin (the neighbors don't have a thyme plant I can "borrow" from, but that huge rosemary is awfully convenient) I'd made Saturday. The hint of sweet from the cinnamon and the golden raisins paired with the savory bite of the ginger from the pork were, in my unworldly opinion, a great pairing.

Returning to the making of my first risotto, I have to say that I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. It's really not that difficult to make, and from what I've read in other sources, you don't have to stir the risotto incessantly as some people would have you believe. Furthermore, it's not like your standing over a blazing hot stove for hours on end stirring some thick concoction with the kitchen equivalent of a canoe oar. It's just a wooden spoon, for the FSM's sake! And the burner isn't even all that hot.

Of course, I made a batch of risotto for three to four people. I'm sure the batches Bill Buford made while working for Mario Batali were meant to serve dozens of people and so maybe someone did have to use the kitchen equivalent of a canoe oar to stir the pot, which was in a kitchen already sweltering from the preparation of many other foodstuffs. But seriously, Gentle Reader, what's the likelihood of you or me ever being in such circumstances? Exactly.

If you find you're growing bored with your usual rice and want to play, pick up some arborio superfino the next time you're out and about and have fun. This ingredient has lots of tasty--and not so tasty--possibilities.