No-Knead Bread Round Two

Note: I'm writing this post while I'm letting the dough ferment. I've found that with baking bread, I have a lot of time between steps. It is perfect to start blogging and finish off with pictures later. This way all the steps are fresh in my head. Often I am doing a few different items at the same time.

The bf really loves pasta. So whenever I extend an invitation to come over for pasta, he never refuses. When I tell him I'm making curry, he says no thanks. I still don't understand. My curry is the best. I am known for this dish. When my old roommate moved out, all he asked for was the container of my red curry in the freezer. I usually made a huge pot and gave some away to my friends and froze portions for later meals. I don't do leftovers but I do leftover curry. It is my favorite dish.

Off on a tangent again. I'm not posting about the pasta dish. Nothing too special tonight. I'm not making my own meatballs. I purchased two pounds of hot chicken italian sausage. It is the bread I am posting about.

The last time I made it I told myself I would make a few adjustments. The loaf came out too flat in my dutch oven. I wanted a bigger boule of bread. My dutch oven looks about the same size that Jim Lahey used. I decided to double the recipe.

6 cups flour; bread (This time I only used 4.5 cups of bread and 1.5 of AP. I ran out of bread flour.)
1 Tablespoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast (I bought a jar of bread machine yeast this time instead of the little packets. Bread machine yeast = instant yeast + ascorbic acid.)
3 cups water + more depending on how much the dough swallows up.
The night before:
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. (I used my cheap plastic sterilite because it is big and it has a loose-fitting lid.)

Mix in 3 cups of waters. Add more until you get a wet shaggy dough. This term still confuses me. I'm not sure what is considered shaggy. I try for a wet dough that I can actually grab with my hand and pull away from the bowl.

Let the dough sit at room temperature for 12-17 hours (I think I let it sit longer than 17 hours last time and the bread was still delicious. I wouldn't go too much beyond the 17 hours without refrigerating it. My experiment in the room next door shows how just plain old flour and water can go bad.)

The next day. A few hours before dinner.
Generously flour a work surface. Dump dough onto surface and fold dough over itself several time. Form a boule.

Spray a bowl with oil. Place dough, seam side down in oiled bowl. Cover with damp flour sack towels. Let rise until doubled in size (approximately 2 hours).

Place dutch oven in oven. (The reason I do this is because I want the dutch oven to heat up slowly. I'm afraid that if I place the dutch oven in a hot oven, it will shock it. It is sorta like how you never throw a hot pan in cold water. You need to give it time to acclimate itself.) Preheat oven to 45o degrees. (Jim says 500 degrees but I'm too chicken to heat my oven up that high.)

When dough has doubled in size, take the hot dutch oven out, line with a piece of parchment paper, spray with oil, dump the dough out of the bowl, into the dutch oven. Jim Lahey says to have the seam side up. I don't know why, other than for a more rustic look. Cover the dutch oven with a lid. Prior to dumping the dough into the dutch oven, you can roll it in flour, wheat bran, corn meal, or oat bran. It gives the finished boule and more artisan look.

Bake covered for abotu 30 minutes. I think I will add a few minutes since I doubled the recipe. Take off lid and bake an additional 15-30 minutes until golden brown on top.

Let bread cool a little before slicing. I'm always terrible with this part. I just want to tear into the bread.

Wet shaggy dough. Just mixed.

12 hrs later: Nice and bubbly. You can bake it at this point but I want to wait a few hours for dinner. I will likely let it go until 17 hours for better flavor. The big bowl of dough is actually sitting in my bedroom on my makeup table. I find that dough does better upstairs since it is warmer than the kitchen. I usually leave it in the spare bedroom/storage room but I have the sourdough starter experiment going on in that room and I do not want any commercial yeast to find its way out of this big bowl into my containers of starters. I want to catch wild yeast; not commercial yeast.

17 hrs. Even more bubbles.

Folded and placed in an oiled bowl.

Proofed until doubled. It doesn't look like it has doubled. The metal bowl is a lot deeper than the plastic bowl.

Dumped into a preheated cast iron.

Baked.

I'm not sure I should have doubled the recipe. It almost filled the entire dutch oven. It is shaped like the dutch oven. The center is still very wet. The dough is gummy in the center. Right now it is sitting in a warm oven, hoping that it will dry out a little.

After sitting in the warm oven for about an hour and on the counter for most of the night, the bread actually tasted cooked and was not as gummy. This bread is too moist and moist in a not so good way.

Read More

Feeling Sick

I am feeling a little under the weather. I started feeling icky on Friday but I believe my strong immune system is keeping this sickness at bay. I believe the only reason why the sickness was able to take hold is because of my compromised immune system. I've also been pushing myself these last few days. I think I just need plenty of rest and hot fluids. I left work early today and crawled into bed.

I'm not feeling well enough to cook. On Sunday night, the bf came over and made me some dinner. Chicken Bacon Casserole. It wasn't that bad. I don't crave it but it was better than nothing. Yesterday I thawed my container of frozen chicken curry. I did stop by Sunflower Market on the way home today. I picked up two pounds of hot chicken italian sausage, mushrooms, and a jar of their sauce. I don't make my own sauce very often because it takes up freezer space. I wished I had a second freezer like my parents. Maybe the bf will come over tomorrow and cook some pasta for me. It is probably a good idea to mix together some no-knead bread tonight and bake it tomorrow so that we can have some fresh bread with dinner. I also got some arborio rice. I want to make scallop pea risotto.

Even though I am sick, I am not idle. I am actually working on a sourdough starter. I am writing about it and taking pictures each day. I will post it once it is completed so it is easier to see the sequence of the progress.

Read More

Sourdough Starter: Aki and Barry

I'm growing two pets. I 'm hoping that these two will live forever and be passed down to my grandchildren's grandchildren. I'm not sure which of these two will survive and I'm not sure if I will have more pets to nurture.

I don't know why but all of a sudden I wanted to make a sourdough starter. I've never started one before and I've never baked any sourdough bread before. All I know if I like the taste of sourdough. I tend to just buy it or eat it when it is served at a restaurant. I did some online research. I could get some dried sourdough starter but I am an impatience person. I decided to capture the wild yeast on my own. I also sent for some free Oregon Trail starter from friends of Carl. It will take up to six weeks to get the free starter.

I'm testing out two methods. The first method (A aka Aki) is from a woman on the freshloaf.com discussion board and uses a mixture of rye, wheat, and pineapple juice. The second method (B or Barry) is a more traditional method of wheat flour and water.

Day 1 (January 26, 2009):

I decided on using organic hard red winter wheatberries that I purchased from Vitamin Cottage a couple weeks ago. I read that freshly milled flour works best since a lot of the yeast spores are on the outside of the grain. Why do I happen to have wheatberries at home when I don't grind my own flour? I like the taste of cooked wheatberries with maple syrup.

I ground my wheatberries in my little Cucina Bella Rocket multi-purpose machine. It is like a Magic Bullet machine but prettier. I've used it for smoothies, flax seeds, anise seeds, nuts...

I started off with just water and ground wheatberries. Later I read about the pineapple juice and decided to experiment but I didn't take updated pictures. I added pineapple juice to Aki and then started Barry with ground wheatberries, bread flour, and water.

Day 2 (January 27, 2009):

Since I didn't see much activity in the morning, I went out and bought rye berries (and also rye flour). I got the rye flour first and then stopped by a second store and found rye berries. I did the same thing and ground it in my Cucina Bella.

24 hours: Starter A (Aki). A few hours after adding the rye. I see little bubbles on the surface. It smells like bread dough with a faint tropical scent.

24 hours: Starter B (Barry). Still no activity. Smells good to me but maybe it is just me. I like the smell of flour and water.

Day 3 (January 28, 2009):

36 hours: Aki still has just a few bubbles. Scent is pleasant.

Aki side view. It hasn't increased in volume.

36 hours: Barry has really forged ahead of Aki. I was surprised to see all the bubbles. Barry's bubbles are bigger than Aki's. Barry also is starting to smell really bad. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe like sour milk. It is not intolerable just yet but I have a feeling it will start to get really bad. According to my research on the internet, this is where the bad bacteria takes over. It will get really big. (If you look at the picture below of the side view, you can see that it has increased in volume to about the same size as Aki. When I went to bed last night, Aki was twice the volume of Barry. I used more flour in Aki.) After a while the bad bacteria will start to produce lactic and acetic acid and will kill the bad smelly bacteria. The starter will shrink and look dead. But I can't give up. Eventually something called lactobacillus will take over and I will have a nice symbiotic culture of lactobacilli and wild yeast. I won't have lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, the name of the strain found in San Francisco sourdough. But I will have some sort of lactobacilli; probably a mix of the flora of where the grain was grown and lactobacillus denverisinensis (I totally made up this word).

36 hours: Barry has doubled in volume in the last 12 hours.

Aki 48 hours: Approximately five hours after today's feeding with 2 tablespoons of organic rye flour.


Barry 48 hours: Approximately five hours after feeding with 2 tablespoons of organic wheat flour. Barry went flat. No bubbles. No signs of life. Even the awful stench he had earlier in the day had disappear. If I wasn't home sick today, I probably would have missed all the action. I gave Barry some aeration just as Peter Reinhart suggested. I hope this will help him out. I must not give up. It just means that the bad bacteria leuconostoc has finally killed itself off and I must wait for the good bacteria to establish itself. The byproducts of the leuconostoc bacteria created an acidic environment that the good bacteria will thrive in.

Day 4 (January 29, 2009): No am shots. I checked them in the morning before work and they looked the same. Not much progress. I took the pictures below prior to feeding. I'll leave them alone and check again to see if I see anything exciting happen. This whole experiment is taking a lot of my time. I have to keep track of the pictures. I'm glad I am blogging as I go because I do not know if I can keep the pictures straight if I decided to blog at the end of the experiment. I will be so upset if this fails.

Approximately 72 hours: Aki doesn't look like she has developed many more bubbles. This picture was taken prior to the evening feeding. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. Aki should be producing more bubbles.

Approximately 72 hrs: Barry has a few big bubble holes underneath the layer of liquid on top. The liquid has separated from the gooey mass. I want to see more action.
Side view of Barry at 72 hours. He has bubbles throughout. I couldn't get a good side picture of Aki but there wasn't much happening on the side.

Day 5 (January 30, 2009): Not too much going on today. Last night I felt that I was not feeding the starters enough. I don't want too much of each starter so as I added more and more flour each day, the amount grew. However, I was not feeding it double the food each day. I was only sticking with about three tablespoons of flour. So I decided to scoop out 1/4 cup of each into a new container and feed both with a quarter cup flour. I kept the rest of the old starter in their containers just in case it didn't work. Not much was going on this morning. Not much was going on when I got home. I fed both when I got home tonight. The feeding was a little late. I'll check on them just before going to bed.

Aki

BarryDay 6 (January 31, 2009): I'm starting to feel like the only activity is from the bacteria. I pretty much only kept a little of the original and fed it more flour. I stopped the pineapple juice. I feel the bubbles are from bacteria and not from the yeast.

Aki has a few bubbles but mainly from me aerating it.

Barry seems a little more active with bigger bubbles.Another picture of Barry but this time was a night picture.

Day 7 (February 1, 2009): I didn't take any pictures today. It just looks like batter right now. I fed them in the morning. Later that night I decided to go for a stiffer starter. I used less water.

Day 8 (February 2, 2009): I thought that by reducing the liquid, I would get some rise. I read that a liquid starter doesn't double. I converted to a firmer starter. I see a couple bubbles in Barry but that is it. The bubbling doesn't break the surface. When I got home today, Barry was a little more liquid and flat. When I make a stiff starter, I cannot really get it flat and smooth. I started to use pineapple juice again.


Day 9 (February 3, 2009): I'm so excited! This morning when I checked the starters they were both bubbly. Barry even increased in volume! I fed both with flour and bottled water because that was what I had upstairs. I left both pretty thick. When I came upstairs at about 6 pm, they both increased in volume and turned fairly liquid. Barry even doubled himself. I took a whiff of Barry and when I did I knew that some magical had happen. Barry's smell had changed entirely. It is developed and full of different fragrance notes. I can smells the difference between Aki and Barry. Aki smells like how Barry smelled earlier in the day.

When I stirred Barry, he let out some gas but re-inflated himself up quickly. He no longer had the thick pancake batter consistency but more like yeasted dough. When I dip the chopstick or a spoon in to stir, I can see the strands. He was nice an airy. Aki is falling behind a bit. I have a good feeling she will do just fine but she is just not as developed as Barry. I dumped out half of each starter and fed them bread flour and pineapple juice. I don't weigh or do exact measurements. I just eyeball it.

I'm not sure if I am getting the days correct. It has been a week and a day since I began this process but I counted the first day as day 1 instead of day 0. So now I think we are actually on day 8 and not day 9.

Aki:

Barry:

Barry side view: I marked the container with some scotch tape to see where I started.

Day 10 (February 4, 2009): I took Barry to work with me today. I wanted to test out a different feeding schedule. I've been feeding both about every 12 hours. It was getting too much. When I woke up this morning, Barry was more than double his volume. I took Barry and some flour to work with me and he sat on my desk all day. At about 2:00, Barry was triple/quadrupled in volume. I read some more about feedings. One freshloaf poster said that she waited until a little after the peak to feed her starter. After peaking, the starter will start to cave in in the middle. I took out half and put into another container for a co-worker. I sent him home with some instructions. I didn't feed Barry until the 24 hour mark.

Barry smells really good. I can really tell a difference because my pineapple/rye starter is still a little behind. It smells fine and I can tell there is something happening but the smell completely changes when the starter is ready. It smells sour yet sweet at the same time. I don't know how to describe the smell other than the smell of a good ferment. It smells a little like Odwalla apple juice a few hours after if has been feed. The smells then changes to a little more sour but with sweet notes. The starter also feels alive. When I stirred it down and gave some away, the starter continued to grow. The smells changed slightly as the starter aged during the day. It still smelled good but a little more pungent. I fed both a little past 6:00 pm. I just checked (about 2.5 hours) and Barry is almost doubled again. Aki (the pineapple/rye) has bubbles but no noticeable rise yet. I suspect that Aki will soon transform.

This is a picture of the starter after a feeding around 6:00 pm.

This is the starter about 2.5 hours after feeding. It has doubled. It continued to increase through the night and into the morning. I experimented and tried to not feed it every 12 hours. I took Barry to work with me in order to make my observations. I notice the peak is about 18-19 hours after feeding and then it starts to shrink again. It is much happier with twice a day feedings so I've been doing that.
February 6, 2009. I feed Barry and put him in the refrigerator. He is nice and strong so it was time to stop wasting flour. I'll bring him out a day or two before baking. I'm not keeping too much on hand so I'll have to build it a few days before using.

February 8, 2009. Aki (the rye and pineapple starter) finally has some faint signs of a starter. The smell is starting to turn in the right direction. She was able to turn the stiff consistency into a more liquid consistency. She also increased in volume. I didn't feed her on Saturday at all. I fed her on Friday evening and ignored her on Saturday. I remembered to check on Sunday morning and it wasn't rancid as I expected it to be. I was ready to toss the entire contents.


So this experiment was to test out some of the methods for sourdough starter on the internet. Below are some assumptions on the internet:

- Yeast is more prevalent on rye. I didn't notice much difference between using rye or wheat. Barry, the wheatberry & unbleached flour combination is doing much better than the rye. I've even weaned the rye starter off of the rye by slowing decreasing the amount of rye used in each feeding.
- Yeast is more prevalent on organic whole grains. I started both with whole grains. For some reason I was not convinced that the little yeasties survived being milled and stored in sacks for the last few weeks or months. I thought my best luck was on the hull of freshly milled flour.
- Pineapple helps maintain the pH that good lactobacillus thrives in and discourages the growth of bad bacteria. The pineapple starter never developed a bad smell. The plain water starter only smelled bad for less than a day. After the smell, it sorta went dormant for a few days but when it came back, it came back immediately. The pineapple starter never really had too many transformations. It is timid and quiet. The bubbles are small. It is actually pretty slow to develop. It is really slow to develop. Almost twice as long as the water starter. With the water starter, I saw a transformation over night.
- Potato water attracts wild yeast. I didn't use any potato water or potato flakes. I didn't want to have another starter to watch over. Two is plenty.
- Wild yeast is found on grapes and other fruit. I'm not sure where I would find wild grapes at this time of year in Denver. I was also not convinced that the yeast on grapes is the kind of yeast I wanted. I read that it is a different strain that will eventually be killed off by the sourdough yeast. I even read about a woman who took a leaf cutting from an oak tree, soak the cutting and soaked it in water and used the water for her starter. I thought "weird".
- Yeast is captured in the wild air. I began this in January. Although this year's winter is a little mild and some days temps actually get to 70 degrees, I was not planning on leaving my container outside, exposed to the elements. It could potentially freeze. I live in a neighborhood where we don't have private outside spaces. Everything is shared. We have a lot of dogs and kids in the neighborhood. I wasn't sure what kind of wild cultures I would be capturing. I kept the starter in an extra bedroom that no one has ever really lived in. I also have an air purifier to capture all the wild microns in the air. I'm convinced that the yeast was on the grain and not in the air.

What I learned:
- Patience: You must be very patient with this. It helped that I was busy these past few weeks so I was only able to check in on them periodically. Most of the time I was either at work, out, or sleeping.
- Must not lose heart: A few days into this and when nothing happens, it is difficult to continue to nurture and feed the darn things but it you persevere, one day you will be rewarded with something magical.
- Less is more: You don't need fancy here. Remember that people have been doing this for a long long time and they did not have anything fancy. Pineapple juice is not necessary. I don't think it hurts anything (well maybe just slow it down a bit).

Next is the sourdough bread. I have dreams of making sourdough loaves, sourdough english muffins, sourdough pancakes, sourdough pizza crust...the endless possibilities. With just a little patience, I may never have to buy yeast again...well maybe for some recipes.

I dried some Barry starter on one of the plastic lids of my corningware. I spread out a thin layer of the flour paste the night before. I woke up in the morning and the mixture was almost dried and the coolest thing happened - the thin layer bubbled up. See the big bubbles of dough? It is amazing!

Read More

Random Shower Pictures

I'm not going to go through the steps the of cinnamon buns because I already posted that. I did them with the Kitchenaid this time.

The frosting for the cinnamon rolls. This time I sorta followed the instructions. It made a very nice fluffy frosting. This frosting actually looks better than the Ina Garten coconut cupcake frosting recipe. The difference is the margarine versus the butter.

Blue Bonnet margarine. Look at the difference in the shapes of the margarine quarters. The long one was purchased about a week ago and the short fat one was purchased a few days ago.

Dry ingredients for the double-batch of cinnamon rolls.

The dough that I had to divide in half and wait an hour for the mixer to cool down.

Rounded double-batch of dough.

I let the dough rise a little longer since I left for tea.

Sunday morning at 6:00 am. Waiting for the oven to preheat and then bake the rolls two pans at a time in one layer. I didn't have enough 9 inch square pans. I had various shapes. The squares produced the best results.

This is in one of my odd-shaped round pans.

My ideal square pan.

8:13 am. All baked, rearranged into rectangular foil pans, iced, and covered. I should have taken the picture before covering them.

Food table at the shower. I was actually not in charge of the menu or the food. One of the other hostesses put together a menu and made most of the food. Other guests insisted on bring something. Lisa knows such talented ladies. I only made the cinnamon rolls and the one of the other hostesses helped me make the cupcakes. She also helped rolled the cinnamon rolls.

I don't know why Nicole is so excited. She is the second one from the right.

Guests enjoying their food.

Read More

Ina Garten's Coconut Cupcakes

Candy table at Lisa's shower. The cupcakes are on the tiered stand. There are a ton more pretzel rods and fortune cookies below the table.

I took the picture after we already packed up the cupcakes. I was too tired to even lift the cupcake cover to take a better picture.

This was for our friend's baby shower. After tea at the Brown Palace, one of the other shower hosts came over and we made cupcakes. First we doubled the recipe and only got 26 cupcakes. We made a third batch. We decorated them with coconut and dragees.

I was so exhausted by Saturday night. I spent most of Friday night prepping and baking. I woke up early on Saturday morning to mix up the four batches of cinnamon rolls. The bf actually made the bacon and eggs to eat with the fresh bread for breakfast. I was so out of it, I shook my bottle of starbucks frap after the bf opened the bottle for me. Half of the contents of the bottle went flying. I am a little out of it. I do things and I forget that it. I think it is the side effects of my chicken pox vaccine. I feel a little sick, my arm (near the injection site) is sore, I itch all over, and my mind is all muddled.

After mixing the dough, we went to pick up a few more items at Target. Then off to tea and back for more baking. My legs were really tired. My feet hurt. I think I cut off the circulation to my feet. They were cold. The bf said that I was moaning the entire night. I asked what kind of moaning. I don't recall moaning. He made the sound for me. It sounded as if I was moaning in pain. Ouch! I do recall grabbing a pillow and sticking it under my feet to elevate them. I used to do this whenever my feet and legs ached.


Coconut Cupcakes
from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
makes 12-16

1.5 cups all-purpose flour
.5 teaspoon baking powder
.25 teaspoon baking soda
.25 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
.75 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large eggs
.75 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
.75 teaspoon pure almond extract
.5 cup buttermilk
1 7-ounce package flaked sweetened coconut, divided (I used unsweetened coconut from the bulk bin of The Sunflower Market. I find the flakes are thinner and longer. The sweetened coconut has flatter and shorter flakes that fold over. The unsweetened coconut is drier and looks nicer on the frosting.)
Cream cheese icing (recipe to follow)

Line muffin cups with paper baking cups, and set aside. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the sugar and butter on medium speed for about 3 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Turn the mixer speed to low, and add the eggs one at a time, beating on medium high 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and almond extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and beat again briefly.

Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately to the butter mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined. Fold in only 1 1/3 cups of the coconut.

Use an ice cream scoop to fill each muffin cup almost full with batter. Bake in a 325-degree oven for 22 to 28 minutes on the center rack, until the cupcake tops are golden and a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.


If you bake 2 pans at once, switch them out (put the bottom pan on the top and the top on the bottom) halfway through cooking so they brown evenly.

Allow the cupcakes to cool completely, and then top them with cream cheese icing. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 days. If you want to freeze these, store them unfrosted in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 6 weeks. To serve unfrosted cupcakes that have been frozen, allow to thaw at room temperature for about 1 hour before serving, then ice and serve them. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Icing

2 3-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature
.5 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
.5 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
.25 teaspoon pure almond extract
2.5 cups sifted powdered sugar
Remaining coconut

In a mixing bowl, beat together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla extract and almond extract until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in 1 1/2 cups of the powdered sugar, beating well. Gradually beat in as much of the remaining sugar as needed to reach a comfortable spreading consistency.

Spread each cooled cupcake with the cream cheese icing and then top with the remaining coconut and decorate with dragees.

Read More