Of course with the new year, there comes New Year's Resolutions. Mine are usually the same - lost weight, get in shape, etc. Something I did start last year and will continue will be to be more mindful of where my food comes from, as well as limit, as much as possible, food that is processed or has unnecessary chemical additives. Of course, that means more cooking of raw ingredients!
I recently started reading a book called Cooked by Michael Pollan. It's very interesting - he has 4 main parts that go along with the 4 elements - fire, water, air and earth. In each he learns to cook using this element, so in fire he learned how to slow cook Southern barbecue and whole hogs, in water he learned to braise, in air he learned to make bread and in earth he learns about fermentation. I'm currently in the Air chapter. The way he describes making bread was so evocative that I just had to try it myself. He made his own sourdough starter, which can take a while to start up and I fully plan on doing this in in future, but after waking up out of a dead sleep in panic yesterday morning and not being able to get back to sleep, I remembered seeing a recipe that sounded similar to the one Michael was describing but used regular yeast. So at 5am I trooped down to the kitchen to see where I put my yeast. The interesting thing about bread is that you don't really need a lot of ingredients - yeast, salt, flour, water - the key is time. The thing that interested me about this kind of "artisan" bread is that there is a long fermentation time - 8-12 hours and even overnight. The recipe I used comes from The Kitchn and is called No-Knead Bread. The idea is that you allow the time for the yeast to break down the sugars in the flour and make gluten without kneading it to a pulp. The dough also has a lot of water in it so it is very sticky and would not be something easy to knead.
So I went to find my yeast and came across some that I had put in storage from when I lived in Tucson.
It's only 2 years past the expiration date...the recipe only called for 3/4 tsp and a packet has 2 1/4 tsp, so I added the whole package...you do what you can with what you have!
So first things first, add the flour (regular all purpose flour), yeast and salt in a bowl. You are supposed to stir this up before you add the water, but I forgot to do that. You also need to have warm water - about body temperature.
Incorporate the water until your dough is a sticky mass. Then cover with plastic and a towel and find a warm corner in your kitchen to park the bowl for the day. I put mine on top of the radiator. My kitchen tends to be on the cold side, so I thought that would be the best place. I was a little concerned that it might be too hot in that spot so took the temp (you want it to be about 70). I ended up putting a little insulation between the radiator and the bowl and that seemed to be the ticket.
All day I was a little worried that the cats would investigate and I would end up with dough on my floor, but thankfully that worry was for nothing! This is what the dough looks like after fermenting for about 12 hours. You take the dough out of the bowl onto an oiled cutting board and fold it over, at least once. I didn't have such a great day so I kinda worked out my aggression on the dough.
Then put back in your bowl, cover with plastic and let rise again for 1 hour. When there is 20 min left of your hour, put a covered dutch oven in your cold oven and set to 450 degrees. Let both come up to temperature. Take dough and attempt to form into a ball (yeah, that didn't happen for me, but I tried) and put in the dutch oven, cover and cook for 30 min. Then uncover and cook an additional 15 min. You will know the bread is done with a thermometer at 220 degrees.
Look at that!! Pretty much fool proof - old yeast, didn't fully stir the salt in...
Of course I had a hard time letting the bread cool long enough before I had to try it. Look at that texture - Michael Pollan calls this a "crumb shot". By using the dutch oven, you are mimicking a commercial steam oven that allows for a nice crispy crust. It was very tasty bread, but you know, white bread. I think the texture was more interesting than the taste. Some of the comments at the end of the recipe alluded to this as well. I think the bread did as much as it could with the ingredients it had, but this has made me want to investigate a sourdough starter and whole wheat options.
Today, I decided to make a BLT panzanella salad with my bread. A panzanella is an Italian bread salad. This is a way to use stale bread as it softens up with the addition of salad dressing. I first looked to Alton Brown and his TBL Panzanella recipe for inspiration. His recipe is more tomato-centric (notice that the letters are changed around for this reason) and I didn't have that many. Another thing that I liked was that you use some of the bacon drippings to "fry" the bread. Of course, the recipe calls for bread that has been sitting out over night. I ended up putting my bread in a plastic bag (sacrilege, I know) but that actually softened the exterior some. I cooked my bacon in the oven, as described in this blog post. Then poured off the grease and used what was left to coat my bread cubes and put that in the oven - the oven was already hot and the pan was already dirty, why should I make more dishes for myself??
I added some Italian Seasoning and put it in a 350 degree oven for 10 min, stirring half way through. Then it was a matter of halving the cherry tomatoes, chopping up the bacon and adding the greens. I didn't use the dressing in Alton's recipe, though it would be good. I had some dressing on hand from a kale salad that I have been enjoying. This is a lemon forward, Caesar type dressing, super yummy.
Yum, yum, yum. Looking forward to a healthy, happy and tasty New Year.
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