Greek Debt Crisis Bread

As promised, here are some photos of my Greek debt crisis bread complete with Omega and Delta symbols (baked last weekend). Nothing says debt crisis like hand kneaded bread!

Hamburgers!

I've always loved burgers. When I was in business school I would always go to Roosevelts, a dive bar down the street in Philadelphia, for their $4.50 burger and fries. There was nothing that special about the burger, it was just a good, solid burger with tomato, lettuce, and onions and a side of decent, average fries, but for $4.50 (eat-in!) it was a special deal. I've since combined my love of burgers with my love of being a big nerd, and now whenever I have burger, it's benchmarked against that Roosevelts burger. This generally means that a $9 burger needs to be twice as good as the Roosevelts burger with some extra credit if the restaurant is nicer. Many $9 burgers come close enough. But, the $30 "gourmet" burger at a fancy restaurant needs to be ~6.5x as good, which is tough even if the place is much nicer. At some point you get into diminishing returns of burger deliciousness.

I often reflect on the efficient burger frontier, and a couple of weeks ago I was reading an article on mobile slaughterhouses in the New York Times Magazine when, much to my surprise, I noticed a recipe for house-made hamburger buns and ketchup featured in the right margin. My heart filled with joy when I realized that the article was a perfect excuse to combine my newfound love for breadmaking, with my love for eating burgers, with my love for being a nerd, with my love for blogging about making bread while eating burgers and being a nerd. And that, my friends, is how I spent last Sunday afternoon.

House-made buns

(from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook via NYTimes)

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk

1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 egg

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

1) Put the milk into a small saucepan and warm it over low heat until lukewarm, then remove from heat, sprinkle in the yeast, stir, and let rest for 5 minutes. This was easy enough, although I found that the milk heats up fast so try not to overheat it.

2) There were all sorts of electric mixing instructions in the original recipe. We don't have an electric mixer, so I added half the flour to a large bowl, then added the milk/yeast mixture, sugar, salt, egg, and 2 tablespoons of butter and stirred with a non-stick silicone spoon for 1 minute and then gradually added the rest of the flour while mixing for 1-2 more minutes. At that point I switched to hand kneading for about 10 minutes. After hand kneading, the dough was reasonably smooth and did not stick to the sides of the bowl, but was not noticeably dry or cracked. At that point, I transferred it to a buttered bowl and let it sit for 52 minutes somewhere reasonably warm until the dough doubled.

3) At that point, I turned the dough out onto a floured surface and divided it into 6 pieces (recipe calls for 7, but I found it easier to divide into 6 and ended up with slightly larger buns) and rolled each piece into a ball. At this point the recipe suggests you let the dough rest for 10 minutes (I inadvertently missed this step...). Then using a rolling pin, I flattened the dough balls into rounds 3 1/2 - 4 inches in diameter and placed the buns onto a baking sheet on parchment paper (I felt like freestyling and sprinkled some cornmeal on the sheet as well). I then covered the buns loosely with plastic wrap and let them sit for 30-45 minutes until they had doubled in size, meanwhile preheating the baking stone in the oven to 375*F.

4) Before putting the buns in the oven, brush them with a bit of water and liberally sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Bake until golden brown and delicious looking - 20 to 25 minutes. I also used the steaming techniques from the Pain L'Ancienne recipes below to help caramelize the dough and help with the crust formation.

Another bread success -- the buns were delicious, if not slightly on the giant side.

Buns cooling.

Our oven is now littered with sesame seeds.

Good, somewhat dense crumb. With the sugar, egg, and whole milk, it's a somewhat heavier enriched bread than french bread.

Ketchup

(from "Forgotten Skills of Cooking" by Darina Allen via NYTimes)

1 3/4 lbs. tomatoes, peeled and chopped

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped

1 cup chopped yellow onion

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 pinch of cayenne

3 peppercorns

3 allspice berries

3 cloves

1) At first making ketchup from scratch seemed like a bit of a hassle, but it ended up being surprisingly easy. The hardest part is getting all of the ingredients ready. Fortunately, while learning how to make gazpacho last year, I also learned the weird science behind efficiently peeling tomatoes. First, remove the green stem. Then, turn the tomato upside-down and score the bottom using a paring knife with an "X". Next, bring a pot of water to a boil and fully submerse each tomato in the water for 20-30 seconds. Remove the tomatoes using a slotted spoon (or even a normal spoon, just not your hands, the water is hot). The skin should peel away easily from the "X". After peeling, proceed to chop. It's messy.

"X" marks the spot.

The skin should peel away relatively easily if it hasn't already started to.

2) Place all of the ingredients into a steel saucepan and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 1 1/2 hours, stirring regularly, until it has the consistency of ketchup. Let cool for a few minutes and blend into a smooth puree (remember that the ketchup will thicken as it cools). Store in a cool, dry place for up to 3 months.

Ingredients simmering early-on. Was not sure how this would turn into ketchup, but ...

Lo-and-behold after reducing the mixture and pureeing, it looked a lot more promising.

End result. Thickened to more ketchup-like consistency while cooling.

I made a few modifications to the ketchup recipe. I didn't have cider vinegar so I used a mix of 2 parts all-purpose vinegar and 1 part red wine vinegar. I also threw in a few extra peppercorns and allspice berries, as well as slightly more than pinch of cayenne. In the end I was surprised how good the ketchup was. I had visions of a sub-optimal private label-esq version, but that was not at all the case - it tasted fresh and not as artificial as commercially sold versions.

In the end, the home-made buns, ketchup, and meat purchased from the Healthy Butcher made for a burger that fared well on the efficient burger frontier.

Sunday dinner. Mahlzeit!