English Muffins

Little-known fact (at least to me...), but the 'muffin man' in the nursery rhyme refers to a purveyor of English muffins rather than the heavier variety of muffins widely made today at places like Tim Hortons.  Back in the early 19th-century, the muffin man was a common sight.  It would seem that everyone knew the muffin man in Jane Austen's England.  I came across a recipe for Homemade English muffins on Michael Ruhlman's blog recently that I decided to have a go at.  Below is the play-by-play from our home English muffin factory.

Homemade English Muffins

(from Ruhlman.com)

60g unsalted butter

1 tbsp sugar

450g milk

7-8g dry active yeast

1 large egg

450g all-purpose flour

7g salt

2 tsp baking powder dissolved in 1 tbsp water

cornmeal (for dusting

Step 1:  Dissolve the sugar and butter in a small saucepan.  Easy enough.

Step 2:  Add the milk and stir it into the sugar/butter mixture.  I left it on the stove until the milk warmed up slightly (lukewarm) and then removed the saucepan from the element.

Step 3:  Stir in the yeast and the egg.  Done.  It doesn't dissolve completely, but seems fine.

Step 4:  Mix the flour and salt in a medium-to-large size mixing bowl.

Step 5:  Add the milk mixture and stir until well combined.  This is before stirring ...

Step 5 (cont.):  ... and this is after stirring.  Exciting stuff.

Step 6:  Cover and let it sit for 1-1.5 hrs.  After 90 minutes the dough should have almost doubled in size.  Immediately before cooking, stir in the baking powder dissolved in water.  The dough will collapse (not a problem).  The picture below is after stirring.

Step 7:  Heat a medium cast-iron skillet on medium to medium-low heat, dust with cornmeal, and scoop 1/4-1/2 cup portions of dough onto the skillet.   You can use a round 3" english muffin form to set the initial shape (we used a biscuit cutter as a substitute).  Cook for 14-20 minutes.  The main problem we had was that we had to flip them frequently to keep the crusts from burning (which happened quite fast in the skillet).   We ultimately went with skillet time of 12-15 minutes and finished the muffins with another 5-10 minutes in the oven at 425*F, which seemed to work well.

Step 8:  Muffins cooling.  

Step 9:  Eat toasted with butter, jam, the newspaper, slippers, a labrador retriever at your feet, a rainy day outside, etc.

Very pleased with the result.  Check out Michael's blog for more great recipes.

Scones

My wife has English parents and is a bit of an Anglophile. Pride and Prejudice (the original BBC / Colin Firth version) is on constant re-run at home. We spend more on tea than on coffee. She has a deep love affair with scones and jam. Hence her delicious creations below. It's a very quick recipe.

Sweet-Milk Scones

(from Cooks Illustrated)

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1-2 tablespoons granulated sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup whole milk

1. Pre-heat oven to 450*F

2. Mix flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, table salt and granulated sugar in a food processor using the pulse setting.

3. Using the dough knife attachment, mix in the butter until only a few slightly larger butter lumps remain.

4. Pour milk into food processor and pulse until dough starts to gather into a rough ball. The dough is quite dry and crumbly at this point. Turn on a floured work surface.

5. Roll the dough to 1/2 - 3/4 inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter (lightly greased; we used a 2-inch shape) cut scones out of the rolled dough. Gather and re-roll the dough scraps when you run out of surface area and cut more scones until there's no longer enough dough to roll into a 1/2 - 3/4 inch thick slab.

6. Place the cut-out scones onto a baking sheet. We buttered the tops of half of the scones at this point to see how they would turn out (good result - tops became more crust-like). Cook for 10 to 12 minutes in the oven (or until slightly brown). Serve with tea and jam.

Scone army.

Very delicious and crumbly. Ours ended up being quite small. Would recommend a larger shape (3-4 inch biscuit cutter vs. the 2 inch that we used).

Brioche

Lisa and I were in William's Sonoma a few weeks ago partaking in their free samples of seasonal mulled cider and I spotted small brioche forms. Lisa loves brioche, and there are three great variants of the recipe in Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice so last weekend was my maiden voyage into the world of brioche baking.

Brioche dough is very heavy on butter. Kneading in four sticks of room temperature unsalted butter was not the world's most pleasant experience. I would recommend using a mixer if you have one. Our mixer's name is Rob.

Half-filled petite brioche forms. The dough rises nicely once it warms up to room temperature. After approx. 2 hrs of proofing they fill the forms.

Baked and cooling.

Close-up.

Crumb. Soft and delicious.

The recipe calls for a somewhat industrial quantity of brioche. We were able to make 12 petite brioche and a loaf of brioche, most of which we ended up giving away to family. My nephews were very excited by the 'croissant bread'.

No Knead Bread ... and Brownies

Lisa and I were at the bookstore yesterday, and I caught a glimpse of Jim Lahey's book My Bread. A few friends had mentioned Lahey's no-knead bread recipe that appeared in the New York Times a few years ago and set off a no-knead bread frenzy, so feeling somewhat inspired I decided to give it a go. Results below.

The crust looks awesome. It was my first shot at cooking the bread in a dutch oven instead of on a pizza stone (which works better for baguettes). After 10 minutes of pre-heating I noticed a funky smell, which turned out to be the plastic knob on the lid of my 5 1/2 qt. le creuset dutch oven melting! After taking the lid out of the oven and a few quick google searches later, I discovered that the knobs are only certified for up to 450*F (vs. 475-500*F required for bread baking). Good to know. After removing the knob from the lid (it screws off easily) I was back on track. It's worth noting that you can buy stainless steel replacement knobs that can withstand higher temperatures.

On the final result, my loaf feels a bit dense given that I mistakenly used dry active yeast instead of the instant yeast called for in the recipe and failed to make the necessary adjustments (er, like activating my dry active yeast..). Not bad for a first effort though. As you'd expect without much kneading, the preparation time was significantly shorter than that required for other recipes. I'm intrigued -- the next shot at this recipe will involve proper proportions of yeast. It looks promising.

The day didn't end there though. I did take a stab at a chocolate chip and pecan brownie / cookie hybrid recipe from the Bakerella website. Pictures below. Somewhat over-baked. I underestimated how much they would harden while cooling. The theme seems to be errors this weekend. I will need to six sigma my baking process. The brownie-cookies are still tasty in their own kind of crunchy over-baked way.

We're off to dinner tonight hosted by our friends Jim & Sarah where I will foist my frankenstein-like creations on them and have a few heavily biased judges to render the final verdict and protect my fragile baking-ego.

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!

Whole Wheat Baguettes

Since my last post, I've made a habit of weekend bread-making (at least for the last two weekends). Last weekend, I made a larger batch of 4 baguettes using the Pain l'Ancienne Recipe -- this time switching to a 5 parts white : 4 parts whole wheat flour combination (mostly because I ran out of hard white bread flour).

From what I understand, whole wheat is not meant to rise as much as white flour given the lower gluten content. My experience last weekend was mixed -- the overnight rise in the fridge was quite aggressive, but despite the large overnight rise, the crumb in the finished bread was more dense than in the all-white baguettes made last month. This may have been from the 20 minutes of kneading when I prepared the dough (I've read that longer kneading times result in more dense crumb) but was surprising given the extent of the first rise.

But who cares - the bread tasted great. I was able to give away a baguette to my parents, our friends Rich and Anne, and as a parting gift to our friends Marie-Eve and Rick who are moving to Chicago. Bread makes a great gift, or at least it does in my case since my friends are so shocked that I've actually started making bread. No one had 30 in the "age at which Rob will finally make bread pool". I've also discovered that people don't mind if you stop by unannounced when you give them free bread. A few pictures of last week's bread below.

Dough after overnight rise -- bubbling with whole wheat goodness.

Finished baguettes. The whole wheat content also seems to result in a darker crust. Even though it was almost a 50/50 mix, the crumb had a good, strong whole wheat taste to it.

This weekend, I made it to Rube's in the St. Lawrence Market to pick up several pounds of organic hard white flour, as well as some organic hard whole wheat flour. Even though I'm keen to start on some other recipes, work is looking busy this week, so I decided it wouldn't be a great week to go through the process of bringing a sourdough seed culture or starter to life. So, this week's offering involved more baguettes -- this time with a 350g white 100g whole wheat mix, and a smaller 2 baguette batch. One baguette will be staying with us, and we'll be giving away the other to our good friends Jim and Sarah, who have shown an interest in my bread making and have accepted my minor obsession with the Queen & Beaver.

These are the large glass containers we picked up from IKEA today to store the copious amounts of white and whole wheat flour I bought yesterday. I think they're great, and Lisa enjoys them as well since it eliminates the leaky plastic bags of flour that have been dusting our pantry (in our case a 10-inch wide cupboard). I hope that they also provide Laura with some comfort that she's not the only person who enjoys containers and order.

This week's bread cooling. I've tried to up the artistic flair of the bread and have gone with "X"s instead of diagonal cuts. Next weekend I will be carving in Greek symbols to mark the sovereign debt crisis and my nerdiness.

This week's bread with some pecorino from the market.