Digital Confusion

With my 37th (! I know, who'd a thought ?) birthday rapidly approaching, the selfish gene has fired up and got me thinking about what I'd like as a present.

Being a bit keen on both technology AND photography, I'm lusting after a Nikon D90 even though Ken himself makes it plain that for most of y'all out there, the D40 (which I have) is quite good enough. So if I can rein in the desire for a posh new camera, then I've been thinking that a wide-angle lens would be a great addition to the 'kit repertoire', and of course its a good bit cheaper than a new camera!

Sensible head switched on, stick with the D40 and get the lens, go out with the camera more and just continue practicing to 'see' better photographic opportunities.

Stoopid head on, bigger toy to play with, lots of new buttons, extra features over my current model.

Wow, I really don't have anything important to worry about now do I?! Like where the next meal is coming from, how to keep a roof over our heads...

For Linas...

How much do you like the look of that???

Funny old thing, I was driving up the motorway to the office in Chorley and a big steak popped into my head along with the word 'Linas'. 'How about that?' I thought to myself, luckily managing to recall I'd even had the thought now that I've stopped driving.

I think I may have to drag my sorry ass over to the butcher on Saturday and see if he can carve me up a nice piece like that, which will go beautifully with a fresh green salad (or, if you're name's 'Linas' then skip the greenery obviously, and stick to french fries!).

Ancienne Sourdough

After a bit of grief yesterday with some pizzas I made, which came out looking and tasting worse than some shop-bought dross, I was feeling a bit unhappy with the oven we've just got. The baking stone clearly just wasn't getting hot enough to crisp the pizza base and cause the water in the dough to evaporate quickly enough. Resulting pizza base was therefore awful.

So when I set about baking the sourdough bread I'd prepared yesterday (and fridged overnight to develop the flavour), I was concerned over how to avoid the same problem. Anyway, long story short, whacking the stone under the grill in the top oven, having warmed it already, meant I could get enough thermal energy into it, so that putting the stone into the main oven and immediately placing the shaped dough onto it, there was plenty enough heat to drive the bread upwards in a glorious example of oven spring: as the stone heat subsided the oven itself continued to cook the bread in a less direct way, meaning the crust formed nicely and the bread cooked through as it should.

Anyway, I've given it the label 'sourdough ancienne' cos I dunno what the right name should be. Bottom line, I'm happy with the outcome and no longer thinking about taking an axe to the new oven... ;-)

A little light reading...

Just acquired this little beauty ->



This weighty tome by the founder of the SFBI runs to 1043 pages, all of it on baking... you wouldn't think so much text were possible, would you!?

I think its one I'm going to use as a reference, rather than trying to absorb it all by actually reading through it! Blimey, where would I find the time?

Needless to say, there are almost all the baking recipes you're ever gonna need, and it all looks gorgeous!

More Baguette Action

Made these recently, using another variation on the classic recipe of baguette, and - apart from their somewhat wonky shape - they are pretty nice, with a nice brittle crust and soft, melting crumb, perfect to enjoy with a decent drop of red... which I should add is safely back on the wine rack for the time being!

Only thing I didn't like about them was the aeration was a bit too much, although I suspect this might be resolved by being less 'dainty' with them during the final shaping process: no doubt next time I'll learn something else about how to make really good baguettes, which will override this latest lesson!

Bread, so far

In the short time I've been turning my hand to baking bread, I've realised not just how very little I know, but how even less I knew before this process began. There's absolutely more to bread than meets the eye... :-)

However, I've started to notice a logic to much of it and also begun to appreciate the 'why' of the individual parts making up the techniques, even though I remain firmly planted in the kindergarten of bread-making school. Thought I might try anyhow and share a couple of things that I've learned so far, which seem to tally with experience gained over the past months:-

* If you're not using a sourdough starter, use a 'sponge' or pre-ferment to enhance the flavour of the final dough.
* Free-form loaves need decent surface tension to retain their shape when baking.
* Rye flour is usually limited to 40% or less of overall flour content (with strong white making up the rest) since it does not have sufficiently strong gluten to hold together like strong white.
* Flour takes time to absorb the water when you initially add it, so adopt a 'staged' kneading technique.
* Kneading and stretching help develop the strong gluten bonds in the dough.
* Sourdough dough is slower than commercial baker's yeast and takes longer to develop.
* Slashing the dough nicely to acquire a satisfactory 'gringe' during baking is hard!
* A baking stone is worth its weight in granite/limestone/marble.
* Get a disposable silverfoil turkey roasting tray to act as a cover over the bread for the first 20 minutes of baking - it will trap the steam escaping from the dough and help delay the hardening of the crust, thus allowing the bread to 'spring' more as it heats up.


That's that I reckon. I still need to play around with delaying the addition of salt, using LESS commercial yeast to achieve a lighter bread, finding the best temperature for each type of loaf, etc etc etc...

Mill Loaf

The baker's been at it again, not content with making pizza from scratch, I also made a recipe from Dan Lepard's book (The Handmade Loaf) called 'the mill loaf', which turned out alright I reckon. Made with a white sourdough starter, strong white flour, wholemeal and a bit of rye.

Baked on the oven stone, half the time covered, half the time uncovered (seems to aid with retaining steam, aiding both oven spring and a more tender crust).

Delicioso!

These are the best so far! Top one's a veggie version, with artichokes, black olives and sun-dried tomato, bottom one is mild pepperoni, green chilly and sun-dried tomato. Both made using a slow ferment sourdough recipe I got from the Dan Lepard bread site forum. Cooking the pizzas on the maximum heat on a stone in the oven is, as ever, the key to getting a crisp base with aerated crumb structure while not losing some of the moisture from the dough. Slapped under a hot grill for 2 minutes to finish off the top, then served with fresh basil herb - delicioso!

And then there was one...

Made 12 of these last night, which are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, decorated with sugar strands. Distributed them amongst the poor and needy (oh, hang on, no I gave them to the slackers at work!) who seemed to like them.

Anyway, big yes to the frosting, some adjustments needed to the cupcake ingredient ratios in my view.

Baguettes!

Fresh from ze oven, 'oo will buy my luvlee baguettes?

These have turned out pretty well, for a first attempt. Bit broader than standard shop baguettes, but with a really nice crust and soft, well aerated interior, I'm very happy!
They were done using a 'preferment' as well as some of my leaven and made entirely by hand (of course!), then baked at 235 degrees for 15 mins followed by 10 mins at 210.

ooh, these look nice!

The above is a shot of some sourdough cinnamon rolls from The Fresh Loaf dot com.

I plan to have a crack at these myself, perhaps on a smaller scale, or when I know there will be a large number of people handy to consume them all, and I might change the drizzle slightly (or just go with what the author suggests, I mean I don't have to stamp my own particular mark on them after all!)

Pizza vera!

Basta, here is the first product of the 'pizza by stone' technique which I've been itching to try for some time now. Basically you stick a nice thick tile (untreated and unsealed) in the oven about 4 inches below the grill and crank the oven heat up to the max. When everything is nice and hot, flick on the grill and slide your home-made skinny crust pizza under the grill directly on the stone.

The end result was yummy! Real thin crispy crust and bubbling mozzarella, I just oughta got some fresh basil to serve. Its definitely bolstered my pizza confidence and showed me that you CAN have authentic crispy pizza at home!

hand made loaf

Confidence boosted by the growth of my natural leaven and the sour dough barm loaf I baked last week, I've gone and got a copy of the hand made loaf by a guy called Dan Lepard.



Gonna try the Mill Loaf next... once I've revived the leaven, which has been 'sleeping' in the fridge for a few days and slowed down.

Sourdough BarmLoaf

And here - as they say - is one I made earlier... this time its a barm loaf, leavened with my own home leaven, using a recipe from the handmade loaf and made, not unsurprisingly, entirely without mechanical assistance.

To be blunt, I'm impressed with it - texture and taste are great and its got so much more body than commercial bread. Using a natural leaven means that it doesn't get as big pockets of carbon dioxide as bought bakers yeast would result in, but it still rises ok and 'springs' in the oven when it goes in.

The nice thing is, not only is it completely additive free, but you know you're eating a slice, its a lot weightier than the spongey rubbish from the shops.

Its hard work being naughty!

This is what our intellectually challenged white boxer was getting up to this afternoon in the garden.



Next door have a couple of chickens, and the dogs kinda know this. This is why we have such a severe-looking fence, to keep them all apart. Anyway, white doesn't think anyone's spotted her trying to tunnel into next door to 'play' with their chickens, however this is her reaction on hearing my call. Oops, rumbled.

Basic Bread

Have had a go at baking, based on using a pre-ferment (or Poolish, as its apparently sometimes known) and made a couple of loaves. They're all-white flour loaves and you can just make out that the crumb is fairly aerated, so consequently there's not much weight in them.

I used re-hydrated Active Yeast for both the poolish and the main dough, which seems to be pretty vigorous. Since I've been been 'growing' my own leaven from scratch, I'm planning on using that next time, which should result in a stronger flavour, though I'm not sure how much growth during dough development it will give.

Gotta give this a go!

Toblerone puddings with caramel sauce


How nice does that look? And how good do you just know it will taste?!

Ribeye and x3 Chips

Tried my hand at a bit of 'DIY' sous-vide, but since I don't have a personal vacuum machine (ignoring for now our trusty hoover) I merely tried to exclude as much air as possible from the bag in which I slow-cooked the rib-eye steak, placing it in a water bath at between 50 and 55 degrees celsius for about 5 hours.

The inside of the steak was very tender and pink, although I really thought it would be even more melting than it actually was. The outside was seared in a hot pan to kick-start the Maillard Reaction and give that caramelised outer layer of meat that is so tasty, and the whole thing served with triple-cooked chips and french beans.


Mmmm, now feeling full!

Delice de Woking

I made those. And ate quite a few of them, funnily enough :-)

The recipe is one I got from an old Roux Brothers Pastry Gastronomique I dug up last week. Bit laborious, but ultimately quite simple and the end result is very nice!

Darwin Week

Although I missed the 'first-hand' presentation of my church's sermon on Darwin this Sunday, I caught it as a podcast which they've helpfully done - here's the link.

Don't think that I'm pushing a one-sided, biased commentary on you, by the way, since I can faithfully say that its a beautifully mature look at the ongoing debate about science and God, where the speaker is well aware of the dangers of the fundamentalist's point of view, be they a Darwinian fundamentalist or a christian fundamentalist.

Rightly, I think, Phil discusses the significance of both sides' 'a priori' beliefs and their foundational viewpoints. More than anything, I got the sense from his sermon, that we are not expected to 'switch off' our heads in order to understand more about the 'Who' behind this life, but that science will continue to provide answers as to the 'How' of the universe around us.