STIR THE POTS

Another loaf out of the pot..creuset that is.

My obstinate nature made me take another stab at the pot baking method  today. I was inspired by my friend Vincent, who told me about an oven used in England that didn't need steam injected during the bake because the humidity from the loaves themselves created the glossy shine we often find in commercial loaves.

I whipped up my stock levain into a stiff mix, followed Dan Leader's general measurements from his favorite levain formula on Bread Alone, et voila a crisp and light feeling loaf. Sure it doesn't have a perfect grigne. The problem was it got stuck in the banneton while I was carefully trying to avoid singing my legs as well as my fingers in the process! Of course New York that day was hot and humid. Luckily the wife was getting her gym workout, giving me about an hour to bake and try to chill the apartment with some air conditioning before she got back. And then I knew all would be okay when my cat, curious as he always is, approached \ the cooling loaf that was making sounds of "snap, crackle and pop!" He seemed to love the smell of the hot bread, no matter how hot the apartment. 

Anyway, after speaking with my friend Mick in Conzieu, I started to feel as between this blog and all the other baking media online, I was sharing my passion with soul mates all over the world. All to say this is for the friends and bakers...Kathy, Vincent, Mick, Brad, Adam, Ben, David, Susan, Dieter...too many others too mention, but happy baking one and all!

Dan Leaders Favorite Levain
Levain
170g flour
340 starter

Dough

510 water
680 flour
1Tbsp salt

Mix the levain overnite 8-12 hours

Combine water and levain on 1st speed of mixer till broken up.
Add in flour mix until shaggy and autolyse 20-60 minutes, continue mixing on second speed, add salt.
Rise for 2 hours, giving one or two folds, ( I did 2 since the dough felt a bit loose.)
At this point you may want to continue to shape, proof,bake. Since I went to dinner and wouldn't have time to bake, I decided to retard the dough overnight. In the morning I let the dough warm up a bit for about 2 hours, with one fold. I then shaped and baked in a preheated creuset pan for one hour. As the oven I have is fairly small and the pot is a large one, I lowered my initial temperature from 500 F to 400 as soon as I put in the loaf. You want to cover the loaf with the lid for at least a 40 minutes, then finish the loaf with the top off...be careful this stuff is hot and Vincent says he has left many a mark on a table top forgetting the pan was scorching hot!

My field of bread dreams.

Last year I was in Wales with a bunch of bakers with whom I had made acquaintance through Dan Lepard's forum. This year one of the participants has carried the torch to his backyard in Conzieu, France. Brad Prezant and I spent some time together talking, all the while appreciating the fact that we were the two sole Yanks present for the Bethesdabakin event. That didn't stop us from enjoying the great atmosphere and the bread bond that brought all sorts together for the sake of bread.

So as I sulk at work after a testy day with waiters and high humidity in New York City, my mind wanders and wonders on how the bakers are doing in France? Knowing them, it's all party and lots of good loaves coming out of the oven. I will ring up Brad in the morning and try to get a hold of some of the bakers for hints.news and perhaps some formulas?

Happy Baking y'all!

Here is some news and pictures from Pab at Dan Lepards site

Congratulations Dieter

Editing interviews and posting, I periodically check the stats to identify what people are looking for from all parts of the world. In the process, I was led to an article about no other than that really wonderful man, Dieter Schorner.

My favorite part of the article connected food and people with a wonderful lesson from this great teacher.
As Chef Schorner put it, "If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. But if you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people. I teach as if I am the farmer who is planting the seed of prosperity and I am praying it will grow successful people."

Wish I had said that. Happy there's someone with wisdom like Dieter Schorner to say it for us.

Kathy McClean

I met Kathy McClean on Dan Lepard's forum, where she asked me for information regarding equipment for her bakery in Northern Ireland. Kathy's queries, several e-mails, and some wonderful bread mixes were a starting point for me to find out more about how a woman who baked at Steve Sullivan's famous Berkeley bakery Acme Bread, then picked up stakes and moved to Northern Ireland. Because that's exactly what Kathy McClean had the courage to do, despite the natural difficulties in introducing a food product to a land that suffered enormous civil strife, where change comes in small steps, and deep persistence is cost-of-entry to a modicum of success. After seven years, she's not just surviving but thriving.

In Northern Ireland, bread isn't yet held to the same esteem or quality as it is in some parts of the world, like here or other parts of Europe. Kathy is a ground breaking pioneer amongst a few artisan bakers across in the Republic of Ireland, trying to educate the palates from soda bread to yeasted wheat loaves. Weather, provisions, as well as labor and location play a role. Still Kathy thinks there is a good opportunity for interested bakers to make a mark there. As a matter of fact if you're interested in moving there give her a ring, and tell her I sent you!

Kathy's original retail store

The current bakery

New deck oven.

Location,location,location....

Kathy McClean
California Market Bakery
Flurry Bridge Unit B12
Lower Foughill Road
Jonesborough Newry
Northern Ireland
BT35 8SQ

028 30 284 277

VAT GB 854 1045 44
www.californimarketbakery.com
www.irishfoodnetwork.com

Click to listen Podcast

Dilara Erbay

Istanbul (or Constantinople)  has rich layers of history where the  food is central to life in this metropolis. Yet in the United States, not much is really familiar about Turkish food, except maybe shish kebabs or baklava. One person changing that is Dilara Erbay of Dilara Sabra Cadabra. Check out her wonderful site!

Erbay is a chef and artist who I literally just discovered online via Momondo, while surfing for information on the similarly terrific chef Mehmet Gürs, interviewed here last week. My curiosity piqued by Erbay's ideas and charisma, I dispatched an e-mail to her asking her for an interview. Voila, the speed of the internet, the generosity of Turkish chefs. She quickly accepted. This week I finally called her and I am already invited to visit her restaurant in August.

Dilara reminds me of a Frida Kahlo of Turkish food; she is the real thing and  expresses herself quite eloquently on all subject's food and more. My favorite statement of hers is. "Art is anything!"

Click to listen Podcast

Mehrkornsaatenbrot

I should know better by now. Sure it's 80 degrees and muggy, and yeah, I know my wife is going to kill me, heating up our sunny Sunnyside apartment. But...this loaf is beautiful. Beautiful! And it's probably the best German loaf I have made since school! Mehrkornsaatenbröt or multigrain bread is what this toothsome and flavorful loaf is called. Without a decent translator or any German vocabulary sufficient to really make sense of directions, I boldly went where no baker goes. In other words, I winged it. And it happens that winging it worked.

True, it certainly isn't 100% Sauer, but it's good. Very good. Oh, yeah, I already said that. Besides boasting, to make up for the heat I'm getting from my wife and the sun, let me just say this: I didn't add any improver in this loaf, no vitamin c or fava bean or even soy flour which seems pretty common in some backerei breads these days. John Downes is frowning on me, but I did add yeast as a fail-safe measure,  only because I wasn't sure about the power of my rye Sauer. Forgive me mate.

Anyway, in truth I Googled a recipe, this one from some trade school named "Bandesfachschule des Deutschen Båckerhandwerks." Roughly translated, it means Technical school of German Hand work bakers. But translated the online directions make no sense at all, and don't give any clue as far as procedure. So here is my "winging it" recipe improvised with help from my fellow bakers in Germany.

The  formula:

Sauer:

90g Rye flour

72g water   

5g  rye sauer

16 hour proof

Soaker:

80g Rye chops 

80g Oat flakes

60g Flax seeds

60g Pumpkin seeds

100g Sunflower seeds

300g Hot water

2-3 hours soak before making the final mix

Final Dough:

162g Sauer

680g Soaker

750g bread flour

10g malted barley powder

23g Sea salt

10g instant yeast, (you maybe more hardcore than I was, go total sauer. The original formula asked for 40g!)

390g Water

Sourdough:
I did a short mix 2 minutes on 1st speed and about 3 on second. I wasn't being ambitious about doing by hand, as time was of the essence as my wife would arrive and I wanted the apartment clean and cool!
First rise: without having written down anything to check my loaves or clock, I assume I watched the news and surfed the internet about an hour, then gave the dough a turn.

One more hour passed and the dough had risen a bit, I figured that the high humidity was a factor and the rye in the Sauer. I weighed out two loaves, and shaped them like jelly roll style and placed them into two oiled loaf pans coated with cornmeal. I sprayed the loaves before and rolled them in the seed mix.
Covered them for about and hour and a half, they were booming and ready to be shoved in the oven. Baked at about 460 degrees Faranheit, my oven sucks and the thermometer is hard to read.

 

 

Halo Vincent! Oui?

A few posts back I introduced a young baker working in London, a Frenchmen who learned his craft in England. Since my last post and a few e-mails, I finally got in touch with Vincent Talleu, (The Baker). This impromptu interview he gave was off the cuff, as he was talking literally on route from a trial stage at a bakery in the sunny part of France close  to Nice. Hear what Vincent had to say...and thank you, David, for the questions and initiating the conversation.

P.S. Vincent, don't forget to get some more baking porn up on your site!

Podcast

Click to listen

My friend Mike!(Knorr, chickens and latex gloves!)

Anthony Bourdain always says people in kitchens are misfits who couldn't make it anywhere but the kitchen. I tend to agree with Chef Bourdain. The characters you meet come from all parts of the world or universe.  Some shouldn't stay in the business. Others just can't escape it. The hardest part is keeping in touch with people when your busy working those shifts  and staying friends... at least by anything more than email. Afterall, if you're a working chef, you're spending an awful lot of time in your workplace kitchen, leaving little time and energy at the end of the week for much socializing.

And honestly, it's tough making friends "in the biz." Beyond time restrictions, there's the competitive nature of the restaurant industry, as well as the seemingly intrinsic insecurity of kitchen positions. One day you're there. The next day you're not. Such harsh fate can stem from all sorts of things. The top chef decided one shift that the "plate of the day" was not up to snuff, and therefore it must be your fault. Gone. Or you screwed up their special soup on a day they were particularly sensitive. Out the door. Maybe you're showed up at work reeking of a late night bender. Or worse you show up in the middle of a bender. Whatever, really great food elicits great passion. Kitchens draw passionate people. Passionate people make for colorful but risky environments. At least for cultivating easy friendships.

Still, sometimes in this crazy wonderful business (even a bit more than sometimes... sometimes) you meet a fellow food professional who it doesn't matter if you see every day, every week, or just once a year. They may be someone who has your back. Or they just may be someone who is generous with their wisdom, humor, or good cheer. Whatever, such friends are precious. Take a certain chef whom I count on to take me to New York's Asian markets in Queens, introducing me to different ingredients and food not recognized in my culinary repertoire. All to say, I would like to make my own introduction to a friend of mine. Everyone, meet Mike Kobylanski. You will find him every once and a while leaving kind messages here. Or just adding his two cents. 

There are more than enough stories to tell  about Mike, you could fill a book with! One time we were in the kitchen after lunch. Mike and I put some latex gloves over our heads and were clucking like chickens when our top chef walked in. Worse, he was joined by Charlie Trotter. Mike and I scurried like hell to the walk-in fridge and hid. All of a sudden Mike turned to me. "Shit," he said. "The Knorr chicken base is on the counter!" For a moment we were scared. But then we broke into uncontrollable laughter, imagining how it would ruin our boss' reputation to see the chicken base as he showed the esteemed industry AND television food personality around his kitchen. We didn't even consider the latex gloves swaying on our own heads as we crowed and cuckled, knowing that our future no longer carried jobs with the legendary PBS-sanctioned Charlie Trotter. Hell, that is what a real food friend delivers, sharing war stories and kitchen mischief.

Thanks Mike for the memories. Oh yeah, when are we going to the Heidelberg to see Rosa?

 

 

Chef spotting at Momofuku

 

For some reason every time I go to David Chang's Momofuku in the East Village I see some famous person or celebrity chef. Two weeks ago we saw Drew Nieporent. He said hello to my wife. ”Who is he?" she asked. I explained he was the owner of Montrachet and Nobu, among other restaurants in his Myriad group. "Why did he say hi?" my wife asked. "Maybe he likes you, or he is just being friendly?" I said, all the while considering asking him to do an interview. But I was already busy giving my business card to the manager to see if I could book David first.

The next sighting was Rick Bayless, on my most recent visit. I couldn't resist walking over to say hello, since Rick was one of my first interviews on this old blog! Stupidly I went over to his table and said, "excuse me, are you Rick Bayless?" Duh, who hasn't seen him on PBS a million times making his version of Mexican food? I even snapped a picture of him with my cell phone covertly from my table, feigning short sightedness while trying to get a profile shot.

Later at home I inadvertently erased the shot on my cell phone. Oh well. Rick was getting the treatment. I guess he couldn't get a table at Momofuku Ko. That place just doesn't stop getting press, I tried getting David Chang for an interview but he is not doing any right now. Should of gotten him when I first met him on the street and handed him my card. Back then, he was just getting started with his first Momofuku.

Back to the lunch at his restaurant. So as we started choosing dishes from the menu. The waitress gave us a list of 86'ed items: no Char, no sweetbreads, etc. Shit, I spied Rick's table and they were getting the sweetbreads. Did Rick's table get everything and we were just getting the scraps? We chuckled about it and then my friend told the waitress, "Maybe we should just get a corn dog at the street fair down the street, because I was really looking to try the sweet breads!" Regardless, we ordered. The food was good, though it was not as spot on as the last visit. Could it have been the focus on one chefs table and not another? We got a complimentary ice cream for the table, and, I have to say, the fish (fluke - yes, really) was totally delicious.

Of course fighting a head cold this week during a heat wave could also make my judgment less clear, but I still like David Chang's food. Hell it's a good place to try to hit up famous chefs for interviews instead of going through their assistants!

Summertime in the kitchen...hot

No chef in his or her right mind will tell you that it is nice to work in the kitchen when the summer approaches, why? It's hot, hot, hot! Another problem, especially for my line of work as a private club chef, is the tedium and waiting between services if I can't manage to get out for a break. So what pray tell do I do? Bake bread amongst other things. Kind of like Dante's inferno, why not just get a little hotter and just enjoy it.

Yesterday was case in point, I rustled up a loaf of Jim Lahey's infamous no-knead pot bread, with various borrowed sources. Dan Leaders levain formula from his first book, Bread Alone. From Pim of Chez Pim, who got bit by the baking bug on one her recent posts, I followed her formula. I didn't have any special flour except all purpose white, my boss smirks when I make a loaf, the fact is I don't think he has a liking for crusty loaves of sourdough, whatever?

This whole week after memorial day has been deliriously boring, though it gave me time to play with the new summer menu which I try to snap photo's of when I am not sautéing or filleting leaving me helpless to focus and snap!

So here are a few pictures to show you I am not having blogger block or something, I actually do work for a living! Not that I wouldn't like to be traveling and eating in temples of the food gods instead.

So until I write a cook book or end up on food network, well I guess I will just keep cooking for the hell of it, even when it is hot!