STIR THE POTS

Pain Bâloise

So often my schedule interferes with one of life's great pleasures for me, baking. Either I can't find time to schedule for bread baking days or fail to enter one of the growing number of daring baking events sponsored by other bloggers.  Blame it on the  whacked-out hours of a working chef. Take this week. Checking out a recent post by NIls, he informed me of a bake-off that was, odd as it seems, close to home; namely a Swiss National Day Bake Event sponsored by Zorra.

Last summer at this time, I landed in Switzerland to visit my sister Rachel, who lives there. I remember that night so well. Though somewhat jet lagged, a bit full of beer or wine, I sat with her and the family watching the town and surrounding hills light up with fireworks, listening to gleeful cheers from my neices as the entire country celebrated all around us. And though at one point, my nephew got scared by all of the explosions, letting out a frightened howl, what I remember most was it was just such a joyous evening.

In fact, it was a great vacation, a time with family totally focused  on baking! Visiting bread museums and mills, I played the role of my sister's  official "taster," testing all the good things baked in her kitchen, from bread to  her fantastic steinofen. Well, Nil's post about the contest inspired me to whip up a Pain Bâloise,  named after a town a few minutes down the road from my sister's village. Though I failed to send in my recipe for the contest, and even if my Basel bread looks less like a Baloise than a Bürlibrot, I hope my sister will chuckle when she sees this.

Basel Bread

(based on the Basel bread on Anne's blog who got the recipe from Jan Hedh's book.)

• First Feed
• rye                      100%    18
• water                  100%    18
• starter (chef)         50%     9
• Total                              46



• Second Feed
• rye                       100%    46
• water                   100%    46
• starter (chef)        100%    46
• Total                            139



• Final Dough
• levain                 52%    139
• bread flour        100%    268
• water                 72%    193
• salt                     3%        9
•          
  
• Total flour     100%    268
•  
• Hydration   65.0%
• Levain       42.0%

I used Dan Lepard's hand mixing method of 3 short mixes at about ten seconds, with two folds at about 30 minutes and 1 hour, total rise was one hour and retarded in the refrigerator in bulk. Remove from fridge and allow the dough to come to temperature, at least an hour. Shape into small batards,(mine were rounded like boules, that is right if you want Bürli) rise about two hours and bake at 460 for 5 minutes, with steam, then lower to 400 for the final 30 - 40 minutes.

 

 

A matter of taste...la materia de ingredientes

Apparently, a war of words has erupted in the world of haute cuisine. The center of controversy  is world famous Hotel El Bulli and its chef, Ferran Adria. Opened in 1961 on Costa Brava's Cala Montjoi, it sits in an area on the Spanish coast known for its beauty and excellent scuba diving. The hotel's restaurant has developed a reputation as a center of culinary innovation, first begun by its German founder, a homeopathic (and epicurean) doctor who was particularly imaginative about mixing ingredients. Since then it's been home to chefs who have continued amping up the experimentation. According to Wikipedia:

The restaurant has a limited season from April to September; bookings are taken on a single day in the previous October. It accommodates only 8,000 diners a season, with 800,000 people calling to try and book places — around 400 requests for every table. The average cost of a meal is €250; the restaurant itself has operated at a loss since 2000, with operating profit coming from El Bulli-related books, and lectures from Adrià.^[3][1] As of April 2008, the restaurant employed 42 chefs.^[2]

Currently leading El Bulli's staff is Ferran Adria, (made head of kitchen in 1987, three years after he joined the crew), a man who seems especially intrigued by culinary alchemy or "molecular gastronomy," which is focused on pushing the edges of food creation by technology adoption, a sort of mashup of processes and ingredients. Take the way, for instance, that Adria does things like creating "foams" in which he forgos cream and eggs, instead counting on pumping oxygen into whatever primary ingredient he is using. Adria's goal, in his words, are to" "provide unexpected contrasts of flavour, temperature and texture... The idea is to provoke, surprise and delight the diner." But Adria clearly gets his own delight from eclectic combinations that connect so-called natural with processed foods. Here's an example of the surprise he is out to inspire, taken from a Guardian newspaper article on Adria: "Kellogg's paella, which consists of Rice Krispies with an intense seafood reduction, alongside flash-fried shrimps, a piece of shrimp sashimi and an ampoule that contains a thick brown extract of shrimp heads."

Supporting Adria's approach are chefs like Heston Blumenthal, Wylie Dusfrene and Alex Talbot, someone we recently interviewed. A group of fast paced techno-savvy necromancers, they toil over changing textures and de-constructing, as well as reconstituting, food stuffs into ethereal masterpieces, many based on wild combinations between processed and natural sources. Highly critical of such efforts are a organic conscious group less enamored by high-tech cuisine, impassioned by an instinct symbolized in the so-called slow-food movement. Their questions for the technology-happy alchemists start with concerns around health but extend to aesthetics and morality, especially with destroying food traditions and ways that what we eat impacts the larger world.

The recent battle is led by chef Santi Santamaria, described by the BBC as a a "culinary traditionalist." Santamaria thinks Adria's use of gels and additives may be unhealthy. Like Santamaria, I wonder about about the larger process that's industrializing the food that comes from professional kitchens, rather than just the tools that create them. Liquified olives. Emulsifying anything you can eat. Or processes that the larger food industry is delivering, like irradiated tomatoes. With the current state of our food chain (e.g. mad cow disease, salmonella in jalapeños, etc., I wonder how far off we are from a Soylent Green world! Is it so important to make a cool-looking product that fails to capture the essence of the original source?

What led me to this post was a BBC article on the war between these two chefs. According to the BBC, Adria claims that the ingredients that he uses are healthy.

"El Bulli is a language which sometimes you can't understand, but all I ask is that people come with an open mind," he says.  "For example, we do one dish which is a gently liquefied tea soup, with tiny jasmine and eucalyptus flowers floating on it, like water lilies."When you taste that, I don't know how to explain exactly what it is. And I made it! There are no reference points."

Read the article to get a full sense of Adria as personality and food philosopher. He's certainly brilliant and colorful. But this article led me to El Bulli's web site, where I found a link to a restaurant with which Adria is connected. Apparently it serves "comida rapida," or fast-food. Adria purports that his cuisine is 80 percent healthy and that additives are common in all foods. By his logic, all cooking is a form of processing. But with current concerns about obesity, and the push towards fast food establishments posting calorie charts on posted menus, it makes me wonder if Adria will be convinced that perhaps some processed foods just aren't worth eating, even if interesting to create. Or to look at.

Flat Pizza or thin crust like Bo-bo's...a mistake?

During the weekend I was looking at a Joe Pastry's blog where I fortunately found a link to a pizza guru, Jeff Verasano. From his extensive  hunt for the best "New York Pizza", to his method of engineering his oven to cook a pizza at the authentic 800 degree temperature, it's all fascinating. There are various sources for cheese, sauce, mixer reviews, flour and water myths and methods of making a Neopolitan style pizza.Checking the list of his pizza shop rankings (all from personal visits) establishments, I noticed that he had ranked a pizza joint I knew well from my high school years in Stamford CT., zip code 06902. Not exactly a Hollywood  zip code, but it did have a quirky place called the Colony Grill, otherwise known as Jimmy Bo-bo's, an Irish bar that served a thin crust pizza pie.

So what is so special about a pizza joint? Well in the case of Colony Grill (or Bo-bo's) it was the crust. My brother first introduced this place to me when we first moved to the area from a town 20 minutes away. Named after the owner (Bohanon, I believe), Bo-bo's was a gem. Before telling you about my introduction, let me describe the place. "Back in the day," as I remember it, Bo-bo's walls were covered by photos of military GIs going back to WWII. Some of the guys in the pictures now worked behind Bo-bo's bar or as waiters. Like the regal and charming "Fitz," his Dapper Dan coiffed hair, his beer belly and his regular greeting of "hey fellas!" made you feel immediately welcome.

My brother was initiated when he joined the Navy with an all night drinking party. When he returned from Boot Camp, Bo-bo's gave him an even a bigger party. But I digress. We were talking pizza at Bo-bo's. Their pie was like no other. With its thin crisp crust, it avoided the curse of most local pizza joints, namely rubbery dough overloaded with tons of tasteless cheese. More, Bo-Bo's had a unique sauce, which while a little greasy and on the sweet side, was balanced with a light sprinkling of cheese and, if you liked, fennel sausage from a place across the street called Deyulios. My preferred pie was with sausage, but I could go with the plain as well. I guess it was that dough that made it stand out. Once, I remember, my brother asked for the recipe. The kitchen guys laughed but they let him look at how the pizza was made. According to my brother, the crew had an old clothes wringer through which they passed the dough, achieving that spectacular thin crust.

My last visit to Colony, I went alone. Minus my brother, not seeing Fitz or anyone from my past, I felt a bit lost. Especially when I noticed the place crowded with yuppies and tourists who now flock to Bo-bo's, as it seems to have finally found the reputation it long ago deserved. Sometimes I think that anything on the cutting edge, once discovered, it suffers. Loses more than charm, perhaps a bit of its soul. At least, it seemed that way to me that night, because for some reason the pie, well it was different. Bo-bo's had introduced more pizza toppings, like stingers, which were described as jalapenos but were really Serrano peppers. Maybe something brought in by the now predominantly Hispanic crew. Maybe it was nostalgia, or it was my brother telling me to go and have a pie for him, only he wasn't there to share it. I missed the place where me and my brother had shared some great pizzas and beer.

Gleaning  from Jeff Verasano's own recipe, which he kindly provides as a general guideline, I recently put my hand to recreating those wonderful pies like we once ate. Without a sourdough at hand, I decided to approach the formula with a poolish, equal amounts flour and water with trace of yeast. I left it out overnight and the next morning proceeded with the rest of the ingredients; water, flour, salt and yeast, (optional). I mixed by machine, let the dough sit out for about a half hour, then stuck in the fridge to retard.

Jeff says he allows his dough to develop about two-six days refrigerated in individual containers. Being impatient, and wanting some lunch, I whipped up a pizza and used stock tomato sauce, generic mozzarella, basil leaves and some olive oil to caress the top of the pie. I don't have a pizza stone, nor do I have a real deck oven, so instead I used the back of a second-rate sheet pan, baking it in my trusty vulcan broiler oven, which can get to 700 degrees or more. At first I wasn't sure about the basil but, wow, what a flavor! I could of used buffalo mozzarella, but I find it pretty wet, so I used the commercial block mozz, admittedly greasy and with no really discernible  profile of  real mozzarella cheese.  The dough hadn't risen in the bowl nor in the oven, and yet I recognized something familiar. Was it a mistake? dunno, maybe it was fate, but hell it sure tasted like a Bo-bo's to me!

My pêche, your Melba!

It being summer, the season for fresh fruit, my wife requested another of her favorites, poached peaches. Off season, she will get a yearning and buy the glass-jar variety from Trader Joe's. Her pleasure is my happiness, especially since it is a  simple  preparation to make this dessert that reminds me of childhood. Its pedigree can be dated back to the 1890's when Auguste Escoffier, the designer of modern French cuisine simplified the codified style from its elaborate state as designed by its originator Antoine Carême.

One of Escoffiers signature dishes was named after an Australian diva named Nellie Melba. After watching her perform on stage, he wanted to dedicate a dish in her honor. It was said that she liked ice cream but was afraid of its cooling effect on her vocal chords. So Escoffier decided to put in some other elements, including peaches, raspberries, red currant jelly  and, of course, ice cream. I have not picked up either of my two copies of Escoffier's recipe books for some time. They are really wonderful tools, like references that read like testaments, not in a religious sense, but a kitchen primer of the highest order.

Thinking about Escoffier reminds me of having once seen a French chef prepare peaches for a dessert. He poached and peeled them, and then with surgical precision carefully pushed a pairing knife into the fruit, magically removing the  pit through a tiny opening that he made on the top of the fruit. He then  filled the cavity with lavender-flavored ice cream. Sublime!  Forgetting how he did that, tonight I just cut my peaches in half,  made a light syrup, and poached them untill pushing a knife into the flesh showed that they were tender. I let them cool and without garnish we had them for a refreshing dessert after dinner; maybe not your Melba but my pêche all the same!

What's in a miche? Or how to Poilâne.

Returning for the first time to Paris since moving to America as a child (and not having yet become so big on bread) luck brought me walking past Poilânes bakery on  8 rue cherche midi. Giving credit where it's due, fate gave me my wife, who is not just lovely but also loves a good boutique. She brought me to the neighborhood. Thus I was able to visit the most fabled bakery in all of France, a center of that famous bread the miche.

At the time, being a recent  graduate  from FCI's  bread course, I was sure I knew something about this great French creation, at least I thought I did. It just so happened a classmate had brought back one of these cherished loaves from her own trip to France. What I remember was that her miche seemed (dare I say it?) a bit traveled! Well traveled! But biting into it, unimpressed, I decided not to dismiss generations of good bread from this fabled boulangerie. And so spotting the Poilânes outside where my wife was visiting the boutique, and then gawking at one of the two kilo miches beckoning from the bakery windows, in truth entranced, I entered the hallowed shop.

I was in heaven. Oh, the glory of that visit. They even let me step down the narrow steps to enter the baking epicenter in the basement, but " pardon,no photo's Monsieur!"  Overwhelmed, amazed, delighted (all three!) by their well guarded secrets, I considered taking a floor scraping, or even seeing if there was some levain to nab on my way out. Alas no such luck!

 

 

Back at home I started to ponder the many miche I had seen and wanted to replicate. Since that first visit, I have done so with some regular success, as well a few dense rocks about which it's best to forget. One of the best miche on my quest for this icons of French country bread was from none other than my friend Mick Hartley of Bethesdabakers fame.   

 

Bethesdabakers€™  Poilâne€™ 2k Miche 

(Micks's photo of his huge Miche!)

(Mick's adaption from an avid home baker Alan Zelt of his own version of Poilâne's miche.)

1st Refreshment – morning

Take starter from fridge.

Starter 26g
Water 60g
Rye flour 70g

Mix, cover, stand at room temperature.

2nd Refreshment – bedtime

Starter 114g
Water 40g
Plain Flour 128g

Mix and knead to form a ball, cover, stand at room temperature.

The Dough – following morning

Starter 282g
Water 684g
Plain Flour 786g
Spelt Flour 170g
Rye Flour 64g
Salt 28g

Break up the starter and whisk it into the water. Add the remaining ingredients and mix for 8 minutes in the machine. Form into a loose ball and allow to stand for 15 minutes. Form into a boule and place in a ten or eleven inch banneton. (These days I would probably have a four hour bulk fermentation stage at this point with hourly stretching and folding.)

Depending on your starter and the temperature, rising should take between 6-10 hours.

Preheat the oven to Gas 9 (475F, 240C) – hotter if you can. Turn out the dough, slash and bake spraying the oven a few times in the first 15 minutes. You may want to turn down the oven but, in my oven, even though the crust looks as though it is scorching, 50 minutes baking at full ahead gives a comparatively thin crust and a moist crumb. This is a big loaf.

Improves with standing a few hours or overnight.

Just this last week I was making a version of Dan Leader's favorite levain bread. Again, it is a typical miche. Just by it size alone, it's huge.  While browsing around different bread sites looking at variable in flour, percentages, etc...I fed a mixed levain of rye and wheat I had stored in my fridge from my last version of Amy Scherbers miche, made it up like a stiff levain from Dam Leaders Bread Alone book. From a recent visitor on this site, Jude, I patterned  his  flour mix from Peter Reinharts Poilâne miche using the same amount of water, 75% white whole wheat flour and 25% Bread flour to see if it would mimic the high extraction flour commonly used in this sort of bread. As usual my schedule was pretty much all over the place, so between shifts I fed the starter, retarded it overnight, then made the dough in the early morning with about a 3 hour rise. Then retarded the dough till the the afternoon, when I shaped it and put it back in the fridge for another  18 hours till the next morning whereI let it sit out for a couple of hours to come to temperature and in the oven. Success, the loaf was well expanded and I cut into it and the crumb was somewhat tight but the loaf it self was moist and was not as sour as I expected it to be, actually it was rather balanced.

Miche (adapted from Bouley Bakery)

222g whole wheat flour
1024g t65 flour
33g Rye
891g water
28.salt
2200

168g t65 flour
168g water
168g starter
505

222g Whole wheat flour
855g t65 flour
33g Rye
722g water
28g salt
337g levain
2200

During this search I happened on a newsgroup that included Mike Avery, as well our friend Vincent Talleu who actually went for a trial stage at Poilâne. Their discussion focused on the various theories surrounding the famous Miche at Monsieur Poilâne's. The bare bones and basic production of this type of bread is like the holy grail for some bakers. It makes you wonder, is it really the best bread? The back and forth from bakers included the quantity of flour, hydration and whether or not they use 30 percent spelt. These are all mysteries which I am sure none will get an answer. Unless they work for the famous French bakery, and that is assuming they have to sign a waiver to work there too! My mother has her own stories growing up in her village, where each family would have their own signature miche, each baking it off in the town's communal oven. According to her, the bread would last for days. All to say that the legends of Miche have a history and then some. So here's some more ammunition to add to that history, yourselves!

Vincents Pain Poilâne

To make a two kilogram loaf with that recipe, try:

Preferment:
144 grams Flour
58 grams Old Dough
86 grams Water

Final dough:
960 grams Flour
19 grams Salt
730 grams Water
288 grams Preferment
3 grams Instant Yeast

This is basically how they make their bread at Poilane:

Take old dough(from previous mix), make a preferment with it adding
flour and water to it (100 flour, 40 old dough, about 60water) making
it a tight dough.
Leave it for about an hour to proove.
Then mix the main dough, using:
100 flour T80 (a fine wholemeal. If you don't have T80 available, (I guess you can
just sieve wholemeal flour)
2 coarse sea salt
30 preferment

Enough water to make a nice dough, not too tight.

Mix for 7mn first speed, put in a wooden box for proving, about and
hour and half. Scale your dough 2.2Kg, round up, put in a banneton
with lots of flour. proove these for about an hour, or however long it
will take. 15 mn before they are ready to prove, put lots of wood on
your oven, leave the flame warm up the oven for 10mn, then put water
for steam and start loading your oven, slashing the top with a nice P.
Bake for about an hour. When taking out the bottom of bread should be
almost black.
Of course that's if you have a wood oven like them!

They don't actually weight the flour like I said there, instead they
weigh the water and have the matching amounts of preferement and salt
to the water weigh, after they just add the flour until the dough is
good. But I recalculated it for the flour weigh because I think it's
easier.

It seems long gone, but thanks to Lionel Poilâne vision to re-capture the quintessential loaf that most symbolized the French bread of past generations instead of the recent usurper le baguette!

 

 

Pâté, a meat loaf a primer.

Trying to get a recipe for pate, my friend Brad shared a terrific primer on rural French hunting traditions, as seen here in tips on wild boar pâté. But while fun to read and imagine, Brad's instructions were better set in a country forest than the jungles of New York City.

The truth is that I have a wine dinner coming up at work featuring some Bordeaux's from Sotheby's. So I endeavored to make my own pâté or terrine, or whatever you may want to call it!. What better in the current heat then a  game pâté.  The names are somewhat confusing as they're meanings refer to only parts of what makes up the final product. Terrine by name is  the vessel in which the meat is cooked, Pâté is roughly translated as paste. My guide is a  recipe for terrine I found from a charcuterie  site that has a PDF file full of sausage recipes. Julia Child  has a standard and wonderful version in her book,Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. Other good sources include the always useful Larousse Gastronomic, Stephane Reynaud's recipe rich,Terrine or even the reference tool of no other than Auguste, Escoffiers Cook Book which fantastic guides as well as good choices.

Some points to follow when making a pâté:

1. cold ingredients, (freeze the meat for up to an hour)
2. fresh ingredients
3. cold utensils, ( I put my parts in the refrigerator)
4. Add fat last, ( fat back breaks down easily, it has no connective tissue.)
5. sharp knives
6. proper sanitation
7. Add eggs  last, ( because they would be too wet and difficult to incorporate.)
8. Salt before emulsifying (it helps break down proteins in meat)
9. Never salt fat ,( draws out too much moisture, making meat harder to breakdown)

Farce or force meat: too much meat will make the pâté dry, too much fat and it will be greasy. Liver is a flavor component,and can vary from foie gras, poultry, or even pork liver can be added. Variations of coarse cut or fine paste determine the final texture and taste

The ratio for a pâté  is  2 parts Fowl, (duck, pheasant) or whatever meat is the dominant component, 1 part fat and 1 pork, about a 1/2 to 2/3 part liver is added . From this I take a third of the ground meat and process 1/3rd of the mix and puree to a fine paste, finally adding the eggs.
From the basic meat component you add in flavorings and various dice of meat either from the same processed bird, veal, pork meat and even vegetables, it's basically your choice about layering flavor and look of the final product.

Fillings:Depending on your taste filling can include the dominant meat, (usally the breast meat for fowl,  ham or vegetables like artichokes, peppers.When filling the terrine or mold you want to give a design to the way you lay out your pâté so you will get a mosaic effect, or if making a say a  pâté de campagne which is filled with more liver you won't have that defined look, it's a more rustic meat that is more flavor driven,

Flavoring:Then there is the spice and herbs that may vary according to flavor profile or whim. Just as long as you follow the ratio of meat to fat in the terrine recipe, the variations are endless.You may add in fruits and nuts, fresh or dry herbs. Quatre épice or other spice mixes are just one of the many possibilities.

Pâtés and terrines are a mystery meat for sure, but following some basic rules and some kitchen skills you can make a French classic at home without much stress, and besides with a slice of good country bread...délicieux's

Hot tamales

Tamales with pulled brisket and chilies, not your average summer meal...but if you have a bit of braised brisket leftover from Passover in the freezer, why not make use of it? That is what I did today, with some easy masa dough, some dried chilies, onions, garlic and juices from the braised meat it was a cinch. Tamales are a basic dough in which you can fill with pretty much whatever you have, chicken, pork, beef, chilies, beans and cheese.

.

Based on Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican, cookbook.
Tamale dough:

3.5 oz Masa harina
4oz masarepa
1 1/4 cups of boiling waterDried and reconstituted corn husks or banana leaves.

Stir in the hot water into the Masa harina and masarepa and set aside to cool.
4oz. Lard or vegetable shortening if so inclined.
2 cups of prepared Masa,(above)
about 1/2 a cup of chicken stock at room temperature
1 tsp. baking powder
about a 1/2 to 1 tsp of salt depending on broth used, (homemade or store bought.)
Filling:
Shredded or pulled meat with whatever salsa you want or condiments like, chilies, raisins, olives, eggs, etc...
Beat lard until soft and light in mixer. add half of masa mix beating until incorporated, while your beating add in increments stock and the rest of the masa. Sprinkle salt and baking powder over the dough and mix for a couple of minutes.
Soak corn husks in boiling water and allow to cool and soften.
Take about a quarter cup of dough and place it in the middle of the corn husk that is laid out flat, flatten it into a square about 2x2 inches and fill about a tablespoon of meat down the center, fold over both sides to cover filling. Roll the husk to create a package over the other side, fold upward the pointed end and tie off with string or pieces of husks made into ties.

Steam for 1 1/2 hours until the masa separates from the husk and is somewhat firm.

Paul Newmans wine

So I am sipping my third or fourth glass of Paul Newman’s Cabernet Sauvignon picked up in Stamford at my mom's fourth of July. I am getting lit, and will probably regret it in the morning. But it's good. I'm good. I want to share some Paul Newman memories. Should  I  blog and publish or wait till the end of the afterglow, giving me time to edit?

No, here goes. I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. A suburb of New York City, it's a cozy town. A pretty town. A town Paul Newman, like me, called home. The year was around 1972 or 73' or 74'.  I forget, except that America's president was Tricky Dick and my hair fell down to my shoulders and my face had too many freckles and a big smile and one night I was at Baskin Robbins with family eating an ice cream cone, when my brother and mom got into a heated argument about a certain bald gentleman with shades. "Mom, that's Paul Newman!" "Philippe said. "Non, Philippe!" my mother said. They went back and forth like that for way too long, as only a single mom and her oldest son could do.

My brother actually had spent a short time at the same school as Newman's daughter Nell, the pretty woman you always see on the Paul's food packages, so he was even more fiercely adamant than usual.  Anyway, there I was, licking the ice cream, listening to my mother and brother argue, thinking about whether the "bald gentlemen" was or wasn't who they said, not even sure why it was so important. Shortly afterwards, I would get to see Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy, but in those few moments on a cozy summer evening in my cozy town, my round freckled face with ice cream melting onto my chest and then down to my bellybutton, I remember being struck by the passion this man's name evoked, and then suddenly some local newspaper photographer shot my picture. Paul Newman helped me get in to the newspaper!

As for his wine, well it's got a good taste. Not a Grand Cru, but not bad. Hell, even if it wasn't half as good as it is, Mr. Newman is a guy I respect for his great movies, for his ample charitable efforts, and even for opening a restaurant in a space where my brother was once sous-chef. Anyway, Paul Newman, I drink a toast to  you, hoping that like my mother, who survived cancer, that you you get better, and that you have your own summer evenings to enjoy in the future, whether with an ice cream cone or a a glass of a nice tasting wine.

Dieter Buschmanns Hamburger Feinbrot

Master bread baker Dieter Buschmann sent me this formula when I asked him for a typical bread from his region of Germany. Due to different flour types I thought I would link some information regarding equivalents for German and American flours.

Hi Jeremy,

As an attachment you'll find an ExcelFile with my special Recipe.

btw, you can get a better flavor, if you are using a bit (hint) of caraway

Gruss

Dieter Buschmann

This is a delicacy from North-Germany            
from Hamburg.
This is called "Hamburger Feinbrot            
You can bake it with 40% or 50% or 60% of wheat            
            
This Example is (This is my favorite bread, I love it the most!) with 60% rye            
In Germany we are using rye type 997 or 1150            
and wheat type 812 or 1050 for this bread            
it is different from town to town.            
            
In this recipe we are using a 3-stage - sour-dough            
we won't need yeast.            
But you must take care of the time and temperature            
of this stages.   

         

"Hamburger Feinbrot"

1st stage      
Mature starter 2.80 G    Total yield     200   
Rye flour          8 G    temp. of the dough    25 - 26°C    77-78° F
Water               8 G    Freshening   6 hours
Total               16 G            
            
2nd stage               
Sour              16  G    yield of the dough    160   
Rye               92  G    temp. of the dough    23 - 27°C   73° F
Water           52  G    basic sour    8    hours
Total           160 G   
            
  3rd stage       
Sour           160 G    yield of the dough    190   
Rye            200 G    temp. of the dough    28 - 31°C  82-87°F 
Water        210 G    Full sour    3 hours
Total         570 G      
            
final-dough             
Sour          570 G    yield of the dough    166   
Rye           300 G    temp. of the dough    27 - 28   73-82°F
Wheat      400 G       
yeast            8 G (Optional)      
Salt             18 G            
Water       390 G            
Total       1686 G 

Bulk fermentation: 20 - 45 min (if you have more wheat, shorter time is needed)
Baking temp 230 - 250 lower to 210°C  440°  -482°F lower temp 410° F
Total baking time about 45 min

 

La Bonne Mère du Brad's recette de pâté sanglier

Brad Prezant, my friend and fellow Bethesdabakin alumn, shared a culinary secret from his mother in-law in France. It's a wicked looking wild boar pate that they recently had at his French version of Brads'abakin. Don't ask me for the exact measurements or procedure. Use your own judgment in trying to replicate it as chances are it's a secret recipe held by the family. But as  Brad and I are friends, he gladly offered to share with me a highly earthy path to getting it right. And so, dear blog buddies and readers, go on to read one of the most poetic descriptions of hunting, butchering, and enjoying the process of finding one's food, indeed capturing life!

Pâté de sanglier (Sort of a recipe?)

"Dear Jeremy, you go into the woods in the Fall, spend the morning looking for tracks of the boar, find a few, go back home for lunch, drink a few bottles of wine, go out with the dogs, track through the woods for so long that you think your feet are going to fall off, go back to the barn because it's milking time, have a few beers, go out again with the farmer, whose son says he "pensez comme un sanglier", identify where the boar is taking its afternoon nap by sheer intuition, station hunters surrounding the few hectare wood, enter with dogs and gun, flush the boar, shoot the boar, numerous times if you've been drinking a lot, cut its throat to make sure it's dead, cut off its balls, drag it into the back of the vehicle, hang it up "hog tied" with the manure loader/front end loader, eviscerate and throw entrails into the manure pit, steaming, put the carcass in the barn, go home and drink, come back the next afternoon to do the butchering, redefine the meaning of the word "butcher" with a very dull knife and hacksaw, put the head in the freezer, and wait for a call from your son-in-law, who cannot explain why we are going to have so much bread with nothing to put on it. Grind, cook, serve. There it is. Brad."