STIR THE POTS

Neighbors need bread!

Oats n' apple loaf with a fennel and fruit bread, my neighbors were happy!

Small world

Yes I am endeavoring to cut back on social networking. Facebook. Twitter. The latest, Posterous. But it's fun when you see old friends, army buddies, and meet new food oriented people like, well, a lot of your readers.

Recently, such networking reconnected me with Bob del Grosso. Talk about "blast from the past. I met Bob not long after getting out of the Army. It was my second professional kitchen job, a place no longer in existence called Le Coq Hardi. Yet, the memories are fresh as ever; its copper bar, the oysters (which I shucked), the chores of making granite to cleanse the diners palates. This was back at the end of the 80's, when food was really blooming in America.

Bob was an erudite, well read man. I recall his copy of Escoffier, along with his quiet, serious demeanor as he worked, always precise in his movements on the line. A man of few words, save for explaining method and techniques, lots of thinking and no wasted movements. So when we touched base through a mutual friend, and I found he writes just as eloquently as he spoke back then (a bit of humor and of course seriousness, focus on food and a bit on politics), well, it's a joy.

So let me share the joy. Even if we only worked three months together, the shifts we enjoyed together induced so many memories and lessons, remembered to this day, etched from the heat and blur of a busy kitchen. Click here and enjoy him like I did. And do.

Derivatives

This post isn't anything to do with the Wall Street type of derivatives. Rather it's an homage to a bakery "down under," namely in Australia. Sydney's Bourke Street bakery  is owned by Paul Allam and David McGuinness. It's a much talked about neighborhood bakery that also has a book chock-full of wonderful baked goods.

While I haven't been to visit yet, my friend Shiao-Ping talked about the book on The Fresh Loaf, motivating me to buy it. So far I used its recipes for two or three loaves, all with pretty good success. It offers easy-to-use formulas for more experienced bakers, but it's also a good starter material for beginners.

Today's bake was one of there so called derivative loaves, a sourdough-meets-linseed-and-soy. It's easily made and sports an awesome flavor. I think it's sure to become a staple. My neighbors Jane and Adrian, serving as bread guinea pigs, were my first customers. While slathering the freshly baked loaf with French butter, Jane asked if I was baking another loaf, as this one was halfway gone!

Buffalo from Kansas, the golden kind....from the Heartland.

Making bread means sacrifice, hot oven, sweat, time and... some freaking organic flour! Golden Buffalo from Heartland Mill in Kansas was my latest purchase, along with some medium rye and malted wheat flour. Where is a NYC-based baker going to get local high extraction flour? While a wonderful and resourceful baker told me to visit a certain downtown Manhattan yoga/health food center for my flour resources, I couldn't wait. I live in Queens, and that's too long a subway or bicycle ride, especially when I have a weekend urge to make a miche that my fellow bakers/bloggers Susan and MC have baked. So I stayed and shopped local and went for the flour from Kansas. Which only added more fermentation to the dream of opening my own bakery and buying the huge 50 pounders at least once a week!!!!

So what's my point here? A home baker needs good flour to make a decent rendition or facsimile of Jeffrey Hamelman's  breads, let alone any other loaf from any source. So my challenge to all you bakers is this; tell the world we're not amateurs, we're connoisseurs. We're making good honest bread. We want a better source for better flour, not that supermarket stuff that by dint of necessity we end up buying. No, world - listen up,  we want a home baker's share of commercial baking flour. After all, world, we're here to make good bread.

Okay, rant over. As to my first miche with this flour, it's the Pointe a' Caillere Miche from Jeffrey Hamelman's book. Hope your weekend is as bright and tasty as Kansas sunshine, not to mention flour.

10 Downing street

No, I haven't been to London in years. But I was asked to make a reservation for a young  friend of ours to celebrate his eighth year on our planet. And so relying on my inner food guide, I thought of my food blogging friend Shuna Fish Lydon, who is also the pastry chef at 10 Downing street in NYC.

Shuna and I met up online, both mutual fans of each other's blog. And when she returned home to the United States (her native home) from London where she had been baking professionally, we moved from the virtual to the real world, specifically New York City! While we're planning to do an interview here for Stir the Pots, for now we're waiting for the time in between both of our work schedules.

Anyway, for the birthday party, Shuna told me to get in early. "The place gets loud," she said. With people or piped in soundtracks, I wondered. Personally, I still don't know why music is needed in restaurants these days. The sound of forks knives and conversation should be the choral background to eating. But... I digress. It's the food we are talking about, and what wonderful tasting food it was... Starting with Shuna's basket of seeded and plain soda breads,and a light,crisp  foccacia. Not the wild yeast formula that I gave her, mind you, but excellent. 

Chef Jonnatan Leiva, who hails from the Bay Area, serves up a farm friendly market oriented menu. He kindly sent us some delicious tasting samplers; a demi-tasse of potato leek soup, and my favorite a simple but flavor filled beet salad with Castelvetrano olives, and burrata. Honestly, I almost ate the whole thing myself!

I could of had the foie gras or some other meat, but I wanted fish. So I ordered a delectable scallop ceviche and some local albacore tuna with sepia in a light ginger broth, it was light and lovely and allowed for some desserts later...

With two eight year old kids, you wonder if they can or will eat what they've ordered. But our young friends had good ideas on food, going for the roasted Bobo chicken and the Painted Hill Farms beef burger with truffled fries.The tuber on tuber frites were such a hit, the uneaten portion went home with our guest who was adamant when instructing the waitstaff to package them. "Truffles are expensive you know", she said!

Our server, sporting a a pierced tongue and a commanding knowledge of the food and wine selection, had me a bit hypnotized. Whether it was her striking looks or the wonderful wine, I found it hard to remember what I had ordered when Shuna came out to say hello and started quizzing me on the menu.

Shuna then let me sneak back into the kitchen to squeeze off a few candid photographs... including her and the restaurant's Sous chef Matthew Wilbur making gnocchi for a wonderful Striped Bass my wife had for dinner.

I would be remiss also if I didn't mention her wonderful desserts that our table literally devoured, leaving us all with a dessert high, I couldn't remember a thing and I didn't get a focused photo, just too busy enjoying it all!

Thanks Shuna!

6 degrees of seperation (Puerto Lopez)

The other day my niece Rebbecca asked me on Facebook  if I heard about Anthony Bourdain doing a show in Ecuador? "You're kidding," I told her. "I have my Tivo set up to record all his shows."

Knowing he traveled to Ecuador, I couldn't wait! To... see him try some dishes like, cuy,tripa mishqui in Quito, and then encebollado de albacora in Guayaquil. But I wasn't prepared for his visit to Puerto Lopez! Hell that's where I am going this August. My wife and her brothers own a restaurant there called the Blue Water Grill. I have been enlisted to educate and refine her cooks with my gringo methods and techniques!

Maybe this is the big break for this sleepy village or will it be overrun by the tanned and beautiful crowd that Anthony so disdains. In any case, I will be behind the counter cooking, teaching and trying to better my Spanish as well as learn how to make Bolon, the way it is made in Manabi, even though my version with Morbier cheese and Neuski bacon rocks!

Anthony, give me a call if you need a table!

3 Stage Levain

Looking at all the years I've been baking, I still haven't baked half the breads of which I dream. But this weekend, I was able to produce a loaf that made me very happy. Of great quality, still it was so simple in basic profile. The pain au levain below is primarily white flour, save a few grams of whole wheat. This bread tasted so good and looked so beautiful, I had to share this picture, as that was all I had left after breaking in to it with my wife, then sharing the rest with my neighbors!

 

Pre-ferment

First build

Starter:

9g

Flour:

9g

Water:

14g

Second Build

Starter:

32g

Flour:

27g

Water:

42g

Third build

Starter:

100g

Flour:

53g

Water:

56g

Total=209g, return 9g for next bread.

Final Dough:

Flour:

510 (I used 95% White flour, and 5% whole wheat)

Water:

278g

Salt:

12g

Levain:

200g

My levain was fed in approximately 8 hour intervals, and the final dough had about a two hour bulk ferment. The dough was shaped and really took off, I think it must of been perhaps an hour of rising and plop into the fridge. After about 9 hours I baked the loaf in a Creuset pot for a total of 50 minutes, 25 with top at about 470 F, and opened at about 450 for the rest of the baking.

This is going to Susan at wild yeast for Yeastspotting on Friday....

Just a few words about pie - pizza pie!

Recently I felt like only posting  pictures. No paragraphs. No sentences. Not a word. Simply click and upload a beautiful naked pizza pie. Sometimes a picture says a lot more than even ten million - nevermind ten thousand words. At least of mine.  But trying to shake off the Lazy Baker moniker I gave myself, I've been taking notes. Or at least remembering "bullet points" to share. My latest project to share is, accordingly, pizza.

A fun and friendly food, it hits a comfort zone and has so many different toppings as well as shapes. And though I am mad about sourdough, and have had some good success with pizza, I can say yeasted dough isn't that bad either. More key is the heat source that can make or break a the sought-for pie. At home your pizzas will take on that chubby look, pale in comparison to those fluffy charred specimens for which great pizzaiolas are known.

Though the pies cooked in my home kitchen are good, I still wanted to make a pizza at work to genuinely compare to the best; up-skirt, puffed and crisp blackened edges with a bit of pride. In my experience, pizza like bread has parameters, style's and toppings,hydration, etc... but it's a pretty loosely interpreted craft that has re-awakened both amateur bakers and aficionados around the globe. Like the homebakers crafting a loaf, pizza is just an extension or nearby cousin, and worth the investigation. I mean, who doesn't like pizza?