STIR THE POTS

Pain du jour

After a long week at work, I was itching to play with some dough. And finally I found some time. My recent miche was at the nub, drying quickly. So I had some teff levain, just on the cusp of "use me or lose me." Took some more advice from Shiao-Ping, who herself admired Flo's Makanai's  1,2,3 bread method. Which is basically just one part levain, two parts water, three parts flour. It's simple and efficient, especially in a pinch.

Anyway, mixed my dough, giving it a a short bulk proof, around an hour. Then into a banneton. Then into the fridge. Then I went to sleep. It was midnight! Next day I didn't get the loaf out till at least 7 that evening. But I popped it into a creuset that had been pre-heated at about 450 F degrees for 20-30 minutes, baked it for about 35 with the lid and 15 lid off at about 400 degrees and... well,here are the results.

Taste: mild, but full of nuances, probably from the teff, white whole wheat and spelt.

Texture: Chewy and full of airy crumb, great for ham and asiago cheese with which I just made a sandwich.

As you may have gathered from my previous posts on bread, I bake at weird intervals and at totally impromptu pace. So I can only pass on this bit of advice; feed your starters and bake it if you got it.

This will be sent in to Susan at Wildyeast for yeastspotting. 

Spring bake!

Been awfully busy at work, whether it's cooks going AWOL, food tastings, parties or whatever. Takes me away from my baking routine, which doesn't always fit my schedule but is always worth giving the time when it's there. Thus, within these constraints of the day, I offer my most recent bake, a high extraction miche borrowed from Shiao-Ping (who adapted it from San Francisco Baking Institute).

My golden buffalo stash is quickly disappearing, but I managed to use it for this 70 percent hydrated and retarded loaf...very active after three feedings and it went into a creuset to bake "a'la" Jim Lahey. The result is interesting, a bread with a beautiful color, crust and, like Shiao-Ping notes in her recipe, on the sour side with a tight crumb. And oddly enough, it has a back-note taste of rye yet with that wheaty sweetness. Do I sound like a wine connoisseur? Hope not. Or if I do, it makes sense.

Anyway, taking a quick break from work and ready for the second shift, I fed my starters today, rye, wheat and teff. If I get a chance in between work shifts, I hope to get a bake in at least one loaf for the weekend, in between my chauffeuring and spring cleaning duties at home!

Professional paths

It's been a few years (decades?) since my high school guidance counselor was giving me advice on life after graduation. Honestly, I wasn't a great student, but had a mother, brother, and sister who were all great cooks. So when I saw the counselor's futuristic charts about the seemingly way-distant year 2000, graphs that said by the millennium a job as a chef would yield premium wages, well, sounded good to me. But then the counselor pointed out that my grade point average sucked, and even with economists painting a rosy picture for kitchen professionals, the army might be a good place to start. So I did my service and gained lots of human experience in the college of hard knocks, all the while cooking for the general staff.

So why am looking back or into the future? While having to juggle two work stations and the typical multitude of hats a professional chef wears, I've been thinking back to that counselor, wondering whether in hindsight I should of thanked him for his efforts to steer me into my current metier. Now, more then ever, it seems to me that there are  so many misfits wandering through the food industry.  Yes, the luxury sector and high end restaurants can afford a million stagiaire and food geek slaves. But for many of us cooking professionals, it's a different story. We're not clipboard and coiffed types. We're blue collar guys, managing staffs who are often untrained, undisciplined and uninterested, folks just making the weeks work for that paycheck.

All to say, I wonder why many people do this work and are making life and work so difficult for those of us who have to pick up after them. Maybe it's too much food oriented television, or just the way people today don't care or can't handle the grind. As a profession, food work isn't sexy; It's heat in the air, burns on the skin, cuts on the fingers, back breaking and teeth clenching rush of service, day in and day out. All that between higher-up management and customers whose attitude is one of pure servitude. 

My knowledgeable food friend Shuna has been writing a lot lately about food industry jobs. Sort of the do's and don'ts of interviews, giving notice, attitude, learning, etc. I hope other food professionals would glance at it and take notes. There's big value in learning job etiquette and protocol. Personally, a lot of things I gleaned from my experience in the military, which perhaps is where that guidance counselor years ago was right in suggesting...nuff said!

All in a daze bake!

Some days I am  lucky enough to get home early from work and cook some dinner for my wife. (thank god for sous chefs!) One  recent evening our menu was simple enough with a Greek salad,bratwurst and potatoes. And my advantage of a simple meal gave me time to  even manage to bake a bread; a play on  one of my recent successful try's at 3 stage levain builds, but with a minor change in my starter...There was this jar of backferment experiment that lay dormant for nearly a month in my fridge that would be  used as the agent to rise. Surprisingly It was still showing a signs of life.  So I added equal amounts of flour and water I whipped out my recent Swingley calculator sheet from which I had made  a levain bread recently with much success. While earlier perusing the web I had decided to use MC's famed Gerard Ribauds mix of flours, 60/30/10 of wheat, spelt and rye, in that order, to my dough and was even going to follow her Polka patterned boule. All good I thought, that is until I had just put my loaf in the oven,check! And my dinner of Greek salad in the bowl,check! Bratwurst with caramelized onions braised in beer were just simmering away, check and....that's when my wife dropped my recently honed 10 " chef's knife on the floor and cut her big toe. Eeeegad, the blood was flowing on the floor while the menacing blade lay next to her, ! My army training set in, I wrapped some paper towels on her toes and applied pressure. Then I shut off the stove top and quickly searched for bandages and hydroperoxide, we had nothing in to speak of for first aid! My thoughts took me back to basic training when we would shout, "help medic!" My bread still in the oven was needing more time and I quickly played Florence Nightengale to my wounded princess, all the while I juggled my dinner and bake. I decide to lower my oven to 300 F while  rushing out to  get bandages and antiseptics at the pharmacy. Of course I was concerned about my wife's wound  but my bread, I just left my loaf unattended and it was showing such promising signs of both color and activity.  I didn't want to leave it alone. So I quickly ran to the store, got the bandages and rushed back in time to pull out the golden specimen from it's precarious state and this eventful evenings side show.

Dinner was great, bread fantastic, oh my wife? She's okay, she'll survive...the bread, fabulous, and full of flavor. It's all in a daze bake!

This post will be sent to Susan for yeastspotting on www.wildyeastblog.com

Motorino

Just like me to get on the pizza craze kind of late and miss out on Anthony Mangieri's famed Una Pizza Napoletano while he was still in NY. But not to worry, there is pizze  being made there again, that of Chef Mathieu Palombino at his new outpost  Motorino.

 

It's definitely made some waves, the likes of Rachel Ray anointing it amongst others with the seal of approval...at first I was sort of turned off, with the thought of a good thing turned out or spoiled by fame, plaudits and celebrity...but I was hungry the other day  and was itching to try some pizze! I had already seen Mike Colameco's recent show where he tried some pizze at  the flagship, Motorino in Williamsburg. Mike usually is a good indicator whats hot  and I like the places he goes to.

So upon entering the minuscule storefront that is well manicured and well tended by a sharp staff, I couldn't wait, just the first sighting of a charred, puffy and steaming pie made me even more hungry.

So my wife and I perused the menu and ordered the signature Octopus and warm potatoes flecked with pepporoncino, capers, celery, parsley.The wife ordered some non-descript mixed green salad, simple unpretentious, with some health factor or reasoning I suppose?

We ordered a pizze to share, the spicy sopressata pizze along with a fabulous barley ale from Sardinia.

 

We quickly polished off the first pie and I couldn't help but order an other.This time the special of the day with chopped ramps....my wife doesn't really enjoy pizze like I do, but she helped wipe out the two, exclaiming how good it was and so lite!

The acoustics were a bit loud with the peoples voices drowning out the old school playlist of Elvis and Sinatra, but I was entrenched in my birra and fabulous pie, oh yeah, the service was tops! Vespa, taxi, bike or whatever, get some pizze!

A loaf

After making this loaf today,I thought about writing a haiku about baking bread or something? But hell, you need a PHD for that! So instead I settled on a few snap shots of my bake today.

This loaf is my take on the 1994 BBGA Bread Teams Pain au levain. I have been using the bread calculator from the site of a pretty smart fellow who makes not only bread, but beer, and has a lent this bread tool  for us lazy bakers or just those who are too busy  to crunch the numbers...

 

I gave the other boule to my neighbor, who was pleased because she didn't have to buy any of that store bought stuff!

Back of the box...a secret recipe.

 

Sometimes family secrets aren't so secret, especially with a recipe. Sometimes they could seem so obvious. But then it comes to that special way they taste, making it daunting, or at least difficult, to reproduce. Take the cookies baked by a friend's grandmother, someone everyone knew as "Granny Barwick."

Granny Barwick made the most delicious oatmeal cookies. They were loved so much that she had to make huge of batches, kept in a chest freezer for our periodic visits. My brother Philippe and her grandson,John, were regular visitors to Granny Barwick's house. And freezer. Years later, my brother and I joked about how those cookies were able to quench the enormous appetite a person develops after a youthful partaking of certain substances.

Anyway, when Philippe brought some home, I asked him to get her recipe. Being the lovely grandmother that she was, Granny Barwick was only too willing to share. "Back of the box," she said to my brother. Somehow that bothered me. It seemed too easy. Philippe, too, was perplexed by her divulging a recipe that good. Then he realized her matter-of-factness was just that - she was pointing him to the lid of one of those old Quaker Oat tins. She'd used their recipe. Back then they used lard or Crisco instead of butter. I guess the secret Granny Barwick didn't share was that pinch of extra seasoning. Or the recipe for that other element, the quiet but deep love that only a grandmother can give - whether to a batch of cookies or to anything she does. 

Oh and if your in Vermont, stop by and see John and his dad at the Old Stage Coach Inn for some of that old New England B&B charm. I think they still make those cookies there, too. Unless you just get them yourself off the back of the box!