103 posts tagged “baking”
The best bread I've baked to date. From an America's Test Kitchen recipe that utilizes a Dutch oven, to try create a similar environment to the professional ovens that regulates steam.
There were three problems, but I've only got a solution for two. First off, it didn't have the complex flavors that I get when I retard the dough in the fridge for a few days — easily corrected. Secondly, the bottom was burned a little, and I believe I can correct that by moving the oven to a higher rack — and failing that, I can put a water bath underneath it (this will have no effect on steam of course, but would shield the oven from excessive heat from below. The third problem, I have no solution for: The dough was very wet, which made the crust go all soft as it cooled — even if it was extremely crispy right out of the oven. The only thing I can think of right now, is to try cut bigger slits in the dough before baking, which should help the steam escape from the bread.
One thing that I'm extremely happy about, is the crumb. It has just the right mixture of big and small bubbles, and looks great. So does the crust, but sadly, it's rather chewy, than crispy.
Oh dear.
I've been trying to recreate a fish au gratin dish from my childhood. I loved the crispy crust on this dish so much that I always tried to scoop up a bit more than my fair share... But I'm having problems recreating the crust. Last time, the filling was too wet, and I poured too much oil over the crumbs, so they ended up completely soggy. So this time I left the filling (the sauce) a little thicker, and used a lot more breadcrumbs. Way too much breadcrumbs. And not enough cheese.
The breadcrumbs did far more to spoil the look, than the taste (well apart from the crust, which obviously was a complete failure), so overall it was really very tasty.
I sautéed some lightly floured potatoes to brown the edges (the crispiness would obviously fade, but that browning does create a little extra taste) and set them aside — same with a small dice mirepoix and chopped tilapia. This was put in a baking dish with a thick Béchamel sauce flavored with dill, thyme, Dijon mustard, white pepper and salt. Topped with lots (ie., far too much) of homemade breadcrumbs, and some commercial Italian seasoned breadcrumb, and finally some grated Jarlsberg.
The charred edges look a lot worse than they actually were. Simple, tasty stuff. Puff pastry, tomato paste, onion and garlic. Bake. Done. Nothing very special, but very easy and damn tasty.
This was very nice, but there's still some considerable room for improvement — the buns, in particular. I think the buns are the must under-appreciated part of a burger. I got several things right, but a few were still wrong.
I obsess over this thing called bread making. Being obsessive is generally considered to be a bad thing, but I read an interview in a kite flying magazine (is there such a thing? Surely not. Yes, there is) where a guy was asked about how he could create these amazingly intricately decorated kites, and he said he was obsessive-compulsive, but didn't take any medication for it. Funny, if you're not hampered too much by it... I guess.
I've cooked a lot of things, and screwed them all up, but I've gotten most of 'em right, eventually. Bread is the toughest thing I've encountered, culinary-wise, so far. Yet, I stumble on, thinking, with some non-midichlorian mind, that hell, I might never sort this out, but I'm kinda learning things, still. So, it's still all good.
The buns look nothing like what burger buns normally look like. But hey, normal burger buns aren't all that nice. I'm not doing normal burger buns here, baby — I'm trying to do something better than that. Those buns were some of the best I've ever made: flavorsome, chewy, and with a crispy texture: crust and crumb. In this case, I merely baked them wrong — I halfway got some of the proofing stages right.
Okay, I'm gonna shut up now.
Wafer thin crêpes filled with shrimps in a Béchamel type sauce from Smart Balance fake butter, peanut oil, 1% milk and flour along with yellow onions, scallions, white and cayenne pepper, lemon juice and salt. Asparagus on the side.
Very tasty. And apart from the crêpes, very simple. The use of low fat milk, margarine and groundnut oil (as opposed to cream and butter) had an impact on the taste, but I can't quite tell whether it was good or bad — taste, or health-wise.
Julia Child famously said "I just hate health food." I think that was mostly because she appreciated good food so much, but in fairness, you can't help but wonder that some of those uh, "old fashioned" opinions came from people who never had much of a weight problem. Not because they were biologically lucky, but because they lived in a time when people lived a much more active life — by necessity, if not by choice.
So while I appreciate that anti-health food opinion, I also think that we shouldn't be scared of holding a differing one, in our day and age. Still, one argument says that if you use proper butter and cream you won't eat as much — and if it says low fat, calories, or "can be part of a healthy diet," people eat buckets of it. Insightful stuff.
But the most interesting bit was probably that this meal killed to birds with one stone: it was both low fat and calories, while at the same time, it miraculously made me eat less.
Because it just didn't taste as good.
The most overlooked part of a hamburger — in my opinion — is the bun. Same deal with the bread, when it comes to pizza. Before you even start thinking about selecting cheese and toppings, you must make sure that the bread is good enough to be edible on its own: if there are pieces of uneaten crust left on the plates, you've failed — in my opinion...
From "The Breadmaker's Apprentice," I used three-days-in-the-fridge pâte fermentée, and managed to time the proofing well enough to be able to consume the thing at a reasonable hour. I was very well pleased with that.
What I was less pleased with, is that this is the second, or possibly the third time that I've managed to burn the basil. For some reason, I cannot get it into my idiot head that the basil is supposed to be added after the pizza comes out of the oven...
And as proud as I am of my bread, I sliced the tomatoes far, far far too thin... Culinary speaking, I come from that most sad and depravedly ignorant belief that the more toppings, the better the pizza: "One with everything — including anchovies. Double cheese. Hell, double everything! Pile it on, baby. And bring me a shovel. And a trough." And then I end up doing this. Ough. That pizza needed three times as much toppings. That's a depressing result, from all that effort. Dang.
(And yeah, I decided to add some thinly sliced Jalapeños to half of the Margherita pizza — which made it a bit more picturesque, and thus I took a picture of that part of it.)
Am seriously starting to feel confident about my grub at this point... This was a very improvised meal, made with leftover, frozen aloo mutter akuri (potatoes, peas and carrots), along with a blended garlic mirepoix flavored with my homemade curry spice mix and some sour cream. This was topped with grated parmesan and breadcrumbs (made from my last baguette attempt). I poured oil over it, to create that crispy crust, but I used too much — and the whole thing was too wet, so it ended up fairly oily looking. But still, it was crisp. Oh and roma tomatoes from the garden.
Buffalo meat is very lean, so I decided to grate some yellow onions into the mix. I had to dry the grated onion out a lot, since it is so moist, and tends to ruin the (uh, sorry to get all Star Trek Next Generation here, but) structural integrity of the burger patty. Thus, I got some breadcrumbs, and shifted it through a fine sieve, so that only the smallest, most dust-like bread particles came through — to bind things together. I lucked out, and got just the right amount (eg., not enough to dilute the taste of the meat itself, but enough to keep it together). I didn't properly season the burger patties though. They needed a little salt and pepper.
Then, there's the buns... Bread making is magic. Black magic; the dark arts. I don't think Alton Brown could make sense of this stuff.
Making your own bread is kinda like Linux: it's okay for the newbie, and for the expert — but a real struggle for anyone in between. The newbie (or in the parlance of our times, the grandma user) is the primitive user, who checks emails, browses and buys things on ebay. Her mistakes are obvious, and easy to rectify. The expert nerd can make Linux do almost anything. But the dudes in between — well, they just might be better off with some off-the-shelves Microsoft or Apple product.
The whole bread vis-à-vis computer operating systems is like this:
Windows: Buying supermarket garbage wonder breads.
Apple: Buying pretentious, overpriced "artisan breads."
Linux: Baking your own breads. These users, in turn, can be segmented into three further factions: the novice (ie., bread machine), the intermediate, and the expert. I'm barely above the bread machine people. But dammit, I'm gonna keep trying.
Finally, there's the fries. A good burger deserves good fries. Deep frying is impractical — you have to cool the oil down, and then you have to dispose of it properly (you should never pour that stuff down your drain). So I go for oven fries. And they're good. Except I have a really hard time getting a crispy texture.
Once upon a time, I joked about how I could make procure great bread by ambushing customers who emerged from a bakery, beating them over the head with my stone-hard, inedible, home-cooked bread, and then stealing whatever they'd just purchased. That was a joke.
These baguettes aren't. I don't think I could actually knock someone out with them, but these suckers could definitely give you a black eye. Really.
The saddest bit about it is, this is the first time I've properly followed the instructions from that bible of breadmaking: The Bread Maker's Apprentice. I've learned a lot of things from it, that has helped me make better naan and burger buns. But I never did try to properly do a verbatim recipe from the book.
The book recommends a steam tray, which I've used before. But the pictures shows the steam tray on a higher rack in the oven, than the bread — as opposed to putting it underneath the bread. As much attention that is given in this book, to the differences between professional and home equipment, I find it hard to believe that this was the only thing that ruined my baguettes, but damnit, next time I'll put the steam tray underneath.
This Malaysian chicken curry the second of Gordon Ramsay's Asian recipes that I've tried (the first one being a sautéed salmon with a tandoori style paste), and I've gotta say I'm really quite impressed by the results. A lot of it is just plain luck, I know — but well — the harder I work, the luckier I get.
When it comes to the naan, well that's a slightly different situation. The harder I work on that thing, the more knowledgeable I become, as to how damn hard it is to make a good naan. But that's bread making for you. Black magic, that stuff is.
