34 posts tagged “bread”
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.
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.
The better-known aloo gobi just doesn't hold up to this recipe. But that's just the recipe, I guess. I've got to try doing this recipe with cauliflower in lieu of the peas, and see if that changes anything.
Some more naans. This time I tried a different recipe than normal, with fake mayo and lemon juice instead of yogurt, and some baking powder. But I didn't like the results too much. Still, the black arts of breadmaking is beyond my knowledge, so it might just as well have been something I did wrong. Still, I'm learning, so that's good.
Not my burgers — all I did for this meal, was to provide the buns. But oh, what buns they were. I've decided to aggressively muscle in on any burger making attempts around here, demanding to practice my bread-making skills. It's a win-win for everyone, I think. The bun is the most overlooked part of a burger, in my opinion — and the homemade ones are just miles better than the decrepit, insubstantial Wonderbread crap the supermarkets flog.
And hey, collective, communal cooking is always nice, too.
The initial plan was just for chicken tikka, but I decided to make a sauce from the marinade since I finally managed to harvest some tomatoes that the birds hadn't ruined. (Those tomatoes really taste amazing. They're like fruit, they're so sweet. I'll never be able to eat store-bought tomatoes again.) The naans were cooked directly on the grill — no stone. With the coals directly underneath the grill griddle; I mean, the coals were actually touching it, so the heat was extreme. A little too extreme, perhaps, so I had a really hard time preventing charring. But it turned out pretty good.
I've been struggling with naan for quite a while now, and I kinda think I've gotten good at it. So I figured an unleavened bread like roti should be a breeze. It wasn't. These things ended up being almost bone hard, and tasting of nothing. This surprised me — but nowhere near as much as what happened to the pan I used to cook these bastards...
A friend of mine has a strange cooking pot that is specifically designed for chipati/roti bread making. I thought this sounded like a pretty dumb idea — I mean, a really good quality stainless steel pan can withstand almost any amount of abuse, yet clean up easily.
I mean, who needs non-stick pans? Amateurs. Silly people who don't understand how to cook, that's whom. And that, apparently, includes me. It took me a helluva lot of effort to clean that pan up. I'll definitely have another go at this roti thing, but I think I'll try a non-stick pan the next time around.
