Cooking Cheap

I’m upgrading the blog software.

Let’s see if comments work. Works OK for me.

One of things I happen to like about the multiple day process of sourdough is that I don’t have know what I’m going to make when I start.

Early this morning I mixed 1 oz of bread flour, 1oz of water, and something like a table spoon of starter from the fridge. When I wake up later, I’ll add 3 oz each of bread flour and water and let it get happy. Then I’ll make a dough for an overnight over night retard and bake on Wednesday.

Plenty of time to think about what I want to make. Pain au Levain at 70% hydration is what I’m thinking about at the moment. Wet dough is so much more interesting to work with and get the timing correct. That little bit of whole wheat will change the timing.

9 hours later, I added 3 oz of bread flour and 3 oz of water. I left it on the counter top for almost 6 hours. I probably could have used it sooner.

I added 1 3/8 oz of whole wheat bread flour, 9 oz of unbleached white bread flour and 5 5/8 oz of water. I mixed up it and let it rest for 10 minutes. It’s too dry. I added maybe 2 tsp of water and then it seemed a little two wet so I waited another 10 minutes minutes. It’s a little too tacky to hand knead but that’s what I did, using water on my hands. I added 2 tsp of kosher salt and kneaded for about 10 minutes. I got bored. The amount of the whole wheat flour which doesn’t seem like all that much really does change how much water the dough takes and it’s feel. I plan to do 3 stretch and folds.

On the first stretch and fold, the dough is relaxed but no longer sticky. I can stretch it a long way. I like it! Of course, I always talk myself into thinking the best at this point. Time to clean the kitchen. The second stretch and fold also shows an elastic dough or is it extensible? Or both? I get confused about that. I think elastic means it springs back. In that case the second fold was more elastic than the first. To be expected. The third was more elastic (less stretch) than the second. I think I’ll just let it finish rising.

Now I’m a little worried. It rose but it didn’t rise as much as I think it should. So, five hours and 45 minutes after mixing, I put it in the fridge, in the bowl. Better that than to take a chance on the dough collapsing.

Today, I took it out of the fridge and let it warm up for an hour and a half. I shaped it into a boule and raised it in the banneton for 3:00 hours. Then I got worried again that I was over-proofing so I baked it (450F).

A lot of oven spring and where I slashed it properly, you can get a good hint of the interior, That’s good. Where I didn’t slash properly, it didn’t expand like it could have. Not the prettiest loaf of bread but It’ll will taste fine.

I finally got around to trying this recipe. You might notice there are no measurements in the recipe. I’ve written my best guess and then explain what I did and what I would do the next time.

Serves 1 or 2
—-
1/4 cup honey
1 Tbl brown sugar
1/4 cup water
—-
3/4 lb thick boneless loin pork chop, fat trimmed sliced into 1/8″ medallions.
Salt and Pepper
Flour for dusting (1/3 Cup?)
—-
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt, a pinch
vinegar, a dash
Honey/sugar/water mixture
Pork Medallions
Cornstarch slurry

1. Mix the Honey/water/sugar mixture in a small bowl.
2. Mix up a cornstarch slurry.
3. Slice pork, salt and pepper slices and dust in flour
4. Shallow fry pork slices in oil in wok. You might have to do two batches.
5. After pork is done, remove to a plate.
6. Add bit of oil to the wok and fry garlic. Add pinch of salt, dash of vinegar. Just a few seconds.
7. Add the honey mixture (it should boil). Add the cornstarch slurry to get the proper thickness.
8. Add the pork medallions and toss to coat them

[My notes]
I forgot the dash of vinegar. I think it would be better if I didn’t forget that.
I added too much honey, and not enough brown sugar (I’m not going to buy the Chinese malt sugar).
I didn’t use enough garlic. I could have doubled to 4 cloves.
In step 6, I stir fried 1/6 of a bell pepper, cut in chunks. Because I like it and it was about to go bad. Then I added the garlic. I also added a pinch of red pepper flakes, two pinches would be better.

It turned out pretty good. A little too sweet for my taste but the vinegar should help that. I ate the whole thing with some fried rice on the side. The recipe is worth tinkering with, particularly when pork is on sale (as it was the day after I made this).

At Cooking Cheap it’s all about using up the stuff in the fridge. This time I’m using up the jar of yeast. Then I can go back to making sourdough.

I started a biga or poolish yesterday. 4 1/2 oz of flour (1 Cup), 4. 1/8 oz of water (1/2 Cup) and 1 tsp of yeast. I let it ferment for some hours in the warm spot and put it in the fridge overnight.

Today, I let the biga warm up for an hour and mixed in 10 1/8 oz of flour, 5 1/4 oz of water, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of yeast. That should make for a 65% hydration. Hand kneaded for 10 minutes. I probably should have done it longer. I let that rise for 2 1/4 hours on the counter. It had doubled but was still tacky to the touch and a bit of a pain to shape.

I put in the banneton for 2 hours on the counter top, slashed and baked at 450F. It looks like many of my other loaves of bread. Some things look good, some not so good. It looks fine to the untrained eye but not worthy of taking a picture and posting it.

Disappointing? Hardly. I’ve proven to myself that there is no magic in using sourdough instead of yeast. It’s a nice looking loaf of bread, but no better looking that some previous sourdoughs. The taste will be different of course, I predict it will be good.

The lesson? If you’re reaching for muliple day rises and retards to build taste or texture or crumb the time advantage of commercial yeast is lost. There are other differences but I think it’s really about kneading and timing and temperature, not the source of the yeast. If I choose to learn one well, it might as well be sourdough because IMO, the taste is better, and growing your own yeast is a lot cheaper than a $5 jar of yeast.

This loaf could end up as bread crumbs. Not because there’s anything horribly wrong with it. Bread crumbs are useful and home made is a lot cheaper. Just thinking about another batch of bread dumplings gets me all worked up. There is a real difference in meatballs for example, made with home made bread crumbs.

[Next Day]
It made fine bread crumbs

This is a small book from 1991 written by Peter Reinhart when he was unknown as an author and unknown as a baker if lived far from from his bakery.

I’ve read his other two books, “Bread Bakers Apprentice”, and “Crust and Crumb”, written in that order. There has been a progression in him as a baker and as an author.

A cookbook review could rip on the words, the recipes and techniques, or the pictures and graphics. With fame, comes a publisher that will take pictures and give them some page space in the later works. I’m shallow so I like the later books with the pictures and illustrations. This book is light, a paltry 0%, on pictures.

I’m too full of myself to follow or judge his techniques or recipes. I’d twist them my way, by commission or omission, for better or for worse. Even if I wanted to, I just can’t duplicate his recipes. I’ll bake my way. Until I find a better way. That’s why we keep looking.

There’s a point when the touch and the feel and simple words are enough for me to understand. I think I’m there and yet I know I’m going to be fail on some cosmic measuring spoon.

Most of the book is not about recipes. It’s a “Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” for bread bakers. He connects his spirituality to bread making. He’s not wrong. It is a mystic thing and not everyone can command the ingredients into the “perfect loaf”. You can’t get there by not trying. You can’t get there with a measuring cup either.

I knew that. Reinhart’s later books have changed the recipes and techniques subtlety and greatly decreased the “we touch God when we bake”. I don’t know if thats a good thing. The passion doesn’t come across once the editors work with you. That’s OK. Baking is a duality held in balance by an external force. Might be me, might be you, it might be Martha Stewart. You’ll know when you try to break out of the paradigm.

You are officially authorized to beat the verbal crap out of me for using the “paradigm” word. Just don’t use the meme’s on me.

I decided to test my bread making skills by using “yeast in a jar” instead of a sourdough starter. I decided on 70% hyrdation just to see what that looks like in a normal dough. Being lazy, I let the bread machine mix it up. 70% is wet enough that handling the dough is a pain.

Simple recipe for 1 1/2 pound loaf.

• 2 tsp yeast
• 14 oz flour
• 10 oz water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar

I measured the water and mixed the yeast into it. Then I measured the dry stuff and put it in the bread machine. I gave the yeast a few minutes to hydrate and tossed it in to the machine, set the French Bread, Manual setting and hit the start button.

I removed the dough at the end and dumped it in a oiled bowl (remove the machine’s paddle from the dough). After 90 minutes it was ready to shape. I chose to make baquettes, I need the practice. I divided the dough in two. I don’t do a punch down. By the time the dough is out of the bowl and I’ve shaped it, it’s been deflated. The dough was easy enough to work with and really didn’t need a lot of bench flour.
I placed the rolls in my baguatte pan, put that in a plastic garbage bag.

I’m rising everything in the warm spot and it’s not taking very long to finish the rises. I credit that to 1) the warm spot, 2) higher hydration, and 3) letting the yeast soak for a few minutes in the water.

I’m using the finger test. On the first rise, if you poke it and the indendation remains, it’s done (it has to double too). On the second rise, if you poke it and it springs back in a few seconds, it’s ready. No, I can’t remember that either. No sponges, bigas, poolishes or retarding for this bake. I could do sourdough if I wanted the overnight fun.

[After Baking]
There’s good news and bad news. No oven spring to speak of. It tastes fine but it doesn’t have the complex flavors of sourdough. That was expected. The slash marks are slightly more pronounced than my sourdough. The crumb is more uniform than I would have thought. It’s good enough to eat, but not good enough for a picture.

I don’t think my bread machine does the right thing for gluten development, I know, I’ve said that before and have been disappointed every time I use it for artisian bread. I need to put the bread machine in a closet so I’ll never be tempted again.

It’s really not as bad I’m making it sound.

I thought the sourdough starter might be lonely so I fed it a half cup of flour and some water (maybe 1/3 cup) and let it feed at room temperature. It liked that. I took a couple of tablespoons out and smeared it across some plastic wrap. I want to dry it in case I kill mine. It seems like the right thing to do, to save a backup of my starter.

Or not? It’s not that hard to make a new starter (or buy one) nor would nursing a dried sample back to life be any faster. It’s a good thing to do.

I think I’ll test my bread making skills on some yeast bread.

This is a viable method of cooking beans with way less hassle and saves some time. I was skeptical so I tried it. It’s only beans, right?

I brought one quart of water to a boil. Added 1/2 pound of dried black beans, sorted, and 1/2 tsp salt When it came to a boil, I covered the pot and I put it in a 250F oven. I checked every 30 minutes to make sure they still had water.

90 minutes later, they were almost done and perfectly seasoned which is a great thing for me to get correct. 15 minutes more was enough for tenderness.

I have a theory that the covered pot and heat from all sides acts like a poor mans pressure cooker.

I’ll use these to make some black bean soup, the recipe follows but I won’t claim its the ultimate, but it’ll be decent.

Two strips of thick bacon, chopped
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped.
1 rib of celery, split and chopped.
1/3 of medium size bell pepper, chopped.
1 clove garlic, chopped

Seasonings:
1 tsp of hot sauce
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
Big squirt of catsup

On med low, cook the bacon until you get enough fat, then add the veggies and garlic to the skillet and sweat them for a few minutes (5? 10?). Pour all that and the seasonings of choice into the beans are return to the oven or cook over a low burner. The oven’s already at the right temp for a low simmer, why not use it?

About the seasonings: I’d have used cumin powder if I had it or had the foresight to grind some cumin seeds with peppercorns and garlic in the molcajete. One could use a portion of a can of whole tomatos or paste or sauce. I went for the squirt of catsup. 1/8 Cup? I thought about some thyme, oregano and cayenne. The hot sauce amount was what was left in a bottle of Tabasco Brand Chipotle sauce. It’s only beans. They’ll be fine.

Turns out you can do a lot worse than this. Very Good beans.

I’ll fill this under veggies.

I ran out of bottled Salsa the other night. Today at the mega mart I had to look hard to find my standby friend, Pace Brand, Medium. I had to look hard enough that I found the “on sale” sticker for Herdez Medium for a $1.20 less for what looks to me like the same amount. $2.50 vs $3.79? The store brand was also the same low price but I’ve tried it a it was lacking a lot unless you thing salsa has corn and beans in it.

I bought the Herdez Salsa Casera home and compared the labels with the old Pace. Product of Mexico vs “A Division of Campbell’s Soup Co.” That puts some irony in the “Made in New York City!” TV commercial don’t it?

Ingredients:
Herdez claims: tomatoes, onion, serrano peppers, salt and cilantro.
Pace: tomatoes (fresh and canned with canning stuff in parens () ), onions, vinegar, jalapeno and then a long list of spices and chemicals.

Taste test?

Herdez wins. The serranos are different from the jalapenos. Not really better or worse, just a little different in subtle ways. Both are chunky cooked salsas but the Herdez has a clean fresh finish.

I’ve eaten some very good home made salsa’s and restrurant salsas in all kinds of styles and some store bought “salsa frescas” and all the major US brands of bottled salsa. If you want a jar of generl purpose salsa in the fridge, Herdez is definitely worth checking out. Even better if you can find it on sale.

You really shouldn’t compare different styles without a context. Pico de Gallo and bottled salsa are too differnent styles. Bottled salsa and bottled taco sauce and pepper sauce are very different things. I have all three in the fridge. Just stay away from anyting in a jar that has beans or corn in it.

I love reading about things I’ve never tried and that show the old wives tales to be myths. People are swearing alliegience to a new (to me) cooking technique for beans. Read the eGullet forum for all the details (it’ll take you some time).

I have nothing to add to their conversation except some redundent “me too” observations about freshness, soaking, salting. I have made a lot of beans and I’ve never found a reason to soak overnight, or to use the quick soak method or to just simmer the things. Their experiments say the the same thing. No real advantage. Since I’ve never found one to be better either, I just use whichever fits my schedule.

Salt I’ve alway added at the end because that’s what every book says to do, so I do that. Sounds like thats wrong. Cover on or cover off? Lid on. They cook much faster with less risk of burning from too high a flame to maintain a simmer with an open pot. I’ve learned that.

In the oven or on the stove top. The new wisdom says in the oven at 250F. People are claiming doneness in an hour and 15 minutes!!! They taste better and needed less salt.

The basic idea, for those who won’t read all the forum messages, bring your water to a boil, add salt and beans, bring back to a boil. Cover and put in a 250F oven, checking every half hour for water and doneness.

Most of my bean work is refritos and you need cool or cold well cooked beans (next day is better, some say) so let them cool for an hour or two. That’s a 5 hour cook my way (Quick soak for an hour, 2 or 3 on the stove, and cool). This technique, if it works for me, would cut that time in half and free up the stove top. It also explains something I’ve seen with my Baked BBQ bean recipe.