Amazingly Delicious Cookies

In my last post, I mentioned that I had tasted some of Sue's food from her blog. It was these almond butter chocolate chip cookies. They are absolutely incredible. I recommend them most highly.

I will be posting more of my own food just as soon as I get back on my feet with my work.

Forthcoming

So classes recently started in my PhD program. The last little while has been a whirlwind of orientation, meeting new people, setting up all of the administrative things, and trying desperately to navigate a new public transportation system (which seems to me to make very little sense). In fact, things have been so crazy I missed 2 out of the three trains home on Friday due to inexperience and bad luck.

I did bake my first bread in my new oven as well as a set of English muffins with the same dough.  I will be posting that in the next few days. They were very simple but very delicious.

Also, I just wanted to say that I made some pumpernickel bread with Sue today (I will be posting that bread soon as well). It was a lot of fun and it tasted pretty good for a rye bread, although the loaves were really ugly. She brought over some of her baking for the blog for Servia and me to try. I won't spoil the surprise because she's posting it later this week, but I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. I will put up some sort of alert when she posts it.

However, it may be a few days before I post because I'm buried under all of the reading that I put off this weekend (oops). For now, check out Sue's microwavable chocolate cupcake recipe, which I'll probably succumb to making some night when I'm up late studying.

And They Say Philosophy Isn't Relevant Anymore

Apparently, two Russian men got into an argument about a week ago. It became so heated that on man shot the other repeatedly. You can read the basic facts here, and there is a wider discussion here.

At graduate orientation, two of my friends and I were taken to the university pub by a philosophy PhD first year (in logic) who bought us all beer. Apparently, this guy recently won $1000 in Vegas betting on the particular part of Kant about which the argument took place. I didn't even know one could bet on things like that. Anyway, I guess philosophy can make money after all.

Tartine, Revisited

This weekend, I was helping Egnatius move in to his new apartment. He's a lucky boy-- he's in a beautiful place with a great roommate, fabulous resources within walking distance (including a shop that sells locally-grown, organic, high-gluten, first clear flour in bulk for cheap-- I'm so jealous!), and has a magnificent coffee shop on campus.

Despite this, we dragged ourselves away from there to take a long journey to see some old friends of ours in SF. It was really nice to see them and they both have cool jobs in publishing. While we were there, we visited Tartine, which is the bakery that produced the book that made me a real bread baker and which I reviewed as a disappointment last time I visited.

Not so this time around.

The bread wasn't over-proofed (like it was last time), despite the heat of the day, so it was delicious. I don't have a picture of the loaves. We got a country loaf and a baguette, because that was all that was left when we arrived around 6:30pm. The bread didn't taste exactly like mine; the crust was slightly thinner (although it was still nice and crunchy) and the bread was fairly sour. I like the sourness, so I liked the country bread much better than the baguette, which I thought was a little too bland (although it had an even crunchier crust, which was nice).

If you haven't seen the video yet, the Tartine video is beautifully put together:
Now, I would, like they do in the video, recommend that everyone (who is not gluten-intolerant) try Tartine bread at least once. Even if you make it yourself. Actually, especially if you make it yourself.

Also, it looks as though Chad Robertson, founder of Tartine, has a new book coming out in November.

A Lesson to Be Learned

Much of the time, I am communication-o-phobic: I hate calling people, I often don't carry my phone with me or neglect to answer it, I'm not great at replying to emails (and especially bad about sending them to people whom I have not met), and I just generally avoid dealing with things. I try to be sociable and reasonable about modern communications, but it's not one of my skills.

However, today I considered posting this status on facebook: "I called to talk to the head of an office that deals with 28,000 students at my new university and he instantly recognized my name. Lesson to be learned: If you don't confirm that my paperwork is received, I will keep harassing you until you do."

I realized that that was dumb, so I refrained. It just shows that, when I have the impetus (in this case, making sure the money from my fellowship was going to cover my tuition), I can move mountains. The best part was that the head of the office laughed when I called-- he didn't seem annoyed that I was worried about my information. So, as of today, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf.

I'll post some more bread in the next few days-- my family and I just finished off the wonderful SFBI loaves and so we'll be needing more bread.

Downton Abbey: Season/Series 4 Trailer

Despite the rather disappointing end of last season, I'm still a Downton fan. So, I thought I'd share the trailer for the upcoming season. It still won't say when it's coming out in Britain, but it is coming out in the US on January 5th.
Enjoy!

SFBI Bread Follow up-- Delicious

SFBI Type 70 Bread

I decided to make the bread recipe that I posted. It was a thousand times easier than the Poilâne miche and absolutely delicious. I highly recommend it.

Lovely Crust

One thing to note, first clear flour (at least the King Arthur version and the Great River version) smells funny. I always end up second guessing myself and tasting it to make sure it hasn't gone rancid. Usually, the strange smell goes away when it's baked into bread. This time, it lingered a little, in the bread (although it doesn't smell bad-- just a slight odd hint), but the bread tastes incredible.

Slightly Lopsided Blunt Batard

Here's my scaled down version of the recipe. My only modification was to feed my starter with first clear flour instead of feeding it with bread flour. This meant that my dough was a little drier than the SFBI version. It was delicious and had a nice crumb anyway, but I might add a little more water next time.

SFBI Type 70 Bread

Makes 3 medium-large or 2 very large loaves

Ingredients

• 1024g first clear / type 70 / high extraction flour (I used Great River organic unbleached bread flour)-- divided: 204 to feed the starter, 1000 for the bread mix
• 1074g water (around 75 degrees F)-- divided: 204 to feed starter, 870 for bread mix. As a note, mine was a lot drier than the one in the video. You may add more water if you want a softer dough, or you may need to hold back water, depending upon the absorbancy of your flour.
• 42 g whole wheat starter (or white-- whatever you have lying around)
• 25 g salt

Method

Day 1: *if you have 450g of young, ripe sourdough starter, you can skip this step*

• Mix the starter with 204g flour and 204 g water until it is homogeneous
• Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise until fully mature (should smell kind of like overripe fruit and a spoonful should float in water). This should take somewhere between 8-16 hours at room temperature, depending upon how fast your starter rises and how hot your room is. Mine took about 12 hours.

Day 2:

• When the starter is ready, mix the flour and the salt in a large mixing bowl.
• Add the water and the starter to the dry ingredients. One of the cool things in the SFBI video was that the baker poured water into the starter to lift it up and make it easier to remove from it's container. I tried this and it worked well. I suggest it. I don't specify how much water because it is going to depend upon the size of your container.
• Mix the ingredients together by hand until it forms a homogeneous mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl or tub with a plastic pastry scraper and make sure the dough has picked up all excess flour and water.
• Let the mixture rest for five minutes to fully hydrate.
• Using your hand as a shovel, cut gently through the bread to increase gluten strength. I'm not sure how to describe this properly. See SFBI video.
• The dough will now begin the bulk fermentation. I bulk fermented my bread for 2h45 at 77 degrees F. The video calls for 1.5h at 81-82 degrees, but I think the starter is a faster-working starter than mine is. Calculate your time based on this formula: for every 17 degrees below desired temperature, double the time. Then guess based on the rapidity of your starter.
• For the first 45 minutes, you will stretch-and-fold the dough once every fifteen minutes (for a total of three times). By the end of this, your dough should be able to pass the windowpane test. If not, do a fourth stretch-and-fold.
• Take the dough out onto a and divide it into 2-3 loaves. Round the loaves so that you develop some surface tension (See SFBI video).
• Let the dough bench rest for 30 minutes.  Make sure you cover it with something so that it does not form a skin. I bench rest my dough under large overturned bowls, but other things work. If you use plastic wrap, you should probably oil it to keep from sticking. If you're in a particularly forgiving, fairly humid climate, you can probably just use a dishtowel.
• Then do a final shaping. The video suggests blunt batards. Fold the dough almost in half. Stretch out the two sides and fold them  across one another. Then roll the dough three times to complete the batard. Pinch any extra seams. I need some more practice with this shaping method, and my dough wasn't as pliable because it was drier, so my loaves came out a bit lopsided.
• Place the dough seam-side up in proofing baskets or in a couche and cover with plastic wrap or similar for 2 h (in his case 1 hour. Basically until an indent in the dough sticks.) If you can't bake your loaves simultaneously, remember to put your extra loaves in the refrigerator for the last half an hour of proofing and during the entirity of the baking process of the other loaf or loaves. This will ensure that your bread doesn't overproof while you're waiting to bake it.
• Preheat your oven half an hour before baking to 450 degrees F.
• Bake for 35-40 minutes under steam (I used an iron combo cooker and an overturned broth pot on a stone to create steam for my loaves). Then cook the last 10-15 minutes until the internal temperature reads 212 degrees F and the crust is lovely and brown.
• Let the bread cool for at least 30 minute before slicing, but the best flavor will develop around 1-3 hours out of the oven.

Two of my 3 loaves (the third one was in the oven baking)

I highly highly suggest this formula. You'll have to play around with the times a bit given your environment and your particular sourdough starter, but this bread is delicious.

High Extraction Bread from SFBI

I am a big fan of high extraction flour (also known as first clear). This flour is hard to come by in the United States (at least where I am). To turn whole wheat flour into white flour it is sifted twice to remove the bran and germ from the endosperm. White flour is 72-75%, meaning that only the starchy endosperm (the largest part of the wheat kernel) is retained. Extraction above that (retaining more than 75% of the grain) retains some of the germ and bran up to 100% extraction which is whole wheat flour. High extraction flour (at least the type I have) retains the germ but is sifted of most of the bran and it's about 82% extraction.

While I have used high extraction flour (which I could only find it to order) in many different breads, I've only made one entirely high extraction bread. It was not sufficiently proofed and it took an incredible amount of work. I've been looking for a slightly easier version of a similar bread.

Fortunately, SFBI posted a video and formula for just such a bread. I will be trying it out soon (although I'll be scaling down the recipe).