More bread

The weather remains lousy, my Weather Channel desktop keeps sounding thunder at me...





That makes it prime time to keep on baking. I've come to realize that baking good sourdough bread is going to be like learning Tai Chi. You learn it by doing it day after day, month after month. After a while you begin to get a feel for what's right, and you keep on making it, day after day.


This is my fifth batch, most of them have been edible, the best tasting one got left developing in the fridge for way longer than it was supposed to before being baked. I think I will keep that part of the technique. The latest one was really wet and floppy as dough, coming out of the oven it looks good but is still too hot to cut.

One thing I didn't expect was that it would take so much advance planning. It seems one should feed the starter 12 hours before one starts the dough, then there is making the dough, letting it sit for 4 or 5 hours, cutting and shaping the loaves, more rising, 12 hours of sitting in the fridge, 3 hours of warming up before just 30 minutes of baking. The first time I tried to do everything exactly right and I ended up setting an alarm clock and getting up in the middle of the night to shape the loaves, dozing on the couch for an hour and then putting the loaves in the fridge before going back to bed. Jeeze Louise! Well, I'm learning to think two days ahead, and doing something with bread every day and every evening. I have loaves at all stages now. I'm also getting a bit more casual about the timing. If something has to be done at a time that is not the time called for in the recipe, it just becomes a learning experience.

The best so far has been the dog biscuits I made with some extra starter, the recipe was out of the La Brea Bread Book. They're really just thick, dry, sourdough crackers and I can't stop eating them, I love the crunchiness. Oh, and the dogs love them too. It seems the sourdough smells real tasty to them, Chester keeps pointing his nose at the place where the starter is kept on the counter.

As I've said before, I am working with Nancy Silverman's La Brea Bread book. It makes great reading and will tell you everything you need to know, but it's pretty hard to cook from. She recommends that one learn to make a country loaf first, and the recipe takes up 16 pages! After wading through all of that information looking for the actual directions I took a pencil and underlined what I needed, typed it off and printed the one page recipe for my own use. The other recipes are not quite as bad, but one still has to look for the directions amid all of the info. I'm hoping another good bread book will come my way one of these days.

My friend let me borrow the Tassajara bread book, a classic from hippie times. I will be making my first loaf from it tomorrow. Their technique for working with the starter is different so I'm looking forward to seeing if it makes any difference.

a day indoors to cook

Just for fun here's a picture of a tiny butterfly on a Chrysanthemum flower in the garden last fall. Love her stripey antenae!

We had the craziest dust storm last night, really unusual for our location. After the storm there were tiny drifts of fine red sand on the windows of my car. The light actually was red at the height of the dust, it looked like sunset but was much too early. It blew our patio furniture around and broke one of the cable ties holding the shade cloth onto my greenhouse.

I'm baking bread again, I'm trying to replace a bread that has been a part of my diet for several years, an artisan multigrain from Albertson's made by Maple Leaf Bakeries. This is the first multigrain bread I have ever had that is not sweet, has great flavor, and crust and crumb are both enticing. It's also been great for my health and eating it every morning actually lowered my cholesterol, which had been climbing in spite of eating meat only three times a week at the time. Unfortunately it costs nearly $4 a loaf and the budget just won't handle that any more. Well, that's one reason, the other is that I believe that any food you invest your time and interest in gains chi and returns it to your body, thus making it a more physically satisfying and energy giving meal.

The best breads I have ever tasted come from La Brea Bakery. The catering company I worked for used them and they are ever so good, chewy, crusty, and flavorful. So I got Nancy Silverton's Breads from the la Brea Bakery and am learning from it. I got a sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour last week and fed it and got it ready to go. My first loaves of County Bread, the bread she recommends beginning with, were not very good, flavor wise because of stale flour from the grocery store shelves and crust wise, dark, hard and bitter. But I'm learning. I got a big bag of flour from Sam's Club and it is fresh and sweet. My next two loaves are now safely retarding in the fridge and will be ready for lunch tomorrow. What a fun adventure.

It was gloomy, cold, and windy today so it was a perfect day to cook. I made Jambalaya, a recipe that I have been working on and customizing for the last year. Here it is:

JAMBALAYA

1 t Olive Oil
2 large onions, chopped
4 medium cloves garlic, peeled
1 red and 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
4 stalks celery, diced

6 Tbs fresh Italian parsley, minced
½ Polska Kielbasa, cut into ½ inch cubes
8 oz. ham, diced
1 chicken breast, diced
1 large bay leaf
¼ t ground white pepper
½ t Cayenne
3 inch sprig fresh thyme or ½ t dried thyme
3 inch sprig fresh oregano or ½ t dried oregano

3 lbs fresh tomatoes diced or 3 cans diced tomatoes with juice
4 Cups Chicken Broth

¾ C uncooked rice

You will need a large dutch oven or stovetop safe casserole.
Sauté onion, garlic, bell peppers and celery until onion is translucent.
Add Parsley, ham, Polska, chicken, bay leaf and spices.
Cook, stirring often until chicken turns white.
Add tomatoes and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer.
Add rice, cover and cook, barely simmering, for a good three hours or more.
This is better the next day, and the next. Add shrimp after reheating or 5 minutes before serving if you like. Very tasty.