Black bean burgers with chipotle ketchup
Let's be real for a minute. We all know that beefy burgers are bad for us, right? Even if you're like me and you don't particularly like 98% of the burgers out there (the rosemary burger at the Bear Tooth Grill in Anchorage is the lone exception, in case you were wondering. And while we're on the topic of the Bear Tooth, that burger is served with scrumptious garlic-cilantro fries - utterly unfair. Again, I don't particularly like the fries at 98% of restaurants, but the Bear Tooth is the one place I will get them. Holy digression, Batman!) it doesn't change the fact that sometimes you just want to eat something that you can hold like a burger, like a sandwich piled so high you have to unhinge your jaw just to shove it in. Ahi burgers are a great way to fill this niche, but what if you live in, ahem, a desert and have spotty access to good seafood?
A lot of people turn to gardenburgers, and they are... oh, how do I put this delicately?... absolute rubbish. I once heard a Brit say that the idea repulsed him, since they call their lawns gardens over there, and he imagined it being full of yard clippings. Really, I don't think he was far off the mark.
So, because of those disgusting facsimiles of real food, vegetarian burgers get a bad rap that they truly don't deserve. Done right, they're substantial and full of flavor. No, they don't taste like beef, but they're not supposed to, and in my opinion, they're much more delicious than all but 2% of the cow burgers out there. They're far more healthy and honestly I think they're even heartier and more filling.
You may be thinking "Sure, Stacey, it's obvious that a tree-hugger like yourself would love these, but what about people who really enjoy meat?" I'll bring in Exhibit A, The Hubs, one who is much happier than me to eat beef. He actually requests these on a regular basis, so, to borrow an awesome phrase from Heather, they get the stamp of Manproval!
Of course, in a recipe like this ingredients matter. I can't stress enough how much better these are when used with heirloom beans that I know to be less than a year old, as opposed to the five-to-ten years-old beans that you'll find in on supermarket shelves. As usual, I have been gaga over the results I've gotten with Rancho Gordo midnight black beans, but you will still get good results with supermarket beans - you will just need to cook them longer and use more aromatics and spices to flavor them. Canned beans will work just fine too if you want to make these on short notice.
I think that the only thing that could really make these black bean burgers even better is a good homemade whole-wheat burger bun. I have yet to branch out into those but I shall soon! These were photographed on bagels that had been baked that day. Unconventional, yes, but who am I to say no to using whatever fresh homemade bread I have on hand as an alternative to store-bought buns?
So pull out your stores of black beans and get a-soakin'. Treat yourself to a real black bean burger and revel in the fact that you can finally have a burger that tastes great and is actually good for you!
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BBAC Episode 7: Ciabatta
Flour. Water. Yeast. Salt. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? In fact, when you're talking bread, it doesn't get any simpler (unless you're in Tuscany, of course).
But ingredient lists can be deceiving.
So it was with not fear, but a healthy dose of respect that I approached my seventh Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge bread: ciabatta. This is one of the wettest doughs out there - it has to be because that's where the beautiful, big shiny holes come from. I know from experience that working with a rustic dough like this is a challenge. I'm not saying it isn't fun - sticky, wet, messy fun - but it takes a certain amount of patience and an understanding of what you're getting yourself into. Even then, I'd never worked with a dough quite this wet. I came in with high hopes yet a full understanding that I probably wouldn't end up with cookbook-worthy holes the first time I tangoed with ciabatta.
In this recipe we're given the option to use either a biga or a poolish as a starter. The poolish seemed lower maintenance since it's essentially a dough the consistency of pancake batter so I mixed up my poolish two nights before. I hadn't realized that it would take 3 or 4 hours to ferment at room temperature so I got started a little later than I would have liked. After a couple of hours, nothing had happened in the dough so I heated up the oven and put the poolish on top, hoping that the heat coming off the oven would help the starter along. I checked it on a regular basis, hoping to catch it right as it was foaming and bubbling so I could put it in the fridge in time. Unfortunately, I think it went from totally asleep to POOLISHZILLA in the span of about thirty seconds because the final time I checked it it was trying to push the lid off its bowl. But even worse, I thought I detected some boozy off-aromas. However it was too late to fix it and I had wanted to be in bed for the last two and a half hours so it went into the fridge until I was ready to use it.
Now, the day of: the instructions call for mixing the dough without using your hands (i.e. a spoon or stand mixer). However, as I've said, I have experience handling these kinds of doughs and I was eager to try the technique out again. I figured that if stuff starting going to hell in a handbasket I could always dump it into the mixer. I'll admit it: my mixer and I are on the rocks. More on that later. I just wanted to say that yes, there are reasons beside my foolish pride that are spurring me on down the hand-kneading path. So I pulled out and measured the flour, water, salt, and yeast, poured in my bubbly intoxicated poolish, and mixed for a couple of minutes, adding several more tablespoons of water as I went. After it was fairly well incorporated into a ball, I let it sit for a 20 minute autolyze (pronounced ow-toe-lease) and then started to knead it in the gravity-assisted method that's so well suited for very wet, sticky doughs.
I think that the biggest secret of hand-kneading these slack rustic doughs is acceptance. There are other important things like learning that flick of the wrist as you fold the dough or grabbing your dough with quick confidence off the countertop so that it comes off cleanly, but none of these things will be learned if you haven't just accepted that this is going to be a sticky mess, that there will be dough all over the place, including your hands, and that this is ok, it is the way it is supposed to be. Just work with the dough and before long the dough will be working with you too.
After working for the dough for about 25 minutes the dough had lost its shaggy disorganized appearance and looked quite smooth (I really wanted pictures of all of this but I was flying solo while The Hubs was at work and my hands were completely sticky - it just wasn't gonna happen). When I picked it up to let gravity stretch it out the aligned gluten strands were easy to see in the dough. It was still very sticky so I decided to let it rest for about half an hour before doing the first stretching and folding step prescribed in the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The dough ended up not stretching out quite as prettily as shown in handling artisan bread dough article I've already linked a couple of times, but I was still able to get some good stretches and folds in. So I let it rise for the full time suggested in the book, preparing my stiff baker's linen (a couche, pronounced koosh with a the oo sounding more like boo than wood) towards the end of the fermentation period.
Now that the dough was fermented, it was much smoother. It helped that my hands and the countertop were now clean of sticky, sticky dough that had been marring the surface of the dough when I was kneading it.
I had decided to make two loaves because frankly the idea of moving just one proofed ciabatta to a baking peel was causing my blood pressure to spike - why would I want to do it three times??? So, using a bench scraper and the least-aggravating touch possible, I divided the dough and rolled it around in the flour a little bit before shaping it and putting it on the couche to proof, arranging the stiff fabric walls around the dough to act as walls to prevent it from spreading during this pre-baking stage.
Forty-five minutes later when I peeked under the towel cover I was so excited to see that the dough had swelled beautifully and, after a nail-biting session of transferring the dough to the peel while attempting to leave every precious air bubble intact, was ready to go in the oven. (I really tried to get pictures of this but I was racing the clock at this point and the camera wasn't cooperating, even though The Hubs was home by then. To transfer the dough, slide the bench scraper under the dough and tilt it up. Slide the baking peel in under the bench scraper and then pull/nudge the dough onto the prepared peel.)
This time I remembered to prep my oven ahead of time, so my implements of Steam Making were ready to go. Good thing, too - it's so important with breads like ciabatta because if the crust stiffens while the yeast is still alive it will impede the rise and you won't get the holes in the crumb that we are all so desperately striving for. This day the baking stone did its job of slamming a lot of hot hot heat into the bottom of the dough and the boiling water that I poured into the lava rock-filled cast iron skillet (preheated with the oven) produced so much steam that the bread rose like crazy during its oven spring! That combined with the intoxicating smell had me jumping up and down around the kitchen, so excited, happy, and grateful to have gotten my ciabatta so far on my first attempt.
I kept the bread in the oven perhaps a bit longer than suggested in the book, but I was holding out for the rich dark golden red-brown that is so appetizing on a good artisan bread. Thanks to Mr. Reinhart, I had learned that you really don't have to worry about the bread drying out in the oven, so when you're working with a lean rustic dough that relies entirely on the starch in the flour for caramelization (instead of any sugars or fats that are added to the dough), just leave it in the oven until it's the color you desire.
Once it got to the point I pulled it out of oven and began one of the most impatient 90-minute periods of my life. I wanted that bread to cool down now so I could slice into it! To distract myself, I took about a million pictures of the bread while I waited for it to become totally cool to the touch. I also ruminated on my loaves: I decided one looked like a slipper, the bread's namesake (pictured on the left in the couche and above once baked) while the other looked more homey (pictures on the right in the couche and below once baked). I also had plenty of time to think about what the interior of the bread looked like. After all, that's the whole point of the ciabatta: getting fantastic flavor is easy (thanks to the poolish), but getting big shiny pretty holes is much less so. I had great hopes for the interior of my bread because it had swelled so nicely on the countertop and it had risen so spectacularly in the oven, but again, I was trying to temper the enthusiasm by remembering that this was my first attempt, it probably wouldn't be perfect, and that I would have lots of fun perfecting my technique down the road.
Finally the moment arrived: my slipper-shaped loaf was cool! Without wasting even a moment I sliced into it and was only very slightly disappointed with the state of the holes. But whatever the crumb looked like, the bread was delicious. It had all the tangy complexity that a good artisan bread should have and was fantastically complemented by a good fruity olive oil (try Lucini, my favorite supermarket EVOO) or an almost room temperature eggplant caponata (recipe coming soon!). As The Hubs and I ate our way into the loaf I was happy to see that, even though they weren't completely consistent, there were bubbles scattered throughout the loaf, bearing at least a few those trademark ciabatta holes.
So imagine my excitement when I sliced into the second, more homey loaf last night and saw honest-to-god big holes!!! It goes without saying that they weren't as spectacular as the ones pictured in the Bread Baker's Apprentice, but they were there!!!
I was so excited that I grabbed the slice, ran into the other room where The Hubs was, and started jumping up and down, brandishing the bread, and squeeing about how this bread was a totally success! It was a good moment. I took several of those slices and put them away (going so far as to literally save one of them from The Hubs' jaws) to save for photographing today when there was some natural light to do the bread justice. As we sliced our way through the second loaf, we again found that the bubbling was a bit inconsistent, but I was very encouraged by what I had accomplished so far on my first try.
But Stacey, you might be asking, what about the drunken poolish? It's true, I was worried when after its initial fermentation I smelled boozy aromas - aromas that strongly intensified during its 36-hour nap in the fridge - but I detected no trace of off-flavors in the finished bread, even when it had aged one or three days. I'm not sure why I got off scott-free, flavor-wise, but I'll take it. I will be more careful in the future with my pre-ferments though.
So, now the moment of truth: will I make this again? Absolutely. There's something great about a slack rustic dough like this: it feels very elemental because you're working with a stripped-down ingredient list and it's all about you and the flour, doing a dance with time to extract every last bit of flavor out of the grain. These types of bread are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful. I love the rich color of a caramelized crust and the contrast it makes with the flour that's clinging to it. Let's not forget that it's also super-fun to have an excuse to get sticky and dirty like you do when you're kneading this dough. And it's so exciting to see how much oven spring you can get out of a super-hydrated dough like this! Plus, if you're a bread nerd like me, you get to really use your toys to full effect in a recipe like this. Finally, practice makes perfect: I can't wait to see how much air I can trap in the crumb of this bread after I have a couple more batches under my belt!
See also: Heather's ciabatta.
Up next: cinnamon rolls, a holiday treat.
BBAC Episode 6: Challah
A couple of years ago, several great friends from college came to visit me in Alaska. Back in those days I was always cooking for myself, so whenever I had guests I tended to go a little overboard because I was so excited to a) feed mouths other than my own and b) eat with friends. One of the meals I remember best from their visit was the morning we decided to make French toast. At the time I lived across the street from L'Aroma bakery so Jeremy and I wandered across the street while the other three folks were still asleep. The bakery had challah (pronounced 'hallah') that day and as we ordered the loaf one of the other employees ran across the store, raised the roof, and yelled "CHALLAH!"
Ahh, L'Aroma. You just don't find quality people like that everywhere.
So when all my Thanksgiving baking was done (and really, it was pretty epic), it came time for our sixth bread in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge and I was pretty excited. Not only could I make this awesome bread myself, but I could also recreate that scene in my own kitchen without humiliating myself in front of several dozen strangers at the local bakery in Tucson. I was also excited to find out that this bread is nowhere near as bad for you as I thought. I had imagined challah to be a very close cousin of brioche, but in reality this bread uses only about an eighth of the fat (and that fat is vegetable oil instead of butter) and fewer eggs. So what's not to love?
Not a whole lot, apparently, because in addition to the fantastic yumminess and the far more heart-friendly ingredients, the process is pretty attractive too. This was a straight dough (a first thus far in the BBAC) so there was no starter to fuss over - just mix the ingredients and go. After the mixing I let it sit for a 20 minute autolyze before kneading and let me tell you, I've never seen a kneading go so fast. I let the mixer go at it for a couple of minutes but when it quickly became apparent that the dough was creeping up the hook again (stay tuned for more on that), I cleaned off the counter, dumped out the dough, and within three minutes had an utterly supple and smooth ball of dough that passed the windowpane test. I was a little concerned because the dough seemed dry - it wasn't sticky, but it wasn't even tacky like most fully-kneaded standard doughs are - but I decided to proceed anyway.
The dough rose a little ahead of schedule but it wasn't a problem because I had been checking it early and often. I noticed as I was kneading the dough to degas it that it had a lot of air bubbles in it, but they seemed to get worked out as I worked on the dough. I set it up for a second rise, and again it finished just a bit ahead of schedule.
Next came the shaping. Because I can tend to be on the overambitious side, I decided to ignore the fact that I hadn't ever done a braided loaf before and opted for the double-decker celebration loaf. Yes, that's right, two braids, one stacked on top of the other. I also decided to ignore the fact that this loaf would be, ah, difficult to store. So having thrown all caution to the wind, I divided the dough into three bigger balls and three smaller balls and set them to rest before attempting to do any shaping.
Here's where I started to have problems. Not only was my dough infested with air bubbles, but the gluten was super uptight and refused to relax. After trying a couple of times to roll a ball into a strand only to have it spring right back, I covered it with a towel and walked away for another ten minutes. After the second rest I was able to work with it a little better and figured out that if I worked a little on one strand, then a little on the second, and next a little on the third and so on, that the other strands could be resting while I was shaping. I had work on each strand at least twice (a few of them needed a third time around) but finally they were ready for braiding (though I hadn't been able to exterminate all the bubbles). After getting it braided I was really wishing that Peter Reinhart had included instructions for how long each strand was supposed to be because the loaf was so long that it didn't even fit along the diagonal of my sheet pans! I crammed it into the corners, took a few seconds to admire my handiwork, and covered it for the proof.
Here's where I made my second mistake: I forgot to preheat the oven. The dough was almost fully proofed and the oven was still off, the cast iron skillet and lava rocks still cold! So I covered the dough back up and hoped that it wouldn't over-proof in the time that it took for the oven and my steaming implements to heat. They heated a little more quickly than usual and my dough was just getting to the point that it was too delicate to take an egg wash - it deflated a bit as it got brushed all over. Ah well.
Despite the short preheat, I got some good steam when I poured the kettle into the skillet and it definitely helped: when I looked at the loaf ten minutes later it was as though BREADZILLA had moved in and was threatening to bust open the corners of the sheet pan, so clearly the bread didn't over-proof badly, otherwise there wouldn't have been much growth in the oven. I was watching the baking dough carefully because Heather said hers was done really fast, but I was holding out for a really dark crust. I forgot the first egg wash that was supposed to happen before proofing, so maybe that's why the crust was nicely dark - but not quite was I was expecting - before the bread got to the right temperature.
I had some difficulty transferring it to a cooling rack because the hot loaf was so large, long, and unwieldy, but with the help of Sous Chef Hubs I got the bread moved without incident, though it was trying to separate along some of the braiding seams. After the loaf was completely cool, I couldn't resist it any longer and I tore off a chunk, totally amazed at how you could see the plait of the strands in the interior of the finished bread (which is something you don't really get to see if you take a bread knife to the loaf).
Even though it is beautiful, the bread is tasty but it's not really what I hoped. I think a big reason is that the dough was a too dry - I only added the minimum of water - and so the bread is a little chewy and not as tender as it should have been. It's definitely not a dealbreaker though: it'll be great as traditional toast or even made into French toast! Like I said though, the loaf is huge - but storing it won't be a problem if we eat it fast enough! I'm sure I'll make this again - challah is such a good alternative to brioche French toast and making it is so much fun.
Now lemme hear you: CHALLAH!
See Heather's challah here.
Next up: the wet, sticky beast ciabatta.
Something to cure your Thanksgiving food coma
Ok, seriously - does anyone actually cook the day after Thanksgiving??? Who isn't sick of the inside of their kitchen by then? And aren't the contents of your refrigerator quick to take away any reason for one to turn on the stove (except to reheat leftovers, of course)?
Well, I'll admit it: I wasn't as kitchen-adverse this Friday as I have been in the past. Nevertheless, I wasn't about to actually cook anything for lunch. The last thing I wanted was a plain turkey sandwich - I was craving something healthy (no surprise there, given the gluttony that took place the day before) and even though my Thanksgiving table is laden with far more veg than most (without having to resort to green bean casserole! Boo-yah!), I didn't want to just nosh on leftovers. I'm all about re-inventing last night's food whenever I get a chance, and when I spied the unused greens in my fridge that didn't quite get turned into a salad with poached pears, candied nuts, gorgonzola, and homemade balsamic vinaigrette, I had my inspiration.
I scooped the spinach into a bowl, tore off chunks of turkey breast, added some leftover roasted butternut squash, topped it off with some juicy pomegranate seeds and toasted pecans, and finished it with a drizzle of shallot-cacao nib vinaigrette that had graced the roasted squash the night before.
Chances are you don't have those exact ingredients on hand the day after Thanksgiving unless you stole my menu, but no worry, there are plenty of ways to make your own. Try using homemade cranberry sauce instead of pomegranate seeds or perhaps some roasted brussels sprouts or cauliflower instead of the squash. The point is that you're only limited by your imagination. Unless you're like me and you've already transformed your turkey leftovers into a steaming pot of delicious soup, chances are you still have plenty of food on hand with which to make your own creation. So go nuts and go fix yourself a salad while you're waiting for me to get to the really good stuff: the Thanksgiving menu, plenty of food porn, and bread that flowed continually from the oven!
BBAC Episode 5: Casiatello
Continuing in the vein of brioche variations , today's Bread Baker's Apprentice bread is casiatello, a sort of savory Italian brioche with meat and cheese stuffed inside.
I'm not gonna lie: I'm kinda overdosing on all of these ridiculously rich white breads. I'm a whole-grain kind of girl and doing these white breads is certainly fun, but it's not how I like to regularly cook and eat. Add on to that the fact that I'm not a big meat-eater (especially processed meats - I never eat them!), and it's no surprise that I came into this bread a little under-enthused. Regardless, I decided to just go ahead and do it and get it out of the way because baby, challah and ciabatta are next! Think of casiatello as an investment. I'm sure there are those of you out there who are less Type A and are like "Uhm, Stacey, why don't you just skip this one if you don't wanna do it?" Because that's not how we do it in the BBAC! It's every bread in the book, in order! Those are the rules and even though there's no one enforcing them it would really chafe me to break them. I come from a long line of anal retentive people so you can imagine my horror when my Mom told me she's going to go out of order and she suggested I do the same. I may have to turn her in to the Bread Police.
Anyway, that whole paragraph was kind of one huge digression, so I'll get on with it already.
When it came to ingredients, I stuck with an Italian dry salami like suggested but I couldn't find a decent provolone so I went with a gruyere instead, despite some misgivings about how incredibly salty this loaf was going to end up being. The assembly of the dough was pretty straightforward after having done brioche just a few days ago. The sponge was very different from the others we've put together - much more soupy - and nowhere near as cool as the sponge I got so attached to from the brioche. I had to give this sponge a little extra time and it still never sighed when tapped on the countertop (most likely because it was too slack to really sigh the same way). The rest of the dough assembly was very similar to the brioche and, like the brioche, needed no hand-kneading. The big difference here was that there was a single room-temperature fermentation - no chill in the fridge here, which was nice because I seriously doubt I could have found room for a sheet pan.
Once the fermentation was done it was time to shape the dough. When I first started reading over the recipe I was delighted to see that, compared to middle-class brioche, there is relatively little butter - but then I remembered the salami and cheese that are added and quickly realized that my arteries, oh, they will curse me so. I was really not relishing the idea of having a couple of pounds of casiatello hanging around yet I was loathe to give it all away without tasting it, but then I had a sudden inspiration. I pulled out one of my mini loaf pans that's equivalent to about 1/3 of a 9x5 loaf pan and decided it would be the perfect portion to keep for Cory and me. The rest went into the springform cake pan suggested by Mr. Reinhart and that loaf is destined for Cory's office!
I eyeballed a portion that I thought would fit the mini loaf pan, chopped it off with my bench scraper, formed it into a rough little loaf that looked a tad too small, took a bit more dough from the mother loaf, then a little more, and finally was satisfied. I had a bit of trouble shaping both the mini loaf and the larger dough into a boule because the salami was disrupting the otherwise smooth gluten surface. Once I finally got a result I was semi-satisfied with I set them to proof. When I came back an hour later I was pleasantly surprised by how much they grew in the pans but I may have let them go a little too long (especially the mini loaf) because they didn't spring back at all when poked. Despite that setback, they had great oven spring and grew quite a bit more in the oven (I credit the boiling-water-poured-over-a-preheated-cast-iron-skillet-filled-with-lava-rocks trick for this success) but they never really browned the way I'd hoped they would, despite reaching the right internal temperature. Even stranger, they didn't really smell that great while they were baking. I never really smelt the bread itself - just the salami. Every other bread I've baked so far in the challenge was intoxicating, present a real challenge to the "Thou shalt not cut into the loaf until completely cooled" commandment, but I wasn't particularly tempted by casiatello.
When I finally sliced into the bread the next day, I was impressed by the exceptionally tender crumb and the nice cheese flavor. The flavor was salty but not unpleasantly so: it was like the saltiness of a yummy hard cheese (no surprise since that's what's in there). I was actually thoroughly enjoying myself until a couple of bites later when I got to the salami. Yep, I could definitely do without that. Other than that though, it's a pretty good bread. Definitely decadent - don't forget that this is a cousin of brioche.
Will I make this again? Maybe for special occasions or if there are going to be a lot of dudes around. It definitely strikes me as a Man Bread. I'd definitely consider using a different meat and if I still had access to reindeer sausage I'd use it in a heartbeat. In the variation vein, I've seen several posts from fellow BBACers who made vegetarian versions with things like sun-dried tomatoes so I will keep that in mind if I want to go the vegetarian route, but, well, sorry Mr. Reinhart, but I think I will skip your suggestion to use toasted tofu.
See also: Heather's casiatello.
I'm taking a bit of a bread from the BBAC this weekend. I'm going to Texas for a quick visit with the folks and my Mom and I are taking a bread class! It's all about artisan breads and seems to focus on pre-ferments. It'll be fun to hopefully make some more rustic lean doughs!
When I get back, next up: Can I get a holla? Challah!
BBAC Episode 4: Middle class brioche
This week the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge brings us a concoction that I had really been looking forward to trying out. Brioche has a decadent reputation: it's known as the butteriest of breads, more similar to pastry than even, say, challah. Be it due to its reputation or its availability, to the best of my knowledge, this bread had never passed my lips.
The book offers three variations: the rich man's (in which the butter is a whopping 87 percent of the flour's weight), a poor man's (the butter is a scant 25% of the flour), and the middle class brioche (where the butter only matches half of the flour's weight). Having heard about the utter decadence of the rich man's version - and knowing/fearing my self-control around freshly baked bread - I opted not to go that route. That said, I still wanted a real brioche experience, so treating this as a special occasion, I settled on the middle class bread. Plus, I figured, since I made this on my birthday, if I happened to over-indulge I could just skip dessert after dinner. Awfully fitting, since Marie Antoinette is rumored to have actually said "Let them eat brioche" instead of "let them eat (birthday) cake!" I'd rather have bread than cake any day anyway.
So last night I mixed up the sponge and this little guy turned out to be my favorite sponge so far. I think it made a huge difference that I mixed it mechanically (because - brace for how much of a loser I am - I actually mixed another sponge today while the light was good so I could get a photo, but mixed it by hand, to far less spectacular results) because it was smooth, bubbly, gluten-y, and collapsed when tapped on the counter right on schedule.
I mixed up the dough, thoroughly lamenting the loss of my scraping paddle attachment, and though the dough didn't look so nice where it was sticking to the bowl, when I stopped to scrape it down it was satiny smooth. Declaring the dough done (sadly, no pictures - the sun sets early in Tucson in the winter) I spread it on the baking sheet and popped it in the fridge.
Today I pulled it out and found it to be the consistency of semi-hard Play Doh. Shaping it into something uniform and symmetrical just wasn't going to happen - the only thing that would accomplish was getting my hands buttery - so I pulled out the rolling pin, which worked like a charm. I used half the dough to make a brioche a tete (using the first shaping method) and the other half went to eight petites brioches a tete, using the second shaping method. I didn't have the traditional fluted brioche pans and I didn't want to buy them because I didn't know if I would ever make this again, so I just decided to go free-form.
The shaped dough proofed beautifully and right on schedule, so they got a gentle egg wash and were popped into the oven.
They smelled intoxicating while they were baking and had great oven spring, growing even more than they had during proofing and actually melding with some of their neighbors to become pull-apart rolls. Once the time was up, I was satisfied with their color and the instant-read thermometer was satisfied with their internal temperature, so out of the oven they came!
And here's where I share one of my baker's secrets with you: bread really is better when it's been completely cooled before being cut into, but really, and I mean this super seriously, where's the fun in that??? The bread has been mocking you by proofing beautifully and by smelling so fabulous while baking: do you have any idea how much willpower it takes to resist the stuff? So rather than cutting into a loaf that's been out of the oven for 45 seconds and ruining the whole thing, I opt to make some rolls and some large loaves. You can bet that Cory and I were chomping on some of that brioche right out of the oven, leaving the rest of the bread intact to cool so that the flavor could finish maturing.
Meanwhile, the large loaf had finished proofing so it went in the oven next. Here's where I learned a lesson: you can get away with doing the little guys free-form, but the big guys, uh, not so much. The dough was so soft that it couldn't support its own weight and had actually started to sink and spread out a little during proofing, but once it got into the oven and the butter heated up there was nothing to hold it up and it slumped over like a narcoleptic pile of dough.
On the plus side, you could see that the dough had fantastic gluten development and it tried really hard to prevent the slumpiness. Besides, I'm sure it still tastes fine and it is actually easier to store in the freezer until the Appointed Time Of The Making Of The French Toast.
But here's what really counts: the flavor. No joke, the bread is decadent. It reminded me very forcefully of a croissant (flavor-wise, not texture-wise). It does pull apart the way a pastry does, with a light, airy crumb that really melts in your mouth. Will I make this again? Most definitely, but even though it is a Special Occasion bread, I'll be sticking to the poor man's brioche in the future, unless the bread is strictly being used as a gift. I've also heard that this bread makes superb cinnamon rolls, which may make an appearance this year at Thanksgiving, as the in-laws are huge fans. However, I'll probably make an effort to use a premium butter (wooo! Even more fat!) instead of a common brand so that the flavor will be even better. But for now, I'll just gaze longingly at the petites brioches a tete on my counter and dream about the day that I finally get to have my brioche French toast!
See also: Heather's brioche!
Next up: Casiatello!
Let's compare: homemade stock vs. commercial broth
By now, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm very much a make-your-own-ingredients sort of cook. It's not hard to notice that one of my very favorite homemade ingredients to have on hand is chicken stock - it's extremely versatile and oh-so-flavorful. A lot of cooks, though, haven't been properly introduced to the joys and benefits of real chicken stock and so they continue to take a shortcut or two, buying insipid broth in aseptic packaging, not fully realizing what they're missing. So, in this entry, I'm going to try to rectify that.
We'll start with a simple eyeball test. The broth, which for full disclosure purposes was Swanson's reduced-sodium chicken broth, is an unappetizing pale, pale yellow color, paler than even the most watered-down lager. It's so pale, in fact, that when photographed with real stock, it's difficult to make the broth the focal point of the photo because your eye is naturally drawn to the more interesting color. This broth it is, of course, a liquid at room temperature, and when refrigerated, it stays completely liquid, which makes you wonder exactly how much "stock" there is, given that it's the first ingredient listed.
The homemade stock, on the other hand, is a yummy rich dark golden brown. If we're going to stick with the beer comparisons, it brings to mind something like Fat Tire or Shiner Bock. Again, it's a liquid at room temperature, but when refrigerated it turns gelatinous, thanks to the gelatin that leeched out of the chicken bones during cooking.
Clearly, looks aren't everything, so we'll move on to a taste test. The broth has a faint chicken flavor with a chemical-y taste that set off my salt-sensitive palate. It does not taste as watery as one would expect based on its color, thanks to the massive amounts of salt, but its flavor is one-dimensional.
However, when you taste the homemade stock, it has a pronounced and robust chicken flavor. You can definitely tell that there were plenty of herbs and chicken-friendly aromatics in the pot with the chicken, but they don't take center stage, they simply compliment the flavor. There is no trace of salt or other flavor-enhancing chemicals because there aren't any.
You may be wondering how each stacks up in the cost department. Prices for the commercial broth and for stock ingredients vary wildly from place to place, so I'm going to talk in generalities. When you buy broth, you are paying for the labor of making the product, for the packaging, and for the (not insignificant) cost of transporting something that is mostly water and is therefore dense and heavy. We'll estimate that you pay about three bucks, give or take, for a quart of chicken stock.
On the other hand, for stock I buy whole chickens. These are cheaper than whole cut-up birds and are even a pittance when compared with boneless skinless chicken breasts. I save what I don't eat and put it in the freezer for a future stock-making day. Many of the ingredients are kitchen scraps: I save carrot tops, celery leaves, onion skins, and extra herbs or veggies that I know I won't use before they go downhill. Again, everything goes in the freezer for stock-making day. So I have to buy very, very little for actual stock: maybe a leek or bit of parsley. My yields are typically huge: upwards of eight quarts, essentially for about a buck fifty after I bought a leek and some parsley.
Next, we'll compare ingredients.
Broth: chicken stock, contains less than 2% of: salt, favoring, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, celery juice concentrate, carrot juice concentrate, onion juice concentrate.
Stock: filtered water, two raw chicken carcasses, one roasted chicken carcass, carrots, celery (with leaves), leeks, onions (with skin), shallots (with skin), garlic (with skin), parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, whole peppercorns
Note: my recipe varies batch by batch, so this is was I included this last time I made it. Ingredients are obviously not listed by strictly by weight as they would be on a commercial food label. If you're wondering what the chicken carcass is, it's a whole chicken with the edible bits - breast meat and legs - removed, plus fond from roasted chickens.
Now, let's talk. Moving down the Swanson's ingredient list: after the dubious "chicken stock," it's no surprise that salt is the first ingredient. I'd like more information on what that "flavoring" is, too. It's probably artificial. I don't know what dextrose is, but it sounds like a type of sugar and it's certainly not food. Ah, autolyzed yeast extract: this is where I get really mad! The front of the package boldly proclaims "No MSG!" but here's the rub: autolyzed yeast extract contains MSG. How they can get away with that is beyond me, and it makes me really mad. Finally, we come to vegetable juice concentrate. Sure, mirepoix is great for flavoring, but a) why not use the whole food, and b) doesn't it scare you that they use more "flavor enhancers" than actual real flavor ingredients?
If I labeled my stock the same way they did, I would have one ingredient: chicken stock. Even though my ingredient list is much longer, notice that all of the ingredients are whole foods. My point is that we don't know what is in the "chicken stock" that is the first ingredient on their list. My guess is that it was approximately two chicken bones in four gallons of water, because for a company like that, chicken bones are going to be expensive to use en masse.
If a comparison of the ingredient list hasn't sent you running for the hills, let's look at how they actually perform in the kitchen. I have found out the hard way that using commercial broth as a basis for soups is a recipe for disaster. D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. I'm so not even kidding here. There is so much salt that it's all you can taste, and if the liquid reduces at all, the broth is rendered completely inedible. A bit of reducing is naturally going to happen during the simmer that soups require, so you can quickly see where this is heading. Just don't do it. On the other hand, homemade stock makes a perfect base for soups. Its rich flavor generally complements soup ingredients, adding interest to even the most basic vegetable soup.
However, homemade stock is not perfect in every situation. Even when diluted, the gelatin in stock interferes with grain dishes, so it's a no-go in things like rice or quinoa. But you can't use commercial broth here either, because guess what happens when cooking grains? The liquid reduces, so... yeah, that's a dealbreaker.
I will grudgingly admit that commercial broth is not horrible in every single situation and, in a pinch, I have been known to use it before. If it's just a small ingredient in a recipe and there are a lot (a lot) of other liquids that allow the terrifyingly huge amounts of sodium to diffuse and dilute, it can be done. I don't recommend it, but in situations like you've just moved into a house and haven't made a pot of stock yet, or you're staying with a loved one who needs to be nursed back to health and they don't have any of the real stuff on hand, it can come in handy as a last resort.
Now for an unbiased look at the two, side by side. I did my very best to represent the two contestants as they really are: I set the light meter by the white plate instead of the subject (the broth or stock), used the exact same exposure, shot them scant minutes apart to ensure uniform lighting, and when editing, used the exact same settings to fix contrast. In my mind, the choice is clear - or, more fittingly, opaque.
So, to sum up, look at it this way: store-bought chicken broth is like Pamela Anderson: a cheap blond bombshell enhanced with chemicals and additives - so processed that you can't even tell that a living creature was the basis for the product before you.
Chickpea soup with Swiss chard and barley
By now, you've probably been able to tell that I'm having a love affair with Rancho Gordo beans. They're just so damn good (and good for you) - I can't help trying to put them into every food imaginable. I love them so much that someone who possibly lives in my house may have possibly placed an order for 45 pounds of beans from them a couple of weeks ago. My thinking was that I was buying a year's worth of beans, but at the rate I'm finding fantastic recipes, the ten pounds of garbanzos may only last a couple of months. We're not even going to mention the fifteen pounds of black beans and fifteen pounds of borlottis that arrived in the same shipment. But I digress.
I've recently started reading the Rancho Gordo blog and was ecstatic to find this particular recipe on there last week. It sounded so delicious, so healthy, and so satisfying, that I had to hurry up and make some chicken stock post-haste (as we had just run out two days before - like I've said before, the stuff burns a hole in my freezer) so that I could put this soup on the table.
Clearly, I hadn't really been paying attention when I read up on the ingredients - I must have just been skimming for the produce I would need to add to the grocery list. So I didn't really notice that it called for cinnamon until I was mise en place-ing everything. It was such a pleasant surprise though - we Americans are really missing out by regarding cinnamon as a wholly sweet spice rather than something that can be used to great effect in savory dishes. It brought a whole new dimension to the soup: adding a fullness not otherwise present and bringing to mind the most comforting of comfort foods. Try this on a cold, dreary winter night with a glass of lush cabernet and discover it for yourself!
Click here for the recipe for "Chickpea soup with Swiss chard and barley" »
Roasted garlic hummus
One of my favorite things search for in the land of food is delicious ways to get lots of protein from non-meat sources. I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but I'm a big fan of the motto "Eat a variety of foods - mostly plants." So when I was in my early twenties and learning about the power of legumes, I was so excited the day the "hummus is chickpeas!" lightbulb came on over my head. It quickly supplanted the nasty deli meat sandwiches that had been my lunch between classes up to that point.
Cory loves hummus too, so when we finally got to live together I started stocking it in the refrigerator as a staple. But, predictably, it wasn't too long before I started looking for recipes to make my own, because even though there are brands of ready-made hummus that have a minimum of ingredients - and all of them are even pronouncable - I could still taste chemicals. Why put up with uninspired hummus when there is a vast variety of this classic dish at my fingertips?
Being both a Moore and a Cilia, I've got a serious garlic addiction. There's something about these two families: we just can't get enough. So long as it ends up cooked, just about all of us routinely triple or quadruple the amount of garlic that's called for in a recipe. There have been times I have bought seven head of garlic from the grocery store and it's all been gone less than 48 hours later.
This just goes to show that it's no surprise whatsoever that my favorite hummus recipe is one of the roasted garlic variety. We're not talking about a paltry four or five cloves worth, we're talking about a triple-garlic punch. This recipe uses two heads of garlic, garnishes with fried garlic chips, and incorporates garlic-infused olive oil. I hope you're not going to be in non-garlic-loving company for a while after sampling some of this stuff!
But, really, that's the beauty of garlic: it packs so much flavor, and it's so good for you, which yet another reason that I love this stuff so much. You pair this stuff with some amazingly fun-to-make whole grain pitas and you have a fantastic, filling source of lean protein.
Nom!
Click here for the recipe for "Roasted garlic hummus" »
Harvesting pomegranate seeds
I love autumn! I'm not gonna lie, one of my favorite things about the season is the food. Fall produce is so awesome - hard squashes, apples, pears, root vegetables, and, of course, pomegranates!
These nutritional powerhouses definitely make you work for your food. Slicing the fruit up and taking out the seeds is laborious to say the least, but luckily, there is a better way!
Slice off the blossom end of the pomegranate.
Score the rind of the fruit lightly into quarters. Make the cut deep enough that you penetrate the rind but not so deep that you damage the seeds. Basically, stop cutting when the resistance to your blade gives way.
Fill a bowl with water and let the pomegranate soak in it for ten minutes. After the ten minutes are up, break the fruit up into quarters along the score lines, putting the pieces back into the bowl.
Separate the white pith from the seeds. The pith will float and the seeds will sink.
When everything is separated, scoop the pith out of the bowl and discard. Strain the seeds. Enjoy these beauties sprinkled over oatmeal, in salads, or on their own.
stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
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