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Lens: the adventures of a girl and her camera
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!
Ok, I can't guarantee that you'll never shed a tear cutting up an onion. What I can deliver you from is tears of frustration. Trust me, that's a big deal. After all, what's the least fun part about cooking? The prep. If you can find tricks to make the process easier and faster, you will enjoy the prep more, and you will be more likely to cook more often. Plus, it appears (from observational evidence, not scientific evidence - that I know of, anyway) that when you cut this way, leaving the root end intact, that you are far less likely to cry from stinging onion-y eyes (unless the onion is too old to be cooking with. I can't help you then, sorry).
So, without further adieu, I give you the spoke method of chopping onions!
Artisan French dough is an interesting animal. On one hand you have four - count 'em, four - ingredients. Not so hard, right? The thing is, it's not the number of ingredients, it's their proportion to each other. It's a very hydrated dough compared to the multitude of sandwich loaves I've posted here previously, yet many of the requirements are the same.
The tricky requirement here is the kneading. Yes, this dough is a wet, sticky monster. And yes, you have to develop the gluten yourself. You don't get to rely on a ridiculously long autolyze to do the hard work for you like you do in my much-loved no-knead bread (but it's worth it - the pre-ferment makes for a far superior flavor). So how does one get the gluten to develop?
Some of you may quickly point out that KitchenAid stand mixers are proof that a god loves us and wants us to eat good bread. But I'll point out even more quickly that the French have been making this bread before mixers were a twinkle in a baker's eye, so there has to be some way to do it. And being the do-it-yourself-er that I am, I'm going to teach you how.
Like I said, you obviously can't knead in the conventional fashion. Pushing, folding, and rotating translates into smearing, smearing, and smearing in the language of French dough. So instead of using force provided by your body, use the force provided by gravity to stretch, relax, and align those gluten strands and turn that yucky, sticky mess of flour and water into a ball of stretchy, supple, super-soft dough. Here's an illustrated guide for how to do it:
Lay the heels of your hands on the dough, both thumbs pointing to the left (or the right, if you like. Just be consistent). Be sure your hands are positioned so that your thumbs are close to the edge of the dough and there is plenty of dough visible on the other side of your hand. Get your fingers underneath the dough.
Pick up the dough with your thumbs now pointing up instead of to the left. Allow the dough to hang down and let gravity stretch it out.
With a little flip (and without letting go of the top half of the dough), put the dough on the counter so that the side of the dough that was facing you when it was suspended in mid-air is now in contact with the counter. The upper half of the dough will still be in your hands.
With another flip, fold the dough in half and let go. You've just completed on knead. As you become more practiced it will become a more fluid motion. Continue to work the dough until it is smooth, elastic, supple, and less sticky than it was originally.
None of the photos of the fully kneaded dough turned out, but the photo on the right shows it mostly kneaded, becoming smooth on the surface. Notice the huge difference between this and the shaggy unkneaded dough on the left.
During the kneading process, resist the urge to add too much flour to the countertop. The dough will still be a sticky mess and will get all over your hands, but only add more flour a tablespoon at a time if the dough is totally unworkable. Without a very wet dough you can't get the irregular, beautiful open crumb that is the hallmark of a good artisan bread.
After kneading, the dough will rise several times. This is another time when you don't handle the dough in the same way as a sandwich bread. Do not punch it down or deflate it. Instead you will stretch the dough out between your two hands. When you see this in pictures or on video it looks impossible, like no dough should be able to do that, but after a properly kneaded dough has risen for a little while it will be incredibly soft and elastic. It's very easy to stretch the dough out as shown below:
Once the dough is stretched, fold it into thirds like a business letter. Rotate the dough packet 90 degrees and stretch and fold as before. Return the dough to the bowl and continue with the recipe. Best of luck to you!
Many thanks to my Mom for taking these photos while I handled the dough. This tutorial wouldn't have been possible without her help.
For more fantastic information on baking artisan breads, buy the King Arthur Flour Baker's Forum DVD.