Baking

For an Indian-themed dinner party that included tandoori chicken cooked in the charcoal grill / smoker, I also wanted to make fresh naan. As usual, there’s a Serious Eats article about it. I made a few test batches the previous weekend with both white and whole wheat flour, cooked under either the broiler or in a cast iron skillet: While I liked the taste of a 50% white-whole-wheat-flour naan and it cooked fairly well, white bread flour combined with a preheated oven + pizza steel + broiler on during cooking led to a really fluffy, puffy naan, which I used for a larger dinner party. If I tried it again, I’d use whole wheat flour but add some vital wheat gluten powder as I’ve done with bagel-making. ...

(from last winter) What do you do when you grow five different varieties of colorful heirloom corn in the back yard? Grind them into cornmeal and make individual corn muffins, of course: Some day I’ll type up some notes on the corn growing itself– it was very fulfilling and an interesting challenge (especially the hand-pollinating due to the small area under cultivation and desire to keep separate varieties from cross-pollinating). ...

Unfortunately, a friend I was planning dinner with caught sick, so I had spare pizza dough I’d made yesterday, rising overnight in the fridge… Rather than toss it (but also not motivated to make sauce), I made a quick pizza bianca (olive oil, garlic, rosemary, mozzarella) as the first lunch of the new year: I tried a new cooking method in my somewhat limited electric oven, and it worked reasonably well: Preheating the oven to 500F with pizza stone on the top rack, sliding the pizza onto the stone, then switching the oven to broil and cooking for 10 minutes– letting the preheated stone cook the bottom of the pie while the broiler element cooks from above at the same time. ...

Arkansas Black apples in the CSA were beautiful– so while I rarely make dessert, it seemed time to make a crisp. A quick search for a Cooks Illustrated take on it turned up this recipe, which I followed the rough spirit of without measuring because I was running around making dinner at the last minute. Basically, I sliced four apples and tossed them in lemon juice, brown sugar, and grated nutmeg, then melted butter and a cup of hard cider in a skillet, tossed in the apples, and cooked them over medium covered until mostly cooked through– 10-15 minutes. I mixed some oats, flour, brown sugar, and a pinch of salt and cinnamon, sprinkled that over the apples, sliced 4 Tbsp of butter into thin squares over that, and put the whole skillet in a 350F oven for about 20 minutes, while we ate the rest of dinner. Not bad, with vanilla ice cream, of course. ...

A few photos from another round of making bagels, over Thanksgiving: [slideshow] Differences between this time and the last few times I’ve made them: I used the “6 cups all-purpose flour + 12 tsp vital wheat gluten” method of making high-gluten flour, since I didn’t have any special flour. This worked well, producing a chewy bagel. 3 tsp yeast (instead of the usual 2 1/4tsp packet), and it was mixed with a little of the malt syrup and lukewarm water a few minutes before adding it into the dough, to give it a head start, since proofing suggested this particular jar of yeast was on the old and lazy side. This seemed to work– the bagels rose slightly overnight (as expected, see the different in the 1st vs. 2nd photos) and puffed up nicely in the oven. I minced three cloves of garlic and toasted them (medium heat, dry skillet) until browned, then used them as a topping on some of them. I cooked in a different oven than normal, on a pizza stone. Unclear if this made a difference.

Breakfast: Picking lettuce for a light lunch: Dinner (I made squash with crispy sage butter, and brussels sprouts with bacon and sauteed onions): Apple pie*, later: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope your food and family or friends afternoons treat you well. \* Which included my first time making pie crust in quite a while, and perhaps my first-ever lattice top? Ahh, delicious geometry. I used a basic dough recipe modified to use 1/5th whole wheat flour, and 50/50 shortening and butter. ...

Maple-pecan scones, scrambled eggs with a little smoked paprika, fruit, and a view of the Bay.

A brief article from Slate earlier this summer suggests that if you’re making your own bagels, the water (New York or otherwise) doesn’t really matter– it’s the combination of gluten, slow rising, and boiling before baking. Similarly, an article in The Food Lab at Slice / Serious Eats suggests the mineral level in water has no significant effect on the quality of pizza dough.

I’ve probably made bagels 25-30 times at this point, and have reached a point where they turn out surprisingly well– not the best I’ve had in New York, but better then any bagel I can buy locally. Here’s my standard recipe, based on trying a few variants (I’ve even made two different recipes and done blind taste tests with friends). It’s very similar to the one in The New Best Recipe. ...

Some typical flours and their protein percentages: Cake or pastry flour: 8-9% Generic all-purpose flour: 10.3%? King Arthur all-purpose flour: 11.7% Generic bread flour: 11.7%? King Arthur bread flour: 12.7% King Arthur whole wheat flour: 14% <-- though I believe the protein / gluten relationship in whole wheat is different, because some of this protein is in the bran yet not available to promote gluten formation. King Arthur Sir Lancelot high-gluten flour: 14.2% Bob’s Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten: 75% Why am I posting this? Mainly because I’m about to post a bagel recipe, and having a high-protein flour really does matter for them. ...

I’ve made bagels 7 or 8 times at this point, and thought I’d settled on a recipe I liked… but cooking in a new kitchen always throws a few wrenches in the works. In this case, the oven in a vacation home rented with friends didn’t seem to want to go above 350F, while I wanted 450F… so I baked some bagels in the oven, but cooked most of them on a gas BBQ grill on the outside deck. To my surprise, that worked pretty well. ...

This is great sliced thick and used to make a sandwich or luxurious toast (but with soup, I prefer whole wheat bread). I used to make this monthly but haven’t in many years– I just found the recipe card recently. White sandwich bread (two loaves, takes 4-5 hours total including cooling) Mix and let stand 5-10 minutes: 4 tsp dry yeast 1/4 cup warm water Meanwhile, mix: 1 cup warmed milk 1 cup warm water 2 Tbsp melted butter 2 Tbsp honey 1 Tbsp salt Combine the two mixtures. Gradually add: ...

Scones are one of the only things I’ve made where I’ve tried (and kept track of) many changes to a recipe over time and gradually evolved it. Here’s my current favorite version: Maple-Pecan Scones(makes 16) First, preheat the oven to 425 (don’t you hate recipes that don’t tell you to preheat the oven until late in the recipe?) You’ll need: 2 & 1/2 cups white flour 1 cup whole wheat flour (I’ve tried more– this is about as much as I can fit in) 1 & 1/2 cups chopped pecans (for even better scones, chop half of these pecans coarsely, and grind the other half into a powder, almost a “pecan flour”, in a food processor). 2 Tbsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 11(!) Tbsp cold butter 1 cup milk 1/3 cup maple syrup (plus a little extra to brush on) (real maple syrup, of course) A cast iron skillet The process: ...