French Baguettes

Whipped these together a few weeks ago for a beer tasting.  They were great!  I would have liked the holes to be a bit bigger, but the taste was subtle and sweet.  A long slow cold ferment was required (2 days).  The first few pics are of the bread when it first came out of slow ferment.  I set it out to warm for a couple hours.

I then mixed it with more flour and yeast.

Then I kneaded it for around 10 min by hand. The dough feels great in the hands.  Slightly tacky but not sticky and bending to my hands in such a satisfying way.

After kneading I left it to rise a few hours.

Then I shaped it into baguettes and left it to rise.

As usual I burned myself on the steam in my steam pan, but the final product was worth it.  The taste was a nutty, rich flavor that just begged to be devoured.

This was a great bread.  Went really well with our Rye IPA tasting.  I made up some oil and herbs to dip it in and it disappeared in no time.  I think next time I need to handle it a little less when shaping to keep some of the bigger bubbles in the loaves.

Anadama from BBA

I recently picked up a copy of Reinhart's the bread bakers apprentice (BBA).  A wonderful read which I hope will improve my baking substantially.  I have decided to attempt to bake every type of bread in the book.  In the spirit of Julie Powell, I give myself a year to do it (a little under 1 bread a week).  I'm not trying to be a mimic, I just really want to make good bread and am too busy to take a course.  I discovered that if I give myself a deadline then I will actually do something towards it.

 This is the first batch.  Its Anadama, the first recipe in the book.  The above is a soak of cornmeal I set up the night prior.  It looked great, smelled like cornmeal.  I then mixed it up with the molasses, yeast, butter, salt, and some flour.   This is where I went wrong.  I left it for 60min, but I should have waited until it was bubbly.  I also used whole white flour (my typical choice) but I think the extra protein really needed some extra fermentation time.  When I added the remainder of the flour, I had a terrible time trying to get the gluten to form.  

It looks yummy, but it wouldn't even come close to the window pane test.  I could barely get it to stretch.  I kneaded it for about 15min when I finally decided to toss it in the kitchen aid and use my dough hook.  Even after 10 more minutes of power kneading the gluten sucked.

It did rise nicely, but I should have shaped it first.  When I punched it down it never really recovered.  Probably because all the gluten had been broken and it couldn't hold onto its CO2. 

 It ended up looking nice, but it was dense.  The smell of my apartment was worth it though.  The roasted grain and caramelized crust with the molasses and cornmeal just perked the whole place up.  Emma and I were cuddled on the couch watching a movie when I went to check on it and was hit by a wall of euphoric smells.  It's such a shame so many people rely on store bought loaves.  The smell of baking alone is enough to sustain the soul for a couple days.

In this fist step I have learned much.  I discovered that I should invest in some unbleached bread flour (I just wish I could get it nearby and organic).  I also realized the bread needs its own attention.  What it is telling me, more then following generic instructions, will allow me to better hone my craft.  I am hoping at the end of this experiment I will have enough experience to know how long I need to achieve the various steps, given my climate, my apartment and my ingredients.  Times on recipes are not my friend.  I need to embrace, like I do in brewing, that patience and love of process, not final product, will yield me the greatest rewards.

Banana Bread

I was making a mashup of 101cookbooks's zucchini bread and my banana bread when it crossed my mind to mix in a couple table spoons of crushed caramelized barley (40L).  Damn it was good.  Next time I'll double up on the barley.  Sadly it only occurred to me to snap a picture only after I ate half of it.

Brewing: SAAZ RIPA

A few weeks ago our local chapter of the brewnosers (SAAZ) brewed up a Rye India Pale Ale for the Rye IPA competition out at Garrison brewery.  We brewed it at Andy's crazy grouse brewery.  I’ll post the recipe once the competition is over but in the meantime I pulled up some pics.  

Here we are pre-heating the hot liquor which will be added to the grains.  It was a cold day, -12 or so if I remember correctly.  Spending eight hours in a little shed on Andy's beautiful hobby farm in the freezing weather was really a great experience.  Its so easy for me to huddle away from the elements on a cold, snowless January.  This brew day got me up and outside, and really appreciating every watt of solar energy pouring through the sky.  It was a sunny day, which contributed to the cold, but also allowed us to soak up some much needed vitamin D since the skiing this winter has been horrible.

Glasses caused a bit of trouble when we were measuring out our mash water.  It was hard to see anything as soon as the condensation took over, but we managed to get what we needed.  The next few shots are of the mash.  The first one is of Andy getting rid of any dough balls and giving it a good stir, then we took a temp.  I wish I could post the smell.  People say beer stinks, but I think that's just people who hate the wonderful aromas of porridge, bread, and caramel.  It's like the morning before a big ski race, your cold but the smell of the stewing grains just coats your soul in warmth. Sadly the mash tun was new and cold, and so were the grains, which resulted in us missing our mash temperature of 152 and hitting 149F instead.  I thought this would result in a thin body, boozy beer, but so far my samples have been great.  

 Next we drained the mash into the kettle.  We decided to pour the wort right onto the first hops.

 Here we have Jeff grinding some more grain for the second 10gallon batch.  Although the mash smelled great, this smelled phonomanal.  A fresh grind results in a fine flour dusting your olfactory, stimulating all those fantastic memories.  I'm sure you coffee fanatics out there know what I mean.

Because of the cold, we had some trouble with the propane freezing up on us.  I snapped a picture of it in our makeshift bath.  It worked to keep the tank from freezing.

Now you cant brew good beer without hops.  Here Jeff is weighing out a good hefty addition.  We were using mostly simcoe and citra, two of my favorite hops.  As citra suggest, it smells like grapefruit.  Though simcoe has low cohumulone levels.  Cohumulone is what gives a bitter its real astringent bitterness, so although simcoe adds bitterness it come off with a reduced dry pucker that other hops can bring.

 

 Here we have the boil going full steam. Not much to say, its boiling wort.  Smells damn good, but I have commented enough about the smells in this little brewery.

 The first 10 gallons went to Jeff and I to ferment and dry hop.  Here are our worts ready for transport.  A little rant about our archaic laws; if I had put yeast in at Andys (in Nova Scotia) I would have to pay taxes to bring it home.  Dumb, but luckily, malt/hop tea is legal to transport.

We decided to ferment mine with some Farmhouse yeast I had.  This is a Belgium strain, almost identical to saison.  A little hiccup is that saison yeast like it hot, having been developed as something you ferment/age over the summer to give the field hands something to drink in the fall.  That means it can ferment quite high (lots of booze) to preserve it over the summer months, and that it likes warmer weather.  It's January here, so it is anything but warm.  That means I wrapped it up in a thermarest and stuck it next to my baseboard heaters turned to high.  I also put a big foam board of insulation under it and behind it to create a little tent of warmth for it.  I ended up getting the temp around a constant 25-26C, even though my apartment is closer to 17C.  Not the most environmental of me, but in the future I will save this recipe for the summer.

 I snapped a few photos of the finished product as it comes out of the keg.  I hope the stuff I primed in the bottles (and submitted to the competition) are as good.  Its wonderfully sweet, not cloying.  Like memories of cotton candy from your childhood, but the hops make it balanced with a good dose of grapefruit in the nose.   There is a spiciness from the rye that is nice, but not my favorite.  The yeasties contribute their own melodies to the chorus, a bit a spice that accents the rye, but I want to draw it out more into the spotlight in the future.  I think next time I will leave out the rye, but it was a rye IPA competition, and the colour may be worth it alone.  Its unabashedly orange thanks to the rye!  I should have back-lit it so you can see how vibrant it is.

Cheers!

Giving purpose to this space

Life gets complicated.  We have so many options for what journey we should walk, that we forget to choose our path.  Paralysis of choice can quickly overcome our minds and we slowly end up doing nothing, fulfilling our appetites with quickly consumable commodities.  I have started this blog to try and document and discover what I find the most enriching parts of my life, the things that drive me to craft and create.  Sometimes they are moments barely longer then a heartbeat, but as long as they make my soul smile I will write them down.  My goal is to steal back time for my adventurous and creative mind.  To show myself that it’s not about a career but about living my life and having real purpose that I might one day be able to give to my children.  This is a place for me to document those moments of creativity and awe.  This is my corner, this is my life, welcome.

Leek and Potato Soup

2 Leeks, chopped (dark greens removed)

6 fist sized potatoes, cubed

1 carrot, grated (two fingers width, forearm length)

3 handfuls of wild rice (I use a nice mix of dark brown prairie and black rice)

1L of good quality faux-chicken broth (or veggie broth)

Oil (high flashpoint, e.g. grapeseed)

½ tbsp. Smoked Paprika

1 tsp. cracked pepper

1 tsp. salt

½ tbsp. flour

2 tbsp .Butter

Heat cast iron pot to mid-high and melt some butter (~1 tbsp). While heating toss potatos in some oil with the paprika, pepper, salt and flour until well coated. Toss potatoes into pot and stir regularly. When a good layer of browed stuff builds up on the bottom of the pot add leaks and the other tbsp. of butter. Once the leeks start to become translucent add carrot. Stirring should be regular throughout to prevent burning of stuff on the bottom. Unstick any potatoes but try to limit how much you scrape off the bottom. After a few min remove everything from the pot and add 1 ladle of broth to deglaze stuff stuck on bottom. Add more broth if needed until everything is mixed into solution. Add leek, potato and carrot mixture back into pot then add remaining broth and rice. Let simmer until rice is soft (~45min).

~ 4 servings