Baking with whole wheat flour

On principle, I am a big fan of whole wheat. Whole wheat pasta and some hearty homemade pasta sauce (none of that store-bought, mass-produced jar of crap) fills you up. Whole wheat bread, smoked turkey, cukes, tomatoes, and avacado delivers a solid lunch. Baking with whole wheat flour, on the other hand is not so satisfying. Perhaps it's a lack of practice and finesse with the whole wheat technique, I find that the bread I bake with whole wheat flour to be lacking the open, airy crumb that appeals to me.

One of these days when I'm not so preoccupied with MS1, I'll get around to working on my whole wheat technique.

Baking Bread by Approximation

Just baked a loaf today; tastes great and the crust turned out well, but I'm not satisfied by the crumb structure. It was approximately 2 cups of unbleached ap flour, 1 c cold tap water , 1/8 tsp dry yeast, 1 c poolish (1/2 c unbleached ap flour, pinch of dry yeast, enough water to make a very slack batter-like dough, fermented for about 24 hrs) mixed to form a rough dough; autolyse (i.e. let rough dough sit out) for approx 10 minutes; added two small pieces of spare dough from a previous loaf (probably around a total of 1-2 oz) and 1 tsp salt. Briefly kneeded dough for about 3-4 minutes.

1st Fermentation: about 7 hours, folding the dough every 30 min for the first 1.5 hours. (First 1.5 hours was at about 75 F, the remaining time probably at about 50 F.)

"shaped" the dough by folding again

2nd Fermentation: 3 hours (while I took a postprandial nap) on a well floured cotton dish towel (not terry cloth!)

Preheated oven and pyrex dish at 450 F for about 30 min, turned down to 400 F. Turned dough out onto dish, and baked at 400 for about 30 min with a pan of boiling water, and then finished at 450 for 15 min (sans steam).

Next time, I think I need to reduce the length of the 1st fermentation, and extend the proofing time.

Roast Pork tenderloin

Pork tenderloin before roasting
Originally uploaded by askliu.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to go to a potluck. In relatively short order I whipped up some roast pork for a late summer get together--the meat wasn't particularly inexpensive, but it was buy one get one free, so I decided to pick some up for the dinner.

Earlier that day, I had bought some fresh sage and rosemary at the farmers market, inspired by a post at David Lebovitz's blog. I used this sage and rosemary herb blend as a rub along with some black pepper and salt on the pork. A generous drizzle of olive oil, and I popped the meat into a 450 F oven for about 20 min/lb, and then turned the heat down to 375 F for another 15 min/lb. I didn't have a thermometer, but the meat turned out nicely cooked--juicy and tender without a trace of pink.

Still alive

Hallo all--still alive, but extremely busy with applications and such.

Will return in the fall, I promise!

Carrots, Veggie Burger for dinner

Carrots, Veggie Burger for dinner
Originally uploaded by askliu.

Ladies and Gents,

I present to you one interpretation of a vegetarian meat-patty substitute.

Vegetarian burger
1 c leftover bean and lentil stew*
1 small onion chopped up
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tsp pan roasted cumin seed
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 c cous cous re-hydrated 1:1 v/v
salt & pepper to taste (obviously you can't really taste it raw, so I just put in 1/2 tsp or there abouts of salt and a generous shake of pepper)
1 egg

mix above until well incorporated; if consistency is very wet, add a little bit of flour or corn meal (I used corn meal) to firm it up. I think you're looking for a wet, but not gloopy, lumpy pancake batter-like consistency.

Pan fry on both sides until crisp.

This doesn't serve very many, probably enough for two meals for a hungry person. Very tasty though. (Onions, lettuce, ketchup and mustard required. I didn't have any ketchup, unfortunately.)

*Soak beans and lentils overnight. Cook in salted water until tender. I cooked mine until they're almost disintegrating, but I think you want some texture here.

For the stew, made a soup base from browned onions, garlic and chicken stock, and then I added the beans, and cooked it for a few hours, covered, on low heat.

Bread, wheat, and the new year

I apologize for not having posted for a while, and I will be on hiatus until after April/May. Here's to 2nd semester Junior year and to a successful high-stakes (or high-steaks?...nevermind) testing result.



Anyway, here's a pic of the bread I baked during the break. I was initially baking some neopolitian-style pizza based on a recipe from Maggie Glazer's Artisan Baking Across America (a beautiful book that I got at Half Price Books for more than half off, heh), but since I was the only one eating the pizza, I decided to make the excess dough into smallish boules.

I used a poolish pre-ferment based on regular all-purpose flour with an additional 20% whole wheat flour by weight. I don't remember what the ratio of pre-ferment to the finished dough but I do remember the dough having about 60% hydration.

The pizza dough in the book was interesting because it didn't follow the standard (ok, standard for me) 6-12 hour 1st rise, then 1-1.5 hour proofing pattern, but rather it had a very short 1st rise, probably something on the order of 1 hour and then a very long proofing in the refrigerator, close to 12 hours.

It was extremely dry when I was baking this (cf. the crazy wildfires in North Texas) so by the end of the proofing, there was a thin skin of dried out dough, which might have impeded the full rising.

For the pizza, I took the dough out of the fridge and streched it out into a thin round-ish sheet (frankly, I didn't succeed here; they ended up being weird oblong-shaped pieces of dough) and I topped it with olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper. I popped them onto my baking stone set on the top shelf of the oven with the broiler set on high. They were done within 10 minutes and they were quite tasty when warm.

The bread involved some shaping, which turned out ok, except for the problem of the dried skin that made it hard for the boule to close up tight on the bottom. My manhandling and extreme shaping probably popped a lot of bubbles, and I didn't really let the shaped dough proof for long enough.



Anyway, lessons learned: use a better rising container to keep the moisture in, up the hydration when the ambient relative humidity is almost 0, and kneed vigorously but handle gently.

Apologies

I really should be writing more about my foodie adventures, but unfortunately school-related things have been occuping my mind for the past few months.

I've taken to drinking coffee with a tablespoon (or two, if I'm feeling in need of a pick-me-up) of sweetened condensed milk now, for no particular reason other than I had a can of condensed milk sitting in my cupboard, and I thought it would be good to use it up. It adds a pleasant, creamy caramel touch to the cup of joe, and I love it!