New Year’s Resolution… A Fun One

I hate New Year’s resolutions. In a few days, the gym will be packed whenever I have to use the treadmill because I can’t walk outside for some reason or another. Of course, by February, it won’t be packed anymore. And that’s why I hate New Year’s resolutions. Most of them are too hard to keep. They’re almost always something we don’t want to do but think we should.

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted the following screengrab from social media:

every time i ask people if they do any new years resolutions its all oooo i dont like making them bc i fail or ohhhhh no i couldnt keep up with that and then when they ask me and i tell them about Pasta Quest (i am eating as many different pasta shapes as possible in the space of a year or when i did Fruit Adventures (every time i saw a fruit i had never eaten before id get one and eat it and read the wikipedia article about it) theyre like hang on i forgot you can make Fun Ones i want a fun one

I love the idea of having a fun New Year’s resolution. I’m not sure about Pasta Quest, but I think it could be fun for me to cook one new dish each week to try some new recipes, practice my cooking skills, and use my cookbook collection.

I didn’t see any reason to wait until the new year officially starts in a few days, so I started tonight.Milk Street: Tuesday Nights Mediterranean: 125 Simple Weeknight Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine

I love Milk Street for taking me outside my comfort zone; their dishes are always much more exotic than I’d usually cook. I bought this cookbook a couple of months ago to add to my collection. I decided to find something in the cookbook to try for dinner tonight and wound up picking the Sumac-Spiced Chicken Cutlets with Tomato-Onion Salad, mainly because I knew I already had all the spices and pomegranate molasses (thanks to Helen Rennie). It’s a secret ingredient in a lot of my sauces now) and would only need to pick up the chicken and produce from the grocery store. I liked it so much that I will definitely add it to my repertoire. I was recently watching Helen Rennie’s YouTube channel, and she has a video for Salmorejo. Helen doesn’t live very far from me, so when she has tips about shopping, I find them more helpful than her viewers who live farther away might. She mentioned in this video that Campari tomatoes are pretty good year-round in New England, so I bought those. In-season summer tomatoes would probably be heavenly in this dish. I found it pretty easy to make as well. I can’t print the recipe here for copyright reasons, but I highly recommend anything by Milk Street, so check out the book. I was really pleased with the results. I rarely take pictures of meals I cook (baked goods are another matter), but I had to take a picture of this meal. It was so pretty.

Sumac-Spiced Chicken Cutlets with Tomato-Onion Salad

This is a New Year’s resolution I can get behind.

In Praise of the Checkerboard Cookbook

recipes by Joel Kramer, Used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) License

The first cookbook I owned was the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. This cookbook is famous for its checkerboard cover. My first copy was a wedding gift, and the second I bought to replace the first when it fell apart. Both copies were ring-bound with tabs dividing the sections, and I understand the newest iteration of the cookbook doesn’t include that feature. My first copy was a wedding gift, and the second I bought to replace the first when it fell apart. Another quirk both of my copies shared was that they were both Pink Editions (Celebrating the Promise), limited editions of the book that supported the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization. Now that I know more about that organization, I don’t really support their work. My grandmother had breast cancer, and family members have supported this organization’s work, but if you want to read some critiques of this organization, check out these articles:

I love this cookbook, however. It includes a section with special recipes by celebrity chefs. To be honest, I haven’t touched that section, which may not be included in other editions of the book. I love the Cooking Basics section with helpful advice on equipment, cooking terms, smart shopping and menu planning, measurement, ingredients, and more.

My two staple recipes from the book are the Pepper-Lime Chicken (p. 467) and the Peanut Butter Cookies (p. 249). Both recipes are simple and delicious. I grew up eating peanut butter cookies made from this recipe, and they’re still my favorite peanut butter cookie. I have also made the Salsa (p. 66) and Buttermilk-Brined Fried Chicken (p. 458) more than once. The Zucchini Bread recipe (p. 132) is a good one. I don’t always think their recipes are the best available. I made the French Onion Soup (p. 566) recipe in this book for over a decade before I found a better one from Ina Garten.

I haven’t come remotely close to cooking my way through the book, even though I’ve owned a copy of the book for 30 years. But everything I’ve tried has been easy and has worked well. I believe this book is a staple for any cook’s kitchen because of its versatility. New editions cater to changing preferences by including new and updated recipes, but classics never die. When I’m not sure where I might want to start, I start with this book.

You can purchase the book’s latest edition from either Bookshop.org (support local, independent bookstores!) or Amazon (affiliate links earn me commissions).

Peach-Bourbon Jam

It’s finally peach season in New England. When I lived in Georgia, peach season started a little earlier in the summer, and I think it lasted longer, too. I went to the local pick-your-own and bought peaches, blackberries, and blueberries from their farm store. The peaches are juicy and delicious. I had two of them today!

I had been wanting to try the Peach-Bourbon Jam recipe from my America’s Test Kitchen book on canning and preserving. I don’t have permission to share the recipe publicly, but I took pictures of the process and results.

Peaches Cooking

Look at that boil! I took a quick video of it to share with my sister.

You need to check to see if the jam is set before putting it in jars, so one way to test that is to put a small plate in the freezer while you’re cooking the jam. Once the cooking is finished, take the plate out of the freezer, put a teaspoon of jam on it, and put it back in the freezer for two minutes. Take it out and run your finger through the jam. If it separates in a nice line, it’s set. If it runs back after you swipe your finger, it needs to cook a little bit more.

Peach Jam

This jam has a nice set.

I filled two jars. One thing I like about the ATK book is there are so many small-batch recipes. I only needed two peaches for this recipe.

There was enough jam in the pot coupled with the teaspoon tested on the plate to spread over a slice of bread, so I tried it. It’s delicious.

Peach Jam on Bread

Tomorrow I’m making biscuits. I can’t wait for my husband to try this jam.

Canning and Preserving Books

I have been wanting to try canning and preserving for a long time, but I was intimidated and also didn’t have enough time to devote to learning a new thing. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might remember that I have made soap pretty often in the past and also taught myself how to make bread. I learned both of these home crafts, for lack of a better term, through reading books (my preferred medium for learning). One of my students told me that’s really weird because she, like many other people her age, prefers to learn by watching YouTube videos.

Shrug Gif

I bought myself two canning and preserving books. I figured I’d have time to read them and try out some recipes now that it’s summer (a perfect time to learn to preserve) and I’m all done with grad school. I did a bit of research to find out which books most people were recommending on blogs, and I wound up buying two.

Canning and Preserving BooksFoolproof Preserving: A Guide to Small Batch Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Condiments, and More by America's Test Kitchen
Published by America's Test Kitchen on April 5, 2016
Genres: Cooking
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Buy on Amazon
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five-stars

Canning perfected the America’s Test Kitchen way. The art of preserving produce by canning and preserving has come full circle from grandmother's kitchen to a whole new generation now eager to learn it. This detailed guide to home preserving is perfect for novice canners and experts alike and offers more than 100 foolproof recipes across a wide range of categories, from sweet jams and jellies to savory jams, vegetables, condiments, pickles, whole fruits, and more. Let the experts at America's Test Kitchen show you how to do it right with detailed tutorials, troubleshooting tips, equipment information, and insight into the science behind canning.

What I loved most about this book is that all the recipes are small-batch, and the book is geared toward novices. One reviewer on Goodreads criticized this book for having a lot of recipes that cannot be processed for long-term storage. That’s a fair critique. One example I noted was their recipe for onion jam; however, the Ball book below has a similar onion jam recipe that can be processed. I thought their instructions were very clear. I have learned to trust America’s Test Kitchen books and recipes online/in magazines after trying so many. They all just work because, well, ATK tests everything (hence, their name). It’s nice to know what pitfalls to avoid. Their ingredient and equipment reviews were really helpful. On their advice, I bought the canning pot, jar lifter, and pectin they recommended.

Canning and Preserving BooksThe All New Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving: Over 350 of the Best Canned, Jammed, Pickled, and Preserved Recipes by BALL
Published by Oxmoor House on May 31, 2016
Genres: Cooking
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
Buy on Amazon
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five-stars

From the experts at Jarden Home Brands, makers of Ball canning products, comes the first truly comprehensive canning guide created for today's home cooks. This modern handbook boasts more than 350 of the best recipes ranging from jams and jellies to jerkies, pickles, salsas, and more—including extender recipes to create brand new dishes using your freshly preserved farmer's market finds or vegetable garden bounty. Organized by technique, The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving covers water bath and pressure canning, pickling, fermenting, freezing, dehydrating, and smoking. Straightforward instructions and step-by-step photos ensure success for beginners, while practiced home canners will find more advanced methods and inspiring ingredient twists. Thoroughly tested for safety and quality by thermal process engineers at the Fresh Preserving Quality Assurance Lab, recipes range from much-loved classics—Tart Lemon Jelly, Tomato-Herb Jam, Ploughman's Pickles—to fresh flavors such as Asian Pear Kimchi, Smoked Maple-Juniper Bacon, and homemade Kombucha. Make the most of your preserves with delicious dishes including Crab Cakes garnished with Eastern Shore Corn Relish and traditional Strawberry-Rhubarb Hand Pies. Special sidebars highlight seasonal fruits and vegetables, while handy charts cover processing times, temperatures, and recipe formulas for fast preparation. Lushly illustrated with color photographs, The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving is a classic in the making for a new generation of home cooks.

This book is a comprehensive compendium that includes instructions and recipes for everything from jams and fruit preserves to dehydration and smoking and curing meat. I think many of the recipes and techniques are within reach of beginners, but whether or not beginners would want to invest in them is probably another issue; for example, I’m not sure I have an interest in curing my own bacon. Still, that’s just me. Most of the book is dedicated to canning in many forms, from jams to pickles. There is a chapter on pressure canning. I’m not sure I feel like I want to invest in a separate gadget just to try pressure canning, but some of the recipes in that section do look good. There is an intriguing recipe for mustard in the fermenting section that I want to try, and their dill pickle spears look like they’d be interesting to try as well.

Both of these books are great in terms of instructions, advice, and recipes, but I give the nudge to the Ball book in terms of range. I haven’t tried any of its recipes yet, but I made some of the ATK book’s blueberry jam and preserved some cherries in syrup. I’m hoping to try dill pickles next. I took some pictures to chronicle this journey.

Blueberries on the Bush
Photo credit Steve Huff

My husband and I went to our local pick-your-own farm and got four quarts of blueberries. There was something really satisfying about pulling the fruit off the bush and hearing it plink as it fell into the bucket or cardboard box. I’ve never picked blueberries before, but I have gone to this farm to pick strawberries and apples.

Blueberries

I decided to make the America’s Test Kitchen book’s Blueberry Earl Grey jam because I love Earl Grey tea. Also, it was a small two-jar recipe that would give me a chance to try out processing, a technique for preserving jam for long-term storage—up to a year.

Blueberries Cooking

The blueberries don’t need to cook very long before they start to release their juice. After you add the pectin and sugar, it seems like a really quick process. Even though I was just making two jars

Blueberries Becoming Jam

I tried out my new canning pot, which is the one America’s Test Kitchen recommends in their book both in terms of value and durability. When I was done I had two jars of blueberry jam. I can’t taste the Earl Grey tea at all. A friend told me you need a lot more tea than five teabags to impart flavor, so I’m not sure what the folks at ATK were tasting, but it didn’t come through for me. Lesson learned. I’m not going to bother adding the tea in the future.

Jars of Blueberry Jam

Our local pick-your-own had a few tart cherries in their farm store, but the season is pretty much over, and if they grow sweet cherries, I missed it. I bought some sweet cherries from my grocery store. Making the cherries in syrup was a process because I had to pit all the cherries, and I don’t have a cherry pitter. I’m not sure I should get one because I don’t think I’ll be preserving cherries in syrup a lot. They are extremely delicious, but the cherry season is so short. It seems like something I might do once a year. I did a search online to see how you go about pitting cherries if you don’t have a pitter. I found a video that recommends pushing a metal straw through the top of the cherry so the pit comes out the bottom. This might be a fine idea if you only have to pit a few cherries, but if you have to pit three pounds, it’s a bit tedious. Some of the cherries fought pretty hard to hold onto their pits. My hands were covered in cherry juice, and I made a big mess, but I got it done. I followed some additional advice in the ATK book about cutting a vanilla bean in half, scraping out the seeds and putting them in the syrup, and then cutting the bean in fourths and putting one section in each jar. Now, that did make the cherries have a hint of a vanilla flavor that was really delicious, but I don’t want to tell you what I paid for vanilla beans. It was shy of sacrificing my firstborn. I don’t know if the same effect can be achieved by using vanilla extract or not. In any case, I processed the cherries to practice using the canner again.

Cherries in Syrup

I tried some on vanilla ice cream, and they were delicious. They were not overly sweet—just the right amount of sweetness and that yummy hint of vanilla. Fruit in syrup can be cloying, but these were excellent. Perfect for vanilla ice cream.

Cherries on Ice Cream

I really enjoyed starting my canning adventures, and these two books are both highly recommended for anyone looking to try it.

Review: Tartine Bread, Chad Robertson

Review: Tartine Bread, Chad RobertsonTartine Bread by Chad Robertson, Eric Wolfinger
Published by Chronicle Books (CA) on October 29, 2013
Genres: Cooking
Pages: 304
Format: E-Book
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five-stars

For the home or professional bread-maker, this is the book. It comes from a man many consider to be the best bread baker in the United States: Chad Robertson, co-owner of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, a city that knows its bread. To Chad, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. He developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens. Readers will be astonished at how elemental it is. A hundred photographs from years of testing, teaching, and recipe development provide step-by-step inspiration, while additional recipes provide inspiration for using up every delicious morsel.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might recall I’ve been learning how to bake bread for a few years now. I struggle to find time to bake sourdough bread because it has such a long rise. During the week, it’s just not really possible because of work. If I want to bake on the weekend, I need to plan in advance so that I can get my starter active again. I recently read Michael Pollan’s book Cooked, and it reminded me that I still hadn’t finished Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread. Pollan learns to bake sourdough from Robertson and documents his experience in that book. I have read quite a few books about baking sourdough, and my results have been sort of mixed. I decided to give Tartine Bread a try because I had heard that Robertson’s recipe and technique were good.

The selling point of Jim Lahey’s recipe and technique is that it is a no-knead recipe, and you can let it rise overnight. I kind of liked what I saw in Ken Forkish’s book, but it didn’t wow me. I thought it was me, and partly it was. It took me a while to figure out how you could tell your starter was active. I really like Chad Robertson’s helpful technique of dropping a bit into some water to see if it floats. If it does, it’s active. If it sinks, wait longer. I believe that Ken Forkish shared that tip in his book as well. Of the sourdough recipes I’ve tried, I think I liked Paul Hollywood’s recipe the least. I didn’t have good results with it. I figured I’d see what happened with Robertson’s recipe, and I was not disappointed.

I tried Robertson’s recipe and technique as written and made some beautiful loaves of sourdough.

Sourdough Bread
I had to get my starter in there, you know.

I halved the recipe so as to make just one loaf, and I’ve had a chance to bake twice using the halved recipe. I was initially afraid the salt amount was too much, but the bread doesn’t taste salty. The folding technique is easy to master once you’ve tried it a few times. The bread has a perfect crust. I baked Jim Lahey’s recipe as written and found the crust way too hard and dark for my liking. The kids wouldn’t eat it either. In fact, this recipe marks the first time they’ve eaten the sourdough bread I made (I know; they’re weird).

I did not make a starter using Robertson’s technique. I have had a starter going (in the fridge, for the most part) since late 2017, and I didn’t see any reason to make a fresh starter. I’m glad I didn’t worry about it because I don’t think I needed to. I tried the recipe with a bottle of spring water and then with water from the Brita pitcher and noticed no difference, so I think Robertson is right that the water doesn’t matter. He argues that the flour does, and I think he gets his from a local mill. I used King Arthur, which has been my go-to for a number of years now—pretty much since I moved to New England, though I clung to White Lily when I could find it for a little while. If you’re curious, I used King Arthur’s directions to make my starter. Robertson’s recipe calls for whole wheat flour, but what I had on hand is King Arthur’s sprouted whole wheat, which has a slightly milder flavor. I am convinced that the small amount of whole wheat flour is what separates Robertson’s recipe from the rest. It’s not really enough whole wheat flour to taste like wheat bread, necessarily, but I think it adds a flavor that white flour alone doesn’t have. I will definitely have to try Robertson’s recipe with regular whole wheat flour when I run out of the sprouted whole wheat.

I think if you get this book, you will probably get it for the main country bread recipe. I’m sure some of the others are good, but I haven’t tried them yet. Some of the recipes aside from the main recipe for country bread, as Robertson calls it, strike me as a bit different… and complicated, too, but we did try the French toast, which was probably the best French toast we’ve ever had. It smelled amazing as it was baking, too.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to try sourdough baking. This is hands-down the best recipe I’ve tried so far, and my results using Robertson’s recipe and technique have been the best out of the sourdough recipes I’ve tried, too. Honestly, I thought the country bread recipe alone made the book worth it.

five-stars

Review: My Bread, Jim Lahey with Rick Flaste

Review: My Bread, Jim Lahey with Rick FlasteMy Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey, Rick Flaste
on October 5th 2009
Genres: Cooking
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
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five-stars

When he wrote about Jim Lahey’s bread in the New York Times, Mark Bittman's excitement was palpable: "The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I’ve used, and it will blow your mind." Here, thanks to Jim Lahey, New York’s premier baker, is a way to make bread at home that doesn't rely on a fancy bread machine or complicated kneading techniques. Witnessing the excitement that Bittman's initial piece unleashed worldwide among bakers experienced and beginner alike, Jim grew convinced that home cooks were eager for a no-fuss way to make bread, and so now, in this eagerly anticipated collection of recipes, Jim shares his one-of-a-kind method for baking rustic, deep-flavored bread in your own oven.

The secret to Jim Lahey’s bread is slow-rise fermentation. As Jim shows in My Bread, with step-by-step instructions followed by step-by-step pictures, the amount of labor you put in amounts to 5 minutes: mix water, flour, yeast, and salt, and then let time work its magic—no kneading necessary. Wait 12 to 18 hours for the bread to rise, developing structure and flavor; then, after another short rise, briefly bake the bread in a covered cast-iron pot.

The process couldn’t be more simple, or the results more inspiring. My Bread devotes chapters to Jim's variations on the basic loaf, including an olive loaf, pecorino cheese bread, pancetta rolls, the classic Italian baguette (stirato), and the stunning bread stick studded with tomatoes, olives, or garlic (stecca). He gets even more creative with loaves like Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread, others that use juice instead of water, and his Irish Brown Bread, which calls for Guinness stout. For any leftover loaves, Jim includes what to do with old bread (try bread soup or a chocolate torte) and how to make truly special sandwiches.

And no book by Jim Lahey would be complete without his Sullivan Street Bakery signature, pizza Bianca—light, crispy flatbread with olive oil and rosemary that Jim has made even better than that of Italy’s finest bakeries. Other pizza recipes, like a pomodoro (tomato), only require you to spread the risen dough across a baking sheet and add toppings before baking.

Here—finally—Jim Lahey gives us a cookbook that enables us to fit quality bread into our lives at home.

I ordered Jim Lahey’s first book My Bread after finishing his third, The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook (his second is My Pizza, which I guess I’ll need to read!). Lahey’s recipe for a perfect no-knead crusty loaf of bread apparently took the world by storm some time back, but I missed it. I probably wouldn’t have picked this book up had The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook not crossed my radar. I have long been too intimidated to make bread, primarily because I saw it as a fussy food: you had to knead it just so, but don’t handle it too much. You had to set it out to rise. I love bread, but it seemed like a lot of hassle. In actuality, the biggest hassle is the amount of time. Jim Lahey’s bread needs to rise pretty much overnight, so it’s a good idea to mix the dough before you go to bed on a weekend. The next day, you can shape the dough and allow it to rise again, and you will have a nice loaf of bread for weekend supper.

Unlike The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook, the recipes in this book call for yeast rather than the stiff sourdough starter Jim Lahey calls biga. There is not a huge difference in flavor between the bread made with yeast versus the bread made with biga, but I think I actually prefer the bread made with biga. It seemed to me like the “holes” in the loaf were bigger. However, following the baking directions as stated in The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook yielded a very dark loaf for me with the crust almost burned. Of course, I didn’t use parchment for that loaf as I did the yeast loaf I made using Lahey’s recipe in My Bread, and I think perhaps the fact that I used oil may have contributed to the issue I had. Still, it might be worth following the baking directions for the yeast loaf next time I try to bake the bread with biga.

Here is the loaf I made today using Lahey’s recipe for basic no-knead bread on pp. 50-52 of the book:

The crust turned out perfectly, and I think the parchment paper was the trick there. I noticed that I could hear it crackling as it cooled, but it didn’t “sing” like the biga loaf.

Both loaves are delicious. I think the idea of using a natural yeast I created has some appeal. Lahey talks about trying to do things the old-fashioned way, such as baking in fire ovens, and I understand that feeling. It is a way of connecting to the past, to the work our ancestors did with their hands. I felt the same way making my own soap.

I haven’t tried the other recipes, but the book is an entertaining read, and the basic bread recipe is one I can see returning to over and over again.

Foodies Read ChallengeI hadn’t planned on reading quite so many cookbooks for this challenge. I envisioned reading more food histories, which also interest me. Still, I think it says something about the entertaining readability of the cookbooks I’ve read that I was able to read them cover to cover and see the personality of the author shine through.

I also discovered this book was a Gourmet Cookbook Club selection, which had me Googling said book club. It looks like after Epicurious acquired Gourmet, they scrubbed all the book club material from the site, but their list is still out there.

five-stars

Review: The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook, Jim Lahey with Maya Joseph

Review: The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook, Jim Lahey with Maya JosephThe Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook by Jim Lahey, Maya Joseph, Squire Fox
Published by W. W. Norton Company on November 7th 2017
Genres: Cooking
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
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four-half-stars

Founded in 1994, Sullivan Street Bakery is renowned for its outstanding bread, which graces the tables of New York’s most celebrated restaurants. The bread at Sullivan Street Bakery, crackling brown on the outside and light and aromatic on the inside, is inspired by the dark, crusty loaves that James Beard Award-winning baker Jim Lahey discovered in Rome.

Jim builds on the revolutionary no-knead recipe he developed for his first book, My Bread, to outline his no-fuss system for making sourdough at home. Applying his Italian-inspired method to his repertoire of pizzas, pastries, egg dishes, and café classics, The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook delivers the flavors of a bakery Ruth Reichl once called "a church of bread."

I think I ordered this book after reading about it on some sort of best-of-2017 cookbooks list. I am trying my hand at baking bread, and I really wanted to step up the challenge by trying sourdough baking. Back in December, I made my own sourdough starter using this recipe from King Arthur Flour. Jim Lahey includes his own starter recipe in The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook. I followed Lahey’s instructions to make my starter into biga, the stiff starter Lahey uses in many of his recipes. After I made my biga, I tucked it away in the refrigerator because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to experiment with it. Lahey says that unlike regular starter, biga doesn’t need to be “fed” and will keep pretty much as long as you want it in the refrigerator.

I don’t know if it matters whether or not your biga is brought to room temperature after it’s been refrigerated, but I didn’t bother with it when I decided to try out the recipe for pane bianco, Lahey’s recipe for a no-knead sourdough bread. Until I used this recipe, the only sourdough bread I’d made was King Arthur’s sort of cheater recipe for “rustic” sourdough bread. I call it a cheater recipe because it uses yeast and doesn’t rely strictly on the sourdough starter to rise, which makes it good for beginners. It tastes fine, but I wasn’t happy with it. In looking through the recipes in Lahey’s book, I settled on the pane bianco because it seemed the least fiddly (there are a lot of very fiddly recipes in this book). Word of caution: it is extremely time-consuming—not in the amount of work you need to do, but in wait time.

Lahey’s instructions said that after combining the water and biga with the flour and salt the recipe calls for, you might need to wait anywhere from eight to eighteen hours for the bread to double in size. 😯 I decided to mix the dough the night before I would bake it so it could do its thing overnight. When I woke up, I checked the bread, and it seemed pretty much ready to go, so I followed Lahey’s instructions for shaping it and then letting it rise again. I have an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and the instructions say not to heat it empty, but Lahey’s instructions say to preheat the Dutch oven. What to do? I didn’t want to risk damaging my Dutch oven, so I did some searching online and discovered I could put the bread into the Dutch oven, turn the oven on, and put the Dutch oven with the bread inside in the oven, which would serve basically the same function as preheating it while allowing the dough to finish its final rise. According to King Arthur’s blog, if you do this, you can just bake the bread according to its directions. I didn’t find this to be true. My crust came out quite a bit darker than I wanted it, as Lahey’s instructions say to bake the bread for 40 minutes. Next time, I will bake it for less time and see if that works better. The bread still turned out great.

My first loaf of “real” sourdough bread

I think given the fact that it was my first one, it really turned out better than expected. I forgot to slash the bread, which you are supposed to do with sourdough, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything.

I was really thrilled to see all the pockets of air. It truly tasted like one of those artisan loaves of bread you get at a bakery. I was ridiculously proud of being able to make a loaf of sourdough bread completely from scratch, using my very own biga created with my own starter. I have been intimidated by bread for a long time, and I credit buying Bread Toast Crumbs with being able to get over my fear of baking bread.

Lahey doesn’t like the tangy sourdough, so he says you don’t really taste that sourdough flavor in his recipes, and that was true of the bread I made. Keeping in mind this is the only recipe I have tried, I still recommend this book for people looking to step up their baking game. The recipes will offer a nice challenge for intermediate or more advanced bakers. It’s not a book for beginners, and be forewarned that most of the recipes will take time. We live in a busy world, and baking bread the old-fashioned way that Lahey uses takes a long time. Lahey also uses a kitchen scale and gives most of his instructions in grams. He gives you the volume measures as well but cautions that grams are better and more precise (and he’s right about that—I learned that lesson making soap). Bread is particularly picky and seems to work much better if you use a scale rather than trying to use measuring cups. It also matters if you are baking in the summer or winter, and you have to adjust. Thankfully, Lahey has good advice for how to adjust for seasonal temperature variances.

I know it’s sort of weird to read a recipe book all the way through, but Lahey’s personality and passion for baking come through, and even the recipes were entertaining to read. I used some of the techniques he describes in other recipes. For example, I found this great recipe for Detroit-style pizza with a homemade crust. After reading about how Lahey makes pizza dough look dimpled by “docking,” or pressing his fingers into the dough, I tried it with my pizza dough, and I achieved the same effect—”a sublime texture—pliant, soft, and bubbly” (119). For anyone curious about the pizza recipe, I make the pizza as is except I omit the cheddar cheese, which seems wrong on pizza to me, and use more mozzarella. I use both shredded mozzarella and fresh mozzarella cut into cubes. The results are pretty awesome.

There are a lot of recipes in the book I’m not sure I’d ever try (that panettone seems incredibly daunting for something I’m not even sure I’d like), but the bread recipes look good, the breakfasts look tasty, and the pizza crust is definitely on my to-d0 list.

I ordered Lahey’s first book My Bread this afternoon because I liked this book so much. I kind of want to visit his bakery if I get a chance to go to New York.

Foodies Read Challenge

four-half-stars

Review: Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat

Review: Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin NosratSalt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat, Wendy MacNaughton
Published by Simon & Schuster on April 25th 2017
Goodreads
five-stars

A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements, from the woman declared “America’s next great cooking teacher” by Alice Waters.

In the tradition of The Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything comes Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an ambitious new approach to cooking by a major new culinary voice. Chef and writer Samin Nosrat has taught everyone from professional chefs to middle school kids to author Michael Pollan to cook using her revolutionary, yet simple, philosophy. Master the use of just four elements—Salt, which enhances flavor; Fat, which delivers flavor and generates texture; Acid, which balances flavor; and Heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food—and anything you cook will be delicious. By explaining the hows and whys of good cooking, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach and inspire a new generation of cooks how to confidently make better decisions in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients, anywhere, at any time.

Echoing Samin’s own journey from culinary novice to award-winning chef, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat immediately bridges the gap between home and professional kitchens. With charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone. Refer to the canon of 100 essential recipes—and dozens of variations—to put the lessons into practice and make bright, balanced vinaigrettes, perfectly caramelized roast vegetables, tender braised meats, and light, flaky pastry doughs.

Featuring 150 illustrations and infographics that reveal an atlas to the world of flavor by renowned illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will be your compass in the kitchen. Destined to be a classic, it just might be the last cookbook you’ll ever need.

With a foreword by Michael Pollan.

I picked up this cookbook after hearing about it on NPR during a segment with Corby Kummer about his Atlantic article featuring the best cookbooks of 2017. It might be one of the few cookbooks that I read cover-to-cover because even more than recipes suggesting what to cook, Samin Nosrat’s book teaches you how to cook. Her contention is that if you learn how to work with salt, fat, acid, and heat, you can cook anything. I haven’t tried many of the recipes the book yet, but I have tried her techniques, and honestly, I only wish I’d had this book many years ago. Where has this book been all my life?

One caveat for people who buy cookbooks for pretty pictures of food. This book doesn’t have any photographs—just Wendy McNaughton’s artwork. When asked why no photographs, author Samin Nosrat said:

This book and this message is about teaching you to be loose in the kitchen. And I didn’t want you to feel bound to my one image of a perfect dish in a perfect moment and feel like that was what you had to make. So I didn’t want you to feel like you had to live up to my version of perfection.

I have to admit that the perfect photos on food blogs and cookbooks can sometimes be intimidating. Even though what I make might taste good, it rarely matches the photographs for aesthetic appeal, so Nosrat’s reasoning makes sense to me.

This book is perfect for beginning cooks or even more experienced cooks who want to expand their understanding of how cooking works. It’s also great for cooks who need a bit more confidence.

My biggest takeaway from the book is to taste as I’m cooking. I know that seems pretty obvious, but tasting as you cook is the best way to know if you are balancing flavors properly. Tiny little case in point: I made macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight (the real stuff, not the box kind). I thought maybe my macaroni wasn’t done, but I wasn’t sure, so I scooped a noodle out of the pot and tasted it. Nope, done. Just a small example. I’ve also tried her tips for macerating shallots for salad and used her technique for dicing onions. I had my own technique for dicing onions, but hers works better. These sorts of techniques are hard to come by in most cookbooks, which by and large assume a level of knowledge that not all cooks have.

Nosrat also has a likable and charming voice that most cookbooks lack. For example, here is part of her instruction for fixing a broken mayonnaise emulsion:

Using your oily, eggy whisk, start whisking the hot water maniacally, until it starts to foam. Then, treating the broken mayonnaise as if it were oil, add it drop by drop, continuing to whisk with the urgency of a swimmer escaping a shark. (84)

This is one cookbook I would recommend to just about anyone as I think there is something for everyone in its pages.

five-stars

Review: Bread Toast Crumbs: Recipes for No-Knead Loaves and Meals to Savor Every Slice, Alexandra Stafford with Lisa Lowery

Bread Toast Crumbs
Image via Alexandra Cooks blog

I have not reviewed cookbooks on this blog before, though I have been collecting cookbooks for a few years, and I have some really good ones that I should share with you all.

Cooking is not really something I have a ton of time to do, but I actually do like cooking. I am a very slow cook, and I make a great big mess when I cook, but I enjoy the process.

Bread, however, is something I have always shied away from, especially after some failed attempts. I tried to make a pie crust for my pumpkin pie and failed. I made a white bread recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, and it was okay, but certainly nothing to write home about. The only bread successes (discounting breads like zucchini bread and pumpkin bread, which didn’t use yeast and did not need to be kneaded) were my Thanksgiving dinner rolls. I credit the really excellent instructions for that success.

Everyone knows bread is picky. You have to knead it just right or else it will not turn out well. You have to have to fuss with the yeast, and everyone knows how finicky yeast is about how it’s handled. So, like many people, I was always a bit afraid to experiment with bread. A few weeks ago, that changed when I found Alexandra Stafford’s mother’s famous peasant bread recipe at her blog Alexandra Cooks. I read over the recipe. I watched one of the videos. It didn’t look hard. So I tried it with all wheat flour, not knowing (because I am not a bread baker) that I was going to get a denser loaf of bread. But you know what? It was still amazing. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I hit on Alexandra’s advice to keep the flour weight at 512 grams, and the next time I made bread, I used about two cups of wheat flour and made the rest of the weight up with unbleached white flour. It was perfect. Measuring by weight was the trick. The consistency was just like Alexandra’s pictures, and the bread was not too dense. That’s how easy the recipe is. No kneading. The time you spend actually fussing with the bread is maybe five minutes. The rest of the time is just letting it rise. It’s a very forgiving recipe in that even if you mess up on a step, it still seems to turn out just fine.

My family loved the bread, too. The recipe makes two loaves, and twice, I’ve come into the kitchen to find my son has taken half a loaf before I could even cut it. I knew I wanted to try the variations on the recipe in Alexandra’s book Bread Toast Crumbs: Recipes for No-Knead Loaves and Meals to Savor Every Slice. I have read through the book, though I haven’t made many of the recipes yet. The recipes are straightforward and easy to follow. Alexandra offers some tricks and advice for those of us who don’t often bake (for example, toast nuts before using them in breads—this is a trick I had picked up from a friend of mine at work, but it was nice to see it validated in the book). The book has many variations on the peasant bread recipe in the Bread section. In the Toast section, Alexandra shares recipes for spreads, jams, soups, sandwiches, entrées, and desserts that use the various bread recipes. In the Crumbs section, she shares salads, soups, side dishes, pasta, entrées, and desserts that use crumbs made from the various breads. Each section has its own introduction with more tips.

The photography in the book (like most cookbooks) is beautiful and serves as a nice guideline for bakers. I can’t wait to try more of the recipes. I’m especially eyeing the Roasted Garlic Bread. Today, I tried out the Oatmeal-Maple bread on p. 41. Here are some pictures of one of the loaves I made today. It’s already been eaten, by the way.

Rating: ★★★★★

Weekend Reading: May 3, 2014

BookSpring finally appears to have sprung here in New England. We had an especially cold and long winter here. I haven’t done a weekend reading update in quite some time. It is so typical of me to decide to do some sort of regular post and forget about it.

Right now, I’m reading several things: [amazon_link id=”039332737X” target=”_blank” ]Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare[/amazon_link] by Stephen Greenblatt, [amazon_link id=”0060838655″ target=”_blank” ]A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present[/amazon_link] by Howard Zinn (just dipping in and out of that one), [amazon_link id=”0062314610″ target=”_blank” ]The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia, HarperCollins Audio)[/amazon_link] by C. S. Lewis (meh so far), and [amazon_link id=”0812981618″ target=”_blank” ]Blood and Beauty: The Borgias; A Novel[/amazon_link] by Sarah Dunant (not hooking me, but not boring me).

The other day, I came across an article on NPR discussing this excellent cookbook collection curated by Amazon. I spent a long time poring through the regional cookbook selections, finding myself especially drawn to the historical cookbooks. What a find! I decided I must start collecting cookbooks and put the ones that interested me most in my wishlist. I especially liked the way the cookbooks were broken down by region, and I found myself drawn most to the collections from my adopted home of New England, my former home in the South, and my family connections and ancestral ties to Texas. I found the Southwest intriguing as well. Anyway, I think it’s an excellent collection for a beginner to peruse, and I found that the methods of selection for the list interested me as well:

To develop the map, Malcolm started with books she personally liked, then James Beard and International Association of Culinary Professionals award winners, then historically significant ones like Fannie Farmer and the quintessential African-American from the 19th century: What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. Then she threw in highly rated reader favorites. “Editorial selection criteria didn’t have anything to do with sales,” she says.

[amazon_image id=”1449427537″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy[/amazon_image]The first book I ordered from the collection comes from New England. [amazon_link id=”1449427537″ target=”_blank” ]The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy[/amazon_link] drew me because of its emphasis on one unusual ingredient. The book is especially praised in reviews for the ranch dressing and scalloped potato recipes. I am a huge fan of ranch dressing, and when you get it just right, it’s amazing. The book also includes instructions on making butter and buttermilk. I actually already know how to make butter, but I was curious about making buttermilk. I know that some folks substitute buttermilk with milk and vinegar or lemon juice, and I am really, really hoping that is NOT the recipe. Surely not. Wouldn’t that be kind of embarrassing in a cookbook like this? Anyway, I will find out later today, when FedEx brings the book.

So what are you reading?