Daniel's French Bread

Well, a very exciting day for the Bread Blog, as this marks my first totally off-recipe attempt at making a loaf. Now, you may recall that earlier I learned that by law to call a loaf of bread "French" it must have as its ingredients only salt, flour, yeast, and water...so that's what I've done! And, I know you're wondering, but I promise: the decision to make this loaf has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that, since my car is still at the mechanics, I haven't gone to the supermarket in a few weeks now. Honest.

Start out by proofing 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast in 1 cup of warm water. After a few minutes, add this to a mixing bowl with 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 cups of all-purpose flour. Stir in another cup of flour and another 1/2 of a cup of water. The dough will still be fairly sticky, but, um...yes, that's what we're going for today. Start kneading the dough, adding in maybe another 1/4 cup of flour as you work. The stickiness of the dough means you'll have to use our ninja speed as you knead, otherwise the dough will just stick to your hand.

Anyway, since we aren't using butter this time around, pat the outside of the dough with flour and then place it in a lightly floured bowl. Cover and let sit for the


First rising (2 hours)
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For all of you wh
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Punch the dough down, and then coat your hand in flour to remove the bits of dough that are now sticking to it. Apparently the stickiness of dough increases as it rises. So, anyway, knead in just enough extra flour so that you can handle the dough, and then roll it up into a tube (just like making a snake out of clay!) Then, since I still don't have a baguette pan, flour a long piece of aluminum foil, put the dough in, and roll it up (weighting down the ends of the foil so it doesn't unwrap as the dough grows) for the


Second rising (40 minutes)
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Set the oven for 450 degrees. While it is warming up, flour a cookie sheet and transfer the dough to it (actually, trickier than it sounds! the dough is still sticky enough to stick to the tin foil a bit, and it isn't stiff and sturdy enough to pick up...I resorted to holding the long edge of the tin foil, letting it unfurl under the weight of the dough, and letting the dough plop down into place. Not exactly the most elegant solution!)

When the oven is at temperature, put the dough and cookie sheet in the oven. Now, take a liquid hand-soap dispenser (thoroughly cleaned out beforehand, and filled with water), and use it to "spray" the inside of the oven with water. The goal, of course, is to create steam inside the oven, ideally giving the bread a nice, crispy crust. The result, just as inevitably, is an accidental activation of my apartment's overly sensitive smoke detector. But don't let that deter you! Repeat the water-spraying after 5, 10, and 15 minutes. Let the bread bake for a total of 35 minutes. After which, remove it from the oven (not forgetting to admire the gradations of flour charring on the cookie sheet), and let it cool for at least half and hour or so.


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Finally, since there is no fat in this bread and thus I'm pretty sure it won't keep very well, why not make it into a nice dinner side dish? Cut the loaf in half lengthwise, and then cut that half in half depthwise. Liberally spread with butter and a little garlic, and wrap both slices up in that aluminum foil we already used. Put back in the oven (at, say, 300 degrees), for just less than 10 minutes. Unwrap and enjoy!


Tasting notes: Um...tasty! The bread itself is nothing to go on at great length about. Pretty standard, nothing overly exciting. The crust did not come out as crispy as I had hoped (although the crust on the twice-cooked garlic bread portion was just what I was looking for. But I don't know if just letting the whole loaf cook longer would have been a good idea...the crumb itself was just right, and more time in the oven probably would have just dried it out. Any ideas?

Currently still in the middle of reading: East of Eden

Cornmeal Bread

Back to sandwich bread this week, and another week where we start out making a cornmeal-based sludge. So, put 1/2 a cup of cornmeal (medium ground) and 1 teaspoon of salt into 1 cup of boiling water. But watch out! Boiling cornmeal sludge, as it turns out, splatters all over the place. And it hurts.

Well, once the cornmeal has thickened take it off the burner and let it cool. In the meantime, proof 4 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water mixed with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Add the yeast mixture, along with 3/4 of a cup of warm milk, 1 scant tablespoon of salt, and 1/4 of a cup of dark brown sugar, to the cornmeal, and stir well. Start mixing in all-purpose flour, a cup or so at a time, until the dough is workable (for me, about 4 cups). Time to get to the kneading. While not as tough as some of our earlier doughs, this dough needs lots of extra flour worked into it before it stops being so sticky. So, if not a sprint, prepare for a marathon of kneading. Anyway, as always, put the dough in a buttered bowl, cover, and set aside in a warm spot (and really, since summer has more than certainly arrived, that probably means jsut about anywhere) for the


First rising (1 hour)
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For all of you who are laboring under the impression that I'm any good at math, this one's for you: and installment of "Daniel is Baffeled by Basic Arithmetic," the "cooking dinner" edition.

To set the stage, let me first explain that I enjoy cooking dinner for myself. Quite a bit, actually, since it means that I almost never have to eat foods that I'm even mildly uninterested in (except, of course, for those pesky green vegetables. Which I make myself eat). However, it's also true that sometimes, especially on those days that I get home late from work, I'm in more of a "Me hungry now!" than an "Oh! Why don't I spend a while cooking before eating anything!" sort of mood. So, my compromise is the standard one of cooking for more than one person, and then having leftovers. And, I've decided that the ideal amount of leftovers is to have enough for dinner the next night. Or, if I'm making something either extra elaborate or extra tasty, enough for two leftover meals. So far, nothing too out of the ordinary, right? Well, for the purposes of this note, just remember that my ideal dinner-units worth of food (and thus, the number I am always aiming for) when cooking for myself is two, or three on the outside.

So, the, what to make of my last dinner-cooking experiment, conducted almost a week ago this past Monday? The one in which I was thinking I would make enough food for three nights total, counting that night's dinner. You remember, it was that pasta dish...the one where I started out with about four meals worth of rotini. It had that sauce whose first step involved pouring almost two pounds worth of diced tomatoes into a sauce pan. And, since I was feeling like a bit adventuresome, the sauce that I proceeded to add about two meals worth of cut up, seasoned, pan-grilled meat to. Well, I'm happy to say that the pasta did at least end up being rather tasty, but also painfully plentiful. Because, you see, it turns out that 4 meals plus sauce pluse two meals doesn not equal two or three meals. Inevitable conclusion: I can't add. Life Lesson Learned: "sauce: is not a negative integer. Punishment Assigned to Atone for Mistake: let's just say I've eaten a lot of pasta recently.
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Punch the dough down, and divide it in two. Shape into loaves, and put in buttered 8x4 and -x5 bread tins (so chosen, of course, not out of design but because those are still my only two pans to bake bread in). Re-cover, and set aside for the


Second rising (35 minutes)
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Well, terribly sorry, but nothing else really to report just at the moment. Last week I was just catching up on work, so nothing overwhelmingly exciting happened. And let's see...this coming week, other than keeping up with the work (an extra boatload of journal reading for the next little while), I just have an assortment of miscellaneous stuff: get the car fixed, keep looking for a new apartment, look into getting my car registration/insurance switched over the Illinois...all those fun details!
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Set the oven for 425 degrees, and bake for 10 minutes. Then, lower the temperature to 350, and bake for another 22 minutes. The recipe rather endearingly hints at how imperative it is to ignore the delicious aromas of this bread and resist the temptation to cut off a slice before it has thoroughly cooled. Well, I'm sure we all know how well I followed that advice.

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Tasting notes: First, speaking of delicious aromas, this loaf really did have one of the best fill-up-the-apartment-while-baking smells of any bread I've made in a good long while. Quite the added bonus because, you see, this is also a very good, solid-tasting sort of bread... in a way, it reminds me of the anadama, albeit a bit richer and a bit less flavorful. All told, I think I have a week or so of better-than-my-average sandwiches to look forward to. And really, that's all I ask.

Currently reading: East of Eden (or, rather, just starting it).

Bagels! (Attempt #2)

This week we'll be trying a totally different recipe from last time's effort, which not only gives me hope that these bagels will come out better than last time, but also keeps alive my "no-repeated-recipes" streak.

Start out by proofing 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/3 of a cup of warm water mixed with 1 teaspoon of sugar. After a few minutes, pour that in your mixing bowl, and start adding the following: another 2/3 cups of warm water, 3 tablespoons of melted butter (my one deviation from the recipe this week, which actually called for 3 tablespoons of "salad oil" instead of butter), 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 beaten egg. This will leave you with quite the tasty drink, I'm sure. Anyway, from here stir in, about a cup at a time, 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour.

The resulting dough will be quite easy to work with, so just knead it for a few minutes until it becomes nice and smooth. Put in a buttered bowl, cover, and set in a warm spot to rise. Watch out, though! This dough, if yours turns out anything like mine, will be completely out of control! I had barely looked away when all of a sudden the dough had almost expanded right out of the bowl. Which means it practically tripled in bulk in a very short time.

First Rising (1 hour)
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Euro 2008 has started! And so now, thanks to the big projector at the student union, I am now more than able to get my daily dose of soccer goodness. So, you ask, which team am I throwing my support behind, seeing as I have no real connection with any of the teams in the tournament? The Netherlands.

A strange choice, you think? Well, I have essentially two reasons. The first, and the one actually related to soccer, is that I think they make for some incredibly fun games to watch. For one, they have a fast, slick, fun, and at times simply stunning offense, counterattacking with speed and (so far!) seemingly able to pull goals out of thin air. And on the other hand, they have what seems to me to be a highly suspect defense, which makes at times truly boneheaded decisions. Put those two facts together, and you have a team that keeps the game interesting and exciting at both ends of the field.

And, my more superficial reason: Holland has both my favorite team nickname (the "Clockwork Oranje"), and perhaps the best named player in the tournament (that would be Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink). How can you beat that?
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Punch the dough down, recover the bowl, and set aside for the

Second Rising (1 hour)
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So, this past Thursday I went to the opening midnight screening of a movie (embarrassing admission: I really wanted to start that sentence "This Thursday last..."). Which was a first for me. In fact, I don't know if I'd even ever seen a movie on its opening weekend before, let alone its opening day. Sadly, the movie my friends and I went to see for this momentous event in my life was "The Incredible Hulk." Let's just say I was sufficiently underwhelmed by the experience.

Things started out with a brilliant display of competence from the projectionist, who, as a prelude to the film, allowed us to watch all of the previews for and the first seven minutes of "Kung Fu Panda" (which, to be fair, may well be a better film anyway). Fortunately, just when the audience had settled down and decided to make the best of the situation by watching that and not generally shouting at the screen, things got back on track and the intended movie was put in. I think, though, that my favorite pair of things about the movie were (a) the running commentary from the seats behind me - featuring such insightful observations as "Hulk..SMASH!" and "Oh, man, do not test him!" - and (b) reading a review of the movie after seeing it (something I don't usually do) - a review that has what is, so far, the slickest movie-review-slam of a performance (see the "Mr. Norton, ever the professional..." line) I've yet read.
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Punch the dough down, recover the bowl, and set aside for the outrageous and thus-far unprecedented

Third Rising (50 minutes)
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And speaking of personal firsts, just today I paid my first visit to a winery, one just outside of town. It was quite nice, even if I didn't particularly care for the wines we tasted. Perhaps most disappointing, though, is that I remain frustrated in my quest to taste and compare for myself a wine grape and a table grape. Well, serves me right for going in June!
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Set a pot of water (with 2 tablespoons of sugar added) to boiling, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In the meantime, knead the dough for a minute or so, and then divide into 8 roughly equal pieces. Just as in our last stab at making bagels, shape them by rolling each piece into a ball, pinching in the middle, and gently working the hole until it is as large as you want it to be.

Drop the bagels (just a two or three at a time) in the boiling water for 2 minutes, and then flip them over to their other side to boil for another 2 minutes. I have to admit to a certain amount of trepidation here... the recipe claims the bagels will first float, then sink, then rise to the surface again. But I saw none of that. Worrisome. Anyway, after boiling, put the bagels on a greased cookie sheet, and brush them with a mix of beaten egg yolk and milk. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and then bake for 35 minutes.

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Tasting verdict: Well, I'm getting closer, but I clearly still don't quite have the bagel thing down. The crust came out just about perfect (well, as far as I'm concerned, anyway), but the interior of the bagels still aren't really up to snuff. More like bread than a bagel. Still, I think I'm getting closer, and they still taste good, even if the texture still isn't there.

Portuguese Sweet Bread

This week: another one of those delicious, egg-and-butter rich loaves of questionable health value. Because after last week's loaf I just want something tasty.

Start out by proofing 5 teaspoons of yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar in 1/2 a cup of warm water. After a few minutes, add 1/2 a cup of warm milk, 1 stick of softened butter, 3 lightly beaten eggs, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 cup of sugar. Which seems like a lot, but I guess they don't call it "sweet bread" for nothing!

Anyway, one cup at a time stir in about 4 cups of all-purpose flour. The recipe suggests this will be all that is needed, and to add extra flour only until the dough loses its stickiness. My experience was somewhat different, as after 4 cups all that was in front of me was a very thick, sludge-like liquid. Anyway, I added maybe another 2 or 2 1/2 cups of flour just to get a dough I could knead, and even then the dough was extremely soft and loose. Actually, the dough was vaguely reminiscent of oobleck, now that I think of it!

First Rising (2 hours)
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Reasons why I should like the summer: Well, first and foremost I suppose, would be how much less stressful the days are. No exams to prepare for, no problem set deadlines pressing down upon you, just a steady flow of work. It's funny, but even though I'm putting in almost identical hours (albeit minus the teaching workload) it just feels like much less work.
Second, the pace of the day is much friendlier. The knowledge that I could sleep in if I wanted to, or take an extra 15 preparing a nice breakfast instead of a quick bowl of cereal, makes the start of the day so much nicer, even if, in fact, I almost never do either of those things.
As I mentioned last week, now that the summer has started and there are so many fewer students on campus, I feel like I'm starting to recognize faces on my walks to and from work. Kind of a nice, if fake, small town feel.
And, I must admit, not having to walk past lines of squiffy undergrads outside of bars (or, closer to the weekends, rather more thoroughly drunk ones) has been a welcome change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Punch the dough down and cut it in half with a butter knife. Which will actually be trickier than it sounds...the dough at this point will have a sort of quicksand-ish quality, and will try to yank the knife away and drag it down to the depths. Anyway, shape each half into a loaf, and put one in a buttered 9x5 bread pan. For some variety, though, why not go for a circular loaf and put the other half in one of those medium-sized frying pans. Cover, set aside, and let rise again until doubled in bulk.

Second Rising (2 hours)
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Reason why the summer is actually my least favorite season: the heat. The mind-melting, soul-sapping, draining, awful oppressive heat. The sort of heat that makes it impossible to think, that discourages you from wanting to cook anything interesting to eat. Temperatures that make you forget your distaste for water (and inability to swim) and suddenly long for a swimming pool. Weather in general that makes you feel like nothing so much as a gelatinous blob of cooked spaghetti (or, perhaps more aptly, a string of wet sponges). Now, I know, I know... I just need to build some character and get over it. But I am not a fan.
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. While it is warming up, thoroughly beat one egg. Liberally brush the beaten egg on the loaves, and then bake for 32 minutes.

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Tasting verdict: As the astute reader has perhaps figured out by now, I rather like the whole genre of egg and butter loaded loaves. And this one is no exception. I think I managed to slightly under-cook it (just by a hair), so there is definitely some room for improvement in this loaf. The fact that an entire cup of sugar went into the bread is awfully apparent, and as a result this bread is just teetering on the brink of being overly sweet. But, all in all, I really quite like it...definitely in the top 50% (maybe even the top third) of the loaves I've made so far.

Brown Bread

Well, I am continuing my streak of bread posts beginning with the letter "B" this week with what turned out to be, the easiest loaf to make. And also, owing to some unorthodox instructions (no kneading, only one rising), far and away the fastest loaf, clocking in from cluelessly looking at the recipe to slicing a piece of cooling-on-the-rack bread at just under two hours.

Now, don't call me crazy just yet, but start things off by putting 3 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour in a mixing bowl, and put that mixing bowl in the oven. Turn the heat to the lowest setting and leave the door slightly ajar. While the flour is warming up, proof 3 3/4 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water. After a few minutes, stir in 2 tablespoons of molasses, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1/2 a tablespoon of butter.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour. Oh, actually, it's probably best to first take the flour out of the oven. Then add the yeast mixture to the flour. Pour in as well another 1 1/2 cups of warm water. After some vigorous stirring, you should end up with some warm, wet, sticky dough, not at all unlike what we wound up with when making the limpa a few months ago. Pour the dough straight into a buttered 9x5 bread pan, cover, and set in a warm spot. Keep a sharp eye on it while it rises:

First Rising (25 minutes)
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I think I've finally figured out one of the things that, in the back of my mind, I've been thinking is strange about this town: I almost never recognize people walking down the street. That struck me last week, when some of my friends and I were out and someone walked past that I knew I had seen before but was not in the physics department and had not been in any of my classes.

I spent the next few days idly trying to figure out where I might have seen this person before (and realizing on Saturday that it was someone who worked in a coffee shop I had gone to maybe twice over the last year), and it really hit me that when I'm walking around town I've just altogether stopped expecting that I might know anybody I run into outside of the few buildings where I work. Now, I know right now all you city folks are just chortling away, but that's really quite a change from both my hometown and where I went to college. But mostly, I wonder why it took me so long to realize this.
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Basically there is nothing left to do. While the bread is rising preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and once the dough is level with the top of the pan, put it in the oven for all of 35 minutes.
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Tasting verdict: Well, last week I may have made a horribly unhealthy loaf, but this week I fear I've swung too far in the opposite direction. This bread tastes entirely too wholesome for me to really enjoy, although I'm sure it will make at least passable sandwiches. Also, although you don't notice it so much while chewing it, this loaf has a distinct and non-too-pleasant aftertaste of molasses. Definitely a loaf only to be made once.

Currently reading: Brushing up on the "confluent hypergeometric functions" part of my math methods lecture notes. So, as I'm sure you can imagine, at the moment I am still welcoming any alternate suggestions.