Cheese Bread

To start off this bread with oh-so-much potential to be delicious, proof 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast a 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar in 7/8 of a cup of warm water. After a few minutes, stir the yeast mixture into 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, a small half-handful of salt, and 2 tablespoons of butter. Then, start kneading. This is a particularly easy dough to work with, and took an almost disappointingly short amount of time to bring to the usual satiny, elastic consistency. Anyway, put in a greased bowl, cover, and let sit for the

First rising (1 hour and 30 minutes)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, I've finally put the Qual (more on that next week, perhaps) and a pair of apartment moves behind me, putting an end to what felt like one of my more surreal summers. I think I mentioned in my last post that the company I am leasing my apartment from had messed up and accidentally overlapped my lease with the tail-end of the former resident's lease, something the company only told me a few days before I was supposed to move. This struck me as strange, but all the more so because of the events that preceded my hearing that news.

I had just taken a weekend trip to Chicago (the only time I made it out of this college town all summer). And while the time in Chicago itself was fantastic, the journeys to and from were far more interesting than three-hour bus-rides should have been. First, on the way up to Chicago, there was a couple taking photos of the countryside as we drove up the interstate. Taking photos almost exactly every 15 minutes (by my watch). Now, of course, I have no problem with people taking pictures on vacation, but really...the entire drive up provides an impressively unchanging view of large farms laid out exactly alike, and I continually found myself trying to imagine the picture slide show that must have resulted, "And here: here's a corn silo. And this one: no, I know it looks just like the other corn silo, but in fact it's about ten miles down the road! And look at this: a corn silo that is slightly more faded than the last two. And..."

I really rather enjoyed that, and thought the bus ride back would offer nothing to compare. But, I think I somehow attract moments of the "You don't want to hear 'X' from 'Y'" sort. In this case, Y was the bus driver, and X was "Now wait a second...Am I supposed to take this exit?" This was particularly unsettling, as the drive from Chicago to the University involves getting on the interstate and not taking any exits until you have arrived at the University. Thus, the correct answer to X was "No," but that wasn't the answer the driver settled on, and we ended up driving up 30 miles West before the bus driver decided that we had, somehow or other, gotten off course.

So, after arriving home at the end of this bus ride rather later than I expected to, I decided that I wanted to get something from one of the sidewalk eateries. Now, I have been carded very few times in my life; I think I can count on both hands (or if not, certainly on both hands and feet) the number of times I have ever been asked to show my license. So, "Can I see some ID?" is still a question that I don't always expect. But, it was doubly unexpected in this instance: I had only gone to a Subway-like sandwich shop, and was carded for trying to order a tuna sandwich. It was about half an hour after this that the leasing company called me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Punch the dough down in the bowl. Cover your kneading board with a super-thin dusting of flour, and then with a very (very!) generous layer of grated Parmesan. Start kneading the dough again on the board, and in addition to the Parmesan, work in another 1/3 of a cup of fine-shredded double Gloucester cheese. This cheesy version of the dough will feel weird and grainy until both cheeses are really well incorporated into the dough, which makes it particularly easy to tell when it has been kneaded enough.

Anyway, press the dough into a rectangle, fold it, pinch the seam, and place in a greased 9x5 baking tin. Cover and leave alone for the


Second rising (50)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week I finally, not wanting to deal with making the long round trip to Maine every year by car, switched my license and registration to the state of Illinois. This made me rather sad for a pair of reasons. The first is easy enough to explain: I think of myself as a New Englander, and really not at all as a Midwesterner (nor is my Midwestern geography nearly good enough to qualify me as such - I once, very embarrassingly, identified "Lake Michigan" as "Wisconsin" when one of my friends was trying to sketch the surrounding area for me). So, having an Illinois drivers license sitting in my wallet, falsely proclaiming some sort of Midwesternitude (Midwestosity? Midwestness?) just doesn't feel right.

The other sense in which the switch made me a little sad takes a quick few sentences of back story. For the record, I very rarely compare myself to gorillas or gibbons or other such apes. And when I do, the comparison is usually very much in my favor. Sort of in the vein of, "Hey I'm taking Field Theory! I bet an orangutan would really struggle with this material!" On the other hand, I have a much more mixed record when it comes to using tools. Sometimes, things go just fine and, for instance, after using just a Swiss Army knife to disassemble all of the furniture in my apartment to make it easier to move, I get a pleasantly inflated "I could totally survive alone in the wilderness with just my wits and this 21-in-1 gadget" sense of myself (for the record, I think my knife is only a 15-in-1 device). Sometimes, though, things go less well, as when the seemingly simple task of changing my license plates (requiring me to change 4 screws, all told) leaves me struggling for the better part of 20 minutes. It's moments like those that I start playing nature documentaries of chimps using tools in my head, and the comparisons start to look a little less favorable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Set the oven to 375 degrees, and while it is warming up put in the steam pan that the previous resident of your new apartment left behind. When the oven is preheated, pour 3/4 of a cup of water into the pan, and put the bread in as well. After 30 minutes, take the bread out of the tin and let bake on the wire rack of the oven for another 3 minutes or so. Take out, and let cool before slicing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Tasting verdict: Quite, quite tasty. The crust and general texture has a hint of the Brioche about it, but rather less buttery and certainly with less of the pure-unhealthy-for-you feel of that earlier bread. Anyway, the crust is practically perfect in my book: Nice and crispy, but if anything just a touch not tough enough. The flavor is also excellent, with a nice but subtle and not at all overpowering flavor of cheese to it. I do think, though, that the cheese flavor isn't quite evenly distributed through the slice, so I guess even though it felt done I needed to knead it a little bit more. All in all, though, one of my more unqualified successes!

Cheese of the week: In the latest less-than-healthy addition to my life, I discovered a shop that sells a truly astounding selection of imported cheeses (it was right behind the temporary apartment I had to live in for a week), and I simultaneously and totally coincidentally rediscovered the fact that I really like cheese. So, the week before last was a fantastic Gorgonzola, and this week (coming as no surprise given its inclusion in this recipe) was double Gloucester. In addition to being quite tasty and excellent for sandwiches, see these hilarious articles about a bizarre tradition surrounding double Gloucester.

Long-rising homestyle bread

To get started with this loaf, proof 2 teaspoons of (active dry - the sort I've been implicitly using all along) yeast in 1 cup of warm milk, along with 1 tablespoon of sugar. After a few minutes, add 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 2 teaspoons of salt, and 3 cups of bread flour. Ah, you were expecting the usual "all-purpose flour" there, weren't you? Well, I guess I'm just full of surprises! Actually, it's just that after months of seeing bread flour sitting next to the all the other flours I finally just got curious and decided to give it a try; see if the loaf turns out substantially differently.

The very first difference comes out right away: this dough is unexpectedly tough to knead. Either that or, perhaps just as likely, my arms are just tired from moving all of my furniture and belongings twice in as many weeks. Anyway, when the dough has that usual nice, elastic feel set it in a greased bowl, cover, and let stand for the extra-long

First rising (1 hour and 30 minutes at room temperature, 7 hours overnight in the fridge)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm afraid this is going to be another short post, and I'll probably not post next weekend either. But I think I have pretty good excuses on both counts... I was supposed to move into my apartment a week ago, but the leasing company made a small mistake, starting my lease before the previous tenant's lease expired. Which, on the one hand, seems like a pretty minor mistake and an easy one to make, but on the other hand...I mean, getting lease dates right seems to me to be pretty much the primary task of a leasing company. All other details secondary, and that sort of thing. Oh well; at least I got a rug out of it. Not, of course, that they actually gave me a rug as a consolation prize (unlike my previous luck with airlines and teddy bears), but they did knock one week's worth off of my rent check, a sum which I decided I ought to use by getting something for the apartment, with no real function, that I otherwise wouldn't have bought. Hence the rug.

And, as for next weekend..l Well, a week from today The Qual starts, and I think for the next week, much like the past several, I'll be doing little other than studying.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take the dough out of the fridge in the morning, and punch it. Gently rub the resulting slightly bruised knuckles, as you realize that after spending time in the fridge the dough has pretty thoroughly solidified. Give it an hour or so to come to room temperature, and then punch it again and to much better effect. Shape into a loaf, out in a greased 9x5 bread pan, and cover for the comparatively short

Second Rising (1 hour)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three things about my apartment that caught me (quite pleasantly) by surprise: First, it is a bit (say 125%) larger than I remember it. It turns out that when you move less furniture in than the previous resident moved out, the result is more open space than you might have seen during the showing. Second: I now get to walk by a rather nice fountain every day as I head to and from work. I'm a big fan of fountains (something of a mystery, perhaps, as I'm really not such a fan of water otherwise). Third (and most surprising!): I can't believe I didn't notice this when I was viewing the apartment, but it is situated one one ridge of what you might call a little valley! Now, anywhere other than here I'd more likely call it a pair of barely discernible rolls in the terrain, rising and falling at most 10 feet over the course of two blocks. But that's almost certainly more total elevational change in the space of two blocks than I had on my entire 1.5 mile walk to and from my last apartment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heat oven to 400 degrees, and bake for just over 35 minutes. Discover that your new apartment, much like your old one, has a hyper-sensitive smoke alarm. Let the bread cool, slice, and enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tasting verdict: Excellent! This (slightly misshapen) loaf has one of the best textures of any bread I've made in a long while. And, the crust is exactly the tough, chewy sort of beast that I like sinking my teeth into as I'm starting to eat my sandwich. Definitely not a breakfast-toast sort of loaf, but I think a superb (if not particularly striking, taste-wise) lunch bread. Bread flour might have to become a standard part of the arsenal.

Currently reading: Just finishing up David Copperfield. I had forgotten how hilarious Dickens can be sometimes...a perfect book to complement the much heavier and drearier Qual-preparatory-reading I've had to do.

08/08/08!

On the one hand, the Olympics started today. But perhaps more importantly, I hope everybody is enjoying International Bagel Day!! Perhaps next week when I do an actual post again I'll make bagels to belatedly mark the occasion.