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Meet Oliver. He lives in my fridge.  But more about him later. First course: French bread with dipping sauces  Traditional active dry yeast. Olive oil with roasted garlic and romesco sauce (thickened with bread). Paired with red wine. Second Course: Sourdough bread and veggies with hot cheese fondue  Sourdough bread from homemade starter. Cheese fondue made with sharp cheddar, gruyere, and provolone. Fondue flavored with German lager beer, same beer served as a pairing. Third Course: Ethiopian food served with fermented Injera Bread  Homemade Injera made from fermented whole brown Teff grains. Served with ayeb be gomen (collards and cheese), lentils, roasted root veggies, cabbage slaw, and doro wat (chicken, not pictured). Dessert: Lime Cheesecake Ice Cream sandwiches with toasted brown bread  Brown Bread (quick bread), steam-baked in a can in the traditional method. Lime Cheesecake Ice Cream. Background: we've been doing a lot of baking at my house On a trip to Restaurant Depot back in September, the girlfriend talked me into buying a 50 pound bag of King Arthur special Patent Flour. At $16, it was a fraction of the supermarket price, so I couldn't say no. We've been keeping it in 6-gallon beer brewing buckets.  I just realized that I spent more on storage than I did on flour. Seriously, though, these lids are amazing: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KAZ1W0  This is a high-gluten flour, and it makes excellent bread. It can be a little unruly to shape, but we've used it to make all kinds of bread, including pizza and bagels. Which brings us to Oliver. I have to admit, he is really the woman's project; I've never had the patience to keep yeast as pets. Oliver was created with rye flour, water, and patience. At first, the bread made from Oliver was slow to rise, and not very sour. After a few weeks, though, he got very active... and very sour.  We keep Oliver in the fridge, in an unsealed container. He is labeled so I don't accidentally knock him over (again). (sorry about that, bro) She feeds him when he is hungry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZttFozHr9g We've mixed Oliver with all kinds of different grains, too:  (click for bigger) Details: French Bread King Arthur Special Patent Flour leavened with active dry yeast.  For an appetizer, fresh bread with dipping sauces. This kind of dough is quite versatile; I saved half of this batch in the freezer to make pizza with next week.  The Romesco sauce is made from fresh roasted red peppers, crushed smoked almonds, and bread. One of the two baguettes was a little misshapen, so it got chopped up and turned into sauce for the other one. The olive oil has some roasted garlic cloves, herbs, and salt. Details: Sourdough and Cheese Course King Arthur Special Patent Flour leavened with Oliver (sourdough starter)  What is a better pairing than crusty bread and molten cheese? With this combination of flour and starter, we've found it best to use a very wet dough. The pics at the bottom of the following collage show the bread before and after rising. Baking the bread in the cast iron dutch oven gave it the perfect size and shape for fitting the ramekin inside.  Now on to the cheese:  I am pleased to announce that I have joined the rest of the goons in the 21 century: I bought a bag of Sodium Citrate. A traditional fondue requires a constant heat source to keep from breaking, but the sodium citrate gives you a lot more temperature stability. I found that when pouring hot sodium citrate cheese sauce into a heated ramekin, the sauce keeps for at least 20 minutes. Sauce was made with German lager beer, dijon mustard, and a little worcestershire. I ended up flavoring this more like a Welsh Rarebit than a fondue, so I guess I actually replaced a roux with the sodium citrate.  I've had a lot of different cheddars, but the Cabot 3-Year is my favorite. It's loving awesome, and CostCo always has it at a decent price. Details: Injera Course Whole grain brown Teff with sourdough  An entire cuisine meant to be eaten with bread. Lovely, fermented, sourdough bread. The traditional method of making injera (if you don't have a starter going), is to run some of the batter over the back of your hand to pick up some environmental yeast, and then let it ferment in the African sun. This takes about a day, but if you live in Boston like I do, it takes more like three days to get a really get a good ferment going. On occasion, we've gotten impatient and turbo-charged a batch of injera batter with some active dry yeast. This time I ground the teff in the Vitamix, stirred in some filtered water, and added about a teaspoon of the liquid that pools up on top of Oliver. After a single day it was bubbly and sour.  Injera is cooked on only one side. The key is getting the thickness of the batter right; don't be afraid to adjust the consistency with some water or flour. It helps to have a pan that can hold some heat. That fancy copper clad crepe pan in the picture above didn't really hold enough heat, so I went back to my regular pan. Here is a video of the injera cooking... I like watching the bubbles form. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l_m21HuDWw We made up a few fancy plates for the pictures, but since the injera was smaller than restaurant size, it was easiest to just serve everyone buffet style.  Details: Dessert Multigrain quick bread (both baking powder and baking soda)  People from outside of the New England area might not be familiar with our old friend, B&M Brown Bread in a can. (not my picture)  It's supposed to be eaten with baked beans... it's sort of savory, sort of sweet, tastes a little like molasses. And since it's canned, the texture is weird, kind of gummy. But I can do better than canned, I can bake my own!  Of all places, I found that Alton Brown had a good recipe for this. Whole Wheat, Rye and Corn Meal. Makes delicious, flavorful bread, I didn't change the recipe at all. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/boston-brown-bread-recipe.html I found a bunch of lovely recipes for the ice cream, so I had to do some experimenting to find what I liked. I ended up going with a cornstarch thickened ice cream base, something I've never tinkered with before. The final recipe I came up with froze up nicely, and I didn't miss the eggs at all. I used cream cheese and buttermilk to give it a tart, cheesy flavor.  And then into my DeLonghi. I love this thing, it's super fast! The only downside is the small bowl (had to freeze my base in two batches), but it can crank out batch after batch.  This dessert was even more awesome than expected. The toasted bread was a perfect accompaniment to the ice cream, in both flavor and texture. It was amazing, and the perfect capper to the meal.  A final note: regarding the recent discussions of what is and isn't a sandwich, most of the food in my meal can be eaten with your hands, another key feature of bread. Squashy Nipples fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 01:50
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This all looks great. Time for me to learn about injera. Also, your girlfriend is right- always get the big bag of flour.
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Jun 5, 2015 02:50
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Fantastic. This was like masterclass in baking. It made me ashamed of buying bread in the shop.
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Jun 5, 2015 08:35
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Jaw-dropping amazing. Where abouts in NE? I'm just outside of Boston.
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Jun 5, 2015 13:54
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Don't tell him, Squashy! He's only after Oliver!
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Jun 5, 2015 19:03
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Jesus Christ Squashy, wanna have dinner at your place. Those are beautiful, man.
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Jun 7, 2015 00:55
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Thanks for all the compliments!Veritek83 posted:Time for me to learn about injera. The first time we bought teff, the results were terrible. Delicious, but lovely bread. Then we sat and watched like 2 hours of African women making injera on YouTube. You can't make giant restaurant-sized ones without special equipment, though. Also, there are two kinds of teff, golden and brown. Most restaurants use a mixture of two (sometimes cut with white wheat flour), but we've only worked with the brown stuff, which is why our bread is so dark. mentos posted:Where abouts in NE? I'm just outside of Boston. Me too. I'm South Shore, near where Ikea is. Scientastic posted:Don't tell him, Squashy! He's only after Oliver! We are glad to share some of Oliver! Manuel Calavera posted:Jesus Christ Squashy, wanna have dinner at your place. Those are beautiful, man. For you, anytime. 
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Jun 7, 2015 14:14
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Those are some fantastic bread ideas
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Jun 7, 2015 18:22
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All that looks wonderful! May I make a suggestion? I think that reversing the layout of your post would improve it. It's a lot of fun to see all the work and effort that went into your step-by-step photos, and putting the pictures of the finished dishes before all that kind of lessens the impact. IMHO, of course. Great job!
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Jun 8, 2015 18:42
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Hi, I ate this and it was loving awesome. That is all.
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Jun 11, 2015 01:47
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The Midniter posted:All that looks wonderful! Thank you! The problem with a post that long is that only the truly dedicated will read the whole thing... so it's always better to start out with the best food porn pics right up top, when you are laying out your vision for the meal. Think of it as a TL/DR; a lot of people would never make it to the bottom if you don't hook them at the top.
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Jun 18, 2015 14:20
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excellent work, and those photos tho, drat son. thank you for directing me towards that gamma lid thing, just ordered one. I have an old beer brewing bucket that I've retired sitting in my garage, now I have a new use for it! also <3 oliver, you're gonna make me bake some bread this weekend christ.
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Jun 19, 2015 22:27
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mindphlux posted:excellent work, and those photos tho, drat son. Thank you! Apparently, those bucket lids are really popular with the doomsday-prepper types. As for the photos, the woman has an expensive camera, and it shows. The watermarked pics are ones she is planning on using on her blog.
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Jun 21, 2015 16:45
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Squashy Nipples posted:Thank you! I held true to my promise. I loving failed at bread though, but my starters are marvelous. William is a sour, samantha is a standard poolish. I'll learn how to bake proper bread eventually.... 
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Jun 22, 2015 07:08
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