I have never considered myself much of a baker.  That is changing.  I really like to make bread.

After reading the Tartine Bread book cover to cover, I knew I had to have my own starter.  You start with flour (50/50 blend of white and whole wheat flour) and water – that’s it.  You mix the two essential ingredients together with your own paws, unknowingly adding the 3rd essential ingredient - natural yeast from your hands that begin to feed and ferment along with the other natural yeasts in the flour.

After 3 days, you have your starter – see above.

Once you have this witnessed this magical development, you will feel moved to make some bread.  The process takes the better part of two days, but the actual “active time” is just a few hours.  I’ve yet to photograph the process, but I will soon.  For now, here are a few pictures of the bread I’ve made in the last week or two.

This blog is moving away from recipes.  This is nothing new for a food blog – or for many/most professional chefs. For example, there is a great blog: [norecipes.com] and books and apps like “Ratio” by Michael Rhulman that focus almost entirely on core techniques and principles that enable a cook to make hundreds of dishes.

I’d like to get away from them myself and make this blog more fun and more powerful.  The truth is that I put these posts together after I make a dish by using rough estimates in order to enable someone to give one of the dishes a try.  Going forward, I’d like to center posts around a particular ingredient or fundamental technique.

Learning how to treat a particular fresh vegetable to get the most flavor possible is so important.  The opportunity to go to farmers markets each week for work has really changed the way I cook at home.  If I find some nice baby artichokes – I also found a new mission for dinner – get the most flavor out of those artichokes.

Similarly – learning a new technique or two each month has enabled me to be much more versatile in the kitchen, with so many options for how to approach a given ingredient.  I hope to share what I’ve learned.

Lastly – I’d like to tell a better story about the process.  That means more photos and more background. Even if you don’t feel like cooking – I’d like the blog to be a fun place to browse around.

Here are a few links to posts that (mostly) address a few fundamentals. More to come.

• Fundamentals of Braising (take a tough cut of meat and turn it into something amazing)
• Pizza Dough (pizza dough has always been a tough one for me, I seem to have finally gotten somewhere)
• Pasta Dough and here
• Aioli
• roasted tomato sauce (you should never have to buy “sauce” again)
• chicken stock and veal stock (make a small batch – it will go a mile in a home kitchen)

This is a simple pasta dish – braised baby artichokes, tossed in a roasted cherry tomato vinaigrette in spaghetti noodles.  You can use dried pasta if you’d like, but I used fresh here for it’s smooth, rich texture.

Make the pasta dough as directed here (more information on kneading here) and then use a pasta cutter attachment to make the spaghetti shape. As an aside, I’ve found that when my dough starts to stick or look funny coming out of the pasta roller or cutter, it’s normally because I have not dusted the sheet of dough adequately with flour. You can use semolina flour for the dusting, just be sure to run your hand down both sides of the dough to scrape off the excess each time. (you don’t want to use more than you have to and be sure to cover your noodles after your cut them)

braised baby artichokes

5 baby artichokes (discard all tough outer leaves, cut of the top, trim the stem and half the artichoke – remove furry choke — you are really going for the hearts here, you don’t want to be picking through leaves as you eat your pasta – be sure to have a bowl of lemon juice nearby to dip your exposed artichokes in)

juice and some zest from 2 lemons

1 cup of dry white wine

1 cup chicken stock (optional – use it if you have it)

1 shallot (diced)

salt and pepper

few sprigs of thyme

parchment lid

 

 

 

1. Heat about a tablespoon of canola oil in a saucepan or dutch oven, add your shallots and after about 2-3 minutes deglaze with white wine – cook off the alcohol
2. Add artichoke halves, lemon juice, chicken stock and a few sprigs of thyme (I emulsified a little butter here too before I added the artichokes) – mix and taste the liquid – adjust salt (don’t add too much, keeping in mind that the liquid will reduce) and cover with parchment lid.
3. Let simmer for 25-30 minutes or stick in an oven at 300 degrees for the same amount of time.
4. Make sure the artichokes are tender (make sure that all of the leaves are edible – you don’t want to be picking through the leaves, etc) and then remove from the pot – continue to reduce the braising liquid until it thickens a bit (about 15-20 minutes) if you are planning to serve the dish immediately. Enrich with a little unsalted butter if you’d like. If you are not serving immediately, store the artichokes in the braising liquid.
5. You can either add a few tablespoons of this braising liquid to the roasted tomato vinaigrette or spoon it over the artichokes on the plate.

Roasted Cherry Tomato (vinaigrette)
(credit: prepared a similar vinaigrette at Piccino Cafe)

1. Wash and pick the stems from the tomatoes
2. Toss with olive oil and salt
3. Place under a broiler or in a hot oven (450 degrees) for 4-5 minutes in a small saute pan. Meanwhile, microplane 1 small (or half a large) garlic clove into 2-3 tablespoons of white balsamic vinegar.
4. Add juices and tomatoes to a bowl with white balsamic vinegar and add salt and pepper and more olive oil to taste
5. Add half a bunch of torn, roughly cut basil (don’t cut with a knife) 30 minutes before you serve it
6. Adjust if it needs more acid or salt.

This is a basic roasted chicken dish with creamed corn and arugula.  Roasted cherry tomatoes give the plate some more color and a little tart from the vinaigrette.

Creamed Corn Ragout

6 ears of fresh sweet white corn

2 tbs of bacon fat or butter

1 tbs of unsalted butter

1 tbs AP flour (method by Frank Stitt)

¾ cup of H20

1-2 handfuls of wild arugula

Salt and white pepper

2-3 slices of crispy bacon

1. Cut corn from 6 ears of corn into a large bowl. Be sure to use the back of your knife to scrape all of the juice from each ear into the bowl.
2. Add 2 tablespoons of butter or bacon fat to a medium-high heat cast iron skillet or sauté pan.  Let it foam a bit and start to subside before you add your corn. After 1-2 minutes, add your flour.
3. Cook the corn for about 5 minutes,  add ¾ cup of water and salt and pepper
4. Overall cooking time should be about 25-30 minutes.  Be sure to scrape up all of the crusty bits – they are really flavorful. Mix in the bacon, chopped.
5. Wilt in the arugula before serving
6. To make it extra creamy, feel free to add a little more butter or cream.

The Chicken:

I began by breaking down (while leaving all of the skin on each cut) and brining the chicken about 6 hours before I planned to serve it. (I always buy full chickens vs. buying breasts – the dark meet is great and you get so much more meat for the price + it’s fun to break down a chicken). Be sure to let the chicken have at least an hour to dry after brining and about 30 minutes at room temperature before cooking.

Sear the chicken in a smoking hot pan with some canola oil for 2 minutes each on the skin side and 1 minute on the other side. Add a tablespoon or so of butter (and a sprig of thyme) and place the skillet in the oven at 400 degrees – the chicken only needs about 6-8 more minutes. Be sure to check your chicken, as thickness will vary widely ( I do this by touch, sometimes stick a pairing knife in it for 5-10 seconds and pull it out to see if it’s warm. Finally, do note that the chicken wil continue to cook as it rests).

Plate the creamed corn with wilted arugula in a few areas around the plate. Add 2-3 spoonfuls of the quick sauce and arrange a breast cut in 3rd’s.  I also garnish the plate with few roasted cherry tomatoes tossed in a little olive oil and white balsamic vinegar (+ a little basil and thyme).

I wanted to go ahead and tell anyone who reads this blog to go out and buy the Tartine Bread cookbook. Even if you don’t intend to tend your own starter or bake your own bread – it’s a great read by itself.

Chad Robertson sets the context by telling the story of his pursuit of the perfect loaf of bread.  He starts with his early decision to skip the expected Michelin star apprenticeship after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America and instead apprentice with a special baker, Richard Bourdon, who was unique in his use of natural leaven (instead of post-industrial dry yeast).  From here Chad tracks down (and spends countless hours of hard work with) a cast of characters in France who were still apart of small group of bakers making great bread in the pre-industrial French tradition.

Chad then travels back to California to settle in Point Reyes (north of San Francisco) to start his bread-making business – Tartine.

From a cooking perspective – all of the recipes are centered around the country loaf which is described in perfect detail with amazing photos for each step without compromising the quality for the sake of the home cook.  I’ve just begun my own natural starter but confess that I have already skipped ahead to jot down a few of the recipes for using day old bread – white gazpacho, meatball sandwiches, nettle fritatine.

So much to say – I’d go get a copy of Tartine Bread on Amazon for $22.

The advantages of brining meat before cooking are clear.  The brine allows the meat to absorb 10% of its weight in water while also taking in salt and other aromatics added to the mixture.  This means that when it’s cooked and loses about 20% of it’s weight due to moisture loss, you have cut moisture loss in half.  (knowledge from Harold McGee)

Your basic brine:

1 gallon of water

1 cup of salt

1/4 cup  + 2tbs of honey

(bay leaves, thyme, parsely, peppercorns, lemon juice and zest)

Bring your brine to a boil, let it go for another minute and remove it from heat.  You should make the brine a day ahead of time so it can completely cool and chill or….

If you don’t have the luxury of time – (tip from Michael Ruhlman) – reserve half the amount of total water (do this using weight!) in the form of ice cubes and pour the hot brine over them when it is ready to be removed from heat (1 minute after boil).

For chicken, place the whole bird or just  the breasts in the brine 5-6 hours ahead of use. Bigger piece of meat take longer and some brines have a little less salt (like a traditional 5% salt brine).  Also feel free to play around with the aromatics you use to give the meat flavor – the salt to water ratio is more important to keep consistent.

The most helpful thing I’ve picked up: the bakers percentage for a good wet bread dough: 75% water (to flour), 2% salt (to flour).  This ratio works very well for pizza dough.

For about 4 pizzas:

15 oz flour

11.25 oz of water (about 1 & 1/4 cups)

.3 oz of salt (about 2 1/2 tsp)

1.5 tsp of active dry yeast

1 tsp of honey

You want a relatively wet dough for a crust that will be light and crispy. Salt helps the dough build and maintain structure and it also will give the dough a fuller flavor.

Should it rest overnight? If you have time – yes, it should. I let the dough rise at around 70-80 degrees in a bowl covered in plastic and a wet towel for about 3 hours (if your kitchen is cold, boil a pot of water on the stove and place your bowl in the oven, which is OFF) and then move to the fridge for 24 hours. A slow fermentation process is helpful – you give the dough more time to capture the interesting flavors of the yeasts fermentation (+ the harsh taste of the yeast will dissipate and you will need to use less) and the gluten will slowly form bonds by itself as air moves through the dough.

For an even more interesting flavor – a starter/sponge / leavener is required.  Im starting my own (again) this week with the help of the Tartine cookbook.

Also – after making pizza dough 5-6 times in the past month – I’ve found that the crust bakes the best when I do not use a rolling pin.

I dust each side with flour and push the dough into a flat disk. Then, using the pads of all of my fingers, I make an indentation around the edges (1 inch of the outside edge) to form the crust.  While rotating the dough on the lightly floured table top with my left hand, I stretch each edge with the outside part of my right hand (it provides a nice smooth edge to push the dough out from) until it’s about 7 inches across.  At this point I pick the dough up and stretch it with the tops of my fists rotating it after each light stretch (gravity helps here) – making sure to keep away from the center of the dough with my fists ( to avoid breaking through). If the dough is overly fragile at this stage, you probably did not develop the gluten enough and may need to give it a few folds and then a rest for 15-20 minutes.

Final step: don’t put too much tomato sauce (to avoid saturating the crust- see photo) or too much cheese.  I like to see some small bare spots on the top of the pizza instead of covering every square inch with toppings.  I’ve found that if you create a mound of toppings, it’s harder to walk away with a crispy crust and evenly cooked pizza.

One last thing that’s really helped my pizza making process: a pizza peel. It’s just so much easier to lay out the pizza and plop it right on the stone. Mine was 10 dollars and you can get them on amazon for about the same price.  Metal is preferred (pizzas slide off easier) but I got a generic wood one because it was cheaper.

When you knead pasta dough by hand – it’s safe to say that you won’t / can’t overwork it.  Once it is mixed together and binded into a large mass (photo 1 in the series), take it out of your bowl (I always start in a large mixing bowl) and begin to knead the dough.  When you knead the dough you are unfolding and aligning the gluten proteins into longer chains (vs. short kinky ones).  Following the kneading process you will need to let the dough relax for 30 minutes to an hour so it will be more malleable. These are great bonds you have formed, but they are relatively weak (as McGee points out), so you some of them will break down during the relaxation process, which is a good thing…

An excerpt from McGee:

Whether the dough is kneaded by hand or in an electrical mixer, it undergoes a similar kind of physical manipulation: it is stretched, folded over, compressed, stretched, folded, and compressed many times. This manipulation strengthens the gluten network. It unfolds the proteins further, orients them side by side and encourages the development of many weak bonds between neighbors.

McGee, Harold (2004-11-16). On Food and Cooking (Kindle Locations 14488-14491). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

With pasta dough, you want to be a bit more firm, using the heels of your palms to strongly compress the dough as your fold it out vs. with bread and pizza dough where you want to be more gentle and just fold, compress, fold compress, repeat…

Here are a few photos:

Check out a good pasta dough recipe here from Thomas Keller.

It’s 6 egg yolks, 1 egg, 8 oz of AP flour, 1.5 tbs EVOO, and 1 tbs of milk + pinch of salt. Take a look at the post for more details.

The amount of salt? Rodger’s says 3/4 tsp per pound of meat. The thicker the meat, the more time it needs to do all of the above.

Keys to Succulent Braises

Cookbooks will tell you that it takes 1.5-2 hours to braise a piece of meat.  This can be true, but you will get better results if you slow things down even a bit more – causing your meat to spend less time at drying temperatures (140+).  Here it is, straight from McGee: