What do your meals look like (show me pictures)....
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A colleague came over for dinner. Staying in a hotel near me was cheaper than her 1 hour train commute back home. Confit du canard, green salad, sauteed beans, roast potatoes.
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Wednesday dinner: savory Dutch baby pancake (roasted broccoli, onion, cheddar), 2 strips of bacon and a small arugula salad. It looks like a lot, but I didn't have much of a lunch today. (I wish I was faster at getting everything on the plate. The pancake had already started to deflate - it was much fluffier looking when I took it out of the oven. )
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Quick Trinchado on Sautéed Veg from the book The Real Meal Revolution. I have some issues with the book, and I've made some truly atrocious recipes from it... but found some extremely good ones, too. This one was meh until I added some Dijon mustard. Made as written, it didn't have much to offer other than a generally sour flavor... and the fact that there's seemingly a lot of volume for the amount of calories it contains. Which can be nice on a 1,300-1,500 calorie meal plan, haha.
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A quick, easy snack: an avocado with carrot and smoked trout.
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This one didn't photograph super well (I should have taken the photo without the parmesan shavings, but I was hungry and not thinking straight). It was incredibly flavorful though, I couldn't get enough. You can see a better photo here: Seared Tuna with Italian Umami Salad, also from The Real Meal Revolution.
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Roasted cabbage Caesar Salad with Chickpeas by Hetty Lui McKinnon, omg yum. If I could only eat one meal for the rest of my life, this might be it. (There's a cabbage wedge underneath the parmesan, lol)
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Gammon and Mustard Cabbage Rolls, again from The Real Meal Revolution -- I haven't been able to find the recipe online. The filling was mayo, capers, parsley, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, pecans, egg, dill pickle, bacon, cabbage, red onion, and ham. Sounds like a total mess but it was delicious.
This was a nice change of pace. I'm not usually into stuffing and rolling food because I find it too fussy and messy to eat, but this worked quite well. The blanched cabbage leaves turned the most amazing translucent green, I felt like a million bucks eating these pretty things 👸🏻
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Speaking of fussy foods: kebabs are another thing I don't bother with at home. So I made the Chermoula Chicken with whole chicken thighs, and that worked out just fine. Served atop oven-roasted eggplant, and topped with the dukkah yogurt from the chicken recipe. Tasty.
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This one isn't going to win any photography prizes, but OMG you guys. Guatemalan Black Bean Soup made with Rancho Gordo's Santanero Negro Delgado Bean.
I had all kinds of intentions to eat this with avocado and cilantro and cheese and whatnot. But then I had a taste of just the soup, and I realized this doesn't need anything else. It's literally beans, water, onion, garlic, and salt. And the onion & garlic are removed before eating. I kid you not, this is one of the best bean dishes I've ever had, I don't know what happened in that pot but it was magical. I made a batch for the week, and the pot liquor in the refrigerated portions was like silky pudding.
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Plain old bread.
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I hope to make bread of that quality at some point. I’m definitely struggling but enjoying the process regardless. Here’s my recent batches. I’ve had to figure out why they burn on the bottom and what to do about that (putting a cookie sheet on the bottom rack as helped somewhat). They’re also fairly dense in the middle still. I’ve also purchased a Dutch oven and I’m experimenting with different recipes, but my oven isn’t cooperating with their temperature and timing recommendations. I don’t remember making bread this hard before. Anyway, I won’t give up. I’ve recently purchase a sourdough starter from Etsy and looking forward to using that in the future. Please send your tips and tricks if you have any.
My first breads were recipes from the "artisanbreadwithstev" youtube channel about 5-6 yrs ago. Lots of good, simple advice there to start, mostly variations on a theme. He has an approx 3-hr "turbo" process which is, with some tweaks, the basic approach I still use most often for standard loaves. I also experiment with different grains, inclusions, flavorings, shapes and more. Dutch ovens or cast-iron skillets are great for certain results; I use mine occasionally. The Dutch oven could ease the quirks of your kitchen oven by creating a consistent internal environment for your bread once it reaches temperature. Sometimes for better crust when using open bake pans, I place a pan of water in the oven as the wise old French bakers used to do. Another method is brushing some water on the loaf before you put it in the oven (just a little). I do this on some batches, but didn't on the batch depicted above which yielded a normal crust. I up the water added to the flour mix a bit for breads using whole wheat flour versus only bread flour. Try experimenting with other brand flours; I tend to use King Arthur mostly. My next big leap will be to mill my own grain - I have a mill - but downsizing and moving into a retirement home this past year has kept that project at bay. There are a couple of good channels on the home milling approach.
I still don't (after all these years) have a baking stone, which helps with heat management. I often, as in this batch, invert one sheet pan, preheat it, and place my loaf pans into another, upright sheet pan on top of the first. I saw this somewhere as a way to emulate a baking stone. Steve's methods are pretty flexible about ingredients (as opposed to other sources who are rigorously precise in their measurements), but I find keeping to his recommmendations on temp (400F) and time (40 minutes) has never resulted in a burned bottom and have been successful. On a wetter dough I keep in a bit longer. I give the loaves about 10 min to sit in their bake pans after removal from the oven, then pop them out to rack cool and expel steam for a couple of hours. You may also find the "chainbaker" youtube channel useful ... he goes more into details and experiments on hydration and proofing, for instance, which might result in density fluctuations. Mine above is slightly underproofed but I think still pretty well in the groove. Good luck. Your loaves look appetizing.
Those are some of the offhand "tips and tricks" I have to offer at this time. Good luck, you're already on your way.1 -
Be careful with that pan of water.
I spilled some room-temperature water while putting a pan in the oven for my bread crust. A tiny bit fell off the pan and hit the glass of the oven door. What a mess. My oven door has three panes of glass, so at least I was able to continue using the oven while I waited for the new glass to come in, and it took a LONG time. In fact, the stove store had to order one from a different source as the less expensive one didn't seem to arrive. Months later I got a call - they were wondering if I still wanted this glass. Uh... Yeah, I did many months ago. Sigh.
If you can find a baking stone at a yard sale or thrift shop, it's a good way to save a few bucks. I love mine. A friend found it at a yard sale for three bucks. I found a second one at a thrift shop. I didn't like it as well, but it works OK. Even now it still works even though it's cracked. I don't remember what cracked it, but I'm sure it was some liquid.0 -
A preview of what I'll be cooking with this week....
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Be careful with that pan of water.
I spilled some room-temperature water while putting a pan in the oven for my bread crust. A tiny bit fell off the pan and hit the glass of the oven door. What a mess. My oven door has three panes of glass, so at least I was able to continue using the oven while I waited for the new glass to come in, and it took a LONG time. In fact, the stove store had to order one from a different source as the less expensive one didn't seem to arrive. Months later I got a call - they were wondering if I still wanted this glass. Uh... Yeah, I did many months ago. Sigh.
If you can find a baking stone at a yard sale or thrift shop, it's a good way to save a few bucks. I love mine. A friend found it at a yard sale for three bucks. I found a second one at a thrift shop. I didn't like it as well, but it works OK. Even now it still works even though it's cracked. I don't remember what cracked it, but I'm sure it was some liquid.
Oh yeah, I can imagine, thanks. I usually put the water pan (often one of my old, smallest "blue cornflower" corning wares) in at room temp, sitting on the lower shelf in a quarter-sheet pan, then start the oven for the baking pre-heat. This gets the steam going before I put in the loaf pan(s) on their half-sheet pan onto center shelf. I just leave the water pan there until stone cold afterwards.1 -
Most of our European meals are Italian or Spanish, but we had a Northern European somewhat Germanic one today. Homemade salt beef, mash, braised celery, pickled beets and onions, sauerkraut.
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Still don’t really have an appetite but Al I’ve had today was orange juice and a protein drink so salad and pasta is as good as anything.
I’m fighting a sinus infection and bronchitis and ready for it to be gone.
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@mjbnj0001 Thank you for that thoughtful and detailed response. I’m going to look into those YouTube channels, I’m sure I’ll spiral down the YT rabbit hole of bread making once again but I’m just fascinated, I can’t help it. I’ve tried the water approach when baking baguettes a few times but those were a total fail- I think my yeast was dead/expired. So I ordered new yeast and started buying better flour which seemed to help. Then I went to Croatia and fell in love with their bread so started making the Dutch oven round loaves. I love it so much I’m adamant about learning it no matter what. It’s a work in progress and I need to get the internal texture right, but they’re edible. I’ve found my oven is a great proving box with just the light on, and laying either a cookie sheet or aluminum foil on the bottom wrack has helped reduce the dark bottom, but I’m still making a lot of tweaks. One day I’ll nail it and it will be so worth it.
Question- the recipe I’m currently using is a No Knead recipe. What happens if I do knead it? Will it make it better or will I lose all those big air pockets that I like so much? My bread feels so dense and doughy even though the internal temp says 200f, and the outside looks great, so I’m not sure what to do about that. I thought maybe I should try kneading it to see if it would help. Current cook temp is 445 (but my oven thermometer says closer to 500) for about 40m with lid on, then 15m lid off. After removing from the oven it sits in the Dutch oven a little while longer because it still seems doughy. Maybe I should reduce the temp even more and increase cook time? Now off to YT. I need to see what milling grain is all about 😊.
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@mjbnj0001 Thank you for that thoughtful and detailed response. I’m going to look into those YouTube channels, I’m sure I’ll spiral down the YT rabbit hole of bread making once again but I’m just fascinated, I can’t help it. I’ve tried the water approach when baking baguettes a few times but those were a total fail- I think my yeast was dead/expired. So I ordered new yeast and started buying better flour which seemed to help. Then I went to Croatia and fell in love with their bread so started making the Dutch oven round loaves. I love it so much I’m adamant about learning it no matter what. It’s a work in progress and I need to get the internal texture right, but they’re edible. I’ve found my oven is a great proving box with just the light on, and laying either a cookie sheet or aluminum foil on the bottom wrack has helped reduce the dark bottom, but I’m still making a lot of tweaks. One day I’ll nail it and it will be so worth it.
Question- the recipe I’m currently using is a No Knead recipe. What happens if I do knead it? Will it make it better or will I lose all those big air pockets that I like so much? My bread feels so dense and doughy even though the internal temp says 200f, and the outside looks great, so I’m not sure what to do about that. I thought maybe I should try kneading it to see if it would help. Current cook temp is 445 (but my oven thermometer says closer to 500) for about 40m with lid on, then 15m lid off. After removing from the oven it sits in the Dutch oven a little while longer because it still seems doughy. Maybe I should reduce the temp even more and increase cook time? Now off to YT. I need to see what milling grain is all about 😊.
We just downsized and moved into a retirement home. The house is a flip, and the new oven comes with a "proof setting" and convection option. My old oven was all manual everything. I haven't used the convection for bread baking yet, with the exception of trials giving pizza crust a head start before adding all the other ingredients. The new oven's "proof setting" I think forces the proof a little as the temp is a little high. I'm still adjusting to the new oven.
"No Knead" recipes are, I believe, all high-hydration doughs, which makes a sticky mess for kneading. But you can do it, I have. The hydration and long proof time chemically encourages the gluten to form up nicely for the co2 without being kneaded. I sometimes use a "spurtle" (wooden stirrer) I got up in a Christmas market in Ottawa Canada a couple of years ago, not to "knead," per se, but pull and stretch the dough. I get nicer sandwich/burger rolls this way with nice open crumb. In the case of the batch I started this conversation with, I extended the usual sponge knockdown into some manual dough stretch-and-foldovers, using some extra dusted flour to make the sticky dough ball manageable, before I divided it for the 2 loaves and let them do their 2nd rise. And yes, you can overknead or overwork your no-knead dough if not careful.
There are roughly a billion YT channels covering these topics, some good, many not so much; you can spend a lot of hours watching this stuff as you find the ones that you like and work for you.
Good luck.
PS - You know, King Arthur Flours has classes, online and in-person. I hinted to my wife that sending me on a little trip for a Christmas present might benefit her, as well, LOL. Anyway, seems you've got the bug to master this craft, so I thought I'd suggest that. There may be other baking classes around you, too.
PPS - your 445 to 500F for 40 minutes offhand seems like too high, too much. I usually stick close to 400F and 40 minutes, with some variation based on the product I'm trying to produce.2 -
What Do Your Meals Look Like....Show Me Pictures!
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Sorry everyone, I got excited seeing bread! Didn’t mean to hijack 😊.1
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