What do your meals look like (show me pictures)....

My Saturday (yesterday) jobs included another bread experiment. That's why I wanted something fast and easy such as the chickpea dish I posted last evening.

I've been trying, as you've seen this year, varying types of "hybrid sourdough" approaches, that is, mixing commercial yeast with the microbes in yogurt. This emulates a mixture such as might be obtained via conventional sourdough culture via exposure to air to capture wild bugs. The other factors in true sourdough (and yes, some people call what I'm trying to be "sourfaux" bread) are length of fermentation of the dough batch and deveopment of the sourdough starter culture over time. I'm trying this hybrid approach because I have historically been terrible at keeping a sourdough culture alive for more than a couple of weeks. Yes, it's pretty pitiful when you can't keep bacteria alive, LOL. I hope that by mastering this approach I can reap the benefits of sourdough at home (I've been baking 80% or so of our bread products - loaves, rolls, etc. - for a number of years now, just using yeast).

So, for this cook batch, I am trying Kefir rather than yogurt in an all-bread flour dough with my old brand of yeast (what we call "bread flour" is usually called "strong flour" in the UK; what I use is unbleached and unfortified), and a new brand of yeast in a 70/30 bread flour/whole wheat flour mix using my old standby yogurt. I call this 70/30 mix "Lite Whole Wheat," sort of like some commercial brands of bread. The yogurt delivers 6 strains of microbes, and the kefir 12. The plan was my typical higher-hydration no-knead recipe, with 8 hours of room temp (countertop) first proof, 30 minute 2nd proof, usual 400F for 40 minutes bake. Results as below.

The two doughs starting their 1st proofing period. 1 loaf for the kefir experiment, 2 in the WW/yogurt batch as per my recent efforts.




After 1st proof, 8 hours. kefir/bread flour on left, ww/yogurt on right.




Hot out of the oven. I did get a more pronounced "sourdough" smell during the bake this time. They'll cool overnight (it's nearly midnight in this picture). As you can see, I got a pronounced "oven rise" on the WW loaves; I'm thinking this yeast is more robust than my previous. Since they were from the same dough ball cut in half, why one got so much more expansive than the other is something to research.




And, this morning, 2 of the loaves cut to display their internal crumb. My main interest, the kefir loaf, didn't have much of a sourdough tang until I lightly toasted it, but was delicious in both cases. I cut into the more expansive ww loaf to see what's going on there.




The two WW loaves are headed into the freezer, and we'll be eating the kefir loaf first. With this much bread, it'll be a couple of weeks before I make another batch ... although I'm thinking I should make some burger rolls using the new approach for our weekday grilling. I have a lot of the kefir available. We'll see. My next loaf bread experiments will be the 70/30 WW mix, new yeast and kefir, and perhaps a 12 hour 1st proof. Yes, good science implies changing one variable at a time, but I'm not that patient, LOL.

mjbnj0001 wrote: »

SafariGalNYC wrote: »

🍴 Roast sardines for dinner.

Brunch take away for 2 from my fave Hamptons (NY) beach restaurant. 🏖️
—
🍴 Fluke, beets,eggplant, peach, tomato.
🍴 Roast chicken, sweet potato, broccoli rabe, asparagus, radish.

We were just talking about the area out there earlier this evening - the local Channel 12 news had a travel blurb about eastern Suffolk. We used to head out to Montauk and nearby areas in the 70s fairly often from Bergen County NJ. Mostly off season or the shoulder seasons. Likely it's changed. Had some good times out there. Raised our kids near Sandy Hook, now we're further down the NJ Shore, and getting out there now would be definitely a trek.

@mjbnj0001 - proximity and travel time does make it easier. At least you are already by the NJ beach!!

Was in Montauk earlier today!

Bought a bunch of clams and Oysters 🦪-

Jetlagged first dinner back at home. Pulled the last of the sausage ragu out of the freezer and sauteed some spinach. It was a simple meal, but kind of thankful to eat home cooking again after a week or nursing home dinners. Sorry mom.

July 4th burger time.

I think I've mentioned decreasing my red meat this year. I'm pretty sure I didn't mention that I pretty much specifically cut out beef burgers earlier this spring.

But, burgers and July 4th go hand-in-hand (and I say this as a former vegan-for-my-20s-decade guy). So I asked the local butcher to fresh grind a chuck steak for these, feeling that would lead to a better result than grocery-store prepackaged ground beef. Added in diced onion (white specs) and minced garlic, other spices and flavorings, and got good results. Alas, those are commercial onion rolls toasting, not some of my homemade versions. But tasty enough.