The Starter

As requested, here's some info on the starter.

You'll need a small clear plastic container--probably one that's about 8-12 ounces would be ideal. You'll also need water and flour. The book suggests a wide range of flour options: bread flour, all purpose flour, white/wheat flour blends... All should work well enough for developing the initial culture. I used the half and half mix of white all purpose flour and whole wheat flour.

If you have a scale, maintaining the starter is a little easier. For the most part, you'll be adding equal weights of water and flour. For the initial mixing, I started with about 3 oz each of the flour blend and the water. Mix this in a container until it's the consistency of a THICK batter. (I did it wrong the first time and ended up with something way too watery for the first few days--even so, it was easy enough to recover.) You can mix with either a spoon or your hand. Hands are suggested for the first mixing, so that the starter can take advantage of the wild yeasts that are naturally on the surface of the flour and the baker...

You'll want to cover the container with a clean kitchen towel or a washcloth, and put it somewhere dark and fairly cool. I used a closet. Weird but effective. Check it after about 2 days. It should start looking fairly active by then--if not, give it another day. This is what mine looked like after 48 hours:


Note: it smelled far from pleasant after the first few days. It was beginning to overpower the apartment, which was not ideal--I was worried my home would smell like that eternally, but after a few feeding cycles it stopped being noticeable.

The starter needs to be fed about once every 24 hours. For me, the process was something like this:

1. Using a spoon, lift off the top layer and discard. Then discard more of the starter until you're left with about 20-25% of the original volume.
2. Add equal parts flour (whatever flour option you originally used) and water--I ended up doing about 1.5 oz of each for the feeding.
3. Stir until it resembles a thick batter again. Cover, and replace in a cool dark spot.

Start to learn what it smells like before and after the feeding, and make notes of its appearance, too. It took about 2 weeks for mine to start smelling recognizably like bread, and for the culture to behave the same way every day. Once that's happened, it's usable.

Now that I want to be making bread regularly, I'll need to keep up the daily starter maintenance. The idea that these cultures can become many years old is both creepy and totally awesome.

I just wrote a fair amount about the starter, but it's only a fraction of the material they present about the starter in the book--for all the facts, you may want to get your information directly from the source!

Bread!

As promised, a progress report on my bread resolution. I've been tending my starter for a few weeks now. Once it started to "behave predictably", I decided to give the actual baking a try. I'll say upfront that this turned into a full day ordeal. I was determined to follow the instructions to the letter, so I decided to do this on a day that I could devote pretty much fully to the project. That day was yesterday.

Without going into much detail, a portion of the starter is incorporated into a leaven. I let the leaven develop overnight--the book said it would be ready when it passed "the float test". So here is photographic evidence that my goo did indeed float:


Now I'll leave out all the middle stuff--basically you mix the dough and then let it sit at various stages for long periods of time--I took a lot of pictures, but they all looked like... dough. So I'll spare you. This develops structure and flavor. I didn't have to do much hands-on work during these phases; just a lot of waiting to let the bread become magical. Or so I hoped. In the end, the rising and dividing and shaping and baking ended pretty well:




It has the texture of *actual* bakery bread! And a flavor that's like a mild sourdough, with more pronounced wheat--deliciousness. For a first try, I have to admit that I'm thrilled with the results. Now that I've done it once I won't be so terrified about screwing up the process in future. Knowing that bread like this can actually come out of my oven means I'll probably stop buying bread elsewhere, and that's extra exciting! And the recipe made enough for two, so here's my bonus loaf (the two had their final rises in different containers, hence the different surface patterns--quite pretty!):

Holiday Baking

I did a LOT of baking during the last few months--especially around the holidays--so I thought I'd toss together a few photos here. I'm not posting recipes for everything now, but I may in future, or if any are specifically requested. (Some photos are from my phone, so forgive the low resolution!)

The four kinds of cookies I made while still in RI--pfeffernussen, speculaas stars, Mexican hot chocolate, and glittered shortbread.

The cardinal was the new addition to our gingerbread repertoire this year--I think they're pretty adorable.

Some of the gift boxes that mom and I put together--gingerbread, and about five other kinds of cookies underneath!

We made gingerbread scone-men for Christmas brunch. Awesome with apple butter!

Profiteroles! A favorite dessert in our family, and now I finally know how to make them myself!

I was making cardamom bread for the holidays, and I discovered this amazing plastic wrap dome over the dough after it had risen. I thought it was just about the coolest thing ever, so I took a lot of pictures of it. And no pictures of the bread...

A cake loaded with fresh ginger and frosted with fresh vanilla flavored whipped cream.

Brownies. Really Good Ones.

Do you ever have those days when you just NEED brownies? I do. They don't happen very often, but when they do, brownies are pretty much all I can think about until I have some of my own. This week, I had one of those days.

On the weekend, I had seen an episode of America's Test Kitchen that started with an experiment--a head-to-head blind taste test comparing homemade brownies to the kind you make from a box. The box brownies won by a landslide. I was inclined to agree. I was raised on box brownies--my grandma used to make them and then cover them with chocolate frosting (and she would sometimes let me have a brownie for breakfast... if mom wasn't around), and no matter how much I want to stop using mixes, I was pretty sure the grandma brownie standard would never be met with real ingredients. I've tried various brownie recipes before, and while they all have awesome chocolate flavor, the texture tends to be lacking--dry, crumbly, and nothing like you get from the box stuff. Turns out the Test Kitchen folks came to a similar conclusion, and were determined to come up with a recipe that would rival the mix. My mind was sufficiently blown as I watched this play out, so I knew it wouldn't be too long before I tried the recipe myself. Four days later, I had a giant pan of these in my kitchen.

I'll go ahead and call myself a fairly well qualified brownie tester. These did NOT disappoint. So much so that my good intentions of sharing were shattered after the second bite.

This recipe is very easy to throw together, and if you have a moderately well-stocked kitchen, you probably have all the ingredients already (which is VERY handy when you're snowed in, I might add...). The real challenge--believe me--is waiting TWO AND A HALF HOURS for them to cool completely. That was torturous, but worth it in the long run. I cut all the brownies into reasonable portions before packing them away. If brownies are your weakness, I would strongly recommend doing so--if I hadn't, I'd be passing a quarter of the pan off as "one brownie".

Better-than-Boxed Brownies

-1/3 c. Dutch processed cocoa powder
-1 1/2 t. espresso powder
-5 oz. boiling water
-2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
-4 T. unsalted butter, melted
-5. oz. vegetable oil
-2 large eggs
-2 large egg yolks
-2 t. vanilla extract
-2 1/2 c. sugar
-1 3/4 c. flour
-3/4 t. salt
-3-6 oz. bittersweet chocolate pieces or chips (I used ~3 oz. of chips)

1. In a large bowl, whisk together cocoa powder and espresso powder. Add the boiling water and whisk, then add chopped chocolate and whisk until melted.
2. Add in the melted butter, oil, eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla, whisking after each addition until the mixture is smooth.
3. Whisk in the sugar until smooth, then fold in the flour and salt with a spatula until combined. Add in the chocolate chips.
4. Pour batter into a 13"x9" baking dish that has been lined with aluminum foil slings and coated with non-stick spray. Bake on the bottom rack at 350* for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs attached.
5. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 90 minutes. Use the foil sling to lift the brownies out of the pan, and let rest on the rack for an additional hour, until completely cool.


I was ready to go at this with a spoon.


Giant brownie or tiny plate? You'll never know...