making

This is an epic bread fail. Not only is the boule burnt, the...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:11:43 -0500

This is an epic bread fail. Not only is the boule burnt, the baguettes deflated when slashed. So many things went wrong! (But surprisingly, the ugly baguettes still tasted good.) I think a short respite from bread-baking is in order.

Sourdough waffles. These were quite good, but not very sour. ...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:11:00 -0500

Sourdough waffles. These were quite good, but not very sour. This recipe only used 1 cup of starter. I have found another recipe (for sourdough pancakes) from Crust and Crumb that calls for 2 cups of starter, so I think I’ll try that next time. You can easily convert a pancake recipe to a waffle recipe by increasing the fat (i.e. 1/2 cup melted butter instead of 1 tbsp.)

Memorial garden

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:13:45 -0500

Memorial garden

ephemera, et cetera: Cookie explosion

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:29:06 -0500

ephemera, et cetera: Cookie explosion:

ephemeraetcetera:

I’m gearing up for the annual Christmas cookie-making. This year, I’m planning on making the following:

Russian tea cookies

Lemon-polenta cookies

Piparkooks (as per Alex’s request)

Don’t use that recipe - it’s missing half the spices! Here’s how my grandmother used to make them:

Piparkuks

3 sticks butter
½ cup oil
1 ¼ cup molasses
¾ cup honey
1 1/3 cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
9 ½ cups flour
2 eggs
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
4 t. cinnamon
4 t. ginger
1 ½ t. pepper
2 t. cloves
2 t. nutmeg
3 t. cardamom
5 t. coriander
3 t. lemon peel
3 t. orange peel

Mix butter, oil and sugars. Heat to boil, add spices and cool. When cool add eggs one at a time. Mix baking powder, soda, and flour. Add to wet ingredients, mix well. The dough can be kept for weeks in the refrigerator. Roll very thin and cut with small cookie cutters. If the dough gets sticky, chill again. Brush with beaten egg yolk and decorate with bits of almonds, if desired. Bake 350-375 degrees for 10 minutes or less. Makes 100-150 cookies.

Anyone remember this game?

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:13:18 -0500

Anyone remember this game?

2-month old ColoRouge cheese, from Fort Collins. The Terror...

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 20:17:42 -0400

2-month old ColoRouge cheese, from Fort Collins. The Terror Creek Winery sits at 6400 feet, overlooking Paonia, CO. The whole-wheat sourdough bread is made by Udi’s in Louisville and is only available on Saturdays at the Boulder Farmer’s market, as far as I can tell.

A preview of something for tomorrow. Guess what it is! Hint: 2...

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:13:00 -0400

A preview of something for tomorrow. Guess what it is! Hint: 2 days ago, I tried to make graham crackers, but they came out so tough that they wouldn’t even soften in milk. (When I was making the dough, the recipe said I should knead and adjust liquid and flour until the dough was “neither sticky nor crumbly”. No matter what I did, it came out both sticky AND crumbly.)

This isn’t about making anything, except maybe...

Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:48 -0400

This isn’t about making anything, except maybe cathedrals. View of Basel, Switzerland.

Bordeaux.

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:40:48 -0400

Bordeaux.

Pain Poilâne. This is from the other formidable boulangerie we...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:37:00 -0400

Pain Poilâne. This is from the other formidable boulangerie we visited. You may remember my attempt at a giant sourdough 100% (sifted) whole wheat loaf. Mine was not nearly as lofty as this one.

The shop, tucked away on rue du Cherche-Midi, deep in the Left Bank, is really only meant to sell one kind of bread - the 2kg miche. They have other bread products but they’re really just purely decorative. We bought a quarter of a loaf, and ate it over 2 days.

And something for a little later, from Poilâne…

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:27:44 -0400

And something for a little later, from Poilâne…

Today we returned to Boulangerie Gosselin for what is really...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:24:24 -0400

Incredible sandwich de Gosselin

chicken, tomatoes, mayo, lettuce...

Today we returned to Boulangerie Gosselin for what is really quite possibly the best baguette I’ve ever tasted. In other places in Paris we’ve had bread that is orders of magnitude better than anything in the US. (We’ve also had stale bread with less flavor than you get at Safeway).

I learned of Gosselin in Peter Reinhart’s book, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. This bakery apparently uses an unconventional technique of cold fermentation that fundamentally changes the taste of the bread. The loaves also end up somewhat less perfectly shaped than the standard baguette. They more than make up for it in taste.

I thought I understood what “cool and creamy” meant, but with this bread, it means “it tastes like it’s been buttered even though there is no butter on it.” With ham and Gruyere this bread is divine. (Just a few blocks from the Eglise de St. Germain or the Musée d’Orsay at 258, boulevard Saint Germain.)

Yesterday I found myself in the wonderful gothic Cathedral in...

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:30:34 -0400

Yesterday I found myself in the wonderful gothic Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland. We wandered around for a while and then I looked up to see this lovely organ.

It looked vaguely familiar.

Now, I’ve never been to Lausanne before. My family is from Erlenbach, outside of Zurich, and so all my previous visits have been to the German-speaking part of Switzerland. (Well, they actually speak Schwyzerdütsch, but that’s a different post.

Turns out this organ is C.B. Fisk’s Opus 120, designed and built in Boston over 48,000 hours; disassembled, packed, and shipped; across the Atlantic; and finally reassembled over 12,000 hours in the cathedral.

I recognized the organ because the church of my childhood was lucky enough to house Fisks’ Opus 81, a wonderful instrument in its own right (see next photo).

One summer I took lessons from the organist. After 9 years of piano lessions, I had expected that it would be fairly straightforward. It was not, for two reasons.

First, an organ requires all four limbs at once. Balancing on the edge of your seat to operate a pedal keyboard while playing with both hands is tricky to learn.

Second, both of these instruments are tracker organs, meaning they are mechanically operated. Each stop that you pull out enables air to reach another pipe when you press they keys. If you “pull out all the stops”, each keypress is opening a large number of valves. This is really hard on your fingers, and so most organists rehearse with fewer pipes than they use during a performance.

Regardless, the sound is amazing. And to think that 60,000 hours of labor went into building this instrument is unbelievable. It’s also remarkable that the Swiss consented to have an American-built organ installed. This is the first American pipe-organ installed in Europe. You can imagine the cultural risk taken!

One of the unusual features of this organ (at least, I’d never seen it before) is that many of the pipes point directly out into the center of the church). I would love to hear how this sounds.

Now, on to Paris. I hope to catch an organ concert at Notre Dame this weekend.

I was told this morning that my breakfast was...

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 12:57:43 -0400

I was told this morning that my breakfast was “ostentatious”. Which is funny, considering that:

1. The strawberries were sad-looking, shriveled ones that had been in the refrigerator for a week.

b. The banana, before peeling, was mostly black, and couldn’t be sliced into discs, so it fell apart into little chunks. However, they had intense, concentrated flavor, almost like banana chips. Their sweetness contrasted nicely with the tart strawberries.

iii. The bread was a sourdough, bought yesterday, which added another tart taste. Overall, this was not as sweet a dish as you might think.

Also, a cortado i poured this morning. Photo courtesy of...

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:14:00 -0500

Also, a cortado i poured this morning. Photo courtesy of ephemera,et cetera.

Today’s baking produced french bread again. Same recipe...

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:09:45 -0500

Today’s baking produced french bread again. Same recipe with 50% pre-fermented dough. When it comes out of the oven it makes this delicious crackling sound. You’re supposed to wait an hour before eating it, but I never can seem to manage that.

Bourdain's Coq au vin

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:00:22 -0500

I am working through Bordain’s Les Halles Cookbook. Bourdain is an entertaining writer and this is a great cookbook to curl up with on a cold day and read through, but the style that makes his recipes entertaining also makes them hard to cook from. In any case, I was able to produce his “Coq au Vin” today, with good results:

Here’s what you have to know to survive Bourdain’s cavalier style:

Although the description says this is a “dish you might enjoy spending a leisurely afternoon with”, you’re supposed to start it the day before. There is an overnight marinade involved. Fortunately I begin my leisurely afternoon in the morning, so I was able to marinate the Coq for about 3 hours.
Start heating the pan and the oil before you take out the chicken and strain the marinade.
This is a hands-on recipe. Although Bourdain says you can take breaks, don’t take breaks unless there are no additional steps you can do. I paused for 20 mintues after getting the bird on the stove, and then started chopping my mushrooms. The chicken was done about 20-25 minutes early. Next time, I will chop the mushrooms and peel the onions at the start of the afternoon, and then begin to stew the chicken.
Plus, peeling pearl onions is a horrible painful experience. It took me nearly 15 minutes to peel 12 pearl onions. Maybe there’s a better way. I think you can buy them frozen to avoid this.
Bourdain doesn’t say whether to cover the pot. I covered it, and ended up with a ton of thin sauce. Next time, I would cover it for the first 45 minutes, and then leave it uncovered for the last 30 minutes, in order to reduce the liquid and make it thicker.
I don’t know why Bourdain wants you to cover your onions with parchment as they braise. Why not a lid? I had parchment, and so I used it, but I was running behind, so I took it off after ten minutes and cranked up the heat. The onions were still awesome. I don’t think you need to braise them slowly.
This recipe uses 1 bottle plus 1 cup of wine. You should really have 3 bottles on hand, so you can drink the second bottle while cooking, and have a fresh bottle to serve. The time to start drinking is around the 1 hour mark, just as you start browning the onions. If you start drinking earlier you will run out of wine and struggle to strain the cooking liquid into the reduced wine.
Put on water to boil for noodles when the chicken has been going for 45 minutes. Flat egg noodles are hard to eat - get the curly ones so they stay on your fork. I added butter, pepper, and a little parsley to the egg noodes. I should have sprinkled them with salt.
I garnished it all with chopped parsley. Sosumi.

Made some traditional french bread, and shaped one loaf into a...

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:21:45 -0500

Made some traditional french bread, and shaped one loaf into a boule to use my new banneton (rising basket) that Mel got me for Christmas. This is a 2-day build - I made a french bread dough yesterday, let it sit in the fridge overnight, and then mixed it into a second dough this morning. 5 hours later, they’re out of the oven.

A Christmas Day bike ride

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:11:41 -0500

In Boulder on Christmas Day afternoon, there are few cars in the streets. In my neighborhood, families with small children are out walking. Gray-haired fathers in their fifties with much younger-looking wives accompany their eight and ten year-olds. I cross Broadway and turn right on Thirteenth Street. Two teenagers are heading south with their skateboards - one riding an older board, one carrying a brand-new one.

Pearl Street is quiet, but not empty. The businesses are mostly closed. I turn on Walnut and wait for a driver in a Ford Escape who is cramming a letter into the roadside mailbox by the post-office. I’m going to turn onto the sidewalk just past him, so I wait behind him. He’s confused - he wants to drive, but he doesn’t know where I’m headed. Finally, he moves on.

In the post office lobby, which is left unlocked, I pick up a Small Flat Rate Priority Mail Box. $4.95 to ship anything you can fit into it. I wonder if it would be cheaper to mail cookies to my grandmother in an envelope. Through the two-story glass windows I can hear the clatter of some kind of mail-sorting machine. Even today, someone is at work at the Post Office.

As I head out to my bike, a homeless man walks by. He has a limp or some physical disability, and is lurching a little bit as he drags a wagon full of his belongings. Under his arm is a doll that I briefly confuse for a real child. What kind of loss has he experienced that causes him to clutch this doll under his arm?

I unlock my bike, and assemble the Small Flat Rate Priority Mail Box so it will stay in place on my rack. I head east on Walnut, past the First Presbyterian Church Annex, where several homeless people are standing with bags. A fresh tag has been sprayed - black paint on a tan wall. Further down the street, a stuccoed house in the Whittaker neighborhood has also been tagged.

Crossing Folsom is unusually easy - there are no cars to speed past the Yield signs and the flashing lights at the bike crossing.

At 26th and Walnut a man is doing Tai Chi very on the lawn of a single-story office building. He watches his reflection in the mirrored-finish glass.

29th Street Mall is closed for the day, but there are still four or five people walking around.

I head into King Soopers. It’s 3 p.m., and all of the customers look angry. I track down some plastic wrap and some bread flour and head for the self-service line. A cashier with salt-and-pepper hair and a kind face who’s worked here for at least 10 years is talking to a coworker about a customer. “I wished her Merry Christmas, and she said, ‘That’s offensive!’. Should I just let it go?” His co-worker told him he did the right thing. I thanked him for working on Christmas Day.

As I head out to load up my bike, I noticed another man carefully balancing 3 bags of groceries on his handlebars. He heads off, wobbly. His seat is too low and his knees jut out awkwardly to the sides.

I return downtown. As I wait to turn on to Pearl Street, a car comes to a complete stop in the middle of the road. He has the right of way on a major road. He has no stop sign. I wait on the side street. He begins gesturing wildly that I should go. I go, and wave, hoping he feels good about his misguided generosity.

Q’s Restaurant is full of people eating. I wonder if people who go out on Christmas are bad tippers. I wonder who is working in the restaurant and whether they volunteered to work today. I wonder if they’re getting anything extra for working on Christmas. I wonder if by buying flour and plastic wrap today I’ve made it more likely that more people will have to work on Christmas next year.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist has no Christmas decorations or signs at all.

As I pass Casey Middle School, I notice another fresh tag spraypainted on the big stone sign. The two teenagers with the skateboards are standing on the patio. A video camera sits haphazardly on the ground. The school has installed skateboard-defeating brackets on the edges of the low stone benches and walls, so the boys are eyeing a much taller railing on the top of a retaining wall. There’s a fifteen-foot dropoff on the other side.

I just made some Basler Läckerli - Swiss nut/citrus/spice...

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:27:06 -0500

I just made some Basler Läckerli - Swiss nut/citrus/spice cookies, intensely dense and chewy. No need to spend CHF100 to get them shipped from Basel.