Heavy Sadness...

I'm not trying to make excuses for myself or anything because there is no excuse for my sheer lack of blogging, except that I have bigger news. In my intense efforts to be an adult and to have full time job complete with health insurance (gotta treat those baking burns)...I have for the most part become a totally lazy cook. Now I know that the events leading up to this horrible disaster are common for the most part: blah blah you don't have time to bake anymore blah blah job blah blah social responsibilities blah non hermit blah blah career not in food blah blah...it is with heavy sadness that I admit starter defeat. I have killed my starter. BUT i swear it was an accident. Amidst moving and a new job, I totally forgot to feed it. So imagine my surprise upon opening my refrigerator, taking out some holiday leftovers and realizing with horror, what was at the back. Grey and totally unappealing...it was my starter.

Thinking I was a genius for giving part of my starter to several friends, I soon realized that they had not fed their starters either and so...

no more starter. No more fresh, delicious sourdough bread. I still have about 5 tons of flour in my cupboard, so baking will happen, I'm just widening my horizons a tad. Lets just say, there may be more "things" in "Bread and things."

..and the clouds parted and a Bagel descended from heaven...

I've been looking through Nancy Silverton's book Breads from the LaBrea Bakery with the intention of making something on my next day off. As that day approached, I realized I was having a difficult time deciding what to make because everything sounded so good...did I want fresh pretzels, bagels, sourdough chocolate cake? I wanted it all, however a diet of 90% carbohydrates probably isn't a good idea, so I made a decision based on another craving...which was smoked salmon.

The recipe from Nancy's book uses a sourdough starter (Just a heads up. I'm sure you can adapt it to suit commercial yeast needs, but I thought the sour flavor of the bagels was a delightful change from the flavorless bagels everyone seems to sell these days.)

here's what you need:

1 1/2 cups of cool water
2 teaspoons of packed fresh yeast
1 1/2 cups activated sourdough starter
6 1/2 cups of high gluten white flour (I couldn't find this at my supermarket, so I added about 6 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten)
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon sea salt
2 tablespoons barley malt syrup
6 tablespoons milk powder
semolina flour for dusting


what to do:
use the water to dissolve the yeast and stir in your sourdough starter. Add the sugar, salt, malt syrup, milk powder and integrate the flour slowly. Once all your ingredients are well integrated, flop your dough out onto a work surface and knead it for about 8 minutes. Don't dust your work surface with flour. The dough should be firm and extra contact with flour will only make your life difficult when shaping the dough because it won't stick together when you need it to.

Once you're done kneading, cover your dough with a flour-free cloth and let it sit for 10 minutes (if you have other things to do, you could let it sit longer. Let the flavor ferment a while, why don't you). Divide your dough into four-ounce portions (there should be 18 or so) and tuck under the edges. Cover with a cloth again and let rest for 15 minutes.

The next step is to shape your dough into that classic bagel shape. To do this, first form a rope about 9-10 inches in length by submitting consistent pressure from the center of one of your portions of dough and rolling it while moving your hands away from each other. When your rope is long enough, take one end between your thumb and forefinger and wrap it around your hand and roll the connecting ends (they should overlap by about an inch and a half) together against your palm and the table until they are the same width as the rest of your bagel. Place your bagels on a parchment paper lined tray, dusted with semolina flour (the semolina flour keeps the bagels from sticking to the paper). Place your bagels 2 inches apart from each other and cover with a flour-free towel and put them in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours.

After 12-24 hours, let your dough come to room temperature. Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and bring a large pot of water to boil (you should have at least 4 inches of water in the pot). Test one of your bagels before you throw the rest of them in. If the dough is ready, the bagel should rise to the top of the water immediately, like a ravioli. If the dough sinks, it is not ready and you should let it sit out, covered until it is a little warmer. If your test bagel floats, add two more to the pot. Let them sit in the water for about 10 seconds, turn them with a wooden spoon and let them sit for 10 more seconds. Lift them out with a strainer (I just used a spatula, to be honest) and place them back on their parchment lined baking sheets (you might want to throw down a little more semolina flour though). Let your water come to a boil before you throw in your next three bagels, and continue until they've all been boiled. Next, lower the temperature of your oven to 400 degrees and bake your bagels for 20 minutes until delightfully brown. You may also want to rotate your trays after 10 minutes to ensure even browning.

And let me know if you never want to eat another commercial bagel ever again.

Ruiskakkuja

Otherwise known as Rye Cookies.
Last week, I picked up a copy of "The Finnish Cookbook" by Beatrice Ojakangas which has quite a few very awesome bread and cookie recipes. While perusing its pages I came across this awesome four-ingredient recipe for not-too-sweet cookies. Nothing against the ever popular chocolate chip cookie, but sometimes chocolate and sugar aren't at the root of a cookie craving. It's all about the butter and flour.

Although simple, these take a little elbow grease.. but in my opinion they're worth it.

here's what you need:

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
5 tablespoons sugar
1 cup rye flour
1/2 cup (sifted) white flour


here's what you do:

Start by creaming together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. While still mixing, gradually add the rye flour and the white flour until you have something that resembles fine bread crumbs. Stop adding flour(no, really. stop!). Knead until the warmth of your hands form the mixture into a dough. If you need to, place your mixing bowl over a pan of hot water to speed up the process (super helpful if it's cold out or if you just have cold hands..). This took a lot longer than I thought it would and it will be especially difficult if you add too much flour.

Next, turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and roll it out to about 1/8th of an inch in thickness. Cut into rounds and place onto a greased baking sheet. These cookies don't expand much (or at all) so don't worry about giving them too much breathing room. You're also supposed to cut a hole in the cookie slightly off center using a food coloring cap or something as small...but my cookies were a little too fragile, so I didn't worry about it I was happy when they made it to the baking sheet without falling apart). Prick each cookie with a fork and bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes.

Traditionally, you eat these with your mid-afternoon cup of coffee, or if you have guests over. I thought they were perfect as-is, but they might also be good with jam if you want something a little sweeter.

IT'S ALIVE! (sourdough pancakes)

I am a terrible, busy person and I neglected to feed my starter for about a month...so when I found the starter at the back of my refrigerator I thought it was a goner for sure. Despite its terrible condition, I figured the least I could do is try to revive it. So I fed it. And let it sit out..and then fed it again. AND IT LIVED! so I made pancakes. The Recipe I want to share with you is form Nancy Silverton's cookbook "Breads from the LaBrea Bakery" which you should all look into if you like to bake bread (even if you don't like baking, it's still captivating if you just want to read it). The woman knows what she's talking about. These pancakes are a bit more savory than normal pancakes (who needs all that sweet sticky stuff at breakfast anyway) and I topped mine with sauteed apples.

here is what you need:

2 cups of activated sourdough starter
2 tablespoons of maple syrup (use the real stuff)
3 tablespoons of oil (Nancy wanted me to use sunflour oil, but I used olive.)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

(since I hadn't fed my starter for so long it was SUPER sour...so to mellow it out a little I added two small handfuls of wheat flour and a little water to maintain the correct consistency)

what you should do:

put your starter, eggs, maple syrup, and oil in a bowl and whisk until combined. I think I started with the eggs and starter and beat them together (it took some effort) and went from there. Once everything looks good, sift in the salt, baking powder, soda and additional flour and whisk until incorporated. The batter (according to Nancy) should be thicker than heavy cream and feel elastic.

for the apples: heat a tablespoon of olive oil and add your thinly sliced apples. To this I added caraway, ground cloves, nutmeg (just a little) and some cardamom and stirred frequently until cooked. Unfortunately I didn't really measure any of the spices before I put them in...so if you choose to make these, just go with what tastes good to you (which may mean not adding caraway or cardamom, but that is your call).

Pecan-swirl...bread

Okay, so i'm a major baking slacker. I'll be the first to admit it. The holidays resulted in an overnight bake-a-thon (not recommended) which produced more muffins than I ever want to see again and an altered bread recipe that I forgot to write down (but which seemed to be greatly enjoyed by my grandparents). The best part of this bread is the swirl inside which I unfortunately didn't capture because the perfected loaves were all gifts.. so you'll just have to make one to see for yourself.

you will need:

3-5 cups of white flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon yeast
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup milk

for the filling:
about 1/2 cup of chopped pecans (mine were roasted and lightly salted as well, but that's your call)
a few tablespoons of slightly softened butter
and some brown sugar

what to do....

gently heat milk (don't boil it. keep the heat on low just until the milk is warm) and then add it to your yeast. Mix in your butter, salt, and sugar (note: if you don't have or can't find caster sugar, just put 1/4 cup of regular sugar in a food processor for a minute or so. It's almost the same thing). Add your eggs and gradually integrate the flour.

Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes. Put the dough back into the bowl, cover, and put it in a warm place to rise until doubled in size.

once risen, punch down the dough and knead again. Then roll it out into an 11 inch or so square (I made two smaller loaves which were probably somewhere around 5"x5" rolled out). Spread softened butter over your dough and sprinkle with a generous amount of brown sugar and pecans. Roll up the dough (I started by folding over the ends just a bit so the filling wouldn't spill out while baking) and place in a greased bread pan to rise once more.

Once doubled, brush with egg yolk and sprinkle some more pecans on top. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes. If the pecans start to brown too quickly, cover with foil.