Day Three: Fun things to do with bread

Lazy Sunday. Finished reading Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Lots of downtime, which I needed to feel better. Not as much time to cook though.


This Sunday is bread day. Thinking of making it an institution.


Bread is all about proper care and feeding of dough. The short version is that you put some bacteria around food (for them). They eat the food, fart a lot and that makes the air pockets in the bread. Not a romantic notion but it's been working for humankind for thousands of years. Incidentally, that's also similar to how beer is made. There's a much longer story but this is an express project and there are many, many books written about the subject.

Dough is also versatile and there are lots of things we can do with bread. I'm going to take a foray into a new method that I've never tried before, a quick sourdough starter. The real version is complicated and I've not managed to get it right in nearly a dozen historical attempts. I'm also going to make a couple of plain loaves that will hopefully turn into a bruschetta tomorrow and something French toast-y later in the week. Hopefully I can squeeze in a sub roll or two. For tonight, it's something like a meat pie, but vegetarian, of course.

The sourdough is a separate batch. Instead of water, I'm using a buttermilk and lemon juice mixture for liquid, one that's been sitting out all day. I'm hoping it's well soured but not yet bitter by now. That seems like a pretty good interval.

Everything else will be from a different batch and I'll work on a good enrichment scheme. I'm looking to get at least a little bit of protein into everything so some eggs and dry milk will hopefully provide that and make the bread taste better.

I'm also prepping the remaining eggplant for frying tomorrow. That's also a new method and I'm going for overkill on that. Also throw on a pot of stock, this time with less carrots and a little more left over vegetable matter from the fridge. I'm targeting some lentils and a soup or stew later in the week. Cream of mushroom sounds really tasty right now. Leftovers from the soup and maybe some other leftovers will make a great pot pie, which will take us through quick breads.

Bread usually starts the same way: reconstitute some active dry yeast. Unless you live in a place where I've never cooked, this stuff is easy to find. It comes in little packets or bigger jars. Keep it refrigerated even if they don't in the store. Use it within a few months too. To reconstitute, first bring the yeast to room temperature. That's as simple as taking it out of the fridge 20 minutes before you want to use it. Then get the tap running as hot as you can get it, pour some water into a large mixing bowl and sprinkle the yeast on it. Let it sit until it starts to get a little frothy, usually about 10 minutes.


This whole thing is an imprecise process. Sure if you're a Cordon Bleu graduate or if you work in a commercial bakery, there are recipes and so on. For home cooking, you need to get enough of the stuff eating your flour to rise your bread. If your yeast is really hardy, you may be able to take it from dry to wet straight out of the fridge into cold water. Room temperature to hot water is more reliable for more people I've done this with. Also, you can put more yeast in, but that doesn't mean your bread will rise more. The living, breathing things you're reconstituting love to multiply. If you make that easy for them, they'll do it quickly and copiously. I've gotten more rise out of a quarter packet on some occasions than from all three packets in the string. One should always do the trick.

Once it frothing, add your liquid, any enrichment, then flour. Depending on the flour you use and where you're doing this, you should expect anywhere from two-to-one to four-to-one flour to water, roughly. I live in a dry climate and use bread flour often, which tends to be dryer, so I usually run around two-to-one. When I lived in New York, four-to-one was pretty common, especially in the summer.

Bread is made from flour, yeast and water. Sometimes you add salt. Anything else is enrichment. This can be things like fat, extra gluten, eggs, sugar or milk. It's pretty rare that I make a completely unenriched bread, usually I'll add at least a little sugar in with the yeast to make it rise faster and some sort of fat in the dough. Gluten makes the dough stronger and is usually for more advanced applications. Fat makes the bread last longer, acting as a preservative. Sugar shortens the yeast lifecycle, so it lives harder, producing more carbon dioxide, but dying quicker. Some enrichment adds residual protein. Milk and eggs are both somewhat complicated as they contain fat, sugar and protein.

Stir the whole thing up, adjusting with water and flour until it mixes into a soft, slightly sticky and pliable ball. If you've got a Kitchen Aid with a dough hook, by all means use it. If you've got a bread machine, sell it on Craig's List. Once it's all mixed up, knead it. If it's a little on the tough side, pick it up and slam it into the counter you're kneading on. Yes, that's a valid technique and after a few times your dough will be softer.

Now let it rise. This will take some time. Like sugar, warmth will accelerate the lifecycle of the yeast. Your dough will rise faster but the yeast will die sooner. You want them alive when you bake them. It sounds a little twisted, but they're organisms with very few cells and I assure you that they have no feelings. Grease the bowl using PAM or olive oil before you return it to rise. It's done when it's about twice the original size.

My first loaf was with buttermilk and lemon juice for the liquid. The second got about half a packet -- the kind that makes a quart -- of nonfat dry milk and two eggs. Both got a little beer because I was drinking beer and wanted to share with my dough.


Meanwhile, let's make some other stuff.

I made some beef empanadas the other day that were really good. I'm going for a vegetarian version of that today, but more like a meat pie. I'm on leftovers again today so the ingredient list was mostly whatever I had leftover.

Veggie pie stuffing:
1/2 block tofu (extra firm is easiest), diced to 1/8 inch
1/2 onion, diced finely
4 cocktail olives (stuffed or not), chopped
1 carrot, diced and sliced finely
2 small cloves garlic, chopped
Tomato juice, about 3/4 cup
Stock, about 1-1/2 cup
About 2 tbsp chili powder

I know the onion and carrot descriptions are ambiguous. I tend to go with large onions. Chopping and dicing to 1/8-inch would be optimal but neither carrots nor onions easily dice into 1/8-inch cubes like tofu does, so try to keep the pieces small. I also chopped up 3 small Thai peppers because I had them in the fridge. That's completely optional.

Sautee the hard ingredients in some vegetable oil. When the onions start to turn slightly translucent, add the liquid then the chili powder. Cook the whole thing down until pasty. Optionally, you can add about 1/2 cup more stock and cook some more. Really, you can repeat this as many times as you want and the whole deal will taste better and be softer. If you just go with the original volume, you'll still get a great mix.

Let it cool.

Today's stock is like last time but with fewer carrots and added celery. I think the celery will add a great flavor to the mix. We'll find out tomorrow morning.

When the bread is doubled in volume, punch it down. This is secret code for kneading it. It'll go back down to somewhere closer to the original volume. Depending on how hearty the dough is, you may end up with halfway between original and risen volumes.

I also did some work on the leftover eggplant. I had the remaining portion in 1/2-inch cross section spears, so I dumped them in a jar and covered with buttermilk. I'm trying a new frying process, refrigerate in milk overnight, then double batter, cool overnight again, then fry. This means I'll need another idea for tomorrow. Not a big deal, I'm sure.

To make the pies, grease a ramekin or cup on a large muffin pan. Anything about that size that will survive the oven is fine. For a ramekin, I cut off a piece slightly larger than a golf ball, rolled it out a little, to about 1/4-inch thick, then roughly lined the cup with it. Fill with the vegetable mixture. The mixture I had made 2 ramekins. Let them rise about 20 minutes then fold the edges over. They may not cover the center, that's okay.

The rest of the doughs, both of them, make rolls and loaves. I think one Italian-sized loaf will suffer bruschetta tomorrow and two sub rolls will hold eggplant Parmesan. The sourdough, well... that's just an experiment. It'll make great breakfast too.

All together, this took me probably 30 to 45 minutes of work, but spread over several hours. Not something well suited to a day at work, but it didn't take much time out of my day. Kitchen space is another story.