Out here on the East Coast it’s been way too crazy hot to turn on the oven. I had bought some rhubarb at the farmers market late last week and I wanted to cook it up, thinking I’d be getting more today. More on that later. Last night I made rhubarb sauce. Just rhubarb, some sugar, and a teeny amount of water. Delicious! I enjoy rhubarb sauce over angel food cake, which I had to buy because of said too hotness for the ovenness.

It’s a little cooler today and I could probably justify turning on the oven to bake a pie but the universe does not want me to. The people I bought the rhubarb from last week didn’t have any this week. A different stand had some but it was on the limp side and was $5! For a small bunch! That’s a little spendy for rhubarb, much as I love it. We did have tamales from the Boxcar Cantina stand and they were very good. The best I’ve ever had? Not quite. Best I’ve had outside of New York City from Somewhere That’s Not Out Of Business? Yes.

In case you’re wondering, said market is the Westport Farmers Market. They’re open on Thursdays.

The CSA starts in one week. Exciting! The freezer is in decent shape but hopefully we can polish off a bit more before the cookable & freezable veggies start arriving.

I enjoy gardening. Even though the CSA provides more food than we can actually eat (hence the freezer) I grow a nice chunk of veggies & herbs myself. This year is a little more intense than last year. In the good name of ‘crop rotation’ I decided to plant tomatoes in pots this year. Since I was going to plant a couple of pots, the reasoning went something like “well why don’t I just plant a bunch of pots?”
I found a couple of really pretty large terracotta pots with wooden stands at Crate & Barrel when we were up in Cambridge over Memorial weekend. I already had two large plastic terracotta-colored pots, a long green windowbox, and an assortment of smaller pots.

I’m not so great at planning ahead when it comes to my garden. If I was, I would start leafing through the seed catalogs in February and I’d order things well in advance. Instead, I go to a nursery and buy whatever they happen to have once the weather gets nice enough to plant. I cleared a bit of the patch and planted some peas mid-May, before we went to Japan. The rest went in June 1. I went shopping in the morning and planted in the afternoon. Of course, I got a little carried away at the nursery and bought more tomato plants than I was planning on. A couple of them had to go in the garden but I put them in different spots than I usually do. Here’s what we have: 8 tomato plants, 1 eggplant, 4 cucumbers, peas, mint, cilantro, thyme, sage, chives, arugula, dill, eucalyptus, basil, and a few pretty annuals. Some are on the “upstairs” deck in pots and some are in the garden.

Before

after!

I need to take some progress pictures and a few shots of the “downstairs” garden.

It’s quite late but I’m not at all tired, even though I should be. I’m hanging out in Chicago with Lani for the weekend. We did a lot of walking today. I mapped it out using mapmyrun.com because we were curious and it looks like it was just over 7 miles. This morning we went to Dollop coffee for awhile to chat and relax before going on to the beach. Lani had talked up their pie and one of several flavors they had today was strawberry rhubarb. It was delicious and I definitely want to make some variant of rhubarb pie next week. If you find yourself in Chicago, Dollop is a very nice place to spend some time. And eat pie. I’m nowhere near hungry right now but if I knew there was a piece of that pie in the kitchen, I would go eat it.
Note: the pie is baked by Hoosier Mama Pie Company!

Thursday night I started a white sourdough sponge.

On Friday I worked from home, which allowed me to bake off some bread while I was waiting for various bits of code to compile. First off - sourdough! We planned to have hot dogs Saturday night for dinner and I wanted to see how sourdough would work for hot dog buns. I finished the sourdough dough with 2+ cups of whole wheat flour, for about a 60/40 white/whole wheat split. Half the dough went towards the rolls and the other half became cheddar pepper sourdough. When it was time for the final shaping of the bread, I stretched it out into a rectangle and sprinkled it with cheddar and fresh cracked pepper. I rolled it up like a jelly roll and then let it finish rising in the brotform.

The cheddar pepper is sticking its tongue out at you.

Once that was done, I went on to Challah! I tried the recipe from a new book in my collection, Secrets of a Jewish Baker. It’s very interesting in that it gives each recipe with three possible modifications for making the dough: by hand, in the food processor, or in a heavy duty stand mixer. The author recommends the heavy duty stand mixer and luckily, I have a good one. The stand mixer modifications end up making more dough than the standard recipe, so instead of two breads it yields three. I have little use for three challahs in one Shabbat and we usually struggle to make it through even one standard size challah, so I decided to make 6 “small” challahs (they weren’t *that* small). I froze 4 of them and baked off two.

As you can see, I tried the ‘6 Strand Braid’ for two of the challahs. My 6 strand technique needs work. Here are the two I baked off:

The challah was delicious. Eggy but not too eggy, sweet but not too sweet. The sourdough rolls were good, but a little too hard on the inside to be a perfect hot dog bun. Perhaps I’ll try them again using only white flour to see if that makes a difference.

the dough	the oven

This week I tried my hand at half white/half whole wheat sourdough bread. Really, it was more of a 3/5 to 2/5 split, since I made the sponge with white starter and white flour and then added 2+ cups of whole wheat flour in the second stage of mixing the dough. The other new area of experimentation was in the oven. The small tin you see there was for boiling water. Many professional bread ovens have steam injection and I wanted to see what the effects of some moisture would have on the bread. They were many.

plain, before baking	with caraway seeds, before baking

Big bread! The loaves definitely expanded more than they’ve been with pure dry heat. The crumb was moist and the crust was beautifully golden brown yet much softer than previous breads.
Here’s a shot of the loaf with caraway seeds, sliced.

I started the sponge late Saturday night, added the second round of flour and kneaded it before heading to the gym on Sunday morning. When I got home I shaped the loaves for their final rise and baked later that afternoon. After an excruciating cooling period (I wanted to rip in to the bread as soon as I pulled it from the oven), we had panini sandwiches for dinner with the plain sourdough, fresh mozzarella, and homemade pesto from the freezer. Delicious. Thankfully there’s leftovers of all the ingredients so I might get another treat for dinner tonight.

I made hamantaschen last night. Apricot, raspberry, and chocolate. For the chocolate I used the fancy Cote d’Or Noir de Noir spread that we get in Belgium. It’s a very dark chocolate and while it’s a little too dark for me, Jeremie and Courtney really liked it. My favorite is the apricot. I sent a tin of hamantaschen to Elias this morning and I packed up a tin to take to Belgium. We’re going to Brussels tomorrow evening. Yay for that!

Last weekend was all about Whole Wheat Sourdough. I intended to make one batch with the long fermenting recipe, substituting whole wheat flour for white flour and adding a bit more water, since whole wheat requires a greater hydration. I started the sponge (a.k.a. stage 1) late at night. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I wasn’t paying as much attention to the process as I should have. I ended up adding a whole recipe’s worth of flour to the bowl. Whoops. Instead of trying to scoop the right amount of flour out, I scaled everything else up and made two recipes of dough. Which means four loaves. Lots of practice is good, right? I made two loaves of plain whole wheat and two loaves of seeded whole wheat sourdough. One loaf got to spend its final rise in my new brotform and the other three rested on flour sack towels inside of glass bowls. That worked out fine but the brotform makes such a nice design on the bread, I may need to pick another one up. Here’s the goods:

I’ll have to do this again with the right amount of ingredients for one recipe before I post what the proportions should be for Whole Wheat sourdough.

I fed my whole wheat sourdough starter all night long.

Not really. Before bed I poured out about a half cup of starter and added a cup of flour and a half cup of water back to the mix. By morning it had bubbled up to the top of the jar. I was hoping to start some dough going before I left the house this morning, but I ran out of time so I had to pop the starter in the fridge. I’m going to do some serious whole wheat sourdough experimenting this weekend. I want to tackle the long fermenting recipe with whole wheat flour, try my brand new brotform, and play around with various methods in the oven.

Last night we polished off the last of the seeded sourdough by making panini sandwiches for dinner. My sandwich had Emmentaler and sauerkraut. Mmmn, delicious.

Last Sunday I baked two breads: Seeded Sourdough and Chocolate Chunk Sourdough

I was trying to get close to Zingerman’s Chocolate Sourdough bread. The taste was there but the crust was on the soft size. Baking on a baking sheet is very easy, especially when it comes to shaping the loaves, but it doesn’t get you a perfect crust. The next round of this same bread will be on my baking stone or in my 5qt Le Creuset round. I’m not yet convinced that a cloche baker is worth the investment. They’re not terribly expensive but there’s lots of reports out there that they break pretty quickly.

I did not do any additional baking this week because most of my time was taken up preparing for The Party. What was The Party, you ask? The Party was for my birthday and Jeremie’s birthday. It was our first Big Party in this house (we’ve lived here 5 years) and the first we’ve had in a very long time. Last night we had about 30 people over and a good time was had by all. On the savory side we had veggies & spinach dip, hummus and pitas, salsa, black bean dip, guacamole, and tortilla chips, tapenade, crackers, and a variety of cheeses, spinach pies, mozzarella cheese sticks, and garlic cheese crostini. For the sweet stuff we had my sweet & spicy pecans, peanut and regular M&Ms, a big birthday sheet cake, and a giant chocolate torte. The drink options were too numerous to enumerate. Needless to say, we have a lot of leftovers.

I’ve been so in to the baking part of this whole sourdough extravaganza, that I haven’t wanted to take time to post about it! I just pulled my 4th? 5th? batch out of the oven. Therefore it is high time I caught up here. Though I’m really supposed to be doing work-work.

The original sourdough - batch one!

Classic Sourdough Bread (from King Arthur Flour)
9 ounces “fed” sourdough starter
12 ounces lukewarm water
5 to 6 cups unbleached AP flour
1 T salt
1 T sugar
cornmeal to sprinkle on pans

Pour the starter into a large mixing bowl. Add the water and 3 cups of flour. Beat vigorously. Cover this sponge with plastic wrap and put it aside to work. The period can be very flexible, but allow at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours. A longer period at a lower temperature will result in a more sour flavor. - This is very true. Longer sitting == much better flavor, if the sour bit is really what you’re after.

After the dough has bubbled and expanded, remove the plastic wrap. Blend in the salt, sugar, and remaining 2 cups of flour. Mix until the dough comes together, then knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Add only enough extra flour to keep the dough from sticking. Place the dough in the bowl, cover, and let it rise until doubled, 1 to 2 hours.

Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into an oval loaf and place on a lightly greased, cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled. This can take up to 2 hours. Remove the cover, slash the tops, and bake in a preheated 450F oven for approx. 20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Yield: 2 loaves. Note 2: this bread is tasty. It won’t last long. Try to let it cool for at least a little bit before you dig in.

After such a good experience with my “white flour” starter, I wanted to try a batch with my whole wheat flour starter. For batch 2, I tried a different recipe: Sourdough Bread with Yeast. I was so excited that I forgot to take pictures while I was making it.

Sourdough Bread with Yeast - also from King Arthur Flour
9 ounces “fed” sourdough starter
12 ounces lukewarm water (you may need more with Whole Wheat flour)
1 T sugar
2 t instant yeast
5.5 to 6.5 cups AP flour (I used 5 cups of Whole Wheat)
1 T salt
cornmeal for sprinkling on baking pans

Combine all of the ingredients, using only 5 cups of the flour. Knead to form a smooth, soft dough, adding additional flour as needed. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Divide the dough in half and shape into two oval loaves. Place on a lightly greased, cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet. Cover, and let rise for an hour, until doubled. Slash the tops and bake in a preheaded 450F oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Yield: 2 loaves.

This made a tasty bread with a dense crumb and very few holes, and a very faint sourdough flavor. It’s good, but I don’t know that I would have recognized it as a sourdough bread. My educated guess is that the limited sourdough-ness of this recipe is due to the lack of the sponge phase and not because of the whole wheat flour. I need to try the first recipe with whole wheat flour to be sure.

I took some of these breads in to work so that my friends could try it and I took the rest of it to GR last weekend for the fam to enjoy.

This past Friday we had a good snowstorm, which meant a work from home day. Since I work on my laptop in the kitchen, I couldn’t resist throwing another batch of Classic Sourdough together. This time I didn’t let the sponge phase last very long, only about 3 hours, because I wanted to have the bread finished in time for dinner. The whole process took about 9 hours, from beginning the sponge to pulling it out of the oven. I also decided to make one big loaf rather than two smaller loaves. The end result was a bread with an excellent, light crumb, ample holes, and a mild sour flavor. The large size was definitely impressive looking and I would do it again, especially if we were having other people over for dinner.

Of course I forgot to take a picture.