Tonight I fried chicken tenders that I had soaked in dill pickle juice for about an hour and they were very juicy (I've read that Chik fil -A does this)baked sweet potato,leftover green butter beans and garden pea salad,jello with fruit cocktail for dessert later on.
For my 2nd test batch of baguettes, I used a second sheet pan as a lid and put a shallow pan of boiling water in with the dough. That seemed to work fairly well in terms of keeping the air moist, so I may try it again.
I think that batch of dough was just too high a hydration, the recipe calls for double hydration (and extra 5% water added towards the end of mixing, a mixing process I hadn't used before.) I should probably have done more stretch-and-folds to firm them up, one of them flattened a lot.
Taste-wise, they were excellent.
Our younger son developed an allergy to shellfish and these days can't eat anything made with fish sauce, either. I occasionally have problems with shrimp (which started with a bad reaction I had to some shrimp Creole many years ago) but I'm ok with lobster, crab and oysters. Never cared for the taste of clams.
If I'm going to buy tenderloin, I'm more likely to use it for Steak Diane. I find it is not very flavorful as a steak. Not enough fat in the meat, most likely. (That's why a filet is often wrapped with bacon, to add some extra fat.)
I usually do sirloin steak, because one of the stores usually stocks a thick cut of it and I can trim it into 2 sets of 4-5 ounce steaks with a few scraps that go in the freezer for the next batch of beef stock. Or sometimes I'll use the 2nd half of it for a stir fry or for beef Stroganoff.
RIbeye steaks have too much fat in them for my taste, NY Strip usually does too.
The chocolate chip chllah is very good. My big oven was busy with dinner, so I did a 3 strand braid that was only about 13" long, I should probably have done two smaller braids or a longer one that waited until the big oven was available, because it got REALLY wide and had a bit of a blowout. (One of the braids essentially got pulled apart by the one underneath it.) It was probably underproofed, this dough takes long time to proof.
But I think I'd make it again. I wanted to put some cinnamon chips in the 3rd braid, but I couldn't find any in the house and didn't feel like making a trip to the store just for one item. So I just put some extra cinnamon in it.
I may try making French toast with it, I'll definitely need to freeze a bunch of it, there's way too much of it to eat. I may offer some to our neighbor.
Filet mignon (the only steak worth eating) with bearnaise sauce.
We are getting some badly needed rain today.
I was in the mood for a spicy black bean soup for lunch on Sunday. I began by sautéing chopped onion, carrots, and red bell pepper in olive oil before adding a scant four cups of turkey broth, 15 oz. of black beans that I’d frozen, and a can of Del Monte petite diced tomatoes with hatch chilis (mild), a Tbs. of tomato paste, ½ a tsp. of Penzey’s Salsa and Pico, ½ tsp. chili powder, ½ tsp. Penzey’s dried garlic (out of fresh), and a dash of cayenne pepper. I added the leftover millet, probably about 1 ½ cups. I simmered to reduce it for a thicker soup. It's all mine, as my husband never eats most of the ingredients!
I'll be interested in hearing if you find the magical way to get the dough neatly slashed. I usually wet the blade before I slash, but that does not always work, depending on the bread.
To go with stew for Saturday night dinner, I remembered a sourdough biscuit recipe that I used to bake that came from Sunset magazine. Of course, I could not locate it among my recipe cards, and I'm not sure if I still have the magazine packed away somewhere. I turned to the internet, and after some frustration, this one came up:
http://www.samartha.net/sd/file-corner/rec.food.sourdough/FAQ/recipes/recipe803.shtml
It is close to what I remember. I did not have time to let the initial sourdough mixture sit for more than an hour. I replaced 1 ¼ cup of the AP flour with Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour. I reduced the salt to ½ tsp. and deleted the fennel. The recipe does not state where to add the olive oil. I decided to add the flour mixture to the sourdough mixture, then work in the olive oil. It is slightly messy, but it worked. (Adding the oil at the end seems to be best for my pizza dough and crackers as well.) The biscuits had good rise, and we enjoyed them. I will bake them again now that I have the recipe.
I suppose that peanut butter on baguettes is American-French fusion food?
Friday night’s dinner was leftover pork. I cooked some freekeh in water, along with the pork drippings from yesterday. We had microwaved frozen mixed vegetables as well.
We are preparing for a late freeze tonight, with temperatures expected to dip to 28F and stay there. We hope it will be the last freeze of the season, but is not good news for the local berry crops. My husband has covered our blueberry plants but the black raspberries and blackberries will have to fend for themselves. We had saved the heavy plastic that wrapped my stove when it was delivered, and it works well to cover some plants. We also had to secure a kayak that was delivered on Monday, which we tried out yesterday morning (much fun!) and had put next to the house. It cannot be in freezing temperatures, and there is not room, at the moment, for it in the garage or the shed, and the shed would be a bit of a hike, as it is across the road. So, we have brought it into the living room to overnight. Nothing says lake house like a kayak in the center of the house. 😊
I do eat but usually while I'm making pizza. My boys (the girls do not eat meatzza) actually reserve half the meatzza for me. They each take a quarter to make sure there is some for their dad. When the last two pizzas are in the oven I start to break things down and clean up. So I do not usually sit during pizza night but we can figure something out.
I've baked that recipe (with changes of course), also, Len. They are delicious.
Hooch is largely the alcohol produced by the yeast, which could stunt or kill the yeast if there was enough of it.
If a starter is left idle for a long time (lost at the back of the fridge), it can reach a point where the yeast and the alcohol reach an equilibrium.
I give today's test bake a B-, the dough got a bit of a skin on it during the final rise and that made it hard to slash cleanly. I'll have to work on that. The crumb wasn't quite as open as I had hoped, either, I think it deflated a bit as I was transferring it from the couche to the baking sheet. I don't have a flip board, maybe I'll try to make one. Or I may try to do the final rise on the baking sheet rather than in a couche.
But it still tastes pretty good and making what Chad Robertson calls a young leaven or immature starter by adding a very small amount of my rye starter (around 5%) to flour and water at 100% hydration and letting it double overnight at room temperature, then using that plus a small amount of instant dry yeast produced a bread that rose fairly well, but with just a hint of an acid taste.
There's always a question of how long to bake a baguette. As bakers, we tend to like the ones that have a lot of browning on them, but bakeries often report that one that are just mildly browned sell faster.
I'm planning to do at least one more test bake before I break into the T65 flour.
I've got 3 baguettes in final proof in my couche, turning them out onto the baking pan will be next, then I'll slash two of them and cut the third for epis de bles. I'm doing things a bit differently, so it's like going back to school on baguettes. This is my (first) practice batch using KAF bread flour, the recipe is a bit higher hydration than I'm used to.
I hear you on that, if I'm cooking or baking for guests, I'm focused on the kitchen, not them. But pizza for 2 means just one pie (unless I do a dessert pizza too), so not as much effort, the real challenge may be scaling recipes down so I don't wind up with 2/3 of the dough in the freezer, a lot of extra sauce, etc. I think I'm out of whole-milk mozzarella, which means a trip across town, assuming they still have it.
I was sort of figuring I'd plan to have the pizza ready to cut at the start of the party. Anyone making multiple pizzas is going to have to figure out the timing.
