Floundered Attempt

It's been 24 hours so my bread for tomorrow is set to go. I get it out of the bowl somewhat poorly and then ungracefully drop it into the clay oven. The result was a flat, ugly, misshappen loaf that tastes totally awesome.

M decided to mix up the batch for the next day. She either used a bit more flour or a bit less water, so we'll see what effect that has. This is definitely a try-often kind of thing, so I'm sure we'll have it refined in a few days. I also picked up some rye flour, so I'll try that later this weekend.

I know that you could easily say that we're going to be having way too much bread, but on the other hand this is 50% whole wheat,it replaces other carbs we'd be having, and we know what's in it.

Just Not Fair

During the call, and for a while after, Mush just decided to be inordinately cute.

A Splendid Idea

M and I walked to the store to get some more bread flour. The weather is getting very crisp, and with people more affluent than us lighting up fires in fireplaces, the air smelled a lot like camping. It was very pleasant.

I mentioned a few days ago that I received my next whisky from my brother, an Islay malt - Laphroaig 15. It had been years since I tried the 10 (and remember preferring the Ardbeg), but was really looking forward to trying this.

We hopped on a Skype video call, and spent a half hour or so, just chilling and having a nicely sized dram together. Not only was the whisky delicious (really, with no burn on the tongue, nice smoke and peat flavors, and a rich fullness). I'm going to get a Lagavulin next time I go out and compare, but this was definitely up there with the greats.

It was great to just hang out with my brother. The video Skype thing is great, and we need to do it more. There's nothing like being able to toast each other face-to-face from 3000 miles away.

I will be sending his flask back with some Cask Strength Macallan (delicious), and we will do this again shortly.

Pizza Pizza

Weekdays are not going by fast enough. I know that this is a terrible way to approach a day, but I could use a nice weekend and some sleep to reset a bit. I'm not working quite so many hours any more, but there is definitely some demoralization going on.

Yay! In the afternoon, I got some pizza dough prepped that made a pretty pie, but wasn't nearly crispy enough. Next time, I make it even thinner and push the oven all the way to 550, which will hopefully work.

Remember how I said I was going to talk about things other than food and such? Apparently I was lying. Sorry about that. One of these days I'll get out of the house for a bit and try to tell you some other stories.

Motivation

I am trying very hard to wake up this morning. It's taking me a while.

I forgot to mention that M made "olive-oil and chocolate brownies' last night. They were tasty, but I still prefer Alton's recipe as the pinnacle of brownie achievement.

Hello, yeast. I will be baking you alive tonight.

Just Wow

Once the dough has risen, you put it in a dutch oven (I only have a clay one, I'm sure cast iron would be awesome too.) and bake with the lid on for a bit (yay, steam) and then the lid off for a bit. Despite some snafus (dough stuck to towel, leading to slight collapse, and a rather sloppy dropping of the dough into the clay dutch) this came out of the oven.

Wow.

So, this may be an ugly hunk of bread, but holy crap is it delicious. Quoting M, "Best Crust Ever", and IMHO (oh, yeah, I just "IMHO"d you) the crumb was pretty damn awesome as well. We had to try as hard as possible not to eat the entire thing right away. On a web recommendation, I'd upped the salt to just under a tablespoon, and that was a bit too much, but it didn't slow down our eating.

So, with all the bread experimenting that I've been doing, the by far best results have been with a recipe that a minimally-supervised 4-year-old could nail perfectly. Unbelievable.

I'm serious, this is easily one of the best breads I have ever had. So, before you get started making it, let me give you some valuable info.

The recipe is here. While I am sure this done straight will make a great bread, there are some very valuable optimizations online.

Some modifications, which I applied (more salt, 50% whole wheat flour, longer ferment times) and a video of the entire process are here. This is a must-read-and-watch before starting.

Lastly, having learned from this one, there are lots of other tips for things like making it neater and reducing towel-stickage and such on here.

I have actually already started two more of these (also 50% whole wheat and using 2tsp of salt (regular, not kosher)): one for pizza (dinner tomorrow), and one that will come out of the oven when we got to sleep tomorrow night and will be cooled, fresh, and waiting for us for breakfast the next morning.

My big recommendation is that you start two, because once the first one comes out your biggest concern will be that you wish you had another one.

Yeah, seriously.

Flour, Towel

So, the entire no-knead bread process takes about 24 hours from mix to eat, including an 18-ish hour ferment (I only did 15 here), 2-3 hour shape and rise, 1 hour bake, 2-3 hour cool.

It was morning, and I emptied the extremely wet, sticky dough onto a floured towel (more on that later) and folded it over on itself. It's kind of like folding a jellyfish, and you need to put a LOT of flour on it and on your hands, but it's not that difficult. However, this is common to "wet" doughs that make awesome breads like baguettes and ciabatta (and pizza dough?).

Return of Fist Bump

Before bed, enjoying some warm flickering and nourishing radiation, the gentlemen in this advertisement is fist-bumping his antennaed dog, who just helped him get the girl on the left by clapping his antennae together to turn down the lights to a romantic level.

Awesome.

It's a TiVo ad, by the way. I don't remember how exactly this related to TiVo, but that's what it was for.

The Bread Project Continues

Before leaving for dinner, we quickly mixed up the ingredients for the "no-knead" bread. Once you mix it up for a few seconds, you cover it in plastic wrap and walk away for 12-18 hrs.

Want to see how it turned out and get the recipe? Ok, keep reading.

Or don't. It's your loss.

Hipster?

Tonight we're going to Capitol Hill to meet up with some friends we met at "Camp" a few weeks ago. It seems weird. We so rarely "go out" that I think I've forgotten what it's like.

The neighborhood is sort of hipster, like Williamsburg, but mixed with (as I see it) San Fran. Only not as dirty. Hmmm...

Anyway, we meet up at a Moroccan restaurant where the food is quite nice and we're one of only two tables filled the entire time we were there. Also weird.

It was fun to be out with our new friends, and to have the "new people" conversations. It's not a bad way to spend an evening.

Like A Spring

Today happened. That's about all I've got.

I watched a few episodes of Scrubs with M and also learned about making a bread requiring no kneading. I need (get it? "need"? ha!) to try that.