devlin

Pizza -- the Italian, near paper-thin cracker bubbly crust sort. Three of them, two with bressaola, olive oil and arugula (mozzarella and olives added to my husband's), and one with thinly sliced apples covered with melted gorgonzola dulce. My favorites. We ate them standing up in the kitchen dropping bits of cracked pizza crust for the dogs to snatch.

Foodie, you've reminded me that I worked for many months finessing the croc into just what I wanted, including adjusting the salt and experimenting with different ferment times. I use a sort of middling fine sea salt, and I now use only 1 tablespoon (just looked it up and see the book calls for more than that). That may have something to do with your displeasure with your final product, but I suspect it may also be something to do with the duration of the ferment. Here's the schedule I finally found provided the flavor I most prefer in this bread. I finally decided on a 17 hour ferment for each of the first two days. For example (and this is currently my baking schedule for this bread): first day: 10 pm, mix first starter 2nd day: 3 pm, mix second starter 3rd day: 8 am, mix dough for rise I also add about a tablespoon of raw wheat germ to every cup of flour, even in the starters, which adds a nice little extra dimension of flavor to the bread on the whole and a tiny bit of interesting crunch to the crust. I never get what I'm looking for the first time I make a whole new kind of bread, and I really had completely forgotten how much time over so many months I'd spent working on this one bread. Many times, with other ferment schedules, I ended up with a flat tasting bread. So I hope this one experience hasn't discouraged you from trying it again. It's worth the effort.

Brand new to gardening. Have some questions I hope won't sound totally lame or haven't already been asked and answered or otherwise discussed. We're in southern Indiana (bordering Louisville, KY), just moved into our new place several months ago but have been so busy putting up acres of fence and building out the barn that we've only now gotten time to sit down and wonder how in the world to think about approaching gardening. We want to do everything at once (unrealistic, of course), but feel compelled first to do some landscaping around the front yard which has not one bit of it yet. We've ordered a variety of fruit trees for the front few acres between the street and front yard, and we're designing a walkway from front stairs to drive, together with a garden and trees all round that area, all of which we're doing ourselves. But we also want to start a kitchen garden in the back, herbs, etc., and a vegetable garden as well. Here's one of the stupid questions. How late is too late to start a vegetable garden? And things like garlic. Is it too late to start garlic? Can you tell I know nothing? I'm afraid by the time we research the stuff we'll be off by too many months. Should we just focus on learning as much as we can now and plan for next year? Not to mention we've got the wood-fired brick oven to build immediately to start up my bread business. This is beginning to sound insane as I type, but my husband is hell-bent on doing everything now. Which is probably just as well, otherwise the horses might be living in the basement. And speaking about manure. I've always heard that horse manure is one of the best things you can put in a garden -- horse manure turned fertilizer, that is. But early in the thread someone suggested something to the contrary, or at least cautioned that it may not always be the best thing. True? Not true? If it is true, is it okay to use manure without compost? Is there any vegetation you shouldn't use in compost? I've got three fast growing piles of horse manure out back, and we've planned to use the stuff in the gardens once it's all broken down completely. And an aside in response to an earlier comment about manure: I don't think three months or even 6 months is enough time for horse manure to break down to the fertilizer stage. It usually takes many months more than that to break down completely. Or anyway that's been my experience.

Well, just to continue the argument, I'd say it should always be the soft "z" rather than a hard "s." Even when you're talking metabolism and thermometers. That said, there's the other basal, the adjectival form of "basic," and there you use the hard "s." On the other hand, I'm sure somebody might suggest otherwise.

Foodie3, how'd the croc go?

Seth, your matzoh looks delicious, which is not a thing I ever figured I'd say about matzoh. I've been interested lately in trying some of the cracker-type recipes and such and want to start making my own pita because I'm increasingly unable to abide the store-bought stuff. I swear it's like eating cardboard. Godawful. I made more ciabatta Friday and meant to take pics, but when I came downstairs the next morning my husband and three dogs had devoured nearly the whole loaf, so all I had left was the butt end, or I guess we call those heels, don't we . But I went ahead and sliced some of what was left and took a pic. Not sure whether I'll get the pic upload figured out, but I'm gonna try.... .... Oh heck. No luck. I'll try to figure it out later. But here's a link to the photo I uploaded on another board which has an easier photos thread, at least for me, for the moment: http://groups.msn.com/WhatsNews/newplaceco...oto&PhotoID=596 [oops: Editing to note that the one round loaf is the ciabatta dough using pugliese shaping.]

Dorie, I always wondered what the time frame for filming was, but it sounds way more complicated and arduous than I'd ever imagined. Watching, everything looks so effortless and sort of as if a couple of folks just got together to hang around in a kitchen one day. It's been a long time since I read the intro to the book. It sounds frankly exhausting, and I can't imagine opening my home to so many people in that way. JC must have more energy than you'd think. Here's a question. Is she as personable and engaging and funny as she comes across in filming? I find her so delightfully compelling and funny and smart. And were you there for the Silverton shoots? Especially the one that gets JC crying over the brioche? It's a thing I've saved on video. I showed it to my husband when he got home from work the day I taped it because I just had to share it with somebody.

Flaming yawn. How fabulous is that? Whenever I visit the Italian food store in Louisville (there's only one of any one particular anything in Louisville, excepting bad dance halls), I have to repeat myself and point to make myself understood. Not because they're Italian, they're not. But because they pronounce things like bresaola, for example, "bress-uh-oh'-la" with a really cool southern twang.... Actually maybe it's more lilt than twang. But then there's no word in southernese that can't be stretched into at least one more syllable than it's worth. [i really have to proof these things before I hit send]

I'd like to add my support for the several hours initial rise, turning (or folding) every hour. It's a method that improved my breads immeasurably. Also, a suggestion about turning: if I have a really wet dough, and I usually do, I use two bench scrapers to lift and fold.

I had a cat once named Basil too. It's sure I'm not able to answer your question. Can we answer the "skedule" (or "skejool") versus "shedule" (or "shedyool") mystery? Surely the American pronunciation makes more sense, no? Which is the righter of the two? Who got it wrong and where? Somebody probably has a theory somewhere.

Well, sure, but the OED is essentially a British dictionary, or anyway was, yeah? Which is not to say it doesn't pertain, but only that some of the pronunciations may be more essentially British. I use the OED all the time, by the way. The American Heritage Dictionary is considered a pretty reputable thing, probably one of the most recommended dictionaries by college English teachers, even for their graduate students, and it includes both the long and short a for "basil." I'm thinking the difference is simply one of dialect. "Schedule," for example. Americans say "skedule." Brits say "shedule." I don't think I've ever heard an American pronounce "basil" with a short a, unless it's the actor or one's cat. [editing because I'm too tired to do anything right the first time]

I'm just now here making a bad attempt at absorbing roughly three months worth of beans tutorials, so forgive me if I sound addlepated . I'm one of those very annoying people who has assumed for many years now that beans must be soaked both in order to mitigate the gas factor and to speed up the cook time. And since I've never been a huge fan of beans generally, I've never really bothered to check my own biases. But here's a question. On occasion I cook a thing from one of Madhur Jaffrey's books, a gorgeous chickpea, potato, tomato and onion affair, and I've always soaked the chickpeas. Of course one day I neglected them, let them sit an extra day, it was summer, I think, and when I uncovered them they were foamy and slightly fermenting. They smelled pretty godawful, but I couldn't abide the thought of throwing them out so I rinsed and cooked the thing as usual. Frankly the dish tasted better than it ever had. And invariably when I serve the thing to unsuspecting guests, they are wowed by it. Okay, two questions. One, is it okay to ferment beans or peas, and, two, am I endangering my guests? So far we're all still thriving, and I've been doing this for a good many years now.

Dorie, the book is wonderfully consistent in its voice. I hadn't really thought about it til you noted the challenge there, but it would be very difficult to channel so many very singular voices and methods into a single "grammar," as you've done. The book is one of the most consistently methodical books of its kind that I've seen and has a really fabulous clarity. It's one of my favorite books. And beautiful to boot. Were you part of the filming process at all?

I have a quandry that isn't so much about the table manners of children but related to having children to dinner, which is to say, actually, preferring not to have them to dinner. Or friends' children anyway. I don't have children of my own. But several of our friends do have children, and although I don't mind enjoying their company on occasion, especially if it's out or at their own home, there are other times I'd rather enjoy the company of the parents sans children. I'd like to be able to invite my friends over for dinner without them automatically presuming it's a family invitation, even when it's framed, "Gary and I would love to have you and Don over for dinner on Saturday." Inevitably, they show up with the kids. Is there a way to frame this politely so as not to alienate good friends? As far as I'm concerned, they might just as well bring their dogs too. I actually don't hate children, I just prefer to enjoy them on other people's property.

Foodie, many thanks! I'd heard Giusto's was in the works to provide bulk flours to the public, but it's been many many months since I'd investigated that and hadn't checked back yet. The last time I checked (a bit ago), their web site noted they were on the verge, but not quite there yet. I'm gonna give it a try. Shipping tends nearly to double the price for flours. I'm tentatively driving just south of Louisville next weekend to check out a mill that carries some promising flour which will make the whole enterprise way more economical. Since moving from Chicago, buying many foods I've been used to or food stuffs I'd like to try has been a real pain in the neck. On the other hand, there aren't any wheat fields or mills handy in Chicago either. Oh, yes, the smell for the fermentation of the croc. Yes, it will be, as you say, "sour" during the height of fermentation. It worried me at first too, but now it's a smell I look for. You're in for a fabulous treat. Because of the durum in particular, it's not a great keeper, and into maybe the third day or so will begin to be fairly hard. Let it cool completely before cutting. Don't butter it. It's not a bread that works well with butter. Or anyway I don't think so. I like it just as it is, or with a goat cheese spread topped with slow-roasted tomatoes (tossed with a bit of olive oil and roasted with thyme and garlic, salt and pepper), or just a simple olive oil dipping sauce with minced garlic or parmesan or both. At any rate, it makes a fabulous bruschetta or crostini bread.

Question: How do I append a photo as so many of you have under your names? I've got one loaded in my profile and thought it would automatically append itself. I reckon not. What do I do?

I'm going to need some help with conversions, that's for sure, so RLB would be worth it just for that alone. Thanks. I've been dipping into the linked thread a few messages above, the one with the review and the sourdough (?) gone the way of "The Blob" , and I gotta say your breads all look very wonderful. But I would encourage you to experiment with other flours. The variations are pretty significant. One of the things that scared me most when I started playing with dough were the scary stories about yeast. I was surprised to learn that yeast has been the least of my worries. It's the flours and the techniques. Yeast schmeast. Flour's a big deal in my world. The rest of this week I'm busy with dogs and horses and my mouth (dentist) and then making my husband a long-promised batch of cannoli, not to mention the much anticipated arrival of the new flour, so the bread's sort of rote and on the back burner for the next few days. But I'm hanging around hoping to catch some pics of somebody's croc!

I have to stop posting such long messages! And I didn't mean to hijack this thread and turn it into a bread-baking thread. Maybe we should start a bread thread in addition to this one. I'm still interested in working through the JC book as well. But Seth, just to say one more thing about Field and the Cocodrillo, I'm just dying for you and now Dahome to make the stuff and let me know what you think. So far we've got two big fans of the stuff here (and many of my friends, family and acquaintances), and I'd love to know that other folks enjoy it as much as I do. I've read reviews of the Beranbaum (am I spelling that correctly?), and because I have her cake book and am a little familiar with her history, I was thinking that maybe she would simply be repeating a lot of other people's work and so her book would be a little superfluous for me. I have it on my list of books to buy, but it's way down on the list. What changed your mind about it? What did you find particularly useful?

Dahome, actually I think the home baker can get very close to the artisanal breads produced by professional folks with their heavy duty, fabulous ovens and such. Can I ask what kind of flour you're using? I started out with the basic, grocery store shelf Gold Medal and Pillsbury and managed to produce some fairly good bread working with books by Field and Silverton and Reinhart and the like. And then because it was clear those flours wouldn't produce what I was after, and by then I was on a mission and unaccountably obsessed by bread, I spent a lot of time reading those authors on flours and trying to figure out where I could get it. I was discouraged, of course, that they all noted it was nearly impossible for the home baker to get good bread flour, or at least not without a lot of work, and so I bought some here and there, ran into a number of dead ends with author recommended mills that had either closed or who don't sell to the public (Giusto's, for example, which so many people recommend as having one of the best bread flours around, although I hear they're about to start providing bread flour to the public), and then was happy to discover Great Valley. I'm not sure why, but the King Arthur flour just doesn't do it for me. For awhile, before the Great Valley flour, I tried adding suggested additives to help with a better rise and such (malt, for example, which I finally stopped doing just because I found it altered the flavor just a bit in a way I didn't much like), and I've used vital wheat gluten as well which works very nicely. You might try some vital wheat gluten and see where that takes you. King Arthur carries it. And I've actually found it on the grocery store shelf in my very tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. But they also carry King Arthur flours which is peculiar to me, given the area. I don't know the Semifreddi ciabatta. Ciabatta with ice cream or something chilled? Or something? What the heck is it? We've recently landed in southern Indiana, which is where I hope we can finally stay for a good long while. Just moved into our new home several months ago. We're from Chicago, have transferred around the Chicago area for several years, and then down to the Arkansas Ozarks for three, and now, finally (I hope), here in southern Indiana, close to Louisville KY. It's very pretty here, suprisingly. Not at all like northern Indiana, which is what I'd somehow expected. There's only one place in the area that makes good bread, a Louisville bread and coffee shop with a wood-burning oven. Monster of a thing. One of the owners of the place, a nice young man also obsessed with bread making, took me on a little tour last weekend and showed me how the thing works and told me how it was built. They'd hired an oven builder from Spain who came over and apparently walked around the room measuring with a piece of string, and that was the extent of the actual "plan." But I'm thinking the area can probably accomodate another bread maker. Here's a suggestion. The cocodrillo method really turned me around in terms what I could expect from a bread. It's a two day ferment and then a several hours rise on the third day, the dough stretched and folded every hour and then set to let rise again for a shorter, final rise just before baking. Field actually just says to "turn" the dough every hour, but after reading about the stretching/folding method somewhere else, I tried that and it seems to work the dough better. You can't use your hands to stretch it, it's too wet. You just use your bench scrapers. You'll have in that loaf exactly the sort of texture you're looking for, the great holey crumb. It's that loaf and the methods used to produce it that made me understand I could do the same thing with other breads and get very similar results. It's the very wet breads that'll get you there. Or anyway that's my experience. I'm a complete novice at this, but I've learned that little bit so far.

Dahome, I do a lot of ciabatta, using a sort of hybrid of both Field's and Silverton's recipes. I like both, but found Field more accessible in the beginning because Silverton's bread book is very much devoted to sourdoughs, although you could probably just substitute a biga or poolish for the sourdough starter in all her recipes. By all means get the Field book and try the cocodrillo. It works best with bread flour, though, although I started with all-purpose, Gold Medal and the like, which produced a loaf I found truly startling since I'd never had anything like it. But with bread flour it's awesome stuff. Dorie, I'm a big fan. I'm thinking a book about your experiences along the lines as the one you just related would be fabulous. And a question to anybody about experiences with flour: I just raved above about the mill I buy my bread flour from and then immediately got a very questionable batch. This has only happened once before with them and I just soldiered on and didn't say anything. But since it is expensive, especially with shipping costs, and I buy in 25 lb bags, I phoned them this time to ask very politely if there might have been a mix-up in the order. Don't know what that might be, but I didn't want to just come right out and say, "Hey, this flour sucks!" So after some preliminary niceties, the owner asked what exactly the problem was, was it, for example, rising properly? It actually is rising, bubbling nicely, etc., but it tastes overwhelmingly like paste. Even the bread tastes like paste and ends up out of the oven after cooling like a sort of cardboard. I finally said, "I can't really explain it except to say that it tastes like paste, or, as I said to my husband, it tastes dead." And I've made several batches from it just to be sure I wasn't doing anything wrong or just not paying attention to something. He's sending me another 25 lb bag, and was very lovely, but I'm wondering whether anybody has had similar experiences with flour and what the reasons for the extreme difference might be. Just a bad or questionable batch of wheat? Or maybe something else?... I don't think it's a yeast problem. I buy yeast by the jar and store it in the refrigerator, and I'd used yeast from the same jar in the last batch of good flour just a couple of days before and the bread was fabulous.

Thanks so much folks for the welcome. Dahome, I've not bought the Levy yet, although it's on my wish list at Amazon. I have her cake book, but have been too preoccupied with other things to even approach it. I started doing the bread from a small book printed many years ago by some monks, I think, that I'd carried around for years and which scared me for all those years, for all the reasons so many people are scared of baking bread (how do you handle yeast, how and how much do you knead, when the heck is it done and how do you tell, that kind of stuff). Pretty basic loaf, sandwich type bread. And then I started looking around on the internet and saw that a lot of folks were recommending both Field and Nancy Silverton, so I got their books and started experimenting. And then I got Daniel Leader's (? -- is that the right name?) book, Laurel's Kitchen book, one of Reinhart's, Wood's Classic Sourdoughs, Artisan Baking Across America, some others I can't think of. I spent several obsessed months working with Silverton's sourdough, had to travel a bit and then ended up throwing it out. I've got a sourdough starter going now which I've been using in everything, and I like my breads more and more, especially over the past several months. In fact, I'm building the oven because I'm planning a bread business. I've got one restaurant tentatively lined up, and that's a plenty good start for me right now. She's impatient for me to start which is good for me to see. A mutual friend recommended my stuff to her. My husband works for an Italian company, and so we've gotten to travel a bit and I've taken some cooking classes in Tuscany, but baking bread has really turned into a passion for me. I think after three years I've finally got two nice basic loaves down that I love above all breads anywhere so far, and that's a great start. If that sounds ridiculously paltry, well, I guess I'm a little anal retentive, a perfectionist, and I've been trying to figure out the perfect combination of elements for what I like in a bread and don't really expect to be there for another ten years. One of the doughs is the kind of thing you can just add stuff to and end up with a whole new thing -- like olives, herbs, cheeses, that kind of thing -- or shape in any number of ways. Field's book is worth getting for a number of reasons, but if for nothing else for her "cocodrillo" bread, an invention by a Roman baker, a ridiculously wet durum mix that is unbelievable. You can't really touch the dough, you just have to pour it and cut and separate with a bench scraper and let it lie where it is which just happens to approximate the shape of a crocodile, hence the name. The first time I made it I thought it must surely be a mistake, until it came out of the oven. Unbelievable bread. I've been buying my bread flour from Great Valley Mills and the durum from King Arthur, have tried the KA bread flour, among others, but so far really love the GVM. I need to get to a local mill, though, because shipping is just too cost prohibitive. But GVM has beautiful bread flour. Here's a link, if anybody's interested. Look up their hard white flour. I always add about a tablespoon of wheat germ per cup of flour to my doughs and really love the texture and little bit of crunch it gives to the crust: http://www.greatvalleymills.com/ My husband is a little worried about how the oven might affect the resale of our house, if we ever have to move again (we only moved in 6 months ago). We've had to transfer for his job many times over the past 7 years or so, which is why I started baking and one reason I settled on bread, having to rethink a career for myself, but think we've finally landed in one spot for the forseeable future. We're fortunate to have several acres (for horses primarily), and an attached garage to build the oven in. If I'm going to be consistent with selling to restaurants and the like, I can't just build it out in the back yard as so many folks do. Baking bread in the rain or snow wouldn't quite work. We're going to try to do as much work on the oven as we feel able to do ourselves, so that should help defray some of the cost. It's a little scary, a little nerve wracking, thinking about where this will go, or if it will. I'm encouraged by the responses I've gotten to my breads, though. All more than good. In the long run I'd like to add some Italian-based desserts, ricotta cheesecakes and maybe some tea cakes, for example, some simple things. But till now I've been hell-bent on getting the right thing in a couple of breads, and I'm feeling pretty confident about that. I had a wonderful conversation with a bread baker in Italy, most of it in gestures and a lot of it translated, a man obviously devoted to his bread. When a friend asked how my bread and this particular baker's bread could be so much better than anything he'd ever had anywhere else, I said, "it's art and soul," which somebody translated to the baker who immediately laughed and nodded very vigorously. One thing's sure, I need to sell this stuff just so I don't end up eating it all myself! I'm going to try the epis next and hope they look even half as beautiful as the pics here. Very wowsville. I like the idea of working on a gallette or even the cheesecake.

Greetings, I'm new here, reading for the past several days whilst waiting for my application for membership to go through. I'm enjoying the pics and the discussion. Have had the JC book for a few years now and always enjoy dipping into it now and again. Although, truthfully, I've had better luck with Carol Field's bread-baking methods from her very wonderful Italian Baker. But I love the JC book for a million other reasons. May I suggest trying Nancy Silverton's to-die-for pecan sticky buns (also from the JC book)? If you've never tried them, you'll never think of sticky buns in the same way again. They are flat out one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. Her brioche tart with the white secret sauce is also very fabulous (the one that made JC cry on her "Baking with Julia" show, a delightful and quintessentially Julia Child moment, very sweet and funny), although the sauce was a bit finicky. But I may just be remembering it that way only because I screwed up and burned it the first time and had to do the whole sauce over again. I don't know whether any of you who are having trouble with the mixers overheating and such might find this useful, but Silverton notes in her bread book that "mix to combine" = speed 1 on the mixer, "slow" = speed 2, "medium" = 3, and "high = speed 4. That may help. Also, if you reserve a cup of the flour called for in the bread recipe you're working with, mixing for a few minutes to get everything kneading, add only what you need for the water and the flour to make a fairly wet dough (I tend to add only enough flour so that the dough still pools a bit in the bottom of the mixer while mixing). Having worked through Field and Silverton and several other bread making books over the past handful of years, I've realized they're right on: wetter is better. And a question. Have any of you worked with wood-fired ovens? Any experience building them? I've recently got the plans from Alan Scott to build one of his ovens, and my husband and I are going to try to get the thing built by the end of April. I look at the plans and immediately go cross-eyed and get pretty crabby, although my husband is just fine with them. It's so nice to be here and to have discovered so many dedicated baking folks.