glennbech

Aspargus with sauce gribiche as a starter... .. Moving on to a rather big oven roasted chicken breast (400grams), risotto made from the chicken stock, and a field salad with sundried tomato, vinagrette and parmesan cheese. Did Anyone else notice how well sundried tomatos taste with the parmesan cheese?

Well, here's my first decent atempt. My original recipe called for capers, and fresh herbs... I substituted with some Chives, and a very small amound of dried tarragon. Yum! Aspargus is only in season here in Norway in June/July, and only harvest from one certain distruct is anything to speak of.... I never tried them, but I've heard the taste is spectacular as they get time to grow. The Norwegian aspergus looks a bit like the Thai I've used for this dish. I'm most certainly looking forward to that and are most certainly going to try with a sauce gribiche. :-)

I'm taking my family to london this easter, and want to know if anyone have any recomendation of any "child friendly" venue. I'm thinking of somewhere me and my wife can enjoy a 3+ course meal, and still bring our little prince charming. Our 8 monts old is easy going, and can stay happy for hours if he gets his own chair, some biscuts and attention from the waiters .-) I know london is vast, we're probably going to stay in the more central areas. What do you guys think?

Nice work! :-) I noticed your proofing baskets, what kind of cloth are you using, and do you have problems with sticking? How much water in yout recipe. Nice crust colour and slicing patterns .-)

I totally agree on your conclusion in point 1. If I want an "easy going" laof that anyone would like, still with that characteristic sourdough crust, I use up to 35% active starter in my dough. This is also a faster way to bake sourdough.

I am finally back in business with a good starter, after a long SD baking break. This is a very basic 3 Ingredient loaf, 70% water. Bulk fermented for about 18 hours, the first 10 in the fridge, and the last 8 on the counter. It got (no sureprise) real sour :-) It was experimental, but the only workflow I could manage in the middle of th week .-) I can recommend it if you like the real sour taste :-) It stuck (!!!) while I removed it from my improvised proofing basket. This caused it to flatten out a lot. In only one more week or so, I'll get my bannetons from brotformen.de..... :-) I am Really looking forward to that .-) Improvised proofing basket. Floured cloth in a plastic bowl. I would not recommend it

Your images look a *little bit* like my atempts with baking with a not optimal starter.... If you take a look at my website by going here ; http://www.glennbech.com/2006/04/sourdough-disaster.html You can see pre-bake photos of my first futile atempts. When I baked those, they were pizza's. Yours look a lot better though; Keep up the good work .-) How long do you "ferment"? (first stage of rising), and for how long do you "proof"? (rising, after you have shaped your loaves), and how do you keep your dough during the proofing stage ?

Thanks for pointing that out. Does this mean that the yolks will thicken the sauce no matter what, and that I don't have to be careful about adding a little at a time? My sauce split during rather heavy manual whipping, I suspect that of beeing my mistake. I thought I was making mayo :-)

Baking for a friend's newborn's baptism party I used a baloon to sculpt a chocolate cup as a decoration for my cake.... This was last summer, it was hot! In the car on my way to the party my wife had the cake on her lap. Whenever the sun hit the cup on top of the cake directly, you could actually see it start to melt! I must have been a funny sight, manouvering and jumping from shadow to shadow from the parking lot into the building where the party was. I also tried to shield the cake from the sun using my body, walking "backwards" .-) I have almost no experience in baking cakes, and I would never had thought that my chocolate decoration would be so voulnerable to direct sunlight :-) It also belongs to the story that my first atempt at the cake ended up on the floor.... This was well documented here on eGullet

Working withe percentages is very usefull when comparing recipes.... If i see a recipe using the baker's percentages, I don't have to care about the size of the dough (it might be baking huge bakery sized doughs), and I don't have to care about pounds, ounces, kilos og kilograms. It's all in the percentages .-) I Usually let the loaves rise on a baking sheet on a peel, and put the loaf with the sheet onto the hot stone. I know this is "cheating", but imagine losing a few days work in the last few seconds of the baking process.... Believe me, that has happened :-) Some suggest flouring the peel/pan with generos amounts of Semolina flour. My experience is that doing that leaves my whole apartment smelling of burnt flour for days. This is the "crux" of the process for me... Slicing the loaves, into the oven onto the stone, spray-misting or pouring cold water/ice cubes into the oven, and slamming the door shut :-) It's not easy, but it's so fun to watch those loaves rise for for first 10-15 minutes. I sometimes sit in front of the oven watching... My wife thinks Im crazy .-)

This sauce is a emulsion sauce based on hard boiled eggs. The yolk and white of the boiled egg is separated and the hard boiled yolk is mixed with the mustard, and oils to make the emulsion. Later, herbs, white wine vinegaer, salt, shallots, capers are added. Finally the egg white is finely chopped and mixed in. - My first atemt at this sauce was a disaster. It split..... I know how to make mayo, and sauce berinaise without problems, so this came as a sureprise. Does emulsion sauces based on hard boild egg-yolks split more easily? - Did anyone make it? Was it good? - I was planning on using it with Asparagus for a starter. Any other suggestions?

Things can be a bit confusing at first, but you'll get the hang of it ! Here is the ABC on how to get a great loaf with open holes. Anyone please correct me if Im wrong here. - All ingredients in a bread recipe are compared to the weight of the flour. This is called baker's percentages I believe. - Hydration level usually refers to the amount of water in the recipe, compared to the weight of the flour, and *NOT* the percent of water in the total dough. This can be a bit confusing at first. - So... Let's take an example basic recipe. (Should give you a wet challenging dough to handle, but should produce good open textured loaf) The starter should be active, lively and bubbly, and be aproxemately 50/50 water and flour. The "real" water content is close to 70% in this recipe, due to the wet starter. Some will probably suggest even wetter doughs, but they can be challenging to handle in the beginning. 1000g (1 kg) AP flour (100%) 650g (6 dl) Water (65%) 20g salt (2%) 300g Sourdough starter (30%) - As you can see, all ingredients are given in the percentages of the flour weight. The water content is listed at 65% this does *NOT* mean that the fina dough has 65% water in it, only that the water's weight is 65% of the flour's weight. My online tool for calculating percentages - To help with oven spring , bake on a hot stone. And make sure there is steam in the oven during the first 3-5 minutes of baking. I usually just throw 1 dl water in the bottom of the oven, a couple of times. Did any of this make any sense ?

I Agree... However! I wouldn't recommend trying to use a low hydrated dough (60-65%), under proof and hope for good results. In my experience Two things will happen ; 1) The good news is that you *will* get large holes, the only problem is that the texture of the bread around the holes will be very dense. 2) The bread will crack up. No matter how much steam you can create in your conventional oven, under-proofing a low hydrated dough will very often lead the gringe (cut) to be fully expanded, and the oven spring pushes the bread further out creating additional cracks and strange shapes. I've tried ice cubes, pans of water in the bottom of the oven...... In my experience high hydration (70'ish) and hot-stone baking is the key to a fine texture and lots of holes. I've had boules lookign flat and unpromising blow up themselves up like bowling balls inside my oven. I think that's the thing I enjoy most about baking :-) I have some pictures documenting the baking process in my foodblog

My guess is that from a chemical point of view a wet starter should be preferable as all chemical reactions happens faster in water. I Keep my starter wet, but often use it to make "biga's" (60% hydrated non-salted leavening doughs).

This is my experience as well. The starters I have made have all been extremly hard to kill off, even in the beginning. With my current starter, I even forgot to feed it over the weekend during the first week. It got left on the kitchen top, even with no lid on. After coming home from skiing, on sunday, I just stired the separated starter togehter, discarded about half, and added equal amounts of flour and water. Also notice that I used the term "about". I have also found that making sourdough starters are not a very scienfidic process. During the first days, I usually discard "about" half, and add "aproxemately" equal amounts of water and flour to it I might have gotten lucky though. This is only the 3'rd culture I've started :-)

Awsome crumb texture! :-)

After a long period of not baking I'm back in business with a new sourdough starter. This is my first loaf using it. (Sorry for the horrible photo quality). You might notice a huge crack in the middle of the loaf. My theory so far is unsufficiant final proofing (3 hours) and that I didn't cut the loaf enough prior to baking. But... The point is that I'm finally sourdough baking again. It feels good to have a well working sourdough starter in the fridge :-) I'll make sure to post better quality bread, and better quality photos later ! :-)

After a long period of not beeing able to care for my baking hobbies, I just started up again. I started a new sourdough culture two weeks ago, and had my first real atempt today :-) Go on! Create your own starter. That way it's more personal, and more fun when it works ! :-) Also remember to share you experiences on this forum :-)

I really love the green salad leaves in the picture, but I cant seem to remember their name. Anyone?

Thanks Jan. I didn't use anything special for my deep frying. Just a sautè pan, and digital thermometer to keep the oil at an apoximate 170 C.

Thanks! They were real crunchy. I was also amazed by how well the taste of th fish gets preserved when you prepare it this way. I used grape seed oil for the deep fry. It has an interesting greenish colour. I don't think it really makes a difference for the result, but I guess a non-aromatic oil does best ?

This is my first atemt ever at tempura. I made a tempura batter with egg, water, heavy cream, corn starch and AP flour. For this batch, pieces of Wolffish went into the make-shift deep frier :-) Yum! Closeup

or quickly blend in a blender and then strain. this breaks up the juice sacks and makes it easier to separate seeds and pulp from juice. ← Excellent! .-) thanks to both of you. I'll post with pictures next time -)

I purchased a black truffle from a small but well stocked grocery store store on Friday. Half was used in a Black truffle risotto apetizer for two. I started saturday with home made toasted walnut bread, a plain omelet and grated black truffle. That sure was a good way to start the weekend. Now I have half a black truffle in my fridge in some risotto rice. Any suggestions on what to do with it? I guess I have to use it as soon as possible to get the most out of it. The truffle is from Provance. If I've understood it, hunting season is January black truffles. Of course I want to use it as fresh as possible :-) I'm open to suggestions, the recipe should serve 2 people. Ps. The truffle cost me $90 and had a weight of 30 grams. For my personal economy that's a bit pricy. The store is probably to only one in Oslo/Norway that would have a fresh truffle, so there isn't much competition. How does this price compare to other countries, and how accessible are fresh truffles when they are in season?

I did a Grand Marnier Panacotta with Passionfruit "jam" on top yesterday. It was excellent except for the fact that I miscalculated the panacotta/jam ratio per serving a bit, not putting enough jam into them, making the whole dessert on the sour side. For a family dinner it didn't really matter :-) The Panacotta was made with double the vanilla (2 pods) compared to other recipies I've seen, no sugar, and the juice of an entire lemon to 250g of heavy cream. The sweet and delicious Passionfruit was mixed with sugar, and put on top when the panacotta had set, for a green/yellow sweet layer. Question; Im not used to working wiht passion fruit. It reminded me a bit about the pomegranate... The taste is realy good, but you end up with lots of seeds in your mouth.... Is it possible to "Filter" out the seeds, or extract the flavour leaving the seeds behind in some way? Or do you all fancy the seeds and take it as a part of the eating experience?