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Chris Hennes

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  1. Chris Hennes
    Ají Amarillo and Roasted Purple Potato Sourdough (KM p. 72) Though the recipe here calls for pureeing canned peppers, I simply bought a pepper puree and used it as instructed. This recipe is also designed to demonstrate the inclusion of roasted vegetables in the dough -- the roasting instructions aren't really even what I'd term "roasting" -- you bake at quite a low temperature. High enough to cook, but low enough to significantly dehydrate. The vegetables then retain their shape (more or less) when included, instead of disappearing as a mush. Although I think the potatoes add an interesting color pop, the ají amarillo really steal the show here, they are a terrific flavor in a sourdough.
  2. Chris Hennes
    Hominy and Mole Sourdough (KM p. 72) I'm continuing with the theme here of trying out all of the techniques they include for adding flavors and textures to a basic sourdough. In this recipe the use ground canned hominy and premade mole paste to flavor the dough. The taste is more subtle than I would have expected -- you can smell the hominy and mole when the bread is warm, but the taste is quite mild once the bread has cooled. Flavorwise think it's a pretty obvious step here to use a homemade mole and masa in place of the mole powder and ground hominy, though of course the water quantity will need to be adjusted as per some of the puree recipes.
  3. Chris Hennes

    Waffle Varieties

    Chris Hennes replied to a topic in Cooking

    eG's definitive Waffles! topic is here: It was actually member dr_justice who first suggested the "Air Waffles" here: And I cooked a bunch of the recipes from Dorie Greenspan's Waffles book here:
  4. Chris Hennes
    It isn’t sweet (at least not overly so, there is some sugar in the purée but not a lot). But the flavor is pretty clear. The texture of the bread isn’t affected much.
  5. Chris Hennes
    Black Currant Sourdough with Marcona Almonds (KM p. 79) Here's the follow-up to my earlier post about the vivid purple dough. It does, indeed, yield vivid purple bread. The overall sensation of eating it is like having toast with built-in jam.
  6. Chris Hennes
    Lemon and Herb Pesto Sourdough (KM p. 71) This starts life as a normal sourdough. After pre-shaping into a boule, the dough is flattened into a disk and a divot made in the center. An herb pesto (roasted garlic, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and lemon zest) is added to the divot, then thin lemon slices layer on top. The dough is then shaped into a boule such that the pesto forms a layer over the top of the dough ball, just beneath the surface. It's proofed like that, and then scored to reveal the filling.
  7. Chris Hennes
    Pistachio Butter Sourdough (KM p. 72) This starts with a normal batch of sourdough (I used the Modernist variant), to which you add 20% pistachio paste and 20% toasted pistachios. It tastes basically like pistachios (shocking, I know). It would probably be great with a pistachio gianduja spread on top, but I enjoyed it plain or with butter as well. It's a light green color: not too intense, just enough to be unusual.
  8. Chris Hennes
    OK, the last loaf just came out of the oven... four of them today, starting with: Modernist Sourdough Of course. I usually make at least one loaf of this when I'm making sourdoughs. I tried a different proofing strategy this weekend. I started making the loaves at about noon on Saturday. I machine-mixed, so they were ready for proofing at about 4:00pm. I proofed them at 13°C until midnight or so (so eight hours), then moved them to my normal refrigerator overnight. I started baking at about 11am so the loaves got something on the order of 12 more hours of colder proofing. I prefer handling the dough at the colder temps, it scores more cleanly and seems to retain its shape better. Last weekend my loaves were overproofed, having been left at 13°C overnight. This weekend they were spot on.
  9. Chris Hennes
    As usual I've got several loaves in progress this weekend, but the craziest looking, by far, is this purple beast: That's the blackcurrant and marcona almond sourdough just after adding the almonds (medium gluten development). It is seriously bright purple.
  10. Chris Hennes
    (That said, I've used one of those generic 7-grain mixes, all cooked together obviously, and still gotten excellent results)
  11. Chris Hennes
    I'd say that the True Modernist Way™ would be to cook each grain separately. And I think you'd want to use 210g total cooked weight for the 1kg dough recipe, but I guess it depends on how much you like inclusions! They have demonstrated that you can include a nearly arbitrarily large amount and still get a successful loaf.
  12. Chris Hennes
    And for giggles, a video showing the production of the Modernist Focaccia (I made it into pizza, which I cooked on the grill because it's still quite hot here).
  13. Chris Hennes
    This weekend I returned to sourdoughs after a summer-long heat-induced absence. It wasn't actually the plan, but a friend of mine stopped by my office the other day and asked if I had a starter he could have, his had gotten infected and was on its deathbed. I didn't (now that I'm comfortable starting new ones I didn't see a reason to maintain it all summer long), but I had previously given my starter to a colleague at work. So she brought in hers, and after my levain-killer friend took what he needed, I also grabbed a bit and figured I may as well bake with it this weekend. My colleague had been feeding it whole wheat flour, but the levain didn't seem to mind a feeding on white flour Friday night, so by yesterday morning it was definitely ready for baking. I made six loaves total: two Modernist Focaccia, two Master Recipe Sourdough, and two Chocolate Cherry sourdough (now a marital obligation, I think!). Here are the latter two loaves: They are all a touch over-proofed (overnight at 13°C), and honestly I was also really lazy with the shaping and just sort of let the dough drop into its banneton. So not perfect, but functional and delicious anyway.
  14. Chris Hennes
    I love the translation on that first one: "Pizza with meat fragrance".
  15. Chris Hennes
    Yeah, it's volume 2, not 3.
  16. Chris Hennes
    @JoaoBertinatti - I usually split mine at feeding time, so feed both the part I plan on using and the part that is continuing on at the same time. If you are talking about feeding earlier or later than your normal feeding time I'd only feed the part you plan on baking with, and feed the other portion at the normal time.
  17. Chris Hennes
    Meh, pizza is a flatbread. If it's good on bread, it's good on pizza. I'm making one from the New York Times tonight, roasted eggplant and ricotta. I've made this one before, it's pretty good. Lots of basil and chile flakes.
  18. Chris Hennes
    I recently ate at Moose's Tooth pizzeria and pub in Anchorage. At our waiter's recommendation (and because it sounded really weird) I had the Amazing Apricot: Blackened Chicken, Cream Cheese, Apricot Sauce, Red Peppers, Carrot Threads, Green Onions, Cilantro, Mozzarella, Provolone. It was actually not all that interesting, flavor-wise, everything just sort of blended together into a suprisingly bland non-thing. You can see the rest of the menu here, most of their pizzas are on the strange side.
  19. Chris Hennes
    Sounds excellent, they should feel free to open an outpost in Norman! I should be in Tulsa later this fall, I'll try to check them out then. It looks like some nights they have a live band, too.
  20. Chris Hennes
    Great idea - I think the Anova is the best of the several I've tried in terms of very simple controls. Although the new ones come with Bluetooth, they can still be used with just the dial on the top. Set the temp, press the start button, and away you go. They are compatible with a large variety of pots, though your library might consider including a cambro with the kit.
  21. Chris Hennes
    😞 As usual, I'll most likely be out of the country then (coincidentally quite close to ptw1953, actually!). Maybe we could have the thing in Scotland in 2020! (Not volunteering to plan it)
  22. Chris Hennes
    I've been a bit remiss in reporting this summer's experiments (summer is my busy season at work). It's pretty hot here in the summer, so I literally haven't turned my oven on since May: my grill, however, has been getting quite the workout. I've been playing around with their various flatbread doughs and different styles of grilling pizza. My favorite so far is a thick, fluffy pan pizza made with their direct focaccia dough. You can easily retard it several days in the refrigerator so I get a couple nights of pizza out of it. I tweaked the dough by adding 4g of polydextrose to it so that it maintains its crispness off the grill, and I've been cooking it in a big skillet with a lot of olive oil over relatively low heat (about 400°F, give or take). While I basically love all styles of pizza, I haven't been all that thrilled with most of the direct-on-the-grates techniques out there. By migrating to an entirely different style of pizza I've ended up with something I'm really happy with.
  23. Chris Hennes
    This morning we updated the eG Forums to the latest software from Invision, Community Suite 4.3. The bulk of the changes are under the hood, but a few things of note for those who like technical details: You can now use real emojis (rather than just emoticons). So, 🎉 and/or 🥂. This is particularly nice for those using mobile devices. Emoticons will still work, though . We've switched from MySQL Fulltext searching to ElasticSearch. This should give better search results in the long run, but will take us a bit of time to really dial in. Although we don't ever give your information to third parties, and we don't accept advertising, this software update does help us comply with some of the other requirements of the GDPR. If you experience any problems with the software, please see this topic. 🍾
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  24. Chris Hennes
    @Tri2Cook -- I made those for a party last week and had the same reaction. I made a second batch and increased the mint by a pretty substantial amount (at least double, maybe more). I preferred the mintier version.
  25. Chris Hennes
    Yes - I didn't even think of trying to do it in two steps. Good idea.
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