jackal10

"Oi! Squire! Over here!" while waving money usually gets attention

Liver pate (suggestions above. Use this one http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r728.html but repalce the chicken livers with your liver, and omit the game. Liver sliced, soaked an milk and then pan fried; Variations: Liver and bacon Liver and onions Devilled (lots of worcester sauce) Dirty rice

Now bring us some figgy pudding, Now bring us some figgy pudding, Now bring us some figgy pudding, And bring some out here. For we all like figgy pudding, For we all like figgy pudding, For we all like figgy pudding, So bring some out here. And we won't go until we've got some, And we won't go until we've got some, And we won't go until we've got some, So bring some out here.

Isn't syrup of figs a laxative? It would make a killer sticky toffee pudding

You get Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) from a health food shop or a chemist/drug store. You want the powder, not the fizzy flavoured tablets. If you can't get it, omit it. I don't have any personal experience of ovens with glass in, but some threads mention them. The light can be dismantled and removed. The glass door I don't know but someone mentioned covering it with a double layer of foil. Mea Culpae. Dan Lepard has pointed out that I was using the wrong word - my dsylexia - I meant of course "chef" not "clef". Its a real problem since the terms are not well defined, and change from place to place and book to book. Here is one suggestion "culture" (or even "starter culture") is the biologically active base that is kept from one baking session to the next, "sponge" is the elaborated culture, which is then mixed into "dough" which is what is baked into bread.

oooh, my sympathy. I hope the starter survived, or do you need more? It warms up when mixed with room temperature or warm flour and water. Since this then ferments for 18 hours or so warming it up to activate it beforehand makes no practical difference.

Excellent. LEt me encourage you to post some pictures... Starter is a confusing term. I take the "clef"(which is what I store from one baking session to the next) out of the fridge and use it cold to build the sponge "poolish", that I then use to build the dough. Since I only use a tablespoonful of clef that is mixed with a cup of water and flour it really makes no difference as to its temperature and I use it straight from the fridge.

For an extra flaky crust I give my pastry a couple of turns - rough puff.

Aiee..despite what Silverton says, grapes and the like in starter encourage the wrong bugs. You want bugs that eat flour, not grapes! I use a spot next to the Aga cooker (the Aga is always on) that is at 30C. Other people find a place - over the pilot light, or above the hot water cylinder that maintains the temperature. Others improvise with a picnic cool box and a large pan of hot water for thermal mass. If you are high tech you can build a proof box from an insulated container, a low wattage light bulb or acquarium heater and a thermostat.

You are being much to kind to your starter. Mine lives in the fridge for months without attention. When I want to bake, as in this demo, I take a spoonful of the starter and mix it with flour and water to form the sponge. The jar goes back in the fridge. When its looking a bit empty I make a double batch of sponge when I next bake and put half back in the jar of clef. Best way to make a starter is to take equal weights of flour and water and leave in a warm place (30C/90F) until its bubbly. Then referesh it a couple of times, and you are done. Temperature is important as it helps select the right bugs. Alternatively PM me your snail mail address and I'll send you some. I usually ask that you make a charitable donation to your favourite charity in lieu of postage, and undertake to pass the starter on to anyone with a need...

The dough in the couche stayed in the fridge overnight - about 24 hours. Baked it off this morning. Nice bread, a typical baguette. It still not as open a texture as I like, given by the softer flour.

Yes, I'm at Emma. The food there is much better than Trinity. When on song, and for set piece occasions such as formal dinners the food can be wonderful, as a good as any grand hotel in the world, in the old country house tradition - 7 course feasts, for example. Everyday its reasonable mass catering, usually heavy on chips (fries) and carbohydrates, but certainly edible. Trinity has the odd tradition in the fellows Parlour that the port only goes round the table twice - to the left of course. Abstemious fellows. No you won't starve. The every day food at Trinity is average institutional, but the wines are magnificent. The cellar is one of the best in Cambridge, and Dr Perry is a wise and informed wine steward. That reminds me, he was getting me some Zind Humbrecht Gerwurz Heimbourg VT 2002 - I must see if its arrived. You can also cook for yourself - Sainsbury supermarket and the stall holders in the Market are close by, and there is a farmers market on Sundays. London is only an hour away, for the restaurants there. Trinity May Ball is famous, as are the feasts. Trinity bar is OK. Cambridge, as might be expected has many cheap restaurants and pubs catering for students, and one or two upmarket ones, including Midsummer House, now 2* Michelin. What are you studying? I guess its postgrad. PM me, and I'd be happy to show you around.

I've posted a demo of the basic method http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...=0#entry1002596

Let me emphasise that this is work in progress. I'm experimenting to get what to me is the best texture and taste. This how I currently make sourdough baguettes. Its not the only way. It may not be the best way. You need to experiment to "dial in" the method to suit your environment, flour, starter and personal taste. However I hope to show some basic techniques that have general application for handling very wet doughs. The dough can also be used for other breads and rolls. This is a home recipe, but could be scaled for restaurant or small shop use, making a few dozen baguettes. Industrial scale production has different issues. I like big uneven holes and an open texture. To achieve this we need to break some of the rules, which were designed to make the even textured bread thought desirable in the past. This demonstrates my version of the "a l'ancienne" style, where the dough is mixed cold with a long cold fermentation to allow the enzymes to break down the starches in the flour to sugars before the yeast becomes active, so when the dough warms up it is exceptionally lively. Combined with short proof times to give lots of oven spring the result is an open texture.. The problem is that the acid in the sourdough degrades the protein and the long starch molecules, making the dough very wet. Step 1: Build the sponge 100g Flour 100g water 1 Tbs "clef" The "clef" (key) is the mother sourdough starter. I store it in a jar in fridge. You can see it seperates into two layers. That is OK, just dig though the liquid layer. I'm actually making a double recipe, since the clef is running a bit low, and the excess will go back into the jar. I'm using a 11.8% protein (actually measured by the nitrogen content) organic white supermarket flour, after some discussion on the sourdough baguette thread, since this approximated to the french type 65 flour. However flour in France is classified by the ash content when burnt at 900C that is they indicate the mineral content (in milligrams) per 10 g flour. In Germany they measure the same thing, but per 100g, of flour, so German flour types are ten times as much and have three digits, such a type 405. Thus a type 65, a common baking flour, has 0.65% ash. Mineral content is roughly a measure of the extraction rate, or amount of the grain in the flour, since most of the mineral content is in the husk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Flour_type_numbers. However this only loosely correlates with gluten and protein content. Traditionally french baguette flour is quite soft. There are some books that indicate french flour has about an 11.5% protein content, so that is today's experiment. Why they indicate in several places on the bag that flour is suitable for vegetarians is unclear to me, It states it only contains wheat flour. What would non-vegetarian flour have in it? Ground bones? Weavils? Mix together. Ferment for 18 hours at 30C. Temperature is important. Just mix it until its more or less even - time and the bugs will do the rest. This is in bakers terms a 100% dough, that is the water content (hydration) is 100% of the flour content. Note its like a thick batter, just holding together. This is a wet sponge or poolish. 18 hours later... Ths sponge is bubbly and alive. It has thinned out a lot, now like cream, since the acid in the sourdough has attacked the long starch molecules and the gluten in the flour. The long sponge development time gives lots of sour flavour to the finished baguette. Stage 2: Make the dough. Flour 500g 83% Sponge 200g 33% Salt 12g 2% Water 330g 55% (iced) Vit C 5g 1% Total flour 600g 100% Total water 430g 72% Total dough weight 1047g The percentages are bakers percentages, that is relative to the total amount of flour, including the flour in the sponge. Whizz together, without the salt in a food processor for 20 seconds, then add the salt and whizz for another 20 seconds. This short intensive mixing makes a softer dough. Don't mix a lot more, or you will overmix the dough. If you use a conventional mixer, mix on high speed until the dough clears the bowl. You can also hand mix the dough - again just mix to an even consistency, no need to knead, and I tend to hand mix larger batches. I have experimented with leaving the salt out until you come to shape the dough, and that works well, and gives the bread a saltier taste. Weigh everything. There is no substitute for precision if you want to be able to make the same bread again. The colour is a bit off in the picture - the dough is light cream, rather than orange. After the second mix. This is a very extensible dough that windowpanes well. Turn out into a bowl, cover and put in the fridge overnight (12 hours plus) Timing is not very critical. I mist the top with a hand pumped EVOO spray, which is the silver cylinder to the left. The trigger pump sprays that cleaning products come in, well washed out, also work well to spray oil. The worst part of this is the cleanup. The dough is very sticky. A rubber spatula and lots of hot water helps. Next day not much seems to have happened, but if you look closely uyou will see lots of bubbles in the dough. To get it out of the bowl cleanly ease it all round the edge with your fingers (oiled or floured), then lift it out in the piece. You can only sucessfully handle the mature dough when it is very cold. Put it on a lightly floured (or oiled) pastry board, and fold sides to middle and top to bottom, like a turn in puff pastry. This gently stretches the dough, and because of the coating of flour or oil makes it easier to handle. Divide into three baguettes with the traditional weight of about 320g. Use a square dough scraper, and press rather than saw the dough. Let the pieces rest for 15 mins. Shape. The objective is to make a half-length baguette that gets stretched later, but one where the outside layer is stretched and tight, like the skin on a balloon. Take each piece, flatten a little and again make a turn, long sides to middle. You will need some flour on the board to stop it sticking but not too much, since we don't want the flour pickup to unbalance the formula. Now flaten the top edge a bit (assuming the dough is in the orientation shown), and taking the flap pull it out to stretch and fold it over pressing it down as you go along. The do the same with the other side. Its to work form the top edge, the edge away from you, forming the baguette. Normally, at this point one would put the dough into a couche, folded floured linen to prove. Mine is an old oven cloth in a half sheet pan, and a short rolling pin. However I'm experimenting with very short or no proof times for this method, instead using intensive mixing and Vitamin C in the dough to provide aeration, so we are going to bake immediately. Let me again emphasise you can ony handle the dough cold, so we need to get it into the oven befoe it warms up and becomes liquid. At this point he oven should be pre-heated to around 500F/250C, with a layer of tiles, brick or pizza stone to bake on. Make yourself, if you do not already have some three baguette boards, the length of your desired baguette, usually what will fit in your oven. Put some baking parchment on it, and put the dough on it. Stretch the dough to the desired length. Repeat for the other baguettes. Slash them and using the boards slide them into the oven so that the baking parchment under the dough is in direct contact with the hot base or stone. Steam, mist or put a cup of water into a pre-heated heavy pan in the oven to provide a burst of very hot steam that gelatanises the outside and gives a shiny crackly crust. (caution scald danger and oven glass or light can shatter if not protected). Close the door. The slashes form the "grigne" (grins) on top of the loaf. Traditionally bakers use a lame, or razor blade on a stick. Cut at an angle, not staight down. and nearly parallel to the loaf. 5-7 slashes along the length is usal, each just overlapping the previous. I did not slash these. Bake 30-40 minutes or until the desired crust colour looks about right. Texture is OK, but not as good as that made with softer (9% protein) flour. As I said at the top, I'm still experimenting, and I encourage you to do so too, and post your results. Ther are lots of variables: flour, hydration, mix times, bulk ferment time and temperature, proof time and temperature. Maybe this stronger flour needs longer proof times. I've put the couche with a baguette from this batch in the fridge (in a plastic bag) overnight, and will try baking it tomorrow to see if that makes any difference.

In fact that's what I'm having this Sunday. I'm entertaining some of my MBA students, to congratulate them on submitting their thesises. Decent piece of beef (3 or 4 ribs from a local farm), cooked rare (57C). Decent claret (proabaly some of the 1990 Château Haut Batailley) to go with. Consomme Roast forerib with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes parsnips etc; garden runner beans; horseradish Blackberry and apple pie; Stilton Champagne (although Pimms is a good idea) Claret Port

To get the marmelade to set reboil it until it reaches 221F, then you will have the right sugar concentration. Marmelade (and all jams) are acid, so hostile to botulism, You won't get botulism by eating it. Fat and a sugar rush maybe, but not botulism. Unless, of course, you spread your marmelade on botulism infected hamburger... You might get yeasts and molds on the surface - personally I just scrape them off.

So much to choose from Roast beef with yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, boiled cabbage and carrots Always popular, Treacle tart with custard to follow. Steak and kidney pudding Fish and chips Apparently the most popular meal is now Chicken Tikka A little more up market 1st September marks the start of the pheasent season,

Crust texture has little to do with proof. Lots of very hot steam in the first minute of baking, then none. Put your thickest cast iron pan in the oven and pre-heat it very hot. When you put the bread in the oven throw a cup of water into the pan (care -scald danger, and it will crack any glass in the oven like oven lights) and slam the door. Some people use ice cubes instead of liquid water for a slightly more contollable burst, but I think water is better. The hot steam gelatanises the outside that then cooks crisp. Cool the bread with lots of air circulation. Putting the bread is plastic is one thing guaranteed to soften crust. You can retard the the dough by putting it in the fridge overnight or for 12 hours before you bake. The dry atmosphere in the fridge slightly dries the outside and gives a characteristic crisp crust, with tiny bubbles in it. Of course you can always egg wash

Science of dough mixing as I understand it. This is a vast over simplification. Gluten is a series of large, complex protein molecules whose chemistry is complex. Gluten contains four classes of proteins: gliadins, glutenins, albumins, and globulins. Gliadin is the alcoholic glutamine and proline rich fraction of gluten and in turn contains over 40 different components. When the wheat is ground, the cells are boken, releasing the gluten, which in the presence of water bonds to itself to form large scale plastic structures. Its not the mechanical work that develops the gluten, but time and hydration. Hence you can short mix doughs, Easy to try yourself with just some flour and water.- just mix by hand until its more or less evenly mixed. Leave it for half an hour, and you will find the dough has magically turned silky, like a well kneaded dough. High speed or prolonged mixing does something a bit different. It overworks the dough so that some of the gluten bonds are broken, weakening the gluten, giving fewer, bigger holes, but also oxygenating the dough which helps the gluten, or rather destroys an enzyme that attacks the gluten. Vitamic C (ascorbic acid) does a similar oxydation. Stale flour has also lost this enzyme. The enzyme is also released from the ground up wheat cells, where it stops the gluten bonding in the living plant. The Chorleywood process uses a short high intensity mixing combined with of vitamin C to give high oxydation and air entrapment, to make a very pliable dough. Although it can produce good bread, it has fallen into disrepute since it is the basis for much short process flavourless supermarket bread. Overworked dough has a characteristic sticky silky texture, since the gluten sheets have been disrupted. The trick is to work the dough the amount you want to get the right texture. Most of my bread I now hand-mix, and the use the folding technique. For these baguettes I use a food processor (Magimix Robochef), since I don't have a suitable mixture (or rather I do, but its buried in a shed somewhere). I find 20 secs, then a 10 minute rest, then 20 secs works for me for the batch sizes I make. If you want to feel what overworked dough is like whizz for a minute or two, but don't expect it to rise. Its difficult to compare flours, since the French measure ash content rather than protein - hence type 55 has 0.55% ash, type 65 0.65% etc. I've found a few references that suggest they have a protein content (loosely related to gluten in white flour) of around 11.5%, which is not all that weak - more like US AP flour. I thought they were softer than that. I'm not sure you can get the same effect by blending different types of flour. Flour is complex stuff, with many variables - not only the amount of gluten but also the ratio of gliadin to glutenin, the extraction, the particle size (french flour tend to be ground finer) all affect the dough, and in turn are affected by the variety, the climate and the way its grown. Blending a soft and a hard flour are unlikely to lead to a flour with the characteristics of a variety in the middle. As Dan Lepard says, its not the flour, but the baker. You can make good bread with almost any flour, although you may need to tune the formulation a bit to get a similar effect. Each flour will make a slighly different bread, unique to that flour. The "Crocodile bread" is somewhat similar to what I'm doing here - very wet dough, long fermented active starter.

Looks good. My guess is the dough is a little overproved, hence its wetness and less oven spring, although the width of the grigne (Slashes) indicate there is plenty. I wouldn't bother with the water after the first spraying.

The starter comes via the former Librarian of Sutter's fort from the Simpson Ranch in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Experience tells me that 12 hours is about right for a very active sponge. Much longer and it will begin to collapse. The provenance of the clef is just romance; the flour and water you feed it are not sterile. After a few months it will have been contaminated, evolved and adaped to the local conditions and the yeasts and bacilli in the flour and water its fed. Today's baguette. Same dough but machine mixed (2 x 20 secs in a food processer). 500g baguette. 1/2 hour proof I used some steam, so it has a shiny crust. Still very wet, as you can see from the cross -section. Texture is getting there, still a little tight in places. Need to work on the shaping, especially the ends. I'm retarding the other half of the dough to see if that will keep shape better.

I have had the starter (clef) for some time, and it is very healthy. I believe it can be traced back to California in pioneer days. Not timid at all. It lives in a jar in the fridge, and when the jar is a bit empty gets refreshed with some sponge (equal quantities of flour and water by weight, spoonful of clef, fermented out), What I meant was that the I had fermented the sponge for 12 hours at 30C. Most of the flavour in sourdough is added from the long fermented sponge. For a stronger flavour try fermenting your sponge longer and warmer.

Pastry flour is softer - around 6% to 8% protein AP flour is 9% - 10% Bread 12% plus

OOPS! 8 oz suet If you want a lighter puddung you can omit the flour. The amount of brandy is up to your discretion. say 1/4 cup... Just made the Damson Cheese/Comfits for this year

Baking hotter is certainly a possibility, and I'll try some in the wood fired oven next time I fire it, in a couple of weeks time. The dough is about as wet as I can handle it, and then only when cold. I fear if I make it stiffer, I'll lose the texture, so I'm not sure I want to go that way. What surprised me was how little difference the final proof time made. I've varied it from 0 to 4 hours, and except that the dough is tough to handle warm, it really makes little difference to the texture. The bulk fermentation time is pretty minimal, since its at fridge temperature, although there is some rise. Looks like the mechanism is different from the conventional story of yeast produces gas that expands on baking to expand the gluten bubbles.