paul o' vendange
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Posts posted by paul o' vendange
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Brutally cold today, -24 F. Good day to bake. An old favorite I haven't made for awhile, a recipe from a German friend of mine Björn Hollensteiner, aka "Der Brotdoc." Björn is a family physician, clinician, incredible baker and author. He also runs the FB page Angebacken, a page and community I've been involved with a few years now.
Kasseler is an everyday bread that German schoolchildren always look forward to coming home to. It is commonly made as a milder, more wheat-based bread. This one is a "würzig" or "spicy" variant, because it is higher in whole grain rye than wheat. I mill at home.
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Just a simple bauernbrot, made with both rye sourdough starter and a "Vorteig," a poolish. Also made some fresh farmer's cheese to go with it for dinner.
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8 minutes ago, Acelestialobject said:
Hi Ann here do you mean that you feed and let it rise before refrigerating it and then you feed it again without discarding any, right when you need it??
I have fed mine and after it doubled kept it in the fridge. So next time I use it do I directly feed it without discarding any??
It's hard to say one rule for everything, because needs can be different. Whole grain flours provide more nutrition and enzymes (especially in the case of whole rye flour), so your culture is going to burn at hyperspeed, relative to their metabolism when using white flour. If you want more of a leavening purpose v. flavoring component to your starters, you will want younger, fresher, vibrant starter.
I used to refresh my stiff wheat starter every 5 hours - around the clock. My rye liquid starter was refreshed twice daily.
I decided to get a life. Now, usually, I will refresh my rye starter twice weekly, and my LM 3x weekly. Most times, I refresh the rye and LM at the same time, so they both get 3X weekly. the rye starter is 1:1:1, 50 grams starter, 50 grams water at 40C, 50 grams "T1150," 1.15% ash, Central Milling's "medium rye flour," kept at 28C x 4 hours. My LM is 10 grams "old" LM, 50 grams water at 35C, 100 grams T550/white bread flour, kneaded just as a bread dough, until smooth, elastic and satiny; rolled into a ball and cross-cut with scissors 1/3 of the depth down the ball. This is also kept at 28C x 4 hours.
For the rye starter, which I now use in most of my sourdoughs, even French levains (I no longer maintain 4 starters - stiff and liquid wheat, liquid rye, lievito madre), the starter has good leavening plus the more aromatic, spicier, somewhat more sour flavor component.
For the LM, it's all about leavening power, and a very mild taste - like cultured dry yeast, developed with wild yeasts. So it's all about very frequently refreshed, young yeasts, at the height of their replication period (and not after they've gone deeply into anaerobic fermentation).
Though again, time, hydration ratios, temp. can all engineer different qualities. For instance, the Germans have several regimes they do for using "Anstellgut," or starter. 1, 2 and 3 stage developments ("Detmolder Ein-, Zwei, oder Dreistufenführung" - each stage favors yeast, lactic acid bacteria, or acetic acid bacteria), a salted starter ("Monheimer Salzsauer," gives the ability for a very flexible baking day, as the starter development is retarded), a short starter process ("Berliner Kurzsauerführung") and so forth.
If I bake with these the next day, or day after, I usually won't refresh. Any longer, and given my weekly schedule, I will have refreshed and used the fresh starter in the day's bake. The German use of Anstellgut or ASG almost always, in fact, calls for a cold ASG that has sat at least overnight in the refrigerator. Of course, this cold ASG, which is the German equivalent to the French chef, is usually then used to do any of the starter regimens mentioned above.
I've learned to sweat it less, and pay more attention to the senses - again, smell, sight, touch of the dough, how it looks while bulk fermenting and proofing, etc.
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On 2/4/2025 at 3:10 AM, Acelestialobject said:
On day 5 it wasn't showing much activity. And the next day, I left it without feeding for more than 24 hours. And when I remembered to check on it it had white mould on the residue on the sides of the bowl.
I hope to see it turn out this way
Did you wipe the walls of the jar of your starter?? Is that important???
Sorry, missed your last line. When developing a new starter, no, I'm not to careful. I let the beasties fight it out, though I take reasonable measures to not introduce any contamination - clean spoons, etc. The starter container is basically a closed system, an ecosystem, and given time and the right conditions (at this stage, mostly, temperature), it works itself out for a good starter. Later, when actually using it in breadmaking, especially German baking, temperature, time and starter hydration ratios ("stiffness") matter when it comes to encouraging various yeast or bacterial species. When refreshing and discarding old starter, yes, I do clean the container out each time. Though to be honest, I don't think it's necessary.
As to the readiness of your starter, looks good to me. More and more over time I not only look for activity (e.g., bubbles), but go on smell and taste. Does it smell sharply acidic? Does it taste pleasingly tart, or sharp, like vinegar? Does it smell solventy, and look grayish on top? Does it smell like good old white bread dough we made as kids - direct ferment, toss some cultured yeast in, ferment/proof/bake same day? Does it smell like fresh green apples?
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1 hour ago, Acelestialobject said:
Wow. Cheesemaking is so cool. I didn't know listeria could be so persistent. Also, Your cows look really friendly and nice. Hope they live a long happy life
Thanks! These cows are the most loved cows I've ever known. The two brothers have devoted their lives to living rightly - as soon as you start down the driveway to their home, you feel a kinetic difference, really. They rotationally graze the girls on small paddocks loaded with grasses, forbs, clover. One of the cool things about using raw milk is that you taste the seasons in the cheese - the spring and summer cheeses are loaded with grass, floral and herbal notes, the winter cheeses are creamy, more luxuriant, richer. One of the most beautiful things to watch is the first time they're out on pasture after the spring thaw and the ground has hardened up enough to let them out - they get as giddy as puppies, spin in the air and play. Never knew cows have such personalities until coming to know Jeff and Greg and their friends.
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3 hours ago, Acelestialobject said:
Thank you..Then I'll continue doing what Im doing till I get the result like you said. Also I had no idea cheese making could be so precise and a small misstep could end up being deadly O.O
Have fun!
All my cheeses were from raw, pasture-raised Ayrshire cows, two brothers, friends of mine, smallhold. I made Abondance, a hard, long-aged French alpine style, tommes, again, hard, alpine style, and reblochon, this one a soft, stinkier, richer cheese. So many species can foul a cheese and make it unedible, but not unsafe.
E-coli is usually introduced pre-make, i.e., fecal contamination somewhere prior to the make. Salmonella can be the same, but also through process errors, i.e., poor sanitation. Listeria is particularly dangerous and can be deadly. It is usually not a problem in the making itself, but plant sanitation, i.e., it is a species that can survive the cold temps of storage, and is particularly nasty as it forms a (self-protective) biofilm resistant to sanitation after it is given a foothold. Sadly a cheesemaker I once knew killed several people due to Listeria. It turns out it was his lack of proper sanitation protocols. Once in a plant, nothing but a complete overhaul of all surfaces everywhere will do.
A few pics of my cheesemaking - and the cows they came from.
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Staff note: This post and responses to it have been split from The Sourdough Starter Topic discussion, to maintain topic focus.
On 2/4/2025 at 10:10 AM, Acelestialobject said:On day 5 it wasn't showing much activity. And the next day, I left it without feeding for more than 24 hours. And when I remembered to check on it it had white mould on the residue on the sides of the bowl.
I hope to see it turn out this way
Did you wipe the walls of the jar of your starter?? Is that important???
Interesting. I've actually never had that issue so I'm sorry to say I can't help much with what happened, but I can say my experience - whether it's bread, or cheesemaking - is that if I set the parameters to favor the species I'm looking for, eventually, they'll win out. Some people use things like apples or potatoes or some other means to sort of give a "jump start" to their new starters, hoping to avoid the ecological "war" that takes place (the "yuck" part of the battle) before things settle down and you get a working starter. I used to play around a bit with things like active barley malt (to encourage easy access to sugars from starch) and salt in small amounts (to discourage/slow down unwanted species in favor of the more desired, salt-tolerant species). Such as the Gerard Rubaud method, attached. Now, I do nothing more than flour, water, and time.
While I am making new starter or refreshing starter, I do clean the containers. But honestly, I don't believe it's necessary. In cheesemaking, where yes, sanitation is extremely important (i.e., Listeria is deadly), on aging surfaces like wood shelving, it's more important to worry about giving the desired species competitive advantage by temperature and humidity, than trying to achieve a sterile surface/substrate for rind development. That's why when an official in upstate NY wanted to ban wooden shelving throughout the country on terrible science, many, myself included, raised the alarm, and prevailed (thankfully UW Madison's Center for Dairy Research joined in, with solid science).-
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4 minutes ago, Acelestialobject said:
Update on my starter: The site I followed used a glass bowl for the starter. The actual 'starter' was fine. It was not bubbling too much but nothing wrong with it. Unfortunately the sides of the bowl developed WHITE MOULD T_T
Also I started a new starter in a glass jar, so do i need to consistently wipe the walls of the jar to prevent this from happening again???
Not sure what happened here (and are you sure it's not just dried up starter?), but over time if you keep the ambient conditions where you want them (mostly, temp, ratios of starter:water:flour), your desired species should prevail. It's much like a brand new starter - you will pass through some truly foul-smelling and looking days, but shortly, you have a beautiful ecology of great yeasts and lactic acid bacterias.
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I used to maintain 3 starters:
A stiff wheat starter, with the flour blend as used by the late French baker Gerard Rubaud (70% bread flour, 18% 50-50 blend of hard red winter and spring wheats), 9% spelt and 3% rye. I followed his methods explicitly, which included always refreshing the starter at peak - which meant, 24/7, every 5 hours at 28C, religiously. You got that right - woke up in the middle of the night to refresh a stiff starter.
A liquid rye starter. It has been my main starter for a long time, for any kind of bread regardless of the grains or flours. I use Central Milling's Type 85 flour, with 0.85% ash. It corresponds to a French T85, or a German T 850 if they had it (the Germans don't have an equivalent - the closest wheat they use with this ash content would be a T 1050, with 1.05% ash).
Lievito madre.
I used to refresh the rye, my only starter for a long time, about once per week. Now, with the LM, I do both usually at least 3x/week because although it will survive, a weekly schedule of the LM refreshment would significantly acidify the LM and defeat it's purpose, a mild, wild-yeast centric stiff starter.
As to the discard, I don't really use the LM discard but I do save the rye discard and make fleur de levain - adding it from time to time as a flavoring component. Because it's spread out thinly and dried in the oven at about 200F for 90 minutes or so, it is no longer leavening. I grind the flakes into a powder and freeze it for later use at about 1 tbsp/1 KG dough.
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A few of late.
Ötztaler Saatenbrot. (https://www.mannbackt.de/2023/09/25/oetztaler-saatenbrot-echtes-alltagsbrot-mit-sauerteig-92448/?srsltid=AfmBOoqnXwXcQzivyHDuwz6LdkCGkMtJBXAI4QVYNM_lqmUS3qaRbtez)
60-40 blend of home-milled Khorasan and Central Milling´s T 85 flour, which would correspond to a T85 French or T 850 German flour. With lievito madre. (mine)
Kerniges Toastbrot with flax seeds and oatmeal, lievito madre. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/366444498953863/posts/915143520750622/)
Kraftiges Roggenschrotbrot. (book: Rustikale Brote aus deutschen Landen, by Bernhard Kellner.)
French country levain - 70% bread flour, 18% 50:50 blend of winter and spring hard red wheat, 9% spelt, 3% rye, all home milled. (adapted from the late French baker Gerard Rubaud).
Münchener Hausbrot, seen here. (Book: Der Brotdoc: Heimatbrote: Traditionsreiche Brote aus dem eigenen Ofen. Mit Sauerteig, Vorteig & Co, by Björn Hollensteiner, a friend of mine).
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Just a couple of late. A pretty typical German bauernbrot, and a French Levain (an everyday one for us, recipe and process, the late French master baker, Gerard Rubaud). The Bauernbrot is high in whole meal rye, but it is soft, moist ("saftig"), very aromatic due to the use of altbrot, just flour made from my leftover and dried dark rye breads. Really helps the dough take in more hydration without becoming too slack.
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On 8/17/2024 at 12:32 PM, OlyveOyl said:
@paul o' vendange Thank you. It’s an adaptation of a Donna Hay pear tart, it’s mostly almond flour.
Man that is insanely gorgeous. Thank you again.
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Just now, OlyveOyl said:
Never let a good thing go to waste! A nice dollop of pastry cream was an excellent addition to the fruit tart.
Gorgeous!
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1 minute ago, OlyveOyl said:
@paul o' vendange That is an amazing picture, how wonderful your brother had kept it.
i saw a TV clip of Graham Kerr a few years ago, apparently he is living in California .
I just looked him up - glad to say he's still with us. 90!
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23 minutes ago, OlyveOyl said:
I have two, “ Dessets by Pierre Hermé” and “ Chocolate Desserts by PH”.
( I just went to look for my “La Technique” book and can’t find it. I hope it turns up, a treasure.)
Thanks! My mom bought the book for me as I'd grown up in love with everything French from very early (like, 5 or 6, began learning the language), and was driven to cooking from, among other things, Galloping Gourmet which I raced to always watch. I was 13 or 14 when I cooked Christmas for our extended family, all from La Technique. My brother sent me some photos....feel really lucky.
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3 hours ago, OlyveOyl said:
And the proof is in the crème pat…raspberry tart, pastry cream, Pierre Hermé pate sucrée. With a tip of the hat to @JoNorvelleWalker for the quick and easy method for the delicious pastry cream 😋
Looks really beautiful. I grew up 50 years ago on La Technique so not a lot to contribute here. Which Pierre Hermé book(s) do you draw from, if you don't mind me asking?
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We were re-watching Top Chef Season 15, episode 5 ("This is not Glamping") just two nights ago, the very night I found out. I was very saddened to come to know of it. Not too many days prior, I had read the article covering Kwame Onwuachi in the current F & W, and noted the sidebar at the end mentioning Naomi's Cornet Custard Shop. She died after the issue had already gone to press. Peace to her memory and healing to her husband, staff, friends and family.
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On 7/16/2024 at 11:54 AM, Maison Rustique said:
@Ann_T, I followed the directions given here by King Arthur Flour. I've got it in a Mason jar and storing in the pantry.
For what it's worth, a good amount of discussion here and here on "fleur de levain," though it's in German (I'm part of a German baking community on FB). Though these aren't used as leavening, rather just a flavoring component using up excess sourdough or "Anstellgut."
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On 7/15/2024 at 6:55 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:
I have a whole, uncut, intact block of gruyere from panic buying before Covid. I'm wondering how to deal with it?
If you'll send it to me, I'll wash it for you.
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1 hour ago, paulraphael said:
Similar idea. The coulis from pre-revolutionary France is just taken to exorbitant extremes. Whole joints of meat are discarded in the name of making a final sauce for a banquette.
It puts things in perspective ... how Classical cuisine (especially idea of the mother sauces and demi-glace) is really a kind of fast-food simulation of the old ways, designed to make a-la-carte dining possible at bourgeois restaurants.
Yes. There's a part of me that wars with a part of me that misses the classical coulis that is disgusted by most elements of haute cuisine. It's one reason I got out.
There.
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This is a "gateau orange caramel," which I got from Cuisine et Vins de France. The recipe calls for Grand Marnier in the batter. My wife, whom I lovingly refer to as "kitchen witch" as she loves to make all kinds of liqueurs and extraordinary bitters, provided her "Cointreau." One of these days we will have to source Seville Oranges. The recipe also calls for faisselle égoutté. Easy to make (the soft, drained cheese), I've made it many times but I haven't made any cheese in a log time and have no cultures so I substituted the faisselle égoutté with Chobani yogurt - I made a "sack" with double layers of tight-weave cheesecloth and drained it overnight over a bowl in the frigo. Texture came out beautifully.
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Just now, paul o' vendange said:
Paul, a sort of master process, let's say. Do you have a "standard" light chicken stock recipe? And what size (make, while we're there) PC do you use?
And you're earlier description of a sort of hybrid-coulis process sounds like something I seem to recall Peterson describes, in terms of trying to parse out aromatics given multiple wettings. Is this where you got it?
@paulraphael: "
It's so easy that I don't do anything generic like veal or a white chicken glace. I use a dish-appropriate meat for whatever meals I'm planning. The degree to which this is better than an Escoffier demi-glace has to be tasted to be appreciated. And you don't give up a whole weekend for it."
I always believe in using the "thing itself" as much as possible, which is why I was always such a fan of Keller's "quick sauces" approach. That said, because he uses his (extremely light, 40-minute simmer) chicken stock and demi-glace, along with water, for his multiple glazings, I think there can be a tendency for a generic "roast meaty" taste between his duck, squab, lamb, etc. quick sauces, despite the uses of "squab spice" and so forth. Interested in the coulis approach, with meat. Anyway, more of the PC process generally somewhere?
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39 minutes ago, paulraphael said:
Mitch, no one's going to take your stock pot away. I haven't even given mine away. I still use it for lots of stuff ... just not so much for stock.
Sounds like your reason for doing it the old fashioned way is you like it. No other reason needed.
But it's not a general argument against a pressure cooker.
You're right that the time savings aren't huge for chicken stock. When I did it conventionally, I simmered for 3–4 hours. In the pressure cooker I go 2.5 hours (plus waiting for it depressurize).
It's a bit quicker, but the bigger advantages are 1) no skimming (called into question by this thread) and 2) tastes better (to me, anyhow).
It also uses way less energy.
The real revelation for me, though, isn't chicken stock. It's any kind of meat glace / coulis. What I'd use as a substitute for traditinoal demi-glace. A project like this used to take nearly 2 full days in the kitchen. Now it takes about 30 minutes of work plus 2.5 hours waiting for the pressure cooker to do its thing on day 1. And less than an hour of work on day 2 (which includes portioning into ziplocs for the freezer).
It's so easy that I don't do anything generic like veal or a white chicken glace. I use a dish-appropriate meat for whatever meals I'm planning. The degree to which this is better than an Escoffier demi-glace has to be tasted to be appreciated. And you don't give up a whole weekend for it.
Paul, a sort of master process, let's say. Do you have a "standard" light chicken stock recipe? And what size (make, while we're there) PC do you use?
And you're earlier description of a sort of hybrid-coulis process sounds like something I seem to recall Peterson describes, in terms of trying to parse out aromatics given multiple wettings. Is this where you got it?
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2 hours ago, AAQuesada said:
Puebla y su Cocina was published in 1971 and was likely put together in the late 60's by a social / charitable organization. Recipes are all from local ladies in the higher social class many of whom had French trained Chefs -I know recipes in foreign languages doesn't hinder you here you will find stuff like Oysters Rockefeller and Oso buco to soufflé to hot cakes (Mexico does pancakes very well!). Really anything you would need to know food wise if you were marrying into a wealthy Mexican household. Including a section on nutrition, calories, weights measures and substitutions.
Yes there are all of the recipes you'd expect from Puebla as well like manchamanteles(so good you stain your tablecloth!) Tinga Poblana, mole Poblano, Desserts as well that are local as well as French or Spanish. There is a great party guacamole with lots of chicharrón!
I posted a cocktail from this book somewhere in that section not too long ago btw and no idea if it's available online. I'll mention again that the book was recommended by family in the city as having good recipes that are typical and work.
Thanks. Looking for Puebla y su Cocina, no luck so far but I love these kinds of books.
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The Bread Topic (2016–)
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
@Ann_T, wow, spectacular! I also love Khorasan. From time to time, I'll venture into both emmer and einkorn, but though I love their flavors and aromas, I really like that Khorasan is both really aromatic and as easy to work with in my experience as wheat.