In search of Chanel and the creative spirit

Have you waded into the book "Inspiration Sandwich" by Sark? Find it.

The best boss I ever had, whose secret name is Princess Papuli, sent it to me in the mail, along with a card and a warm scarf. She is wise beyond her years; she reads the wind and knows when a gal needs a wink and a smile, or a morning of hats and gloves, tea and two lumps of sugar. After reading just a few pages of this inspiring work, I jumped from the bed, threw on the Pop-Eye apron that says "I yam what I yam" and fried a batch of leeks, as outlined in Alton Brown's "Good Eats, The Middle Years." Then I felt better.

There's something gentle and engaging in this book, stuffed with reminders of how to find great pleasure in simple joys. No typed words, either, it's all spelled out in handwriting. If you haven't visited some of your early memories as a child, pack a sandwich, make a tent over a few chairs and get under it with this book.

The trouble with culinary school, as I have experienced it, is that you go into it with this eager, enormous hope that it will be a journey of sensations and discovery. You're living the passion! You'll shout "voila" and mean it. You'll discover the inner you, who has real talent, and you'll amaze even yourself.

Good reader, that's not how it goes. Even the sculpted cake pictured above in the style of a Chanel purse, from the cakes class, should have been a crowning moment of personal magic - something I made with my hands and then admired. And then came the chef's opinion of its worth, dashing the creative spirit like the snap of fingers. I lived the entire cakes class in fear of the critical reply - and that's what I got. If this is living the passion, I'm the creator of Ratatouille. Does that mean I should give up on passion? Hell to the no, as classmates say.

I need books like "Inspiration Sandwich" to remind me how to rekindle happy thoughts and moments. I need Princess Papuli and her legion of resources to point me in the right directions.

My favorite passage in the book so far is this:

"I like to think of my fears being driven away in a Rolls Royce (for it's true that once you face a fear, it loses all of its stuffing, and will sit quietly in the back seat and do as it's told.")

What color is your Rolls? Mine is white and black, ever so Chanel.

Circle of Croquembouche

This life we're in. Is it delicious or bitter? Sour or savory? Are we tasting the fruits of our labors or grubbing for leftovers? Are we building anew in daring ways, like this cream puff croquembouche you see here, or are we melting down like wet spun sugar?

Reason I ask is, my life has gone circular on me. Before Dueling Margaritas was conceived in the sweet lil town of Dubois, Wyoming, as a partnership with a fabulous editor from a major magazine, I was a cubicle-dwelling, fully employed person of a company con health insurance. I worked on big accounts and was a bit smug about it. Perhaps you've heard of Coca-Cola. Pizza Hut. Samsung. Boy, does my resume look rich.

Then came the gelatinization of the economy. Let's not dwell there. It's enough to say I'm one of those Americans you've heard about and crossed yourself that you didn't lose your job in mid-life, with two kids in college.

When I tanked, similar to the narrative in "Then We Came to the End," I had nowhere to turn, so I entered culinary school. (I've often said it's the adult's version of running away to join the circus).

On the side, I now work for a gourmet-to-go market and bakery. It has given me new perspective on the work that people do to pay their bills. In food service, the hours are long, the pay is low and the pains are unceasing. If you're not burning yourself, you're banging your elbows. At the end of a shift, you hurt all over - in your hair, in your eyebrows, in the fingernails.

I haven't written a word about working for this new company, because I never want to say anything that could reflect a point of view that is not consistent with its brand position. See how working in advertising pays off? It's enough to say the food is fresh, fast, and I know how it's prepared, so it's safe. I have a high regard for their artisan breads, and the "chocolate oblivion" flourless cake with mousse, caramel and Heath chips is a chocoholic's delight. With the company's help, I've managed to work an early shift, then go to school. It's not a life sentence, right?

Here's the circular part. Not one but two companies who previously freed themselves of my expertise have reached out to hire me on a contract basis. It gives me great pleasure to help one of them (after all, I can't take on three jobs can I?) By contractual signature I cannot say who or what I'm doing, but it is sweet as cherry pie to be needed again.

Maybe that's what I'm getting at here: Losing one's career is a bitter bag of brussels sprouts. Moving forward when you don't know where you're going is a tall glass of vinegar with sprigs of Swiss chard.

Paula Deen told me the harder you work, the luckier you'll get. And with luck, maybe your life can take a turn and maybe it's circular. Maybe what you lose along the way can come back to you.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be cream puffs in this, with a marzipan rose or two.

Under the Sea (of Sugar)

To explain what this is you're looking at: In my last post, I whined about burning my thumb trying to blow sugar for the final piece in the advanced patisserie class. I expressed doubt that like trig, calculus and algebra, blowing sugar would ever be useful in life.

I'm fortunate that two other classmates were less dismissive of the concept. They helped pull off the "Under the Sea" assignment of presenting four different sugar techniques. What you see here is a bit of a tossed salad, but we were working against extremely humid conditions, and pieces either melted or shattered, depending on sugary temperament. In other words, it was stick it together and go like aces before the blame thing cracked.

If you look to the right in the photo, you'll see a mermaid sitting on a piece of orange sugar coral. Here's how you get the coral: Heat up a pot of isomalt sugar with a touch of water in it, then pour this over a large container of ice cubes. As the sugar cools, it drizzles down through the ice for a rather cool effect. The mermaid, the work of a crafty friend, is made of pulled sugar pieces. How do you get pulled sugar? Same approach - heat up the isomalt and water to about 329 degrees, have a heat lamp standing by and a Silpat (fancy rubber sheet). Pour out the sugar onto the sheet, and when it is malleable under the heat lamp, start pulling it like taffy. This creates shine and an ability to mold the sugar - but did I mention wearing three pairs of gloves? This is ghastly hot work.

Also in our showpiece, there are two blown fish and a jellyfish (not blown by me, but I did overcome my revulsion to it), also wavy frondy things and some bubble sugar not quite visible in the back of the ring. Doing the bubble sugar is a snap. Just pour some isomalt (no heating!) onto a Silpat, cover with another Silpat and place in the oven at about 350 degrees. Wait the length of a cup of tea, and you'll get a melted, bubbly effect that is visually seaworthy.

The blue ring and the base this creation is sitting on are made of "cast" sugar, that is, heat it up, pour into a cake ring (or one ring inside of another to get the cylinder effect) and within an hour, remove the rings.

You glue pieces together by using the heated sugar like hot glue. Works, sticks, gets a little messy but keep going.

Should I say how we got the colors? The white coral was done with white food coloring - yes, white food coloring. The other elements were done in the same way - just heat the isomalt and the water about halfway to 329, say around 265ish. Add color at that stage, then continue boiling the sugar until you've reached the top temp. If you don't pull the sugar, the mixture will remain colored but clear enough to see through. By pulling the sugar, you achieve shine, oxygenate the crystalline structure and end up with an opaque piece in your thrice gloved hands.

Check out Pastry Chef Central if you want to buy isomalt. Don't try anything I just said above at home unless you're clever, creative and fear nothing at high temperature. A burn is a burn is a burn.

Burning Shame

The Duelist is upset and you might as well hear about it. I burned my thumb with isomalt sugar in class yesterday, my sucking thumb. (No no, I don't really suck it anymore but at times, like a fretful child, I can still imagine the comfort of a soft blanket and a balled-up fist to the face.)

Of course, the closer we get to the finish line, the more painful this journey to a culinary degree becomes. I know this is true. Right now, I feel all too Hans Solo in the carbonite mold, slabbed from head to toe, with no place to go until the rescue party gets here.

"No," I told the chef yesterday, "I do not expect to be able to blow this blob of heated sugar into a ball using copper tubing and a blood pressure pump before Thursday." She seemed to understand, didn't try to stop me as I scuttled out of the room, my thumb in flames, "just need a moment" hissing through my teeth.

We are just 3 days from finishing advanced patisserie (plated desserts), and the most scorching of products has been saved for the end. Do you know what a dollop of 320-degree sugar feels like on bare skin? Just ask my thumb. My purple thumb. The one I strike the space bar with, the hitchhiker thumb, the thumb's up thumb. The comforter.

Why (and this is whining at its surliest here) do I need to blow sugar into a fish that goes in the "Under the Sea" showpiece when I'm least feeling bold and courageous? When we're out on externship we will not be doing this kind of work. Panning cookies, yes. Scooping muffins. Piping white chocolate over chocolate-dipped strawberries. Making buttercream rosettes on troops of cupcakes. Do you imagine we'll make sugar showpieces with butterflies and ribbons? I think back to a certain chef from a well-known entertainment mega-giant company who told a pastry student, "our wedding cakes may run $4,000. You'll never get near one on externship."

Exactly. So take this boiling sugar from me. Blow it, pull it, melt it with a torch, do whatever you want. I'm all thumbs when it comes to this kind of work, and I need both of them, believe me.

Oh but isn't this a lovely picture above of a Napoleon with a bubble sugar garnish and a sugar spear?

Tart Tatin Tower

Let's discuss. This work of art above is an assigned production. That is, what you see is my effort to recreate the school assignment to make a tart tatin plating that includes dragets of hazelnut, a gastrique, raspberry sauce, phyllo nest, quenelle of ice cream, tempered chocolate disks and a sugar spear.

Would you try this at home? Never. Non! How can you possibly deliver it to the table without a meltdown? It's a constructive sturm und drang - storm and stress - all over the place. Have I mentioned that I am foundering in the uniquely challenging class known as "plated desserts"?

Recently a wise friend helped me see that plated desserts are akin to DI assignments in school, if you're familiar with the Destination Imagination program that challenges kids to solve seemingly unsolvable structural projects using creativity, teamwork and problem solving.

That means I need to imagine solutions for works of dessert, not just look up recipes. Plating is a form of architectural balance and beauty, form and function. Some desserts look gorgeous on the plate but fail to deliver on flavor. And flavor is the number one aspect you remember of a dessert, so why skip its importance when building something good?

Other desserts may taste home-style "yum toy," as the great Gay Smith used to say, but are visually piggy pie messed up. Slop on the plate. The art of this discovery process is to find what works in flavor, texture and temperature, then organize the elements in a way that treats the eye. The Eyes Eat First.

Would you like to see examples of what I've just said, both good and bad? Check out Dessert Professional.

Just around the curve, the world of chocolate. Yum toy!

Bread Sculpture

Behold, my rooster, perched majestically next to our head chef's sugar work at culinary school. (I like to think he comes to life when no one's watching and pecks his neighbor.)

Why did I make a bread rooster, an inedible one at that? Because the world's greatest pastry chef (you know who you are) offered to show me how to do it. I recently spent a Saturday morning glomming this rooster together from pieces of baked bread dough, using isomalt as the glue. Isomalt is a sugar substitute, a type of sugar alcohol that when heated to 300 degrees has excellent stickability similar to hot glue.

I am no sculptress, ask anybody, but something about this felt like Play-Doh. We weren't getting a grade on it, and there was no time limit for presenting to the chef. It was a chance just to play with dough, and it felt fantastic.

I had asked for this special class outside of class, because our curriculum doesn't cover bread sculpture and who knows, somebody might need a showpiece in this new economy we live in, I don't know. I live in hope.

Meanwhile, I did complete two original recipe entries for the California Raisins competition. Here's a glimpse of Blackbird Bun and Pain au Raisin. Done, gone, and in the hands of the U.S. mail.

Toque's off to the pastry chef who encouraged me to work on this lengthy project - the same one who taught the bread sculpture class. This journey is worth the sticky hands and the floury eyebrows.

It is my raison d'etre.

Royal Wedding Breakfast

Wishing Jeeves were here to take charge.

Two days to go for Prince William and his bride-to-be, Kate, and the silver service isn't polished yet. Great Scot, that makes me a laggard!

On the up side of preparations for a Royal Breakfast at my friend Trish's castle, I've made a pastry cream and a Blackbird Bun (see above). This bread is my twist on Scotland's Black Bun from The Book of Bread by Judith & Evan Jones. I tip my fascinator to them (British term for fancy headpiece. Please see Ellen Christine Millinery, sharper than Jeeves himself, if you need hat guidance. Like her hats, Ellen stands above).

To celebrate the twining of new monarchs, Trish and I took repose at the nearby Cultured Cup tea shop to muse on our strategy for serving guests at 4 a.m. Dallas time. I had a lovely cup of tea whose name translates into "floral marriage," or something. We knew the dress for our event would be tiaras and pajamas, but what to serve?

Given the early call to the post of this blessed thing, we decided on an egg and sausage casserole of the type you make up well in advance and pop in the oven as Kate processes down the aisle. Bangers, beans and tomatoes would be on the plate if we were turning the castle into a pub, but for us, we'll go with strawberries and whipped cream (stand-in for clotted variety), Madeleines, lemon tea cake, rolls, fruits and an unusual item with ties to the French Pyrennes. Right ho, it's not Welsh, Scottish or remotely Irish, but I'm desperate to try this recipe from Bernard Clayton Jr.'s book The Breads of France and How to Bake Them in Your Own Kitchen.

He gives you the Gateau Basque - not a cake, bread or a pie, but something of all three. It makes up similar to a pie with top and bottom crust, and includes pastry cream and cherries. Brilliant!

Assorted jams will add the final touch of color and sweetness.  (Bless me, I forgot the flowers.)

God Save the Cream!

(Photo by John H. Ostdick for Singing Wheat Kitchen)

Imagining the best, and thinking of Spain

As I rolled along at the Home Slice Bakery in Dubois, Wyoming, a Frida Kahlo costume on my head and a glass of wine nearby, I never imagined the road ahead, what waited for me beyond the barn with the two black angus steers and the goat pen, beyond the bees in clover.

I thought I was in the mountains just to volunteer for a friend who's a devoted baker for her community, population less than a thousand. I could playfully channel Kahlo while rolling dough, or Julia with my nip of wine, but I never played "let's make believe you're a Le Cordon Bleu student." Never saw it coming, never sensed it. It was not up my sleeve or in my heart to do.

Then we came to the end, which is a title for a book about getting "freed up" in the ad agency world, which is just what happened to me when I came down off the mountain. Suddenly I had too much time and empty hands, but no more kitchen in the Grand Tetons. Before I could think it through, I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Dallas as a baking and pastry student - because there was no one to stop me, not even myself. I knew if I thought too much about it, I'd talk myself out of it. Even the great Southern hospitality queen Paula Deen told me that it was "just courageous" to start on this journey (she meant at MY AGE), and she's right. She would know.

A year later, I have done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unbelievable leap into the unknown. This is bigger than Wyoming, bigger than baking school. I have applied for the BasqueStage Sammic Scholarship. Know what that is? A chance to work in the restaurant Martín Berasategui, which has three Michelin Stars, in the Basque region of Spain. A 6-month commitment, the chance of a lifetime you look for all your life.

Have I gone mad? (You might have thought so after seeing those Kahlo flowers on my head.) Surely it takes a special kind of imagination to see yourself living in Espana, taking direction in another language, soaking in the exquisite culture, cuisine and new life (at your age). What's more important even than applying for it, what I embrace, is discovering that when you toss your sombrero in a ring like this, you declare yourself to the world that you are a candidate - for whatever comes, whatever waits, wherever you go, and why.

I wish myself luck in this endeavor, I wish all the candidates the best - and there are some very good candidates. Everyone deserves the chance to stretch the imagination wider than the strudel dough, beyond where they thought they could go in one terrific leap of faith. We all deserve the right to believe in the outrageous behind every good fortune.

Saludos!

Inside Singing Wheat Kitchen

What does Singing Wheat Kitchen look like, the place where I hurl the flour, splash berry gelee on the floor and stir the pots till they splutter and hiss with promise? Singing Wheat is my kitchen, to be sure, with a sink and an old stove that barely qualify as equipment. It is a kitchen where anything happens, but it's something more.

Singing Wheat is a state of mind, not a workspace or horrors, a cubicle. It's a playroom and a tearoom like Nancy Drew used to visit when she was out chasing clues. You wouldn't think it a suitable space for a baking & patisserie student like I, not with those Persian rugs on the floor and a piano in the corner.

Singing Wheat used to be part of a garage, but we made it over. Notice the antique secretary with the blue-on-white plates? Gives the room a sense of timeless beauty. There are many oddities that find a place here. There are assorted leftovers of 1930s Fiesta ware, a non-singing cuckoo clock, a collection of cobalt blue glassware in a window, an antique turtle table with a marble top, which is where the bread dough hangs.

The family kitchen queens who came before me saved everything - assorted pitchers large and small, Depression era crockery, ice picks, silver service, even children's tea sets. There are white linens that make you think of The French Laundry. Crystal sherbet glassware. Candelabra. Tattered cookbooks. It's all here, with fresh flowers some days, and often, whacking good bread.

I go in there every day, but I'm never sure what will come out. Today it's a twist on herb bread, two twists, made with rosemary, thyme and basil from the garden. Tomorrow, maybe cream roses, or a fresh batch of diminutive madeleines. I never know, I just let the whim carry me off.

As I child I was given a chemistry set, now I have my own lab, a gentle place of aromas. Experiments. Poetic crusts. Drop in, we're always open on days ending in why.

(Photo by John H. Ostdick, Singing Wheat's Chef de Partie)

Daily Bread Part II

It's Spring Break at culinary school, which gives me time to fling flour and try out a few ideas worthy of play-dough. I love the tip from the book Tartine Bread to try baking loaves in a Dutch oven. Author Chad Robertson said the cast iron would give the bread a soft interior and a crunchy exterior - it's just the right vehicle so you can preserve moisture inside the baking loaf. This means you no longer have to use the cast iron skillet under the baking loaves, throwing water in the hot skillet to create a sort of steaming effect. Pfish. The steam always seems to escape before I can what-ho the oven door.

To use the Dutch oven in an oven, all you do is plop the dough in the vessel, slash the loaf top and cover with lid. What could be simpler?

The boule comes out with a marvelous shape, too. It looks like this.

I have another pile of dough rising right now that's headed for the Dutch oven, Pain de Campaigne Poilane, Poilane's Peasant Bread. Nothing has ever compared with Poilane bread from Paris. I don't know if they still do this, but there was a time that you could have a loaf FedExed from Europe France to your house. And I did. It's that good. This is not the place for me to go into the history of Poilane, but suffice it to say that when an author claims to have a recipe of Poilane's, I like to give it a go.

This particular version comes from a book published a few centuries back, 1978-ish. The book is called "The Breads of France" by Bernard Clayton Jr., which appears to have been updated for release in 2004 with Patricia Wells. Good for you, Bernard! I'm working from the old version and having a decided run of luck. The author spent time traveling the byways of France and digging out bread recipes the rest of us have no access to. For instance, he writes about the use of old ship blankets to cover the French rolls aboard the passenger liner the S.S. France, which is no longer seaworthy. Unless you got aboard and worked with the boulangers as monsieur did, then you have no access to the petits pains or stories about rolls cloaked in old woolen blankets. I made the rolls, and they are good as golden. The ship is no longer working, but the rolls do.

Another recipe in the book, called Pain Brie Normande, is a must-do this week, because when would I feel like beating dough with a rolling pin for 10 minutes while in school? You beat the dough. You hit it firmly and repeatedly with authority. It's a pummeling sort of process that requires a striking repose. I must know how this turns out. I also want to try the Gatueau Basque - not a bread, not a cake nor a pie, but something of all three with pastry cream and cherries, too. Who has time for such baking romance when human resources management is next up at school, in a class called "hospitality"? All in good time.

Meanwhile, you know those chocolates twists they have at Amy's Bread in The Village, NYC, USA? They can be yours if you venture inside "The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread."  I did as part of Spring Break, and have been guzzling them ever since, though they're secured in the freezer under leftover crepes from International Patisserie class and my final practical loaf of nuts, cheese and cranberry from breads class. I  recommend that you choose a good high-quality chocolate instead of the bittersweet baking chocolate I found lurking in the pantry, masquerading as a staple.

Heavens, I've just eaten one twist too many. Hoist the rolling pin! Bring out the Normandy dough!

Daily Bread

What are you reading? Answer, The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum and Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. Why? It's a quest. I'm always in search of how to get more flavor out of the flour. These two books are good road maps for the journey.

Friends know I'm loaf loony. They want me to teach how to make good bread. Mon dieu, I'm still trying to figure it out.

One thing I know: Better bread doesn't come in a day. Oui, you can find recipes that simply explain how to mix flour, water, salt and yeast for a bread you can eat in a few hours. In fact, my first bread book was a gift from Dear Val, called Judith Olney on Bread. If you're just starting out with home-baked breads and you're impatient, Olney is there for you. Get started.

The day will come, though, when you ask yourself why the bread doesn't taste earthier, deeper, like artisan breads. Stroll into Poilane on the rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, open le bouche and you'll know what I mean. Better bread is made over time, certainly more than a day, and with advanced skills at understanding the use of clock, temperature and ingredients. This is why I have trouble with my friends, who want a demo class that's sure-fire. That would take a few days, a bread camp, maybe. I don't presume to know everything about how to get the best results, but I'm willing to eat my way through it.

Years ago after Olney, I jumped into The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz and have never looked back. Ortiz and his wife, Gayle, have a bakery in Capitola, Calif., and have made countless pilgrimages to bakeries in France, Italy and Germany to learn the true heart of artisan baking in the European traditions. They have done the hard part for you.

Aha! Thought I, reading how Joe learned to "build" his pre-ferments (bread dough starters) over several days. See, it takes time to build flavor, I knew it all along.

Joe's book still has an honored spot on the shelf near my stove, along with Gayle's book The Village Baker's Wife, with a great collection of croissant and pastry recipes. Next to those, I added Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Right now I'm baking off recipes from 3 of the aforementioned books, just to compare taste, crust, crumb and aroma - Pain de Campagne, Vermont Sourdough with Whole Wheat and Whole-Wheat Bread with a Multigrain Soaker. Doing this while eating handfuls of bread pudding from Commander's Palace that we made in class last week. Bread, always bread.

The moral of all this bread talk is - work it. Find recipes and try them out. Listen to what these knowledgeable and passionate experts know about grains, weather conditions and yes, math. Follow your bouche, and your nose.

Get your hands doughy.

Goodnight, bread. (Vermont Sourdough loaf and rolls in Singing Wheat Kitchen)

Crepes Suzette

I finally set something on fire at culinary school. What a feeling! Can't believe it myself when I look at this image of my first Crepes Suzette, with no signs of black torchy ash or anything. But I assure you, I flamed it like I'd been playing with fire all my life (well actually . . . ).

In the international patisserie class one is introduced to the concept of crepe-making.  There's nothing to it. You make a batter, you swirl it in a beautiful crepe pan, you set your crepes aside as you prepare the sauce, which is artfully done table side in restaurants that uphold the dessert showmanship traditions.

To channel Suzette, I took a little sugar into another pan and caramelized it, added a little butter, some julienned orange and lemon peels, a touch of orange liqueur and a little cognac for the big finale. You just voila the cognac into the pan (off heat for safety), tip the pan into the flame to introduce alcohol to the heat and whoosh, you're aflame and feeling clever.

Toss a bit of cinnamon into the flame like you're the Sorcerer's Apprentice, you know, swish and flick, and you'll get a sparkling affect they say is riveting at the table. 

Where do you start? The taste makers at Bon Appetit published this basic crepe recipe. To do it the Suzette way, use this Crepes Suzette recipe.

Keep in mind if you leave out the sugar, you can use the crepes for many savory dishes, by coating them in a sauce, filling them with all manner of ingredients or stacking them and topping them to your heart's desire.

Can you make this in a dorm room: Yes, but don't set it afire. Leave off with the cognac.

Homemade Cheez-Its

Whenever one gets an email from the jeune fille in New York it refreshes the spirit like a spring romp in clover. Our Madeline (not the storybook character in the old house in Paris, but there are similarities) sent the briefest of messages, but there was a deeper message therein, and bless her, a web link. She wrote:
 you should try this because i want to and can't.

She found a story by Casey Barber about the quality of commercially made Cheez-Its, and a recipe for making your own. Madeline showed true culinary curiosity by sending the message, so I assigned myself one batch of Homemade Cheez-Its, to report back on whether it works.

I have no Cheez-Its photo to post today. I ate the evidence (well, froze half the dough, because I wanted to know if THAT WORKS, too, in case friends drop in and you need a quick nibble at the ready). Don't you think the orangey pansies work just fine suggesting a nice sharp cheddar line of thinking?

The recipe does work, and offers a good product you can use by itself, as an appetizer or as an alternate to croutons in a salad. There's a good crunch and good hint of cheese flavor. Think about adding a touch of cayenne for a slight bite.

Can you make these in a dorm room: Yes, if you have a hand-held mixer and a chopstick.

Curds and Ways

Bless me, I broke the soup! Positively curdled it. How does one accomplish such a sorry state of affairs, wreck the steaming restorative, as it were? Get me a cookie to ease the pain.

When making soup on a chilly day, you need only a dairy ingredient and high heat to find out how curdling - or "breaking" - happens. Any soup that contains an egg, milk, cream or buttermilk will curdle if heated too high.

I broke a good soup just this very week. Wunderculinarian Jeanne Ambrose and her daughter, Lindsey, have a fabulous cookbook called Heartbreak Recovery Kitchen, in which they defend the right of everyone to throw a pity party now and then, in good taste, of course. If you jump into the book as I did, you'll find a recipe for Ale-Cheddar Soup With Bacon Croutons, and what could be warmer on a blustery day?

The soup called for half-and-half or milk - and for that reason, I should have held my thermometer or at least my elbow at the ready. When proteins are heated, they may coagulate to the degree that they separate from the liquid, causing that "pieces floating in a pond" look that makes a soup appear broken, or curdled. Heated eggs are particularly known for their curdling ability.

If you have a starch in the mixture, such as flour or cornstarch, that will raise the temperature at which protein coagulation happens, but you have to be careful, just the same. If a recipe calls for "simmering," many chefs agree that the temperature should not exceed 180 degrees, or well below the boiling point. If you boil the soup, you'll be sorry.

Mind the soup and keep watch. Simmer with the gentle spirit of a potions master. The soup is flavorful and aromatic, so handle with care.

Birthday Cupcake

Here's to a milestone birthday today. This red velvet cupcake is for me. I wish myself all the best as I take on another year in the baking and pastry program of a major culinary program that Julia Child attended.

I thank the delicious ladies who took me to breakfast this morning and will now cultivate ways in which to shake off the jiggery effects of too much Joe. Wish me luck, will you? I'm rattling around.

Friction Factor in Bread: Part Deux

Still hungry for more math? Let's calculate the actual friction factor of your mixing machine, instead of assuming it's 20 degrees, as I mentioned in the previous post.

Here's what you do:

1. With your thermometer, temp the room, flour and water, then add these numbers together:

room - 72
flour - 65
water - 75

72 + 65 + 75 = 212

2. Measure the temp of your dough after you've mixed it. Whatever that number is, multiply it by 3.
77 x 3 = 231

3. Subtract step 1 from step 2: 231-212 = 19

Voila! Your machine's friction factor is 19. With that number, you can then calculate how warm or cool to make your water next time you mix a yeasted dough.

Math is more delicious than I ever suspected. And I'm always suspicious with math, number one.

Friction Factor in Bread

Do you remember me saying that water temperature for dough was an important bit of breadology I learned at school? I burrowed into one of the textbooks and found a reasonable explanation of how to figure out the temperature your water should be when making bread for best results.

It goes like this:

1. Let's assume you want your final dough temperature (final meaning after it's mixed) to be 80 degrees. Why 80? Because dough that is too warm or too cool won't behave predictably and move through the 12 steps of dough production in a manner that suggests uniformity and professionalism.

So multiply 80 by 3 (assuming here that you aren't using a preferment as a starter. If you are, multiply by 4). It's a fixed rule. Use 3 in this case.

2. 80 x 3 = 240.

3. Now using your thermometer, take a temperature of the flour and the room, plus 20 degrees to allow for the friction caused by mixing (there is a way to calculate this number, but let's keep things simple for starters). Say the flour comes out to 68 and the room is 72, and the friction is 20. What should the water temperature be for your dough?

4. 68 + 72 + 20 = 160. Now subtract 160 from 240 like this: 240-160 = 80.

5. 80 degrees is the number you want your water to be before you add it to the dough.

Please don't get all analytical here and say "hey, you started with the number 80, so why not just go with 80?" Well because frankly, the room and the flour were fairly warm in this example. Suppose the room was ghastly scorching, or you had stored your flour in the fridge. You need to take those conditions into account to get the best result for your bread.

Not to preach but ingredients cost money, so why throw good money after a bad result? The equation above gets interesting when you have to make the water very cold, because it flies in the face of what you've thought all along about yeast needing a sort of balmy bath water in which to spring to life.

And speaking of yeast, keep it simple, too. In general, use no more yeast than is necessary in the recipe. Adding more yeast will not improve the flavor, quite the opposite. It will speed up fermentation, but that can be a bad thing. When it's too fast, the dough doesn't develop the depth of flavor you're looking for.

Long, slow and cool is what you want.

Feeling Half Baked

Dueling Margaritas is not always about taking the next big bite, though often that's what fascinates me. There are many outstanding food blogs out there and no shortage of tasty recipes from Bon Appetit and beyond. I have yet to discover the ingredients for outdoing the experts, so at times I just pick myself up, dust myself off and think of something else to do.

As you can see above, in one flight from the kitchen, I knitted my cowboy boots a sweater.  This craned a few necks at the rodeo in Dubois, Wyo., when they saw the "Lucky Devil" sweaters.

What do you do when you've gotta do something different?

(Photo by Skeeter Hagler)

Bread Alone

I am eating handfuls of foccacia from the freezer, and to throw in a few more "f's," I am feeling fit to be fried. That is because we have to change our longstanding email addresses and switch our ISP package. One doesn't think how connected we are to those little email addresses until they vanish. And then voila; you are spending hours cleaning house on your email folders, notifying friends and eating fistfuls of old bread that once was good about four months ago. Switching tactics from whining to wonder of everything, let me refresh with a few Twizzlers and try a different outlook.

This fall I had a marvelous and gifted Chef Instructor for the breads and viennoiserie class. Although I added several new burn to my arms - they might as well be tats - I learned incredibly good things about bread. I've always had a strong and passionate relationship with bread of all shapes and sizes - but I didn't know that in each loaf, there are secret relationships that make large differences in outcome, just like life. All bread is based on relationships between flour and everything else. Salt and yeast have a relationship; sugar and protein, butter and eggs, it goes on and on. Each ingredient affects another in such unusual ways that you could spend your whole six weeks just looking at reactions in mixing bowls, our version of the petri dish. Each of these relationships has a percentage tied to the weight of the flour.  I'm not here to explain how this works; for that you can read in Peter Reinhart's book "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." 

Just know that with the following percentages of ingredients, you can create an original bread recipe that is unique to your household:

Ingredient Levels

Flour 100%
Hydration (such as water)  65-70%
salt 1.8-2.25%
fresh yeast 1.2%
sugar 0-15%
fat 0-15%
herbs 0-1%
nuts/seeds 0-20%
dried fruit/cheese 0-20%

You're thinking Mama Mia, where are you going with this? Here's how it works in baking. Using the weight of the flour in your recipe, you can calculate how many ounces each OTHER ingredient should weigh in order for the bread to come out right. Some recipes don't have fat and sugar, herbs and nuts, and that's fine. But if you want them in your recipe, you need to add them in correct proportions for the best outcome.

One of our class projects required us to create an original recipe, using the structure of math percentages, and to use only ingredients from an approved list. I loved it. Such a challenge made you think about the relationships and how best to work them. How do you actually DO the math?

I'll tell you how. Decide the percentage of each ingredient (except the flour; it is always 100% or, if you're using more than one flour in the recipe, must add up to 100%) you want in your recipe. Base your numbers on the percentage ranges I just gave you above. Now add up all the percentage numbers in your recipe to get a total baker's percent. For example, if we used all the highest numbers from the list above, the total would come to: 229.45%.

That is your total baker's percent. Now what? Well, how many ounces of dough do you want to make? Let's just choose a number, say, 60 ounces of dough. OK, it's simple division from here. Divide 60 by the total baker's percent, 2.2945 (remember, you have to move the decimal over 2 places to the left when turning the percent number into something you can plug into a calculator). The result is: 26.15 (rounding up to the 100th place).

What does 26.15 stand for? That's the weight of the flour in your new recipe. From there, you multiply that flour weight number by each of the ingredient percentages to get your recipe weights. For example: 1.00 (100% times 26.15) = 26.15, and that's your flour weight. Now take salt at 2.25%, or .0225 x 26.15 = .59. And that is the weight of your salt in ounces. Grab a scale and you're ready to go.

Did I mention we weigh all our ingredients? Now repeat the math step, multiplying each percentage by the flour weight and fill in all your new numbers for weights. Easy, yes? If I can do it, it can be done.

Baker's percent was one of the most outstanding and useful lessons I learned - and there's another one to know about. Friction math. Yes, the impact of heat from friction on mixing dough. I always thought that the water in which you proof the yeast should be like baby's bathwater, not too warm but not too cool. Turns out this is WRONG. Sometimes the water needs to be cold!

Why, you say? Think about it: You can't do much about the air temp or the ingredient temps, but you can alter the warmth or coolness of the water you add. And if you can control the temperature of your final dough such that it falls between, say, 75 and 78 degrees, it will always perform in a predictable way that results in a good ending. To do so, you need to take into account the air temperature, flour temperature, even the temperature created in a mixing bowl by the process of mixing - the friction temperature- before you know how cool or warm the water you use should be.

I was going to try and explain how to calculate the friction factor, but you know what? Here's information on how to calculate the temperature your water should be.

Play with it. And when you're through mixing your dough, take its temperature and see where you land.

Play dough.