My Food Geek

This month the Daring Bakers tackled yet another yeast-based product, potato bread. I didn’t participate in the last yeast challenge (sticky buns) so I figured I should step up and complete this one.

It’s no secret that I was disappointed when I saw a basic bread recipe. I was hoping for some intricate pastry or a recipe with a high degree of difficulty, but this is what we got. Since I complained a little, I really needed to finish this one and make sure I didn’t screw up.

I came up with four variations of the theme: A boule, focaccia, a four-braid loaf, and a decorative piece made from some remaining dough. The basic dough could take a few additional ingredients like olives, onions, garlic, or herbs. As usual, I waited until the last day to make this so I wasn’t prepared to modify the recipe with anything extra. The recipe works as is and won’t throw any curve balls at you. The resulting product is a light-airy bread with a decent crumb and a nice crust.

Tender Potato Bread

Challenge Recipe:

Metric measurements are from the European edition.

Ingredients:

4 medium to large floury (baking) potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks.
Tanna Note: For the beginner bread baker I suggest no more than 8 ounces of potato; for the more advanced no more than 16 ounces. The variety of potatoes you might want to use would include Idaho, Russet & Yukon gold, there are others.

4 cups(950 ml) water, reserve cooking water
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
6 ½ cups to 8 ½ cups (1 kg to 1350g) unbleached all-purpose
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (130g) whole wheat flour

Making the Dough (Directions will be for making by hand):

Put the potatoes and 4 cups water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Add 1 teaspoon salt and cook, half covered, until the potatoes are very tender.

Drain the potatoes, SAVE THE POTATO WATER, and mash the potatoes well. Tanna Note: I have a food mill I will run my potatoes through to mash them.

Measure out 3 cups(750ml) of the reserved potato water. Add extra water if needed to make 3 cups. Place the water and mashed potatoes in the bowl you plan to mix the bread dough in. Let cool to lukewarm (70-80°F/21 - 29°C) – stir well before testing the temperature – it should feel barely warm to your hand. You should be able to submerge you hand in the mix and not be uncomfortable.

Add yeast to 2 cups all-purpose flour and whisk. Add yeast and flour to the cooled mashed potatoes & water and mix well. Allow to rest/sit 5 minutes.
Note about Adding Yeast: If using Active Dry Yeast or Fresh yeast, mix & stir yeast into cooled water and mashed potatoes & water and let stand 5 minutes. Then add 2 cups of flour to the yeast mix and allow to rest several minutes. If using Instant Dry Yeast, add yeast to 2 cups all-purpose flour and whisk. Add yeast and flour to the cooled mashed potatoes & water and mix well. Allow to rest/sit 5 minutes.
Sprinkle in the remaining 1 tablespoon salt and the softened butter; mix well. Add the 1 cup whole wheat flour, stir briefly.

Add 2 cups of the unbleached all-purpose flour and stir until all the flour has been incorporated.
Tanna Note: At this point you have used 4 cups of the possible 8 ½ cups suggested by the recipe.
Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes, incorporating flour as needed to prevent sticking. The dough will be very sticky to begin with, but as it takes up more flour from the kneading surface, it will become easier to handle; use a dough scraper to keep your surface clean. The kneaded dough will still be very soft. Place the dough in a large clean bowl or your rising container of choice, cover with plastic wrap or lid, and let rise about 2 hours or until doubled in volume.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead gently several minutes. It will be moist and a little sticky.

Forming the Bread:
Tanna Note: It is at this point you are requested to Unleash the Daring Baker within. The following is as the recipe is written. You are now free to follow as written or push it to a new level.

Divide the dough into 2 unequal pieces in a proportion of one-third and two-thirds (one will be twice as large as the other). Place the smaller piece to one side and cover loosely.
To shape the large loaf:
Butter a 9 x 5 x 2.5 inch loaf/bread pan. Flatten the larger piece of dough on the floured surface to an approximate 12 x 8 inch oval, then roll it up from a narrow end to form a loaf. Pinch the seam closed and gently place seam side down in the buttered pan. The dough should come about three-quarters of the way up the sides of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 35 to 45 minutes, until puffy and almost doubled in volume.

To make a small loaf with the remainder:
Butter an 8×4X2 inch bread pan. Shape and proof the loaf the same way as the large loaf.

To make rolls:
Butter a 13 x 9 inch sheet cake pan or a shallow cake pan. Cut the dough into 12 equal pieces. Shape each into a ball under the palm of your floured hand and place on the baking sheet, leaving 1/2 inch between the balls. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about 35 minutes, until puffy and almost doubled.

To make focaccia:
Flatten out the dough to a rectangle about 10 x 15 inches with your palms and fingertips. Tear off a piece of parchment paper or wax paper a little longer than the dough and dust it generously with flour. Transfer the focaccia to the paper. Brush the top of the dough generously with olive oil, sprinkle on a little coarse sea salt, as well as some rosemary leaves, if you wish and then finally dimple all over with your fingertips. Cover with plastic and let rise for 20 minutes.

Baking the bread(s):

Note about baking order: bake the flat-bread before you bake the loaf; bake the rolls at the same time as the loaf.

Note about Baking Temps: I believe that 450°F(230°C) is going to prove to be too hot for the either the large or small loaf of bread for the entire 40/50 minutes. I am going to put the loaves in at 450°(230°C) for 10 minutes and then turn the oven down to 375°F (190 °C) for the remaining time.

Note about cooling times: Let all the breads cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing. Rolls can be served warm or at room temperature.

For loaves and rolls:
Dust risen loaves and rolls with a little all-purpose flour or lightly brush the tops with a little melted butter or olive oil (the butter will give a golden/browned crust). Slash loaves crosswise two or three times with a razor blade or very sharp knife and immediately place on the stone, tiles or baking sheet in the oven. Place the rolls next to the loaf in the oven.

Bake rolls until golden, about 30 minutes. Bake the small loaf for about 40 minutes. Bake the large loaf for about 50 minutes.

Transfer the rolls to a rack when done to cool. When the loaf or loaves have baked for the specified time, remove from the pans and place back on the stone, tiles or baking sheet for another 5 to 10 minutes. The corners should be firm when pinched and the bread should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

For foccaia:
Place a baking stone or unglazed quarry tiles, if you have them, if not use a no edged baking/sheet (you want to be able to slide the shaped dough on the parchment paper onto the stone or baking sheet and an edge complicates things). Place the stone or cookie sheet on a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 450°F/230°C.

If making foccacia, just before baking, dimple the bread all over again with your fingertips. Leaving it on the paper, transfer to the hot baking stone, tiles or baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a rack (remove paper) and let cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

A long time ago a fellow San Diego blogger was gifted a Kitchenaid stand mixer and asked me for a mixer-friendly brioche recipe. This is probably a few months late but….

Brioche is an enriched French bread with a large amount of butter and eggs that gives this bread a soft, sweet crumb. Brioche are formed into many different shapes but the brioche a tete is probably the most widely known. They’re usually cooked in small fluted pans with an extra small bun on top.

You can see here that I had my best go at the ‘a tete’ variety. I didn’t have access to the small fluted pans so I used a large muffin pan and tried and stay with the theme. They don’t quite look as beautiful without the fluted sides but the muffin pan worked in a pinch and produced a reasonable facsimile.

What many people don’t know is that brioche is made into other shapes including plain old loafs of bread. It seems like brioche should deserve a better fate than a normal loaf, but on the contrary, it is as a loaf that it really shines. When baked as a loaf it can be transformed into some really rich French toast, a mean bread pudding, or just the best slice of white bread and jam you’ve ever had.

This is a recipe that I learned while I was a student at the San Diego Culinary Institute. Our instructor, Yves Fournier, an accomplished pastry chef, was the son of a baker in France. Yves would always give us practical baking tips, whether it was the correct way to shape baguettes, form croissants, or make brioche, he was always full of useful baking knowledge. While we were learning how to make brioche, Yves showed us an alternative way to make this rich dough using a commercial mixer.

This recipe is a little different than a lot of the brioche recipes you will see out there; don’t worry, it works just as well (or even better).

Brioche

500g flour
65g sugar
15g salt
15g yeast
6eggs + H20
250g butter, softened

Dissolve the yeast in a small amount of warm (100F) water. You don’t need much water here, just enough to get the yeast to dissolve.

Combine eggs, sugar, yeast mixer, and all the flour in the work bowl of the mixer. Mix using the dough hook until all the ingredients come together. Add salt.

At this point you will need to adjust the consistency of the dough. If the dough is too tough, adjust consistency with a little more water. If the dough is too wet, add enough flour until you have a soft, tacky dough.

Add all the butter to the dough and continue to knead until the dough absorbs all the butter. You may still need to adjust the dough with a little more flour. It is ok to have a sticky dough but it should still be able to hold it’s shape somewhat.

Remove the dough from the mixer and form into a tight ball.

Place dough in an oiled bowl and refrigerate the dough overnight.

When ready to use the dough, remove from the chiller and allow to return to room temperature. Let rise until dough has doubled in size. Punch dough down and shape into loaves, buns, or whatever you desire.

Proof shaped dough until doubled in size. Brush egg wash over the tops of the dough and bake at 375F for about 25-35 minutes and golden brown.

A monthly event dedicated to food photography.

CLICK is theme-based. Each month, entries will be invited based on a culinary ingredient or concept. This month’s theme is noodles. I tried my best to come up with something original yet photogenic as well. While I think the pasta came out much better than expected, my photos came out just average. The dish was good enough to talk bout so here’s the story.

A few weeks ago at the local farmer’s market I picked up a butternut squash, just because. I really had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew it would keep for at least a month while I decided its fate. While I was thinking about what I could do for this month’s CLICK I came up with the idea to make a twist on butternut squash ravioli.

The raviolis are usually filled with cooked squash puree that is mixed with a light cheese like ricotta and some select spices. They’re quickly cooked in some salted boiling water and then served with a light sage butter sauce. This is usually a good dish but I didn’t want to go through all the troubles of making the raviolis and a filling to go along with them. I decided to deconstruct the dish into the parts I liked best and make a few changes. First I started off with some freshly made, extra thick noodles.

Fresh pasta is something that everyone should know how to make. There’s only a few ingredients to knead together, a little bit of rolling (by hand or by machine), and then you cut the pasta into any shape you want. I skipped using the pasta maker for these noodles and just rolled them out on the counter top with a rolling pin. I left these noodles quite thick and cut them in wide strips to keep with the ravioli inspired dish. The recipe is a quick one and very easy to remember:

Fresh Pasta

3 cups flour
4 eggs
pinch of salt

If you choose to make the pasta by hand, pile the flour on the counter top, make a well in the center, and crack the eggs into the well. Slowly incorporate the eggs into the flour until you can bring the dough together for kneading. You may need a little more flour, you may not use all the flour, it all depends on the day usually. Once the dough is smooth, let it rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

If you choose to make the pasta by machine, throw all the ingredients in a food processor and process on high. It should turn to a course meal. You may need to add either an additional egg or some olive oil to the food processor while it is running to get the dough to come together. Dump the pasta meal on the counter and knead for a minute or so. Let dough rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

I use both of these methods regularly depending on my mood and they both are fairly easy and always reliable. There’s only a few things that can go wrong and they’re easily fixed. If your dough is too dry, add more liquid: water, oil, eggs — they all work. If your dough is too wet, add a little more flour. If your dough is too lumpy, knead more. That’s it.

While my pasta was resting I worked on turning the filling of the ravioli into a sauce. I started working on the squash first. It was peeled, diced, tossed with olive oil, and baked in the oven until it was just browning on top. I set it aside to cool and contemplated a sauce. I knew I wanted something buttery but I also wanted to have something a bit creamy. Butter was the first ingredient, nearly a whole stick, cooked slowly until browned and fragrant. I finely sliced a large shallot and softened it in the browned butter sauce until nearly transparent. For the coup de grace, I finished the sauce off with a good shot of heavy cream which helped to emulsify the sauce somewhat. I added a bit of pasta water to the sauce to bring it all together and tossed the squash in to heat it through. The pasta made it into the sauce shortly after and the sauce coated everything nicely. I sprinkled the whole thing with some freshly dried sage and plated it up.

How did it come out? The eater loved it. As usual I was unhappy with some aspect of the dish. I thought the noodles were a little too thick and the dish wasn’t as pretty as I hoped. While the sauce did have a good deal of butter and cream in it, it didn’t come off as being too heavy or oily. The squash matched well with the sauce and the wide noodles were a very good vehicle for the rich, creamy sauce. Did it capture the spirit of butternut squash ravioli? I’d say so.

Choux paste is one mighty useful item. It is one of those recipes that can be transformed into so many different things. The French flavor it with savory ingredients and pipe small bits of it into boiling water and call it French Gnocchi. In southwestern US long strips are piped with a star tip into boiling oil then covered with cinnamon sugar and called churros. The French also give it a similar deep-frying but with cheese added to the paste and call them gougeres. The most common of uses is probably baked goods like chocolate eclairs. Here’s a look at several variations on the baked good which may or may not be familiar to you.

Profiteroles are the classic sphere-shaped choux puffs that are split in half, filled with ice cream, and topped off with chocolate sauce. These lovely pastries usually pop up in French restaurants and bistros and they’re easily reproduced at home. This example was put together with some leftovers I had in the kitchen: frozen choux puffs, chai tea ice cream, and whole butter ganache from my Bostini Cream pie. I like to keep richer desserts like this on the small side. The full flavor of the ice cream and the rich taste of the ganache can be too much on a restaurant sized dessert.

I think everyone is familiar with eclairs. You can find these things at just about any supermarket or bakery if you’re lucky to find one in the states. In my opinion, they are always made wrong: they’re huge, they’re soggy, and they’re too sweet. I find that small, bite-sized eclairs are more satisfying to eat and lend themselves well to a pastry platter. At this small size, it is easy to change up the fillings and icings and experiment. I was a little bit lazy and filled all of these with a praline diplomat cream and just varied the icings to make the display more visually appealing.

The name of these pastries will bring a smile to your twelve year old brain: Paris-Brest. No, not that breast! These pastries were created in honor of the Paris-to-Brest-to-Paris bike race that started over one-hundred years ago. They are supposed to represent either a bicycle wheel or the round trip ride, either way, they’re good. They are classically topped with sliced almonds and filled with an almond praline pastry cream. Sometimes they are dusted with powdered sugar, sometimes they aren’t.

I recently learned about these little pastries called Chouquettes from an old post on David Lebovitz’s site. These little snacks are small bites of choux paste that are usually covered with very course, crackly sugar and left unfilled. While I couldn’t fine any of that stuff around these parts, I did have some large-grained Maui sugar that worked quite well. These things are borderline addictive, yet so simple you can’t imagine why they’d be so good. Imagine a light and crispy cookie with just a crunchy sweetness on top, that’s a chouquette!

The final choux I created was the Religeuse. These are supposed to resemble a little nun but I’m not entirely convinced. This pastry is comprised of one large choux puff and one small choux puff, filled with pastry cream, dipped in poured fondant, stacked up, and decorated with icing. These are usually medium sized pastries about the size of your palm. Laduree, the famous macron people, are also somewhat famous for their Religeuse. They ice and fill their pastries with exotic ingredients like rose, tomato, and black truffle. I wasn’t so daring and used a mocha faux-fondant and the praline diplomat cream from the eclairs.

In the end, choux recipes don’t really vary all that much. I really liked this recipe from Michel Roux’s Finest Desserts because the proportions were easy to remember and the choux came out nice and smooth. If you desire, you can either use all milk, all water, or both like I used here. I don’t really see much of a difference in the end product but I haven’t thoroughly tested the variations.

You can use this recipe for all of the creations I’ve listed above. Profiteroles, chouquettes, and religeuse are all made with small balls of dough either piped or made with a spoon. Eclairs and the Paris Brest should be piped out to the desired shape. All of these pastries will benefit from a light eggwash before cooking and a slight flattening with the back of a fork to promote even puffing in the oven.

Choux paste:

125ml water
125ml milk
100g butter (diced)
pinch of salt
pinch of sugar

150g flour
4 eggs

egg wash (1 egg with a pinch of salt and a little water)

Combine the water, milk, butter, salt, and sugar in a saucepan and boil over high heat. Continue boiling until all of the butter is completely melted.

Remove pan from heat and quickly dump all of the flour into the liquid. Stir continuously until a smooth paste is formed.

Return the pan to the heat and stir the paste with a spatula for one minute. Try not to let the paste dry out too much or it may crack during baking which will affect the presentation of your choux puffs.

Transfer the paste to a bowl and immediately use a spatula to beat the eggs in one by one. Beat the paste until it is very smooth.

The choux paste is now ready to use. If you are not going to use it right away, press plastic wrap on top of the paste and refrigerate for up to three days.

If you are cooking your choux immediately, pipe into the desired shape on a parchment or silpat lined baking sheets and bake at 425F for 8 minutes then lower the oven to 375F for about 15 minutes more or until the choux are golden brown and mostly dried out. You may have to sacrifice one to test for doneness, but it is worth it.

My parent’s birthdays were Sunday and Tuesday respectively. I thought it would be nice to celebrate both days together so I invited them over to my place for a nice dinner. I already planned on serving them my Daring Baker’s dessert, the Bostini Cream Pie, but I didn’t have a main dish to serve. After talking with my mom about the plans, she mentioned she’d like to have seafood. This seemed like a quite wide open answer but I decided I could take yet another challenge and come up with something.

I knew I wanted to try and make something my parents weren’t expecting so I decided to take some inspirations for the halibut dish I made a while back. I was pretty sure that my parents, being from New England, would expect their seafood deep-fried or broiled since that’s the norm around these parts. Going against the grain, I decided to go with pan searing, as I was sure they weren’t expecting it.

I made my way over to the local Whole Foods to see what sort of interesting seafood they had fresh and available. I eventually settled on a nice loin of cod and some mahogany clams. While I was there, I picked up a small bag of multi-colored, fingerling potatoes: red, gold, white, and blue, to round out the dish. I also managed to get some fresh, local green beans from a nearby farm stand that would find their way into this dish.

The fish was seasoned with a mix of pink alea sea salt, sichuan pepper, and black sesame seeds that I coarsely ground up. It was then seared in coconut oil until a nice crust formed and was finished in the oven. The fish was cooked until just done - medium well. I par-boiled the potatoes, drained them, and finished them in a coconut milk and butter sauce that was seasoned with sichuan pepper as well. The green beans were quickly stir fried in sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and drizzled with soy sauce. The clams were steamed in rice vinegar, ginger, garlic, and star anise. They were then removed from the steaming liquid and topped with a coconut milk reduction. The whole dish took on a Pan-Asian theme before I even realized it.

I’m not sure my parents have tasted my cuisine since completing culinary school and moving away four years ago so I don’t think they knew what to expect. My mom confessed she didn’t usually like green beans but loved my preparation of them (and ate them all). My dad pretty much likes everything and won’t pull any punches when it comes to complaints. His plate was empty and there were no complaints so I’m pretty confident it was a success. It was the first time that either of my parents have tried mahogany clams before (my personal favorite); my mom especially enjoyed them.

We finished the meal off with Bostini Cream Pies which quickly disappeared even though my mom claimed to be full.