English Muffin Experiments

The quest to find an English muffin recipe that I like as well as the store bought variety continues. I have tried several recipes, and this one ended up with the same results: not enough nooks and crannies for my liking. Through these experiments, I have come to find that there seem to be two schools of English muffins. The first is the Thomas' or Bay's school of thought, more like a crumpet and less like a roll. The dough on the outside is definitely all roll with some good chew and a little crust; the inside reveals a velvety softness that is held aloft by huge air pockets. Fork split is the only option as knife cutting mars the pockets left by the leavening. The other type is decidedly more bread like and no where near a crumpet. This has its merits too, but it is not what I am look to replicate. I would love to replace the expensive store bought ones for a cheaper but just as tasty and craggy delicate product.

This time I tried the recipe from Reinheart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. This recipe was one that is completed in one day, but it made a bread style dough. From the outset I was afraid that this one would end up like the old Fleshman's recipe I had tried. These muffins that are more dough based are more like a lightened up dinner roll style dough. There is kneading and shaping involved. I kept thinking that perhaps somehow these could end up with the airy middles, but that was not to be. They cooked up really tall and the browning I achieved on this set is probably the best I have ever reached. These also take some time in the oven after the initial skillet cooking. They had great flavor and were very soft and pleasant, but not what I was looking for in terms of school one of English muffins. I did make sure to fork split them just in case I was wrong, but alas, no really big nooks or crannies to be found. The crumb was nice and the muffin was rather light, but it was not the recipe I was looking to keep.

If you do fall into the more substantial English muffin school of thought, these were very easy to make with little hands on time. Their flavor was good, and we enjoyed using them with eggs Benedict as well as with some homemade jam and marmalade. I am looking at a new recipe that I think may finally be the winner. This one is more of a batter like dough that needs to be spooned into crumpet rings on the griddle and the muffins do not go into the oven at all. The pictures look promising, and other home bakers who have blogged about their use of the recipe have pictures that look exactly like what I am questing to achieve. As soon as we get more bread flour and finish off the last of these muffins, I will dive in and let you know my results.

Scary Busy!

I am not dead, just scary busy right now. It seems like for the first time ever, I was ahead of the holiday game. I had all my plans for my holiday crafting picked out, and most of the people on my list had presents already assigned. I even was starting to cut out all the pieces and getting ahead at sewing on some of the projects. Then the plans had to fly out the window. Our current place that we live in was under a month to month lease as the owner did not want to enter into another year long lease term. This resulted in us now having to move as they have sold the place. It is really sad for me as I really enjoy living here. I love the unit we are in and have made some good acquaintances here as well. It seems like I was finally in the groove of exercise, and a daily routine as well as feeling fully comfortable in the neighborhood. Since this time of year is not the best to move, one option may have to be leaving the neighborhood. We hope to not have to, but we may. I will let you know as soon as I do when we have a new home for Fabulous Pants. Till then, most of my time is spent working on finding new digs for us as well as making moving plans. I hope to keep on schedule with the holiday crafting!

Until then, I have become rather obsessed with this new type of bread from the Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart. The bread here is the second day, baking day, for the many seed bread in this book. I have been steadily loosing the weight I have been striving to shed, and I recently read some studies that people eating more whole grains and seeds are better able to lose and maintain a healthy weight. I decided to try to put aside the most wonderful white bread from this book and move onto this bread. I was worried at first that it would be too many seeds as it is many seed bread. The seeds were just the right amount and super tasty.

The seeds give the bread great texture. The best addition to this was the awesome nuttiness of the added pumpkin seeds. I love how these tasted in the bread, but the seeds are really expensive! I should really look for them in a Mexican grocery store to see if they are any cheaper. This year I saved my seeds from the pumpkin carving, and I hope to shell them once things calm down to use in the bread.

One of the best and yet worst things I found out about this bread is the awesomeness of it toasted with a smear of Nutella! It is so great! I have tried to resist the urge as Nutella has quite a few more calories than I would like to spend in the morning. It is also exceptional with blood orange marmalade. I have actually decided to stop making standard orange marmalade in favor of the blood orange variety. Thanks so much to my friend for introducing me to that tasty treat.

Well there is so much I need to get done in preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday. There is jogging to be done, vegetable stock to be made, chestnuts to be roasted, house to be cleaned, velvet wreaths to be finished (finally!), and a birthday present for my niece to be made in time for sending out. Look for more updates soon. I promise to not take a month off again if I can help it. Things just were so crazy and there was so little time. I promise to carve out more to show off what I am up to. Tune in soon for some more canning notes and a killer desert recipe in the next few days.

Fresh Bread and Pie

I tried Reinheart's soft sandwich bread out of Artisan Bread Everyday yesterday, and I have to say that I was very pleased with the results. The dough is rather easy to make and took me only 20 minutes the night before to mix up. The recipe makes two loaves, and since there are only the two of us, I debated cutting the recipe in half. I decided on making the full recipe and trying to freeze half of it after the overnight fermentation. I will let you know the results of this experiment when I need to make sandwich bread again in the coming weeks. The dough the next day was velvety and soft feeling. It was just a great feeling dough.

I segmented into the two loaves, rounded one and placed it into the oiled zipper bag and froze it just like I have done with the lean bread from this book. The other loaf was shaped, placed into the greased tin and left to rise for two and a half hours. I slipped the risen loaf into the oven for 40 minutes, the shortest cook time, and found this beautiful golden brown bread. The crust on the top was just right. I have to say that the gold touch pans from Williams-Sonoma really do a wonderful job with bread and the crispness of the crust around the full loaf.

When I cut it open, I found this beautiful crumb with just the right amount of bubbles in the dough for lightness. It is a more dense bread than store bought to be sure, but it is also velvety and moist. The texture is soft yet firm enough that it does not collapse into a compressed mess. What did I put on this too too decedent bread? Why peanut butter and homemade jelly of course! I know, it seems so unclassy for this royal sandwich bread, but it was what I was craving. Now to just find myself a perfect bread box, so my bread can last a bit longer. Currently it is wrapped up in waxed paper in an attempt to keep it decent for the next few days. I had it for toast this morning, and while the interior is still wonderful, the crust is starting to lose a bit of its crunch.

After bread baking, I went on a quest to find more lemons as I had run out. I needed them to start the next project, apple pie filling. I processed more apples into the dehydrator and then I was off to the races getting the pie filling made. I have to recommend the v slicer or a mandolin if you are thinking of doing apple pie filling or dehydrating mass quantities of apple slices. It really does make fast work out of the slicing, and it also ensures that your slices are all the same perfect size.

Once the slices were treated against browning, they had to be blanched for a little bit to facilitate the canning process by bringing them to a hot temperature. Next the goopy filling that goes between the apple slices was made. I followed the recipe from The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, and I think this is another winner out of that book. The Clear Jel really makes it all work well. After the goop was made, in went the apple slices and a quick boil was reached. Then packing them into the jars and into the canner for processing.

I found that this recipe ran a bit short on its estimate of yield. I only got five full pints and a scant sixth when the recipe says it makes seven pints. Perhaps my half circle slices were too large to measure out the 12 cups as exactly as they did in the recipe. No matter as I am sure this will not be my only batch of apple pie filling this year. I am sure once we go apple and grape picking this fall that more will be made.

I can my pie filling into pints rather than quarts because a quart perfectly fills our mini pie pan. This pie was made last night out of the scant pint that was left over. It had just too much air space in the jar to reasonably store it, so I used it right away! Hey, no one is complaining here!

I had some requests for the apple jelly and apple butter recipes that I used for yesterday's blog posting. I will post them tomorrow in the blog. Check back to get those recipes then. Today is a really busy day as it is the first day back for me at 826 Valencia for after school tutoring. I still have some canning I am going to try to get done before I leave for that as well as getting my dance class clothing ready and the house straightened up a bit. I promise wholeheartedly to post those recipes tomorrow.

Weekend Discoveries

Over the weekend, I finally got the picture of myself and Mr. Keller off of Dan's phone. It wasn't the best of photos of myself, but then again I was not planning ahead, so the phone photo is the best I can do. He was really nice and even listened to me extol the virtues of his pie crust recipe. It saved me from my recent run of awful pie crusts and turned the act of making pies back into a joyous one. The food at Fleur de Lys was also so wonderful. It inspired me to get back to trying my bread baking, especially after eating the very tasty fig and pistachio bread that they were serving. I set to reading my copy of Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day on Saturday. Bread making started right away.

First thing on Saturday night, I started my bread dough. I also resisted my usual urge to skip ahead and make something complicated. I instead did the responsible thing and started with the first recipe. It was for lean bread, and it was really quite easy to whip up. All I had to do was mix all the ingredients in the mixer for two minutes, then it was time to let it sit for a while. Next, instead of kneading the bread, I performed Reinhart's stretch and fold technique. It was really easy and involved stretching and folding the dough four times, flipping it over, and letting it rest again for ten minutes before repeating the process again a total of four times. At the end of this, it all went into the refrigerator for an over night ferment. When it was two hours ahead of baking, I found this glorious dough waiting for me.

The next step was to divide the dough. This recipe makes two large loaves or four to six small loaves. I opted for the six small loaves because, let's face it, fresh baked bread is the best and most tastiest bread! Plus with there being only two of us eating it at a time, small loaves mean less day old bread. The other wondrous thing about this recipe is that it can be frozen or held in the refrigerator for up to four days. This means that one could start their bread over the weekend and have fresh loaves for that week and the next in the freezer and refrigerator. Your baking day involves only the shaping, resting, and then baking of the bread itself! Brilliant! I shaped one loaf, saved two in the refrigerator, and froze three.

In the end, this is the loaf that came out of the oven. I think it was a bit too brown, but it was the best bread I have ever made. It was also the least time consuming and least work I have ever done for a fresh baked bread. It makes me think that I will be casting off the plastic bread bags forever. Later in the book, Reinhart covers rolls and sandwich breads, and if they are all this easy, I will be making my own bread from here on out. This also opens up the possibility for true Chicago style hot dogs because I will be able to supply us with the poppy seed buns.

We served the bread with a broiled salmon. We marinaded the salmon in some olive oil and fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt and pepper, and then broiled it quickly. Both mangoes and avocados were on sale this week, so we made a fresh mango salsa with red onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and red pepper to go with the fish as well as fresh guacamole. While it broke my usual one grain per meal rule due to the chips and bread, it was a great tasting meal. I truly enjoyed every bite.

A quick gardening note before I head off for a walk outside. When I was watering the plants on Sunday, I found the first pea pod forming. I thought I would share a picture. It looks like I will have several more soon. I am so excited to think about some of my own fresh peas off of the balcony. There were also some new seedlings popping up in the soil as well. Some very small green scarlet onions have shown up as well as cilantro and thyme. More of the red sails lettuce and some more beets have also joined the ranks. It is exciting to see something you plant appear from the dirt. I will keep my eyes peeled for more little shoots and hope to see more soon.

Truly Domestic Day

Yesterday turned out to be a truly domestic day. I spent most of it in the kitchen and not at the sewing machine as hoped, but the chicken stock tutorial is really coming along. I worked on the stock for a while, it is not as time involved as it may seem, and then turned to bread making. Lately my luck with working with yeast has been lacking. My bread has been tough and dense, and the crust not much to write home about. I decided to give it another go yesterday seeing as I have lunch meat around but no bread for lunches. I was amazed at how well it came out. It was, by far, my best loaf of white bread. It rose as it should and cooked through. The crumb on it was just right, and it did not have huge air holes.



I found that part of making my bread better was throwing caution to the wind and ignoring my user's manual for the Kitchen Aid. This all came to me after watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS last weekend. It was a pizza episode, and I wanted to watch to see their crust methods. While watching them, I realized that they use their dough hook on setting 4, which, according to the user's manual, is a big no-no. I had always thought the bread was not kneading fast enough or hard enough on setting two, so this time I took it up to 4! It was a good idea for me. Hey, I am not advocating you break your Kitchen Aid; I can break mine though. The bread had perfect crumb and went through all the risings without loosing the yeast's power. It was a true success.

I then launched into a Greek feast for dinner. We had grilled lamb with homemade tzatziki and homemade flat breads. Bread making was apparently in as my flat breads also turned out. Those usually do, but after reaching successful sandwich bread again I did not know if I had used up my bread points for the day. Needless to say, we are going away from store bought bread again.

I did manage to get some more red work embroidery done, and if I can ever get the red cording into the shop, I will have some new organizational tins up.



I love mine for carrying around my embroidery tools onto the subway. They are also great to store bindi in or moo cards. I do have two up in the shop right now. One is a rectangular tin with blackwork on the top. I love that design! It is a fun one to stitch. The other is a circular one, with a removable lid. It is great for bindi or for holding all your cut ends when you don't want to go off to the garbage or when one is not near, like on the airplane or train. It holds needles perfectly and can even hold a pair of nail clippers if you want to be really mobile with your sewing and not take scissors with you.

Today is full of cleaning the kitchen, freezing up the stock, and trying to fit some sewing in before I have to leave for 826 to do tutoring. I hope to write up that stock tutorial tonight and have it up for you all tomorrow.

On Breadmaking and Boats

You can see some really interesting things when you look out our windows onto the Oakland-Alameda Estuary. Yesterday I saw a pirate style ship sailing along.... well motoring along actually. They were headed up wind and had the sails down, but it still was neat to see motoring along.



It was a nice thing to cheer my otherwise dismal day yesterday. I had a really bad headache the whole day, so not as much work got done as I would have hoped. Also, my attempts to practice with the shirring foot resulted in much frustration as the machine quit gathering the fabric for some reason. I must have had a dial set wrong. I decided to give up and watch some basketball and tried to work on the belt. I did make progress on the belt, installing more faux shisha as well as covering more rings.

Today is starting out much better. I packed up the tutu and other things for Claudia's birthday as well as some pants I took up for my sister. I also have started some English muffin dough that is rising currently. Bread is the newest cooking obsession that I have, and after a great streak of beginner's luck, lately things have not been going so well. I think that I am both adding too much flour as well as over kneading all the doughs in my Kitchen Aid. Today I did things like set timers and refuse to add more flour when it still looked "too sticky." We will have to see what the results are going to be once I get through the first rise. I find making bread to be rather satisfying, even if it does not turn out. My white bread always seems to work from the recipe that I have from my Grandmother on my Dad's side. It always turns out perfect event hough I had to cut it down from the four loaf full recipe. She was feeding a farm, so I can understand that, but with just Dan and I, four loaves is over kill. Sourdough has been a flop as of late, but I am also determined to iron out the wrinkles on that and figure out why my sourdough is not really ever sour. English muffins lately were really dense, and I blame over kneading and too much flour on that one. I will have better data on that after today's batches. I am also trying a new recipe for those to see if this one works better for me.

Laundry is also coming along, and after this posting, I am determined to get that shirring foot working again. So much for getting that skirt done for class tonight, but at least I am not going to let myself give up on learning how to use it this time.

This weekend I am attending a class on blackwork. I am really looking forward to finally learning how to do this technique correctly. Currently, I cheat. With true blackwork, the front and back of the embroidered fabric look the same, so you have to plan your runs and make sure you know where you are going. I have two items in the shop currently that have my attempts at blackwork, but, luckily, you cannot get a peek at the backsides that are not as perfect as the fronts.





Both tins are available for sale in the Etsy shop. Hopefully I can add more designs after I take my class. Oh and those hair flowers, I hope to have them listed now on Monday. Due to the headache they did not get completed. I am working on getting that all in order today as well. So much to do and so little time before bread is done rising and class at Fat Chance is calling.