Whole Wheat Bread

I decided to make bread. It's the season for baking, and I'm getting tired of so much sugar. Candy, cookies, cakes, pies, brownies, eggnog... it's all getting me down. I don't like to be down. So I got some dehydrated fungus and made a bread out of it. Please, go make some more. It's not difficult, and you don't need any fancy equipment.

Just an oven, really.


WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

2 1/3 cups warm water (110°F is ideal, but anywhere between 105° and 115° is fine)
1/4 cup honey
2 packets (1 1/2 tbsp) active dry yeast
3 tbsp shortening
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 tbsp sea salt

1. Dissolve the honey thoroughly in the warm water. Whisking does this pretty effectively. It will take longer with old honey that has crystallized some. Yeast loves to eat sugar, but will get overwhelmed if there are huge bits of undissolved sugar, so it's best to take care of that before the yeast enters the pool. When the honey is dissolved, whisk in the yeast.

The yeast should mainly fall flat to the bottom of the container. Let it sit for a few minutes (five or so should do it) to allow the yeast to wake up. You'll know it when it does.

2. While you wait for the yeast, melt the shortening with the molasses until it's just barely melted (you don't want it too hot because you'll be adding it to the yeast; you want happy yeast, not dead-from-burning yeast).



It should be done melting about the same time the yeast is done blooming. It should look pretty foamy on top of the water.



3. Whisk the shortening/molasses into the yeast water really well. In a separate bowl, mix together both kinds of flour and the salt really thoroughly. Add about 3 cups of the flour mixture to the yeast mixture and mix it until there is naught but smoothness. I tried doing it with a spatula but had to revert back to a whisk. It should look like batter and smell kind of good.



4. Now you can add the rest of the flour. Mix it in a bowl, either with a wooden spoon or your hands, until you get a big craggy-looking ball of dough and all the flour is mixed in.



5. Dump it onto a countertop that has been thoroughly sanitized since the last time the cat was up on it, and start to knead. Push, fold, turn. Over and over and over, constantly moving and working the dough for five minutes. It should look considerably smoother afterward.



Take a brief rest; wash your hands if you want, drink some water. Then get back to kneading and do it for five more minutes. It should look smoother still, but the difference this time will be much more subtle. You are now done kneading the dough.



(By the way, during the early stages of my time kneading the dough I thought about how much easier it would be with a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. I could just watch it spin and knead and not cramp my fingers. But then I considered the fact that people making bread in the Middle Ages didn't have a KitchenAid stand mixer at all, not even one that was not fitted with a dough hook. This made me feel delightfully smug that I was kneading dough the right way. The original way. But it occurred to me furthermore that people in the Middle Ages also didn't have an electric oven to bake their bread, or an electric stove to melt their shortening and warm their water, and still they baked bread. So then I felt as though I need to make my own oven and power it by fire if I want to really make bread right, and melt my shortening in a hand-forged pewter mug over the firepit. My common sense told me, however, that I was unlikely to fashion myself a firepit or fire-powered oven in the near future, and would then probably just buy bread at the store if I was to refuse making it altogether if I had to utilize the help of electricity. It hit me, then. I was finished kneading and I had reached the conclusion that I, much like the bread-bakers of the Middle Ages, was simply using the best tools I had at my disposal. No shame; no wrong. But if you have a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, or something, you can probably just use that.)

6. Put some water on the stove to boil, and place a rimmed baking sheet in a cold oven. Oil a very large bowl and place the dough ball in it. Roll the dough around to coat it all over with oil, so it doesn't stick to anything when it expands.



Then dust a clean kitchen cloth with flour.



Place it over the bowl, flour-side down. Then it won't stick. Pour the boiling water into the baking pan in the cold oven, and then place the bowl with the dough on a higher shelf in the oven and close it up. Leave the oven off (should be warm and steamy in there, though). This will be the first rise; it will last about an hour and a half.

7. Take the dough out of the oven after about an hour and a half. It should be doubled in size from the yeast eating sugar and farting all over and stretching out the gluten with its gaseousness.



8. Deflate the dough and divide it into two very equal clumps. This is best done with a sharp knife, so you don't tear the dough too much. Pat out one at a time into a relatively even rectangle (about 9"x12").



Roll it up so that the roll is 9" long, and pinch the seam closed. Plump it up so it's relatively the same width all over, like so:



Do the same with the second blob of dough.

9. Place the rolls seam-side down, each in a thoroughly greased 9"x5" (or similar size) metal baking pan and press them out a little so they touch all four sides.



Cover again with the floured towel. But don't keep them in the oven this time, because you'll need to preheat it (also, take out the rimmed baking sheet with water in it. You won't need it again).

10. Preheat the oven to 400°F, while you let the dough rise in the pans for another 45 minutes or so. Your time may vary, but when they're done, the sides should just barely be clearing the top of the pan.



11. Stick the pans in the oven, carefully so you don't deflate the dough, right next to each other. Bake them for 35 minutes. If you have an instant-read thermometer, check one of the loaves before taking them out (should be between 200°F and 205°F). But if you don't, and they look done, they probably are.



12. Unmold immediately and place them on a cooling rack. If you don't, they'll get soggy; yuck! Mine didn't get soggy. Look how pretty they are.



You're really supposed to wait until they're cool before slicing, but I didn't, and nothing terrible happened. The inside was all steamy and the butter I put on it melted right up and it was pretty heavenly, to tell you the truth. Look how perfect the inside is. My bread is awesome.

Unless you're going to eat the bread within three days, it needs to be kept somehow. Dried as croutons, frozen, or *gasp* in the refrigerator. Not ideal, but trust me when I tell you that it will mold quickly. It lacks the calcium propionate of Wonder Bread to prevent timely spoilage. I don't think they had that in the Middle Ages, either.

Lentil Stew

So, I had this jar of dried little French lentils sitting in the back of my cupboard. Before I moved to Arizona a year and a half ago, it was sitting in the back of my food shelf in Washington. I'm pretty sure it traveled around to at least three different places of residence with me over the years. Anyway, I rarely cook with lentils.

It may be because they do not share the American culinary ubiquity of, say, black beans or pinto beans or chickpeas. Lentil burritos? No. Refried lentils? No. Lentil hummus? No. But I'm actually inclined to believe that my reluctance to use them originates in my childhood.

We had dried lentils in our pantry, too. They were in an old cylindrical plastic food container, opaque with scratches, with a yellowed snap-on lid. A little paper label on the front read, in my mother's handwriting, "LENTILS." I don't know how long they'd been there (probably about as long as my French lentils stayed unused in my own supply).

It was afternoon. I felt adventuresome, and I wanted candy (bear in mind, not that it changes the story, but I was about 5 or 6 years old at the time, and my parents weren't the type to freely give candy to their offspring). Bored with my usual crime of grazing on pinches of flour out of the container, disillusioned by my recent experience trying to eat baking soda (it looked like flour), and probably running dangerously low on tubed decorative icing nabbed from the spice cabinet, I remember distinctly that I decided to broaden my horizons a bit.

"Lentils," I wondered. I didn't know what those were. I evaluated the shape of a lentil. It was notably comparable to the shape of an M&M. But lentils were smaller, and relatively colorless. "Flour has no color," I thought. "Flour tastes good." As it often does, my sense of exploration overcame my trepidations. I took a small handful of lentils, and I ate them.

The texture was unpleasant. Hard, stale, and simultaneously crunchy and chewy, they had no satisfying give when masticated. The lentils tasted like old, musty rags. I remember making a face and thinking something along the lines of, "yuck," as I grabbed a second handful and swallowed those whole. Positively gag-inducing; certainly no better than the first bunch and likely a little worse. I remember tossing back another handful and a few more individual lentils before deciding, with great disappointment, that this venture was better abandoned.

I don't remember what went on for the rest of that afternoon and evening, but I do recall with clarity the feeling of nausea. The continual aftertaste of musty rags. A dull, building headache. Rolling discomfort in my stomach, and the wrenching quease that never brought relief. I tried to bring them back up to no avail. I didn't want to tell my parents because, well, it's embarrassing when you intentionally eat a bunch of dried lentils and then feel shitty. Besides, I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to snack on dried goods out of the pantry.

(Looking back over this experience, it seems apparent that, as a child, I had some sort of eating disorder.)

In any case, lentils have never really enchanted my adult self like other legumes. I got the French lentils during some crazy scheme I had one day to have available in my own personal store, every type of dried legume on which I could get my hands. You know, just in case I needed them for something.

After about four years (read: a few weeks ago) I decided to finally cook up my lentils and serve them in a coconut-squash soup. I was excited, because it sounded good, and it's soup season. This is all really beside the point, because it took about 2 hours for the lentils to mostly cook, and the soup didn't really turn out that well.

I don't like giving up on myself, though. I got more lentils (regular ones, this time) and made a soup in which to put them, using neither squash nor coconut milk. It turned into a stew, but whatever. It's amazing when it's cold out. And cheap, which is good when you're living more in the red than you've ever lived before.


LENTIL STEW

1 cup dried lentils, rinsed and picked and then cooked
cooking oil
3 stalks celery, all chopped up
3 carrots, all chopped up
1 onion, all chopped up
2 lbs potatoes, all chopped up (1/2 inch cubes is great)
5 cloves garlic, all chopped up
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
few leaves kale or spinach or other green, all chopped up

1. Cook the lentils in 2 cups of water until the water is absorbed and the lentils are thoroughly hydrated and not at all crunchy. This can take anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on how old your lentils are. Stir every so often toward the end, and add some sea salt to taste.

2. While the lentils cook, toss the carrots, celery, and onion in a little cooking oil in the bottom of a stockpot and put it on medium-low heat. I was going for a sweetening-of-the-onions effect, but I didn't consider the fact that the carrots and the celery were hanging out too and they got kinda bored in the pan. That, and I didn't even have a whole onion to work with like I'd planned. Just half. So... that didn't really do anything. Make sure to stir them every so often.

3. While the vegetables are cooking, you can cut up the potatoes. I like red potatoes. You can leave the skin on, and the texture is nice, and they don't fall apart too much.



Look. Look at that relative uniformity.

4. Maybe, by the time you're done chopping, the vegetables will have relaxed rather a lot in their pot. They cooked in there nice and slowly for about 20 minutes. Maybe more. I don't remember, to be honest.



5. Toss the garlic, oregano, thyme, paprika, salt, and red pepper flakes into the cooking vegetables and let that cook another minute or two.



6. Add the potatoes to the pot, and cover with water. I think I added about 6 cups total. Add the bay leaves. Give it a bit of a stir, cover, and turn the heat up to medium-high to bring to a boil.



7. After it's boiling, reduce heat to medium-low again and cover the pot just partially. Let it simmer away until the potatoes are tender, then stir it every few minutes for 10-20 minutes more, so some of the potatoes break up and thicken the stew. Yeah. Then it gets good.



8. Dump in the lentils. Stir it up a final time, and taste for salt. Add if necessary. You can add your green bits at the end. I leave them out altogether and drop them in when I'm heating up individual portions for leftovers. They should really only be hot for 5 minutes or so. Otherwise they go rather limp and become somewhat gray. Not appealing.

Cooked lentils are easier on the stomach than are dried lentils, come to think of it. They're a lot more palatable in general. There's nothing to fear from lentils in a stew, anyway... especially this one, since it's amazing. Slightly spicy, but it's cold out so that's warranted.

That's really all I have. Go forth and consume more expensive things in my stead.

Month o' Pies, Week 5: Mince Pie

O ho! I have returned to bring you the fifth and final December pie. Never mind that I'm posting it in May; I have backdated this entry to appear as though I stuck with the program. Muahaha. I actually did make the pie on time, yes precious. For New Years! And I haven't blogged since then because this had to be posted first, and it was a bit of a daunting task.

This really is one of my favorite pies, although many people claim not to like mince pie. I think the offending factor might be the slight bitterness in the citrus peels combined with the heavy spices, which themselves are ever so teensily bitter. I like it because it's strong and warm-tasting, and not sickly sweet. The flavors have balance. Sometimes you need a little bitterness to drive the cold winter away. Plus, you can always add a little freshly whipped cream.

On a different note, do you have any idea how impossible it is to find organic candied orange peel? Seriously. It's completely impossible. So I have to make my own, which is kind of tedious but not actually that difficult. If you don't care if your orange peel contains the pesticides of centuries under all that sugar and that its production contributed rather heavily to toxic runoff into streams, it's much easier to just buy a container of candied orange peel. But just in case you want to make your own, here's how.


CANDIED ORANGE PEEL

3 orange peels, quartered and pith scraped out a bit
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup water
sugar for rolling

1. Start by blanching your peels. This takes out a good deal of bitterness from the pith, and softens the peels for candying. Cover the peels with water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, then drain. Cover with water again. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 more minutes, then drain again. Do this one more time. Then you'll have a pan of blanched peels.

2. When the peels have drained, and cooled a little, cut them into 1/4 to 1/2-inch wide strips. You can set them aside for a few minutes.



3. Add the sugar and water to your saucepan and heat until it boils and comes to 230°F on a candy thermometer. If you don't have one of those, you'll just have to wing it.



It should get very bubbly, and be careful - it's much hotter than boiling water and will stick to you, so try not to splash around in it unless you want severe burns.



4. Add the orange peels and reduce the heat just a little so that it continues to simmer but isn't so angry about it. You want to maintain the heat, but not cook down the syrup so much that it doesn't cover the peels anymore.



Aim for 30-40 minutes of simmering, and check it frequently to make sure the peels are still covered. When they're done, they'll look slightly translucent.



5. One by one, remove the peel pieces using tongs and toss them into some granulated sugar and roll to coat. You can then put them on a cooling rack covered by a piece of parchment paper and simply wait for them to cool. Neat, huh?

So that's how you make candied orange peel. You'll need it - but not all of it - to make a good mince pie.

Oh, did I mention that mince pie (mincemeat pie) used to be made with meat that had gone off, and is heavily spiced to cover up the bad taste? That's pre-refrigeration for you. Later (and now) it's not made with bad meat - or good meat, for that matter - but instead with beef suet. Beef suet is not a delicacy in which I partake, so I find that using butter makes for an awfully good non-beefy mince pie that instead features the flavors of fall fruits. Thank you, Cook's Illustrated.

I should also note that this pie can take the better part of a day to make if you're not prepared. If you have done it before and/or know what you're in for, you can crank it out in about 4 and a half hours.


MINCE PIE

Crust (I found a winner!)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
10 tbsp shortening
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
6-8 tbsp ice water

Filling
3 lbs flavorful, local, in-season apples (at least a few Grannies in the mix makes it interesting)
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
zest and juice from 1 orange and 1 lemon
1/4 cup diced candied orange peel
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups (maybe more) fresh, local apple cider (this is important! If you're in the Seattle area, I recommend Minea Farm in Woodinville for this one)
1/3 cup brandy

1. For the crust, mix the flour with the salt and sugar as well as you can. Cut in the shortening until it's pretty well mixed but a little sandy-looking. Then cut in the butter until it is almost as mixed as the shortening, but with a few pieces here and there. Add the water (try just 6 tbsp at first) and fold it all together until you can make it adhere to itself. Divide in two pieces, wrap them up, and refrigerate until you need them. You can also save this step for when the mince filling is cooking.

2. Peel, core, and dice your apples. By hand, this takes forever. And I'm not gonna lie, my grandma sent me a peeler-corer-slicer and I FREAKING LOVE IT. What usually takes me at least half an hour took me about five minutes.

It cored, peeled, and spiral-cut all the apples in less than five minutes.



All I had to do was trim the peel bit at the end (maybe eat it) and add cross-cuts to dice them, which also took less than five minutes. You want about 1/4-inch pieces. Chuck them in a large stockpot.



3. Add to the aforementioned stockpot the raisins and currants, citrus zests, juices and peel, brown sugar, spices, butter, and a cup of the cider. Toss it a little to combine.



4. Heat this pot over medium-low until it starts to simmer. It will take awhile, but that's OK. The first time I made this pie, I got too excited and burned it in my attempts to simply make it simmer faster. Don't do that. Actually, you don't have to do much of anything at this point, except let it simmer. For like, three hours. It will let out liquid.



Stir it a bit every so often so it doesn't scorch. Just make sure it's on the lowest heat that will allow it to continue simmering. You don't want to over-stir, either. I did that the second time I made this pie and it turned into a spicy jam pie. Not nearly as exciting.

5. Over time, it should gradually darken and smell absolutely divine.



The lighter bits are the pieces of Granny Smith, and the translucent bits are the pieces of other apple kinds. That's why it's nice to have a mix of apples; you also get a mix of textures and some independence of flavors. But not necessary, if all you have is a bunch of Pippins or Galas or something, you should be ok. Just keep simmering. It's a good time to make the crust, this three hours. You don't have to do it beforehand.

6. If you really need to, as it's cooking down ever so slowly, you can add a touch more cider. But only if it's threatening to scorch and is all dried up, which it shouldn't be at the proper heat. It should be gradually getting slightly viscous with just the smidgeniest bit of apple-butterness to it. After three hours it should look roughly like this.



At this point you should stir every few minutes. No more than three minutes in between, but don't stir it constantly, either. Cook like that for 20 minutes, and take out that pie dough from the refrigerator.

7. Now you can stir in the last half cup of cider, and the brandy. Now it really smells good. Cook that down just ten more minutes, and preheat the oven to 400°F.



8. So. That crust you have that's been refrigerated. Roll half of it out to a 12-inch circle and put it in a 9-inch pie pan, and put all the mince filling into it. Trim the edge to about half an inch beyond the lip of the pie pan.



9. Take the other crust half, roll it out to a 12-inch circle, and use a crimped-edge pastry roller to cut ten evenly-spaced strips in it.



10. Using all the cleverness at your disposal, lay the strips on the pie - five going one way, five perpendicular to that - and weave them. It's really not that difficult. Lay down all the ones going in one direction first. Then, as you lay down the other direction, just lift up the ones you need to lift to get the dough underneath and in a weave pattern. You can figure it out. Trim any overhang to match the lower crust.



11. Although you may have used up your cleverness, hopefully you still have some skill left in your fingers to crimp the edge as nicely as I did.



Bake that pie in the lower third of the oven for 45 minutes. If your oven runs hot on one side, rotate the pie halfway through baking. It doesn't hurt to cover the edges of the crust with foil at that point, too. They like to burn, as evidenced by my final product.



Regardless, this mince pie was really good.

And THAT concludes pie month.

Month o' Pies, Week 4 (part 2): Cranberry-Pecan Pie

This is the pie I didn't know I was going to make. After all, nobody expects a cranberry-pecan pie, do they?

People had all sorts of interesting and helpful suggestions as I was wracking my brain to come up with a fifth pie for pie month (yes, I know it's only the fourth, but they aren't in any particular order). Everything from Nesselrode pie to crème de menthe to chocolate pudding to the abominable cherpumple. But cranberry-pecan - it sounded so simple, yet so unique. Different from all my other pies. Thank you, Miss Amy the koala keeper, for the idea and the recipe!

I baked this pie in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. I think that's probably why Santa never showed up. He knows when you're awake, see, and doesn't want you to glimpse him, so he skips your home. I also don't have a chimney, and I lock my doors and windows, so he'd have had a time of it anyway.

Let me just say that organic (non-GMO) corn syrup is frustratingly difficult to find. The only one I can find is by Wholesome Sweeteners, but it has vanilla in it already. I didn't really know how to adjust my recipe (which calls for vanilla) to accommodate, as I saw no instructions on the corn syrup bottle - so I just used half a teaspoon of vanilla instead of one teaspoon. It seemed to be fine.

It's actually kind of an easy pie. Or maybe I'm just settling into the piemaking groove. But there was no prebaked crust to prebake or meringue to beat or even apples to peel and slice. Just dough, some filling, and a good hot oven.


CRANBERRY-PECAN PIE
filling recipe courtesy of Steve Evans, pie extraordinaire

Crust
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp shortening
3 tbsp cold cubed butter
3-4 tbsp ice water

1. Make the dang crust. You should know how by now. Mix up the flour and salt and sugar. Then mix in the shortening really well. Then cut in the butter until it's just a little crumbly. Then fold in the water, quick as a bunny, until you can make it just come together in a ball. Less water is better, if you can get away with it.

2. Roll it out to a 12-inch circle. Put the dough in a 9-inch glass pie plate and trim the edges, fold them under, and flute.

Filling
6 oz chopped pecans
about that same volume in fresh or thawed frozen cranberries
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 little wee bottle of bourbon (1-2 oz)
pinch of sea salt
3 tbsp butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix up the chopped pecans and cranberries and put in the crust. It should fill it about halfway. Don't skimp on the cranberries. I wish I'd added more.

2. Whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, bourbon, and salt. Just mix it until the brown sugar is more or less dissolved. It should be dark and kind of thick.



3. Drizzle in the butter, and whisk as you go. It should sort of creamify the whole thing. It'll be a little less apt to bubble thinly.



4. Slowly pour all this into the pie shell to fill in the gaps between the pecans and cranberries. It should get relatively close to the top but not spill over (if it gets too full and you still have more, bake it in a separate ramekin.



5. Stick it in the oven, and bake somewhere in the range of 45 minutes to an hour. The center should be a wee bit jiggly, but not very much and not as much as the pumpkin in the previous pie. I had it in for an hour, but I probably didn't need that much time. Anyway, you should definitely smell it.

Serve these pieces small; they're sweet. They are fantastic with brandied whipped cream (as found in the "pumpkin" pie recipe), or regular whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream.

Another successful pie, made and (mostly) consumed. I'm beginning to think I cannot fail at pie.