Brother Juniper's wild rice and onion bread

I just got the updated edition of Peter Reinhart's Brother Juniper's Bread Book: Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor. I've only skimmed it, liking very much what I've seen, but I did take a stab at the recipe for wild rice and onion bread.

Rather than wild rice I used leftover red jasmine rice, and I also chose the fresh onion variation rather than dried. Executive summary: fantastic!

It's slightly sweet, nicely oniony, very tender, and when freshly baked had a superb crackly crust.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups bread flour
• 4 cups AP flour
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2.5 tablespoons active dry yeast proofed in 4 tablespoons water
• 1.5 tablespoons salt
• 1 cup cooked red jasmine rice
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 1.5 cups water

All the dry ingredients are mixed and then liquids added. I kneaded it in the KitchenAid for about 8 minutes. With this much yeast and sugar it rises aggressively. The first rise was an hour. I formed two loaves and let them rise for another hour. Baking time at 350 degrees was close to an hour. Because the dough contains brown sugar and buttermilk it's important to bake at a lower temperature or the crust will scorch.

This is a good way to use leftover rice. I'd like to try it with a wild rice blend to see how it differs, but the red jasmine rice is also very flavorful, nutty, and firm. I wonder how the recipe would take to a doubling of the rice.

homemade ciabatta bruschetta with tomato salad

Leafing through the Sunday paper I saw a recipe for tomato salad on grilled bruschetta. (I think "grilled bruschetta" is redundant, but this was that stellar food journal Parade, after all.) Sounded like an excellent appetizer for a day that was predicted to reach 95 degrees in Seattle. It called for ciabatta bread, and I recalled the one minute ciabatta recipe I'd enjoyed before. But it was already 1:30... could it be done?

I threw it together, experimentally using white whole wheat for one third of the flour, and set the bowl outside to rise. By 5:00 I figured I'd better get moving if this was going to end up on the dinner table. It had risen adequately, it seemed, although if I'd been thinking I would have increased the yeast. I certainly did not want to use the oven, so I fired up the grill and baked it at about 425 for 25+ minutes on a hollow cookie sheet.

The tomato salad was a basic combination of fresh tomatoes, red onion, basil, garlic, red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. Pretty standard, but there is simply no bad way to combine those ingredients. Sadly, only the basil was from the garden. Mid-August and I've had two ripe tomatoes. And don't even get me started on the peppers. This has been a stonkingly unproductive gardening year so far.

Verdict: Not bad. The bread was certainly a bit rushed. It didn't really open up like a ciabatta should, and I'm sure flavor would be better if the yeast had more time to do its thing. The whole wheat probably interfered with the usual texture, too. But once grilled and topped, totally satisfactory for the wall time and level of effort.

potato garlic white bread

This morning I thought I'd try a bread experiment and hit upon potato and garlic as possible contributors. I love potato bread, and sometimes buy a roasted garlic bread at Costco that is one of my favorites.

Ingredients:

• 1 packet active yeast
• 18 grams Morton's kosher salt
• 2 cups water
• 150 grams baked russet potato with skin, cut into 1/4 inch dice
• 12 grams minced (pressed) garlic (a few cloves)
• 650 grams unbleached bread flour

In the KitchenAid mixing bowl I proofed the yeast in 1/4 cup of the water. Added all other ingredients then mixed on 2 for a couple of minutes. Let rest, covered, for 30 minutes. Kneaded on 2 for 10 minutes. The dough migrated downward into a more spherical form in the last couple of minutes.

It was a fairly wet dough but not too tough to work into shape. Let rise for an hour, punched down, reshaped. It was sticky enough that it suffered some damage as I tore off parchment paper and plastic. Should have let rise on a heavily floured counter, and heavily floured the top before covering.

It proofed for 2.25 hours, and was very pillowy but resilient. I was getting worried about having not let it rise long enough, and proofing too long, so I rushed it into a 500 degree oven onto a stone that had preheated for only 30 minutes. Added .5 cup water for steam and turned down to 450.

I tried a new slash shape and technique, using an X and a shallow cut at 45 degrees. The dough did not deflate, to my relief, so if it was overproofed it wasn't by much. It had good oven spring and the grigne opened pretty nicely.

Baked for 30 minutes and removed at about 195 degrees internal temperature, after which it coasted to 199.

The crust was just slightly reddish, perhaps indicative of overproofing and too much conversion of starches to sugars on the skin. It deflated a bit as it cooled and felt very soft beneath the leathery crust.

As bread, it's great. Superb texture, stretchy and tender, moist, and solid white bread flavor. As far as realizing my vision, it's kind of a miss. The potato flavor is present but subtle. I was hoping for noticeable tidbits of potato, too. And the garlic got lost somewhere along the way. The crust has a slight burnt note that I'd try to lose, perhaps by baking at a lower temperature but on a very hot stone, or proofing for a shorter time.

Next time I'd probably double the amount of potato and at least triple the garlic. The garlic might work better if it were coarsely chopped rather than pressed. Potato should also be a larger dice. Doubling the potato might call for reducing the water slightly. I think it should perhaps have a longer first rise and shorter proofing. Need to do some reading about this.

Bottom line, it's a keeper as a basic idea but needs some tweaking to achieve the desired result.

simple crusty beer bread

I saw this recipe for a partial whole wheat modification of this no-knead simple crusty bread from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. I thought I'd touch it up a bit with some beer and vinegar, along the lines of the Cook's Illustrated almost no-knead modification.

Here are the goods:

• 1.5 tablespoons Morton kosher salt
• 1.5 tablespoons active yeast
• 2.5 cups warm water
• .5 cup beer (Cerveza Caguama)
• 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar
• 340 grams white whole wheat flour
• 635 grams all purpose flour

Stirred the yeast and salt into the liquids in the KitchenAid mixing bowl. Added the flour. Mixed on 1 for about a minute. Left to rise for 2.5 hours, then refrigerated.

Baked a loaf the next day. Let the dough ball rise for a little under an hour, slashed fairly deeply, then baked on a stone at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, with a steam tray.

Wonderful! The oven spring was proportionally greater than I've ever seen. The small loaf remained dense, at nearly 20 ounces, but with a tender crumb and good crust. We had it for dinner while still warm and it was excellent. I would try 35 minutes next time. Should try slashing in a way that lets it open up even more, too. And I'll bet the fraction of whole wheat could be increased.

The presence of beer was more evident than in any bread I've made, contributing a superb yeasty flavor without any of the cloying sweetness that I think I've detected the times I've used Budweiser. The Cerveza Caguama, a light lager from El Salvador, is something I bought for a party where I suspected Corona drinkers to be present. It looks and tastes about the same, although notably skunkier. It is paradoxically tolerable when intolerably cold, but this bread is a much better use for it.

2010-03-19 update: I baked another loaf today and gave it a central slash and about four more curving ones on each side. It worked even better, and looked like an armadillo! I may have to do something with that theme.

one-minute ciabatta bread

How could I possibly pass up a one-minute ciabatta bread hack?

Before leaving for work:

• 1/4 teaspoon active yeast stirred into
• two cups warm water
• 600 grams (about 4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 1 mounded teaspoon Morton kosher salt

Came together with perhaps 15 seconds of hand mixing. Poured into a very large greased bowl and let it rise all day (temperature mostly in the low sixties, probably).

Baked it in the evening for 25 minutes at 425 degrees on a baking stone, sprinkled top and bottom with a Tuscan herb mix. I also used a steam tray. The large greased bowl made pouring this wet dough onto a prepped pizza peel easy, so I achieved a pretty good shape and easily snapped it onto the stone.

Oven spring and crust formation were nice. It ended up nearly semicircular in profile.

It does take more than a minute, but taking all prep and cleanup into account it's probably no more than five, and that's quite excellent for this very palatable result. Really tender but chewy crumb, nice flavor, great with butter.

It probably could have baked for another five minutes. I'll try it with a higher protein flour next time, which I think would make the texture closer to other ciabattas (ciabatti?) I've had. As-is, though, it is quite worthy and would be an admirable sandwich bread.

getting started with Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day

For Christmas Tracey gave me Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I don't have the authors' first book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but I was familiar with the basic technique: make a large batch of a wet dough, store it in the refrigerator, and use it as needed for the next couple of weeks. A wet dough is the basic alternative to kneading because it gives the flour's gluten strands a way to align on their own rather than through laborious manual intervention. The downside is that wet doughs must be handled pretty carefully and are hard to shape.

I started with the first recipe, for the whole grain artisan free form loaf:

• 720 grams (5.5 cups) whole wheat flour
• 270 grams (2 cups) unbleached AP flour
• 15 grams (1.5 tablespoons) granulated yeast
• 15 grams (1 tablespoon) Kosher salt (calibrated for Morton's)
• 35 grams (1/4 cup) vital wheat gluten
• 900 grams (4 cups) lukewarm water
  

I went by weight rather than volume and was surprised to see how inaccurate the equivalencies were for water: 4 cups or 2 pounds or 900 grams. Four cups of water is more like 33.5 ounces and 946 grams. The ratios of flour to water by weight in both the supplied standard and metric units are very close, though, so I guess what this really comes down to is that measuring flour by volume is pretty haphazard. I used a white whole wheat flour.

It rapidly doubled or tripled in size, at which point it refrigerated it. The next day I made two small loaves, one plain and one sprinkled with a dry Tuscan herb mix. I need a new and less broken pizza stone so this time I baked on a greased hollow-core cookie sheet.

This is the first time I've tried steam baking. Between two and three cups of ice cubes on a broiler pan provided steam for perhaps 25 minutes, but took a few minutes to get going. It would be better to give  the ice a head start before inserting the loaves. I also tried hot tap water for subsequent loaves; I think this is superior as it produces steam almost immediately and is easier to quantify.

This dough spreads out quite a bit after being formed and resting for 90 minutes. I think my technique could have been better, resulting in a tighter loaf. However, oven spring was significant, as promised.

They baked at 460 for 30 minutes, which seemed about right. The crust is nicely crispy. Crumb was tender and not too dense. Flavor was a bit bland and undersalted, to my taste. This dough should develop sourdough characteristics over time, so a comparison in a few days will be interesting.

At five days I made another loaf. The refrigerated dough was weeping a bit, which is not a problem. This one came out pretty flat; I did not do a good job of shaping it or tucking the sides under. After 90 minutes of rising it was very wide and squat. The flavor was somewhat improved, I thought. Definitely needs salt.

The dough was six days old when I used the last of it. This time I floured the dough and my hands better and took more care in shaping the loaf while still doing it in under 20 seconds. More flour is a big help, and I think also helps the dough hold its shape while rising.

This time I baked for 20 minutes on the cookie sheet, then 10 minutes on the rack. The top crusts so far had been great, but with pallid bottoms. This helped a little, but what I really need is a new stone. In the meantime I should try rising on parchment paper and baking in the dutch oven.

The last loaf turned out the best although it was still irregularly shaped and proportioned. Tucking the sides completely and evenly may be the key to avoiding this, for even though the loaf initially looks perfectly symmetrical the manner in which it rises and springs reveals the internal inconsistencies. I'll have to try the letter-fold technique, too. Also, this loaf was a little larger (17 ounces after baking) and perhaps that causes it to collapse a bit under its own weight.

For the second dough I chose the 100% whole wheat with olive oil:

• 910 grams whole wheat flour
• 15 grams granulated yeast
• 15 grams kosher salt
• 35 grams vital wheat gluten
• 790 grams lukewarm water
• 110 grams olive oil

I mixed this right in the dough bucket with the leftover bits from the previous batch, which is supposed to provide a jump on developing sourdough flavor. This can be done with up to two cups of the old dough. I increased the salt by eight grams from the prescribed 15.

By this time I was getting a little better at shaping the loaves.

 Because the loaf is supposed to be formed in only 20 to 40 seconds if there is a major malformation it's probably unwise to try to correct it.

The second loaf was better shaped and also small, at only 11 ounces baked. I baked it on parchment paper in a preheated dutch oven, uncovered. Oven spring was quite good. For a loaf that fits this is far better than a cookie sheet.

The third loaf was considerably larger at over 17 ounces baked and also fairly well shaped. And, my new baking stone had arrived. Oven spring was good, but I think the stone needed more preheating. It's much thicker than my old pizza stone.

For the fourth loaf I tried the garlic-studded baguette recipe. It was my first attempt at the letter-fold method and it did not go very well. For one thing, I should have made a smaller loaf; this one suffered quite a bit of abuse. For another, I tried using a pizza peel and even though it was liberally cornmealed the loaf offered considerable resistance to my dislodgement efforts. The result was unattractively irregular, to say the least. Also, I did not shove the garlic down deeply enough to keep it from popping out.

As for flavor, pretty uninspired. The garlic doesn't really contribute anything to any slice that doesn't have a piece.

So, what is my assessment at this point? The method is definitely low-effort. I can produce a pretty decent basic loaf and it really does require but five minutes of active effort on baking day. On the day it's baked the crust is excellent; after that it loses its crispness. (This may be a sign of slight underbaking, actually.) It has a relatively dense crumb. It keeps well for a couple of days or more. Flavor from these two basic recipes is underwhelming. I didn't think any sourdough flavors ever developed to a meaningful degree. It makes pretty tasty toast.

Will I keep doing this? Yes, I think I will. I'll keep working my way through the book and I'm sure some of the recipes will be more interesting. And at the very least this is a way to have fresh bread on any given day with very little effort and not too much wall time either.

no-knead cranberry-walnut bread

I used the Cooks Illustrated no-knead bread 2.0 recipe with the cranberry-pecan variant, substituting walnuts for pecans and adding a tablespoon of wheat gluten. The vinegar was a 7.0% white wine vinegar and the beer was my light ale. I used the bottom of the bottle thinking I might pick up some additional yeastiness.

The starter was in the bowl for about 16 hours, then spent the night in the refrigerator. I kneaded it while cold and then it rose for a few hours.

Turned out fine, and it's very pretty inside.

It seems a touch dry to me and I think I'd increase the cranberries and decrease the nuts next time. It makes very good toast.

excellent no-knead olive rosemary bread

I thought an olive rosemary bread would be nice for Christmas Eve so I looked back over some previous efforts. (Hey, a year into this blogging business and it gratifying to find that it's as helpful a reference as I'd hoped.)

This almost no-knead loaf using the Cooks Illustrated method was great aside from the flattish shape. I went with something close to it, but drier in keeping with the original CI recipe:

• 3 cups all purpose flour less 3 tablespoons
• 3 tablespoons wheat gluten
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
  
• rounded 1/4 teaspoon rapid rise yeast
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon goldenflower ale (homemade)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (homemade)
• 1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives
• 1 tablespoon dried rosemary, lightly crushed
  

Mixed this into a shaggy ball and covered at 13:00. Kneaded for 30 seconds at 8:30 the next morning, formed into a loaf, and put it onto parchment paper in a small skillet. It was easy to work and very resilient. Looked promising, though I should have used more flour to get a smoother exterior and permit more symmetric shaping. I was thinking that this one would be, shall we say, rustic.

It rose well over the next two hours, then went into the covered dutch oven preheated on the bottom rack to 500 degrees. Lowered to 425 and baked for 30 minutes covered and 20 uncovered to 206 degrees internal.

Holy guacamole señors y señoritas, it's gorgeous. I can see that the technique of forming the loaf by pulling the dough from several directions into the middle and then using that seam as the base worked perfectly. That has been too difficult to do with other no-knead doughs. Letting it rise in a smaller skillet also worked well. And it bounced or sprang or whatever you call it in the oven better than any other bread I've baked.

Now, two hours of sweet torment listening to it softly crackle into coolness.

GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

It's superb. This is the closest thing to perfection to ever come out of my oven. The crust is spectacularly flaky and crisp, the crumb is chewy and stretchy and soft, and the flavor is heavenly. I'm about to dislocate one shoulder patting myself on the back and the other lunging for another piece.

I can tell that I used dried rosemary. There's no textural problem, but the flavor is clearly that of the dried herb. I'll use fresh next time. I wouldn't mind more olives, either.

Other than that I don't know how it could be any better. Well, I suppose it could be, but I am totally satisfied with this outcome. Outstanding ROI. I'll probably make another.

second rye sourdough bread

I pulled the rye sourdough starter out of the refrigerator yesterday and fed it. Today I tried another rye sourdough recipe, at http://www.recipezaar.com/Crusty-Sourdough-Rye-Bread-170558. It uses yeast as well as sourdough, at least in the less-than-a-day variant.

It starts with a cup of starter, a cup and a half of rye flour, and a cup of water. This can be used immediately or allowed to do its thing and develop some sourness. I let it stand for six hours. It was lively and the volume increased significantly, but it wasn't particularly sour.

A cup of whole wheat flour, a cup and three fourths of all-purpose flour, salt, sugar, caraway seeds, and proofed yeast go in next. I kneaded for nine minutes. This dough was quite manageable; far less sticky and easier to handle than the previous attempt. As instructed, I added flour whenever it felt like it was reaching the point of adherence to something other than itself.

It rose for an hour and a half. I then punched it down, lightly kneaded, let it rise for another half hour.

This is the first time I've used the spray technique. For the first nine minutes at 425 degrees I sprayed every three minutes. It then spent another 25 minutes at 400.

Looked great! It rested for about half an hour while we had dinner. It was still warm, but irresistible. The boys and I sampled it.

Very nice, though not sour at all. In fact, I thought it had a faint sweetness from the whole wheat. Pillowy soft crumb, thin but crispy crust, and good rye and caraway flavors. I think this recipe is a winner. Next time I think I'll give the chef a good 24 hours and see if I can get some sourness.

2009-12-21 update: It's holding up really well. Made great sandwiches yesterday. Very nice with gruyere today.

first rye sourdough a whacking great failure

Wanting to do something else with the home-grown rye sourdough starter I made for the kvas, I turned to this recipe for sourdough rye bread. Man, what a train wreck. I probably erred in not using bread flour, but I had none on hand.

The dough was unbelievably sticky. It was like trying to knead Liquid Nails. I don't think it reached the desired texture but I just couldn't spend more time on it. It remained kind of grainy. Cleaning my hands and the cutting board took nearly as long as kneading. I'm not sure whether I should have just kept plowing flour into it to achieve something workable.

It rose moderately, and for about six hours overall. However, because of the very slack dough the small loaves did not develop much height, and when I slashed them they instantly deflated, leaving me with two football-shaped hamburger buns. I baked on a hollow cookie sheet with corn meal rather than oil.

The crust was rough and decidedly ugly.

I figured I might as well try it hot, so I did. The strong rye and caraway flavors were pretty good, actually. It's about like a rye crisp cracker in flavor, with that kind of crackle when biting the crust, and a soft interior that combines nicely with the crunchiness. It is not terribly dense, defying my expectations for loaves that are less than two inches in height. There's no stretchiness to the crumb. It has no sourness when warm. It made really good toast the next morning, dressed with butter and peach jam. Still no sourness, though. I think the starter may be too young.

I guess it's tasty enough, aside from the aesthetics and awkward dimensions, that I'd try it again. If the dough can be made more manageable and the shape corrected then doubling or tripling the recipe might be worthwhile.

first homemade kvas, part 1

For my first kvas I used the recipe that calls for rye sourdough starter that I found at http://ask.metafilter.com/64513/Kvas-recipe:

Here is a simple recipe for kvas in every way except time (preparation takes at least 5 days, though you don't have to be paying attention the whole time) but I imagine it will be very good. My wife just got a great cookbook called "Bread Matters" and I noticed the kvas recipe in it just a few days ago.

The (five) days before, prepare a rye production sourdough (recipe below).

450 grams rye bread
4 1/2 litres water
300 grams molasses
150 grams rye production sourdough
2 raisins per bottle

Cut the bread into small pieces and dry them out thoroughly, either in a warm place or in a low oven. Put them in a bucket of at least 5 litres capacity. Boil the water and pour in over the bread. Cover and leave until the temperature has dropped to about 35 degrees. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into another bucket. Press the crumbly sludge very gently to release the last of the liquid, but do not squeeze it hard or too much sediment will fall in. Add the molasses to the warm liquid and mix thoroughly. Then mix in the rye sourdough and leave it in a warm place for twelve hours. In the morning, strain and pour into sterilized bottles, adding the two raisins per bottle. Seal the bottles and leave them in a cool place.

If after two days, the bottles have not carbonated, give them a shake and move them to a warm place to carbonate. Drink chilled, or use as the liquid for making soup such as borshch.

In order to make rye production sourdough, you first have to make rye sourdough starter.

To make a rye sourdough starter, start by mixing together 25 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of warm water; keep these in a warm place. The next day, add another 25 grams of rye flour and 50 grams of warm water. Again on day three, and again on day four; same proportions. Leave the mixture for one more day; now you have your rye sourdough starter.

Now, take 50 grams of the starter. Add 150 grams rye flour and 300 grams water. Mix together to form a sloppy mixture and leave for 12-24 hours. Now you have your rye production sourdough.

I started with 485 grams of fresh bread.

The bread dried to 371g. Broken open it was not really fully dry inside, but close. I failed to break it into small pieces to start with.

I combined the boiling water and bread and five hours later poured, strained, and added the molasses and starter.

The water tastes just like liquid rye bread. With molasses, the flavor is just what you'd expect.

The rye sourdough starter tastes startlingly like a Belgian ale! It's crazy!

I did not do anything to avoid aeration and didn't take any sanitization steps up to this point.

The next day I bottled, ending up with three full Martinelli's bottles (25 ounces, I think), plus maybe eight ounces of dregs. I cleaned and sanitized the bottles, funnel, and filter, but did not use any gear to prevent aeration during pouring.

It had certainly fermented and was quite lively on the tongue. The molasses is the predominant flavor and it's rather sweet. I would try making this with a different adjunct, and unless it becomes dryer in the bottle I would use less.

About an inch of sediment settled in the bottles. Two days later, I opened one. Ooooooh. Aaaaaah. All but about three ounces blasted forth like foam from a fire hose. It was quite magnificent in a dancing about the sink trying to keep the walls and ceiling dry sort of way. Needless to say, what remained was murky. It wasn't all that different in flavor or carbonation from when it went into the bottle. The boys didn't really like it. I thought it was OK for sipping but it's not what I'd call a refreshing beverage.

About a week ago I bought a two liter bottle of homemade kvas at European Foods. The proprietor told me to exercise caution when opening it. It was quite explosive, all right. Even the third and fourth openings caused it to release mighty blasts of CO2 and completely stir up the sediment. Hmm.

Well, crud. I'm going to leave the other two bottles alone for a while and think about how to better extract their contents. Mayhap extreme cold would help. At the very least I'll have to capture it and if it's not drinkable use it as a soup base or something.

discovery of kvas

Woot! It's bread in a glass! I was at the highly multicultural HT Oaktree Market and strolled past a pallet of big plastic bottles covered with Cyrillic letters, barley stalks, and a big bearded dude holding a wicker mug. There was some English, too: CLASSIC KVAS and UNIQUE OLD RECIPES. For $1.50 I wasn't about to pass that up, though I hadn't the faintest idea what it was.

Turns out that Kvas is an ancient fermented beverage made of black or rye bread, and sometimes flavored with fruit. It has long been popular in eastern European countries. The alcohol content is very low.

The recent history of Kvas is that the big soft drink makers have been trying to horn in on the action, leading to Kvas-like things that are mass produced and don't use traditional methods. What I bought is made in Ukraine by Danilo. The ingredients make it clear that this is one of those cola-like products: water, sugar, glucose-fructose syrup (I think that's high-fructose corn syrup, or perhaps derived from beets), carbon dioxide, and kvas concentrate based on rye malt. It is non-alcoholic.

While it's surely not authentic, it perhaps gives me a reasonable idea of what a kvas might be like. It has a malty aroma, is moderately sweet, and is moderately carbonated. I quite like it. It's pretty highly caloric, at 86 calories per 8 ounces. That's basically like any sugary soda.

I'm going to have to visit a European foods market and try to find a real kvas. And it looks easy enough to make it at home. Here are some recipes:

• http://oldrecipebook.com/canning-russianrecipes.shtml
• http://ask.metafilter.com/64513/Kvas-recipe
• http://www.whats4eats.com/beverages/kvas-recipe
• http://www.ruscuisine.com/recipes/beverages-and-drinks/n--297/ (beet kvas)
• http://www.ruscuisine.com/recipes/beverages-and-drinks/n--39/
  

Bruce Frankel's grilled bread

After the success of the grilled foccacia I wanted to try another one of the grilled breads in The Barbecue Bible. This was Bruce Frankel's Grilled Bread, from his Panache restaurant.

It's one third whole wheat and has a bit of molasses, for a lightly sweet and nutty flavor. Takes a couple of hours to rise and each small bread is done in just a minute or two per side, so it can be done with little planning and is easily grilled after something else comes off and is resting.

It's topped with olive oil, cracked pepper, and fresh thyme. It was excellent with chevre. Next time I might make a smaller number of larger breads, and perhaps try for something a little thicker and softer.

grilled focaccia and Brazilian pork rollatini

It was definitely a grilling evening so I pulled out the BBQ Bible and looked for something interesting and that didn't require hours of marinating. I hadn't baked bread in a while so the grilled focaccia caught my eye. The Brazilian pork rollatini looked fun, too. A few garden herbs for a green salad and the menu was set.

This focaccia is unusual in that it's very thin, as it needs to be in order to be grilled. It's a simple and fairly dry yeast dough that rises for an hour or two. It has a touch of olive oil, and the yeast was proofed with some sugar. Other than that, just flour and salt.

After rising it's divided into eight balls, rolled into disks, and dusted with cornmeal.

Before grilling each bread is brushed with olive oil and a bit of kosher salt. I did not use the recipe's sesame seeds. At high heat it takes just a couple of minutes per side.

It turned out really nice. Stretchy and chewy, with good flavor. It almost tastes like a pancake, perhaps because of the very slight sweetness. Well received, and pretty quick and easy as breads go.

The Brazilian pork rollatini recipe comes from a restaurant chain in Rio, with the addition of Dijon mustard and cornichons by Raichlen. Slices of pork loin are rolled around ham, onion, pickle, Gruyere, mustard, salt, and pepper. I can't imagine how he manages to coat the pork in grated cheese and then successfully spread mustard on it, so I departed a bit from the construction instructions.

Before grilling the rolls are brushed with olive oil and topped with a bit more cheese. I rotated by 90 degrees every few minutes until done. I was afraid they would dry out, but they stayed tender and juicy.

Quite good! Not a super sophisticated or intriguing flavor combination, but tasty. Really similar to a Cuban sandwich, actually.

Mojitos made with mint from the garden (but not home-grown limes, sadly) were the final touch. I'm rather pleased to welcome Mojito season!