Jorpblog

Bagels are more work than almost anything else I bake, so I like to make enough to last a little while. With a 4-day weekend, I had enough time to get a lot of things out of the way before Sunday ever came around. That left me enough time to attempt 3 dozen bagels.

I had just enough bowl-room to fit the 15 cups of flour, 6 eggs, 3-3/4 cups water, etc. But I hate cutting in thirds, so rather than having to cut the whole thing into ninths, I ended up with 32 slightly oversized bagels. Who’s gonna complain about that? And 32 should still last a little while. They keep well in the freezer.

I’m very competitive when it comes to cookie making. Mostly I compete with myself, because I end up eating half of all the cookies I bake, so I have really built up a reservoir of cookie memories. I’d estimate I’ve made close to 35,000 cookies in my life but I am still struggling to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

I thought I was onto something when I came up with the idea of using cashews. After all, cashews are the best nut for the job. Peanuts are great, but too dominant. I have great respect for hazelnuts, but they aren’t quite rich enough. But cashews, when baked, get a little bit soft, which contrasts well with the crunchiness of the cacao nibs. It is a delicious combination, but I think I can still do better. The previous batch had walnuts and raisins, and that worked awfully well so I think some combination of all those ingredients may work.

Back to the lab…

I’m making my own yogurt now, and I’m soooo addicted! Nearly every morning I have homemade yogurt with granola. The sweet and crunchy granola plus the creamy and slightly sour yogurt make a perfect combination. And knowing that I made it myself makes it all the more delicious.

Pictured here is my first attempt at fruity yogurt. The three in front are plain but the four in back have cherry jam. The cherry ones weren’t that great really, but I’ll keep trying. I bought a pineapple so I can try real fruit rather than jam.

For those who aren’t familiar with the mystery of yogurt making, it goes like this:

Yogurt = milk + yogurt

which can be re-written as:

Yogurt = milk + (milk + yogurt)

which can further be re-written as:

Yogurt = milk + (milk + (milk + yogurt))

Keep going as long as you want until you end up with just milk.

The yogurt maker makes it easy, but if you have some other way of keeping the mixture warm for 6-8 hours but not too warm to kill the culture, you can do it without any special device (maybe set a jar on the radiator?)

Anyway, thanks to Burt and Linda Cohen for the wedding gift. It took a while to really get into it, but I’ve probably gone through 2 gallons of it in the last couple months.

The Sullivan Street Bakery bread recipe changed my life. Not only that, it led me to the biscotti recipe, which I now make all the time too (and get many requests for–the biscotti that is, not the recipe). So when I got another “revolutionary” recipe in the mail and saw the photo of that wonderful crust, I thought maybe another life changer was coming and I decided to make it right away.

This one comes from Jeff Hertzberg and it’s called Simple Crusty Bread. Here you can see that my crust looks nothing like the photo, and I didn’t get nearly the rise either. But then I don’t have a baking stone and had to use the variation listed at the end of the recipe. I will say that the bread is moist, and it’s quick and easy to make. I still have half the dough in the refrigerator, so I would say the verdict is still out on this one. I might try baking the 2nd batch in a lidded pot like the other recipe. I’ll let you know how it goes…

I admit I’m impressionable. After I first read Siddhartha, I fasted for 3 days…twice. I remember sitting on a lawn chair out in the brutal midwest summer sun down at Earthcircles, watching the flies land on my bare feet and reveling in the connection I felt with one of mankind’s least respected creatures. I’m sure–though I don’t remember this part–I wanted to give up all my worldly possessions in my lightheaded delerium. And now I’m a raging capitalist. Well not exactly…but 10 years later I haven’t gotten rid of all my stuff just yet.

Anyway, I mention that because I just read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and it left quite an impression. It’s an excellent book and I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in where their food comes from. And if you don’t care where your food comes from…well, read it anyway and maybe you will when you’re done.

He traces four meals from their very origin through all their stops on the way to his dinner plate. In the case of a McDonald’s hamburger that means going from the cornfields where the cattle feed is grown to the feedlot, the slaughterhouse, the processing plant, etc. all the way to the drivethru. For a meal he hunts and gathers himself, it means shooting and butchering a wild pig, picking wild cherries, growing lettuce and herbs and hunting morel mushrooms.

The section that I found most fascinating was on grass farming. He spends a couple weeks with a farmer in Virginia who uses an aggressive management technique to feed his cows, chickens, pigs and rabbits without using pesticides, fertilizers or practically any external input whatsoever. The animals, the grass, the surrounding woods all form a complete, sustainable ecosystem. It’s only the expertly-timed moving of the animals so they always get the grass at it’s peak and for just long enough to stimulate the grass to grow back quickly that accelerates the natural process enough for him to make a living selling eggs and meat. And what eggs and meat! The eggs are eggier, the chickens more chickeny, and of course all the animals live a decent life, free to graze the little parcels of grassy land and move on a few days later to the next parcel. It’s almost enough to make a vegetarian have second thoughts…especially when you read the sections on Industrial Organic (i.e. The Whole Foods empire) and the history of the animal rights movement. But rather than start eating grass-fed, free-range cows, what it really made me want to do was to become a grass farmer myself.

If you thought all you had to do was look for the little green USDA Organic sticker to know you were getting “good, safe, healthy” food, think again. It’s a good start, but unfortunately there’s much more to it than that. I won’t recount the entire book here, but it delves into all these issues. Check it out.

Sara’s got her own blog going where she publishes pictures of her work (see the link on the side for Muktropolis), but I thought I’d share my thoughts on this latest one…

NOT FOR SALE

This one is a breakthrough, just outstanding, in my opinion, and I just thought I’d announce that to anyone who cares to read this.

In some ways, of course, everything we make is a reflection of ourselves. And humanoid dolls would logically be more of a reflection of their creator than, say, a bagel. But this one’s actually got legwarmers, and I think that’s just awesome…

Life, they say, is not all black and white. Scones, for instance, come in cream color and chocolate brown. I love the looks and the idea of the chocolate & cinnamon ones, but the plain old currant scones are really the best.

More people should make these (and feed them to me). They only take about an hour of prep time and 15 minutes to bake. I think it’s a great form to work with.

I’m open for suggestions as to other things to put in them. So far, in addition to currant and chocolate & cinnamon, I’ve done blueberry and mushroom & cheese. I bought some cranberries, but I forgot to use them tonight…