It's party time

My friends and I decided to throw a party to the couple soon to be married in India. Pooja asked me some time ago about a possibility of baking Black Forrest Cake with/for her and so I took it as the central theme of my kitchen effort for this event. Apart from that we decided to keep it German friendly, by having pickled herring, sausages in sauerkraut, pretzels and rye bread.

The rye bread was sourdough, since I wanted it to be more rye-i than other basic recipe from the book. Sourdough starter was fed with rye flour and although it did not look particularly alive even after 12 hours, the smell was fantastic. The dough had to wait in the fridge, which I do not like so much with rye sourdough, but I had a good feeling this time it will work fine. The next day I just let it warm up and shaped a battard and let it rise, which with the rye starter was noticeably faster process. I cut down the caraway seeds, one tablespoon is plenty. And although it does not look perfect on the cut, it is very flavorfull and with just the right amount of hard/chewy crust. 

 

The pretzels were relatively easy, only the dough is pretty stiff one, only some 51% hydration, and therefore it was a bit tough to knead. On this one I would actually appreciate having a mechanical help. I did a test batch the evening before, which was supposed to yield 12 small ball-shaped breads, but I made 4 medium pretzels instead. The stiffness of the dough helped keeping the shape and dipping in hot soda solution was therefore a no-problem task. Next time I will try the lye solution, though. When I made the next batch, I needed at least 12 pretzels and therefore I trippled the recipe. It was just fine and since I used hotter soda solution and let the pretzels sit in in for about half minute each, they seem to be a bit shinier. I had help with these and it is fun to make them. They are chewy and to me taste just fine.

Le cake was a bit of project. Cherries were marinating in brandy-syrup for about a week, I had enough chocolate and eggs and cream, so I was ready to roll. The recipe called for a half batch for the cake itself, but I baked the full one just in case and since I  was supposed to cut away the top and bottom layer afterward, I wanted to have a space for error. I ended trimming the tops and bottoms and using the whole middle parts as they were, having more syrup than called for was a good idea since one sprinkles it on the cake before covering with the frosting. The frosting gave me a bit of headache. I opted for a light ganache, which is cream melted with chocolate, whipped together. I guess it was due to the higher fat content and good quality chocolate (only cocoa butter in it), I overwhipped it exactly as the book said... and so I re-melted and cooled again and repeated ... and I overwhipped again, this time I knew it was due to not melting it hot enough earlier, since the granular structure formed right away just by cooling down. Third time is a charm and I was very very careful and it was just fine. The ganache was not perfectly smooth visually, but melted in the mouth like a chocolate, yet the sweetness was the one of bittersweet chocolate. The bottom cake layer gets covered with this and cherries are put on top and next cake layer gets seated in and soaked in syrup and covered with the ganache again. Cool for 4 hours in the fridge covered with foil and then make rosettes with cream and put cherry into each.... and the top was supposed to get sprinkled with shaved chocolate, which I forgot in the fridge, eactually, but the ganache was chocolate-y enough anyway. It is a pretty darn good cake. Maybe next time I'd do just the stabilized cream, as in the original recipe. If there is next time.

Tasting

The bread is good, pity I always get too impatient and bake a day too early so when it gets to actual eating, it's over day old product. It is different than the previous Pugliese, it's yellower and the taste reminds me of pasta, actually.
It is airier than the ciabatta, actually, and of course the crust, dusted with flour, tastes exactly perfectly home-made-y. The crumb is a bit tough and dry by now, but light toasting will make it excellent.

Although I felt very weird this morning and had a hard time to pedal all the way to work after I raced with the shuttle bus for a few blocks, I actually  made some progress at work and was ableto follow the candidate speaker in the afternoon.
Beef burgundy, improvised in a slow cooker, ended quite tasty. Thanks to my ingenuity I managed to concentrate the juices just to the perfect consistency and it tasted pretty all right. Maybe merlot was not the best choice of wine for this dish, but it did do a good job. My next slow-cooked thingy will be probably gulash.
Signing off in order to watch a movie...

Pan Laramiese 2

I am not sure if I got the proper durum flour for the Pugliese bread. But, it's late to do anything about it now. I mixed the dough with the biga at noon and stretch-folded it once, than twice more in the evening after I came home. Using the cheapo bench scraper really makes working with wet dough like this quite easy. Now it's rising while my dog is dry humping Sasha. Since she is that much smaller, it looks really weird, not mentioning they are both ex-girls. Fortunatelly it did not take long but I wonder if the vet took out everything. She loves to dry-hump my furry slippers after dinner as well.
I was looking up for high-altitude baking websites and found a blog similar to this one (and  which I cannot find again, of course) and it reminded me of the Julie and Julia blog. I thought about undergoing similar journey as Julie with Julia's cookbook, in my case with the Bread Bible from the great Jewess. But there are many recipes I already know I won't be able to get all the ingredients or equipment for.... and that would mean improvisation on a big part of the book... Plus, it would be a plain copying of someone else's idea. So, no. At least not now.
BTW, the dog snores.
The bread, after about 40 minutes of rising time, one can see how the dough spreads in the basket.

And another ninety minutes later or so:

and than to the hot hot oven and voila:

Smells really nice (which freshly baked bread does not, right?) and although it is flat, it also feels light and so I hope in a great texture. Can't wait till tomorrow.

BTW, Chompy stopped snoring in the meantime.

An extra day

The solution to the holidays in this country is pretty clever, being it a given day in the week instead of a given date like in my home country. Except for Christmas and New Years, one knows pretty well that there will be so many Mondays or Thursdays off every year, no matter what year it is. And, no one is going to rob you of a favorite day off. Our department somehow decided to "kind of work" today since true science knows no holidays, and so did the dentist. Surviving the seminar at noon was not so hard and afterward, since it was officially a day off, I took the doggies for a nice noon walk... I even actually managed to do a little bit of work before going to the dentist, who decided that there was no reason to drill into this tooth, contrary to his colleague from last week, and so I got back to work sooner than planned and managed to motivate myself to even continue with some work. By five o'clock I had enough and since it was still actually a day off, I did not feel bad about going home at five and with the hope of tiring the two hairy barking creatures, I took them for another walk. It was light outside for a while longer and they did have a new opportunity to sniff some new pee marks and even that last-night-vomit under that tree in the corner of the park. Although that looked a bit smaller than at noon, apparently some other doggies had a chance to have fun with it in the meantime. It did not really exhausted our girls like yesterday second walk did, but I felt better about doing something for them instead of sitting in front of the PC and browsing the net.
I bought a durum flour this past Saturday and so I will give one more try to the Pan Pugliese-Laramiese. I decided to double the recipe again, especially since it keeps well. It is a two-day process again, since it uses pre-ferment, or biga, as any good bread does. I am curious about the flavor. Here is the crumb photo of the first Pugliese-Laramiese:

And here is the cut ciabatta, which I might have not succeeded 100%.

Pan Pugliese-Laramiese

The evening started early, when I realized I had actually made the dough during lunch break. Although it is not sourdough and thus the dough does not get over its threshold too fast, I wanted to start with it early. The stretch and fold method is slow and I also sort-of swapped raising step from later to earlier. One more stretch and fold and it can go to the banneton. I also have to admit the absence of durum flour and doubling the recipe. I really do not see the point in making bread loafs in the one pound range. So, the great Jewess whose book I am going by, my bread Julia, has to forgive me. I am even not sure I ever saw a durum flour in Safeway.

Here is the dough after 1+2 stretch-fold cycles, waiting for the last one.

It looks flat and uninviting, I know, and is pain to work with, but if I don't screw up, it may be really nice rustic thing.
One hour of raising in the bannetone:

Another half an hour later

Turned proper side up

And, voilà :-)

For those who cannot wait to see it cut, I have to say, me neither, but a 2 hours cooldown is a must.

Smells like a great bread, I must say, any bread baked this way does.

Yeast at work

In the spirit of Julie and Julia movie and blog, which I have found last week, this is just an update. Dog is resting her head on my left thigh, coffee is cooling down and I am waiting for Keith to return so that we can try together the filles braided pastry from this morning. I decided to use the leftover crushed pineapple before it turned into alcoholic beverage, and to try to make the pastry cream shown on TV yesterday with such elegance. The cream did not thicken, so I had to fix it with more starch, which worked. 

Second filling was ground hazelnut with sugar and chocolate chips and some pastry cream as well. The filling is placed into middle part of the rolled out rectangle of the dough and sides are cut into strips and folded over each other, so the braided effect stands up. The dough was buttery and not too sweet, so I hope the whole thing will be just right.

Dogs did not help much today, they preferred chewing on  each other and also on pieces of firewood. I hope Chompy won't be pooping wood pellets tomorrow. Walking them helped to make them tired now, although just as Keith was leaving, they were full of energy to turn the house upside down.

 

I feel like napping with Chompy now, good luck proposal writing!

First week gone

It has been a strange week, slowly transitioning from European time to US with my sleep pattern and tiredness, getting used to having Chompy around again (and as it turns out, for good) and slowly getting into work, where I have not accomplished as much as I’d like. Partly because I’ve spent a lot of time online researching about dog care, dog shots, dog spaying… about the breed and generally about everything concerning that little rat-baby.
It was bitterly cold, really bitterly, my nose hair (the inside one) pretty much fell out after two mornings of biking to work at -25C. A bit of fresh snow just made everything nicer and once the arctic air hit us, the fireplace was going. And of course, since we kept the dopggies without walking them during that cold, they were quite crazy in the evenings. I have also started leaving Chompy be free in the house, so far no major damage observed.
End of the week at work sucked a little, since I have learned something new about my workplace and the people making decisions there in general. Not overly pleasant thing, but I guess I can live with it for a while longer.
It’s Saturday and am a fresh owner of a slow cooker, thanks to Hana. If the chicken and root veggies come out edible, I may like it.
Today was supposed to be more productive in terms of work-work, I have stuff to do and deadline soon, but my head is just not there, although I know I have only this one shot. I talked to a friend earlier this week and she was as burnt-out as I seem to be, so maybe it is not just me. The house needed scrubbing, my head needed haircut, dogs needed walk and some play time and my love for baking needed to see another episode of Baking with Julia. Plus there is never better time to chop some firewood than Saturday afteroon.
It’s past dinner, chicken was actually overdone and so were potatoes, but the veggies soaked all the goodnes from the bird and the bird smelled by the veggies, so I guess it was edible.
Lazy to make real danishes, I have at least prepared a rich yeast dough for tomorrow and will try some semi-braided thingy filled with other yummy thingies… Inspired from the morning TV, no kidding. Chompy’s napping and seems to have some wild REMs...

back from Christmas

Everything has to end one day. This time it was the last day of the year being also the last day of my vacation in the Czech Republic. I wrote this when I woke up in the middle of the night, still jet-lagged, so what comes to my mind first is the end. On the way to the airport we saw a big full moon hanging low and big above Prague. It was almost surreal. And when the plane took off from Prague and climbed above the clouds, there was a circular rainbow, a strange halo effect formed by the early morning sun, heavy clouds and our point of view. The plane flew through this circle of colors formed on the clouds, it was a ghostly view.



But it was great visit. I spent most of the time with my parents, sister and her family, but managed to meet my friends too and it was really nice. Czech beer is still very good, my dad’s slivovitz still a ‘rocket fuel’, and the best place at home is the old bench in the dining room. I had most fun with the little boy from my sister, Matej. He accepted me as his buddy right away, played with me and let me take him out a couple of times, just the two of us. Once we strolled through the town and met some people I should have recognized, but did not, once we walked to watch the trains arrive and depart from our small train station. Mat talks and understands what he’s told and also picks up English words. I’d teach him English names for fruits in the supermarket and next day he’d remember them just like that. One can see he has his own thoughts and makes you feel that he’s a person already. Small, but a person. How much he loves his dad is impossible to describe. I am a bit jealous that I don’t get to see a kid like him growing up on my own. Just a tiny bit, though.

Christmas Eve with this two-year old boy was a great one. We had more fun than ever with preparing it all perfect, the tree, the dinner and the presents and to make it all surprise for the boy. I am not sure how much fun the little one had, but we had our share for sure. The dinner was great just because it was a potato salad with fried carp as usual. My parents got a surprise present and Mathew got so many that he did not even open all his boxes. We were comfy and happy together and so I think, mission accomplished, thanks to my sis, mostly.