the dog bread and los cardones

So after receiving 5 pounds of poppy seeds (and scaring my roommate by that), I tried the Mantova olive oil bread. It contains plenty of other seeds, apart from the poppy, and lots of olive oil. They were falling out of the outer skin when kneading the dough and the dogs were happily licking the floor. It rose fine and it was really nicely smelling. Baked poppy seeds smell just heavenly. Too heavenly for a devilish taste of Sasha, who occasionally sneaks food from the table. This time she did it not due to a separation anxiety attack, as happened before. This time it was right behind our backs when we were putting food on the table in the dining room and the kitchen counter was unguarded for barely ten seconds. I cannot blame her. It was a good bread. And she took only two slices.

The next bread is one I made earlier and it is my favorite, a light rye bread. It has less than 20% rye flour and lots of caraway seeds, even though I use less than the recipe calls for. With a good bread flour it is very nice to work on and smells fantastic when baked. Plus this time, it was cracking for a long time, after it was out of the oven. That sound is really something.

It made me quite happy and sandwich from it was really good. It is different than a commercial rye bread at home, not gummy, not sour, but still very good, the biga fermentation does its job. It made me that happy that I decided to push forward with some work and after months I got back to measurements on the microscope. It is a routine work in the darkroom with only a green laser and the computer screen as light sources, plus some radio or music. I have had one and the same collection of music on my mp3 player for over a year. So, on Wednesday it was Annie Lenox. On Thursday, however, it came to Juanes, one Spanish song after another... I do understand a bit of the language, mostly am happy from recognizing words and verbs... And as I am sitting in the dark, clicking every minute on the keyboard and moving sample around, my brain calm and relaxed, Spanish words in my ears, I started remembering Argentina. I got back memories so vivid and fresh, the smell of the country after rain,  recalled visions from our daily trips from Quijano to Salta by bus, the Christmas dinner with Luis's family in that gas lamp-lit room in his brother's house, the streets, the light, the words, the taste, flavors... it all came back. These memories were mine true memories, and they were evoked from the Spanish in my ears, although I have not listened to this music in Argentina at all... it is as if some "Spanish part" of my brain woke up and all related to it became alive. Although it is a bittersweet memory, it is very vice and valuable. I was so surprised to remember so strongly that what happened two, three years ago, as if it was in front of me. It was fascinating, I could roam freely in my "Spanish brain" and recall this and that with an overwhelming ease... like rewinding a movie. I guess memories like this make easier to forgive ourselves for our sins on others.

There are days when you feel from the early morning that something is going to happen, and you are expecting it every minute ... and nothing happens. There are days when you do not expect absolutely anything and a simple thing, such as an innocent e-mail or a glimpse at an old friend online, makes you get on a spiral. Fascinating thing is that having a dog like Chompy is very therapeutic, at least for now. She substitutes the attention giving and and attention needing process which I need to feel at times. Having her is like having exits on that spiral-shaped highway.

Of course there are days when you get up early, because you planned to make a good dinner for your friend's birthday, start preparing everything ahead, so that when the guests arrive, you can spend time with them and not only in the kitchen, by noon you have the house cleaned and de-haired and laundry done and tablecloth washed and olive bread pretty much baked, dogs walked...  And by mid-afternoon it starts snowing and one by one your invited friends cancel. It just sucks, because there is a half of your own birthday cake and full dish of homemade tiramisu, which you've spent not only most of one evening on, but also some money on good ingredients. By the time they cancel altogether you want to explode and scream and when you walk the dogs again, you know you can do nothing but swear. Fortunately, the idea of staying home the whole evening with kitchen full of food, however annoying, gets replaced by another one, and for once you are happy for having the movie theater so close to the house. Having a plan B, as my friend Hana always says, works this time, even though it was a last minute plan. I guess anything lesser than Avatar would have left me pissed for all that effort earlier, for my naivety with which I didn't rebook the whole thing for earlier, even though I had a chance when the forecast did predict some snow... I guess it's the take home lesson, always overestimate the weather in Wyoming :) On a plus side, we have leftovers till Wednesday it seems...
BTW, my next bread is going to be a olive oil bread with lots of seeds.

becoming American

After quite positive experience with making the pretzels it was easy to decide the next project, bagels. Since it is only me and my housemate these days, I went for a half-recipe of the great Jewess and followed the recipe quite to the point, only adjusting my rising times accordingly. And I substituted half of the white flour with whole wheat. After the dough is made, one divides it into pieces and tolls them into balls. When the gluten relaxes, the easiest way to form the bagel shape is to push a hole through the balls with your finger and stretch the opening. 

 

The bagels get boiled in soda-sugar water for a minute per side 

 

and then rolled in seeds (and should be glazed, which is a step I omitted).

 

The baking is a bit strange, it ends by turning the oven off and then by leaving the doors opened for the last 5 minutes, which is not explained, but I did as asked and the bagels turned pretty good. 

 

Pretty good! :)

Well, to continue in my naturalization and also since I saw in the morning Baking with Julia where they were making muffins, I got curious whether baking my signature babovka in muffin shape would be any good. Also, by scaling down the recipe one does not feel so guilty, right? I made 1/2 coconut babovka batter with roasted walnuts and filled 9 muffin tins, it could have been easily been 10, but I got into licking the spoon too soon :)
 

These are the survivors next morning...just before my breakfast.

becoming Jewish

It was supposed to be a quiet weekend and I wanted to have the easy Sunday with some sweet bread for breakfast. I was also craving olive bread for some time and my stash of olives was slowly getting smaller, since they are so delicious in our salads. The latter one was not problem, I made it sourdough style many times before. I wanted to have the advantage of fast rising and yet sourdough soul, so I started the biga with my sourdough starter and let it go really long, the next day I made the dough and kneaded in the kalamata olives and it just looked exactly as it should have.

The bread is small, though, about a pound or less of the raw dough, so a bit less after baking. Since the rising was fast, I went for a free-style round boule, meaning it was round and it rose unsupported by anything round... not in a basket. Just sitting on the parchment paper.

The vanocka, however was a bit different story. Rose Levy suggested for her challah using 2x her brioche recipe (for the non-kosher challah). Since it is a breaded bread, I went for this recipe, hoping in a little miracle. Miracle was that I did not throw it away in the middle of the process. There is about 500g of flour and about 220 g of butter in this, not mentioning 6 eggs, making the dough very runny and sticky.

It did not toughen up after refrigerating, as it should have. I could not knead it and so there were little chunks of butter distrubuted randomly throughout. I braided the vanocka as I refreshed my memory about 6-braid vanocka online, and it looked awfull and needed tons of flour to prevent stickiness. I wonder if I have not forgot something during making the dough, but I cannot come up with anything, really. So since the braided version looked awful, I put it to a babovka form and let it rise there

and baked that way. It turned pretty good, very airy, not too sweet and with crispy edges, which is unmistakeable sign of fat in the dough.

 

The weird things on top are sliced almonds and the brown spots in the dough are raisins. I'll make vanocka again, but I guess I'll go for a Czech recipe.

My friends also left for India, for a 500-people wedding (pretty small for Indian customs, I hear). Miss them already a little. I am sure they are not missing my crazy dog.