Baking is SCIENCE! (the latest cookwise post)

Okay, so it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the Cookwise Project was a bit of a flop. It's a great book, but my original concept wasn't all that suitable to my lifestyle. I manaaged to do fairly well with the bread chapter (I love to bake bread). What did it in was the fat chapter (which features pies, cakes, frying, etc). I thought it wouldn't be that hard, but when it came down to baking several cakes and pies in a weekend I knew it was not practical to actually go through the book chapter by chapter (and would actually be quite detrimental to my waistline). Rather than going through each chapter, I'll be posting interesting tidbits that come from the contents of the book and my own cooking experiments.

All that said I did bake a cake, completely from scratch, without a real recipe. This is the type of baking that I never would have thought was possible. I know I can follow a recipe, but building a cake recipe was something that I never would have attempted previously. It's actually quite easy. Cookwise includes a great set of rules for balancing a cake recipe. Cakes are 100% science: balance sugar to flour, eggs to fat, and liquids to flour.

Baking, or not

I've slacked off in my baking. For some reason I'm finding it really hard to bake during the week. I never used to have trouble with it, but it's holding no interest for me lately.

I am continuing in the Cookwise project though. I'm starting both a yeast starter and a traditional starter today. The yeast starter will be used to bake something tomorrow or Wednesday. The traditional starter will be used hopefully next weekend (but not until Sunday afternoon). We've got a retreat with the youth group at church that will keep me busy from Friday night through Sunday noon. The bread from these starters will finish out the techniques I'm using in the book and I'll be ready to try some of my own experiments in the weeks ahead.

For an immediate baking fix check out Dave's baguette.

Morning Bread Notes

So the morning has gone fairly well. After starting the French style loaves I realized that I needed to get containers to hold all of the flour, wheat germ, etc. as the bags on shelves are not acceptable. During the first rise I made trips to both Wal-Mart (ugh) and Target (only slightly better) to find containers that will hold a 5lb bag of flour.

I got home and the dough had risen nicely. I punched it down, rounded it, and let it rest while I got all of the ingredients for the whole wheat loaf. The nice thing about the structure of the Cookwise bread recipes is that they make it very easy to bake sequentially. During the rise of one there is time to prepare the next to start in the mixer. As a loaf is shaped it's time to let the next one rise. It keeps all parts of the kitchen busy, kneading, resting, rising, baking.

So here's what I've learned so far:
1. If you're going to grind your own bean flour (I wasn't about to buy a bag of flour for 1 tbsp. and I have dried beans), don't do it at 5:30 AM while your spouse is sleeping. Grinding beans into flour is LOUD.

2. The brand of semolina flour I use weighs 12g a tbsp or 48g for 1/4 cup (at least today).

3. Adding 1/2 the amount of very cold water seems to be an acceptable substitute for the crushed ice -- in the wheat bread 1/8 cup water in place of 1/4 cup of ice.

4. An x-acto knife makes an excellent tool for scoring.

5. Three batches of bread is way more than two people can rationally eat before it goes bad. This means I'll be putting off the yeast starter for a midweek baking session.

Now it's on to making the rice bread, chosen because we have gobs of left-over rice from the Indian food the other night.

A day of baking

Today marks the first full fledged venture into Cookwise expirimentation. I've read through the entire bread chapter and will be baking 2-3 different bread recipes today. I'll also be starting a starter or two for sourdough purposes.

There was a time when I didn't buy bread, rather I baked a loaf of bread every day. Those days are gone for now, especially in the world of unfamiliar recipes. The baguettes I baked then could be made in my sleep, I still can make them without thinking, but that's not the point of this exercise.

I'm struck by three things about the bread chapter in Cookwise. One is the level of detail of the recipes and explanation. It is unparalleled in other cookbooks. Second is the diversity of the ingredients. See the previous flour post. I often wonder how much of the ingredient list is related to point three.

Third is that most of these recipes do not seem terribly practical for everyday use, but rather serve to illustrate a point. This can be seen in the recipes given that the book very clearly states "What this recipe shows." Examples of this are that "Crushed caraway seeds enhance yeast activity" and "Vitamin C improves gluten development."

I understand these points, but I just don't see myself using crushed ice as a kneading mechanism anytime in the near future. Sarah also refused to purchase the vitamin C tablets as recipes only call for 1/4 of one and they came in bottles of 100 (as we are voracious orange juice drinkers they're not of much use outside of the baking). I'm going to be as true to the recipes as possible for the purposes of learning, but there are certain points where for practicality I will say, "Yep, probably would have had more gluten with X."

So here is the list for today:

Flour

I couldn't sleep and so I've gotten up for my first day of serious bread bakery. The first thing I'm struck by is the amount of flour in the kitchen. Not necessarily in quantity, but rather in variety. I give Sarah a lot of credit for not complaining too loudly about the bread ingredients on the grocery list (although she did comment that they cost more than $20).

On the counter right now:

Naan: Indian flatbread

It was Indian night at the Kerner household. We made chicken tikka masala and a cauliflower, garbanzo, potato curry. We cheated on the tikka masala using a prepared sauce, but the other curry was made from scratch.

This post is really about the naan though. Naan is an Indian flatbread that is fairly easy to make at home with a pizza stone.

This is a variation of a recipe I found online, using some of the techniques from Cookwise for breads. This recipe over does the yeast in order to give a faster rise. If you've got time I would certainly use 1/2 tsp less yeast and give a longer rise. The next time I make this I will substitute yogurt for some of the water to give it a bit of tanginess. I was also lazy and used regular butter rather than ghee (clarified butter), but it was still good.

Naan

The Cookwise Project

So here is the new project that I've hinted about. I'm going to be cooking my way through Cookwise, Shirley Corriher's book about the how's and why's of cooking. It's a geek's cookbook full of scientific explanations for everything you ever wanted to know about cooking.

The Cookwise Project will be a chronicle of my journey through Cookwise. Each month I'll be focusing on a new chapter and going through the recipes. I'm not going to publish recipes from the book on this site, but I will list the recipes I cook from the book. Anything I develop inspired by the book will be published here. Each month will feature a new chapter from the book. I'll start with chapter one in January covering bread, partially because the first chapter seems like a good place to start and also because I'm obsessed with bread. The rest of the chapters will be shuffled around because I refuse to handle the fruit/vegetable chapter in March -- it will be the last part of the project covered in July.

I'm hoping this will be a learning experience as well as facilitate building a collection of original recipes. As some of the chapters contain over 60 recipes, I won't be able to cook everything in the book, although I'm going to try to cook as many as possible. Sarah says I can't dramatically alter our grocery budget which will eliminate some of the recipes, living in Missouri will also further limit what is available at various times of the year.

I've wanted this cookbook for quite some time, but didn't get it for one reason or another. The opportunity to buy my own Christmas gift was the perfect chance. Nobody managed to guess what it was in the game of 20 questions. Sarah says that's because I misleadingly answered yes to "Is it a tool?" As far as I'm concerned it is a tool. A tool for smart cooking.

Updated Design & New Project

I've updated the design of the blog in preparation for a new project I'm going to be starting after Christmas. The project will entail a cooking extravaganza and Sarah tells me that I can't really extend beyond our normal food budget so it's going to take awhile.

You can help support the effort by buying something from the great folks at Powell's Books and by clicking on any ads that I may end up putting on the site.

I have to wait until after Christmas before I can fully divulge the project details. I can't go into it yet because it involves the Christmas gift I bought for myself. Why you may ask did I buy a gift for myself? Well let's just say it's one of my mom's wacky holiday ideas, buy a gift for yourself then we'll play 20 questions. Like I said, one of my mom's wacky holiday ideas. It's all part of the Iowa Christmas fun.