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Thursday, June 7, 2012

How We Flew to Bavaria on Wings of Rye

I had been less than pleased with my attempts to bake bread using only my sourdough starter, rather than any commercial yeast. I have a jar full of Fleischmann's in the fridge, but what would I do if I suddenly found myself in a post-Apocalyptic farm house, no grocery stores left, only my trusty mason jar of bubbling sour-smelling goo to raise my breads? (The yeast is the first thing the zombies go for.) Clearly, another attempt was in order.

Rye bread has always been a favorite of mine, as well as the dense brown breads of Northern European tradition. If lightness was not a desirable attribute of these breads, then maybe leaving out the yeast would work just fine. I started my sponge the day before baking, mixing my starter with dark rye flour, warm water, and a little sugar, and mixing in browned onions and crushed caraway seeds. I put that on the counter and walked away.


After only a couple hours it was quite active, putting up the occasional bubble (polenta-style) and acquiring a rather ripe smell. By the next day (about 16 hours of fermentation time) it had developed a thoroughly adolescent personality - impatient, volatile, smelly, and just plain uncomfortable in its body. It was time to graduate it to the mixing bowl.

I folded in the remaining flour (100% rye, as opposed to most rye bread recipes which lighten the loaf with varying amounts of white wheat flour), and let the sticky dough rise and ferment some more.


Eight or so hours later, I gathered the sticky mass and clumped it into a loaf pan, for a final rise of about 90 minutes. Rye flour, unlike wheat flour, does not depend on gluten for its structural integrity and carbon dioxide trapping ability, and so does not require any kneading (read more here), which is fortunate, because rye dough is sticky. It's like kneading bubble gum mixed with Elmer's.

Finally, it went into the oven (350 degrees F) for right around two hours. It's hard to over-bake a bread like this, and you certainly don't want to under-bake it, so shoot for at least two hours, and give it a knock on the bottom to see if it sounds hollow.

A few squares of cold sweet butter and a pinch of crunchy salt would do just about perfectly, but we had the recently canned sauerkraut to debut. Some hot kraut and onions, melted cheese, a few slices of rye, last summer's bread and butter pickles, and a home brew. Prost!


Monday, June 4, 2012

Recipe

In response to several requests, here's the recipe for the shortcakes. Nothing fancy, just a prodigal amount of good cream and butter, and the ripest strawberries you can find.

Biscuits:

1.5 c AP flour
4 t sugar
2 t baking powder
6 T butter
.75 c cream
fat pinch of salt

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in cold butter, stir in about 10 T of the cream until dough forms. Chill. Roll out to 0.5" thick. Cut out biscuits, brush with remaining cream, and bake at 400 F for about 16 minutes.

Strawberries:

4 c fresh strawberries, hulled and washed
0.25 c sugar (give or take)

Slice the strawberries, sprinkle with sugar, puree half of the mixture and fold back in.

Cream:

1 c cream
0.5 c fresh lemon verbena leaves (mint works nicely, too)
1.5 T

Steep herb in cream for at least 24 hours. Strain out herb and whip cream with sugar.

Assemble the shortcakes any way you want. They won't stay assembled long.

The Main Event

This weekend, Home Skillet was launched, on wings of strawberry shortcake, past the reaches of word of mouth among friends and into the wide world beyond.

Along with several other local food businesses, we offered a menu item to be served at a wine tasting fundraiser for The International School here in Portland. I had spent the days leading up to the event making sure that this simple dish would really shine: finding the best possible local strawberries, infusing rich organic cream with fresh lemon verbena, baking over one hundred sweet cream biscuits. Everything came out beautifully, leaving us with an easy job once we got to the event.



We plated up our desserts, schmoozed (as I love to do) and mingled with the crowd, dispatched a handful of business cards, and called it a night. A great event for all involved. Look out Portland, there's tasty food coming your way, and it's called Home Skillet.