Matt’s Birthday

Yesterday was Matt’s birthday so I made him a fantastic dinner for two when he got home from work. I don’t cook meat very often but I will definitely make an exception for Matt’s birthday. Last year, I made him Boeuf en Croute (or Beef Wellington). This year I made Stuffed Cornish Game Hens with Leek Stew and Vanilla Maple Gastrique.

The recipe is from Tom Colicchio on Martha Stewart (you can see it here). The meal was delicious. I must admit that I picked this recipe because I thought the gastrique sounded really fancy and I was hoping to impress Matt on his b-day. It wasn’t really impressive at all though. I found it to be way to sweet for the dish. I think the recipe would’ve been even better without the Maple Vanilla Gastrique.

Oh, and if you do decide to make this recipe and include the gastrique, don’t take Tom’s advice to “keep it warm until ready to serve”. I kept it on the lowest setting on the stove and it ended up turning into maple candy! I had to make a second batch that would be ready exactly when the birds came out of the oven.

My favourite part of the recipe was the stuffing. I’m pretty positive it’s the best stuffing I’ve ever eaten in my life. But, then again, I’m used to my family’s stuffing which everyone raves about at the holidays but I can’t stomach because it’s too greasy and much to heavy on the parsley. Tom’s stuffing is perfect: onion, apple, bacon, bread (homemade bread, in my case). What’s not to love?

The leek stew was topped with candied pecans which, by Tom’s suggestion, I made in advance. Great idea to save time, but I ended up eating half the batch before Monday evening rolled around (luckily the recipe for the pecans makes 4 times more than you actually need for the recipe. Good thinking, Tom, good thinking.)

We capped the night off with one of my favourite cakes: Sourdough Chocolate Cake! I’ve made this before and even though it looks hideous (entirely the fault of the baker, that being me) it tastes phenomenal. Like a chocolate doughnut. Yummm…

I quartered the recipe and used my mini loaf pan to make two mini loaf sized cakes oozing with espresso frosting.

Well, I’m stuffed to the brim! Happy Birthday, husband.

flour girl: Crispy Crusts

So you go to the bakery and you buy a delicious loaf of bread. You’re barely out the door when you decide to rip into it because the aroma is so enticing. The crust is firm and crispy and cracks as you break into the loaf. The crumb is soft and chewy with nice big air pockets. How do they get the loaf to come out like that?

It’s surprisingly not very difficult to replicate this at home. Bakeries may have ovens that can get much hotter than yours, and they may be equipped with steamers, but these are all things that you can replicate at home.

Hearth-style baking involves breads that are not baked in a loaf pan in a very hot oven. You can replicate this by inserting a thick baking stone into your own oven and placing the loaf on top of the stone to bake. The stone improves heat retention that is necessary for that crispy crust that you’re looking for.

Professional bakeries have devices blast steam into the oven at regular intervals during the first 5 to 10 minutes of baking, and then subsequently stop producing steam to create a dry environment. Steam will condense on the dough’s surface keeping the outside of the loaf moist and flexible thus delaying the hardening of the crust. This allows the bread to rise for a longer time period in the oven creating large uneven holes in the crumb. Once the steam runs out and the oven is dry the crispy crust is able to form. Additionally, the moisture from the steam dissolves sugars in the dough so when the oven stops producing steam during the second half of baking the moisture evaporates leaving sugar on the dough’s surface to create the brown crust.

You can do this at home by using a steam bath with just a cup of water and a metal baking pan:

• Place a cast iron (or other metal) pan in the cold oven directly above or below the shelf where the bread will be placed (depending on the size of your oven). Don’t use glass or ceramic because you’ll end up crying to your husband that you broke your favourite green Le Creuset baking dish. Trust me.
• Preheat the oven to 50 – 100 degrees F above the required baking temperature with the empty steam pan inside.
• Place the bread on the baking stone.
• While wearing oven mitts add 1 cup of hot or simmering water to the steam pan and close the oven door immediately. (Avoid using ice cubes or cold water which will bring down the temperature of the oven.)
• Reduce oven temperature to the recommended baking temperature.
• Do not open the oven door during the first 10 minutes of baking. After that you can open the oven to rotate your loaf 180 degrees and remove the steam pan if there is still water left in it.

This method of hearth baking with a baking stone and steam pan can be used on any number of different types of breads. It is usually used for breads that aren`t enriched with butter or oil and are primarily flour, water, yeast and salt, such as french bread, ciabatta, sourdough, pugliese, pain a l’ancienne, etc.

Check out some recipes where you can use this technique:

• Sprouted Grain Hearth Bread
• French Baguette
• Poolish Ciabatta

sourdough pretzels

Matt and I have a house sitter for the next 10 days since we are going to be on our vacation to Boston, New Hampshire, and Montreal. (A big shout out to Sophie, Elina, and Daisy who gave me lots of suggestions of places to eat and things to see in Beantown). I thought it would be a nice gesture to make some food for him to eat while he’s watching our house. Matt made him a big Muffuletta, and I cooked up a pot of my famous (yeah, you heard me: FAMOUS) Potato Leek Soup. I also made him some delicious sourdough pretzels!!

I’m loving on sourdough lately. With my breads, pizza dough, and cake, everything I’ve baked in the past few weeks has been with my beautiful sourdough starter– my new refrigerator pet is getting lots of love and attention. And I’m turning into a CARBIVORE!

Sourdough Pretzels
(Recipe adapted from here)

Yield: 20 pretzels, about 4 to 5 inches across

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups fed sourdough starter
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 5 cups all purpose flour
• 3 quarts of water + 3 tbsp sugar for the water bath
• coarse salt

Directions

Measure the fed sourdough starter into a bowl.
In a separate bowl mix the butter, sugar, and salt to the cup of warm water.
Add the water mixture to the starter.
Add 4 cups of flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring after each addition.
Turn out onto a floured board and knead in the rest of the flour. The dough will be very stiff.
Place the dough in a greased bowl, turn over, and cover. Let set for 2 hours to proof.

On a clean surface break of pieces of the dough about the size of a large egg. Roll each piece out with the palm of your hands until it is about 18 inches long and about 1/2 inch in diameter. Twist into the shape of a pretzel.
Let the shaped pretzels proof for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring a pot of 3 qts of water to a rapid boil and add in 3 tbsp of sugar.

When the pretsels are proofed drop as many pretzels as will fit without touching into the water and cook about 30 seconds after they have risen to the top. (Or longer, if you like a chewier pretzel.)
Remove to a baking sheet and sprinkle generously with coarse salt.

Bake in a preheated 425*F oven for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Remove and cool on wire racks.

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Matt and I are going to be taking some on our road trip too (a road trip is not a road trip without snacks!) to go with our homemade larabars and a host of other dried fruit, nuts, cans of tuna, etc…

I probably won’t have computer access while I’m away so I will see you all in a week or so for a recap of my vaca. I’ll miss keeping up with your blogs

I’m also going to miss my little Bagigis

day 158: binge weekend

I might have gained 10lbs this weekend with all the amazing eats I had. I don’t know for sure because my scale and I broke up, but by Sunday night I was undoing the button of my pants. THAT’s saying something.

It was a bad weekend… but oh so good!

Between celebrating my cousin’s wedding shower, my dad’s birthday, and Father’s Day with both my dad and my father-in-law I was stuffed silly!

I don’t have a lot of pictures because, frankly, I devoured most of the food. Oh the gluttony! On to the food:

I skipped the cake at the bridal shower to binge on the delicious Lebanese desserts that I only get to have a couple of times a year. My cousin’s aunt makes some awesome desserts and cookies that I always look forward to eating.

Case in point:

These are like mini-pancakes stuffed with clotted cream and they are served with a sugar syrup. It’s funny because I was craving these after Joumana just recently posted a recipe for them. I love Lebanese desserts because they are so light and refreshing.

Saturday night we hit up the annual Carrousel of Nations which is a festival scattered throughout Windsor that showcases the food, music, and dance of several local diasporas.

I wait all year for the Greek village. Souvlaki? Devoured. Not a trace of evidence left behind.

Sunday we celebrated my dad’s birthday and Father’s day (he always gets shafted like that). I decided that I was going to make a cake for him.

Just to be clear, I don’t bake cakes. I bake bread.

This is my sister. She bakes the cakes. And decorates them. (She’s ambitious)

…Anyway, I stumbled upon a recipe for Sourdough Chocolate Cake and with my recent sourdough bonanza I figured it was a good bridge between bread baking and cake baking. (Plus my sourdough starter was starting to feel lonely and neglected in the fridge all week)

Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit that this cake looks hideous but it tasted so good. It was super moist and perfectly dense—my sister said it actually tasted a bit like a Tim Hortons chocolate doughnut. The recipe is definitely a keeper (although the frosting ended up turning out like a glaze that I spread on the inside of the cake. I used an alternate frosting recipe for the top).

I ate a big piece (and then snuck another one when no one was looking :S )

Weekends are just another one of my downfalls! I’m really going to need to watch what I eat this week, since I’m getting dangerously close to my Bikini Birthday!

P.S. Check out the Glass Dharma Straw giveaway @ Making Love in the Kitchen

day 137: progress pt 2

So I mentioned on Tuesday that I would weigh-in on Thursday. Here it is. I had to avert my eyes.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

This is actually exactly the same as I was last week, but 1lb more than the last time I weighed in.

Damn. I was hoping for a 1lb loss. I am not a happy camper right now. I guess I’m going to have to tweak my calorie intake.

Today I was pretty diligent about my food intake. I had to be because I was so embarrassed about what I saw on the scale this morning. I ate 1470 calories and got 121g of protein (which about one third of my calories).

I’m even more embarrassed because I have an appointment with my Naturopath tomorrow morning. YIKES! I’m nervous and worried because I’ve done terribly at following the diet that she provided me and I think I’m in worse shape than the last time I saw her 10 weeks ago. My fingers and toes are crossed.

Maybe I can attribute the weight gain to too much of this:

SOURDOUGH

Since I made sourdough starter last week, I’m on a bit of a sourdough bonanza. I made this loaf (which I wholeheartedly did not expect to rise) that ended up turning out amazing!

I have a loaf of a Poilane style miche rising on my counter as I speak, a sourdough pizza dough in the fridge, and plans to make a sourdough chocolate cake this weekend.

Bread is my weakness.