baking

Pie Advice, Pie Dough

~ mary_m ~ Leave a comment

I’m a little bit in love with this Thanksgiving pie advice from Marian Bull on Food52. (Summary: If pie making makes you nervous, don’t do it for Thanksgiving. Do, however, bake pie some other time.)

I love pie. I love Thanksgiving pies. I love when people try new things. And I love when people don’t fret too much about baking. So Marian, thank you for your voice of sanity here. The only thing I would add is, if possible, when you’re learning how to make pie crust, learn with a friend. A good friend who’s already suffered life’s fair share of utter pie crust defeats can be the best cure for wanting to throw your lump of mangled pie dough across the room. (Not that that will happen! But… it might, and that’s totally OK.)

A brief round up of pie dough recipes:

  • Never Fail PieCrust is more-or-less the one my mom taught me, decades ago, although we always divided the recipe into five. Mom still uses this recipe, and it’s still great. I use it less often, because I don’t generally have shortening in the house.
  • This vodka trick one is great if you’re looking for a relatively foolproof, yet delicious crust.
  • 3-2-1 pie dough is what I generally make, because I love a good, easy formula.

I don’t generally make pie on Thanksgiving. My father-in-law has dibs on pie baking for in-law Thanksgiving, and my mom and sister tend to handle the traditional pies when we gather with my side of the family. This year, however, I’ll be going to a second Thanksgiving and I’m thinking of making Cranberry Walnut Pie, which is one of my favs.

Impulse Radish, Eventual Black Bread

slice of borodinsky bread with butter, black radish, and salt
~ mary_m ~ 6 Comments

Last Saturday, I impulse bought a black radish. (These things happen in root vegetable season.) Once I had the black radish, I started day-dreaming about Russian Black Bread, slathered with butter, and topped with thin slices of black radish and some coarse salt, which someone once told me was the right and proper way to eat a black radish. The only trouble was I didn’t have any black bread and I didn’t know how to make it. All I had was a radish (well…, and some rye flour).

After a web search or two for black bread recipes, I found myself overwhelmed by options, so I also consulted a couple awesome friends with Eastern European roots. While neither of them had a family recipe handy, one did help me narrow down my choices. I decided to try something like this Borodinsky Bread, because I was hoping for something with 100% rye.

Over the next four days, I built up a rye sourdough starter. I mixed ~25g of rye flour with ~50g of room temp. water and let it sit out on the counter in a loosely capped plastic container, adding another round of flour and water daily. It started bubbling noticeably the second day. I was getting slowly closer to actually eating my radish.

When I had >270g of sourdough starter, I mixed my dough. (After which I realized the directions I was working from had skipped the step where you simply use ~50g of starter and add equal parts flour and water to make the required 270g. Oh well. Here is the much better description of the same recipe, which I found too late.)

Here’s how it went:

  • 270g rye sourdough starter
  • 230g rye flour
  • 5g sea salt
  • 5g toasted caraway seeds, cracked
  • 20g molasses
  • 15g sorghum syrup (original recipe used barley malt, but I happened to have sorghum so I tried it)
  • 90g water
  • butter for the pan
  • 5g toasted coriander, cracked

Combined everything but the coriander and mixed throughly, but not exactly kneaded. Proofed in a cool room (the basement in November) overnight. It, uh, didn’t rise much.

The next morning I buttered a small (1lb) loaf pan and put half the cracked coriander in it, shaking to get coriander on the sides and the bottom. I shaped the very, very sticky dough into an oval, more or less, and plunked it in the pan. Then I  wet my fingers and smoothed the top, then sprinkled it with the remaining coriander. Covered with a towel and let sit in a sunny spot on the kitchen counter for about four hours. It, once again, didn’t rise much. (I either need to work on my starter’s vigor or add yeast or simply decide that 100% rye bread is meant to be really dense.)

Baked at 400ºF for 10 minutes. Reduced heat to 350ºF and baked for 40 minutes more. Immediately flipped it out of the pan and cooled on a rack.

And then I (finally) had a slice with butter, salt, and radish, and it was pretty darn good.

Chocolate Chip Cookies & Why I <3 Twitter

~ mary_m ~ 1 Comment

I love the Internet. Sure it’s distracting, bubble-prone, priority mangling, full of vitriol, etc., but it also facilitates conversations in ways that make my life richer, better informed, more connected, and more fun.

Yesterday, I was reading food articles on the bus, like ya do, and came across Food52’s article on Ovenly’s chocolate chip cookies – chocolate chip cookies that just happen to be vegan. I sent a link to my twitter account with one word “Skeptical”. Almost immediately, a couple friends replied that they were going to try it (for science!). Because sometimes peer pressure is great, I decided to try it too. (I even almost followed the recipe! I added 1 tsp of vanilla though. Couldn’t help myself. Oh, and I scooped them smaller so the recipe yield was 25 rather than 18.)

Results:

Friend the First concluded that while these are definitely chocolate chip cookies, they are not chewy enough for her (probably due to the lack of egg). (I haven’t yet heard from Friend the Second.)

I baked the first dozen of my 25. They are… OK. I miss the depth of flavor they’d get from butter and I don’t love how crumbly the dough is (probably due to lack of egg). They also didn’t spread as much as I’d like, so for future batches I think I’ll squash them a bit before baking. I’d definitely make these for office parties, so vegan compatriots could have a tasty dessert that just happened to be vegan. For myself, though, I’ll stick with Toll House, letting the batter rest overnight whenever I manage to plan that far ahead.

It’s Just a Muffin

~ mary_m ~ 1 Comment

With apologies to my gluten intolerant and paleo friends, I’m currently between paying gigs, it’s Autumn, and therefore I’m baking a lot. This topic is liable to crop up more than once in the coming weeks.

Today, the ravenous hordes kids will be home for the afternoon with a couple friends to play D & D, and (partly in an effort to get them to eat something besides every cracker or corn chip in the house) I’m making muffins. Just muffins. Nothing fancy.

Just Muffins go something like this*:

  • 8 oz (1 and a half generous cups) some blend of whole grain flours, maybe with 1/4 rolled oats (4 parts)
  • 2 oz (1 generous quarter cup)  sugar or some similar sweetener (1 part)
  • 8 oz (1 cup) milk or some similar liquid (4 parts)
  • 2 eggs (2 parts)
  • 2 oz (4T, half a stick) melted butter or oil (1 part)
  • scant 1.5 tsp baking powder (1 tsp per 5 oz flour)
  • .75 tsp salt (.5 tsp per 5 oz flour)
  • fruit, nuts, etc.
  • spices

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, adding additions such as fruit and nuts to the dry, then fold together until just blended. Bake at 350ºF for ~20 minutes. 8 oz flour yields a dozen or so regular size muffins. 

Within the basic ratios and keeping the baking powder standard, I tend to vary these muffins quite a bit. Today version has spelt flour, buttermilk and milk for the liquid (because I had a tiny bit of buttermilk hanging around), a chopped apple, some cranberries, some apple pie spice. I sprinkled the tops with more apple pie spice mixed with sugar before baking. (Sprinkling the tops with something + sugar is a super easy way to make Just Muffins a little bit more like treats without adding much more sugar. NB: This also works with scones.) They smell delicious.

I have this formula memorized, which means I can often produce muffins as a handy houseguest trick, as well as a quick way to sate the hordes kids. (To take the muffins savory instead of sweet, just dial back the sweetener.) Baking warms the house on a chilly afternoon and muffins go great with tea, which goes great with Autumn.

*Adapted from Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio, which is often how I roll when baking.