"Country" Walnut Bread

A disclaimer: the recipe for this is in baker's percentage format. This means you need both a scale and, potentially, a calculator. On the plus side, you get a delicious bread with a bit of crunch, a lot of crumb, and a great crust. Until you stick it in your backpack not 10 minutes out of the oven and bike to work, that is. I don't recommend it with this loaf as the enclosed space and lack of cooling will soften the crust a ridiculous amount. This is one of the better loaves I have cooked, up there with the standard rustic mini baguettes (on which the dough is based), struan, and the previous walnut bread (which had mashed potatoes and potato water as the alternate flour). So, yes, do go out and make this bread. Wonderful, really.

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"Country" Walnut Bread

Use 300g total flour for ~1 loaf

75% bread flour

20% whole wheat flour

5% coarse-ground cornmeal (polenta)

80% water (cold)

8% coarsely chopped walnuts

<1% yeast

2% salt

At least a night before you want to make the bread, combine some of the water and the cornmeal in a bowl and let soak for 30 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir with a wet wooden spoon for 2-3 minutes until the dough has come together plus a minute more. It should be sticky. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Then stretch and fold 4 times with a 10 minute rest between each; be careful, as the polenta and walnut will make bread likely to rip. Refrigerate over night.

Day-of baking, remove the dough from the fridge 2 hours before you plan to put it in the oven. Dust a work surface with flour, coat your hands with flour, and gently remove the dough from the bowl and shape into a loaf. Note that, due to the incredibly high liquid, if you shape this into anything other than baguettes you may want to coax it back into shape after an hour as it will have spread out; I assume a banneton would fix the issue, but I don't have one nor nor care to improvise one. For a boule, bake at 450 for 25 minutes, turning after 10-15 minutes. Once the time is up, shut off the oven but leave the bread in for an extra 5 minutes to crisp the crust further. Let cool for an hour if you want to preserve your beautiful crust.

Dirtbag's Delight (First Pass, IPA Edition)

First off: long span without a post. It's not that I haven't been cooking or that I don't like my readers. I've just been very lazy the past few weeks. I've cooked a few meals - the most recent of which didn't even have kale in it (though I did cheat and use broccolini, but it was stir fry and not cooked in the oven). I've failed miserably - if cooking teriyaki sauce from scratch follow the directions. Yes, you do need that much sugar and soy sauce. It is disgusting and you are probably better off not knowing. I've partaken in some delicious cookies, though I didn't cook them. You should, though. Quite good. I even made some bread and didn't show you any of it. But I do return, triumphantly, with a delicious loaf.

I wanted to create some bread for climbers, hence the name and ingredients. "Dirtbag" isn't the best of words, but for climbers it means someone who may live out of their van and spend their days climbing and being cheap on food. A standard meal might be a can of beans, or a loaf of bread and a block of cheese. So - a loaf inspired by this life style. It has everything you'd need during/after some hard work: bread, cheese, beer, and nuts. You could even put peanut butter on it, if you dared. For an experiment, it was quite good. I did have some spillage, as you can see. I even poked holes in the bread to let it air some, but this was not very effective. Instead of going for a spiral, kneading in the cheese would probably be a better option, though you will be left with a much softer crust.

I used a standard bread base (Lean Bread from Artisan Breads Everyday) and built on that. I wanted to be a bit conservative, so only half the water in the recipe was replaced with beer. Taking it higher could work, but I would worry about the crumb keeping and about the yeast/salt/flour ratios being off. I added a small amount of walnuts; not because I didn't think more would work, but rather that it was all I had left. It was so small a percent, in weight, that I didn't think I needed to counteract it with wheat bran (maybe put some in if you go over 25% flour weight in nuts/seeds/non-wheat flour). The amount of cheese was a guess, just putting on enough to cover the surface area I had available before rolling up the log. As mentioned above, consider not doing a spiral or finding some other way of keeping the cheese in.

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Dirtbag's Delight (IPA Edition)

Makes 1 standard loaf (feeds 8-10 people for a snack, fewer for a meal)

340g unbleached bread flour

127g cold water

127g beer (I used BrewDog's Punk IPA)

~30g walnuts, very coarsely chopped (could probably up this to ~45g without trouble)

7g salt

4g instant yeast (could probably go down to 3g and give it two nights in the fridge instead of one)

maybe 4oz finely cubed cheese that melts (I used about 2/3 of a 6oz block of sharp cheddar)

The night before baking, in a bowl combine the flour, salt, yeast, and nuts then mix. Add in the water and beer, stirring with a wet wooden spoon for 1-2 minutes, until the bread is an even consistency. It should lightly stick to your finger if you push it with a little pressure, but the finger should pull away mostly clean with little stretching of the dough. Let rest for 5-10 minutes in a covered bowl. Then stretch-and-fold the loaf 4 times, waiting 10 minutes between each iteration. Especially on the first iteration, the dough may rip - be careful to not let this happen. It should be very firm and resist the stretching quite a bit by the final iteration. Put the dough in a covered bowl in the fridge and let sit for at least a night.

The day of baking, about 2 hours before placing the bread in the oven, remove the dough from the fridge. Flour a work surface and your hands. If making a spiral, pat the dough into a rectangle that will roll up into a loaf and spread the cheese over the surface, then roll up the log, smooth the seam closed, and gently roll into the desired shape. If kneading in the cheese, gently work the cheese into the dough mass, then proceed to shape it as you see fit. Let the dough proof on a parchment-lined baking sheet, covered, for at least 1.5 hours.

Preheat your oven to ~500 degrees and place the bread in after waiting for the proofing time. Reduce heat to 450 and cook for 15 minutes before rotating, then cook for another 15-25 minutes. The internal temperature should be in the 185-195 degree range before you call it done. Let the bread cool a bit before slicing. Eat.

A Veritable Cornucopia of Valentine's Edibles (Verily)

The plan for Valentine's Day proper was to partake in some SF Beer Week shenanigans and get a cheap dinner and instead do a big, fancy meal cooked at home the previous day. The Beer Week event was a shit-show and we went elsewhere, but the dinner was a roaring success. We had worked out a decent menu consisting of things we both agreed would be delicious: a candied walnut, cranberry, and feta salad with a cranberry vinaigrette; rosemary and cranberry pork tenderloin with sauce; roasted root vegetables tossed in oil and herbs; hand-made truffles.

You'll notice a theme running through the meal - cranberries. We thought it cute to have a culinary theme, especially a red one (the default color of Valentine's). Spoiler alert: a very sugary theme can be a bit oppressive, especially when you have cranberry juice instead of wine with the meal. Do note that each dish, except the truffles (more on that later), was delicious on its own; having a link between two dishes is nice, and I'm sure a greater chef could have made it work. Also, cranberries turn purple-ish when cooked into things like sauces.

Also I want to re-iterate something: the pork was amazing. Seriously, a delicious testament to porcine perfection. It may not have equaled the levels of NOPA's pork chop (and, if you happen to find something as good, TELL ME) but for home-cooked meat I don't think I've had much better. The recipe was quick, easy, and not intimidating for a non-meat-cooker such as myself. Recipes, photos, and cutesy stuff follows.

Potato/Walnut "Rustic" Loaf

Still failing in my quest for durum flour (although yet to try Rainbow, which I'm sure stocks it), and finding myself with a decent amount of leftover potatoes, I couldn't wait any longer to do a potato bread. The recipe I wanted to cook with the durum flour is pugliese - a kind of lean/rustic bread with a heavy component of mashed potatoes and a bit of sweet. It is different from most potato-including breads -- it has a lighter profile due to more water, and it doesn't contain any rosemary which is a godsend for someone as rosemary-heavy as myself. I need to get rid of these crutches.

Potato breads, by the way, are delicious. The starch makes the bread a little sweeter to begin with, a little moister/creamier, and, if you pick the right potatoes, it gives it a beautiful internal purple coloring. Due to these factors, the bread works as both a "table bread" to be served with a meal, dipped in olive oil, spread with butter, or soaked in a soup and also as a sandwich bread for something as lowly as peanut butter and jelly. I guess you could make an artisan PBJ sandwich with this loaf, if that is your kind of thing.

For the recipe, I improvised. I kind of mashed the pugliese recipe with the pain a l'ancienne one I cook oh-so-often and felt the dough out as I went. The amounts in the recipe below are approximations or starting points - I added a bit of flour after the first stretch and fold because it was too sticky to do anything with.

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Walnut and Potato "Pugliese"

Makes 1 medium loaf

2 1/4 cups (~283 g) flour

1 cup + a little (~235 g) water

3/4 tsp + a little (5 g) salt

3/4 tsp - a little (2 g) instant yeast

1/4 cup (~60 g) fingerling potatoes

1/4 cup loose walnuts, crumbled by hand

In a small pot, bring at least 1 cup of water to boil and place potatoes in. Let boil for 20 minutes, until you can squish a potato with the back of a fork. Remove potatoes from water and mash, with said fork, in a bowl. Add a pinch of salt. Reserve a little more than 1 cup of the water and let cool. Wait for the potatoes and water to cool.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, walnuts, and yeast. Stir together. Add in mashed potatoes and water and stir with a wooden spoon for 2-3 minutes. Let the bread rest, covered, for 5 minutes. Do 4 stretch-and-fold iterations with 10 minutes of rest between each. I like the "lazy" method of stretch and fold - wet your hands with cold water and lift the dough from the bowl. Stretch one side out and fold it back over; stretch the opposite side out and fold back. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat, then place back in the bowl and cover.

Put dough in a clean, lightly oiled bowl, cover, and refrigerate for at least one night, preferably two. It should double in size during this time.

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About 1 hour before you want to cook the dough, remove it from the fridge. Flour a work surface, your hands, and have a reserve bowl of flour available. Sprinkle flour on the dough and lightly transfer it to the work surface, patting it into a square-ish shape. Shape into a boule by folding the corners into the center of the loaf, pinching the seam, and flipping over. Place one hand above and on the left, one hand below and on the right, and pull/push those hands across the dough, spinning it. Repeat this a few times, making sure to keep your hands floured.

Place dough on a parchment-lined, lightly floured, cookie sheet. If you want, prepare your oven for hearth baking now. Otherwise, wait until 20 minutes before the dough goes in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees. After 1 hour (or so) of proofing, put dough in oven and reduce heat to 450 degrees. Rotate loaf after 15 minutes, and cook for 15-20 minutes longer until it has the characteristics of finished bread. (For those that don't cook often: hard, brown crust, a hollow-ish sound when thumped, and an internal temperature of 195-205 degrees). Let cool for at least 30 minutes.

Eat.