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  • Donna Deane’s Raised Buckwheat Belgian Waffles

    Waffles

    My dear Ben is a bit discombobulated as of late. He must, you see, find new living quarters. The era of living in style and being my neighbor in Chelsea is coming to an end, quickly. And if there's anything worse in the world than giving up your home, especially one that you love, to find a new one – one that can never really measure up, especially in New York or any of the outer boroughs – well, then you've got to tell me about it. Because as far as I'm concerned (and I think Ben agrees), this search is akin to the innermost circle of hell.

    We spent most of the weekend traipsing around town, looking at places in different neighborhoods, trying our best to imagine Ben's daily walk to the subway, or what it would feel like for him to come home there at night. We saw shared lofts with no central heating, two-bedroom apartments next to (and I mean, looking out at) the BQE, and studios with peeling walls and astronomical fees. To fortify ourselves throughout these treks, we had a perfectly cooked meal of Dominican rice and beans with fried eggs and plantains at Hurricane Hopeful in Williamsburg, and our first Vietnamese sandwiches, crunchy and warm, in the East Village.

    And to keep our spirits up, I cooked for comfort this weekend. Pasta with tomato sauce and peas. Cheeseburgers, with organic beef on toasted English muffins, oozing with juice and ketchup. Ben's smile as he chewed his way through one was the best part of an exhausting day. And fulfilling a longstanding desire of mine to finally use the gorgeous waffle iron my stepmother so kindly gave me last year, we also made breakfast yesterday. Of course, it wasn't all easy. Batter sticking to (nonstick, oiled nonstick, I tell you) waffle iron grids was enough to send me over the edge, but Ben calmed me down and we got through this sticky patch just fine (har). Here was my sweetheart, almost homeless, making me feel better because of a damned waffle.

    Donna Deane wrote a piece in the LA Times a few years ago about Belgian waffles and how sophisticated they've become as of late. She included a few recipes, one of which just jumped straight out at me. You make a yeasted batter with buckwheat flour that ferments overnight. The waffles are barely sweet, and you serve them with honey butter and toasted sunflower seeds. (Though I skipped both and served the waffles with maple syrup and my new favorite thing: maple cream. It's maple syrup that's been cooked down and then creamed into a solid state, much like honey. It's unctuous and spreadable and tastes like what I imagine angel food tastes like. I'm in love. New Yorkers, I got it at the greenmarket in Union Square.) Whatever you can't eat, you can freeze. Which I did.

    The most difficult part of the process is figuring out your waffle iron: how much batter does it take? Will it stick? How do you prevent this from happening? But this isn't exactly rocket science: you'll figure it out if you haven't already. And the waffles? They were delicious. Light and airy, crunchy outside, tender within. Each batch gave us a different texture. The last ones were, of course, the best. I love buckwheat: its wholesome, otherworldly flavor is indescribably appealing to me. It reminds me of my childhood, when my father would make buckwheat pancakes for breakfast on special mornings. I can only hope that the comfort I used to derive from them was somehow channeled into the waffles I made for Ben yesterday, making him feel that no matter where he ends up, my place is always his home away from home.

    Note: I've noticed that some of the recipe links in early posts are no longer valid (curse you, LA Times archive). If you ever desire a recipe that I've linked to and that no longer appears, please tell me and I'll do my best to scrounge it up for you.

    Raised Buckwheat Belgian Waffles
    Serves 6 to 8

    1 package yeast
    1/4 cup hot water (100 to 110 degrees)
    2 tablespoons plus 1/3 cup honey
    2 cups buttermilk
    1 tablespoon oil
    1 cup cake flour
    1 1/4 cups buckwheat flour
    1 1/8 teaspoons salt, divided
    1/2 cup butter, softened
    2 eggs, lightly beaten
    1/4 teaspoon baking soda

    1. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and stir until the yeast is completely dissolved. Let it stand until bubbles begin to form. Stir in 2 tablespoons of honey, the buttermilk and the oil.

    2. Combine the cake flour, buckwheat flour and 1 teaspoon salt. Stir in the yeast mixture just until blended. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

    3. For the honey butter, combine the softened butter, the remaining honey and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Cover and set aside until ready to serve.

    4. A half hour before cooking, remove the batter from the fridge and let it stand at room temperature. Then stir in the beaten eggs and baking soda. Combine thoroughly.

    5. Heat a nonstick Belgian waffle iron and spray with cooking spray or brush with oil. Pour the recommended amount of batter onto the waffle iron. Close the lid and cook until the waffles are browned and release easily from the iron. Repeat with the remaining batter. Break or cut the waffles into sections. Spoon the honey butter over the hot waffles and eat immediately.

  • On Tom Douglas’s Seattle Kitchen Radio Show

    0688172423

    If you’re near a computer with high-speed Internet on Saturday afternoon (or evening, depending on where you live), tune in to Tom Douglas‘s radio show on 710 KIRO Seattle to hear an interview I did with Tom and his friend Thierry last week.

    Their show is on from 4pm to 8pm, Pacific time. My segment will be aired from 5 to 5:30pm (that’s 8 to 8:30pm, Eastern time). I’ll be listening with my fingers half-stuck in my ears to protect them from the horrors of hearing my own voice.

  • Harris Ranch’s Pecan Drops

    Cookie

    I've been a bit puzzled by the LA Times food section lately. "Breakfast" pizza with a topping that includes sour cream, eggs, sausage, and two kinds of cheese? No, thank you very much. A vegetable soup recipe that requires almost three hours of preparation? And in an article about the "pure joy" of clear soups, no less. I'm intrigued, but three hours? Really? Mme E. Sainte-Ange's creepy-looking Poularde a L'Ivoire takes less time than that (but admittedly not by much). And I've already mentioned the choice of Paula Wolfert recipes that drove me nuts.

    It was a welcome relief, then, to find cookie nirvana in one of the more humble recipes to be printed in those pages in recent weeks. And from an unlikely source, at least as far as this snob is concerned. Harris Ranch, an inn and restaurant owned by California's "largest cattle feeder, fed beef processor and beef marketer" (oh yes), makes these delicious little cookies that are whipped up in less time than it takes to run a load of laundry (I know, I checked). At least in an American washing machine.

    And what's even better is they're made with no butter or oil or shortening, and with no flour. They're crackly on top and chewy inside and nubby all around from the pecan bits. The pinch of salt is key – it draws out the fudgy, caramel tones in the sugar and the buttery flavor from the nuts. These drops really taste like bites of pecan pie – good pecan pie (hrmph). A nibble on these after our dinner at Suenos on Valentine's day was better than anything we could have ordered (and waited an inordinate amount of time for. And, by the way, I tried, I really did. But I still don't like Mexican food. Sigh).

    I only had half the amount of pecans needed, so with a bit of trepidation, I halved the entire recipe. It worked beautifully. You briefly mix the brown sugar (it doesn't specify whether or not to pack the sugar, which bugged me, but I half-packed it, half left it loose and this seemed to work just fine), salt, vanilla and pecan pieces together, then drizzle in the egg whites (it doesn't seem like a lot of liquid, but just wait). You beat this together for 5 minutes. It will go from being lumpy and unwieldy to a gooey batter, which eventually thickens slightly.

    I dolloped out portions onto my Silpat and baked the cookies until they were barely brown around the edges. The cookies turn a creamy buff color and scent of toasty sugar and nuts fills the air. Freshly baked, the cookies have a nice snap to them. Kept a day, they become softer and supremely chewy. A day beyond that? I don't know – they were gone by then. These pecan drops are cookies for the ages.

    Harris Ranch's Pecan Drops
    Makes 3 dozen cookies

    2 1/2 cups brown sugar
    3/4 teaspoon salt
    3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
    1 1/2 pounds coarsely chopped pecan pieces
    1/2 cup egg whites (3 to 4 large egg whites)

    1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the brown sugar, salt, vanilla and pecan pieces. Beat on low speed to incorporate the ingredients, then drizzle in the egg whites. Increase the speed to medium-low and beat for 4 to 5 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

    2. Drop the dough in rounded tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet. Press each ball of dough with the back of a spoon to form a cookie 3 1/2 inches in diameter and about 1/8-inch thick.

    3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and immediately remove the cookies from the baking sheet to a cooling rack. The cookies will be soft but will firm up as they cool.

  • Suzanne Goin’s Romesco Potatoes

    Hash_1

    I've been on a nice run of pretty good recipes lately. There are a few here and there that haven't been exactly stellar. But it's been a while since I've thrown out the results from a night in the kitchen. And on the other hand, it's been a while since I've made something so delicious that I found myself sitting dumbstruck on the couch, staring at my plate, wondering how on earth I'd be able to find the words to describe the sensation that comes from eating such good food. That's what happened last night.

    The last time I'd made one of Suzanne Goin's recipes, it had come from the NY Times' review of her latest book. Yesterday I wanted to give one of her recipes chosen for the review in the LA Times a go (either Grilled Quail with Sicilian Breadcrumbs, Pancetta and Ricotta Pudding or Olive Oil Cake with Creme Fraiche and Candied Tangerines) but neither came close to piquing my curiosity. Instead, I found myself drawn back to the NY Times recipes, specifically one for Romesco Potatoes: a dish of roasted, smashed potatoes dressed with an lushly aromatic and spicy sauce.

    It was, in a word, incredible. Out of this world. The kind of food that makes you push everything else to the side of your plate so you can concentrate wholly on It. In fact, I had nothing else for dinner. Which might have been a mistake, actually. The flavors of this dish are so amazing that it's almost overwhelming. It might really be best to serve this just as a side. That way you won't have your guests falling down and begging you to scrape the rest of meal off their plate so they can run back to the stove for More Potatoes. (I had an idea, too, to serve this with a runny poached egg on top, for a one-plate meal or breakfast. If you can handle that kind of breakfast. I don't think I could. It's that good. Too good.)

    Although the recipe sounds a bit fiddly, it all comes together quickly. You roast a handful of nuts before taking them out and sliding in a sheet of potatoes, bay leaves, thyme, salt and unpeeled garlic cloves to roast. You process the nuts with a slice of fried bread, more garlic, a small amount of canned tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, and ancho chiles (though because I am a chile idiot, I used chiles de arbol. I have no idea if this made a difference or not. I know nothing, but nothing, about chiles. Except that up until 10 months ago I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them. Now I am sidling up to them sheepishly, eyeing them askance, wondering if I can ever start to make up for lost time).

    When the potatoes are tender, you take the sheet out and crush the potatoes (I used the flat side of a spatula), put them in a hot, oiled pan with more fresh thyme on top and let them cook until crispy and browned on each side. Then you dollop in the entire bowl (all of it!) of romesco and the squeezed out bits of roasted garlic. You stir everything together and top with a handful of chopped parsley. Settle down to eat this, and stare in bewilderment at your plate as you chew. Roasted and raw garlic! Toasted nuts! Fried bread! Mellow thyme! Hot chiles! Creamy potatoes! It's an explosion of textures and sensations and flavors that left me speechless. Ben saw his opening and finished off the whole lot. Cheeky monkey.

  • Bobby Flay’s Citrus and Cumin Roasted Chicken

     

    Cooked

    "How come my chicken never comes out looking like this?" was Ben's cry as he spotted this burnished bird resting on the windowsill last night before dinner. For a moment, I considered smiling pompously beatifically and telling him to just leave the cooking to me, but then I relented and explained: rubbing a raw chicken (or human flesh, for that matter, but it's too long of a story to explain how I know about this one) with citrus juices before roasting will render the appetizingly crackly skin a lustrous browned color. Ben asked for the recipe then, to make when I'm not around. If it's any indication of how much he liked our dinner, he's never done this before.

    We awoke yesterday morning to find our city blanketed in so much snow that we couldn't even see one block south. We managed somehow to get ourselves to Tribeca for brunch with friends, but that excursion drained any energy we might have still had for the rest of the day (I know, we are so youthful and athletic). We circled around Ben's fridge when our dinner plans were cancelled, eyeing the raw chicken that lay there, wondering how we'd infuse a little spark into a Sunday meal that's become, for lack of a better term, a bit rote.

    So it felt like divine intervention when my book of clippings opened to a page that had a recipe for a roast chicken stuffed and rubbed with citrus fruits, ground cumin, herbs and garlic glued into it. We had to amend some of the instructions by necessity (no roasting pan, at least not at Ben's place, so no searing of the breast before slipping the chicken into the oven, and not half as much cumin as required because of the aforementioned slight aversion to the associations it pulls up in my tastebud-to-brain neuron highway), but this didn't end up making a whit of difference in the end.

    The recipe comes from Bobby Flay, when he was being written about in the New York Times by the Lee Bros, and living alone in Chelsea (he's married now). You take a chicken, rub it with a few segmented oranges and limes, stuff the cavity with more citrus wedges, peeled garlic cloves, oregano, salt and pepper. You cover the chicken with ground cumin and more salt and pepper and balance the bird (I'm a veritable Macgyver – that's a baking rack you see there) on a rack over a baking pan that has chicken stock, juice, citrus wedges, and more garlic cloves floating about in it. The chicken both roasts and steams in the oven, and becomes infused with a whole spectrum of flavors: sour citrus, bitter peel, aromatic garlic, pungent cumin and herbal oregano. It's a veritable symphony of flavors.

    Plus, there's a gravy. What's better than a gravy? There's something totally satisfying about pouring the pan juices into a pot, squeezing in a little extra juice, sprinkling in a bit more salt to taste, and reducing the shiny brown liquid to a drippy glaze to pour over the carved chicken. I don't know why, it just makes me feel like one accomplished lady. And on a Sunday night, no less.

    Citrus and Cumin Roasted Chicken
    Serves 2

    2 navel oranges, washed and cut into eighths
    2 limes, washed and quartered
    1 3-pound chicken, washed and patted dry
    2 tablespoons ground cumin
    Kosher salt and ground black pepper
    5 garlic cloves, crushed and peels removed
    Several sprigs fresh oregano
    3 tablespoons canola oil
    1 cup chicken stock or low sodium canned broth, more if needed

    1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove zest from two orange wedges and two lime wedges, and reserve. Rub chicken with juice of those wedges. Season entire chicken, including cavity, with cumin and salt and pepper to taste. Inside cavity place the used orange and lime wedges, plus 3 orange wedges, 3 lime wedges, 3 cloves garlic, and 3 sprigs oregano.

    2. Place a small roasting pan over high heat, and add oil. When oil smokes, place chicken breast-side down in pan. Sear, rolling slightly for even browning, until breast is golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes.

    3. Remove chicken from pan, slip a flat rack on bottom of pan, then place chicken on rack, breast-side up. Add stock, remaining garlic cloves and a couple more sprigs of oregano to pan. Squeeze juice of seven orange wedges and remaining lime wedges into pan, adding spent wedges to pan. Roast until chicken juices run clear when leg is pierced near joint, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Check moisture in pan a few times while cooking, adding chicken broth if pan juices are drying up.

    4. Transfer chicken to a warm platter, and allow to rest for 20 minutes before carving. Remove fruit wedges, oregano and garlic from pan, then place pan juices in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and adjust seasoning, adding more orange juice from remaining wedges if desired. Remove from heat, and add reserved zest. Carve chicken, and serve with sauce.

  • Regina Schrambling’s Beans with Lardons and Sage

    Beans_2

    Oh, I don't know. This is an unspectacular picture illustrating an unspectacular recipe. I had such high hopes for it! Dried beans, fresh sage, canned tomatoes: I feel like it's a parade of some of my favorite foods. I looked forward to making this all week, but then was totally deflated when the stew ended up being just… ordinary. In an unfamiliar and uncomforting (you know what I mean) kind of way. I'd rather have Depression Stew any day of the week.

    I'm not sure what the problem was. It didn't lack for salt, or an interplay of flavors (bay leaves, bacon, whole garlic cloves). But after eating a single bowl of it the other night, I had to force myself to save the rest in Tupperware. Was it because my bacon was cured, not smoked? Was it because I harbor a not-so-secret burning love for canned beans, and find soaking and cooking dry beans to be too much work for no good reason? Or was it just an uninspired recipe?

    I'll stick the rest in the freezer and hope that on days when I find myself scrounging about in there for something to eat, I won't care what I find. In fact I'll be grateful to find a perfectly edible, if utterly forgettable, meal to defrost and eat. But what irritates me is that I can't throw the recipe out just yet, because I glued this one on the back of it, and even though I professed skepticism about Mr. Minimalism, I'm intrigued…

    Beans with Lardons and Sage
    Serves 4 to 6

    1/2 pound (1 1/4 cups) dried beans such as flageolet, Jacob's Cattle or cannellini
    2 ounces smoked slab bacon, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (1/2 cup cubed)
    1 (28-ounce) can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped (about 2 cups diced)
    8 leaves fresh sage
    8 cloves garlic, peeled
    2 dried bay leaves
    1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
    1 teaspoon salt

    1. Sort the beans to remove any stones. Place them in a bowl and add cold water to cover by 3 inches. Soak overnight, changing the water once or twice.

    2. The next day, boil a small pot of water, add the bacon and blanch 10 minutes. Drain and reserve.

    3. Drain the beans and place in a large pot. Add the bacon, tomatoes, sage, garlic, bay leaves and pepper. Mix well. Add about 8 cups cold water (to cover the beans by 3 inches) and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring occasionally and adding water if necessary, until the beans are very tender, 3 to 3 1/2 hours. Serve in a warm bowl.

  • Maple Drive’s Lemon Poppy Seed Scones

    Scone_1

    When your sweetheart has finished the freezer bag of scones you made for him and turns to you to tell you plaintively that they made each of his mornings a little bit better warmed up in the oven and munched on the way to work along with a mug of spicy tea, I defy you to not run back to the kitchen and practically stub your fingers while yanking out the ingredients to make up another batch for him.

    Because Ben indulges my obsession with trying Every Single Clipped Recipe In My Possession, I was able to branch out from the original winning group of scones and try a different recipe that's been burning a hole through my notebook. It was requested by an LA Times reader after having tried a lemon poppy seed scone at Beverly Hill's Maple Drive.

    Instead of buttermilk, the recipe calls for cream, which makes for a richer scone. And an inordinate amount of poppy seeds, which, when purchased from a grocery store in New York City instead of Penzey's and plucked out of the grocery bag by the afore-mentioned sweetheart who also, have I told you, doubles as my financial planner, caused a reaction of the bug-eyed and gasping sort as soon as the price tag was spotted. He was appeased, but not much, when I told him what the poppy seeds were for.

    The scones were not too sweet, faintly pungent from the lemon peel, with an appealingly bitter note from the poppy seeds. They're too dense for my kind of breakfast, but if cut and baked into portions small enough, would be great with an afternoon cup of tea. I actually think they'd be perfect split and soaked in sliced strawberries and cream. Ben thinks they're delicious just as they are. And that's really all I wanted to hear.

    Maple Drive lemon poppy seed scones
    Makes 12 scones

    3 1/2 cups flour
    1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
    1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons poppy seeds
    3 tablespoons grated lemon zest
    2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1 egg
    1 3/4 cups whipping cream
    2 tablespoons melted butter

    1. Mix the flour, one-half cup sugar, poppy seeds, lemon zest, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and the whipping cream. Stir the cream mixture into the dry ingredients just until combined; do not overmix.

    2. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and gently pat into a 1-inch-thick round. Cut out scones with a 3-inch round cutter that has been lightly sprayed with nonstick spray. Place the scones on a parchment-lined baking sheet, several inches apart. Brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon sugar.

    3. Bake the scones 20 to 24 minutes, until lightly golden on the sides and bottom.

  • Marian Burros’ Mushroom Barley Soup

    Soup_6

    My weekend is over and I'm feeling dejected. There's something about visits from certain guests that just makes you want to keep them close. They bring a sparkle to your days, and when they're gone you can't wait for them to come back again. They make you see your city in an entirely different light, and inject an infectious enthusiasm that lingers long after they're gone. I can't wait for the next visit.

    We ate like kings over the past few days: dinner at Bombay Talkie where ogling Carol Alt's uncannily unlined face and statuesque figure (and all I could think was, what on earth will she eat?) at the adjacent table practically took precedence over finishing our meal, a late and restorative lunch at Thai on Clinton while it rained outside and I kicked myself for remembering that this place was off Rivington but not remembering at which intersection, dinner at Les Halles (the fries dunked in Bearnaise were the highlight for some of us, but the petatou de chevre and the creme brulee and, oh wait, the cassoulet and the steak with shallot sauce – oh rats, forget it: the whole thing was delicious), lunch on the 5th floor of MoMA with delicate salads to start and bombastic desserts to finish, and a goodbye meal at a strangely deserted Home on Cornelia Street, where the blue cheese fondue had us licking our plates even before the rest of the meal was carried out.

    When the goodbyes were made and all the planes had taken off, I found myself at home in need of a simple meal, light but filling. Turning to my trusty scrapbook, I found a clipping from 2002, in which Marian Burros published her mother's recipe for mushroom barley soup. The mushroom barley soup of my grandmother's kitchen and of old-time diners had never been one of my favorites: too spongy, too mushy, too sodden with tinny-tasting broth. But the list of ingredients in this soup (sherry, dried and fresh mushrooms, vinegar) seemed promising. And I could use up more of my pearled barley, which made me feel all neat and resourceful inside.

    The soup's quite simple: you dice up onions and carrots and garlic and soften that in olive oil, while you chunk up assorted fresh mushrooms (meanwhile, a small portion of dried porcini are soaking in hot water) and add them to the pot. When that's cooked for a bit, you throw in the barley, let it brown, then add what seems like an enormous amount of beef broth (I use this stuff – I think it's because Julie always talked about it), a bit of sherry, the drained and chopped porcini, their strained soaking liquid and some cracked pepper. This simmers until the barley's done and all the flavors have melded together into a comforting, multi-layered soup.

    I stirred in a spoonful of sherry vinegar to brighten everything up and ate a steaming bowl of it for dinner, with a piece of young pecorino and an apple to finish things off. Now I've got a portion in the freezer for a lazy afternoon lunch, and another bowl in the fridge for tomorrow, and I'm feeling virtuous somehow. If still a little dejected.

  • Kay Rentschler’s Whole Grain Boule

    Boule

    Between Kay Rentschler’s wacky sense of time and my terror of substitutions, baking this loaf of bread was an exercise in stress-control. Isn’t bread-baking supposed to be therapeutic? Tell that to the palms of my hands, covered with the tiny little bubbles of a stress rash (though, according to the Internets, this could also be a sign of either a. Syphilis or b. Rocky Mountain Fever. Which one would you go with?). I have to admit that the rash broke out prior to the bread-baking, probably brought on by a week in which my stress levels were so high that I on multiple occasions debated about going outside in the middle of the night to give the truck driver, who insisted on keeping his vehicle stalled in the parking space in front of my bedroom window – emitting fumes and a motor hum loud enough to make my window-frames vibrate – hell. But I didn’t. I swallowed my anger and bitterness whole, squeezed my earplugs deeper into the passage to my brain and turned over. Healthy, right? So, yes, I wasn’t exactly starting off well.

    In an attempt to regain some Zen-like equilibrium before a weekend that will be so busy I’ll probably forgot to put on underwear, I decided to bake a loaf of bread. Two years ago, Kay Rentschler (she of the world’s most glorious squash pie) wrote an article in the NY Times about recreating the environment of a professional bakery in your own kitchen. The bread recipe she included was for a Whole Grain Boule. It sounded like a challenge, baking bread in a preheated cast-iron pot. And a challenge would take my mind off the things that made this week the depressing exercise in futility it was shaping up to be.

    Kay has you soak a pile of grains in some hot water for several hours. Millet, red bulgur, coarse cornmeal, and oat groats. Maybe if I’d been in a better mood, I would have tripped happily from store to store searching out these interesting little grains. Perhaps I would have trilled to myself that it didn’t matter that I’d only be using two tablespoons of each: it’s fun having 400 little packets of grains in my pantry, open and attracting weevils. But as it was, I grumbled at Rentschler’s persnickety choices, gritted my teeth and substituted what I had at home: regular bulgur for the red bulgur, steel-cut oats for the oat groats and, well, I had coarse cornmeal. So no complaints there. To make up for the millet, I added in equal amounts of the other three grains. While they hydrated, I stirred together the poolish (water, instant yeast, flour – but having only bleached flour around, I made a mixture of unbleached pastry flour and bread flour, which Rentschler poopoos. Whatever, I was pinched and it worked) and also let it sit for four hours.

    Here I’ll have to interject: I live ten minutes from my office. So I did this prep work on my lunch break. Four hours after the poolish was made and the grains were hydrated, I came home, beat the grains into the poolish, added more flour and yeast, and kneaded the dough into a smooth ball. Letting it sit for twenty minutes (while I cried watching the Ebersols on Oprah, castigating myself for being self-indulgently depressed when they had to run out of a crashed airplane and survive the death of their youngest boy) allowed the dough to relax – the process known as autolyse. I then patted the dough out, sprinkled it with salt (but I used only 3/4 of a teaspoon – I’m sick of salty bread), and kneaded it together for 10 minutes. Rentschler instructs you to knead for 20 minutes, but after 10 minutes my arms were going numb and the dough was already silky as a baby’s bottom, so, enough.

    I was to let this dough rise until it doubled in bulk – according to Rentschler, this would take three to four hours. I settled in for a cozy wait. After a mere hour and a half, though, the dough was so high it was spilling out of the bowl. I punched it down, formed it into a tight ball, covered it with more wrap and refrigerated it overnight. This morning, it had swollen to a nice puffy shape. I heated my oven to 500 degrees for an hour (with the fire alarm disengaged this time, thank you very much) along with a cast-iron pot and lid. When the time came, I brushed the loaf with egg white, slashed it ineptly with a knife, and lowered the dough in its parchment sling into the pot. This baked for twenty minutes, covered. Then I took off the lid and let it bake for another 15 (Rentschler says five more minutes, but I say phooey to Rentschler’s sense of time – it’s not been exactly reliable before), until the the loaf was browned and crackly, and tiny little blisters peppered the surface.

    It’s resting on a rack while I type. Holding back my impulse to slice right into it is proving difficult, but I’ll have a sandwich at lunchtime. I’m sure all my complaints will be moot by that point – the smell is heavenly and the loaf sounds perfect when I tap its browned little bottom. I guess the point is this: Kay’s results are good, its just her timing that’s off. I’m not going to wonder about it anymore at this point. I’m going to sail into my weekend with my spotty palms and my four million plans, eating fresh bread for breakfast and hoping that next week is better than this one.

    Edited to add: Well, it serves me right for being snide about the salt – the bread is bland, bland, bland. If you make the boule, ignore my post, and leave in all of Rentschler’s salt. I only sliced off the heel, and am a little worried about the faintly gummy look of the interior, but I’ll find out later if it cooked all the way through. The grains give the bread a nice texture – crunchy and chewy in parts – and the crisp crust is great against the soft interior. But there’s a faintly bitter aftertaste, and it’s almost like it tastes a bit…gassy? The bread’s not bad with a nice piece of sharp cheese or sopped with well-flavored soup. Perhaps toasted and slathered with jam it will be good, too. But on its own? I think I’ll stick with the baguettes from last week.

  • And Now For Something Completely Different

    Fussy

    This is my 100th post. To honor the moment, I have to show off the best purchase I’ve made in months. So perfectly red! So totally soft! Ironic and witty to boot.

    Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy.