Rustic Country Bread

I mentioned in previous posts that I recently attended a class taught by the experts at King Arthur Flour on the craft of baking artisan breads. What is an artisan bread? This is a question people often ask me when I tell them about the class, so allow me to field this question.

1. An artisan bread possesses a very crisp, thick, and hearty crust that is achieved through high heat (500 degrees) and steam.
2. Artisan breads aren't baked in a pan - generally they're shaped in a variety of shapes like a boule, batard, torpedo, or epi.
   
3. Artisan breads achieve their flavors through a series of 3-4 slow rises, so baking artisan bread is very time consuming.
4. Through a series of slow rises and a high water content, artisan breads produce a crumb that is airy, very porous, and full of lovely holes.
5. A lot of soul and love goes into a loaf of artisan bread.
   

I fell in love with artisan breads the first time I visited Wheatfield's Bakery in Lawrence. The crunch of the crust and the chewy, tender crumb of their bread shifted the way I viewed bread. It was an ephipany. Prior to Wheatfield's bread was a supporting character in a dinner production. After Wheatfield's I saw that bread could stand alone in the spotlight. Bread could be the meal.

I set out to learn to bake such bread, and while I've made great progess, I'm still learning.

I first learned to bake a ciabatta, and it took me almost two years to somewhat master it. Now I feel more comfortable as I approach other breads. However, I'm still learning, and I don't always nail a bread on my first attempt. For example, it took me two attempts to feel good about the bread below.

Breads like this aren't for the convenience food or drive-thru window crowd. This bread takes time, energy, and patience. However, the energy put into this bread is well worth it. This bread will make grown men swoon.

Now no one ever told me the secret to artisan bread baking, but ol' muddywaters is going to share that secret with you. Are you ready? Here's the secret to a good artisan bread.

• Artisan breads should have a high water content. The dough will be wet and difficult to work with at first. Fight the urge to add too much flour. Also, handle your dough with care. Be patient and don't over handle to dough.

If you do these two things, you'll be well on your way to becoming an artisan bread baker.

Rustic Country Bread
A King Arthur Flour Recipe

Poolish

1 cup cool water

2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose flour

A pinch of active dry or instant yeast

Dough

All of the polish

1 cup cool water

1 ½ teaspoons active dry or instant yeast

1 ½ teaspoons salt

3 to 3 ½ cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

Combine the polish ingredients and mix until well blended. At this point, it will look like this:

Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight.The polish should be spongy, bubbly, and quite wet.It might look something like this:

At this point, you can begin making the bread or you can place the poolish in the fridge and make the bread 2-3 days later.

In a large bowl, combine the risen polish, water, salt, yeast, and enough flour to make a cohesive soft dough. Knead the dough using your mixer’s dough hook for 7-8 minutes. Allow the dough to rest for a few minutes, covered. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise 45 minutes in a warm place, until almost doubled in bulk.

The dough is now ready to fold. To fold dough, lightly dust the dough and work surface with flour. Using a dough scraper, invert the dough onto the work surface. Gently stretch and pat the dough to deflate it, then fold the dough in thirds, like a letter. Turn dough 90 degrees and fold like a letter again. Pick up the folded package of dough, invert it, and gently place it back into the bowl. The dough will be noticeably tighter. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes.

Fold the dough again, cover, and let it rise another 45 minutes.

Gently turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Using a bench knife, divide the dough in half and gently pre-shape in into rounds by drawing the cut edges together so that the smooth outer surface becomes the top of the dough ball, and the other side, with the edges drawn together, becomes the bottom. Cover and let rest on a lightly floured for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven (and baking stone, if you’re suing one) to 500 degrees F. Shape the dough as desired and set on . Cover and let rise in a warm place until dough is not quite doubled in bulk, 40 to 45 minutes.

Just before baking, gently slash the loaves. Slide them onto the baking stone.

***Fill the oven with steam and close the door.

Bake for 5 minutes, reduce the temperature to 475 degrees and bake until done, about 25 minutes (internal temperature should be 205 degrees F.)

Remove the bread and cool on a rack.

***Steam allows dough to rise to its full potential and helps to create a crunch crust. To create a steamy oven at home, try this: Place an empty cast iron skillet in the bottom of your oven to preheat with your baking stone. Just before it’s time to bake, pour ½ cup of water in the skillet.

Above is a bread shape called an epi or a sheaf of wheat. It's an impressive decorative design that is really quite easy to do. I was the kid in elementary school who always used too much glue or wh0 couldn't color inside the lines, but I easily mastered cutting an epi the first time. For directions, visit the following site:

• How to cut an epi.

Happy baking,
muddywaters

Carolina BBQ

I've never been bitter about Roy Williams leaving Kansas to go home to North Carolina. I still respect Coach Williams, and I appreciate his contributions to the University of Kansas basketball legacy.

To celebrate the KU-NC Final Four game, I plan on preparing pulled pork BBQ, Carolina style with coleslaw. More on that later.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk,
muddywaters

Mahnomin Porridge

At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.

"This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed.

So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.

"This porridge is too cold," she said

So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.

"Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up.

***From "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"

I always found this story disturbing, especially the part about her sleeping in their beds. That's downright creepy. I bet she rifled through their underwear drawers also. However, her greatest atrocity came when she ate their breakfast. Eating another man's (or bear's) breakfast just ain't civil.

This story first introduced me to porridge. I had no idea what it was, but I thought it was similar to oatmeal. It turns out I was right. According to wikipedia, porridge is a simple dish made by boiling oats and sometimes a mixture of other grains in milk or water. I also learned the following interesting facts about porridge

1. In parts of Asia porridge is fed to horses and donkeys (This fact just makes me smile. "Honey, I'm going out to the barn to feed the donkeys their porridge.").
2. Gruel is a form of porridge, but it's usually a thinner consistency, so that people can drink it (I might make some gruel for my daughter because I think it would be fun to scream, "Drink your gruel, or you'll get no dessert!).
3. Every October Scotland hosts the World Porridge Making Championships, where contestants battle for the Golden Spurtle Trophy. A spurtle is a special spoon used to stir porridge. For you curious souls, here's a picture of spurtle (I won't comment on the phallic nature of it. I'd be embarrassed to whip this out of my kitchen drawer):
4. Many cultures use porridge to nurse the sick back to health.

When I read on roadfood.com about the Mahnomin Porridge served at Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis, I thought it sounded interesting, but something I'd never try. For the record, I've never craved porridge. I've never been fan of hot breakfast cereals like oatmeal, mush, or grits. However, I think some of it has to do with its unappealing name. I think the name porridge turns most people off to the dish. In fact, very few people ordered it when it first appeared on Hell's Kitchen's menu. Then they started giving it away, but people still balked at trying it. Eventually, people tried the dish, realized it was heavenly, and now it's a popular menu item.

Last week I had the privilege of eating at Hell's Kitchen, and I was still reluctant to try it. However, the snowy weather and my lumberjack attitude prompted me to give the porridge a try, and when I tried the first bite I was a porridge convert. At that moment I wanted to be porridge's new PR man, spreading the gospel of this great dish. So here I am blogging about it.

Like most restaurant dishes that bring a glint to my eye, I'm always inspired to replicate the dish at home. This drives my wife nuts. She doesn't understand why I would go to all the trouble. She doesn't understand why I just can't enjoy the dish at the restaurant, where it's something special, a treat. Now my wife is partially right. For some reason she's always right and I'm wrong. This is the gospel truth. However, believing that I'm right, I usually respond with a two-pronged response:

1. I could make this dish for a fraction of what they're charging me at the restaurant.
2. What if someday we live somewhere like Moscow, Kansas, where there's not a wide range of restaurants.? Wouldn't it be nice to have a husband, who can prepare a huge repertoire of dishes?

In which she responds:

1. We'll never live in Moscow, Kansas.
2. We can afford to occasionally eat a meal at a restaurant. There's nothing wrong with occasionally treating ourselves.

She's probably right, but I still insist on replicating recipes I encounter on restaurant menus.

This morning I made the Mahnomin Porridge.

Mahnomin Porridge

(Photo from roadfood.com)

Ingredients

4 cups cooked wild rice

¼ cup pure maple syrup

¼ cup dried blueberries

¼ cup craisins

½ cup roasted, cracked hazelnuts

1 cup heavy cream



Preparation

1. In a heavy non-stick sautee pan, add the cooked wild rice, heavy cream, and maple syrup, and warm through.
2. Add the blueberries, craisins, and hazelnuts, and stir to mix well.
3. Serve in a bowl with sides of warm heavy cream and maple syrup.
   

Now my attempt at Mahnomin Porridge wasn't quite as good as Hell's Kitchen, but it still was pretty darn good. I think, there are three things I could do to improve the porridge:

1. I used half and half, and using heavy cream would improve my porridge.
   
2. I could toast my hazlenuts in a skillet. I stepped this step, so I could stuff my face. Toasting or roasting nuts would definitely give the nuts a more pronounced flavor.
3. I could use a better quality maple syrup. I don't really know anything about maple syrup, so I just grabbed the cheapest bottle, a $3.50 bottle of Maple Grove Farms: U.S. grade A Dark Amber. I've been cooking long enough to know that sometimes the quality of ingredients does matter, so I'll research maple syrups and find a better one to use with this recipe. This might be the most important thing I could do to improve the recipe.

I also think you could experiment with the ingredients a bit. Pecans would work in place of hazlenuts. If you don't have wild rice, you could probably use a white rice. Also, you could add a little cinnamon, nutmeg, or vanilla to change the flavor of this recipe. Overall, I'm happy with my results, and I look forward to enjoying this porridge on a cold, snowy, day.

Happy eating,
muddywaters