Food

[skywatch]

I generally fridge age my pizza dough now. I'll make it three days ahead of time, without sugar. I use warm water and as soon as the yeast starts to bloom I'll cover it up anf throw it in the fridge.The 90-100F water stays warm enough that the yeast will be active for 10 or 12 hours and then the risen dough will get tangy for the two and a half days after that.

I freely admit I haven't used a sourdough starter in at least a year, since our fridge started acted up in fact. I am considering harvesting some yeast off of my grapes and starting a new one, but I am having a lot of fun with the wild variations of loaf one gets across the lifespan of the 14 day fridge dough.

If your photos are any indication, you have achieved a level with your bread making to which I can only aspire. I do know about the long fridge aging process - I just don't have the patience! My starter does live and thrive in the fridge for a week or two between uses. That's about how long one of these rye loaves lasts.

[Seriously]

Totally true. If I am making a white bread pizza crust, it's all about the rise. White flour, oil, sugar (I still use my sourdough starter though, because I love that tang.) Lactobacillus "San Franciscans" is such a beautiful thing to fall from the sky on a foggy night. The mother becomes so feisty, like a white wine soaked in lemon juice, and the bread takes on a wildness I don't taste even in modern San Francisco Sourdough breads (because the factories don't wait long enough for the rise without sugar, and their ovens don't have the moisture to make the crust.) I am not an expert at making the style of SF Sourdough I grew up with (it has gone extinct, almost) but I can make these rustic sour ryes and I live by them!

[Henry Krinkle]

If your photos are any indication, you have achieved a level with your bread making to which I can only aspire. I do know about the long fridge aging process - I just don't have the patience! My starter does live and thrive in the fridge for a week or two between uses. That's about how long one of these rye loaves lasts.

That is one of the great things about sourdoughs. They can last a really long time. We've gone the other way with the fridge bread. I bake loaves that are a scant pound. Two days for two people and it's done. Then when we next want bread, I bake another.

Well, thank you. I've been baking bread for probably close to 40 years. I hit a point where I felt I'd learned enough to make decent bread and stayed lazy for a few years. I've since come to my senses and gotten back to my basic philosophy which is that I'd rather go wrong experimenting than settle on good enough or even that's right. Before I perfect fridge dough it'll be time to move onto something else I don't understand.


Speaking of things I don't know... cheese is likely the project that starts this winter.

[skywatch]

One last picture from the two day cooking binge. I fired our little side-smoker for around four hours this afternoon, fueled with apricot wood from our garden. A whole duck marinated overnight, which alas I did not photograph. I removed the meat to refrigerate and put all the bones and skin into a stock pot to make smoked duck stock. Also, one of the four smoked salmon steaks got used for dinner, so here's just a picture of the three that remained. Both duck and salmon turned out amazing.

[Seriously]

Crisp just eaten:
(Sub-eyes were attached)

[Henry Krinkle]

[skywatch]

Our neighbor gave us a huge pile of kale last week. It's not my favorite thing, but I do know that we enjoy it after marinating for several hours. So I embarked on a project to include the meats I smoked last week with the kale we needed to use. Yesterday, this was the dish:



This is kale and cabbage, marinated in honey-mustard dressing for six hours, with homemade praline, Roquefort cheese, and dried cranberries, topped with my homemade smoked duck.

Today I was trying to use up some puff pastry, and still had some of the kale salad from yesterday (it lasts a while.) I filled the puff pastry with my homemade smoked salmon, green onions and cilantro, a bit of cheese. Baked and served with the kale salad. The topping on the puff pastry is a sauce I made with the duck liver, lobster mushrooms and duck stock-madeira reduction.

[Henry Krinkle]

Oh, yes... Hot Sauce #6. Fermented for 10-12 days (can't remember what exact day I started it) with a little pimento wood to give a hint of that barrel aged flavour that one gets from the two and three year old versions. In increasing order of goodnes; the colour is beautiful, the aroma divine, the flavour, the flavour, the flavour, the flavour. As I hoped the half dozen or so different peppers, all on the fruity end of the flavour spectrum, have given this hot sauce a depth and breadth that is pretty impressive for the short fermentation. It may be Mrs. K's new favourite hot sauce. Five years ago she would never have eaten anything this hot on something and this morning she was actually snacking on it all by itself. I've got plans for two more fermented hot sauces and at least one more batch of vinegar style green hot sauce as we are mostly out of it already. After that I'll see what's left on the plants.

[geoffbot]

Amazing. My missus likes hot sauce now too - never used to. There's a world of difference between a good one and a bad one.

[CanadianStraps]

Eggs three ways today. I made the potato cup thing before hand and filled it with a saute of peppers, onion, spinach, and scape with egg. The left one is what i would call Hawaiian style i guess. The bacon was cured (by me) in local maple syrup and into the eggs i bear some leftover dry spice rub i made for a ham a while ago. It has clove and dried pineapple, etc. The centre one is just a simple cracked aggs but i overdid it and it was medium, not soft. Still good.



Enjoyed on the deck, a very nice summer-like weekend to bring in the fall.