If Thou Tastest a Crust of Bread.....

It is with great pleasure that I realize my eldest daughter has become an imaginative cook. In her blog on Janurary 17th she described a stormy Sunday on which she made cream of tomato soup and "artisan" bread for warmth and comfort. I was so inspired by her descriptions of the yummies and the accompanying pictures that I vowed to make the soup and bread the following Sunday.

The recipes looked simple enough, no fancy ingredients required and the name of the bread, Almost No-Knead Bread, promised a quick and satisfying result. I was not disappointed, especially with the bread and so I'm going to share my own photos and the bread recipe here. Feel free to copy and try it yourself. I must give credit not only to daughter, Erin, but also to America's Test Kitchen which produces some of the best recipes for everything from chocolate cake to chicken in a pot. Their recipes are sometimes complicated but they always result in the best food you've ever tasted. Here is the bread recipe:

3 Cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp rapid-rise yeast

1 1/2 tsp table salt

3/4 Cup, plus 2 TBSP water at room temperature

1/4 Cup plus 2 TBSP mild-flavored lager (I used Corona beer because that's what was in the frig)

1 TBSP white vinegar

(The only exotic ingredient here is the beer, but in our household there is always beer, so it wasn't a problem for me.)

If you have made bread before you know that you generally have to melt butter in milk and make sure the milk isn't too hot when you add it to the yeast. In this recipe you just need mildly warm water and you're good.

So the directions are (I have tweaked them to suit myself):

1. Stir flour, yeast and salt together in a large bowl. Add the warm water, beer and vinegar. With a spatula or wooden spoon mix wet ingredients into dry, scraping up flour from bottom of bowl until a shaggy ball forms. It truly will be shaggy and ugly looking and you'll think, ewww, this can't be right, but it is. Just make sure you've gotten all the flour in--I picked it up and squished it around in my hands for a little bit. Now the EASY PART. Cover the lump of dough in the bowl with plastic wrap and LET IT SIT overnight (from 8 to 18 hours!) on your counter.

2. The next day lay a large sheet of parchment paper if you have it or tin foil , which is what I had, in a 10 inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray--I think you could use oil instead--Put dough on lightly floured surface and knead 10 to 15 times (this is such a small amount of kneading that you'll think this is wrong, too, but it works). Shape the dough into a ball and put seam-side down into the paper or foil in the skillet--spray surface of dough with non-stick spray or rub a little oil on it. Let rise until double. (My kitchen on Sunday morning was cold so I heated the oven to 200 degrees, turned it off and put the pan in the oven, leaving the door open. This rising should take about 2 hours.

3. About 30 minutes before baking, put your oven rack at the lowest level so that you can get a big soup kettle in the oven, complete with lid. Heat the oven to 500 degrees with the kettle in the oven. While heating the kettle lightly flour the top of the dough and with a good, sharp knife make a 6 inch long, 1/2 inch deep slit along the top of the dough. Carefully remove the kettle from the oven and remove the lid. Pick up the dough by lifting the paper or foil overhang and lower it into the pot. Be careful of that hot kettle! Reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown, 20 or 30 minutes more. Tap with your knuckles--if it sounds hollow it's done. Carefully pull the paper or foil up to remove the bread and cool it on a wire rack.

I think you could use tin foil to cover the pot if your pot has a plastic handle. I'd say this recipe is pretty forgiving--doesn't make much difference what you do as long as you can get it to rise--make sure you have fresh yeast. The bread ends up being really crusty on the outside and nicely soft, but hearty, on the inside. It's a finer bread than you'd think with only a minute or two of kneading and it makes wonderful toast. Don't forget the Adam's Peanut Butter!

Thanks to my daughter this bread is going into my recipe notebook and I'll make it often. I think I might try putting some wheat flour in next time, but watch out for wheat flour--a dough hardly ever rises as high when wheat flour is added. If you try this, report back. I'd like to hear if you like it as much as we do.

Beer, Orphanage and Eeyore

Gary Parker with a bottle of Brass Ass Brown Ale

We had another successful lunch on Thursday at All Star Lanes in Silverdale. At least 20 alumni of the CK Class of '62 showed up this time and as always, there were a couple of new faces sprinkled in with the regulars, as we have come to think of ourselves. Gerry Simonson and her husband came and so did Roger Cole, who recently lost his wife. It was great to see that he wanted to be with us. If we keep adding classmates at 2 or 3 a month, by the time we hit that Golden Anniversary of our high school graduation we will have gathered so many that we will have to rent a big hall to squeeze us all in. Hopefully, coming to these lunches will take away any apprehension people might feel about attending the full blown reunion. We've seen each other in our skivvies, with our gray hair and wrinkles and weight gain. There shouldn't be any fear left. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

I talked to Gary Parker a good bit this time. He had very kindly brought along some of his beer from the Iron Horse Brewery, that he and his son own in Ellensberg. I was the lucky recipient of two bottles and muy husband and I tried the Loco Imperial Red ale last night and it was a very interesting beer. I don't usually pick up on the subleties of beer, but this one had a citrus and sweet flowery taste to it. Gary had explained a little about beer recipes and hops and barleys to me but now I want to know where this flavor came from. Next time. If you want to try Gary's beers you have two choices. You can go up to Central Market in Poulsbo and find his Irish Death beer or you can visit the brewery at 1000 Prospect St. in Ellensberg or you can read about them at his website at www.ironhorsebrewery.com. Reading about them is not nearly as good as drinking them. I really want to try the Cozy Sweater one of these days. Gary calls himself the "not so silent partner" and it's really fun to talk to him about beer. You can tell he loves it.

The "orphanage" part of the title to this blog refers to the orphanage in Romania that Rupert Walworth and his Romanian wife are building. Rupert explained that his wife was already putting money away for this orphanage when he met her--he'd hired her to clean his house and later found out she was sending a lot of her money back to her native country for the orphanage. He said they were both "faith-based" people and started dating. One thing led to another and now they go to Romania at least once a year, continuing to work on the orphanage.

And then there's the Eeyore reference. We all know Eeyore don't we? The slow-talking, somewhat depressed donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh? When I spotted Roger Cole, the first thing I noticed about him, after his sweet smile that is unchanged from high school days, was the Eeyores embroidered on his coat and baseball cap. I asked him why he was sprinkled with Eeyores and he replied that his kids have always thought he sounded like Eeyore--he said he's always been a slow talker--and so they've loaded him up with Eeyores. Eeyore has always been my favorite of the Pooh characters--"Oh, bother".

I didn't get a chance to speak with Gerry Simonson--that will have to wait for next time, too. Those lunches, though they often last for 3 hours, are never long enough to talk to everyone, or even to hug everyone. So keep coming back guys, so I can find out about you. And be sure to ask Barbara Jarolim about her trips to China. We'll try to get Gary to bring some more of his great beer, too.

Surprising

Robert Mondavi Winery
Originally uploaded by Song Bird

You never know who is going to see your photos on Flickr. It's fun and sometimes a little scary. I got an email from Schmap Guides to Napa Valley, who are short listing this picture for their 2010 guide. I had to give my permission, of course, but am glad to. I also had one of my Scotland pictures used as a cover for a newsletter for a local SCA group. Very flattering and a way to use one or two of the hundreds of pictures I take.

Shallowland

This?

Or this?

I've been reading a lot lately about pop culture and it's rise in the past decade. There is particular interest in the fame of the non-famous--those that have no talent except for the ability to get publicity and fans and paparazzi followings. Also noted is the increase in ticket sales at the cineplex down the street and the popularity of vampire novels, TV shows and movies.

Is it any wonder? It doesn't seem a mystery to me that all this is happening in the decade of the Early Two-Thousands, as I'm going to call it, there being no other good alternative. Do we know history? Does anyone remember the incredible popularity of movies in the Thirties and Forties? People were going to see Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jimmie Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, James Stewart in movies about gangsters, or "screwball" comedies, war movies or Busby Berkeley musicals that were famous for their kaleidoscopic dance numbers featuring hundreds, and showgirls stepping slowly down gigantic staircases with headdresses the size of Rhode Island. Why? Because people were so down in the dumps, perhaps unemployed, maybe having lost lots of money in the stock market, there was a World War going on, sons and husbands were dying--they needed escape. If there had been television then I'd bet there would have been some kind of reality TV to sooth the masses.

And that's exactly what's happening now. Take your pick. Would you rather watch what's new with Paris Hilton or watch replays of 9/11? How about Jessica Simpson or clips of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the count of the dead? Is there a question about watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians or the details of latest suicide bombing? Do you want to go see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (the biggest movie grosses ever) or watch the nightly news and hear about the stock market crooks and their bonuses? How about John and Kate Plus Eight or H1N1? Or Housewives of New York versus the politics in Washington DC?

On a smaller, less national, less frantic scale is my grandson, who fathered triplets by accident this past year, who works two jobs and would rather, by god, play Modern Warfare 2 than think about how he is going to pay the child support which is now required of him. Or me--who plays Bejewled Blitz in order to squash the thoughts of greatgrandchild triplets I may never know and other family worries nagging to get in. The big world has gotten so messed up in the last decade, life so uncertain, flying so dangerous, food possibly infected with fatal germs, a cough in the room maybe a precursor of a pandemic, a job a lifeboat rather than a way to make money and a career, wars that have gone on for years, no one you know unaffected by some of this and your small world, your personal world, has it's own unique horrors--there is a yearning to escape. Yes, maybe playing a video game, or Tweeting, or burying yourself in Farmland is a form of turning off and turning your back on "real" life, but how much can any of us take without succumbing to some brain deadening behavior? In the sixties we didn't have all this stuff to distract us, so we smoked marijuana--how different is that from what is happening now? Not very, I'd say.

Now we have a guy from Yemen who was just barely prevented, partially due to his own mess-up, from blowing up an airplane and shortly we will be going through security lines in airports in flapping hospital gowns from now on (thanks to Maureen Dowd for that visual). There was talk on the Sunday news programs, which I still watch though I'm warning myself against them, that there might have to be "pre-emptive measures" taken against Yemen. Remember "pre-emption in Afghanistan? I'm so fatigued from it all, so weary of the Healthcare Reform that isn't, of Joe Leiberman, of David Gates, of Governor Gregoire, of H1N1, of Swiss banks, of making a big deal about Michelle Obama's arms, and on and on, that I can't wait to watch the new seasons of The Bachelor and American Idol and bury myself up to my neck in shallow, trivial, unimportant mass culture. Want to go see Avatar anyone?