I decided that this year I'm going to master 1) Roasting a Chicken and 2) Pain au Levain.
For the chicken, I have puttered around with a few different recipes but am focusing on the very simple roast from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook. It's a dry roast, just with salt pepper and thyme. I'm not very good at making pan sauces but I am quite good at making mustard so this is perfect. Bake it, let it rest, cut it up, slather with fresh mustard (pink peppercorn is my current favorite). It's not perfect yet, but I think I've gotten skilled enough that it is always tasty.
The bread is a bit more thorny. I've got a reliable sourdough starter living in the fridge, and I've gotten my hands on some french-style high protein flour. I have many bread cookbooks but am using the very detailed Local Breads for instruction. He makes this bread sound more like an animal than a grain, and it feels that complicated sometimes. This type has very precise requirements for humidity, acidity, flour, and the undefined "magic" category. But at the same time you need to roll with the day to figure out how much flour you need and how long it wants to rise. It's a very wet slack dough and I can't work it with my hands so I'm using my mixer. Nice to have my hands free. I think it's actually helping me because I think that the consistency and amount of flour that I would add based on previous experience is detrimental to this bread. You want the dough wet.
First attempt tastes pretty good but is heavy. None of the lovely air bubbles and pockets I was looking for. Made good toast, don't think I would rip off hunks and dip in soup. It's too tough for that. But toasted with butter and honey? Divine.
2 comments:
Sarah, I will send you my mother's Julekage recipe. It's a basic sweet dough, very simple and very tasty. It's an all around basic dough and makes lovely rolls as well.
Aunt Marti
don't feel bad about the pocket thing. After about 5 years of making sourdough, my experience is that it is the sour factor that makes the holes. And sadly, the wild yeast in San Francisco is really sour, and difficult to replicate. BUT the longer you leave out the sponge stage (like... 3 days?) the sourer even the mildest Midwestern yeast gets. So regardless of your recipe, I recommend experimenting with a long early souring period. Post more yummy pictures please
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