Author: Mark Linton

• 12.353 Gallons
• $1.619/Gallon
• $20.00
• 246.5 Miles
• 20.0 Miles/Gallon
• 8¢/Mile
• 13 Days

Nigella Lawson, the British domestic goddess, has a column in the New York Times today where she presents two tasty-sounding comfort food recipes.

• Spiced Beef in Red Wine
• Vegetarian Chili With Corn Bread Topping

I have never seen her show — if anybody knows whether and when it plays on DirecTV in the States, please let me know — but based on this lead-in, I think I would like her.

If you are the sort of person who, when catching a train, needs to arrive at the station with time to spare, you will cook in a very different way from someone who habitually boards the train while it is inching away.

Those like me who need to arrive on time take comfort from cooking that can be done in advance. It makes us feel safe and relaxed, knowing that not too much frenetic last-minute activity will be necessary. We are not the stir-fry crowd. But even if you are a skin-of-the-teeth type who feels that planning smacks of regimentation, there will be times when you need to get ahead of yourself.

Life, after all, is not always arranged according to our own inclinations. If a crowd is coming for supper at midweek and you work late every night, then it makes sense to find the time on a Sunday afternoon to get dinner well under way. And let’s be frank: what else is there to do on gray February weekends? Finding an excuse to stay inside, and to feel good about it, can be only a good thing. It’s even better knowing that you have a dish of chili or winter-warming stew stashed away in the refrigerator for a night when you scarcely have the energy to boil water. [NYTimes]

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of organic steel-cut oats with brown sugar, soy milk, and pecan halves. I weighed in at 156 pounds.

It is just snowing insanely outside. No walk today. A friend with four-wheel-drive drove us over to the Big Onion for lunch. I had an orange before lunch. Lunch was an two slices of plain pizza, a Big Grab® Lays KC Masterpiece Barbecue Flavor Potato Chips (Now even crisper!), and a SoBe Lizard Lava. I wiped the snow off my car before going and there was two inches on it by the time we got back!

Dinner was Lo Mien with a hand full of peanuts for dessert.

Breakfast was a bowl of mixed fruit — orange and banana. I weighed 156 pounds.

Lunch was an orange, followed by a four mile walk, followed by a Big Grab® Lays KC Masterpiece Barbecue Flavor Potato Chips (Now even crisper!) — 450 calories!

Dinner was a salad with Village Eating House Sweet & Sour Italian Dressing & Marinade (No Oil) and a slice of Colonial bread.

Breakfast this morning was a mushroom and cheddar omelette, bacon, toast with strawberry jam, and a glass of orange juice. I weighed 156 pounds. I had an orange for lunch.

Dinner was a bowl of corn chowder with crumbled bacon, two slices of Italian bread, and a glass of Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of mixed fruit — orange and banana — and a glass of orange juice. Lunch was chips and salsa and a glass of Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna.

For dinner I made my rendition of Beef Burgundy and served it up with something called Aztec rice, two slices of Italian bread, and two glasses of Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna .

My Beef Burgundy recipe is based on Delia Smith’s Boeuf Bourguignon recipe. I make the bacon first and sear the meat in the rendered fat, rather than using oil and making the bacon later. I pour off almost all of the bacon fat before moving on to the onions. Then at then end, I add carrots, in addition to the mushrooms, which I sauté before adding, and quartered onions again, instead of shallots. Yummy, falling apart tender, rich, satisfying, comfort food. Oh, and don’t let the fancy French name fool you. This really just beef stew made with red wine instead of beef stock.

Fortune smiled on me the other day and agreed to help me out with some sticky issues (I crack myself up).

As I said, I got Gretchen a baking stone and peel for Christmas. We have been having a great time with it. We have been able to use it, with the recipe provided, to consistently make a nice chewy, crusty, delicious, authentic Italian bread. If we can make the next one last long enough, I’ll take pictures.

As promised, here are pictures of our Italian bread. Before…



…and after:

The thing is, this exercise has shown us the truth in the saying, “the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.” You see, now that we’re getting a little more serious about baking, I realize that I don’t know jack about baking.

Just to clear something up right away, I can cook, but Gretchen is the baker. I really know nothing about baking, and Gretchen has always used pan recipes for her bread. Neither of us really understand the chemistry of dough, and it seems that is important when you start to go beyond the basic pan recipes. Looking around the blogosphere it seems that most people are like me: They love to make good food, but by and large, bread is something they buy from a baker, and pizza from a pizzeria.

The first thing we noticed is that none of our bread books talk about baking stones beyond acknowledging their existence. I figured maybe we just had the wrong books. Fortune tells me it is much simpler than that, “as for the stone, all bread is better on it. just plop any bread on a peel and bake it on the stone.” Ah, the Zen of baking, I was thinking so hard that I missed what was right in front of me. Fortune also had this advice, “you might also want to investigate a bread bell or ‘cloche.’ they are wonderful for boules.”

So, the avalanche starts: what is a bread bell? what is a cloche? for that matter, what is a boule?

(artwork shamelessly stolen from Outlaw Cook)

Well, it turns out that a bread bell is a cloche, because cloche means bell in French, and it is called a bell because of its shape, as you can see. You bake your bread inside it in your oven. Sort of like a portable stone oven.

A boule is just a loaf of bread that is not shaped before baking, or rather it is shaped, it is just shaped into a ball. Boule is French for ball. (Please excuse my artwork. Based on an image from Cambrooke Foods.)

The other problem we were having was with our pizza dough. Our dough was sticking to the peel even though we used plenty of corn meal underneath it. So much in fact, that we would end up with all of this burned corn meal on the bottom of our pizza. I wondered if parchment paper would help. Fortune said, “ my my my. most parchment papers aren’t good for 500. if you’re such a fan of slack dough such that your pizza crust clings to the peel and a small amount of cornmeal can’t serve you, then try parchment and lower the heat to 450; some papers are rated to 450. you might want to try flour as well… you know, make the pizza on a board, sprinkle the peel with cornmeal/flour, shove the peel under the pizza, give a gentle shake to dislodge pizza from peel, carry to oven, and then do another shake ’n slide to the baking stone.”

Ah, the terminology again, I did not know what a “slack” dough was. Fortune to the rescue with “a soft dough usually containing extra water. you are make breads with the bakers percentage, aren’t you?”

Right… bakers percentage… uh, sure we are… yeah, that’s the ticket… bakers percentage. sotto voce: I’ll have to look into that.

Baker’s Percentages

Each ingredient in a formula, including the liquids, is measured by weight. By using weight, the amounts of various ingredients can be directly compared to each other. The metric system is more precise and less confusing than the weight and measure system ordinarily used in the United States. In the metric system, units of weight and measure are based in increments of 10. This makes it easier to both calculate and resize formulas.

The reason it is important to weigh flour is that the texture of various flours and the degree to which they are compacted affect how much or how little space they may take up. Weighing flour leaves less room for error. Flour is the main ingredient in the baker’s percentage, and as such is considered 100%. If more than one flour is used in a formula, the combined total is 100%. As an example, in a formula calling for 400g of unbleached all-purpose flour and 100g of whole wheat flour, the unbleached flour would be stated as 80%, the whole wheat flour as 20%, and the combined total of 500g of flour as 100%. The weight of each ingredient, other than the flour, is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight. In other words, each ingredient in a formula is independently calculated and shown as a percentage of the flour in that same formula. [The Artisan]

So, no. I guess we are not using the baker’s percentage, but I do think that our problem is that our dough is probably too slack — too wet. Fortune did say that “personally i, like suzanne dunaway think slack dough is all good. you might check also out [this page on dough troubleshooting].” Then Fortune offers this insight, “my pizza dough is about 62-63 percent hydration. but then i use durum and first clear flours with high-ish protein amounts.”

So, the flour matters as well. You mean you cannot use all-purpose flour for everything? Why do they call it all-purpose then? In fact, that dough troubleshooting page suggests that one thing to try if your pizza dough sticks to your peel is to “use bread flour — not cake, pastry or all-purpose flour — for dusting the table.”

I do not know that much about flour. I know all-purpose and whole wheat. A new Baker’s Catalogue came in the mail yesterday, so Gretchen and I sat down and thumbed through it. Sure enough, they seem to recommend the bread flour for pizza. Unfortunately for us, the Giant where we shop only carries the all-purpose. We will have to see if Wegman’s carries the bread flour.

I was watching The Essence of Emeril this morning. Emeril was making pizza and spent quite a bit of time explaining the dough. His was definitely much dryer than ours and it slid around on the peel much better than ours does (not at all). Oh, and he used flour and not corn meal on the peel.

So, with a little help from my friends, I have some things to learn about, some things to look for, and some things to try, and hopefully I will end up with, as Fortune says, “happy pizza!”

On a cold winter’s evening, it is nice to have a cat to keep your neck warm.

Breakfast was a bowl of cold cereal with soy milk and a half of a glass of orange juice. I weighed in at 156 pounds. Lunch was Panda Buffet’s kung pao chicken with vegetables on chow mein noodles with hot and sour soup and a small sierra mist.

Dinner was our lo mien made with the last of the whole wheat fettuccine and two glasses of Bolla Valpolicella.

Portraying jerky — typically beef that is marinated, dried, smoked and then cooked — as a good-for-you snack seems like more work than it’s worth, but some food makers and retailers are giving it a whirl. Across the country, health-food stores are stocking up on so-called healthy jerky, low in fat and nitrates. Jerky Emporium in Oklahoma City has introduced “nutritional” jerky made from alligator or kangaroo (sales of the healthy jerky there have risen nearly 20% in the past year alone). The Beef Jerky Store in Las Vegas is selling a raft of new “health-oriented” jerky from ostrich to octopus, while the Whole Foods Market in Beverly Hills, Calif., now carries a soy-based vegan jerky.

It’s another side effect of the Atkins and South Beach diets, which have turned Americans into obsessive carbohydrate counters. In Phoenix, retired military officer Debbie Horgan sends jerky as presents to her carb-phobic friends. “At times it’s a challenge to eat another hard-boiled egg,” she says.

While dried meat might seem like a source of protein, nutritionists such as Lauren Slayton of Foodtrainers in New York advise customers to read labels carefully, since some jerky may contain corn syrup and sugar. While most have less than three grams of fat and 70 calories per serving, an all-natural, sugar-free jerky has no fat and roughly 35 calories. A jerky made with corn syrup and other additives might have six grams of sugar. Not only that, but healthy jerky is more expensive (as much as $9.50 for a four-ounce bag) than the regular kind ($5.75 for the same size).

Beef jerky, of course, has been around since the cave men, and Native Americans later preserved buffalo meat by smoking it in their tepees. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago that jerky went gourmet, with manufacturers and chefs drying it and marinating it with fancy spices. Prime Grill, a kosher and Atkins-friendly steakhouse in Miami and New York, serves marinated beef jerky as an appetizer. Retailers such as House of Jerky in Marietta, Calif., are marketing jerky to schools so that kids get protein at lunch. “I’d rather see a child eat a piece of jerky than a candy bar,” says Ron Hargett, owner of House of Jerky. [WSJ]