Category: Food

Can whole wheat bread have a good crust?

I sent this photograph of my whole wheat French bread to a friend, and he said it made his teeth hurt just looking at the pictures. To my taste, however, the crust was excellent and not tough at all.

For some time, I’d been planning to do the research and development necessary to upgrade the abbey’s rustic loaves to something with a more exciting crust. The gold standard for bread crust, of course, is French bread. On a recent trip to Asheville, I bought a perforated French bread pan made by Chicago Metallic. That was the first step. The second step was to do some research on how to shape French bread loaves and get the crust right.

Though I knead my bread dough in unbleached flour, I use 100 percent whole wheat flour (King Arthur), to make the dough. The dough for my rustic loaves is really just the same as classic French bread — nothing but flour, water, yeast, a bit of sugar to feed the yeast, and salt. No change was needed in the dough. To get a proper French bread crust, I made these changes in my bread-making process:

— I don’t use a coating of oil to keep the dough from drying out while rising. Instead, I let the dough sit on a dusting of flour in a well-covered bowl.

— I give the bread two risings rather than rushing it with only one.

— From Googling and YouTube videos, I figured out the technique for shaping and slashing the loaves.

— I use a spray bottle to mist the loaves with water before they rise and again before I put them in the oven.

— I throw a little water in the oven to create steam for the first 10 minutes of baking.

These methods are simple. It’s easy, really, to make French bread in the home kitchen. The crust was delicious. The perforated bread pans really do work, and the bread did not stick to the pan, even though I used no oil. Though all the dough recipes I came across mix quite a lot of unbleached flour into whole wheat loaves, I’m not tempted to do that.

These French loaves will become the new version of the everyday abbey bread.

The miracle of rain

Four days ago, .4 inch of rain fell. The day after that, there was another .4 inch. That was enough rain to greatly revive the garden. Tomatoes ripened on the vine that otherwise would have rotted on the vine. The corn freshened. The pumpkins and melons resumed their growth. There may even be more peppers if the rain continues.

I’ll probably scald the tomatoes to remove the skins, then freeze them. As for the pumpkin, I couldn’t possibly eat a whole pumpkin pie. Even though it’s a shame not to use the pumpkin fresh, I’ll probably cook it and freeze it and use it later when I have company. I have at least two more pumpkins that I left on the vine, plus a couple of watermelons and canteloupes. I planted only two watermelon plants and two canteloupe plants, as an experiment. They’ve done amazingly well, so next year I’ll plant more than two.

Baby pumpkin

There’s something magical about pumpkins. I’ve never grown pumpkins before, but I’ve wanted to for years. I thought they might be hard to grow, and they’re said to be heavy feeders. But the vines from my two pumpkin plants are now the biggest, most vigorous plants in the garden.

Last week’s rain helped the garden get through the hot, dry week that followed, with temperatures over 95. Yesterday evening, 1.1 inches of rain fell. I took advantage of the soft ground to do some weeding and hoeing this morning. The forecast for the next five days looks good — pretty good chances of rain and normal temperatures in the upper 80s.

Even with the drought, the garden has supplied 99 percent of my fresh food for over two months. I hardly ever go to the grocery store these days. I had been planning to make my monthly trip to Whole Foods this week, but I realized that there really isn’t anything I have to have, so I’ll wait until I run out of half and half or something. For those of us who use a lot of fresh produce, I can definitely testify that a garden saves a bunch of money.

As for the pumpkins: pumpkin pie!

Jefferson the foodie


Monticello

Salon magazine has a nice article about how Jefferson was America’s first foodie.

I sure would like to know what the sources are for all this information about Jefferson. My guess is that it’s scattered throughout Jefferson’s letters and diaries. I’ve read two biographies of Jefferson in the last year, and though there are passing references to Jefferson’s vegetable garden, there’s not much else.

Of the founding fathers, Jefferson is my favorite. He was a Southerner and proud of it, but he didn’t let that close his mind to the larger world. His values were Enlightenment values, not the Puritan values that stank up the political environment then, as now. He loved languages. He loved science and technology. And best of all, he never stopped being rebellious. He was as much a rebel when he died (at age 84) as when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson’s cuisine was a fusion cuisine: Southern comfort food fused with Mediterranean, and wine rather than whisky.

Oh what I would give if it were possible for Thomas Jefferson to write an op-ed in today’s New York Times, wielding his rhetorical light sabre against the Puritans, corporatists, Philistines and know-nothings who have bought the government.

Never turn your back on a cucumber vine


Three days’ worth, two cucumber vines

Three days ago I picked all the cucumbers. I left no cucumbers over two inches long. I was in no hurry to go back, thinking that the weather was so dry that not much could be happening. But this morning there were oodles of cucumbers, and some of them were even too big to be ideal.

The ability of certain plants to grow and produce in hot, dry weather continues to blow my mind. It’s almost as though the cucurbits — cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, melons — tap into the high humidity, though I know that they don’t actually do that. The key — as was clear in my organic gardening books and as I am now seeing with my own eyes — is to have fertile soil, to plant things well apart, and to keep the weeds down. This is simply old-fashioned gardening the way our grandparents did it. I have had only .3 inch of rain in the last three weeks, which I’ve supplemented with a quick watering with the hose on particularly hot days when the temperature went to 95. These were not deep waterings, but just enough to cool things down, reduce stress, and buy time for rain.

Though the tomatoes seem to crave more moisture than the cucurbits, they are holding their own. Based on what I’ve learned this year, I’ll amend my planting next spring. The brussels sprouts took up a lot of space but never produced, so no more brussels sprouts. The cauliflower was finicky. No more cauliflower. The cabbage and broccoli, at least, earned its space. Next spring I’ll reduce the amount of space allocated to the cabbage family and save the garden space for more cucurbits.

Abbey rations


Chioggia beets, kale, abbey bread

When you try to live close to the earth, you’ve got to eat what you’ve got. I had hoped to stretch out the spring crops rather than harvesting them all at once, but the hot, dry weather has forced me to do otherwise. Still, I count my blessings. I haven’t eaten grocery store produce, other than a couple of squash from Whole Foods, in several weeks. I’ve been living off the garden.

When I bought beet seeds, I didn’t know that I was buying chioggia beets. When I realized what I had, I was a bit disappointed. After all, what’s the point of a beet that isn’t blood red? But I’ve found that the chioggia beets are delicious, and I’m not getting tired of them. It seems they’re a new “in” food. Sunset magazine put chioggia beets on a top 10 list of healthy foods.

Yes, I do eat protein foods. I’ve been having the vegetables with vegan pimento cheese. I made a batch that has lasted me for days. When Ken was here, dishes didn’t last as long, and leftovers were rare. Now, with no one to cook for but myself, leftovers are a daily thing.

We people of the grocery store era don’t realize how unnatural it is — or at least how environmentally costly it is — to have such a variety of foods available at any given time. Our ancestors had to eat what was available. When cabbage was plentiful, you ate cabbage, no matter how strong a craving you might have for tomatoes, which you might get later in the season if you were lucky.

Archeologists have shown that, though the Celtic people of the British Isles (my ancestors) ate meat, it was not something they had year round. They mostly ate meat in the late fall, when they thinned the herds that they couldn’t afford to keep over winter.

Yet, we’re not completely without some economic discipline in these matters. Whatever is in season and plentiful will usually be the cheapest. You can have blueberries from Chile, but they won’t be cheap.

As for me, if the beets have to be pulled and the kale has to be cut, that’s what I’ll eat. I’m still trying to figure how how to use all the celery. And today I cut a beautiful cauliflower that I’ll roast tomorrow.

Vegan pimento cheese

There are lots of vegan cheese substitutes on the market. I’ve never found one that I thought was good. If you Google, you’ll also find recipes for vegan pimento cheese with ingredients similar to my favorite recipe. However, the recipe in Frank and Rosalie Hurd’s Ten Talents cookbook is so good that I don’t feel a need to try other recipes.

A key ingredient in this recipe is agar agar, a kind of vegan gelatin made from seaweed. The agar agar doesn’t really add any flavor. It just gives the pimento cheese a cheese-like body, while also adding all those nice trace minerals that are found in sea vegetables. Whole Foods carries agar agar. For the pimentos, I get big jars of roasted peppers at Whole Foods. It’s cheaper in the big jar, and it’s of higher quality that the little jars of pimentos found in most grocery stores.

The Hurds’ recipe uses a blender. I find that it’s difficult to make in a blender, so I use a food processor instead. Don’t be afraid of the yeast. It actually adds a nice, cheesy flavor to the pimento cheese. The recipe uses quite a lot of oil, so that the vegan cheese has about the same fat content as real cheese. I’m sure you could reduce the amount of olive oil without spoiling the recipe.

First cabbage

It wasn’t all that long ago that the cabbage plants were seedlings under the grow light, less than an inch high. Today we harvested the first cabbage. It’ll be served tonight at supper, when we’ll be joined by one of Ken’s former professors who is coming over from Durham.

On Monday we froze four gallons of strawberries, fresh-picked (though we didn’t pick them this time) at Mabe’s Berry Farm near Walnut Cove.

Ken with his favorite chicken, Patience.

Go, garden go

It’s awfully nice to go to the garden to shop for supper rather than to the grocery store. As the garden’s production starts to ramp up, this will happen (I hope) more and more often. This broccoli and spinach went, all raw, into a salad dowsed with homemade Russian dressing. I picked the spinach and broccoli about 5 p.m. when it was still warm out, so I went straight to the kitchen, washed everything in cold water, and dunked it in a sink filled with icewater to chill. You can’t be too careful with that kind of freshness.

A Champion juicer

Today in a country junk shop in Yadkin County, I came across a Champion juicer for $50. That’s a much better price than one can get on eBay. New, Champion juicers sell for over $200. This one is the current model (G5-NG-853-S) and is in excellent condition.

I’ve thought about buying a Champion juicer for a long time, but the price put me off. Not only are they useful, but they’re also a classic piece of engineering. Replacement parts and accessories are available on the Champion web site for a surprisingly reasonable price. They have a grain mill attachment for less than $75. I’ve wanted a grain mill anyway, and that would get double duty out of that beautiful motor.