Silicon Valley Redneck

Sometimes, it's worth trying stupid stuff.

I've finally gotten around to rummaging through my copy of The Lost Art of Real Cooking.

The material on yeast, and the differing strains thereof, set me a-thinkin'.  Catching and taming wild yeasts, as suggested in the book, seemed a bit much work, and I wasn't quite ready to try using probiotic pills as leavening (apparently some of the bacteria in those might be appropriate), but I figured a stop at a brewers' supply store might yield interesting material, both yeast strains and fermentibles.

So, having errands to the north this morning, I swung by More Beer! in Los Altos.

The salesman insisted that beer yeasts are as inappropriate for bread as bread yeasts are for beer, and that I wouldn't like the results.  Still, I bought a couple of packets of different varieties of dry yeast.

Home again, and experiment at making a mini-loaf of Boring White Bread with ale yeast.  (I'd expect to use it in Interesting Mutigrain Bread, but wanted to find out what flavor it would bring.)

So: warm water, bit of sugar, sprinkling of yeast, stir, add white whole wheat flour until it starts getting doughy, spritz canola oil over the top, leave it sitting someplace warm for a while.  OK, seems to be rising a bit.  Add a bit of salt and some more canola oil, stir well, dump into a mini-loaf pan.  Let rise for, I guess, an hour and a half.  Bake.

The top of the loaf collapsed.  Well, I had taken the incredibly-lazy approach; it wasn't even remotely properly kneaded.

Let cool a bit, slice, sniff.  Smells OK, not like white bread, but certainly like a fermented grain product, and not disgusting like beer.  Apply butter and eat.  Yum.

So:

• Ale yeast does in fact work for making bread.
• The resulting bread has more character than the other ingredients would account for.
• It doesn't come out tasting like beer.
• It does come out tasting like unusual, but good, bread.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a proper loaf of interesting bread.

(Bread: it's like solid beer!)

Footnote: Joy says it smells like beer, and doesn't want to taste it.

Footnote 2: small doses. I don't think all the, er, volatile organic compounds cooked out of this stuff.  "We never eat bread, for they make it with yeast, and one little bite turns a man to a beast.  Oh, can you imagine a sadder disgrace than a man in the gutter with crumbs on his face?"

Update: solid beer, yeah.  I dunno what the actual VOC content of that stuff was, but I had a long afternoon nap, then stayed up late, then had a largely sleepless night with my brain whirring randomly.  Not my normal reaction to a small dose of alcohol, and there's no way it was really a large dose, so I suppose there must have been some other post-Thanksgiving metabolic weirdness enhancing the effects.

I think I need to change the process in various ways next time I try that.  Notably: more exposed surface area while baking.

 

I don't think I'll be using...

...the contents of that particular can of tomato paste.

I applied the opener with some trepidation, noting that the lid was somewhat corroded, and, I fancied, just possibly domed.

The cupboard shown is about 4 feet from the point of opening, and the top of the spatter is about 2½ feet above where the can was.  Them's mighty lively tomatoes, worthy of Jim Richardson.

Looking at the bottom of the can, I find that it was about 2 years out of date.

Shows how often I use tomato paste.  Well, I won't be using it this evening, either.  Guess I'll use tomato sauce (whereof there's an ample stock, oft rotated) and let it simmer for a while.

And now for comething completely different

Honey loquat ice cream!

Note: that's loquat, not locust.

Put cream and honey in the blender and blend well.  Add loquats (minus seeds and skins, please!) and blend lightly.  Dump into the Donvier and freeze as normal.  Quantities are rather arbitrary (as in: I didn't bother measuring).

It's... different.  Not really a usual ice cream flavor.

Fairly tasty, though.

Could be a novel dessert to serve at a small party, if you happen to be bringing dessert to a small party during loquat season.

I don't really think I'll bother developing it further (as in: trying again and measuring the ingredients), but it was an interesting experiment.

Abomination!

Via Insty comes this coverage of a "food" gimmick (which I'd actually heard of a few days ago, when a friend forwarded a link to the product's web site).  Beyond Cheez Whiz... it's Pancake Whiz!  Er, "Batter Blaster."  For people who can't be bothered to mix Krusteaz pancake mix and water.  Yeesh.

Mind you, I don't use Krusteaz anymore.  I make my own pancake/waffle mix out of white whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, and whatever else catches my fancy at the time (oat bran, flaxseed meal, buckwheat flour, etc.).  When it's time to make a batch of pancakes or waffles, I just roughly measure about the right amount of the mix, and toss in an egg or two, a bit of oil, enough milk to get the right consistency, usually a bit of vanilla extract, and maybe some fruit.  Hey presto!  Hardly any trouble, cheap, and the composition matches what I'm supposed to be eating this year.  (Well, modulo the syrup, which at least is genuine tree squeezin's and not vaguely maple-flavored corn syrup.)

New health-food concept!

I've taken to making my own pancake & waffle mix, with healthy whole-grain stuff (white whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour, oat bran, flax seed meal, that kind of thing).

Then, when I make pancakes or waffles, I go and pour maple syrup all over them, which kind of ruins the "healthy" bit (or at least the "low glycemic index" aspect of it).

So - what the world needs now is - whole-grain maple syrup!

(With sawdust in it, I guess.  Wasn't there "diet bread", once upon a time, that was made with sawdust?)

And no objecting that "whole grain" is the wrong term because maple trees aren't "grain."  Ever look at maple wood?  It's got a lovely grain to it.

Exciting new snack food concept!

Popsquash!

Take one huge pan, cover bottom with 4" of oil, and heat until the oil starts to smoke.

Add hard squashes and cover.  Shake pan vigorously back and forth over high heat until all squashes have popped.

More nutritious than popcorn!

Culinary note for today

I've been rather fond of Trader Joe's "California Rice Trilogy" for a few years now.  Alas, it's gotten pricey (which suggests mixing my own instead), and now seems to have disappeared in favor of the new "Brown Rice Medley."

Which includes, among other things, daikon radish seeds.

Ugh.

Mixing rice and radish seeds turns out to be disgusting.  Besides, I'm sure it's forbidden by the Bible, somewhere in among the prohibitions against mixing shrimp and polyester, and Congresswomen from Marin County.

So, henceforth I'll be mixing up my own rice blend, consisting entirely of rice.

Thought for a hot day

One thing I haven't seen yet - though I admit I haven't been looking very hard:

Energy pops!

Frozen Red Bull onna stick!

Just the thing for caffeinating on a hot day!

Yeah, I know, in the freezer case they'd look like kid stuff:

"And if you went to gobble a snack at Baskin,
You could see the greatest horror man has known:
For little kids, for nothing more than askin',
Could get their coffee in an ice cream cone!"
            - Gary McGath,
            "The Alternate World Temperance Union"

Culinary note

Blackberry ice cream with whole blackberries isn't a good idea.

The berries freeze into big, crunchy, tasteless lumps.

Either smoosh the berries before mixing and freezing, or make the ice cream separately and then add it to room-temperature blackberries.

Pecan bars

I started with three cookbooks open in front of me: one with a recipe for lemon bars, and two with recipes for pecan pie. After much experimentation, here's the result:

Crust

1¼	cup	flour
½	cup	sugar
¼	lb	butter, softened

Mix thoroughly, and press into an 8" square baking pan. Prick all over with a fork, and bake 30 minutes at 325°F.

Meanwhile, prepare the topping:

Topping

¼	cup	sugar
¼	cup	corn syrup
¼	cup	maple syrup
1	tbs	corn starch
2		eggs
1	tsp	vanilla
1	cup	pecans, broken
½	cup	dates, chopped

Toss all ingredients except the pecans and dates into the blender, and homogenize.

When the crust has had its appointed time in the oven, take it out, let it cool for a few minutes, then distribute the pecans and dates over the top. Pour the blended topping liquid over the top. Put it back in the oven (still at 325°F), and bake for a further 40 minutes.

Remove from oven, allow to cool, and slice up into cookie-sized pieces.