A Perfect Set of Buns!

I know, I know, mille apologies for taking so long to put the newest post together, but once you see the subject you will understand. Some posts just take longer than others. And when you are dealing with perfection, well the extra time should be understandable. Perfection does not come quickly!

Have you ever wished you had perfect buns? I know I have! For the first time it’s possible for millions of cooks to feel the confidence that having firm, good looking buns gives and it won’t even require a torture device hawked by Suzanne Sommers to get them! All it takes is a little swirl here, a flourish there and a nice stretch or two. Give it a little time and “Bob’s your uncle.” You will have a set of buns that will make you the envy of the neighborhood.

Of course there’s a secret or two involved in the process, but nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing too mentally


taxing. I only know that once you experience them for the first time it will change your life. You will leap tall buildings at a single bound, sing and tip-toe through a verse of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. I can guarantee once you see how simple it is to have the loveliest buns on Wysteria Lane, you will never again seek to buy them.

I must give credit where credit is due. I didn’t invent the perfect buns. Again, the credit must go to my friend, Bill Wraith, a most excellent baker who is an incredible scientist and teacher. I have seen three people including myself reproduce gorgeous buns so am convinced this recipe is one for success and pure brilliance. Let’s face it, having inferior buns can completely ruin the appearance of many dishy showstoppers. So don’t let it happen to you.

The Perfect Buns
By Bill Wraith
Methodology amended by Blue Zebra
Yield 10-12 buns

Ingredients:
650 grams AP Flour (22.831 oz
290 grams Water (10.186 oz)
200 grams Milk (7.025 oz)
30 grams Olive oil (1.054 oz)
13 grams Salt (2.75 tsp)
1 package active dry yeast (2-1/4 tsp)


Method:
Mix flour, water, milk together until it looks like a shaggy mess. Let it sit for 20 minutes. This is considered the autolyse period. It is the period when gluten begins to form and the flour becomes fully hydrated from the liquid components of your recipe.



Perform a frissage movement on the dough. Using the heel of your hand, smear walnut size pieces of dough along the counter in order to break up any clumps left in the dough. Frissage also helps to continue the gluten development begun with the autolyse phase.

This recipe is very forgiving. I accidentally missed my 25 minute timer for the autolyse and let it go a full hour. You can see the yeast were particularly active and the dough rose! No problems. I simply degassed the dough (pressed out all the air), and continued with the next step of kneading.


It's time to knead in the remaining ingredients. Start by kneading in the yeast until completely incorporated. After the yeast, knead in salt and olive oil, again, folding and kneading until completely worked throughout dough. Knead dough about 5-10 minutes. This is a large window of variability. I knead by hand and usually knead in 3-5 minute increments. Nothing harsh, just a smooth rolling motion of the dough.I will often cover the dough with the top of a bowl and let it rest for about 15 minutes, then return and knead another 3-5 minutes. Letting the dough rest between kneading episodes does a couple of things. It allows gluten to continue developing as the dough relaxes between sessions. Resting allows the temperature of the dough to diminish, since the friction from kneading causes the temperature to rise in the dough.

Once the dough reaches the window pane stage*, it is ready to undergo bulk or primary fermentation. This is about a one to one and a half hour timespan when the dough is coming close to doubling for the first time and when flavors are developing.


During the bulk fermentation timeframe, I will perform anywhere from 2-4 sessions of the Stretch N Fold in order to further increase the dough strength. Increasing the strength of the dough allows the gluten strands to trap flavor components and CO2 gas within it's protein web, which causes the dough to rise.After the dough doubles for the first time, turn out the dough and scale it. Scaling means to portion the dough into units. You can use a scale for extra accuracy or eyeball it. Roll the dough into balls for hamburger buns or ropes for hotdog buns. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the buns to rise a final time. I use parchment paper to place the final bun dough on for rising and cooking. I also make sure that by the time the buns are fully risen prior to cooking, their sides will lightly touch. This way, they will have two soft surfaces on the sides.

Cook buns for 10-15 minutes at 460 degrees F. Buns will have a great oven spring (that means they will rise significantly in the oven). As soon as the buns are done (about 205degrees F internal temperature), place them in a plastic bag and allow them to cool slightly. The bag will trap steam and make the outer surface soft instead of crispy. Use immediately for best results.

Buns can be frozen for up to 3 months.

Blue Zebra NOTE:
This recipe is very forgiving and easy. Errors and time lapses still result in great tasting bread. You can really feel the dough change dimension as you knead it. It's excellent for beginner bakers. If you have 30 active minutes to cook, make these buns. They cost about $1.00 for all of them and the taste is so far superior to store bought buns.

Another thing to note...I added all the ingredients during the so-called "autolyse" period. Purists and professional or artisan bakers would spank me on this telling me in no uncertain terms that I did not use an "autolyse" period if I added salt, oil, and yeast. Autolyse, technically speaking, is only the stage where liquid and flours are allowed to mix and marry and become fully hydrated. But again, I want time saving and I doubt very seriously if the sophistication of my palette will be able to notice the difference. So far, I have not noticed any delay of yeast performance or impeeded risings because of doing this, which leads me to believe even more, that yeast and risen doughs are more forgiving than anyone gives them credit for being! Read more->

A Loaf of Bread (Sourdough Pagnotta), A Jug of Wine, A Book of Verse And Thou...

...Beside Me, Singing In The Wilderness ~Omar Khayyam

You know what happens when serendipity meets innovation? I don’t always know the answer to that either but sometimes, it results in an incredible loaf of sourdough bread! I recently experienced a most excellent outcome as the result of combining techniques described in two recipes for bread; Sourdough Pagnotta and the so called, New York Times No Knead Bread, so popular today among many home cooks.

My good friend, at another site, kindly amended a recipe for Sourdough Pagnotta that has quickly become B’s and my favorite bread of all time. The pagnotta has a rich, creamy texture, also known as crumb, while the crust is thinner and crispy. It’s the perfect thickness. Thick enough for crunch and thin enough that it won’t send you to the dentist for bridge work while you are eating it. That’s got to be great news, right?

The pagnotta is a very dense bread and the holes in it aren’t quite as open as other artisan loafs, at least mine aren’t. But, you just can’t beat this bread for having an easy recipe. It takes precious little effort to mix and prepare the dough and tastes delicious and flavorful. It’s great artisan bread for only pennies on the loaf. It’s also a versatile bread, taking well to variants like asiago pagnotta, roasted garlic pagnotta and black olive pagnotta. I have even done a really awesome tasting apple, smoked bacon and caramelized onion pagnotta bread that turned out so well!

It’s a high hydration loaf. This means that it has a higher percentage of water than other sourdough recipes. I believe a standard sourdough has around a 60-65% hydration and this is closer to 85% or 90% hydration. Scary to work with the first time but once you know the ropes about working with wet dough; it’s a piece of cake. Hmm, maybe not a piece of cake but it surely is a great piece of bread!

I had wanted to bring you the history or origins of this bread. But what I found is pagnotta is the Italian word for bread! So essentially this is one of many recipes for a loaf of sourdough Italian bread! Here are a few other words for bread from other countries.

bread in Afrikaans is brood
bread in Dutch is mik, brood
bread in French is pain
bread in German is Brot, Brot, panieren
bread in Italian is pagnotta
bread in Latin is crustum, panis
bread in Spanish is pan

And here is your bread quote for today!

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.

~ Mother Teresa

This bread is perfect for sharing with your special someone. B, my best friend and partner in crime and I love to eat it dipped in olive oil seasoned with a touch of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt, fresh ground black pepper, shaved parmesan, and a touch of basil. A wonderful, full bodied cabernet or other rich wine and a few roasted olives or grape tomatoes dipped in olive oil and salt make a great accompaniment to it as well. Add a slice or two of dried aged salami and a couple of black seedless grapes and you have a romantic picnic for two! The pagnotta is also wonderful as a bread accompaniment to any kind of meal you can imagine, roasted meat to casserole and everything in between! Mangia!

Sourdough Pagnotta
By Bill Wraith
Yield: 1 Large Loaf or 2 smaller Loaves

Ingredients:
400 grams fresh 100% hydration starter (my starter was taken out of the
refrigerator after having been refreshed 3 days earlier. I probably should
have used more recently refreshed and vigorous starter) (14.5 Ounces)
650 grams water (22.831 Ounces)
700 grams KA Organic AP (24.587 Ounces)
50 grams KA rye blend (optional - substitute white flour, whole wheat, or
other) (1.756 Ounces)
50 grams Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo flour (optional - substitute white
flour, whole wheat, or other) (1.756 Ounces)
18 grams salt (1.264 Tbsp)
300 grams pitted halved olives (I used calamata olives) - this is an optional
ingredient. (10.537 Ounces)

Method for making bread:
Mix:
Mix ingredients until well integrated and there is some resistance to stirring.
Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
(Bill’s Note: I think there was slightly too much water for my choice of flours and maybe because of the olives, which made the dough harder to handle. This was very slack dough. I would use a little less water next time, but I'm reporting this as I actually did it.)

Fold and Rest, Repeat:
Every 30-60 minutes pour the dough out onto the counter, let it spread a little, and fold it up into a ball. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover and let rest 30-60. Repeat this process every 30-60 minutes 3-4 times.
(Bill’s Note: I may not have repeated this enough, given the very wet dough I ended up with. The dough was still too slack later when I tried to shape the loaves.)

Bulk Fermentation:
Place the dough in an oiled rising bucket or bowl. Allow it to rise by double at room temperature.
(Bill’s Note: Actually, I wanted to bake by midnight, so I let it get a little warmer, about 80F, which may have been a little bit of a problem. I think it made the slack dough even a little more slack to also be warm.)

Shaping:
Pour the dough out on the table on a bed of flour and cut in two. Work with each loaf separately. Form a ball by carefully and gently pulling the sides toward the center repeatedly to get some surface tension on the smooth side underneath. Do not overhandle.
(Bills Note: Here I was a disastrous dough handler. I way overhandled it because it was too slack and would not form a ball. It just kept spreading out quickly. Well, I just decided after way too many times pulling at the sides to stop trying and went for flat bread. So, I can't emphasize enough, don't overhandle. Just make that shape and be done with it.

I am doing a second version, and I think I've discovered how to do this. Use thumbs and fingers of one hand to pinch and hold the gathered sides over the center, holding the gathered edges up a little to help the sides stretch and the shape to become more round and taking a bit of weight off the loaf. Use the other thumb and a couple of fingers to pinch a bit of the side, pull the bit out and up and over to the center, stretching the side as you do. Gather that bit in with the first hand along with others as you work your way around the loaf. Try to make it round by gathering a bit from the place that sticks out the most.)

Turn the dough over onto a thick bed of flour with the rough side down.

Final Proof:
Allow the loaves to increase in size by double.
(Bill’s Note: For me, this took about 3 hours. I'm still having a hard time figuring out when these higher hydration loaves have finished proofing. As I said there was too much water, and I never got these loaves to stiffen up very much. They mostly spread out on the counter.)

Bake:
Bake at 425 degrees F.
(Bill’s Note: This took about 25 minutes, and the internal temperature went quickly to 210F, which I've experienced with these flat high hydration loaves. I didn't get much oven spring. I think the over handling was a serious problem.)

Cool:
Allow the loaf to fully cool.

Results:
The flavor was as good as any bread I've made. The crumb was much less open than I had hoped but was soft and flavorful. I think the flatness was because of the over handling and maybe adding too much water to the dough. Maybe another fold or two would have helped. The gluten never really stiffened up enough. Still, this was a great tasting bread. My bad for the handling, but I'm already trying a second one. I also think the olives made the dough wetter, heavier, and harder to handle. The next try will be without olives.

Blue Zebra NOTE:
When working with wet doughs, high hydration doughs, the tendency is to be scared because the dough looks more like a batter than a dough. But be fearless! No worries, mon! The secret is wet hands!

To make it easier for me, I mix the dough in a bowl with one hand. One hand will be a mess; but that’s ok, it washes! I mix the dough initially until it is just a shaggy mess of incorporated flour, water and starter (I go ahead and add the salt…so sue me, I haven’t had a failure yet because of adding the salt at this phase for this particular dough), cover and leave it for the autolyse period. Then I come back and do my initial folding in the bowl!

I pick up a portion of the dough with my hand and stretch high above the bowl as far as it will stretch without breaking the gluten strands! Then I allow it to be pulled into the center mass of the dough. Once that stretch is finished, I turn the bowl a quarter turn (90 degrees) and repeat the action. I will do 8 of these stretch and folds in the bowl at one time, or 2 complete bowl revolutions. I let the dough rest again, covered. By this time, you will have helped form substantial gluten and the batter will resemble a very wet dough rather than a batter.

The next time, I come back to fold the dough, I will pour it out on the counter as Bill describes. It works to use a dough scraper (moisten it with water.) And it also helps to have wet hands. The dough won’t stick to you then. I don’t use any flour on the counter, but since this dough is so wet, I use a light sprinkle on the counter. The wet scraper and wet hands allow you to stretch and fold the dough, pulling gently from the underneath side (the counter side) of the dough with your hand on top of the sheet of dough, guiding it. You try not to flatten or degas the dough while working with it. The gas is what will make great, irregular holes in the final bread.

Here is an excellent video of doing the stretch and fold with a some what dryer dough (lower hydration dough). My friend, Mike Avery, at Sourdough Home developed this video for his student and is an excellent teacher and writer. I highly recommend his books. They are very affordable books and are available as online versions for quick downloads. You can be reading in less than five minutes.

I used my stainless steel Dutch oven to cook this bread because I don’t have my cast iron Dutch oven here. I used the lid for the first 30 minutes and then baked it another 30 minutes without the lid. I cooked the bread for one hour at 460 degrees F, and the final internal bread temperature was 211 degrees. It was perfect even though there was a rather large hole immediately under the top crust. I could have collapsed it with a pin to let the air out but was in a hurry to bake it for dinner.

I hope you will try this bread. Even though I cut into it before it was fully cooled, you can see how moist this bread is and in my opinion, it has much more complexity than the No Knead To Knead bread that is so popular right now. Read more->

Vermont Sourdough - A Southern Bread?

You know, the birthday celebration for Julia Child got me thinking. Julia wanted to let every American housewife know and understand that cooking flawlessly brilliant meals was at their fingertips; that everyone could do it. She was living proof. Clearly, more of her books and t.v. rubbed off on me than imagined, because that’s the basic premise for this blog. I want everyone to understand that good food, no, awesome food is easy. With a minimum investment of time and money, anyone can make incredible food; food that feeds the soul. The hardest step is to get over your fear of whatever you’re “askeered of” and do it quickly!

My greatest fear was fear of yeast and all things involving kneading and rising. I always assumed that yeasted items were fragile and depended so tightly on measures and rules and it frankly scared the bejeezes outta me. I avoided it like the plague. Our family was not a family who baked other than the basic biscuit, good old fashioned pie, occasional muffin or cake and maybe a quick bread or two at Christmas. But with the exception of one batter bread, aptly named “Dilly Bread”, because of the loads of dried dill in it, we never saw loaves rising on the counter.

But I knew I had to conquer my fear and de-mystify the process of baking if I was ever going to be able to do what I wanted most. Namely, I wanted to quit spending the outrageous sum of money per loaf for “artisan bread” from the market. I am a tightwad. Frugal doesn’t even come close to my relationship with money and yet, I never seem to have any extra – no matter how tightly I close my fist. I come by this honestly, unfortunately. Few people know, now thousands will know, that for most of my life growing up, we had very severe money issues and were even homeless for almost a two year period, save for the charity of friends and family who let us live with them and who lent our dad money when he lost his business.

It seems like life was divided for me – b.w.d. and a.w.d. or “before Wawa died” and “after WaWa died”. Wawa was Dad’s mom, our grandmother, who lived with us from before the time I was born until the day she died. She died handing me a glass of orange juice at the breakfast table, one Sunday after Church, in September. It felt like all the kids left in the house (my oldest sissy had married and moved away only months before) as well as mom and dad, had a mysterious shake-up and reversal of fortune from that moment onward – but that will be another post. Needless to say, I learned the value of a dollar as a very small girl and it was a large and painful lesson, especially for me and my sissy, A!

So back to bread…curmudgeonly begrudging $3.00/loaf for bread, I determined to make it myself or die trying. I believe fear is the worse part of baking. Bread dough and bread recipes are not shrinking Southern violets. They are fairly tolerant of great abuse and in fact are amazingly resilient: under kneading, over kneading, lack of moisture, over hydrated, cheap flours, chlorinated water, filtered water, over proofing, under proofing, under baking, over baking, you name it! The dough will rise and transform into bread through baking, given enough time and patience. Even the worst loaf of homemade bread on the worst day will taste better than the best store bought bread on any given day. I promise.



The real secret to baking is to have mentors, or people who have been there, done that. They will hold your hand, wipe your brow – metaphorically or even virtually and basically reassure you that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. Thanks to the internet there are whole sites dedicated to nothing but bread baking and these sights are populated by fantastically talented amateur and professional bakers, alike.

I encourage you to find one of these sites. Face your fear. Then break out the flour, water, salt and yeast and have a bread orgy! That $3.00 loaf will cost you about $0.20 cents to make and take you about 15 active minutes of cooking once you learn the methodology or as Julia said, “Once you learn the techniques, you will free yourself from recipes.” Well, maybe not quite! Baking bread will always at minimum require that you apply a balance or ratio of ingredients, but master the techniques of baking and you will be free to experiment with a window of grace attached. Bon Appetit!



Oh the other secret I learned? You have two choices with dough/gluten development. You can either knead the heck outta it and challenge the gluten, building protein strands as you go or you can let time and hydration do the dirty work and develop it for you. Guess which one I choose? :D

Vermont Sourdough Bread
By Jeffrey Hamelman – Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes
As posted by Weavershouse on another site
Yield – 2 loaves (batards)

Ingredients:
LIQUID-LEVAIN BUILD:
150 grams Bread flour (5.269 oz)
188 grams Water (6.603 oz)
30 grams Mature culture (liquid) (1.054 oz)

FINAL DOUGH:
750 grams Bread flour (26.344 oz)
100 grams Whole-rye flour (3.512 oz)
462 grams Water (16.228 oz)
19 grams Salt (1 TBSP + 1 tsp)
338 Liquid levain (all less 30 g) (11.872 oz)

Method:
1. LIQUID LEVAIN:
Make the final build 12 to 16 hours before the final mix, and let stand in a covered container at about 21 °C/70°F

2. MIXING: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt. In a spiral mixer, mix on first speed just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary Cover the bowl with plastic and let stand for an autolyse phase of 20 to 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and finish mixing on second speed for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. The dough should have a medium consistency. Desired dough temperature: 22 °C/ 76°F

3. BULK FERMENTATION: 2 1/2 hours.

4. FOLDING: Fold the dough either once (after 1 1/4) hours) or twice (at 50-minute intervals), depending on dough strength.

5. DIVIDING AND SHAPING: Divide the dough into 1.5-pound pieces shape round or oblong.

6. FINAL FERMENTATION: Approximately 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 22 °C/76° F (alternatively, retard for up to 8 hours at 10 °C/50 °F, or up to 18 hours about 5,5 °C/42 °F).

7. BAKING: With normal steam, 240 °C/460 °F for 40 to 45 minutes. More often than not, this bread is retarded before the bake. The result is a loaf with moderate tanginess and a sturdy crust that conveys a lot of bread flavor.

Blue Zebra NOTE:

I followed the directions without any tweaks and folded the bread twice after the autolyze period: at 1 hour and at 2 hours. It rose to double in about 3 hours. I divided, rested, shaped and did a final rise of about 2 hours and baked.

This bread was only slightly tangy because I did not retard (refrigerate) the dough following the bulk fermentation. Had I done so, I believe it would have had a much more sharp, sourdough flavor. The texture of the crumb, while not as open as I’d like, was lovely – tender and moist. The crust crunched with just the right thickness and sharp crackle. You could actually taste the color brown when you bit into it. What does brown taste like? Brown tastes like a good piece of toast. Brown tastes like oven-ny goodness. This truly was the best sourdough bread I’ve baked and the prettiest. Hope you will give it a try! Oh, and I used my hands to mix and produce this bread. It still only took 15 minutes of active time, so don't be discouraged if you do not own a Kitchen Aid or other stand mixer! Also sourdough starters can be purchased online from several sources or you can start your own. Mike Avery is an excellent teacher for this Also, a great tool to have at your fingertips is this nifty gram converter. It doesn't take into account specific gravity of an ingredient but here's where I draw the line in the sand. If I need to be talking and thinking in specific gravities, then the recipe is doomed to failure before it hits the mixing bowl. As you can see in the first piccy of the bread...we managed just fine with this little tool. :D However, if you need more precision, here is the gram converter for specific ingredients.

Here's a little toast and jam as requested by my friend browndog! The jam is storebought *wah* but it is good, B assures me. It's peach amaretto with pecans. Now I can say, the peach and pecans are definitely Southern and even Texan. Our peaches from Fredricksberg and Fairfield are equal to any Georgia peach you want to try.

Read more->

Pizza Club Part 2 - Getting Saucy

It was Friday in the Zebra Pen and that can only mean one thing, Pizza Club. What is Pizza Club? Pizza Club began with my niece, my sissy and brother-in-law back in Dallas. It was all about great friends and family, great pizza and welcoming the weekend! To other blue zebras out there, Pizza Club is all about discussing and making great homemade pizza.

In continuation of our Pizza Club series, I promised we would get saucy this week - talking about anything having to do with sauce. When you really think about it, pizza has three main components that define its quality level: the crust, the sauce, andthe cheese. Get these three things right and the toppings will almost take care of themselves - almost. It sometimes seems as if there are as many variations of each of these components as there are pizzaiolos or pizza makers in the world, so let’s explore the options.

Marinara sauce, sliced tomatoes, chopped tomatoes, olive oil and garlic, alfredo sauce, barbeque sauce, taco sauce, ketchup, hoisin sauce, tiger sauce, or no sauce. This just skims the surface of sauces! I kinda feel like Bubba Gump here but how do you know which sauce to use? Personal preference and trial and error wins every time. What are the conditions under which you are cooking? Meaning, are you making an authentic Neopolitan pizza? Do you need or want to adhere to “the rules” of Neopolitan pizza making? Do you have a high temperature brick or deck oven?

Purists follow strict guidelines depending on the regional specialty they are cooking. Still others will tell you it’s San Marzano tomatoes, canned or fresh and a pinch or two of spices, a grating of parmesan and badabing badaboom, fuhgeddaboudit…there’s your sauce!But once you decide which flavor profile you want: red, white, stylized, funkalicious, then there are other things to take into consideration.

Just as there are three main components to a great pizza, there are also three main variables to determining how to sauce. The most important is determining the heat of the oven along with the length of cooking time. The number and order of toppings also influences sauce integrity. If the sauce is going next to the crust, then the last variable affecting the sauce is the thickness of the cheese and coverage.

Many pizzerias use an uncooked sauce because commercial pizzas cook under high heat in brick ovens or pizza ovens. Temperatures can reach 750°F or more! Temperature this high has the potential to overcook or burn the tomato sauce, especially when cheese is placed in chunks or slices intermittently around the surface area as opposed to grated cheese covering the sauce 100 percent. Using raw sauce effectively combats the over cooking problem.

Most home ovens usually heat up to a maximum 550°F, unless you use the cleaning cycle and I won’t even begin to address that option in this installment! So I don’t really feel like the home pizza cook faces the same types of heat degradation presented by commercial ovens. It’s more important to pick a sauce that carries delicious flavor that won’t break down into water. Water + raw dough = soggy mess when cooked. If that happens, the dough underneath the sauce will never crisp. So choose your sauce, raw or cooked, fresh or canned, traditional or get-down-funky by flavor preference, just watch the water content of it!

As far as red sauces go, I have used cooked sauce, raw sauce and sliced fresh tomatoes. I actually prefer the taste of the raw sauce over cooked and thickened marinara sauces. It tastes “more authentic” whatever that means. For raw sauces I’ve been using canned tomatoes. Again, I feel the flavors are more intense using canned over fresh because of water content. I either use whole canned, seeded and drained or diced and drained. I tend to like the diced and drained better, because it seems like there is higher tomato volume per can. If you do decide to use raw sauce, be sure to allow ample time for the tomatoes to drain using a mesh strainer. At some point in the near future, I will try using roasted tomatoes as a base.

I also like white pizzas either made with an alfredo sauce or a simple olive oil and garlic sauce. In fact, this is my preference for pizzas with non-traditional toppings like artichokes, shrimp, clams or chicken. These simple sauces seem to allow the toppings to take more of a starring role in the pizza.

I have on occasion made specialty pizzas using crazy sauce bases like barbeque sauce and hoisin sauce. They produced good tasting pies but I don’t tend to feel they remind me of pizza from a pizza = comfort food standpoint.

Here is my technique for making fresh sauce. What’s your favorite sauce?

Chunky Pizza Sauce - Raw
Yield 3-10" Pizzas

Ingredients:
1-28 oz. Can Diced Italian Tomatoes
3 Cloves Garlic, minced finely
1 Tbsp Dried Italian Herbs (2:1:1 Mixture of dried basil, oregano, thyme)
1 tsp Kosher Sauce
1 Pinch Cracked Red Pepper
3 Tbsp Parmesan Cheese, grated
2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Method:
2 Hours before topping pizza, place diced tomatoes in strainer and apply 1 tsp of Kosher salt to allow them to give up much of their water. Try to remove as much liquid from the tomatoes because that will allow the crust to crisp.

After tomatoes have drained fully, combine all ingredients and set aside.

When pizza dough has proofed in the pan, quickly brush dough, lightly, with olive oil then top with raw, chunky sauce and remaining toppings and cheese. I place slightly less sauce in the middle of the pizza than I do around the outer area of the crust. Also, leave 1" around edges, unsauced in order to give a lip to the pizza.

For those who desire a smooth, raw pizza sauce, simply place tomatoes in bowl of food processor and pulse to puree or else, use a burr (stick) blender until smooth. Then add remaining ingredients.

Blue Zebra NOTE:
I made two different doughs this week, experimentation on the perfect crust continues. The thin crust grilled dough version from Cooks Illustrated using the traditional yeasted method was used to make the thin crust. I also used another recipe from a forum member at EpiCurious Forums to make the Chicago-Style deep dish pizza. B voted the Chicago Deep Dish as a 9 out of 10 and within the top 3 pan pizzas to date. I voted the thin crust at about 8 out of 10. I like the sourdough version of it better. I also think there is a preferable dough out there and I will experiment with it next week. Stay tuned, the next pizza club will talk about cheese! Read more->

Little Miss Muffet and Her Crumpets

Little Miss Muffet sat on her crumpet, eating her curds and whey… (Ok, maybe she didn’t sit on a crumpet, maybe it was a tuffet! But I don’t exactly know what a tuffet is either. We don’t have tuffets in the South…but we do have princesses and Sweet Potato Queens!)

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine over at another site, about what people in the UK call English Muffins. Someone made the comment they thought they were called crumpets and from there we completely threadjacked the original poster’s thread on English Muffins. I admitted that I’d never had a crumpet before and I don’t even think I’ve seen one. Have you?

Growin’ up we often had a big Sunday breakfast, brunch really. We would go to church and then everyone would get in the kitchen and start cooking and visiting with each other. We sometimes sat at the table and visited for hours. It was a lazy and delicious way to catch up with everyone and just treat the day easily.

We had the usual Southern fare: biscuits, pancakes, waffles, toast, muffins or the like; never all at once, mind you. It was an either/or proposition. Occasionally we would have an English muffin, but they were expensive and a real treat in our house. I think I maybe only had them 4 or 5 times in my first 18 years of life. So it’s no surprise, despite having visited many different types of restaurants in many towns, that I would not be familiar with crumpets.

I vowed to make up for that blank spot in my culinary history. I decided to make them. Thanks to browndog for passing along the recipe from Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Elizabeth David, so I am told, writes recipe books with an insight into English history and is “chatty” in her delivery. She sounds like someone I’d love! :D

I added her book to my wish list but I will go ahead and post the recipe here.

English Crumpets
By Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery
Yield: 8-10 Crumpets

Ingredients:
3 cup or so unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp dry yeast (1/2 oz. fresh)
2 1/2 cup milk and water mixed (a generous measure)
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp oil

Second Mixing:
1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup warm water or a little more

Method:
Warm the flour in an earthenware bowl in a low oven for 5 minutes.

Warm the oil, milk, water and sugar to blood heat. Use a little of this to cream the yeast. (I proofed active dry yeast in 1/2 cup warm water and reduced the quantity of milk showing here by 1/2 cup.)

Mix the salt with the warm flour, stir in the yeast, pour in the liquid, and stir the batter very well and vigorously, until it is smooth and elastic. Cover the bowl, leave batter to rise at room temp until the whole surface is a mass of bubbles and the mixture looks as if it were about to break. This will take 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Forestall the natural falling of the batter by beating it down yourself with a wooden spoon.

Dissolve the baking soda in the warm water and stir it into the bowl. Cover the bowl and leave the batter to recover, for about 30 minutes. This time, put it in a rather warmer place, unless you need to delay the cooking of the crumpets, in which case use cold water for dissolving the soda and remove the bowl of batter to a cool place.

Cooking the crumpets:
Grease the griddle very lightly, also the crumpet rings.

Put 4 rings on the griddle; pour enough batter into each to come almost to the top. Let them cook very gently, 7 to 10 minutes. By this time there should be a mass of tiny holes. If the holes haven't appeared, the batter is too thick. Add more warm water or milk to the batter before cooking the next batch.

Once the crumpets have set, it should be easy to slip off the rings and turn them over. They only need 3 minutes on the other side. (Just enough time to add a little color to the 2nd side.)

Browndog comments, “Here is what Elizabeth David has to say about her crumpets: ‘Personally, I find crumpets edible only when freshly cooked, warm and soaked in plenty of butter. Toasting makes them tough and alters the whole structure. I think it preferable to reheat them in a covered dish in the oven, with butter. When all is said and done, crumpets are only yeast pancakes confined to rings and so made thick and of a uniform size.’”

Blue Zebra NOTES:
This recipe was very easy. I used 3-1/2” rings that I bought at Sur La Table for $0.95 each. I was a little skeered cuz I just didn’t know how thick to make the batter. As my spill-over pictures show, don’t fill your rings any more than 2/3 full or you will have trouble. I cooked the crumpets about 12-13 minutes over low heat, in a cast iron skillet. I then flipped them and cooked for another couple of minutes on the second side. I only removed the ring after cooking on both sides.

These are delicious. They taste quite like a very thick blini (yeasted pancake) and much, much better than your average pancake. They are totally worth making again. The next time I make them; I will begin the batter the night before and retard the batter in the fridge over night.

I made a big Sunday breakfast. It will be the only thing I will cook today. Dinner tonight will most likely be watermelon salad and leftover chicken. The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, cheese grits, bacon, homegrown tomatoes, and homemade crumpet with butter and amaretto/peach/pecan jam, and a slice of watermelon. It’s incredible to me, but again, this entire huge meal was only about $1.10 including 2 cups of coffee. Amazing, yes? Read more->

Friday Pizza Club - The Dough (Part 1)

It was Friday in the Zebra Pen yesterday and that can only mean one thing, Pizza Club. What is Pizza Club? Pizza Club began with my niece and my sissy and brother-in-law back in Dallas. It was a fun celebration of the end of the week and featured my niece and one of her friends and the neighborhood pizza hangout named Slider and Blues. It was a great, family place with games for the kiddos and ice cold beer for the adults - loud, bright and hoppin’ with people. It wasn’t your basic Chuckie Cheese, although Lord knows, we’ve had our share of outings there as well.

Slider and Blues made the most fantastic pizzas. The crust was super thin and crunchy, almost cracker like, with excellent flavor. Toppings ranged from routine to exotic and everywhere in between and it was the perfect food to end a crazy week, especially when you threw in the ice cold brews to wash it down.

Since that time, Sliders is long gone and my niece is now a lovely young lady, all grown up and graduating from college. She moves to Atlanta this month and begins a new job and a new life and although I am so proud of her, the part of me that holds onto the past still treasures the memory of that precious little girl and her best friend sitting there eating pizza with us. Time passes so quickly, so don’t forget to enjoy the moment now, while you can because it will be long gone before you know it.

I’ve tried replacing the pizza from Pizza Club night in an effort to stem nostalgic waves and so far, have been spectacularly unsuccessful in my attempts. I’ve found no pizza places in Houston who can compare (with the exception of Fuzzy's Pizza) and all the national chain suspects fail dismally with ice cold, cardboard pizzas delivered with congealed cheese in pools of fat. Hardly appetizing and sadly not in keeping with the fun spirit that was Pizza Club!

Six months ago, out of desperation I threw out our last piece of ratty, cardboard, look-alike pizza and made the dreaded statement, “I can do better than this!” These are fightin’ words in our house. This statement is usually followed by, “This place is on my black list and I will never eat at ‘x’ place, again…as God is my witness!”

Well get down Scarlett! No one ever wants to be included on my black list. And so it began - my desperate experimentation into pizza, which actually initiated my forays into baking and sourdough. First, let me introduce my starter, Sir Stinksalot, aka Stinky, for short. He is much maligned, but a sure trooper. He’s endured abuse and neglect and kept on growin’ despite my feeble inconsistency as a nurturer and care-giver. He deserves a medal.

Over the last months, I’ve tried about ten different dough recipes from heavy-hitters such as Peter Reinhardt to Jeff Varasano, the obsessed Pizza guy from New York. None of the doughs produced what I was looking for when made by me. I don’t know if it’s the fact that my doughs are hand-made and I’m still not fully developing the dough or that I’m doggedly using All-Purpose flour instead of high gluten flour or bread flour or what. But I don’t get the oven spring with the crusts that I expect. Maybe I’m under-proofing them?

Anyway, I found a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated for Grilled Pizza to serve as inspiration for the latest evolution of dough. But I couldn’t just “make it as written”. Oh no, that would be way too simple, right? Yeah, sheesh! So I translated it to a sourdough version. So far, this has been the best recipe for my thin, cracker crust. I would give this a 9, in a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest). B says that he likes this pizza dough when made into pan pizza, his preference, and gives it 9 out of 10. I made an “original crust” which is similar to a hand tossed and I think I must still continue to work on technique. The crust was not thick and fluffy on the outer edge.

Well, each Friday, I hope you will experiment with me as we continue our quest for the perfect pizza. Here are the pictures of this weeks supplicants (can you tell I’m Catholic?) :D. I included the current crust recipe. I apologize for the length of the recipe. There really is no easy or short-winded way to discuss all the variations of this dough. It's simple to make but complex to explain.

In next week’s Pizza Club installment, we will discuss tomato sauce or sauce options for Pizza. Mangia!

Blue Zebra Pizza Crust
Based on the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated
Make 4 (12") original or thin crusts or 1 (10-1/2") Pan Pizza + 2 (10-12") original or thin crusts

Preferment:
7.33 oz All-Purpose Flour
1 cup Starter by volume (1:4:4 ratio = 1 part starter: 4 parts flour: 4parts water)
1 cup Water by volume

Remaining Recipe:
6oz of All-Purpose Flour, +/- 3oz or All-Purpose Flour
1 Tbsp Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp Sugar
1-1/4 tsp Iodized Salt
½ tsp Instant Yeast
2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Method:
Preferment:
Combine Starter and water and mix to incorporate into a thin slurry. Add flour and mix with a sturdy spatula or dough whisk until mixture forms a doughy paste, similar in texture to “glumpy oatmeal”. Stir it vigorously for about 2 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to ferment. Mixture should sit until doubled (that takes about 4-5 hours for mine at 80 degrees but it will vary depending on the strength of each starter). Once preferment has doubled, place in fridge to retard or immediately mix into the remaining dough ingredients. **See note below to discuss why this is important.

Crust:
Fit food processor with the plastic dough blade. Don’t use the metal one, because of the heat build up. Add remaining flours and starter and pulse to combine. Allow this to sit for 20 minutes in the bowl with the lid in place to autolyse, this is a time when gluten structure really begins forming and where the liquid from the water will completely hydrate the flour grains. Once the 20 minutes are up, add the yeast and sugar and pulse to incorporate. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse to mix well.
(Note: All the water for this recipe was added during the preferment. You will want to add water because logic tells you, that you don't see any in the bulk of the dough recipe but trust. Wait. Mix. If the dough is too dry, then add water a tablespoon at a time...but it won't be. Trust.)

Once all the ingredients have been incorporated using a brief, pulsing technique, you will be looking for the dough to “come to together” or “clear the sides of the bowl”. Depending on humidity and your flour that day, it may or may not be too wet. Using 15 second pulses, spin the blade in the dough and watch to see the dough condition.

If it does not come together, measure out ¼ cup of flour and add it by tablespoons until dough forms a very moist ball that sits on top of the blade. This could take you as much as ½ cup of flour added incrementally. When you’ve made this recipe once, make a note of how much additional flour you had to add, that way you will know within limits the next time you make the dough and it will be an easier recipe to recreate.

Transfer dough to the counter and knead a couple of times to form a ball. Dough should be smooth and elastic but still be wet and a good deal sticky. When in doubt, err on the side of wet. Place dough ball into a lightly oiled bowl and coat dough on both sides. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow dough to double in size. This could take 1-2 hours, more or less!

When dough has doubled, gently deflate dough and cut into portions. I get 3 crusts from this recipe: 1 thick crust/pan pizza (10-1/2”) which uses almost ½ of the dough volume and 2 thin crust pizzas (12”) splitting the remaining dough volume.

If making dough for later in the week, place dough in lightly oiled plastic baggies and place in fridge. These will keep up to six days in the fridge because it’s sourdough. If needed, you can freeze the dough at this point. Move dough from the freezer to the fridge the day prior to using.

Forming the Pizzas:
Allow dived dough to rest on a lightly floured counter for about 15 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent crust from forming. Resting allows the gluten “to relax” so that the dough becomes extensible (able to be gently stretched).

For pan pizza:
Gently coax dough to fill a 10-1/2 cast iron skillet that has been liberally sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina, leaving thicker edges. Cover skillet with plastic wrap and allow dough to rise for 45 minutes. Top and bake at 550 for 20 minutes.

For hand tossed pizza:
Flour your hands and wrists well. Form dough into a disk and gently start working your fingers around the edges of the dough, letting the dough suspend in the air and letting gravity help pull the disk bigger. Once big enough, put both fists underneath the dough and use them to gently pull the dough into a larger circle. You are trying to uniformly thin the dough out in the middle while keeping the outermost edges of the dough built up and thicker. If the dough fights you and resists stretching, set it on a lightly floured counter, cover with plastic and allow dough to rest for 5 minutes. Come back and continue stretching until dough is about 10-12” in diameter. Place dough on parchment paper, sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover with plastic wrap and an inverted baking sheet with 1” sides and allow dough to rise for 45 minutes. Top and bake at 550 for 8-10 minutes.

For cracker thin crust:
Lightly flour disk of dough and roll out to 1/8” thickness using a rolling pin. Dust top of dough very lightly with flour and gently rub into dough to make it less sticky. Dock dough with tines of a fork to prevent crust from rising during baking. Top with cornmeal. Multiple doughs on parchment can be stacked on top of each other until ready to bake. To blind bake thin crust dough, place the parchment with one dough round into 550 degree oven for 3 minutes. Dough will set and be just at the point of browning on the bottom. Remove from oven and gently flip dough upside down onto parchment. Dough will now have the cornmeal side “down”.

If parchment has browned, pull off browned edges or use a new sheet of paper. Top newly exposed and slightly browned surface and bake at 550 for 6-8 minutes or until cheese is melted and edges are brown and crisp.

** Blue Zebra NOTE:
Sourdough is a natural levain. That means, there are natural yeasts that eat the sugars available in the dough and create the by-products of carbon dioxide and alcohol. Carbon dioxide causes the dough to rise when the gluten strands trap it and contain it within the dough. Alcohol just adds a little bit to the flavor.

The primary taste producing agents are the undercover buddies of natural yeast, lactobacilli, which are naturally occurring pro-biotic bacteria. These guys are good guys. They are great for your digestion and are found in a healthy human gut. They are also found in naturally fermented foods like yogurts, etc. and help you by helping to break down food and keeping the unhealthy gut flora in check (from over running your body). These guys love yeast because yeast produce the food the lactobacilli eat. LBs (lactobacilli abbrev.) in turn, digest this food and give off their own bi-products, acetic acid and lactic acid.

These acids flavor the bread, reduce the pH, making it resistant to spoilage and mold, and generally make a very pleasant sour taste distinctive of sourdough.The down side of LBs is that they cause an acid environment so if you use too much of a starter, it can sometimes cause the gluten strands to fail because the acid tears down the gluten structure and releases the CO2, resulting in dense hockey pucks and door stops.

That is why in this recipe where I use a large amount of starter, I want to retard (or put the guys into a sleep) as soon as the preferment has doubled. You could use a smaller portion of starter in the preferment and let it ferment longer. Either way will produce more flavor components in your crust.These pizzas are sooo good, you will never buy take-out pizza again. So says Scarlett and God who were our witnesses ;) ! Read more->

The Summer of Sourdough

I tend to catalog the passing of time by key events that happen within each year. Just as 1969 is remembered as the "Summer of Love" to so many American baby boomers, 2007 will be remembered by me as the "Summer of Sourdough." I gave birth to a one ounce jar of odorific yeasty joy about two months ago after determining that I would no longer be held hostage by my fear of yeast and breadmaking in general. Armed with a set of tongs, a clothespin for my nose and a pair of safety goggles I began my intrepid experimentation with sourdough starters.

I believed with enough perseverance and patience (neither of which is my strong suit), I could breathe life into inanimate flour and water. And I did! Along the way however, my starter, nicknamed Sir Stinksalot went through many phases before he became a bonifide sourdough levain. Some of his nick names have included such heralded titles like General Chaos, Mister Meaner and just general, all around, "Stinky" for short.

I am no authority on sourdough and am certainly not an acclaimed baker, by any means. I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of cook and in my experience that type of attitude rarely bodes well for baking. Baking is an exact science as much as an art. Working with yeast is even more of an artful science and when you get to the subset of natural levains or natural yeasts like sourdough, the bar rises exponentially and almost exists in a completely alternate world. I am happy to say, however, that with the exception of several unintended "door stops" and "bricks" and a few over-zealous toxic spills resulting from overly-risen preferments onto innocent counter tops, there have been very few casualties in this combat zone I call "The Sourdough Wars." Mostly we've just had many loaves of mediocrity and the biggest reward thus far is being able to make the claim that I am baking bread that only costs about $0.25/loaf. Compared to $3.00/loaf - that's gotta be worth somethin', right?

B usually knows when to shut up and take one for the team. I think it's a certain "get off of my cloud" look I wear that warns him I might possibly be in the throws of channeling Elle May Clampitt or something. He says very little about uber-dense bread and brickets loosely referred to as biscuits. He is a good sport. And clearly he loves my attempts at penny-pinching. They are usually as successful as my zany and impractical get-rich-quick schemes and ideas for new businesses...um, which isn't "very!"

I was particularly pleased (not to mention blown away) this morning to have succeeded so spectacularly with the English Muffins pictured above. I got this recipe from a friend of mine, Katie, who participates at another site and she makes wonderful bread or at least, she makes wonderful pictures of bread! Tending to trust her accounts as accurate, I'm thinking if this recipe is any judge, she DOES make excellent bread.

The texture of the crumb is moist and light at the same time - unexpected, really. They have enough body to act as a great "delivery system" for yummy things like egg, bacon and cheese while still retaining a delicacy you just don't find in a store bought English muffin. I made homemade egg mcmuffins for breakfast and they tasted soooo awesome! My McMom would be proud. Mickey D eat your McHeart out! Here's Katie's recipe:

Katie's Sourdough English Muffins
Makes about 12

Ingredients:
1/2 C starter (mine is a 100% hydration "white starter" from all-purpose flour)
1 C milk
2-3/4 C AP flour
1 TBSP sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
Semolina or cornmeal, for dusting

Method:
Combine starter, 2 C of flour and milk in a large bowl. Stir to combine, cover with plastic wrap, and leave out for 8 hours or overnight. After the overnight rest, add remaining flour, sugar, salt and baking soda and mix well. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes. Roll out to 3/4" and cut with a biscuit cutter into rounds. You can re-roll the scraps, but you may need to let the dough rest before cutting more muffins from them. Place muffins on a piece of parchment dusted with semolina and let rest for 45 minutes. Spray griddle or skillet lightly with spray oil. Heat griddle to medium and cook muffins for about 6-8 minutes on each side, or until browned on the top and bottom and cooked through. These have great griddle spring and rise quite a bit during the "baking". Split with a fork and enjoy with your favorite topping! I don't even toast them if I want to eat them right off the griddle--they don't have that raw taste that store bought English muffins have.

Blue Zebra NOTE: I rolled my muffins out to 1/2" and set them on a parchment paper lined pan that had been sprinkled with cornmeal. Let them rise to a little less than double in about 45 minutes to an hour. The recipe made 12, as promised. I used a cast iron skillet to cook them. They fit 3 to a pan and I'm able to control the cooking better than I can in stainless or on the cast iron griddle. I don't use any oil, just the age-worn "seasoning" that remains on the cast iron. I cook them over medium to med-low for about 2-3 minutes per side. You have to have the heat strong enough for a good rise but low enough so they don't burn on the bottoms. Once done, remove them and place on a cooling rack. When all 12 are finished, I pop the rack directly onto my baking stone in a pre-heated 350 degree oven and finish cooking them for 4 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them cool. Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven, right Pillsbury Doughboy? Enjoy! Read more->