Spring Thyme

Posted by pete on March 30th, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

As daft as my neighbors may think I am, I start to walk through my garden the minute I notice the snow retreating; well before I can even see the outlines of the beds still covered by feet of snow. Over an over again on the previous, refrozen, footsteps of yesterday. Thinking of every potential nestled in the Earth, with the occasional word of encouragement to those plants that need it, and projecting a mental picture of all the new things I will plant – sowing the fields with spirits unborn.

I don’t think I could ever live where there are no seasons or even mild seasons; or again in the city where none of that really matters, you just wear different clothes that’s all. The seasons can drive you crazy. The cycle of carrying the brown and lifeless husks of all your love and efforts to the fire and watching them sail up into the moon less night in contrast to joy you get from the pain of the rock digging into your knee as you smile nose inches away from the ground, inhaling the Earthy smell of everything that has come and gone, and rejoicing at the sight of something new cracking the soil surface still wearing a little seed-shell hat. That is not even a sentence but more like 20. Winter is necessary. Spring sucks, it takes forever.

The sun has some warmth again and you poke the newly uncovered soil like someone trying to wake a slumbering drunk, but to no avail. Mother still has to sleep it off.

A couple of inches of snow pulled back from the edge of one the raised beds to reveal a bit of thyme that I did not fully pull up last fall. Who would have thought it would over winter in the Adirondacks! I will have to plant some in the bed that snuggles up to the house, the one that the sage plants ( three years going now) seem to like so much.

Last Sunday I was woken up by the pager tones calling out Au Sable Forks Fire Department around 6am. Not the first thing you want to see when you roll over in bed (picture from bed). Someone set the old mill on fire again.

The window was open all night because it was in the 40s, which meant Ember spent the night in the window. But she got up again and looked on tooking notes regarding the speed and efficiency of the response.

This Saturday was spent experimenting, but not all bakes goes as planned. My peel, Emma, was having a bad day which resulted in a less than perfect drop onto the stone.

Even though I did not let the…thing…brown up, the experiment was still a success as the irregular bubbles were just about exactly what I was going for in addition to the cream color. No special flour here, just time, temperature and amount of “bread” yeast.

Some of the wild yeast breads. I was playing with my cuts. This one almost worked. You can see the other cuts in the adjacent loaves. They spread but not as much as this one did. It has to do with the angle, which also gives it that almost “tearing” look on the left side by the “ear” and a much wider spread than a near vertical cut.

Quite happy. Only two have “bread” yeast. Bet you will be hard pressed to pick them out.

 

Nothing but trouble….

Persephone, the Kore, and the Rising of the Fermenting Fall

Posted by pete on March 23rd, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

A loaded title for sure. Many places to put the emphasis and change the meaning. I have to grin at the unanimous feed back that the video attached to the Epic Battle post weirded people out. While there are numerous other references in it for sure, at its core it is about spring and Persephone; the queen of the underworld and daughter or the harvest-goddess Demeter. But this post is also about something that starts in the fall, apples, and lasts until spring as hard cider.

Up at 4am for no good reason, but plenty of time to think. Decided that I needed a better environment for my bread to rise. Snuggled next to the wood stove is fine but the dough must stay covered with plastic wrap to keep from drying out. But plastic wrap also eats the flour dusting so important for presentation. So, a proving box is needed.

The other issue is that lately I have been making loaves that are a weeeeee bit too big for my oven stone. Fix #1: extend the stone. The checkout lady at the store looked at my like I was daft when I inquired if they had any broken stones as I did not want to waste a perfectly good one. I never really got the opportunity to fully explain as she quickly snatched the $20 bill out of my hand and said “I won’t bother offering you a bag for that.” Probably did not help that I said “Bigger stone. Check. Good for bread bad for kidneys,” and emphasized with a finger check and big grin as I left. Have mark off another store as never visit again….

Mini-Peel. Sounds like a secret agent name. 

The idea is that I can take these straight to the stone or to the Cadillac of peels I made the other week. Basic idea is maximum dough mobility with minimal degassing. It also happens to be a good way to know just how wide my oven stone is. Thin is the idea, less fall equals, well, less fall….

It was going to take a couple of days before I could test, but in the midst of making…did I mention the tagine?

I recently ordered a tagine as I love cooking in pottery and stoneware. I happened across the most odd recipe that is for beets, lots of onions, beef, cinnamon, and few other spices. It sounds like a strange strange combination but the most amazing at the same time. I happen to really like it with local ADK beef and yellow beets. I can not even begin to explain the pleasure this dish brings, except for the excruciating 3-4 hours it takes to cook; smelling wonderful all along.

Oh but we were talking about proving (Proofing) boxes. In the middle of the day I got a text asking about beer in bread. That quickly turned into discussion about hard cider in bread. Not really liking hard cider but having some in my fridge, I figured it was a perfect experiment to use to test out the proving box.

In the middle of making the box and dispatching mini-peel, the neighbors came over. Good neighbors agree to look after your cat when you call them from the airport and tell them you have been deployed for two weeks. Great neighbors ask you a month in advance to take care of their critters then bring you lots of booze at 3 in the afternoon when they get back. Some how I manged to keep the tagine going and get the cider bread in the oven — about 60 minutes in the proving box; the idea is that you put some boiling water in the bottom to keep the humidity up while the bread rises….Time for the bigger stones!

Aye, it turned out okay. Nice oven rise, smells like cider but with only a hint of cider flavor. Maybe reducing the cider a little is necessary, or maybe I did not have enough invested in this fermented fall goodness; as in making cider from scratch, now that sounds like a plan….

 

Epic Battle

Posted by pete on March 21st, 2013 in · 0 Comments

Half a moon is still brighter than no moon at all. Long shadows wind across the snow, but you can still wander in the woods without a light. It is a night that is full of promise, full of shadows, full of stories, full of dark things. The shadows dance above the snow almost afraid to touch the brilliance in just the half moon light.  Looking over your shoulder, there is the stinging, *snap*, of a twig on your near frozen face that only quickens your pace up the slope, which only slows your progress. What is the hurry? Day light has won. But the shadows near. The stars and moon seem closer than ever. The midnight choir tries to sing a dark song but you wonder; you dream. Spring is here and light has won. For now….

Wildly Amazing!

Posted by pete on March 13th, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

A couple of days ago I mentioned my wild fermentation project. It seems that my “not possible” yeast has taken off.

I had plans for a grand bake off to highlighting my wild yeast.

I actually pinched off a bit of starter and tried a mini loaf that I slathered with basil mayo and chicken roasted over a fire in the drive way a couple of days ago. Well, verdict? Amazing. And I do not like Sourdough.

So my wild fruit yeast is behaving like clock work. Feed, rise, fall. I can set my watch to it. Time to get ready for the big unavailing. But I am proud of my little yeast and have big plans for them, so they need a much better ride to the stone than just a metal sheet. Last night’s project. A new peel. Nothing fancy, no refined wood working skills here, just a functional bread motivator.

Around 3pm I could not help myself. My little wild yeast were over ambitious an pushed the starter over the top. So I took the excesses, and thought  pizza. Three hours later  and only a tablespoon or two of starter is taking 150g of flour and 90g of water on a trip down favor town road.

I was actually amazed at just down awesome so little  dough stretched.

Kinda like walking up to a soda fountain, just a flavor fountain.

The final pie, an agonizing 25 minutes later.

BUT worth it…..so damn worth it. Flavor out the wazoooooooo, but not sour. I don’t like sourdough bread. But this, haha….Flour, yeast, and flavor just from my kitchen and the Adirondack air. Makes it hard to think about using bread yeast from a package ever again.

 

Check!….now what?

Posted by pete on March 9th, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

Inspiration. It is an amazing motivator that often comes from unexpected places, but sometimes from something right in front of you.

I have been seeking an objective for a while. Big bubbles in my bread, when I want them, on my terms. Many people have told me I can’t achieve this at home; all the more reason I needed to do it. When it does not happen by chance, but when planned, after many equations, drawings, and schematics, it is real. When it happens because you had your finger monitoring the pulse the whole time, it is great, but not so great,  as it is just an objective reached. But then what?  You check it off the big list and suddenly feel a bit empty. What to do now…

These lovelys will not win a beauty contest, but taste great.

Wild Fermentation

Posted by pete on March 4th, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

Once again I have decided to try an capture some wild yeast to do the heavy lifting. Last spring I tried to get a starter going, but in the end I was not patient enough and tried adding just a touch of regular bread yeast to speed things up. The end result is a super sour/strong starter and the thing is I really don’t like sour dough bread.

This time I took a slightly different approach. I thought of a way I may gather some wild yeast faster, because we live in an instant gratification type world and waiting three or more days to see if your flour water mix bubbles or not is just not going to cut it. So I took fruit, specifically lemons and blue berries, and buried them flour for a couple of hours. When it came time to mix up my starter, I carefully sifted out the fruit then wasted them off with the water that was to add moisture to my started. Less than 24 hours later I have a lovely bubbling mix that has not a hint of sourness to it. And before you try to tell me that yeast living on fruit has nothing to do with yeast that would like munch flour, I will politely tell you to stuff it and refer to the picture below….

 

It is still going to be a little while before I have trained my yeast to do exactly what I want it to, so in the mean time it was necessary to make some sweet brioche with mascarpone raspberry loveliness.

The old man’s pipe

Posted by pete on February 28th, 2013 in · 0 Comments

The day before, of, and after a full moon are always important for shadowing and a time of illumination. The duality of dark and light; how the reflection in the shadows is often illuminating. The snow covered blank canvas of the backyard — a formidable challenge and golden opportunity.

The daylight is noticeably getting longer.

Tonight I walked outside to get another armful of logs for the fire and I stopped short of the wood pile. There is no other way to describe the late night air other than a swirl of pipe tobacco. Had there been visual whips, intermingling paths, suggested destinations,  I may have wondering into the woods and followed them for miles before the cold numbness registered in my thin fleece slippers. But nothing stirred. Nothing gave away its location. The recent heavy snow accented every angle and edge but softened everything.

Time stopped.

Nothing gave away its location.

The old man walked above the canvas and painted a thousand possibilities in the folds and wake of his oak leaf cloak. It is not just that the new born year will soon walk then run on its own, it is that for the first time, in a while, you can not sleep because staying awake is better than dreaming.

Jammed Up

Posted by pete on February 3rd, 2013 in · 0 Comments

It has been quite an interesting weather week. From bitter cold and snow the day before, last Wednesday reached into the upper 50s with rain. Perfect conditions for ice break up and I have to stay I called it perfectly last Sunday evening already; though I was four hours off (late) when the jam would actually pass through Au Sable Forks.

The jam made its way past the forks but did not make it all that far. The river got jammed up a couple of miles south near Clintonville. For the most part there is little impact and concern for later in the Spring. We had just had a break up two weeks ago, but is has been bitter cold,  so the chunks are only averaging 2 foot thick.

The ice completely blocked this road for a couple of days. This image was taken at the very far extent of the visible ice in the picture above. Usually there is a considerable climb down to the river level.

Looking further down river, the jam is a couple of miles long and about 30 – 35 feet thick at this point in the river.

Sunday was a cold start, just around zero but mild compared to the last couple of weeks. This was one of those morning where every branch, twig, bush, blade of grass was covered with fluffy crystal coating. As the sun back lit things they glowed. As the sun touched them they faded back to normal.

Just a couple of days since break up and the east branch is already getting solid.

New Hardware

Posted by pete on February 1st, 2013 in and · 0 Comments

Got some new kitchen hardware that I almost forgot I ordered it took so long to get here. Since it was new, I just had to take it for a spin. An original recipe just got even better…

Left Handed Hacks

Posted by pete on February 1st, 2013 in · 0 Comments

It seems that the dead of winter often brings to play some rather interesting hack mastery. Tonight I set out to hammer out some code that has been rattling around in the empty brain pan like uncooked popcorn kernels. The original idea was a machine readable  answer sheet, but way more fun. Anyway, my -project- quickly digressed into an automated turtle face recognition program, which worked but….

The upper left image is the “target” and the larger image(s) are the scene (i.e., database). The result is accurate but the target and scene were only taken 20 seconds apart, so it better make a match or else. However the reality is….well, reality. And what is that you ask? Well, I can’t give away all secretes in one night.

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