Day 3 - Lean Breads

(Clockwise from L) Baguettes, Epis, Rye, Pullman, Fougasse, Ciabatta

These are breads with very little, if any, fat. Baguettes, French Bread, Rye Bread. Chewy with a crispy crust.

First, Chef Martha demonstrated the mixing method by making a batch of pizza dough. While that fermented we broke up into four teams and each team made a batch of baguette dough and another dough. My partner and I made a traditional French loaf. Every half an hour, we had to punch down, fold, and flip our dough until each dough had been flipped at least four times. One team made Pullman loaves which are baked in special covered pans. Another made rye bread and another, whole wheat.

The pizza dough was ready first and we each got to make our own pizza crust which got prebaked enough to be browned and sturdy. Then we made individual pizzas and took a break for lunch.

Sausage, caramelized onions, mushrooms, mozzarella and basil.

Pullman loaf about to proof in its special pan

Epi loaf

After lunch, it was time to shape the baguettes and let them proof in a couche (flour lined canvas bed). Then we shaped the other loaves. Our traditional French bread was too sticky so it was converted to a rustic ciabatta loaf. The whole wheat bread became fougasse and the rye was shaped into batards. All were proofed and baked on cornmeal. Even the Pullman loaf pan was coated in cornmeal. Some of the baguettes were converted into epis.

At the end, of course, all the breads were staged for their photo session and divided amongst the class.

My Amazing Neighbor

We were invited to our neighbor's house yesterday to break bread.

This was no ordinary bread.  He had been planting rye grass in his yard and then got to wondering what would happen if he let it grow and harvested it?  Well, he let the whole yard grow and then, recently, harvested it with a scythe.  Then he threshed it.  And winnowed it.  And ground it.  And made bread.

It is (and was) a work of art!  I can't even begin to tell you how good it is.

In return, we brought some of the apricot ginger mulberry jam which not only tasted fabulous on the bread, the mulberry tree is across the street from his house.  Talk about eating local!

Nettle Ravioli

And so much more!

Perhaps some of you are aware, it snowed last night.  In Massachusetts.  In October.  And, from what I can tell, Halloween is a rather tenuous holiday which cannot handle snow.  Almost everything I had planned for the weekend was postponed, cancelled, or postponed then cancelled.

Remember how I was making Halloween costumes for the riding competition?  Cancelled.  Too slippery for the horse trailers.

Our neighborhood has an annual Halloween party in the local park.  Postponed, then cancelled.  First it was raining/snowing, then the paths were too wet today.

Instead, I spent the day cooking.  Yesterday I started a batch of mascarpone cheese.  This time I used Creme Fraiche starter culture, so it sat overnight in a warm room and then this morning I drained the creme fraiche in butter muslin for 4 hours to get the mascarpone.  I think I like this version better than the previous, using cream and tartaric acid.  It takes longer, but it's really good!

While the mascarpone was draining, I made a batch of sugar cookies (don't get too excited, it was a mix) in Halloween themed shapes: candy corn, spider, and skull and crossbones.  Later, when we decorated them, we decided that the spiders also worked as eyes with legs, and the candy corns also worked as ghosts.  The 6 year old decided that every shape made an Angry Bird.  (The 6 year old lately speaks of nothing but Angry Birds.  And will be one for Halloween tomorrow.  Yes, I had to make a whole separate costume from the riding one.)

Using the recipe in Hunt, Gather, Cook, I made rye pasta and used my frozen nettles, 2 potatoes, and 1/2 cup of the mascarpone cheese to make nettle ravioli.  The 10 year old was a big help for this project and together we made 5 dozen raviolis.  This pasta dough is even stretchier but much more fragile than the other (plain) pasta recipe, so there were lots of technical difficulties, but after the third dozen we did OK. 2 dozen have been frozen and the other 3 dozen were eaten for dinner, with just butter and parmesan cheese.  The remnants of the dough were converted to spaghetti and served for dinner as well.

We had friends coming over for dinner so I pulled together: a pork roast with onions and apples, applesauce, the nettle raviolis, roasted red kuri squash, roasted beets and a salad of lettuce, kale, Hakurei turnips, carrots, a few tiny green beans, and cucumbers with a balsamic vinaigrette. They brought a fabulous flourless chocolate cake for dessert!

And, in the middle of all that cooking, we took a trip to the hardware store and carved our pumpkins.

For the record, the snow is mostly gone as of this afternoon.  Hmpf.