BBA: Bagels

Okay, so I have to apologize - I got caught up in this challenge and completely failed to document any of the things I've made so far. As my first bread (anadama) was an utter failure, and my second (Artos) was only so-so, I feared that none of my endeavors would end up being post-worthy.

Enter Bagels.

These bagels are Good. As in, you can't buy anything close (at least in Seattle) kind of good. As in, I might open up a bagel cart and devote the rest of my life to making them good.

As part of the challenge, I wanted to tackle another area of baking that I'd always wondered about and semi-feared, which is cultivating wild yeast in a sourdough starter. It always seemed like something tricky and difficult. Turns out, not so much. A scale helps. All you really need is a portion of water and flour in equal parts (I kickstarted mine with part rye flour and part bread flour), keep it out on the counter, and feed every 12 hours. I followed directions from WildYeastBlog. Sure enough, within a few days I had a bubbly mass of yeasty little monsters, ready for breadmaking. I named him Bob.

Bob lives in my fridge when I'm not using him for delicious sourdough things. Under chill he only needs to be fed once a week or so. (I've decided yeast cultures are male, despite off-color jokes you could make to the contrary - they smell, and they fart alot)

I've modified the Peter Reinhart BBA challenge bagel recipe to incorporate Bob. Sorry for giving weight instead of volume, but seriously, buying a scale has changed the way I bake. No more measuring! Yay!

Salt and Poppy Bagels

Starter:
35 oz starter with sourdough (about 200g of pure sourdough starter fed with equal parts bread flour and lukewarm water to equal 35oz, goosed with a teaspoon of active dry yeast and left to rise on the counter in a large bowl for at least an hour)

Dough:
17 oz (3.75 cups roughly) bread flour
.7 oz (3 tsp) of salt (I use kosher)
.5 oz (1 tbsp) of honey

To finish:
a pot of water
1 tbsp of baking soda
1 egg, beaten (egg wash)
poppyseeds and kosher salt

Once the sponge has gotten nice and bubbly (should take just over an hour), add the flour, salt and honey, and mix up until the ingredients form a ball. The dough will be very dry and shaggy at first - if you mix with wet hands you'll add just enough moisture to bring it all together. The product will be VERY stiff, as in probably break your stand mixer stiff - if you did use a stand mixer up til this point, I recommend switching to your hands.

transfer the dough to the counter and knead until the dough is satiny and pliable, but not sticky or tacky. add a few drops of water if it seems too dry (for example if it breaks easily when you stretch a piece between your fingers) or sprinkle on some flour if the dough is too sticky.

Once the dough is ready, devide into 4.5 oz pieces for large bagels, or 2.4 oz pieces for small ones.
Form the pieces into rolls and cover with a damp towel. Rest for 20 minutes (both of you!)

Line a pan with baking parchment or silpat, and spray with oil. Shape the bagels. I do this by sticking my thumb in the middle to make the hole, then working my way around with both hands to make a good "O" shape. You can also make a snake with the dough and wrap it around your fist, pinching the end to fasten.

place the shaped pieces on the pan, mist the tops of the bagels with oil, cover with plastic wrap, and let them rise for another 20 minutes.
Next, it's time for the float test - fill a small bowl with water and put in one of the bagels. if it floats immediately, they're good to go. If the bagel sinks, more proofing is needed - try again every 10 to 20 minutes. Once your bagels pass the float test, pop the pan in the fridge until you're ready to boil and bake them. I suggest waiting at least overnight, but they should be okay in there for three days.

When you are ready to bake the bagels, set your oven to 500 degrees and get a pot of water boiling (the wider the pot, the better). Once the water is boiling, add 1 tbsp of baking soda. It will stop boiling for a moment. This is normal.
Working in batches, boil the bagels a minute on each side (you can extend the time to make the bagel more chewy, but I dont recommend too long). Once a bagel is out of the water bath, immediately brush on some egg wash and sprinkle the salt and poppyseed mixture over the top.

When all the bagels are boiled, bake for five minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees, lower the temperature to 450, and bake for another five to eight minutes or until the bagels are golden brown. Let them cool for 15 minutes at least. They are worth the wait!

Mm. Bagels.

On Bread and Challenges

My first major bread-related memory involves my first trip to Paris, as I'm sure it does for many well-travelled foodies out there.

Mine probably deviates a bit though - it is of sitting in my hotel room, too afraid to go out into the city, eating my way through a loaf of bread so delicious that even as I cry my eyes out I am unable to stop consuming it.
I was eighteen, travelling with another young female friend, and we were both terrified of Parisians. I should mention that on the first day a rather nasty specimen of a Frenchman had followed us a good eight blocks asking loudly for a blowjob from we "American Whores," so our experience had not been good. In fact, the entire three days we were there were mostly spent in the hotel room, watching horrible french television, venturing only as far as the bakery down the street. That bread was the single memorable thing about Paris for us- of sitting on our hotel bed consuming great chunks of it. It was that experience that really opened my eyes to how incredible bread can be.
(FYI I've since been back and although it wasn't as horrible, I still can't stand that city and the demeanor of its inhabitants to strangers. Sorry foodies.)

For the majority of my life I felt that really good bread was something I could never myself make - that bread making was some occult process that I could never hope to master. It is the antithesis of the way I normally cook,off the recipe, on the fly. All that weighing, math, patience, steps to follow - I'm not good with these things.

Well, I've decided to face my fear of bread baking and master the style of cooking that I am weakest at.
PinchMySalt has started a Bread Bakers Challenge, in which we work our way through every recipe in the Bread Bakers Apprentice, a fantastic book on baking by a guy who knows what he's talking about. I feel this is one of my culinary fears, something I should get over. Bread is essentially flour, water, and yeast - it is something people have made for thousands of years, and there is no reason why I should hold it on a pedestal. I'm entirely sure the first few attempts will be utter disasters, but this is something I should face.

Foodbat digs creature out of sand, eats it: Razor clams!

This past weekend I got the opportunity to do something singularly northwesty - dig for razor clams! I had never done anything even approaching something like this, so when Naomi of GastroGnome invited me to go, I jumped at the chance. Neither of us had any idea of what we were doing, but we did have a clam gun, and it sounded like an interesting experience, so why not?

We left at an ungodly early hour on sunday morning, and after getting lost somewhere around Aberdeen finally made it to Copalis beach. The state only opens certain beaches for clamming at certain days of the year, coinciding with very low tides. The season opened at 8am so we had to make sure to be there in time.


Other clammers were scattered up and down the tide flats, digging and seemingly plucking clams from the sand as easily as picking apples from a laden tree. Easy, right? We found a divot in the sand and stuck in the clam gun, which is essentially a piece of PVC pipe with handles. Push in, pull out, all the sand slides back out of the pipe and into the hole. No clam. Try again, hole fails, no clam. We are obviously Doing It Wrong.


We end up wandering around at the surfline for about 45 minutes, looking like fools among all the people happily digging up thier little mollusks. We had an Epic Clam Fail on our hands - a two and a half hour drive out, and it was clear that we had wasted our time and were going to drive back empty handed due to our noobishness.

After yet another failed attempt, Naomi noticed the little hole on top of the pipe, and wondered if maybe it was supposed to be covered. Eureka! We push in the gun, cover the hole and...SUCTION! A large divot of sand comes out with the gun. And there, in the hole - yes, a little thingy, poking out! I squeal like a little girl and grab for it. I go in up to my elbow, and come out with our first clam!
We dance around in excitement. There is this amazing rush of euphoria that comes from erasing the barrier erected by restaurants, supermarkets and other middlemen of the human food chain, pulling something wriggling out of the ground to be eaten. We certainly felt it.

From there, it was easy, more or less. Look for a divot. Dig in the clam gun. Cover the hole, pull out the sand, grab the clam. We each got our limit of fifteen, and headed home with the load.

I've done some foraging before, but this was hands down the most fun and rewarding venture I've ever had doing it.

Once my clams were home, I washed them of sand as best as I could and put them in a bowl under some wet paper towels. I was a little nervous about the next part, and was exhausted anyway, so clams went in the fridge for the night.

I should probably mention that cleaning razor clams bears very little resemblance to cleaning the hardshell clams that most of us think of when we think of clams - with hard shells, all you have to do is rinse off the outside and steam them until thier shells come open. Not so with razor clams - these suckers are BIG, and cleaning them is a process that requires, well, shelling and butchering the thing. I already am pretty squeaming about killing things - I don't kill spiders, I avoid ants, I carefully move snails to another part of the yard. (Thank god I dont have to deal with roaches). Clams don't whimper or make any sound, but they do pull back when you touch them, and wriggle. Anyway, I'd grown a little attached to my clams, so the thought of killing them weighed heavily upon me.

When the time came the following night, and the clams were in a colander in my sink, I ended up coming to terms with what was about to happen by saying a little prayer for them. I understand it's pretty rediculous, but it helped me feel better.
It went something like this:

O Razor Clams,
Please forgive me for bringing about your demise,
but unfortunately, you are Delicious
and would probably die pretty soon anyway.
I hope that until now your clammy lives have been pretty good
and that if you reincarnate you come back as something that doesn't get eaten
or at least live a bit longer.
Amen.

Actually it went on for quite a bit longer than that but my husband told me to quit stalling and get it over with already.

Here is how you clean a razor clam:

First, pour boiling water over them for no longer than five seconds. Immediately rinse in cold water. If its any longer the flesh will be tough. this should make the shells pop open and help release the clam from the shell.


Using a spoon or your fingers, shuck the clam from its shell. make sure to cut through the four muscles that are attaching the thing and not tear them.


With a pair of scissors, snip the end of the neck part off. I should probably mention that even after they die, mollusks have automatic twich responses - so yes, it will pull back and wriggle in your hand as you are cutting it. THIS IS INCREDIBLY FREAKY. You just have to squeal when appropriate and deal with it as best as you can. They really are dead at this point.

Cut up the zipper and up the ventricle. then located the second ventricle (there will be a little hole) and cut up that as well. the idea is to butterfly the thing so that it lays flat.


make a cut across the dark bit in the center, and gently pull the digger (thats the foot thing) away from the body.

scrape off any dark bits - the gills in this case - from the body, and put aside in a bowl of water.

Make a diagonal cut across the dark bit of the digger. there will be a little glassy thing in the middle that pops out - pull it out and toss it.


butterfly the digger as you did the body, removing any dark bits and pulling out the small intestine (you know, the poop shoot). I recommend doing all this under running water. The fluffly looking stuff should stay on.



I think the most disturbing part of this was not the little (nonharmful) crabs that would scuttle out of the clamshell, or the way the thing wriggled in my hands long after it was dead. Rather, it was the fact that after squealing and squirming through the first couple of clams, I started thinking less about what I was doing and more about how my back hurt, or whatever else came into my head. At one point I even started singing a song about clam poopshoots. How quickly we become numb!

Anyway, I didn't take any pictures of the fried clams I made, but they were delicious. You can find a similar recipe here or on GastroGnome's excellent post on her experience.
I made sure to freeze most of them for chowder or frying later on in the year. Anyway, if you are in the northwest, razorclamming is a ton of fun and well worth the work for this delicacy.

You can read all about razor clams and how to dig for them, as well as where to buy a license, on the Washington State Fishing page.

Zukey Muffins

Apparently I'm the only one in my household who likes zucchini, so when we get any in the CSA box it's always a matter of sneaking it into something my husband enjoys. (grating it, freezing it in baggies and sneaking it into pasta sauce is my go-to.)
So on the day before Easter, when I'm asked to bring something to dinner and we have a few rapidly wilting zukes in the fridge, I decided to try and sneak them into something delicious, something that would even get past the notoriously picky tastes of my husband and a few members of his family. I love banana bread and carrot cake, and the zucchini breads of my past seemed to fit the bill of something to do with zucchini that didn't remind of, well, zucchini.
And who doesn't like a muffin?
One thing about any kind of fruit or veggie-enhanced quickbread is that they require quite a bit of fat to remain moist. Usually this is solved by adding a lot of oil to the recipe, nearly a cup or more. In quickbreads its usually safe to substitute up to half of the oil with yogurt or applesauce - I used whole milk plain yogurt, which worked out fabulously. I also played fast and loose with the spices and flavors, as I like to do - in this case it worked out.
Ginger Brew is a digestive that is found at asian supermarkets, (full name is Ludy's Ginger Brew Salabrat), which gives a sweet spicy kick to baked goods. As far as I'm aware, its pretty much just powdered ginger mixed with sugar, and you can subsitute as such.

Zukey Muffins - makes about 24

3 eggs
1 3/4 sugar, minus 1 tablespoon if you put in ginger brew
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup yogurt (plain, whole milk)
2 grated zucchinis (medium) - make sure you squeeze out as much water as you can from the grated product
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (heaping if youre using kosher salt)
3 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp good cocoa powder
1 tbsp ginger brew (or 1 tsp ginger)
1 cup chocolate chips

Beat eggs in a bowl with a whisk until light in color, maybe 3 minutes of hard whiskin'.
Add sugar, oil, yogurt, vanilla, and zucchini, making sure each ingredient is combined before you add the next.
Combine together dry ingredients (flour, spices, gingerbrew, baking soda/powder, cocoa, salt) and add to the egg mixture.
Gently fold until mixed - you want to be careful here not to overmix, just go until the dry ingredients are incoporated. Fold in chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes - make sure to flip around the muffin tins at 10 so that it bakes evenly.

Seriously, these are good - and will win over even those who say "blech - zucchini!"

Produce throwdown, part 2 : CSA vs Farmers Market

OK, well this part didnt go so well for an obvious reason - my CSA supplements thier produce with stuff from California during the winter, so many items did not have a counterpart currently available at the farmers market. One trend was clear - farmers market prices are slightly higher than PCC prices, which are to be expected, but not significantly higher for many items. Whats really needed is a farmers market comparison later in the season, but it is safe to assume that a CSA will still be the winner in price.

Heres the breakdown of what is currently available from the farmers as compared to PCC prices:

Fuji Apples - $2.75/lb (1.49 at PCC)
Carrots - $3 a bunch (1.99 at PCC)
Arugula - $2.49 a bunch (3.00 at PCC)
Leeks - $3 a/lb (2.99 at PCC)
Potatoes - $2.75/lb (1.49 at PCC)
Tuscan Kale - $$3 a bunch (2.49 at PCC)

Now, I'd like to add that just because going the CSA route is the cheapest for the produce you get, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is the best one. We are blessed in Seattle to have fantastic farmers markets which offer items beyond produce (such as the Seabreeze Farms raw milk that I'm addicted to). Being able to buy directly from farmers and meet them face to face is priceless, and aside from that it's a great social outing and integral part of my weekend.

Will joining a CSA prevent me from going to the farmers market on a weekly basis? Frankly, no.

What it does do is solve a personal problem, which is that I hate spending cash and therefore often find myself passing on buying enough produce to last me through the week. Instead, I buy milk, and maybe some apples or leeks, or maybe eggs, and spend the rest of the time walking and looking and bemoaning the price.

Joining a CSA or organic delivery service ensures that you WILL have the produce and will use it despite all attempts to sabotage yourself. And you'll probably get some good deals to boot.
I'll stick with my CSA (or possibly try out Full Circle Farms to compare) for a while, but will go to the farmers market anyway to supplement. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Produce Throwdown, Part 1: CSA vs PCC

I'm a lazy blogger. Okay, I said it. (although I do liveblog lunch every so often.)
I don't meticulously write down recipes, take pretty photos, or update my readers (HA!) daily on the fabulousness of my culinary lifestyle. Well, not on this blog anyway- twitter is another matter.

I do get pretty obsessive about certain things, one of which is frugality, especially when it comes to food. I'm the girl that takes 3 hours to go grocery shopping because I am deciding which of the 35 boxes of cereal will give me the most (financial, spiritual, culinary, volumetric) value.

Anyway, I recently signed up for a CSA in an effort to bring more fruits and veggies into my life, and immediately became obsessed as to whether paying 35 dollars a box was really the most frugal option. Visiting the farmers market every Saturday has become a ritual, and I'm a regular shopper at my lovely local PCC natural market - is going CSA really the best option?

Anyway, normally I would keep this kind of personal obsession...well, personal, but as several people online expressed interest, I've posted the bout for all to see.

IN THIS CORNER....
New Roots Organics

New Roots is not strictly a CSA, but rather an organic delivery service that sources from several local farms in Washington such as Frog Song Farm and Dry Slough Orchard. I wanted to try them out for thier variety, the fact that you don't have to buy a whole season in advance and the fact that they deliver to your door. They drop off a big rubbermaid tub of food at your doorstep on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, depending on what you sign up for. The price of a regular box is 35 dollars, which is on par which what most CSA boxes cost around here for those who are more virtuous than I and only get single-farm CSA subscriptions.
New Roots, like many CSA-type operations, sources california produce during the winter, which is why I have zucchini and oranges in my box.

AND IN THIS CORNER...
PCC Natural Markets
PCC is a Washington chain of natural foods stores, known for generally being awesome. They have a very wide selection of Organic and local produce, a bulk section, a big prepared foods deli, and lots of natural food type groceries of stuff that doesn't contain trans fats. I should also add that they have a great customer service presence on twitter (Hi, @Pcc!) that will give you price quotes and answer your grocery questions. They run on the pricey side, but that is standard for a natural foods store (although I have not personally done a price comparison with whole foods.) I've chosen them as my CSA's contender as it looks like they use the same wholesaler/sourcing for many items.

THE BOX:


LEEEEEEETTS GET READY TO RUMBLLLLLLE!!!

COST - PCC: 41.09
(I have used prices of Organic produce only as all New Roots produce is organic)

COST - CSA: 35 Dollars

Okay, CSA wins this one. (although, admittedly, not by much.) Add to this the cost of gas driving to the store, plus the cost of all the extra stuff you probably would buy (bar of theo chocolate, that vegan gingersnap, etc).
However, If I was going to the grocery store I probably would not pick all this stuff up, especially the items out of my comfort zone, like kale. Also, its not like I'm going to stop going to the market for other stuff.

Tune in Saturday for Part Two of produce throwdown - CSA vs Farmers Market! (I'm VERY interested in this one, as the fate of my continued CSA membership rests on it.)

New Project: Downtown Seattle Lunch Blog

Just wanted to post that I am working on a new mini project - Downtown Seattle Lunch Blog. I'm sick of having to google around every day at lunch to get ideas for takeout within a 6 block radius. There are plenty of offerings in downtown Seattle, but because many of them cater exclusively to takeout lunch for workers, are hole in the walls, or are in food courts, no one covers them. I plan to document what I get, how much it cost, and whether it's worth a return trip. I'll also compare it with similar offerings in the area.

Its going to be kind of bare bones as its more for myself than anyone else, but if you would like to read it, be my guest =)

http://downtownseattlelunch.wordpress.com/