English Muffins with Ghee

Jana's Karen's Model Bakery English Muffins, Take 2

My parents met Stefan for the first time when they came down the day before my bilateral mastectomy. We went to Jon & Vinny's, had some wine and pizza, and went home for a little socializing. My mom's a great conversationalist - strike that. I was on the phone with my mom when I wrote that, and she demanded accuracy and accountability in my blogging. She wanted me to say that she's actually horrible at talking to people because she has nothing to say when she's not interested in the topic and everything to say when she is interested. It's true that I've spent many, many 30 minute drives on my way to work being lectured on picking-buying-jamming-canning-preserving-fermenting-dehydrating. It's also true that I don't really need to say anything while this is happening. But that doesn't make her horrible at conversation, that just makes her my very smart and very intense mom. (Mom, I love you and think you're amazing all the time no matter what.) 

Anyway. As soon as we were back to my house my mom told Stefan about her homemade chocolate cupcakes that beat all other chocolate cupcakes ever, her homemade granola that actually does beat all other granola ever, her beautiful homemade bags, and her "blue ribbon jam." My mom does make some damn good jam. The only thing is, her jam has never been judged. She makes a ton of jam, she teaches a ton of classes on jam, but she has never entered her jam in a competition. I naturally yelled her name ("Mom. Mom!") and asked what she was even saying, and she responded that her jam was good enough to be blue ribbon jam and she knew that if she ever did enter it, it would win. 

I love my mom.

My first batch of English muffins with my mom's blue ribbon jam.

My mom's blue ribbon jam brings me to Karen's Model Bakery English muffins, since the only thing you should eat on English muffins is my mom's jam. Karen's English muffins are incredible and were the subject of our first lesson together. The recipe will follow, but first, a few pointers:

1. You should try to be as delicate as possible when placing the muffin dough into the ghee, but if you get scared of hot, spluttering butter and accidentally toss the ball in, that's okay, too. The people eating your muffins know nothing!

I was brave with the left muffin. I was scared with the right muffin. 

2. It's hard to turn the muffins over in the ghee to cook the second side without deflating the dough or worse, ending up with a crooked muffin. I like to use my flat metal spatula to begin the flip of the muffin, and a silicon spatula to help guide it gently over. Crooked muffins should be given to people who love you the most and will judge you the least. 

A crooked muffin. 

3. The second time I made these muffins, the silicon lid popped off as the dough fermented in the fridge. I wasn't in the fridge when this happened and so didn't see the problem until the 12 hours had passed. It was fine. Just scrape any hardened dough off the top and proceed as normal. I had three fewer muffins than usual and one baby muffin that I ate alone in the dark in the middle of the night.

INGREDIENTS

The Biga

75 grams bread flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
60 grams water

The Dough

3/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
315 grams water (if using whole wheat, increase to 362 grams)
510 grams all purpose flour (or if making whole wheat, 300 grams whole wheat plus 135 all purpose flour plus 75 grams all purpose flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
cornmeal

The Ghee

3/4 cup good quality unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS

The Biga

At least 1 day before cooking muffins, combine flour, water, and yeast in small container with lid. The dough will be sticky. Refrigerate between 12-24 hours. Biga will rise slightly.

A biga.

The Ghee

Option 1 (Karen's method):
Melt butter over medium heat until it begins to bubble and get frothy, about 30-45 seconds. Remove from heat, allow to cool 5 minutes. Carefully skim foam off top of butter and discard. Place butter in refrigerator until use. 

Option 2 (My method):
Heat unsalted butter in heavy-duty saucepan over very low heat until melted. Let simmer gently until the foam rises to the top of the melted butter. Once butter stops spluttering, and no more foam is rising to the surface, remove from heat and skim off the foam with a spoon. Line a mesh strainer with a few layers of cheesecloth and set strainer over heatproof container. Carefully pour warm butter through the cheesecloth-lined strainer into the container, leaving behind any solids from the bottom of the pan.

Option 3 (My other method): 
Buy prepared ghee for $8 at your local Indian market. 

The Dough 

Transfer biga, water, 3/4 teaspoon yeast and oil to bowl of Kitchen Aid mixer. Mix on low for 1-2 minutes to break up biga. 

Add 435 grams all purpose flour (or 300 grams white whole wheat plus 135 grams all purpose flour) in batches to prevent flour from flying out. Mix 1-2 minutes to make a soft and sticky dough that cleans the sides of the bowl. Clean off paddle, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes.

Add remaining 75 grams all purpose flour along with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Knead in mixer on setting 4 for about 8 minutes if using all purpose flour, or 16 minutes if using whole wheat flour, until dough is smooth and elastic. Remove paddle attachment and clean off any dough sticking to it.

Lightly sprinkle clean, flat surface with flour, and turn out dough onto it. Gently flatten dough into rectangle, then stretch and pull corners into the middle to form a ball. Turn over and create tension in the ball to close the seams. 

Transfer dough to large (4 quart) airtight container. Let proof for 2 hours until dough doubles in volume and air bubbles are visible, or refrigerate for 8-12 hours. If refrigerating dough, let stand at room temperature 1-2 hours before proceeding to next step. (For best results, use the refrigeration option. Just do it.) 

Lightly flour work surface and turn out dough onto it. Gently shape dough into rectangle and cut into thirds using pastry scraper. Then cut each third into 77 gram pieces, using scale to get precise weight. As you do this step, keep dough covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying. 

There is no such thing as weighing 77 grams perfectly each time.
Just place extra bits of dough onto your first effort, like so.

Gently shape each 77 gram piece of dough into a ball by stretching the outer edge into the middle, bit by bit until all edges have been stretched and tucked. Turn ball over and create tension. Roll each ball in cornmeal and place onto baking sheet seam side down. Lightly spray plastic wrap with cooking spray and place loosely over balls. Let rise 1-2 hours depending on temperature in room, until balls have doubled in size and slowly spring back when pressed lightly with pointer finger. 
 

This is a pre-rise ball. 

Weigh these suckers and end up with homogenous beauty. 

Preheat oven to 400. Heat large cast iron pan over medium heat and add enough ghee to fill pan about 1/8 inch. Carefully use thin metal spatula and fingers to transfer 2-4 balls into the ghee (cooking in batches), cooking 3 minutes per side. Take care to ensure even browning. Some cornmeal will come off the balls as they cook; if cornmeal begins to burn or get smokey, throw out old ghee and cook remaining balls in fresh ghee. 

After both sides have been cooked in ghee, immediately transfer to baking sheet and bake in oven for 3 minutes. Remove and transfer muffins to wire rack to cool. Do not cut into or disturb muffins for at least 20 minutes. 

These muffins were cooked for 4 minutes per side. 4 minutes is too many. Do 3.

No-Knead Bread, Again

No one could have predicted that Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread would be featured on my blog mere days after the original post. Except maybe Karen could have predicted it, because she had a lot of input on my first effort. I mentioned this to Stefan as we perused the menu at dinner on Saturday, and he asked me whether she had tasted the bread. 

No. No, she hadn't tasted the bread, but she had seen the bread, and that was enough. 

If I have things my way, I like a solid 75-25 ratio of compliments-to-constructive feedback (some people might call this a compliments-to-criticism ratio, but not me). Karen and my mom tend to reverse that ratio when it comes to their respective topics of expertise, but that doesn't matter because they're also always right. 

Here's what I learned: 

1. My blog is awesome and hilarious. 

YEAH. Give me love and praise, my babies. 

2. To avoid flat-bread syndrome, one should place the dough in a bowl with steep sides for the second rise. 

My bread was flat, I admit it. But I was just following directions! Jim really put me in a tight spot on this one. 

So I let my sequel bread rise in the Kitchen Aid mixer bowl this time around. After two hours of rising the dough was big and tall and round and promised to make a fat ball of bread. Yas. 

Then I dumped the dough into the Staub and watched it deflate as it hit the bottom. No. No.  

They're the same. 

3. Remember my discovery that Jim was trying to trick us all with the wet-dough-on-towel mess? The towel should be well-floured. 

It's just, remember this picture? That bottom towel used to be green. Would the laws of physics and science really have allowed any more flour to get on that towel? 

Karen says yes. And she was 98% right! She was also 2% wrong, because a walnut-sized piece of dough glued itself to the well-floured towel, resulting in the deflating of the bread and two cowlicks.

There and there.

4. The bread should have a much darker, golden-brown color. Did I remember to take the lid off the Staub half-way through the bake?

This one cut me to the core. Of course I took the lid off! That was the easiest part of the entire recipe. But she was right. My bread was anemic and under-baked and so much better when I increased the temperature to 500 after removing the lid. 

Browner. Better.

Bubbles after 18 hours of fermenting.

Dough post-18 hours of fermenting, pre-2 hours of rising.

Kombucha

Raspberry kombucha. 

Lots of things are nice to look at as they're being made. Dough, pasta, ice cream, all nice to look at. Even raw oysters can look good after being staged, cropped, filtered and tagged.

Not kombucha. It's the ugly stepsister right up until it's put into a glass with a metal straw and flowering mint. There are 83 reasons making kombucha the wretched little beverage it is, three of which are worth talking about: the SCOBY, the fermentation, and the explosions and shrapnel. 

The SCOBY

A SCOBY is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (s-c-o-b-y) that looks like a big disc made of algae. Gelatinous algae. A SCOBY can also be referred to as a "mushroom," and little-to-nothing good has ever been synonymous with "mushroom."

A SCOBY. It's a little brown and stringy. You let this live in some tea and then you drink it. Humans!

Fermenting Stage 1

Just like pickles and soy sauce, kombucha gets its unique flavor from the fermentation process. There are two stages of kombucha fermentation. In the first stage, the SCOBY sits in a gallon of sweet tea for 7-10 days, during which time the SCOBY moves around the jar on its own before settling at the top and making a SCOBY baby (a scaby). As the tea ferments, the mixture gets less sweet and more sour.

A note on "scaby": I made this up, it's not a real thing.

A note on "buch": My mom called to tell me that my sister discovered "people in the know" refer to kombucha as "the buch." This also is not a real thing. 

Fermenting Stage 2

Once the tea mixture has the right balance of sweet and sour, you take out the SCOBY and scaby and put a bunch of fruit or herbs or both in and wait another couple days for the flavor to be just so. This sounds nice, but it isn't, because the color gets leached out of the fruit which, like the SCOBY, mysteriously moves around the jar by itself.

Happily after the fruit is done fermenting, it gets strained out of the kombucha and is discarded.

Kombucha after fermenting for two days with a box full of crushed raspberries. Color: nice. Bleached raspberry bodies: not so nice.

Sick.

Explosions and Shrapnel

The final reason kombucha is both unfriendly and unattractive is that sometimes it explodes after you bottle it, spraying half a gallon of sugary fruit tea and shards of glass shrapnel all over the kitchen and the cat, whose food bowl you placed directly next to the brewing kombucha.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't have to happen and usually doesn't happen. But it will happen if you let the kombucha ferment in a sealed bottle for too long, since a single bottle can only hold so much carbon dioxide (and this is why kombucha is carbonated! Science.).  

One of these bottles exploded. That was hilarious. Except it was actually horrible and my kitchen ceiling will never look the same.

Pears Poached in Red Wine and Cassis

I staged these pears for their photo shoot. But since I cooked them at 9:00 a.m. and like to pretend I don't eat cake for breakfast, they were unceremoniously tossed back into the pot. 

Growing up, every holiday season promised two things: a box of Harry & David pears and a box of See's chocolates, both brought home from the office by my dad (thanks, boss-man). It's hard to say which were better; the chocolates speak for themselves, but the Harry & David pears came individually wrapped in green tissue paper and gold foil, good enough to eat on their own, but so much better poached in wine with a vanilla bean and cinnamon. 

It should be easy to reproduce this childhood memory as an adult. It's not. The majority of poached pear recipes were written by people who fail to understand one fundamental truth: You don't throw away the poaching liquid! This isn't Nam, man. You reduce it into a thick, winey, cinnamony sauce, and when you serve it you accidentally give yourself the biggest pears and the most sauce and start eating it before you get to the table so no one else knows what a monster you are. Like, "Oh, I'm delicate and thin and only had a bite!" I HAD 11 BITES.

If you know my dad (hi, Dad), then you know he thinks everything is the "best ever." This really is the best ever. 

If you know me, you know that anytime I eat anything remotely good, I say so. Like, "this is so good," or "that was so good!" This is so good.

Like these pears? It took me 8 minutes to stage them.

Pears literally being poached. 

Ingredients

3 cups not-too-robust red wine, such as a Beaujolais or a Côtes du Luberon
1/3 cup mild honey, such as clover
1/4 cup crème de cassis liqueur
1 vanilla bean, cut in half lengthwise
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 cup dark or golden raisins
Juice of 1/2 lemon
4 firm but ripe pears
1/4 cup lightly toasted slivered almonds

Directions

1. Combine wine, honey, and crème de cassis in a medium saucepan. Using the tip of a paring knife, scrape seeds from vanilla bean halves into wine and add pods. Add cinnamon stick and raisins and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, fill a bowl with water and add lemon juice. Peel, quarter and core pears and drop into the acidulated water. (This prevents the pears from discoloring.)
3. Drain pears and add to simmering wine. Bring back to a simmer, cover and simmer 10 to 15 minutes more, until pears are slightly translucent. Turn off heat and remove cinnamon stick. Add almonds. 
4. Remove pears from the wine and bring back to a boil. Reduce by about a third. 

Serve warm or chilled.

No-Knead Bread

Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread

I've gotten into bread making recently. Or more accurately, Stefan's mom, Karen has gotten me into bread making. The three of us were on our way to the first-ever Los Angeles Fermentation Festival, discussing one of the classes we wanted to attend on making sourdough bread (sourdough bread gets its distinctive flavor from the fermentation of flour, water and yeast). I mentioned offhandedly that I had just bought baguette pans so I could start making and shaping sourdough bread.

Critical error. Just...a really big mistake.

Karen is an expert bread maker, and before I could finish my sentence she told me that I "had a lot to learn" (only Karen and my mom can tell someone they have a lot to learn without offending. But it hurts. Bad.). One does not use a baguette pan for shaping baguettes; one uses a couche. She then offered to teach me how to make bread, and we had a lesson set up within the week. She also told me I had some required reading to do (required reading!), and the next morning I had four 300+ page books in my inbox with instructions on how to open said books on my iPad. One of them involved science.

If you know my mom, you know that this sounds like...well, my mom. I obviously loved it.

Our first lesson was on Model Bakery's English muffins. More on those later. Today is about Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. This is a 24-hour-ish bread, which is pretty standard in the realm of bread making. But it's so much easier than normal bread! There are essentially three steps, but every chef knows to double the purported work involved so that the people eating your food love and admire you. Et voila:

Step 1

Mix the flour, yeast and salt. This works best in a Tiffany-blue mixer.

Christmas gift from my mom. Thanks, mom. Thom.

Step 2

Add 1 5/8 cups water. Hilarious. Jim really means 1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons.  

5/8 cups. That guy.  

Step 3

Turn your mixer on.  

Step 4

Turn your mixer off.

Step 5

What you do in real life: Wait 18 hours.

What you tell people you did: Lots of kneading and shaping. This was hard and a lot of work and not everyone can do it.

Steps 6-8

Dump the dough out of the bowl, wait a few minutes. Then wait 2 hours. Then put the dough into a round, 4-quart, Staub cast iron pot in grenadine and bake the shit out of it for 60 minutes.  

A note on the 2-hour rise: Jim directs the baker to leave the soggy little dough ball on a well-floured towel. This is a trick designed to glue the ball to the towel; don't do it. Put the ball on a piece of floured parchment paper, instead. 

A round, 4-quart Staub cast iron pot in grenadine (that's shape, size, brand, type, and color) as specified by Karen.  

Bread mid-rise. Will all that flour turn into dough in my washing machine? Yes. 

A Good Time For A Blog

My darling sister and I on Abbot Kinney in Venice shortly after I was diagnosed with cancer.

AN INTRODUCTION

When my little sister traveled to Southeast Asia for her second-year law school internship, she started a hilarious and insightful blog chronicling her travel, food, and cultural adventures.  Not long after, my mom started her own blog detailing the best parts of her life with my dad, including their travels, cooking and jamming (i.e., preserving) exploits, and visits with family and friends.  

At my mom's urging, I am now starting my own blog.  There probably won't be a better time in my life to do this, as I am midway through my recovery from and ongoing treatment for breast cancer.  I received my diagnosis on December 4, 2014, spent about a month going through countless blood tests, ultrasounds, scans, and fertility treatment, and started chemotherapy on January 6, 2015.  I stopped working in March of this year because the side effects of chemotherapy made it difficult to work, and I am still recovering from a bilateral mastectomy.  As a friend recently pointed out, one happy result is that for me, every day is a Saturday.  In other words, a good time for a blog.

Why didn't I start this blog sooner? To say I found it difficult to talk about my diagnosis and treatment over the past eight months would be an understatement.  I have never had a "why me" attitude about my diagnosis, but I remember calling my mom in tears throughout my treatment when the unfairness of it all was suffocating.  For example, when the first surgeon I met with told me I would lose my hair during chemotherapy.  And when another surgeon told me there was a good chance I would never be able to have children as a result of chemotherapy.  When I was feeling especially nauseous; spending hours of each day in a bathroom; experiencing migraines; losing my hair; losing my nails.  I couldn't talk about life with cancer, and definitely couldn't write about it.  

Things are getting easier now.  I've had time to deal with the trials and tribulations of cancer.  And my treatment worked: I had a complete pathological response to chemotherapy. My bilateral mastectomy was successful.  I'm still undergoing treatment for cancer, but it's easier than the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach I was undergoing previously, in my doctor's words.  A good time for a blog.

MY PURPOSE

My mom is a woman with strong opinions and ideas, and her inspiration for my blog (her inspiration for my blog) was the cooking, baking, and fermenting I've been filling my days with since I stopped working.  Ostensibly then, this blog supplements my Instagram account, where I post pictures of my cooking accomplishments (when I remember to) and my cat, Izzy (and sometimes her sister, Olive).  

But as my mom and sister and every other blogger ever have pointed out, it's difficult to know the true nature of one's blog until you actually write.  

We'll see where this one goes.