Loaves and Fishes

Posted on 22 September 2009 by christao408

While I haven’t posted any pictures in a while, rest assured that I have still been cooking. In fact, Tawn even got in on the act. Below, top row: Kalmata olive and rosemary bread; Bottom row: Golden raisin bread.

After returning from my Sunday morning bike ride (more about that soon), Tawn prepared a nice brunch from one of Ina Garten’s cookbooks. Tomato and feta cheese salad with cilantro and onion; and smoked salmon toasts with egg salad.

Yummy, huh? It Thai, we say it is น่ากิน (nâa gin) literally, eat-able or “looks delicious”. Along the same lines, some other handy Thai adjectives include น่ารัก (nâa rak) literally, love-able or “cute”, and น่าเกลียด (nâa glìat) literally, hate-able or “ugly”.

Almond Tuiles

Posted on 15 June 2009 by christao408

Last month Sheldon broke in his new kitchen with a batch of almond tuiles, a crisp, wafer-like cookie made with almond flour. They looked beautiful and since I had some extra almond flour left over from the macarons, this seemed like a good opportunity to use it.

The tuiles (pronounced “tweel” – I had to double-check this as my French has all but been replaced by Thai) are basically a mixture of almond flour, all-purpose flour, sugar and salt, moistened with egg whites and melted butter. They are spread very thin on parchment paper and then baked.

The name “tuiles” comes from the French word for “tile”, so these cookies are means to be shaped similarly to the terra cotta tiles you might find on the roof of a home in the French countryside.

To do this, you have to slide them off the baking sheet while piping hot and, working quickly, drape them over a curved object like a rolling pin. Even with only six on a tray, by the time you are pulling the third one off it is already beginning to cool and stiffen.

Frankly, I’m inclined to follow Sheldon’s lead and not curl them as they taste just as lovely flat and they store better.

One challenge I encountered with the recipe was that it calls for 1/2 cup of almonds, ground. This is not, I imagine, the same as 1/2 cup of ground almonds. Since my almond flour is already ground, measuring 1/2 cup of it may have been too much. But I didn’t want to tamper with the recipe until I had tried it once.

The cookies turned out a little chewier and “cakier” than I think they are supposed to be, which leads me to suspect that “1/2 cup of almonds, ground” must measure out to less than 1/2 cup of ground almonds.

I still have plenty of almond flour, though, and these were pretty easy to make. I do need to get a metal spatula, though, as the plastic one seems to be an attractive surface for macarons and tuiles to stick to as I try to remove them from the tray.

A Little Sunday Brunch

Posted on 24 May 2009 by christao408

It was a small brunch on Sunday, just five people. It seems that when we get more than six or seven, the table’s capacity is exceeded and the dynamic just isn’t as intimate. Also, eating while sitting around the sofa just isn’t as comfortable.

Left to right: Suchai, Ken, Tawn and Doug.

The menu was a fairly simple, mostly vegetarian and vaguely Mediterranean one.

To begin with (after appetizers of celery sticks with white bean hummus), I pulled together an interesting salad based on a suggestion from Tawn. A Hawaiian papaya half filled with a shrimp, mango and cucumber salad. Flavored with nigella and cumin, it was really wonderful.

The main meal included scrambled eggs; oven-roasted asparagus; a quinoa salad with feta, corn and cherry tomatoes; and a roasted red pepper fougasse.

The fougasse, a stuffed flatbread from Southern France, came from a website I was recently recommended: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It is really easy to make. After roasting some red bell peppers under the broiler and skinning them, I rolled out a basic olive oil yeast dough.

I cut a few slits on one side and spread the peppers on the right. Next time I’ll roll the dough a little thinner and add more peppers. I then sprinkled coarse sea salt and thyme on the peppers.

Then, I folded the dough over, sealing the edges firmly. A brush of olive oil (I would use an egg white wash next time) and another sprinkle of thyme and it went into the oven on a pre-heated bread stone.

After about 20 minutes at 450 F / 230 C I pulled it out and let it cool a bit before cutting and serving. Easy!

In the afternoon, after everyone headed home and Tawn went to his parents’ house, I tackled a long standing project: finish scanning various recipes from old Cooks Illustrated magazines and sorting and shredding old bills and receipts. What an exciting Sunday, I know!

Second attempts at macarons

Posted on 18 May 2009 by christao408

A week ago Sunday, Tawn’s friend Pat came over to teach us how to make French macarons. The results were tasty but technically flawed, thanks to my inexperience. Wanting to master the secrets of this elusive, meringue-based confection, I did a week’s worth of research and then set out again this past Sunday for another attempt.

The first attempt had resulted in macaroons (right) that were too puffy and lacked both a smooth, even surface and a “foot” – the slightly cracked edge around the bottom.

They also suffered from problems with hollow interiors, caused when some of the insides would remain stuck to the parchment paper after baking, pulling away from the outside of the cookie.

My goal this week was to improve my technique and get to something that looked a lot closer to this ideal:

As promised in the last entry about macarons, I’ll provide you with more detail about the process, which isn’t exactly difficult but does require attention to detail. If you want to skip the whole “reading” thing, there’s a nifty video that I edited, recounting my adventures in macaron baking.

Macarons basically involve three steps: the first is to make a relatively dry dough combining almond flour, powdered sugar and egg whites (below, left). The second is to make a meringue: egg whites, caster sugar and water (below, right). Then you fold the two together to form the batter.

All the ingredients including the egg whites are measured by weight, in order to keep the chemistry of the recipe correct. This is my challenge with baking: I have to closely follow instructions.

The almond flour and powdered sugar have to be sifted. Because almond flour tends to clump, I sifted it first by itself and then again with the sugar, resulting in a fine powder.

Two egg whites are then added to the flour/sugar combination, then the mixture is stirred until no dry pockets remain. Since I was making orange-flavored macarons, I added some fresh orange zest.

The next step was to make the meringue. Most macaron recipes I found just make a traditional meringue: beaten egg whites with powdered sugar added. The recipe Pat gave me (as well as one or two other recipes I found online) use an Italian meringue.

Italian meringue is made by pouring a steady stream of boiling sugar syrup (soft ball stage – 116 C / 240 F) into partially-whipped egg whites, then continuing to whip them to the desired stiffness. Italian meringue is a bit more complicated than the traditional soft meringue, but it is also much more stable – a huge benefit when you don’t want your batter to deflate.

I learned a few things from the experience of making Italian meringue that will come in handy next time:

First, get the egg whites to soft peaks before you incorporate the sugar syrup. Second, when you pour the syrup into the mixing bowl, keep it away from the whisk itself. I ended up with little “sugar icicles” that stuck to the bottom of the whisk and were a pain to clean up afterwards.

The meringue is then folded into the almond flour mixture, a little bit at a time. It has to be incorporated fully but not overworked. This is a careful balancing act and I think I overworked it a bit as my macarons ended up just a little flatter than I would have hoped.

The next step is to fill a pastry bag with a number 10 tip and pipe the macaron batter onto parchment paper. Pastry bags and piping aren’t my forte so I used a nifty little technique: trace circles onto the back side of the paper so you have something to fill in.

Two lessons I learned here: keep plenty of room between the circles because they spread, and don’t overwork the batter next time, so the macarons don’t spread so much!

After piping (notice a few misshapen and inconsistent circles!), the macarons have to air dry until they form a skin and are no longer sticky to the touch. With the air conditioner on high (on a drizzly afternoon) it took the better part of two hours. This is a crucial step, though. The first time I made these we didn’t wait until we had a full skin on them, and the tops cracked and were not smooth.

I also tried baking them one sheet at a time instead of two, as I did the previous weekend. While I have a convection oven, so theoretically the heat is even throughout because of the fan, I have observed that there are some significant hotspots, so cooking one pan at a time will give me more control over even cooking.

One challenge I still encountered was the problem of the meringues sticking to the parchment. The ones in the upper-right of the picture were ultimately not usable because there wasn’t enough substance left. The recipe calls for 130 C oven and about 12-13 minutes of baking. That wasn’t enough.

While I risked overcooking, it seems like I got better results at 150 C for about 16-17 minutes per tray, turned once in baking. Various helpful techniques I read online, such as spraying some water under the parchment paper after taking them out of the oven, didn’t seem to help. Also, letting them cool on the pan versus moving the paper to a rack didn’t seem to make a difference.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions of how to tackle this problem, please let me know!

As the macarons were cooking, I cooked up an orange curd: eggs and egg yolks combined with sugar, thickened over a bain marie – a pot of boiling water – and then some orange juice is incorporated. This didn’t get quite as thick as I’d like; I need to experiment more to get the best texture, but it worked well enough.

The end results turned out much better than before: my macarons have “feet” and puffed up nicely – although a little less overworking would have made them even puffier. They have a nice smooth surface, although they don’t have the glossy sheen that some patisseries are able to achieve. I wonder if they brush the surface with egg whites before baking?

Of the eight dozen individual macarons, about two dozen were not usable because of the sticking problem. This resulted in about three dozen gerets – the macaron sandwiches.

I also learned that they store in the freezer (in an airtight container) for several days very nicely. Good to know.

So, I think I can call this weekend’s second attempt a success. I’ve created a macaron that is substantially similar to what I can buy in the hotel pastry shops. They aren’t nearly as good as the ones in Paris, but were pretty decent. Given that the entire process took the better part of five hours of my Sunday, I’m not sure they’re worth the effort, though!

But, still, a fun and tasty adventure.

My Adventures in Italian Cooking

Posted on 16 May 2009 by christao408

Everybody has a different “cooking personality”: some are rigid, by-the-recipe people, others are rebellious free-form experimenters who have never cracked open a cookbook in their life. I’m definitely more of a “Hmmm… interesting idea. Now let’s improvise!” type of cook, which led to an adventurous experience in a recent attempt to make raviolli.

The whole thing is documented in this video, but for those of you who don’t watch video, let me share the story.

Somewhere not too long ago, I read about using no-boil lasagna sheets to make manicotti, the Italian stuffed pasta tubes baked in tomato sauce somewhat like a rolled lasagna. According to the article, instead of making your own pasta, you just soak the lasagna sheets in warm water for a few minutes and they become pliable enough to roll into manicotti tubes.

Hmmm… interesting idea. Now let’s improvise! If the sheets get flexible enough to be rolled, surely they could be folded in half to form raviolli, right?

What sounded like a good idea didn’t work so well in practice. The pasta sheets are simply too thick and even after ten minutes in very hot water, attemps at making raviolli with the sheets were failing badly.

Never one to be fearful of switching the proverbial horses mid-stream, I retreated to making manicott, albeit without a recipe. I will say this, though: the improvised white bean and spinach stuffing was to die for.

Above, White bean and spinach manicotti with fresh green salad.

Just to make sure the meal turned out okay, I threw together an apple crisp. This is always a safe end to a meal, though even here I stepped out on a limb for a bit more improvisation and tried some maple syrup instead of sugar to sweeten the apples. Along with a few handfulls of chopped pecans, the crisp was a perfect end to the raviolli – er, manicotti – meal.

Above, a scoop of maple-pecan-apple crisp to finish the meal.

Macaron Party

Posted on 14 May 2009 by christao408

Macarons vs. macaroons: Have you been caught up in this latest pastry craze? While macaroons are the dry piles of coconut often dipped in chocolate, macarons are a French confection made of almond flour and meringue, baked and then formed into little sandwiches with buttercream filling.

I first had these at Le Goûter Bernardaud in Hong Kong. While I think most versions are a bit too sweet for my tastes, they are tremendously delicate. The exterior is just a little chewy, giving way to a cake-like interior. The flavors are as intense as the colors. One bakery in San Francisco, Miette, dispenses with the food coloring, which I personally prefer.

From what I’ve heard, the macarons are supposed to be one of the most difficult things for a pastry chef to bake. Of course, that just set my competitive side on fire. I was very happy when one of Tawn’s friends, who trained at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and interned at La Nôtre here in Bangkok, offered to conduct a macaron cooking class for us.

In no time at all, the offer had been turned into a party for ten of their fellow university classmates complete with food and wine. They say too many cooks spoil the soup. In this case, I’m not sure about the soup, but the kitchen was definitely crowded!

Pat, our teacher, flashes the victory sign in our crowded galley kitchen. At one point, we had seven people working in there!

I’m planning on trying another batch of these tasty treats this weekend and will go into more detail on the ingredients and techniques after that. Instead, I’ll just share some of the fun shots form the party.

Bobby, the only other native English speaker, decided to join me in the kitchen after the Thai gossip got incomprehensibly out of hand. He did a fantastic job separating eggs. This was the first time I’ve baked by measuring the egg whites by weight!

While I was pushing for no food coloring – no adulteration, please! – the other gay boys won out and pastels ruled the day.

Macarons are indeed difficult to make. So many steps and so many factors that can inhibit success. One of the biggest challenges is that you have to pipe the darn things onto parchment, trying to get them the same size. Penciling circles on the back of the sheet helped.

But it took a little practice because the batter, which immediately after piping looks like it will stay nice and pert, slowly begins to spread, until this happens:

D’oh! After which, you have to scrape the batter back into the bag and start over.

The other challenge is that you need to let the batter air dry until it forms a skin. We waited close to an hour but with our humidity, two or three hours would have been better. Next time I’m getting the air con going full blast well in advance.

After the first batches came out, Pat (with her husband standing over shoulder, eagerly awaiting a sample) started piping raspberry jam between the cookies and sandwiching them together.

Above, Tawn and Pat with the first batch of macarons. Below, detail of our first plate.

Yeah, they look cute, but they really turned out crap. Here’s what they should look like:

Ignore the color for a moment. What we’re really shooting for are two things: the shiny top and then the “foot” at the base of the cookie. We didn’t get those and I think there are a few factors. Based on what I’ve read in several online recipes and my conversation with Pat, I think I didn’t incorporate the meringue into the almond flour mixture sufficiently, and I think I didn’t let it air dry long enough.

My suspicion is based on what is happening on the underside of the macarons: the centers are sticking to the parchment paper, which I think means the interior is significantly moister than the exterior. In other words, not dry enough.

Left to right: Bim, Ko, Pat, Prince, Tuk, Fluck and Tawn.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll do another batch this weekend. Let’s hope they turn out better. The good news is, even when they don’t look perfect and their texture is a bit off, they still taste good!

Update: Last Sunday I made another attempt at macarons and they turned out a lot better. Pictures and more detail here.

Sunday Brunch

Posted on 31 August 2008 by christao408

Earlier in this week I was in touch with Doug and we agreed that we should get together as it has been months since we last hung out. So I invited him over for brunch and extended the invitation to Ken and Roka, as this is the usual guest list for brunches with Doug.

Prep work began Saturday afternoon. There was a lot of prep work and one gets hungry, so I made an asparagus, bell pepper and onion quiche for Saturday dinner. Thanks to Brent for the idea of making the quiche in a springform pan. What a good idea and nice presentation!

Begin by blind baking the crust for about ten minutes. Then pull out the peas, bake for another 2-3 minutes to dry the interior a little bit, then add the filling and return to the oven. The finished product was beautiful and tasty.

Below, me in the kitchen. Nice view.

Straying from the more traditional brunch menus, I looked to the Mediterranean for inspiration. Our menu:

Toasted pita bread with garam masala hummus and roasted eggplant and red pepper dip
Roasted wild mushroom soup thickened with buttermilk
Mediterranean lentil salad served over a bed of red oak leaf lettuce
Sliced chicken breast poached in white wine and shallots, served with a fresh tarragon-dijon mustard sauce
Quinoa salad with ginger-lime vinaigrette
Banana bread with lemon honey whipped cream cheese

For the eggplant and red pepper dip I started by roasting eggplant until soft. I cut off the skins and cubed the meat, combining with onions, shallots and bell peppers. Some balsamic vinegar added a rich sweetness and a jammy texture and I finished with parsley and toasted pine nuts.

Starting with a variety of local mushrooms (which, ironically, are less expensive than the standard white button mushrooms), I roasted them in olive oil and garlic then blended them with chicken stock. In a second pot I sauteed aromatics (shallots, onion, celery and carrot) with fresh thyme and marsala wine, then blended with chicken stock, straining out the solids. Finally, I combined the two pots, reducing the liquid by about 25% before finishing with a little buttermilk for a rich tanginess.

For effect and convenience, I served the soup in cappuccino cups so they could be sipped by our guests. If I had a soda bottle, I would have tried something like a white truffle foam to top the soup.

Quinoa, a grain indigenous to South America, is a tasty way to get a complete non-meat protein into your diet. Cooked similarly to cous cous, I combined it with chopped yellow bell peppers and green onion, then dressed it with a vinaigrette made with lime juice, olive oil, and freshly grated ginger. It made a nice accompaniment to the chicken breasts.

The chicken breasts were marinated and then poached in a combination of white wine, olive oil and lots of shallots. After poaching they were allowed to cool for a half hour in the poaching liquid, which encourages more moisture to be retained in the meat. The chicken was sliced on the bias and then served with an easy sauce made from lots of fresh tarragon and parsley blended with dijon mustard and mayonnaise.

The salad, which could have stood on its own without the greens (although it was perfectly nice with them), was made of lentils combined with small-dice carrots, celery and fennel, along with black olives and cherry tomatoes, seasoned with a lemon vinaigrette and then sprinkled with cheese. Normally, feta would be used but in this case the local ricotta has a feta-like texture.

For dessert I made oatmeal banana bread. I also made small loaves for each guest to take home. When I went to the local street market to buy the bananas with Tawn, the vendor laughed when I said I wanted the most overripe bananas in order to make a cake. “Oh!” she said to Tawn, “Are you going to bake it?”

“No,” Tawn replied, “he bakes it himself.”

“How did he learn that? He must have a Thai wife,” replied the vendor.

The secret to this bread is that is has oatmeal in it along with plenty of freshly-chopped walnuts. It is very tasty and went well with the whipped cream cheese, to which I added fresh lemon zest and Chiang Mai sunflower honey.

Tawn handled the table setting, for once not getting too worked up over how the entire house looks. It looked fine and everyone was comfortable. Making their debut were the little placecard holders Tawn picked up in Paris: tiny chairs.

A quick picture before eating. From left to right: me, Roka, Doug, Ken and Tawn.

Another Sunday at Chris and Tawn’s…

More of the Same, Two Ways

Posted on 30 August 2008 by christao408

The media offers us just a narrow perspective on particular stories based on the particular angles from which those stories are reported. This is compounded when the media covers a story far away in a another country, a country with a political system different from your own. As a comparison, look at the room you are sitting in through a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels and you’ll get an idea of how little you are seeing and how little that narrow view helps you understand what is going on.

These truths are always useful to keep in mind, but especially for those of you overseas, sitting there wondering what in the world is going on in Thailand right now.

Let’s be clear: there are clashes between protesters, groups of who number in the low thousands, and the police. These clashes have increased in intensity and there has been some violence, although the police and the Prime Minister have been remarkably restrained. Likewise, the army has declined to get directly involved.

Additionally, three airports in the country were shut down by protesters (Krabi, Phuket and Hat Yai), the trains have shut down because of strikes and unions at THAI Airways are being encouraged by the protesters to stage work stoppages in support of them.

Many sources, included some contacts we have who were “in the know” about the last coup, have warned us that things will come to a head this weekend. Either the Prime Minister will resign and dissolve parliament, leading to new elections, or he will take action to end the protests with force. It will probably get worse before it gets better.

That being said, the areas where these protests are happening are pretty limited. In Khrungthep (Bangkok) they are mostly at key locations in the old city, Ratanokosin Island. If you walk just a few blocks north from the Grand Palace and then make a right on Ratchadamnoen Avenue, you would run into police barricades and a few blocks later, the protesters.

For the rest of us, those of us living anywhere else, life continues as normal. For now. (Side note for those of you who are interested: The Nation newspaper has a very good brief history of modern Thai politics. It will give you a good rundown and help put this event in some context.)

Since life is continuing as normal, let me share some of it with you. You’ll find it quite mundane.

During dinner with Steve on Wednesday at Thon Krueng restaurant, I noticed that the pieces of carrot in the vegetable stir-fry looked like they had been intentionally carved to resemble animals. The one on the top looks (to me) like the profile of a cow’s head, looking to the right. Or maybe a moose? Those could be antlers. The lighter core of the carrot is right about where the eye would be. The bottom carrot looks like a crab.

What do you think?

Stopping by Paragon to meet Chris and Tehlin earlier in the week, I parked at the Siam Centre car park and then walked across the plaza between the two malls. The plaza was being set up for another event, this one for Levi’s 501 jeans. I took this shot from the backstage area. You can see the Siam BTS Skytrain station in the background. Their sound check was very loud. Everything here is, so I guess the sound was at the correct volume.

This week, I tried a new sourdough whole wheat bread recipe from the book I recently finished: Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and One Raucous Year of Eating Locally. The recipe I’ve used previously is too wet. I know that it is better for bread dough to be a little wet rather than too dry, but it is impossible to handle. It sticks to my hands and everything else, no matter how much flour is added.

This new recipe turned out a loaf that was just about perfect. The right size, the right shape, the right texture and – best of all – only a little sticky.

Don’t I look just like a proud father?

Here’s a look inside. Note the texture – it’s just about perfect for a general purpose slice-and-eat sandwich bread.

Finally, Friday night Stuart and I met at Roadhouse Barbecue on the corner of Surawongse and Rama IV for a Democrats Abroad Thailand event: watching (a tape delayed version of) Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. There were at least 150 people there and the owner let us have the run of the second floor.

This is about 1/3 of the total floor space and there was another TV to the far right of the room. In the middle area we had t-shirt sales featuring the new “Thailand for Obama” logo, left, and voter registration. That will be one of my areas of volunteer focus the next month: getting people registered.

Too many US citizens living or traveling abroad don’t know that they have the right to vote.

If you or someone you know would like more information – especially if you know any Americans who will be abroad during the November 4th election – please visit www.votefromabroad.org.

Here is a brief video just to give you a little feel of the event:

Not much, but you get the idea.

Lots of cooking today (Saturday) as I get ready for some brunch guests tomorrow. I’ll share more of those pictures later.

Visit by Khun Nui

Posted on 7 July 2008 by christao408

Hot on the heels of Independence Day ponderings and a previous post about families that aren’t as close as cozy as they could be, we have an entry about my mother-in-law’s visit this past Saturday.

Several days in advance, Khun Sudha (Tawn’s father) told Khun Nui (Tawn’s mother – “Khun” being a prefix of respect) that he was joining his friends for some social event all day Saturday. She called Tawn to announce that she would come over and visit us on Saturday. Shortly thereafter, she called me to say that she wanted me to cook for her.

Considering my options, I selected a recipe for blueberry muffins from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, a.k.a. Baking on the Cellblock. Muffins are a fun breakfast food and, despite the expense of the imported from Australia berries, a worthwhile treat for my mother-in-law.

The recipe is basically a white cake dough: eggs creamed with sugar, add vanilla, then spoon in a mixture of flour, baking powder (of which I need to buy some more – note to self), and salt.

Mix just until moistened, taking care not to over mix. Fold in the blueberries – coat them lightly with the flour mixture beforehand so they don’t sink to the bottom of the muffin – and then scoop into a buttered and floured muffin tin.

After filling the tins, bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.

While the muffins bake, clean out every last bit of goodness from the bowl and eat it with complete disregard for the raw eggs in the batter!

Below: Before and after.

Tawn went to pick up his mother while the muffins were baking. His parents live only about 10 minutes away (when there isn’t any traffic) so by the time the muffins were ready to come out of the oven, Tawn and his mother had returned.

I was fearful that the muffins would stick to the pan, but a little gentle loosening with a table knife was enough to overcome their shyness and they popper right out as if to say, “Hello, world! Eat me!”

Also on the list was a roasted bell pepper fritata.

So easy to roast bell peppers at home using your broiler. Burn them and then thrown them in a plastic container to steam for a few minutes. Peel the charred skins off and then slice and use to add a bit of smoky goodness to your food.

To add some moisture to the eggs, I used cottage cheese. It produces a nice creamy texture and, by adding some additional lumps on top of the fritata, I get a nice browning effect.

Finish with some sliced fresh avocado and you have a good California breakfast on your hands.

Below: Before and after.

Finally, after a flurry of picture taking that caused Khun Nui to arch her eyebrows in a unspoken question, we sat down and ate breakfast.

Above: An artistically-composed show by Tawn and me, Mom and the muffins. Notice that he focused on the muffins.

Another breadmaking attempt goes awry

Posted on 16 June 2008 by christao408

For those of your with broadband, you can watch the whole thing in this three-minute video. For the low-bandwidth version, see below.

You know that I enjoy baking. You know that I’m still on a quest to create a really good loaf of whole wheat bread, a loaf like the ones I bought at Whole Foods back when I lived in the US. And I hope you know that these continual mishaps and disappointments are real, not just staged for your entertainment.

After my last attempt, I felt I had at least arrived at a recipe that had good flavor and good self-rising capabilities thanks to the sourdough starter I’ve been nuturing. The problem was, the loaf wasn’t big enough to fill the pan.

This time I increased the recipe by 50%, approximately how much more bread I needed in the pan to get a loaf big enough for sandwiches.

Somewhere after the first rise I got distracted and decided to bake the bread in my French loaf pan. I don’t know why I didn’t stick with my normal rectangular loaf pan. Changing pans meant that I wouldn’t be able to compare the volume of the new loaf to the old one. But some whim captured my fancy and the French loaf pan seemed like a brilliant idea.

At first, it seemed like a success. After the second rise, I had a beautifully shaped loaf that looked a lot like a real French batard. I was even able to score the surface without any tearing or deflating.

I popped the pan into the oven, added hot water to the cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven in order to create steam. (Now you know why there are rust stains in it.)

Fifteen minutes later the aroma of fresh-baked bread began to fill the house. Oh, I just knew I was on the path to success!

When it came time to pull the loaf out of the oven, it was a little dark on the outside – note to self: lower temperature next time – but the internal temperature indicated that it was cooked through.

The problem came when I tried to remove the loaf from the pan. The pan, which has a thousand or so tiny perforations to allow the crust to crisp on all sides, was supposedly non-stick. In fact, a previous loaf I baked in it had pulled away with no problem.

But this time the dough had risen into hundreds of those holes, expanding as the loaf baked and essentially gripping the pan like hundreds of little fingers. I couldn’t remove the loaf!

I tried using a silicone spatula to slip between the crust and the pan. No success. Ultimately, 80% of the loaf came away while 20% stayed with the pan.

The upshot was that despite its hideous exterior, like Victor Hugo’s Hunchback, the loaf contained a complex, delicate, and rich interior that was worth knowing. Especially with butter and preserves.

The downside was that I had to “stew” the pan for several hours over low heat, basting it with water, in order to loosen the lower crust. Even then, I still had to take a toothpick and clean out each of those hundreds of holes, one by one. Next time, despite the claims of non-stickiness, I’m using parchment paper.

The starter is back out of the refrigerator, though, so I’ll try another loaf this week. Stay tuned…

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Tag Archives: baking