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Archive for October, 2006

Chocolate Bar

Posted in sweets on October 31, 2006 | 2 Comments »

Chocolate is definitely not encouraged in Nourishing Traditions. There are several recipes using carob, but none with cocoa or chocolate.

I’m not convinced cacao beans are bad for you. It is a bean that is actually fermented in a multi-day process. It does have some caffeine, but it is extremely high in anti-oxidants (higher than blueberries). My problem comes in with highly processed varieties of chocolate. Your standard Hershey bar is certainly not good for you.

I happened across Rapunzel chocolate bars. In particular the Rapunzel bittersweet bar. Rapunzel is the company that makes Rapadura and they use it in many of their chocolate bars. The bittersweet bar in particular is made with only the best ingredients and follows NT principles very closely (unless you’re anti-cacao).

The great benefit of this bar is that it is quite nutritious while at the same time being delicious. If you don’t like dark chocolate you won’t like this bar, but it is one of the best chocolate bars I have ever tasted.

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Bread Update

Posted in baking, bread on October 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment »

My bread is getting closer.

It is apparent that gluten development is the key to getting the bread I want. Ingredients (e.g. honey, oil, etc.) are nice, but they are peripheral to the key issue of gluten development. The key to gluten development seems to be making sure the flour gets adequately hydrated. The techniques I’ve used so far are:

  • autolyse – a 20 minute soaking of the flour in water before kneading
  • resting the dough for 10 minutes in the middle of kneading
  • really wet dough during kneading (dryer dough doesn’t get kneaded as throughly in the Bosch because of the nature of the machine)
  • relatively short kneading time (5-8 minutes)

With the methods I’m using now, I’m pretty happy with my window pane test (i.e. stretching the dough till you get a see-through “window-pane”). It’s not as good as pictures I’ve seen around the net of window-pane tests with white flour dough, but reasonable.

The problem I’m coming up against now is that the dough is too wet when I put it in the loaf pan and overflows during the rise and baking stages. It doesn’t slash well either.

My next attempt will be to add a little more flour at the end of the kneading process after the window pane test is passed. I’m contemplating adding either some barley or brown rice flour to get a lighter result. Since there won’t be much time to develop the gluten in the portion I add at the end, a low-gluten grain should be just fine. There will be about ½ – ¾ cup of this alternative flour.

Recall I’m using a Bosch Universal mixer to knead this dough so your mileage may vary if you’re using another method.

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Hot Cereal

Posted in breakfasts, cooking, recipes on October 26, 2006 | 4 Comments »

wholecereal.jpgI never used to be a fan of hot cereals. However, they have grown on me with age. Going off of recipes in both Nourishing Traditions and Sue Gregg‘s Breakfasts book, I have arrived at a hot cereal I really like.

I take whatever whole grains I have on hand. Usually that’s brown rice, barley, oats, and some type of wheat. This time around I used cracked.jpgspelt, which is an ancient variety of wheat. Sue Gregg suggested cracking these grains right in your blender, which is ingenious. It’s also nostalgic for me because I used to spend a week every summer in a grain elevator where my grandfather worked. After you run this mixture through your blender it will smell just like a grain elevator.

cooked.thumbnail.jpgI used to make something similar from an Arrowhead Mills box. The freshly ground grain tastes much better.

Based on Nourishing Traditions, I soak this over night in water with a couple tablespoons of whey added. I use 1 cup of grain to 3 cups of water. In the morning I add salt (Eden Foods celtic sea salt) and dried fruit, cook till it’s thick and not too soupy and then add butter, ground flax (freshly in the blender), and maple syrup. This morning I ground some almonds and added those.

Mmmmm.

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Beef and Rice Pastries

Posted in baking on October 25, 2006 | Leave a Comment »

pastries.jpgI love pastries of all sorts. I thought I’d try this lamb and rice pastry recipe from Nourishing Traditions. I used beef instead of lamb since I happened to have some on hand and it’s a lot cheaper.

The first thing I noticed is that either I did something dreadfully wrong (does beef expand more than lamb?), or the proportions in this recipe need some revision. There’s way too much filling for the amount of dough (maybe my crust is too thick?) However, they were pretty bland so I’m guessing I just had way too much filling for the seasonings and crust. It called for 2lbs of lamb. I think 1lb of beef would be plenty. Since I had too much filling left over I froze it and made it a second time. This time I added some extra seasoning.

At any rate, my family all like these except my daughter. I made the yogurt dough with freshly ground soft white winter wheat. Instead of 1 cup of butter, I used 1/2 cup of butter with 1/4 cup of coconut oil and 1/4 cup of olive oil.

Watch them while baking so that they don’t get overcooked. I would probably bake them for 5-10 minutes less than the recipe calls for. Of course it could just be my oven.

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Bread Stuff

Posted in baking, bread on October 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment »

Soft White Winter WheatOn my other blog, before the beginning of this blog, I had someone ask me for details on grain sources and recipes for my sourdough bread. Here are some answers.

I use 100% hard red spring wheat. I can buy hard red wheat locally at a couple different health food stores (Whole Foods and Arbor Farms). However, I was looking for a place to buy in bulk to cut my costs. I looked around for a bit and discovered that shipping costs made nearly any supply house comparable to just buying from the grocery stores.

Hard Red Spring WheatI just so happen to be lucky enough to be close to Eden Foods headquarters in Clinton, MI (I like a lot of their other products as well – especially their mustard). In fact, I drive right through Clinton every day. Sure enough, they have wheat in 50lb bags. I called and ordered a 50lb bag of hard red spring wheat and another of soft white winter wheat (for biscuits, muffins, and pastries). They had it there for me when I drove through that night so I didn’t have to pay any shipping.

I suggest doing a little research in your area and seeing what options you have available for this type of thing. The grain at the grocery store costs about $0.95/lb whereas this costs about $0.50/lb. If you use it a lot that’s worth doing a little research.

A Recent Loaf I madeI’m currently working with a recipe for 100% whole wheat sourdough bread from Sourdoughhome.com. I also ordered the book he is selling (for a measly $5). I was having trouble reproducing his results with the flour from my grain mill. I contacted the author and he indicated that this is pretty common as milling can make a big difference. I am currently experimenting with methods for increasing the rise and improving the dough to get the results described. I’ll post my recipe when I’m happy with it.

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Gourmet

Posted in kitchen logistics on October 20, 2006 | 1 Comment »

I’m currently trying out a program called Gourmet. I’m a Linux user and this installed easily in Ubuntu. Apparently there is a version for Windows as well, but it doesn’t look like it’s real easy to install and is a bit behind the Linux version.

screenshot-1.pngAt first I thought that it would be difficult to use a program to keep track of recipes and shopping lists. But I recently read a statistic that says that most American families use about 10 staple recipes and simply cycle through them. If all you have to worry about is getting 10 recipes into this program and then click on “Add to Shopping List” to have all the ingredients added, this might be useful. Of course, I’m not typical and tend to try all kinds of new foods out. Nonetheless, I do have some recipes I use on a regular basis that could benefit from being in my computer.

Gourmet’s main interface is a searchable list of recipes. Each recipe has a description, ingredients list, notes, and instructions. You can import nutritional information from the USDA database and Gourmet will calculate the nutritional value of a serving of the recipe. It’s much more complete than the nutritional information you find on the sides of boxed food. One handy thing I noticed is that you can add another recipe as an ingredient in a different recipe.

The grocery list automatically adds all the items to your grocery list and allows you to move items off the list into the “pantry.” It tries to remember which are pantry items and which are not. It might be nice to have a pantry inventory feature, but that might get to be too complicated anyway.

It seems like a pretty handy program.

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Over Risen

Posted in baking, bread on October 19, 2006 | Leave a Comment »

overrisen.jpgI’ve been working on my bread skills (see details from my other blog) and learned an interesting thing today. I learned how to over-rise bread.

The jaggies on the left side are where I broke off pieces of baked-on overflowing dough (which where quite tasty). The holes are large and uneven, which is not exactly what I was going for in a sandwich bread. There was a little bit of a fall in the middle where I attempted to slash it.

Since this is a sourdough, I’ve been adding a little baking soda to help neutralize some of the sourness. This time I added the baking soda at the end of my kneading so that it would contribute to the rise more as well. It did.

At about the time it needed to go into the oven, I was popping in a pan of corn bread so it had to wait an extra 50 minutes. I think if I had put it in then it would have worked nicely, but I did get a pretty light bread out of it. This is a remarkably light bread for being 100% whole wheat.

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Chicken Stock

Posted in cooking on October 17, 2006 | 10 Comments »

So over the weekend I made chicken stock.

I followed the guide in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. I’ve done this before, but this time I cooked it for twice as long as I have before. Thursday I moved my chicken (a free-range chicken) from the freezer to the refrigerator. Friday afternoon I put it in the sink in some cold water. Then Friday evening I put it in a large stock pot full of water and a little vinegar. I got the water from our outdoor spigot so that it would be straight from the well instead of softened – more minerals that way.

I threw in some onions, celery, and carrots and then I brought it to a boil. It takes a couple iterations to get the burner on my glass-top stove set to the right setting to maintain a consistent simmer for 48 hours, but once you find the sweet spot you can just let it go and occasionally come back and give it a quick stir.

I’m hoping the extra long cooking time will make a richer stock with lots of gelatin than I’ve made before. I’ll bottle this up in mason jars when the fat on top has hardened and then have it for making soups and sauces for a month or so till I have to make the next batch. I put the chicken in small plastic containers in the freezer so I can pull small portions out and put them in soups and such.

It makes an awesome chicken soup, pot pie, and sometimes I even use it instead of water when cooking brown rice. I’ve tried beef stock before too, but there’s just something about chicken stock that makes it extra good.

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My Philosophy

Posted in foodosophy on October 17, 2006 | 2 Comments »

I’ve always been interested in healthy eating. That’s probably due to my Seventh-day Adventist upbringing, which I left behind. While I gave up the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church (especially vegetarianism), I did retain the Adventist interest in health.

After a long journey through various teachings on diet, including such regimens as vegetarianism, low-fat, Atkins, Zone, and Neanderthin, I happened upon the Weston A. Price Foundation. The methodology is based on a 1930′s study of societies around that world that were in peak health. The most healthy societies had not yet had refined flour, sugar, or oil introduced. They also followed food preparation methods with long traditions behind them.

I think that it is best to respect the wisdom of our ancestors and accept any newfangled methods and foods with caution. The burden of proof should lie with the newfangled methods and foods rather than the old. The old foods and methods have been time tested, while new foods and methods have yet to be proved.

In fact, as far as I can tell, the contemporary American diet does nothing to reduce heart disease, cancer, and numerous other problems. I think it’s time we hit rewind and try a little old fashioned cooking.

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How it Began

Posted in kitchen logistics on October 16, 2006 | 1 Comment »

About 4 months ago I took over the kitchen in our house. My wife Shari had taken care of the kitchen for the first 12 years of our life together and had lost a lot of her love of cooking and baking. She also had a huge change in her work life and became one of the busiest persons I know.

I ended up doing most of the cooking even though she planned the meals and did the grocery shopping. Finally I came to the realization that if I was going to do the cooking, I might as well decide what I was going to cook and learn and develop my own cooking style. That’s when it all began…

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