Bread Update

So, I made a one-serving loaf of the multigrain bread the night that I mixed it all together, and that was good, though a little wet.

And then I had to eat up the rest of the white bread I had made before.

So yesterday I made up a loaf of the bread, and ate it last night and this morning. It had re-risen fairly high (back up to 4 qts) and was no longer wetter than I wanted. (I think the bulghur and other grains absorbed the excess water.) It had the right gluteny feel when I took it out of the bucket.

This morning, I looked at the bucket in my fridge and noticed that even though I had removed a handful (grapefruit-sized hunk) of the dough yesterday, it had risen back to 4 qts today. So this time, I grabbed a slightly larger hunk (small cantaloupe-sized). And it's re-rising now.

I can definitely say that making no-knead multigrain bread over the space of a week or so works really well.

No-knead Bread

Okay, it turns out that there are two schools of thought on no-knead breads. The NYT method popularized by Mark Bittman is for a one-off loaf that you make in a dutch oven. The King Arthur method that I've been using starts with an entirely different premise.

The idea is that you mix up a mess of bread dough, let it rise for two hours, and then store it in the fridge for whenever you want to make it. (The recipe talks about a week, but someone posted in the comments that they had gone as long as 3 weeks.) When you want to make a loaf, you rip off a hunk and let it rise for 30-45 minutes, and then bake it at 450 for 25-35 minutes.

This works REALLY well for peasant white loaves, IMHO. But I've been wanted to try something with more...meat. So last week I threw some Benefiber in the bread, and that managed to make the bread completely uniform. None of the air bubbles that you expect out of homemade bread. (But it was still good.)

This week, I've been looking at multigrain bread recipes. I learned all about "soakers". This is part of the grains that are particular tough (like oatmeal or corn meal) that you soak for a while before you mix it into the dough.The only multigrain no-knead recipes I could find were all for the Bittman-type, one-off loaf method, and even Mark Bittman's loaf was a brick. I have no desire to make a brick--I've made plenty of loaves like the one in that photo, and I'm interested in changing that.

So I started with 3/4 white flour, 1/4 whole wheat flour, and added flax seed, wheat germ, oat bran, and bulghur to the mix. (The original recipe calls for two pounds of flour, which makes about 4 loaves for me.) I had to add another cup of water to the mix--the volume is definitely larger than what I usually make.

The original recipe doesn't call for sugar (to feed the yeast), but every other multigrain recipe I saw used honey or some other sweetener, so I added a couple of tablespoons of local honey. I don't know how that's going to work out over the course of the week.

When I broke off a bit of the dough to bake, I noticed that the dough was a little wet. Obviously, this recipe is going to take some tweaking.

The bread is very good; not too heavy, just a little light. I think next time I will up the non-white flour to 1/3 of the total, and add a bit more of the other ingredients and see how stiff that is.

Braised lamb shank

I bought three lamb shanks because they were on sale for $1.79 /lb. I cooked one last night, following the directions at e-How.com. Basically, I browned the lamb shank, and cooked it in about a cup of water for a little over an hour. (The e-How recipe said to cook it for at least two hours, but I probably cooked it a bit faster. In the end, it was well done, and very good.)

I'm glad that I bought all three lamb shanks. I'll probably freeze the other two.

Tonight's experiment is raita, from a Jacques Pepin recipe.

It's been a month

It's been a month since I posted--a very cold month, with temps down in the teens. (Very cold for Austin.)

I was hoping for some activity on the job front, but nada. Not a peep out of anyone. I did get my unemployment compensation worked out, sort of. (Texas, in its wisdom, pays you in cash on a debit card, from an account where you can't do an electronic withdrawal.) And I went to see my person in the outplacement firm that Freescale hired. It's a pretty good program, I think, though I'm not sure how useful it will be in actually finding work.

Since this blog has the word "food" in the title, I'm planning to post about some of my food experiments. Tonight is a braised lamb shank. I've never made this before, so it's going to be interesting!

Schedules

It's nearly 4PM, and I'm still in my nightgown. I do understand that part of the reason I'm behaving like this is because it's cold outside (only 46 according to my computer), and I REALLY dislike cold weather.

Starting tomorrow, however, I'm going to have to put myself on a schedule, otherwise, I'm just going to fritter all of my time away.

The REAL unemployment rate

I came across a video on the REAL unemployment rate. There are a lot of underemployed, discouraged workers out there.

Funemployment!

I was reading a magazine in the doctor's office last week and came across the term "funemployment", which basically means enjoying your unemployment.

Tomorrow is my last day at work. So far, I don't have any negative feelings about the layoff; the next step is to concentrate on the fun aspects!