Bloggers Picnic today 3/28/09

Noon to 4PM"ish", Farnsworth Park, Altadena CA. MAP HERE.

Chicken and Rice Casserole

This is a 4/5 dish, in other words 4 outta 5 in my house will eat it so I consider it a hit.  Actually one of my pickiest eaters devours this one so its a staple and the 1 who doesn't like it can have pbj that night.

I could *claim* to cook and sauce it from scratch, but why bother when you can use good old canned soups?  Some days it has to be about cutting corners and this dish is a great one for that.

Chicken and Rice Casserole

• 2 cups diced chicken
  
• 1 c diced carrot
  
• 1 c diced celery
  
• 1 c diced onion
  
• 2 T butter
  
• 2 1/2 c minute rice
  
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
  
• 2 1/2 c chicken stock or water
  
• 1/2 c chopped fresh parsley
  
• 1 large can French's Onion Rings
  
• 2 cups colby/jack cheese
  

In large sauce pan cook celery, carrot and onion over medium heat until onion is translucent.  Add Soups and stock.  Bring to boil and add minute rice.  Cook 1 minute, then remove from heat and cover.  Let sit covered 7-10 minutes.

In large casserole layer 1/2 of rice mixture. Add all the chicken in even layer.  Add 1/2 French's Onion Rings.  Sprinkle on 1/2 the cheese.  Add remaining rice mixture and spread out evenly.  Cover and bake in 350F oven 30 minutes.

At end of 30 minutes remove from oven.  Remove cover.  Sprinkle on remaining cheese.  Sprinkle evenly the remaining French's Onion Rings.  Return to oven and bake uncovered 5-10 minutes until onion rings are all browned and the cheese is bubbly.

The added bonus with this one is that at potluck type get togethers its always a hit.  So add in fast, easy and suitable for company and its a pretty well rounded entree.  Not bad for such humble ingredients.

Sourdough Bread

That is one perfectly done boule of sourdough bread.  I did it myself.  Honest, and that was the 3rd time with this recipe so I know it works.  WELL.

Sourdough Bread

2 C starter sponge

2- 2 1/2 cups flour

2 T olive oil

4 t sugar

2 t salt 

seasalt, sel gris, kosher salt for sprinkling 

Before adding ingredients did you remember to reserve starter for the future?

To the sponge add 2C flour, olive oil, sugar and salt.  Knead with dough hook until a ball forms (called a boule).  This is a wet dough but if too wet add additional flour 1 heaping Tablespoon at a time until it forms a tight ball.   Very important that you touch and poke this dough.  Knead about 5 minutes with dough hook.  Even though wet it should have the feel of regular white or french style bread.  Do not over knead.

Oil your hand, take the dough and roll it into the middle several times until you have a smooth ball.  Place in a well oiled bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap.  Allow to rise in warm spot 2-3 hours until doubled in size.  

Remove and punch down the dough, knead a couple of times and start rolling folding into a tight smooth ball.  At this point in time you can do one of two things.  First is let it rise to bake now or allow it to sit refrigerated overnight to develop a stronger "sour" taste.  

Bake now.  Preheat oven with a pizza stone to 500F.  Place the newly formed boule on a piece of parchment paper cut to about 1" wider than the boule. Cover and allow to rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size.  When double slash top with a razor blade or cut with sharp scissors a series of gashes.  Brush dough with water and sprinkle on the salt of choice.

 Place the boule on its paper in the oven on the pizza stone.  Reduce heat to 350F and bake 60-75 minutes until golden brown and instant read thermometer reads 210F.

Bake Later:  Return the boule to the oiled bowl and place in refrigerator overnight.  Remove and give it a quick need then reform the boule by rolling itself into the middle until a tight smooth ball forms.  

Place the newly formed boule on a piece of parchment paper cut to about 1" wider than the boule. Cover and allow to rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size. When double slash top with a razor blade or cut with sharp scissors a series of gashes.  Brush dough with water and sprinkle on the salt of choice.

Preheat oven with a pizza stone to 500F.  Place the boule on its paper in the oven on the pizza stone.  Reduce heat to 350F and bake 60-75 minutes until golden brown and instant read thermometer reads 210F.

Note: for extra crispy crust keep a pan of boiling water filled on the bottom of the oven and refill as needed.  Also spritzing the bread with water mist at times will also make extra crispy crust.  Finally, if you have a convection oven you can get the same result by using convect the last 15 minutes of baking.

Doing the final rise on parchment paper is the key.  I tried doing one on cornmeal to see if there was a difference in the final product in terms of ease of release from the paper.   There was none, the crunchy bits of cornmeal are one of those love it or hate it things, I liked it, 4 others hated it.  You decide if you want to try.

I use good bread flour for the making of the bread itself.   Its higher gluten count yields a better sponge and crumb to the bread.

Swampberry Sourdough Bread

Half the battle with sourdough is the patience to just let it work at its own pace.  Once you have an easy bread it is even easier to adapt it.   This is "Swampberry Sourdough Bread" in honor of the fruit of the swamp - blueberry and cranberry.  Those lovely anti-oxidant rich little sweet treats that help keep us healthy.  

Swampberry Sourdough Bread

• 2 C starter sponge
  
• 2- 2 1/2 cups flour
  
• 2 T olive oil
  
• 4 t sugar
  
• 2 t salt 
  
• 1/4 c dried blueberry
  
• 1/4 c dried cranberry 
  
• 2 t cinnamon
  
• seasalt, or kosher salt for sprinkling 
  

Before adding ingredients did you remember to reserve starter for the future?

To the sponge add 2C flour, olive oil, sugar and salt.  Knead with dough hook until a ball forms.

This is a wet dough but if too wet add additional flour 1 heaping Tablespoon at a time until it forms a tight ball.   It is very important that you touch and poke this dough.  Knead about 5 minutes with dough hook. Add Cranberry and Blueberry and need 1 minute longer until well incoporated.  Even though wet it should have the feel of regular white or french style bread.  Do not over knead.

Oil your hand, take the dough and roll it into the middle several times until you have a smooth ball.  Place in a well oiled bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap.  Allow to rise in warm spot 2-3 hours until doubled in size.  

Remove and punch down the dough, knead a couple of times then roll into it to create a tight smooth ball (called a boule).  At this point in time you can do one of two things.  First is let it rise to bake now or allow it to sit refrigerated overnight to develop a stronger "sour" taste.  

Bake now.  Preheat oven with a pizza stone to 500F.  Take the freshly kneaded bread, and flatten out.  Sprinkle with cinnamon, then reform the ball by rolling it into itself.  Place the newly formed boule on a piece of parchment paper cut to about 1" wider than the boule. Cover and allow to rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size.  When double slash top with a razor blade or cut with sharp scissors a series of gashes.  Brush dough with water and sprinkle on the salt of choice.

Place the boule on its paper in the oven on the pizza stone.  Reduce heat to 350F and bake 60-75 minutes until golden brown and instant read thermometer reads 210F.

Bake Later:  Return the boule to the oiled bowl and place in refrigerator overnight.  Remove and give it a quick knead and flatten out.  Sprinkle with cinnamon then reform the boule by rolling itself into the middle until a tight smooth ball forms.  

Place the newly formed boule on a piece of parchment paper cut to about 1" wider than the boule. Cover and allow to rise about 1 hour or until doubled in size. When double slash top with a razor blade or cut with sharp scissors a series of gashes.  Brush dough with water and sprinkle on the salt of choice.  Preheat oven with a pizza stone to 500F.  Place the boule on its paper in the oven on the pizza stone.  Reduce heat to  350F and bake 60-75 minutes until golden brown and instant read thermometer reads 210F.

Sourdough Pancakes

Some 30 years ago my Aunt Anna Mae in Duluth, MN got me hooked on Sourdough Pancakes and to this day they are my favorite.  No kidding they are the bomb-diggity best ever.  Her starter is what I got my first start from and it was a winner.  I don't remember her doing the bread so much, but do remember her making those pancakes every time I visited.

Sourdough Pancakes

• 2 C Sourdough Sponge
  
• 1/4 c  luke warm water or milk
  
• 2 T sugar
  
• 2 t baking soda
  
• 1/2 t salt
  
• 1 egg beaten
  
• 4 T oil or melted butter
  

Dissolve sugar, salt, soda in the water.  Add the water mixture to the sponge along with egg and oil.  Stir until just mixed, do not over mix.  Let rest 5 minutes before using the batter.  Fry up on hot griddle, serve warm with butter and syrup.

Hooch and keeping your Sourdough Starter alive

Sourdough starter really is a living creature.  The wild yeast that are in there feed on the water and flour in the starter, also sometimes referred to as the "sponge".  It gets the name "sponge" after it has been fed enough times to make it a large mass for your baking needs and  a little extra to store as "starter" for your next round of baking.

How old can a starter be?  I had one make it 20 years before it died due to a lack of electricity and refrigeration after the Northridge Quake.  Boudine's starter in San Francisco is documented at over 100 years old.  Urban legend in Paris is that the Poulin bakery starter dates to the French Revolution.  Not unlikely as well cared for starter used continuously has a chance of going forever with little care.

Storing starter in the fridge helps extend its life.  2 weeks is  your maximum storage before it sours, IE too much hooch built up that effectively kills it.  You can extend with a mid-term feeding and get a month out of it but I would not recommend.  Use it or lose it is the motto with a good starter.

What is "hooch"?  Hooch is alcohol, the remnants of the feeding cycle (excrement if you will) of the wild yeast in your starter.  It builds up first along the side of your starter and will eventually cover it if you don't monitor often.

 Its not bad for you.  In fact the old 49'ers and Sourdoughs skimmed it off and drank it.  I tried it once.  Bitter, burns and a nasty hangover as it has more than its fair share of bad alcohol in it.  An experiment not worth repeating.  But I digress and need to move on a bit.

I'll give you two recipes here.  One for keeping your starter alive.  Another for feeding to build a sponge for baking.  The latter, the one tool I cannot recommend enough is the use of a large pyrex measuring cup of 2 quarts and well marked.  IT will make the sponge building so much easier as guessing is pretty well eliminated.

The hardest thing to remember for me when baking with Sourdough is that when I start the first step ALWAYS must be to pull off 1 cup of the sponge to store as starter.  Really, get in the practice of doing that as the first step and life is always easier.  OF course if you forget you can always beg someone you gave some too or you got yours from initially for a new starter.

There is a debate between measuring by weight vs good old imperial measuring cup.  The weight people argue it must be equal weight as flour can have different moisture content and anything else is heresy.  Pffftttt...I learned with the good old imperial measuring cup and it worked for me all these years so why change is my motto.  Henceforth, all my stuff is by measuring cup when I refer to stuff in my sourdough recipes.

Starter (Staying Alive)

1 cup starter 

1 T Flour and Water

Stir in flour and water at the 2 week and 3 week mark.  Stir in whatever hooch has developed as it really is just character building for your starter.  Do not extend feeding without using beyond one month as your risk of death by hooch building increases.

Always store your sourdough in a well sealed, non-reactive container in the coldest part of your fridge for maximum life of your starter.  Do not freeze as that will kill it.

The sponge building part is pretty easy.  Remember you are constantly doubling the size of your starter until you get a sponge quantity in the amount needed for your recipe.  Your starter will start at 1 cup, you feed  equal 1 cup flour and water to bring to 2 cups total sponge.  Cover with plastic wrap or a tea towel for 3-4 hours later at room temp when it is bubbly repeat the feeding, this time with 2 cups each flour and water for a sponge of approx 4 cups and let it sit at room temp 3-4 hours until bubbly).  

At that point you look at your sponge vs recipe needs and feed enough to have 1 cup starter for yourself and enough to cover recipe needs.  (You can even add extra flour/water combo to give starter as a gift to someone).

Sponge Building

• 1 cup starter
  
• water
  
• flour
  

Feeding 1:  In large volume marked non-reactive bowl add 1 c each water and flour to starter.  Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temp 3-4 hours until bubbly. (approx volume 2 cups of sponge starter)

Feeding 2:  Add 2 cups each flour and water.  Stir until just mixed.  Do not over mix as you will develop gluten which you do not want at this point.  (approx 4 cups volume)

Feeding 3: Add up to 4 cups, equal volumes of flour and water to get the amount of sponge needed plus 1 cup to reserve for future starter needs (for yourself and others).

Of course I had a little brain barf while typing this and thought of the old Bee Gee's song "staying alive", how appropriate for the starter post.  Enjoy, hope it gets stuck in your head as it did mine.

Sourdough Dried Fruit Scones

I like to eat.  I like to bake, what a great combo.  Scones are a take it or leave it for many.  For me I like them with coffee in the morning.   I like them with something in them.

This batch is based on a couple of recipes for sourdough biscuits and a scone.  If you look closely there is next to no fat involved so these are actually very healthy compared to a scone made with cream or whole milk.  An added bonus for anyone who has to watch fat intake.

Sourdough Dried Fruit Scones

• 1 c sourdough starter
  
• 1/2 c milk (I use non-fat)
  
• 2 1/2 c flour
  
• 2 T sugar
  
• 3/4 t salt
  
• 1 t baking powder
  
• 1/2 t baking soda
  

• 1/4 c dried blueberry
  
• 1/4 c dried cranberry
  
• 1/4 c dried raspberry
  

• milk + scant 2 t turbanado sugar
  

Combine first 7 ingredients.  Mix with dough hook until just coming together as a ball.  Add dried fruit knead 1 minute until ball forms.  This is a sticky dough.

Scoop out onto well floured board.  Pat dough into roughly a 6 X 8 square.  Cut in half widthwise.  Cut in half lengthwise.  Cut each resulting rectangle on a diagonal.  Place on silpat or parchment paper.  Brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar.  Let rest 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F.  Bake 30-35 minutes.

Enough of the blogging for one day, it is time to have another of those babies.  Can't wait for the morning breakfast to get another one in me either!

Almost instant Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Mug

By now most of the free world has gotten the email "Incredible Chocolate Cake in a Mug" email and recipe.  Or a variation there of.  It claims to be the most perfect cake for one jonesing for some chocolate.  All told it was 6 minutes from start to tasting which is really fast.

I got the email again for the umpteenth time.  I decided what the heck, lets try it.  Looking at it closely I figured that it is more like a cakey brownie rather than a real cake.  What was missing was a leavening agent.  Hence I added a bit of baking powder and salt to get it to take off with a lighter crumb and texture.  I'm glad I did as what I got was still pretty rubbery.  I think that is why those microwave snack cakes years ago never took off...texture was wrong.   I won't bother with it again but would be interested in hearing from anyone who tried and is addicted to the stuff.  

I still have to laugh at the punch line at the end.   The em quote: "And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night !!!"   I mean really, this isn't that good and you are much better off just grabbing a few chocolate chips out of the pantry and save yourself the bother.   

The recipe with my two minor changes:

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

• 4 tablespoons flour 
  
• 4 tablespoons sugar 
  
• 2 tablespoons cocoa 
  
• 1 egg 
  
• 3 tablespoons milk 
  
• 3 tablespoons oil 
  
• 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional) 
  
• A small splash of vanilla extract 
  
• pinch salt
  
• pinch baking powder
  
• 1 large coffee mug (MicroSafe)
  

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.. 

Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again. 

Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.  Then EAT!  (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).

They weren't kidding that it rises out of the mug, but they didn't warn us it would be so nasty looking as it popped out of its baking sheath.

I cheated also with the recipe, I premixed it in a bowl to make sure I had nothing stuck on the mug itself, or had lumps or had stuff at the bottom that never got mixed in.  My two shiny copper bits...skip it and grab a handful of chips to quash the chocolate craving.

Molten Fudgy Coffee Brownies

From the side of a coffee can great ideas come forth.  This browney recipe got its inspiration from the side of the coffee can for some French Roast under the Pavillions house label.  Silly them, all I need is proportions and am good to go.

I used a really good coffee extract from Surfas, rather than deal with using real coffee grounds in the batter as their recipe called for.  Also rather than using some "unsweetened" generic chocolate I used 70% chocolate Guanaja feves from Valrhona.  Again its all in the name of flavor.  Even the vanilla extract is pure bourbon extract not that coal tar based artificial flavor crap.  Good stuff gets one great results.  

A little experimentation and I got a Brownie that has a soft set fudge center when warm that is awesome next to some ice cream.  Trust me on this, with the gooey fudgey center you won't need a hot fudge for the ice cream.

Molten Fudgey Coffee Brownie

• 1/2 c boiling water
  
• 1 t coffee extract
  
• 4 1/2 oz guanaja 70% chocolate
  
• 3/4 c unsalted butter (room temp)
  
• 1/4 t salt
  
• 3 eggs
  
• 1 t vanilla
  
• 1 c all purpose flour
  
• 1 c chopped nuts - optional
  

Line 8" square baking pan with foil.  Heat oven to 300F.

Put chocolate and butter in microwave safe bowl.  Add coffee extract, salt and boiling water.   All to sit a minute or two and stir until smooth and everything is melted.   Microwave 30 seconds at a time to melt it all if needed.  Allow to cool while beating eggs.

Put eggs and sugar in mixing bowl and beat until ribbons form (about 5 minutes) with the paddle attachment.  Beat in vanilla.  Add  1/3 flour and 1/3 chocolate mixture, beat well.  Alternate the remaining additions ending with chocolate.  Fold in optional nuts if you are using.

Pour into prepared pan.  Bake 55-60 minutes until tester comes out wet but not runny.  Cool in the pan 30-45 minutes.  When ready to serve lift the brownie out by grabbing the edges of the foil.  Serve warm and gooey with ice cream on the side.

Make sure your pan is well lined as this is an extremely runny batter.  It also is heavy enough if you don't use a sturdy pan you will have bendy problems.  I used a pyrex pan as the carry over heat will keep the brownie a bit warmer longer than a metal pan.