Rummaging through my refrigerator this morning trying to find something interesting to go with my bread my eyes fell on the crayon cheese I made back in early May. It had been sitting in the back of the fridge and out of site ever since, the idea being that good cheese needs to age, a month at a minimum. Actually, make that two months and beyond, one month was merely the estimate how long it would take for the cheese to be any good at all.
Well, there it was, pink as on its first day, and definitely at least a month old. Of course I was curious how it had turned out beneath that pink paraffin shell. And not only that, I have actually designs on making another one. But only if this experiment was any good at all. Making cheese had proven time consuming after all, and before doing it again I would want some reassurance it would not be an effort wasted. So I decided it was time to put that cheese to the test.
Just cutting that cheese left me under the impression the cheese was very dry and not creamy at all. No big surprise here considering that I had made that cheese from half fat milk. Normal cheese is not only made from full fat milk, it often also has extra cream added. Also, the interior of the cheese was still as white as on the day that I had waxed it, not yellowish as I would have expected it. Most other hard cheeses are yellow mine was not. Why not? I do not know.
The next step after cutting a wedge off of my cheese was to peal the wax from it. I quickly noticed that using colored paraffin for cheese wax was less than an optimal solution. It is a solution as it did keep my cheese from spoiling. No nasties were growing on it and that was good. It did not smell rooten or spoiled and that was even better. But the paraffin shell was difficult to peel off. The main problem with it was that it was very brittle, breaking easily into tiny pieces as I tried to pull it off. It took quite a while to get most of the paraffin off the cheese, and many of the tiny pieces never came off at all and wound up as part of my meal instead.
And then, the cheese itself. It does have a little aroma but definitely not very much. Similar for the taste: It has taste but it is not strong at all. A little bit like a very mild cheddar. It goes well with my bread but then, any commercial cheese goes well with bred, too. So while my cheese is not bad I would definitely prefer it to be more assertive: With a stringer aroma, and definitely with a stronger taste.
I am hoping that both aroma and taste are a function of aging. Meaning that given more time ripening in the back of the fridge there will be more aroma and more taste. As to why my cheese remained white instead of turning more toward yellow I don't know. Neither do I care much: If I can get the aroma and the flavor right I won't care much what the color is, and after all, white is still a lot better than a lot of other colors I can think of. So I will assume the missing piece is extra aging. And I am even going to put it to a test, by making another, and then waiting longer before I eat it.
But before trying again I need some real cheese wax. While that crayon in the paraffin that I used was non toxic I still did not like it too much in my cheese. Finding real cheese wax may turn out to be somewhat of a challenge but it will definitely be worth it. At least that much I am sure about.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Out of the comfort zone
It's not good if everything is well.
For the last six wees or so I have been perfecting my art in brewing, bread baking, and basic cheese making. And while I am still far from perfect in any of those the result have become passable, well, actually quite good. I would no longer consider buying any bread from the supermarket. My beer is the best to be had for less than seven bucks the six pack (by my totally unbiased opinion at least), and between buttermilk, yogurt, and quark there is little need to buy anything from the store - apart from flour and milk, that is.
Apart from being tastier and cheaper making my own food also proves to be a lot of fun, even now that the big experiments are over, and I pretty much know what will work and what won't. It is so much fun actually, I continue to do a lot of it all: brew a lot of beer, bake a lot of bread, make a lot of milk stuff. And this is where suddenly the problems arise:
While I do spread around some of my bounty occasionally, most of the stuff gets consumed right here - and by me. As a result I have been gaining weight, to the tune of six pounds over the last six weeks! That's right, during the time of the year when the last of the winter pounds usually come off, I managed to gain. During the time of the year when I am usually at my leanest I am now at my heaviest. NO GOOD!
And no, it is not only on the scale. While I usually run a lot I have not felt much like running lately. This usually is a sure indicator of extra pounds making the running less comfortable. When I do run then the former energy just isn't there; I run both shorter and slower than I used to. It is obvious: A the good food is making me fat and lazy. Again, NO GOOD!
I finally decided to do something and to fight back. No, not by eating less or (gulp!) drinking less, but by running more. And just how would I suddenly get motivated if I was not before? Well, by joining a group of other runners, of course. So from now on, I will be running in addition to baking and brewing, at the least every Tuesday and Saturday, and quite possibly more often. In addition, I should have an easy time offloading some of my stuff on these folks, leaving less around for me to eat.
Sounds like a three way win situation for me: I run more, eat less, and the other runners will get something out of it too! So let's see how that is going to turn out ---
For the last six wees or so I have been perfecting my art in brewing, bread baking, and basic cheese making. And while I am still far from perfect in any of those the result have become passable, well, actually quite good. I would no longer consider buying any bread from the supermarket. My beer is the best to be had for less than seven bucks the six pack (by my totally unbiased opinion at least), and between buttermilk, yogurt, and quark there is little need to buy anything from the store - apart from flour and milk, that is.
Apart from being tastier and cheaper making my own food also proves to be a lot of fun, even now that the big experiments are over, and I pretty much know what will work and what won't. It is so much fun actually, I continue to do a lot of it all: brew a lot of beer, bake a lot of bread, make a lot of milk stuff. And this is where suddenly the problems arise:
While I do spread around some of my bounty occasionally, most of the stuff gets consumed right here - and by me. As a result I have been gaining weight, to the tune of six pounds over the last six weeks! That's right, during the time of the year when the last of the winter pounds usually come off, I managed to gain. During the time of the year when I am usually at my leanest I am now at my heaviest. NO GOOD!
And no, it is not only on the scale. While I usually run a lot I have not felt much like running lately. This usually is a sure indicator of extra pounds making the running less comfortable. When I do run then the former energy just isn't there; I run both shorter and slower than I used to. It is obvious: A the good food is making me fat and lazy. Again, NO GOOD!
I finally decided to do something and to fight back. No, not by eating less or (gulp!) drinking less, but by running more. And just how would I suddenly get motivated if I was not before? Well, by joining a group of other runners, of course. So from now on, I will be running in addition to baking and brewing, at the least every Tuesday and Saturday, and quite possibly more often. In addition, I should have an easy time offloading some of my stuff on these folks, leaving less around for me to eat.
Sounds like a three way win situation for me: I run more, eat less, and the other runners will get something out of it too! So let's see how that is going to turn out ---
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Prohibition Ale (I)
Almost from the beginning of my brewing endeavors I have been wondering what people did during the prohibition years in the first part of the last century. After all, it is well known that a lot of illicit at home alcohol production did take place. At the same time, if prohibition was to come upon us ever again I would expect the home brew supply stores to get swept away along with the breweries. So then, what did people do, or even more interestingly, what could they do now to get their fix?
For starters, beer needs malt, hops, yeast, and water. Water will always be available, there is just no way to outlaw that. Yeast? You can get yeast from all sorts of places. Even better, you should be able to keep it. Meaning you keep some of the sludge that collects at the bottom of the carboy as the wort clears and you should be ready to go. Hops? No idea. Allegedly, it is growing wild near old rail tracks, seeded by hops blown off from delivery train in times past. I have to check on that. Some day.
The biggest obstacle seems to get hold of malt. And no, germinating, drying, and roasting you own barley seed is not an option, at least not for the ones of us that don't have their own farm. No it has to be something more inconspicuous, something that's already available as something else. Plain sugar? Would work as far as the alcohol is concerned but the final product certainly would not be beer. Rather, it would be the stuff moonshine is made from, hardly drinkable without distillation.
So - what then? Maybe - bread? It's mostly wheat hence similar enough to barley, it least on the outside. And maybe I could cook the bread first, to possibly mirror some of the effects of roasting, and at the same time release the starches and sugars out of the bread much like the cooking of roasted barley does? At the least, it did not sound totally outlandish. Was it actually feasible, and would it produce something even remotely recognizable as beer? Well, there is one sure way to find out ---
So from my last trip to the grocery store I returned with the following items: Three loaves of the cheapest bread I could find. I sure was not sacrificing my own bread for that type of experiment. And after all, even though that cheap store stuff is barely edible it may just prove useful for something at last. In addition: Four pounds of table sugar. I wasn't going to use it all but surely it would be OK to supplement my brew a little bit, or actually a little more because during times of prohibition, you can't put the standards too high.
Back home I first roasted the bread some in the oven, then threw it all into my brew pot, added two gallons of water, 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, then brought the mixture to a boil. That's when I remembered I needed some to simulate hops for bitterness, and after some quick hesitation went outside and cut some twigs from the next juniper tree. Juniper berries have bitterness to them and so do young pine needles. Just to make sure I ripped off and chewed a little piece: It was bitter alright and so for now, I had my hops.
I brought my mixture to a boil and when I returned to my kettle some twenty minutes later I discovered the first problem with my theory: The bread has acted much like oatmeal- so instead the water absorbing the goodness out of the bread the bread had absorbed all the water and left me with something reminiscent of a giant bucket of wallpaper glue. No good! I spent the next 1 1/2 hours to squeeze and rinse as much liquid out of that slime as I could to salvage my operation, and another 1/2 hour after that the clean my kitchen that I had totally messed up in the process. Regardless if how things would go from here, I already had figured it was not the way to go.
Having put in that much effort already I decided to press on, learn at least from what remained to be learned from that experiment. From all the squeezing and rinsing I had gotten some two gallons of thick, sweet,milky liquid which I duly transferred into my carboy. I added another gallon of fresh water to make it a total of three gallons, which was the amount I had decided beforehand to commit myself to. For yeast? Well, I had anticipated this experiment and kept the sludge from my last batch of real beer. I used about a cup of that.
The concoction started to get alive after about four hours and has been active for the last almost two days. Normal beer produces a regular bubbling, about one "blrrp" in regular intervals every ten seconds when most active, or every minute when fermentation is almost done. This mixture makes "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp", almost blowing the water out of my air lock. Sometimes it will hesitiate, or just make a "blrrp", only to follow this up with yet another "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp". Very strange.
The "wort" itself is also somewhat "unusual". It never lost its milkiness so the liquid appears a yellowish white. There is noticeable sludge buildup at the bottom of the carboy, at this point probably more from settling bread particles than from spent yeast. There is foam floating on top, white mostly but also with some green to it- I figure that would be the juniper.
Definitely fascinating, almost like with a mind of its own. Kind of scary looking, too. And of course, I am just watching right now, waiting for fermentation to come to a conclusion. After that? Second fermentation? Bottling? I think I would at least want to sample some of it before committing myself to any extra work. Or better still, find someone else to sample it for me just in case it makes people go blind. Thinking of it, I believe I know just the perfect candidate for that ---
For starters, beer needs malt, hops, yeast, and water. Water will always be available, there is just no way to outlaw that. Yeast? You can get yeast from all sorts of places. Even better, you should be able to keep it. Meaning you keep some of the sludge that collects at the bottom of the carboy as the wort clears and you should be ready to go. Hops? No idea. Allegedly, it is growing wild near old rail tracks, seeded by hops blown off from delivery train in times past. I have to check on that. Some day.
The biggest obstacle seems to get hold of malt. And no, germinating, drying, and roasting you own barley seed is not an option, at least not for the ones of us that don't have their own farm. No it has to be something more inconspicuous, something that's already available as something else. Plain sugar? Would work as far as the alcohol is concerned but the final product certainly would not be beer. Rather, it would be the stuff moonshine is made from, hardly drinkable without distillation.
So - what then? Maybe - bread? It's mostly wheat hence similar enough to barley, it least on the outside. And maybe I could cook the bread first, to possibly mirror some of the effects of roasting, and at the same time release the starches and sugars out of the bread much like the cooking of roasted barley does? At the least, it did not sound totally outlandish. Was it actually feasible, and would it produce something even remotely recognizable as beer? Well, there is one sure way to find out ---
So from my last trip to the grocery store I returned with the following items: Three loaves of the cheapest bread I could find. I sure was not sacrificing my own bread for that type of experiment. And after all, even though that cheap store stuff is barely edible it may just prove useful for something at last. In addition: Four pounds of table sugar. I wasn't going to use it all but surely it would be OK to supplement my brew a little bit, or actually a little more because during times of prohibition, you can't put the standards too high.
Back home I first roasted the bread some in the oven, then threw it all into my brew pot, added two gallons of water, 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, then brought the mixture to a boil. That's when I remembered I needed some to simulate hops for bitterness, and after some quick hesitation went outside and cut some twigs from the next juniper tree. Juniper berries have bitterness to them and so do young pine needles. Just to make sure I ripped off and chewed a little piece: It was bitter alright and so for now, I had my hops.
I brought my mixture to a boil and when I returned to my kettle some twenty minutes later I discovered the first problem with my theory: The bread has acted much like oatmeal- so instead the water absorbing the goodness out of the bread the bread had absorbed all the water and left me with something reminiscent of a giant bucket of wallpaper glue. No good! I spent the next 1 1/2 hours to squeeze and rinse as much liquid out of that slime as I could to salvage my operation, and another 1/2 hour after that the clean my kitchen that I had totally messed up in the process. Regardless if how things would go from here, I already had figured it was not the way to go.
Having put in that much effort already I decided to press on, learn at least from what remained to be learned from that experiment. From all the squeezing and rinsing I had gotten some two gallons of thick, sweet,milky liquid which I duly transferred into my carboy. I added another gallon of fresh water to make it a total of three gallons, which was the amount I had decided beforehand to commit myself to. For yeast? Well, I had anticipated this experiment and kept the sludge from my last batch of real beer. I used about a cup of that.
The concoction started to get alive after about four hours and has been active for the last almost two days. Normal beer produces a regular bubbling, about one "blrrp" in regular intervals every ten seconds when most active, or every minute when fermentation is almost done. This mixture makes "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp", almost blowing the water out of my air lock. Sometimes it will hesitiate, or just make a "blrrp", only to follow this up with yet another "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp". Very strange.
The "wort" itself is also somewhat "unusual". It never lost its milkiness so the liquid appears a yellowish white. There is noticeable sludge buildup at the bottom of the carboy, at this point probably more from settling bread particles than from spent yeast. There is foam floating on top, white mostly but also with some green to it- I figure that would be the juniper.
Definitely fascinating, almost like with a mind of its own. Kind of scary looking, too. And of course, I am just watching right now, waiting for fermentation to come to a conclusion. After that? Second fermentation? Bottling? I think I would at least want to sample some of it before committing myself to any extra work. Or better still, find someone else to sample it for me just in case it makes people go blind. Thinking of it, I believe I know just the perfect candidate for that ---
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Quick takes
So much to do, so little time left to write. Therefore, just a quick summary of the latest happenings in the chaos kitchen:
- I dried some sourdough by spreading it with a knife on a plastic bag and then let it sit for a day. Then I collected the dried up pieces into a small Ziploc container and put them into the freezer. The idea is to defrost them in a month time and test whether the reconstituted sourdough will be any good.
- My latest batch of new bread consisted of two loaves each of 25% rye and 25% whole wheat bread. The whole wheat dough was of great consistency and easy to work with. The rye dough was rather wet and impossible to knead: It just gummed up my fingers. Surprisingly, all loaves came out rather good, even the rye bread that I could I could not knead and that I finally just left to mold itself into the bread pans.
- I tried myself at another rennet cheese. I am wondering whether I am setting the curds at a high enough temperature because mine are not as firm as they look in pictures. Will try setting at a higher temperature next time.
- My cheese press was a disaster this time, leaking cheese big time and forcing me to repack the curds repeatedly. Maybe it's because the curds were too soft. Even if they were I believe my design could bear some improvement. Still thinking about exactly how.
- Did another batch of yogurt, with full fat milk but without milk powder. The result was rather soft and I had made sure the incubation temperature was as high as possible. It might still be worth it to live with softer yogurt in the future it that means I can cut out milk powder as a necessary ingredient.
- Tried the first two bottles of my second batch of beer. Not sure what to think because it is rather different from the first batch. It's not bad I think (it still officially needs a few days of aging) but I would like to know what accounts for the marked difference of the two batches when the recipes were almost the same.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
News from the bathtub brewery
One effect of having basic brewing equipment around the house is that seemingly I can no longer tolerate the sight of unoccupied carboys. And since there is never a problem ever to give away surplus beer I decided it was time for yet another batch of Hobo's Delight([1], [2], [3]). Just the basic recipe this time and no experiments; I just wanted to settle into a routine to build on before setting out for new adventure.
Boy was I wrong about that routine part! Because in me, familiarity does cause complacency, and in this case, near disaster as well. My mixture of water, malt and sugar was slowly heating up, slow as always to get to the boiling point. A minimum of ten minutes to go I figured and so I went for a quick two minute trip to fetch something from my car out in the parking lot. OK, it might have been a little more than two minutes that I was gone but what I did not expect was to return to an eruption of boiling wort out of my brew kettle, creating a mega mess not only on the stove top but on the sides and the floor before as well.
So what to do first? Turn off that stove, of course, then grab that kettle and set it into the sink. Next? Silence that stupid smoke detector that suddenly also had caught on the the fact that something was not quite right. Yes, and then open all windows as wide as possible. And with the most immediate crisis taken care I finally had the time to stop for a minute and actually plan my next moves.
Of course I was not to abandon my wort. That's $25 which I was just going to dump down the drain. On the other hand, there was no way I could just continue my cooking like this. With all the spilled wort everywhere that smoke alarm would have triggered again almost immediately. Not to speak of the fact that it was not a good idea to pretty much bake permanent stains into everything the spilled wort had gotten onto and into. Obviously, I had to cool down the burner quickly and clean up first.
It was a major operation. Burned wort is second only to burned milk in the damage it does. And it is second only on account of not smelling quite that bad, in terms of the mess it is right up there. For beginners, when sugars get too got, like when they get on the heating stove burner, will disintegrate into layers and bubble of carbon and lots of smoke. The carbon will create a tough layer of crust on everything it gets on, the smoke will only set of smoke detectors. Any wort that had not turned into a bubbly sheet of carbon still had most of the water evaporated out of it and become something resembling sticky glue.
It is amazing how many parts stoves suddenly have when they are given the opportunity to get gummed up wort all over them. There is the heating coil of the burner of course, and there is the pan underneath. There is the stove top itself, which can also be flipped up to reveal some of the innards of the stove. Luckily the mess did not extend any farther than that. But there still was the door to the oven, a little that had somehow made it into the oven, and the floor in front of the oven. And all heavy scrubbing; this was not stuff you simply wipe off. I got it all clean in the end except for the burner pan. I might try some sand paper on it some day but I am afraid it has been discolored permanently.
The brew kettle needed some major help as well. There was no black layer on it but it needed special handling because I did not want any of my cleaners in the wort. Besides, that kettle was still hot. But compared to the surgery I had done on the stove it was easy. While I was working on that stove for over half an hour the kettle got clean in something like ten minutes. And after reassembling my stove I was finally ready to resume boiling my wort.
Would I add any extra malt or sugar to make up for the loss? I decided against it. Just as with milk, a little boiled over wort has the potential for big damage. Hence I was hoping that even though the mess had been big the actual loss may have been minor. Besides, I would have only been guessing at how much replacement was needed anyway. Better to make an assessment from the finished beer and have a better idea if it ever happens again. OK then, keep boiling, go on like nothing ever happened.
It goes without saying that I stood right next to my kettle up the point I reached the boiling point once again. I am also glad to report there were no strange odors through out the remaining cooking process, so I must have done a pretty decent job cleaning up and removing the spill that had not yet turned to carbon. The entire remaining cooking went through entirely unremarkable, and I was rather grateful for that.
All this happened yesterday. As I transferred the wort into the carboy it became clear that indeed I had not lost too much of it, probably no more than a pint. As long as I did not introduce any contaminants into the wort during the cleanup the beer will be fine. It started fermenting within the usual six hours after pitching the yeast and that's a good sign. I will get a better picture next week when this beer is hopefully ready for its bottling.
Boy was I wrong about that routine part! Because in me, familiarity does cause complacency, and in this case, near disaster as well. My mixture of water, malt and sugar was slowly heating up, slow as always to get to the boiling point. A minimum of ten minutes to go I figured and so I went for a quick two minute trip to fetch something from my car out in the parking lot. OK, it might have been a little more than two minutes that I was gone but what I did not expect was to return to an eruption of boiling wort out of my brew kettle, creating a mega mess not only on the stove top but on the sides and the floor before as well.
So what to do first? Turn off that stove, of course, then grab that kettle and set it into the sink. Next? Silence that stupid smoke detector that suddenly also had caught on the the fact that something was not quite right. Yes, and then open all windows as wide as possible. And with the most immediate crisis taken care I finally had the time to stop for a minute and actually plan my next moves.
Of course I was not to abandon my wort. That's $25 which I was just going to dump down the drain. On the other hand, there was no way I could just continue my cooking like this. With all the spilled wort everywhere that smoke alarm would have triggered again almost immediately. Not to speak of the fact that it was not a good idea to pretty much bake permanent stains into everything the spilled wort had gotten onto and into. Obviously, I had to cool down the burner quickly and clean up first.
It was a major operation. Burned wort is second only to burned milk in the damage it does. And it is second only on account of not smelling quite that bad, in terms of the mess it is right up there. For beginners, when sugars get too got, like when they get on the heating stove burner, will disintegrate into layers and bubble of carbon and lots of smoke. The carbon will create a tough layer of crust on everything it gets on, the smoke will only set of smoke detectors. Any wort that had not turned into a bubbly sheet of carbon still had most of the water evaporated out of it and become something resembling sticky glue.
It is amazing how many parts stoves suddenly have when they are given the opportunity to get gummed up wort all over them. There is the heating coil of the burner of course, and there is the pan underneath. There is the stove top itself, which can also be flipped up to reveal some of the innards of the stove. Luckily the mess did not extend any farther than that. But there still was the door to the oven, a little that had somehow made it into the oven, and the floor in front of the oven. And all heavy scrubbing; this was not stuff you simply wipe off. I got it all clean in the end except for the burner pan. I might try some sand paper on it some day but I am afraid it has been discolored permanently.
The brew kettle needed some major help as well. There was no black layer on it but it needed special handling because I did not want any of my cleaners in the wort. Besides, that kettle was still hot. But compared to the surgery I had done on the stove it was easy. While I was working on that stove for over half an hour the kettle got clean in something like ten minutes. And after reassembling my stove I was finally ready to resume boiling my wort.
Would I add any extra malt or sugar to make up for the loss? I decided against it. Just as with milk, a little boiled over wort has the potential for big damage. Hence I was hoping that even though the mess had been big the actual loss may have been minor. Besides, I would have only been guessing at how much replacement was needed anyway. Better to make an assessment from the finished beer and have a better idea if it ever happens again. OK then, keep boiling, go on like nothing ever happened.
It goes without saying that I stood right next to my kettle up the point I reached the boiling point once again. I am also glad to report there were no strange odors through out the remaining cooking process, so I must have done a pretty decent job cleaning up and removing the spill that had not yet turned to carbon. The entire remaining cooking went through entirely unremarkable, and I was rather grateful for that.
All this happened yesterday. As I transferred the wort into the carboy it became clear that indeed I had not lost too much of it, probably no more than a pint. As long as I did not introduce any contaminants into the wort during the cleanup the beer will be fine. It started fermenting within the usual six hours after pitching the yeast and that's a good sign. I will get a better picture next week when this beer is hopefully ready for its bottling.
My pink cheese
It has been two weeks since I started making an attempt at my very own red waxed dream cheese. Since then, the pressed cheese had basically been sitting in my fridge and growing the rind that my Internet sources had instructed me to wait for. And for the last few days, I have positively been antsy about my cheese.
Part of the reason for my antsiness was that I was not sure how much longer to wait for the next step. Some areas had indeed developed a yellowish layer of dry crust which I supposed was the rind. Other areas, however, were still white and were not showing any desire to ever be anything but white. To complicate matters my cheese started to crack at the edges, in exactly the spots that had developed the thickest of the crust.
The short of it I decided it was time to move on to the next stage which meant --- waxing my cheese. Which obviously brought up one question that I had not given too much though before: Now what do I wax it with? Sure, there are plenty of places on the Internet that will gladly sell you cheese wax but I did not see myself sinking like $20 (once shipping and handling is figured in) to wax a single cheese, then possibly decide I have had enough of that and sit on a pile of unused cheese wax for the rest of my life.
The local Walmart offered paraffin for canning and other household uses, and candles. While the candles came in all sorts of colors (like fire engine red) I decided against it. After all, there was no telling what else might be in that wax and it could well be that the stuff that makes candles smell good could also make stomachs hurt. So the paraffin it was- it was much cheaper anyway.
It also was transparent, and I specifically wanted a red cheese. Luckily, the kids of one of my buddies was able to help me out, and the solution came in form of a bright red crayon, straight out of their art box. It was specifically non toxic. And if parents aren't worried about their kids inevitably eating those crayons, I wasn't going to worry about that crayon around my cheese. I was in business!
The actual waxing was easy enough: Heat the paraffin in a small (but wider than the cheese) pot and melt and stir the crayon in. Obviously, the mix has to be hot enough to be liquid but otherwise only hot enough. Some of that wax will likely splatter on skin at some point in the process and if it does, hot feels better than really hot. Once the wax was liquid and all mixed up I first dipped the top into the cheese, immediately pulled it out and let it dry. Then I turned the cheese in my hand and did the same with the bottom of the cheese. I repeated both top and bottom a few more times to build up a bigger layer of wax.
This left me with a narrow uncovered strip of cheese along the sides. I guess one solution would have been just to dip the sides, one section after another until I got around. I decided to use a paint brush (unused!) instead. It worked very well indeed though this was the point when I discovered you don't want your wax too hot. Anyway, my cheese soon had a solid hard layer of wax all around it. The only problem? Well, it wasn't red:
Obviously, that single red crayon had not quite had the effect I had been hoping for. I guess I could have kept dipping my cheese into the was to build up a bigger shell but it was obvious my cheese would never be fire engine red. So how would I fix that the next time? Well, one possible solution would be to throw more crayons at the problem. Though I was extremely hesitant of raiding the kids' art sets of what remaining red they might have in there. And I don't think you can buy red crayons without building a stock of blue, yellow, and other useless colors as well.
Or maybe I can score a lipstick from someone? I suppose there must be tons of them that are no longer fashionable on lips but would still look great on my cheese. And surely they are non toxic as well, or at least I really hope so. Food coloring might help as well though I am not sure if it dissolves in wax and can withstand the heat without breaking up.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I do want to first find out how this cheese works out before waxing any additional ones. And that I won't know for two more months if I am to believe my Internet sources. If I have the patience to wait that long that is ---
Part of the reason for my antsiness was that I was not sure how much longer to wait for the next step. Some areas had indeed developed a yellowish layer of dry crust which I supposed was the rind. Other areas, however, were still white and were not showing any desire to ever be anything but white. To complicate matters my cheese started to crack at the edges, in exactly the spots that had developed the thickest of the crust.
The short of it I decided it was time to move on to the next stage which meant --- waxing my cheese. Which obviously brought up one question that I had not given too much though before: Now what do I wax it with? Sure, there are plenty of places on the Internet that will gladly sell you cheese wax but I did not see myself sinking like $20 (once shipping and handling is figured in) to wax a single cheese, then possibly decide I have had enough of that and sit on a pile of unused cheese wax for the rest of my life.
The local Walmart offered paraffin for canning and other household uses, and candles. While the candles came in all sorts of colors (like fire engine red) I decided against it. After all, there was no telling what else might be in that wax and it could well be that the stuff that makes candles smell good could also make stomachs hurt. So the paraffin it was- it was much cheaper anyway.
It also was transparent, and I specifically wanted a red cheese. Luckily, the kids of one of my buddies was able to help me out, and the solution came in form of a bright red crayon, straight out of their art box. It was specifically non toxic. And if parents aren't worried about their kids inevitably eating those crayons, I wasn't going to worry about that crayon around my cheese. I was in business!
The actual waxing was easy enough: Heat the paraffin in a small (but wider than the cheese) pot and melt and stir the crayon in. Obviously, the mix has to be hot enough to be liquid but otherwise only hot enough. Some of that wax will likely splatter on skin at some point in the process and if it does, hot feels better than really hot. Once the wax was liquid and all mixed up I first dipped the top into the cheese, immediately pulled it out and let it dry. Then I turned the cheese in my hand and did the same with the bottom of the cheese. I repeated both top and bottom a few more times to build up a bigger layer of wax.
This left me with a narrow uncovered strip of cheese along the sides. I guess one solution would have been just to dip the sides, one section after another until I got around. I decided to use a paint brush (unused!) instead. It worked very well indeed though this was the point when I discovered you don't want your wax too hot. Anyway, my cheese soon had a solid hard layer of wax all around it. The only problem? Well, it wasn't red:
Obviously, that single red crayon had not quite had the effect I had been hoping for. I guess I could have kept dipping my cheese into the was to build up a bigger shell but it was obvious my cheese would never be fire engine red. So how would I fix that the next time? Well, one possible solution would be to throw more crayons at the problem. Though I was extremely hesitant of raiding the kids' art sets of what remaining red they might have in there. And I don't think you can buy red crayons without building a stock of blue, yellow, and other useless colors as well.
Or maybe I can score a lipstick from someone? I suppose there must be tons of them that are no longer fashionable on lips but would still look great on my cheese. And surely they are non toxic as well, or at least I really hope so. Food coloring might help as well though I am not sure if it dissolves in wax and can withstand the heat without breaking up.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I do want to first find out how this cheese works out before waxing any additional ones. And that I won't know for two more months if I am to believe my Internet sources. If I have the patience to wait that long that is ---
Friday, May 24, 2013
Maryland chicken bread
OK, I will admit to it right away: The only chicken in this bread is the chicken fat I used to fry the onions. But it still makes for a great name and sometimes, that's important, too. Anyway, I was on the prowl again, trying to find another winning bread recipe. This time, it was all the chicken grease left from boiling down four pounds worth of chicken that caught my attention. I had already discovered that grease from bacon does bread good, and I like onions anyway, in particular fried and as part of my bread. So what would seem more natural but to use all that chicken fat as part of my latest batch of bread?
I started out in my standard way: Mix four cups of general purpose what flour with two cups of water and add my sourdough starter. Cover the bowl and leave alone over night; the result should be a very active, bubbly dough. The second stage calls for the addition of slat, an extra four cups of flour, and an extra cup of liquid. While I always stick to all purpose what flour and water in the first stage I do grant myself more freedom in the seconds stage. For example, I have used rye flour in the past and with good success. This time I opted for two cups of additional all purpose, and two cups of whole wheat flour. And for the liquid I used a cup of chicken broth (without the fat, I needed that for the onions). After all, I had more broth left over that I could likely use- so I may as well do the experiment.
After another night of fermentation the dough was almost climbing out of my bowl! While the rye in the past seemed to retard fermentation a bit the new combination yielded the strongest development I had seen so far. Of course, there is no telling whether this was due to the whole wheat flour or the chicken broth. While it will take another experiment to settle this point I would have to guess it's the whole wheat flour. Why? Mostly, because I want it to be the whole wheat flour, and to me that's reason enough.
So I got my dough, consisting of eight cups of flour and three cups of liquid. It was fermenting very well and I figured it had enough punch for at least two cups if not four of extra stuff, ingredients that would supply flavor and aroma, but would develop little or nothing to crumb and crust development. And it is here that all the chicken fat and the onions come in. I used all the grease I had; I think it was almost a cup of it. As for onions I had used about a medium sized onion per loaf of bread the last time and it had left me wanting more. So make that two medium onions per loaf. And with enough dough to make four loaves of bread that was eight onions to peel and chop. It was definitely the low point of this baking experience.
When frying the onions I started out with big pot full of onions but I was surprised how much the volume had come down by the time the onions were well browned. The remaining mixture of fat and onions was maybe two cups- definitely not more. And very greasy indeed!
Anyway, I mixed everything well and formed my four loaves. Usually my dough is on the dry side- easy to work with (like playdoo) and very sticky. This dough here was so greased up it would not stick to nothing. And it was so soft it would not hold a shape- so bread pans definitely are required equipment for this type of bread. With my loaves in the bread pans I let them sit at room temperature for the next three hours, while running some errands and a lot of kitchen cleaning.
When I returned to my bread loaves they each had about tripled in volume. The top surface which would usually have started to dry out after that much time in the open was still so soft I could not even score the bread properly- I basically just poked lots of holes into the loaves with the tip of my knife, trying to convince myself this was doing any good. I debated with myself whether there was any point in waiting any longer but decided against it. The dough was too greasy to expect it it dry more within any reasonable time, so I may as well go ahead.
I gave my bread the standard oven treatment: 400°F, for at least 40 minutes. What I actually did was spray the bread with water every 15 minutes, and then after 40 minutes start monitoring the bread carefully. I left it in until the crust looked like if should not take any more which was about 50 minutes. Then I removed the bread from the oven, and the loaves from the pans (which was easy with bread loaves greased like that).
And --- it was a very pleasant surprise! The bread smelled great; great enough to bake more in the future just to have it sit around and smell! Even better, it tastes pretty good, too! Good enough I am eating it without anything on it or with it- it does not need anything. Maybe a little bit more salt next time, either mixed in with the onions or added to the dough. After all, the dough had been fermenting so well I am sure it could tolerate the extra salt and still ferment pretty good. Oh, yes, and before I forget, I do think the bread would be even better with maybe a few more onions ---
Anyway, it has been a great experiment, and I am sure there will be refinements in the future. Also, the effect of whole wheat flour on dough development needs checking out. Or what other types of flour will do, like corn or rice flour. Or oatmeal, doesn't that sound interesting? So many breads to bake- I do have to make an effort to recruit more people to eat it!
I started out in my standard way: Mix four cups of general purpose what flour with two cups of water and add my sourdough starter. Cover the bowl and leave alone over night; the result should be a very active, bubbly dough. The second stage calls for the addition of slat, an extra four cups of flour, and an extra cup of liquid. While I always stick to all purpose what flour and water in the first stage I do grant myself more freedom in the seconds stage. For example, I have used rye flour in the past and with good success. This time I opted for two cups of additional all purpose, and two cups of whole wheat flour. And for the liquid I used a cup of chicken broth (without the fat, I needed that for the onions). After all, I had more broth left over that I could likely use- so I may as well do the experiment.
After another night of fermentation the dough was almost climbing out of my bowl! While the rye in the past seemed to retard fermentation a bit the new combination yielded the strongest development I had seen so far. Of course, there is no telling whether this was due to the whole wheat flour or the chicken broth. While it will take another experiment to settle this point I would have to guess it's the whole wheat flour. Why? Mostly, because I want it to be the whole wheat flour, and to me that's reason enough.
So I got my dough, consisting of eight cups of flour and three cups of liquid. It was fermenting very well and I figured it had enough punch for at least two cups if not four of extra stuff, ingredients that would supply flavor and aroma, but would develop little or nothing to crumb and crust development. And it is here that all the chicken fat and the onions come in. I used all the grease I had; I think it was almost a cup of it. As for onions I had used about a medium sized onion per loaf of bread the last time and it had left me wanting more. So make that two medium onions per loaf. And with enough dough to make four loaves of bread that was eight onions to peel and chop. It was definitely the low point of this baking experience.
When frying the onions I started out with big pot full of onions but I was surprised how much the volume had come down by the time the onions were well browned. The remaining mixture of fat and onions was maybe two cups- definitely not more. And very greasy indeed!
Anyway, I mixed everything well and formed my four loaves. Usually my dough is on the dry side- easy to work with (like playdoo) and very sticky. This dough here was so greased up it would not stick to nothing. And it was so soft it would not hold a shape- so bread pans definitely are required equipment for this type of bread. With my loaves in the bread pans I let them sit at room temperature for the next three hours, while running some errands and a lot of kitchen cleaning.
When I returned to my bread loaves they each had about tripled in volume. The top surface which would usually have started to dry out after that much time in the open was still so soft I could not even score the bread properly- I basically just poked lots of holes into the loaves with the tip of my knife, trying to convince myself this was doing any good. I debated with myself whether there was any point in waiting any longer but decided against it. The dough was too greasy to expect it it dry more within any reasonable time, so I may as well go ahead.
I gave my bread the standard oven treatment: 400°F, for at least 40 minutes. What I actually did was spray the bread with water every 15 minutes, and then after 40 minutes start monitoring the bread carefully. I left it in until the crust looked like if should not take any more which was about 50 minutes. Then I removed the bread from the oven, and the loaves from the pans (which was easy with bread loaves greased like that).
And --- it was a very pleasant surprise! The bread smelled great; great enough to bake more in the future just to have it sit around and smell! Even better, it tastes pretty good, too! Good enough I am eating it without anything on it or with it- it does not need anything. Maybe a little bit more salt next time, either mixed in with the onions or added to the dough. After all, the dough had been fermenting so well I am sure it could tolerate the extra salt and still ferment pretty good. Oh, yes, and before I forget, I do think the bread would be even better with maybe a few more onions ---
Anyway, it has been a great experiment, and I am sure there will be refinements in the future. Also, the effect of whole wheat flour on dough development needs checking out. Or what other types of flour will do, like corn or rice flour. Or oatmeal, doesn't that sound interesting? So many breads to bake- I do have to make an effort to recruit more people to eat it!
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