Pain d'Epi FAIL

Yep. Going to have to try that one over again...

It looks like a Mummy's severed arm. Maybe it will cure 16th Century diseases. Or bring me good luck. Or perhaps an angry Zahi Hawass.

Still tastes good though.

Here of course is the goal, perfect Pain d'Epi:


(Photo: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=152)

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Guava Cheese Pizzalito

During my time in Miami I learned many things.

• Humidity is exactly 100x worse than excessive heat. The combination of the two is 1000x worse.
• Hurricanes are only as fun as the size of your alcohol stockpile. Also, it's a great way to finally meet your neighbors.
  
• Everyone has cockroaches, it's only a problem if you regularly see them.
• Firehose rain lasts about 5 minutes, then you've got a window of about 10 minutes to run wherever you need to go before the next one.
  
• Look twice before you cross the road. And before you change lanes. And before you look twice. Remember: roads have two directions, just not always opposite ones, and you are free to decide which at whim.
• If it gets too cold iguanas will rain from the trees.
• The Rule of Law, that fragile glowing string that ties society together, is very, very thin, and frayed at the edges.

I also learned a lot about food. Collards can be edible if done right. Canistel, Monstera Deliciosa, Mamey and Black Sapote are all delicious fruits. Cuban Sandwiches and coffee? Yes please. Hogfish, Mangrove snapper, Pompano, Wahoo, Kingfish and 'Cuda? All great.

But if there's one food I'll miss most it's probably Guava Cheese Pastelitos. This was our Sunday Morning go-to food, whenever we were tired, hungover or had guests over. (Often all three.) Someone would be drafted to go to Karlo Bakery and pick up a box of the flaky triangular pastries, stuffed with guava paste and queso fresco. They're sublime. There are other kinds of pastelito in the case there, but you walk right by them, nose high, because they don't come close. The guava ones? Good. The cheese ones? Also Good. But it's like heat and humidity: the combo of the two increases their intensity logarithmically.

So we were watching a recent episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe was with Miami's Chicken Buster unit, the workers responsible for rounding up the thousands of wild chickens that inhabit the city. Before they start, the whole crew digs into a box of pastelitos and you can see Mike's eyes glaze over momentarily. Meredith and I looked at each other: the craving had struck. So the next day I picked up some ingredients.

Guava paste usually comes in either blocks or tins. I found this round tin from Goya at our local Asian/Mexican/Russian grocery store. It's a sticky thick paste. If you melt it on the stove it makes hallucinatorily good barbecue sauce. As for the cheese: Queso Fresco. A light, crumbly cheese you can find almost anywhere nowadays.

Get some frozen puff pastry and you can make quite passable, but not perfect, pastelitos with just these three ingredients.

But we didn't go that route. Some years back several of us were at the bar having a debate about pizza toppings. For example, I have long posited that strawberries would be good on a pizza, so long as the sauce was also a bit sweet. No one had faith in me. So we all got together to try out various experimental toppings. Out of that madness came: the Guava Cheese Pizza.

We recently bought a pizza peel ($14. Go Seattle Restaurant Supply!) which has greatly improved our ability to get bread and pizzas on and off our oven stone. And I've been messing about with Artisan Breadmaking in 5-minutes a Day, so we've had plenty of ready-to-go dough just sitting in the fridge. It was pizza time!

First comes the sauce. The sauce is very important. I always make my own. Not because I'm uppity about it. I do it because it's stupidly easy. I never measure anything or keep track, but basically: saute about half an onion and a minced clove or two of garlic, add a can of crushed tomatoes if it's winter or some fresh tomatoes if it's summer. Add a few shakes of dried oregano, basil, thyme, chile flakes or whatever else you feel like. Cook for about 10 minutes, or longer if you prefer. Add salt, pepper and sugar to taste. It's all about seasoning it to taste. For this pizza, I go light on basil and heavier on the sugar. You don't want it crazy sweet, just enough that it's not particularly savory.

Roll out the dough, about 1/8" thick. Spread out on a cornmealed pizza peel. Spread on some sauce. Add thin slices of guava paste. Sprinkle a good amount of queso fresco around. If you've also made up some caramelized onions, they go very well in here. Then I add some mozzarella to kind of hold everything down and glue it together, it melts better than the fresco.

Pop it in the oven. 10-ish minutes on the pizza stone at 500 degrees should do it. YMMV.

How is it? Outstanding. This is my go-to pizza for any "Make your own pizza" night. The guava is sweet, fruity and gooey. It's unexpected, but delicious. The queso fresco is salty and a bit crumbly. The caramelized onions play a nice background note if they're there. If you don't bother with the onions, and have dough ready in the fridge like I do, it takes about 40 minutes to make, start to finish.

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No Knead Bread

In the past bread, and most baking in general, certainly the esoteric world of pastries, has been the exclusive domain of my lovely wife. It's not that I can't bake things, it's just that I don't get quite the same giddy thrill out of it.

Nope, I'm pragmatic when it comes to baking. Get it in, get it out, quick and easy with minimum fuss. Recently though, due to her becoming a productive member of society, the weekly bread loaves were slipping. So I stepped in and took charge of bread. Because well, what else have I got to do. Talking to the cat is getting old.

As I was saying, bread is pain in the neck and I hate making it. All that kneading, and sticky dough fingers. Bah. So I started experimenting with so-called 'No Knead' bread. The basic idea is that rather than kneading and rising and folding and rolling, you let the yeast do the work for you, albeit over a longer time-frame. The gluten necessary for soft springy bread develops naturally, rather than through your kneady efforts. Then you use the magic of a scorching hot dutch oven to keep it from drying excessively and to ensure a crunchy awesome crust.

Here's the recipe as I have been making it for the last few weeks. This has become our house bread. It's great for sandwiches and for soups. It costs maybe a buck to make. It takes about 3 minutes of actual work. Get a pen and paper ready, it's incredibly complicated.

• 22 ounces of bread flour
• 1 T kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• 16 ounces of warm water

That's it. Seriously, bread is easy. Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a big bowl. Add the water. Stir around with a spoon until it comes together and most of the flour is absorbed. Done. Stop. No more mixing. Cover up with plastic wrap or something to keep it from drying out too much. I use my largest pyrex bowl (4 qt) which as a matching lid.

Now we play the waiting game. Let this sit somewhere reasonably warm for 19 hours. Yep 19 hours. Or 18, or 20, it doesn't really matter too much. I wouldn't go for say, three days. (Though I might do that soon just as an experiment...) During this time the yeast will rise the dough and glutens will develop. It will look like gross bread soup.


Flour up a counter or cutting board. Use your hands to pull the dough out, it should be sticky but will stick to itself more than to you. Fold it over on itself a few times and try to punch the dough down and press out the air. Cover with a towel and leave 15 minutes. Then get a bowl that will hold roughly twice the dough's size, lay a kitchen towel in it. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of corn meal on the towel. Shape the dough into a ball, drop it in the towelled bowl, and sprinkle another tablespoon of corn meal on top. Then fold the ends of the towel to cover it and set it somewhere warm to rise another 2-3 hours.

About half an hour before it's done, set the oven to 450 and stick your dutch oven inside. I have an enameled cast-iron one. I suppose you could just use a baking sheet and a pan of water in the oven, but I haven't tried it with this dough. When both ovens are hot, take the dutch oven out and take the lid off. Using the towel, carefully drop the dough into the dutch oven. Slap the lid on and stick it the oven. 30 minutes with the lid on, then take it off and go another 15 minutes without the lid.

Your bread will be golden brown and delicious. And it was foolproof, quick and made very little mess.

One thing I have also done that worked out well was add herbs. A handful of chopped rosemary went in a couple loaves back, and it was delicious. Just add right at the beginning, when you're mixing everything.

A couple months ago we tried making a sourdough starter. We got about two loaves out of it before it went horribly, horribly wrong. To the point where I kicked it outside to make it think about what it had done. And had to wash it out with the hose. Seriously, how can flour and water make that kind of smell!?! But if you've got a good starter, you could add a scoop rather than the yeast and this would make awesome sourdough bread.

Finally a word on scheduling. This bread takes about 24 hours to make. In terms of actual work time it takes about 3 minutes, but there's lots of resting. So I start it in the afternoon, so it's ready to be folded and re-risen the next morning, then baked and ready by dinner.

Now it's time to go make a sandwich, with some of the leftover sous vide turkey breast...

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