No-Knead Bread

I've been baking my own bread for a little over six years now.  I usually bake about one two-pound loaf per week.  In all that time, I have kneaded a batch of bread dough just once--the first time I made it.

I claim no originality with the process or recipe.  All credit goes to Jim Lahey and Mark Bitten; the first video they made on it can be seen here:  No-Knead Bread

Numerous permutations of this recipe can be seen in videos produced by Breadtopia.

This is also similar to the "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes per Day" approach.

The nice thing about this process is that you don't need precision.  My own recipe has drifted over the years; what I currently use for the most common loaf I bake is this:

2 cups unbleached bread flour
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (of any kind)
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 - 2 cups water
1/4 cup sourdough starter

I bake it at 475 for 30 minutes, then 15 minutes at 450.  I don't use much salt... I slowly backed it off over a period of time and now I'm happy with the minimal amount I use.  When I bake for others, I bring the amount of salt back up because I know most people would find my bread to be pretty bland.

I started off baking in a Pyrex pot, but soon moved to a Romertopf because it makes nice traditional loaf-sized bread and is good for sandwiches.  Rather than lay the dough on a towel or the counter, I put it in a proofing basket to rise the second time (with a liner).

The inside of the loaf when baking the standard white/whole wheat flour mix looks like this (not the same loaf as above):

Regardless of flour blend, my process is: mix it all up in a bowl; let it rise under plastic for a number of hours; turn it out onto a floured counter top, dusting it with flour on top, patting it out a bit and folding it into a sort of oblong loaf shape; put it in the proofing basket for a few minutes; drop into the preheated Romertopf; bake; remove and let cool for about 24 hours before cutting (both to cool and to build a nice crust).  Then I start storing it in the refrigerator as I use it up.

Regarding rising times: those have drifted.  12 hours / 2 hours will work, but a wide range of times will work.  Most commonly I let the first rise go 9-10 hours and the second more like 30 minutes.  In the summer my house is pretty warm, so the dough rises a lot; in the winter, not so much.  A shorter second rise seems to lead to more rising in the oven.

I use a number of different flour combinations, adding up to a total of 3 3/4 - 4 cups:

All bread (white) flour
All whole wheat flour (white, red, white soft)*
As above with rye flour substituted for the whole wheat
As above with buckwheat flour substituted for whole wheat (only did this one; didn't like it much)

*When baking with 100% whole wheat, I add 1/2 cup of vital wheat gluten, for a total of about 4 -  4 1/4 cups flour & VWG.

The baking times are always the same.  As noted above, I preheat the Romertopf--for 20 minutes as the oven is warming up to avoid having the loaf stick; it almost always slides right out.  Above is my standard white / whole wheat mixture; below is the most recent loaf I've baked: 100% soft white wheat with VWG.

As you can see, the crumb structure is much more dense than with some white flour mixed in, but I'm very happy with the results. The individual slices are heavy. The loaf is shown sitting on my fairly cheap bread slicing guide. I think I prefer the white flour mixed in, but this is certainly viable.  The reason I have experimented with all whole wheat is that I have some unground wheat on hand.  Any baking I do with that will be either all whole wheat or I'll have to mix in store-bought white flour.  Red wheat has a definite bite to it, while white is more bland.  In general, hard wheat is more available than soft, but as you can see, soft will work okay.  I also use hard wheat flour in places where soft is more traditionally recommended, such as when making cakes. 

I haven't used commercial yeast much in the last several years; I have a sourdough starter I originally got from Cultures for Health that is still going strong. My sourdough approach pretty much follows the video on the Breadtopia site.

A few observations:  I don't mix my dough to be as wet as shown in the video.  The texture is obviously different with whole wheat flour in the mix, but even so, if the dough is too wet, it makes a mess in the proofing basket and is a mess to deal with when trying to pat it out on the counter.  Rye is pretty sticky, too.  Regardless of flour type, somewhat less water works fine.

As noted before, the recipe is incredibly forgiving of deviations in almost any of the ingredients or other parameters.  Too much water causes some problems, but the bread will still be usable.  Too little is probably okay.  Flour can vary a bit.  Rising times can vary.  Baking time can vary.  Too little would obviously be a problem, but I've left it in too long on a couple of occasions and it has been okay.  I certainly have had loaves that have disappointed, but they are always usable.

The bread is good.  I obviously bake it to my own tastes, but it beats almost anything I can buy.

I've spoiled myself at this point; I used to be happy with store brand white or whole wheat sandwich bread, but now those are almost inedible--soft, airy, salty, nasty.  What I bake is worlds better.

The amount of work involved is minimal, and it's pretty cheap.  Ten pounds of flour costs $6-$7, and I can get five two-pound loaves of premium bread from that much.  That much good bread in the store would probably cost... I don't know; I haven't shopped for it lately... probably at least $20. The long rising times can easily be built around my work schedule.  I either mix up the dough before leaving for work and bake when I get home or do so last thing at night so I can bake the next morning.


Grinding my own wheat flour would make it a bit fresher, and I have done that before.  I'm pretty satisfied buying pre-ground whole wheat, however.  I've experimented with a lot of different varieties and want to try growing my own. Speaking of which, it's just about time to plant it.

If you've never baked your own bread; give it a try.  It's worth it.

Eulogy for a Pear Tree (Deer, Take III)

Earlier, I mentioned that deer can be a problem, but that there were ways to limit or prevent the damage they do to trees that I have tried that work.  Although it has limitations as trees grow, a circle of welded wire or field fencing--or even chicken wire--seems to be effective.  After complaining to myself about the hassle and expense involved, I eventually decided to give it a try and
have adopted it as the method of choice for every young fruit tree I've planted...except for one.

That one is dead now.

Last spring, I got three pear trees.  I had been thinking about pears for a long time, but had shied away from them because of the plum curculio issues (which also plague apples and peaches, as previous posts had noted).  I didn't really want more high-maintenance trees. Eventually I decided to give them a try.  I have multiple apples and peaches already, so spraying three more trees with Surround won't be all that much extra work.

So I got three trees--two container, one bare root--and planted them.  I got them in the ground very late in the season for Georgia; it was early May.  I ran out of welded wire fencing after circling the two container pear trees, but the next time I was out where I had planted them, I took along a four-foot roll of chicken wire.  I dropped the roll next to the bare-root tree, but "didn't have time" that day to pound in the t-posts and fence it in.  Ditto the next time, and the next... eventually I stopped thinking about it, although every time I mowed, I had to move the chicken wire roll (still laying next to the pear tree) and I'd think, "I need to make time to do that."  In the meantime, I saw no indication whatsoever of deer damage, so was telling myself that maybe pear trees weren't an attractive target.

To some degree that may be true.  What caused the death of my young pear tree was a buck rubbing against it--as the picture shows.  He broke off the entire top of the tree and scraped off most of the bark.  You can see how he pushed it around by the hole worn in the ground at the base.

While it might be possible to salvage this by cutting it just above the graft, I'm going to start over.  I have a few months to decide if I want to add another pear tree or do something else.

More on Black Walnuts

I'm starting to process the black walnuts that have been falling.  Most of the nuts are on the ground now, with only a few left in the trees.

The first step is to get the hull off, which requires a bit of work the way I do it.  I mentioned earlier that corn shellers can be used to de-husk walnuts, but I'm not entirely sure whether that's intended to be when they are fresh--like in the picture at right--or when they've dried down.  You'll see various things online about hulling them; generally, people recommend it be done when the nuts are first collected.  If you wait until the husks dry around the nut, it's tough to remove them.

The texture of the husk is fairly meaty.  It's apparently edible, because you can buy pickled walnuts that include everything--shell, nut meat, and husk--in vinegar (the nuts are picked in an immature state for pickling).  I was interested in trying them until I found out they didn't shell the nuts... eating the whole thing isn't very appealing.

So I remove my husks and try to do so quickly.  The picture above was taken when I had just picked up the nuts.  They start to turn black almost immediately.  Black walnuts contain juglone, a somewhat herbicidal chemical that inhibits some other plants (but not all).  The nut falls to the ground; the husk deteriorates around the shell, and limits plant growth around where the nut will sprout and begin to grow.  So one has to be careful where the husks and washing water are dumped.

I use the hammer method, described very well in this video.  He's a lot faster at it than I am.  I pound away on the nuts inside a bag to try to catch the husks--they're messy and will stain anything they touch.  I use rubber gloves. The bag at left probably took me about 10-15 minutes to do.  Inevitably, you'll find some that have husk fly larvae in them (as shown in the picture below).  The first year I picked up my nuts, I was aghast when I discovered a few little worms in the box.  Don't worry about them.  They're pretty harmless.  They eat the husk material but don't penetrate the shell to get inside the nut itself.  I just work around them.

The husk flies may provide a somewhat beneficial service to the tree, by breaking the husks up a bit and making it easier for them to fall apart and decompose once they hit the ground. On my trees, the eggs laid by the adult flies pretty much reach a dead end, because I toss them in the trash. 

 

The adult husk fly itself is a pretty attractive bug.  I have seen a few of them on the trees, though not often; one spring, I even found one in the garage sitting on some nuts that I hadn't gotten around to hulling the fall before (they were well-dried down by then). 

As noted in another post, corn shellers can also remove the husks though I have never tried that method.

After the nuts are close to hull-less (hammering can't get all the material off), I put them in a bucket and wash them in water, similar to the process followed in the video above.  The final result is as shown.  I don't get them completely clean; I get them clean enough.  When cracking, the dried hull material will flake off the shell and make a bit of a mess, but the only alternative is to use a lot of water and/or a brush to scrub the hull tissue out of the grooves in the shell.  I'm not going to do that.

Once cleaned (or semi-cleaned), the nuts will keep well in the shell for a long time--over a year.  I still have some from last year I need to crack.  Ones I have done recently have been fine.

 

In the picture above you can see that some of the nuts are larger than the others; the big ones come from what I believe is probably a named cultivar tree.  The other tree might be native.  I get usable nut meat out of both.

 

Fairy Ring and Tree Cattle

There's nothing substantial to this post, but I noticed recently that I have a fairy ring in the yard.  This isn't a very good picture--it would be nicer if the grass was shorter, but the same rain that made the mushrooms bloom also made the grass take off.  Once mowed, the ring is much less apparent.

This is the first year I have noticed this ring, and it is relatively small--less than five feet across.  The mushrooms themselves are fairly large, and I have no idea what kind they are. I assume they will be back next year, in a somewhat larger circle.  We shall see.

This is near the blackberries growing near my garage that I referred to a couple of months ago.  Before the blackberry bushes, that spot had a big rose bush that eventually keeled over, then the rose bush rootstock grew up and bloomed for a few years.  As a nearby crepe myrtle has grown up, it has gotten too shaded, so the rootstock rose has been ailing, as well.  Finally, I pulled everything out.  When I yanked up some of the old canes, I saw some very curious little bugs.  They moved very fast but in herd fashion--like antelope or cattle.  I poked around on Google for a while and found that's exactly what they're called: tree cattle, aka bark lice.  I saw the nymph form.  Eventually, they ran away.

Before this starts to resemble a Jim's Journal strip (unless it's already too late), I should stop.

More on Beans

I made another pot of beans with the pressure cooker last night, as discussed previously, but after soaking the beans I discovered I didn't have any onions--which was a problem.  I have never made beans without fresh onion, but I decided to give dried minced onion a try.  I had some of that in the pantry.

Normally I put in two onions, but the amount in two onions varies.  It's probably usually about two to three cups of diced onion.  Usually, dried vegetables and herbs seem to rehydrate to about a 3:1 ratio; one teaspoon dried equals about one tablespoon fresh.  So I tossed in 3/4 cups of minced onion.  I also added more water.  Normally I put the water level right at the top of the beans (sometimes slightly more if cooking in a non-pressurized pot), but I added quite a bit more because I knew the dehydrated onion would absorb water, rather than increase the water level as fresh onions do when they cook down.

In the end, I put a bit too much extra water in.  Another alternative would've been to rehydrate them before adding to the pot, but that seems to be unnecessary.  The picture at right shows the pot after I had scooped out a generous portion for dinner.  The flavor was okay. A whole cup would have worked, too, but the results with 3/4 cup were fine. I wouldn't mind doing them this way again (and probably will; I have more minced onion that I haven't been using much of and I need to learn to use it for more than marinade). Minced onion keeps for a long time if properly packaged.

I could also substitute dehydrated / minced garlic, though I have no experience with it.  The only dry form I have used is powdered.  The bacon would be another problem.  It's an important component in the recipe and I'm not immediately aware of non-fresh or frozen alternatives.  I do know about canned bacon, but that's already cooked and might not work very well.  I may try it sometime just to see how it goes.  This time, by the way, I used thick-cut bacon, which was much easier to slice into small pieces than normal thin-cut bacon is.  I dropped it back down to four ounces, and that was fine (both in terms of flavoring and deterring foaming).

For the record:  It took 25 minutes after the cooking time ended for the pressure to drop in the cooker.  The guidelines for beans in the manual say the pressure should drop on its own rather than via venting.

Lastly, I ran across a site that has nutritional information for generally wholesome foods; pintos are on their list:  World's Healthiest Foods-Pinto Beans.

Acorns

I have a lot of oak trees.  Mostly I have ones that yield red acorns, but I have some white oaks, too.  And near my suburban house, there's a subdivision with about six Shumard oaks planted at the front. At the office park where I work, there are dozens of water oaks planted at the edge of the parking lots and in small plant islands in the lots themselves.  Because the oaks fall on pavement, they are easy to find and if not collected by me or the squirrels, they get crushed by cars and/or vacuumed up by the landscapers for dumping in an inert landfill.
 

Oak trees in the fall are beautiful--at least some of them are.  Some have leaves that turn a drab brown.  The picture at left shows some of the oaks I'm talking about, in addition to other trees--hickories and dogwoods...maybe a few others.   However, I want to focus on oak trees for food rather than ornamentation.

All species of oaks produce edible acorns, and all of them have too much tannin in them to be palatable straight from the shell.  I have tried with a variety of oaks: red, Georgia, Shumard, and white. The whites are close, but still too bitter--and they are reported to have the lowest tannin level.  Apparently tannin matters to some degree to deer, as well; they like white acorns the best.

For humans, something needs to be done.  Many sites and books suggest using water to leach the tannin out.  This book by Samuel Thayer has an extensive discussion of processing acorns.  However, there are many subtle variations. Generally, 'most everyone I've read recommends several changes of water at temps from room to boiling.

I have been picking up acorns for years and doing nothing with them.  Although drying them for a while is recommended, there is a difference between processing and indifferent procrastination.  Now is the time of harvest; later is the time to figure out what to do with them--so I have told myself for the last several autumns. My co-workers think I'm a little odd for picking up handfuls at the office.  So far, I have nothing to show for the effort.  Finally, I decided to try a pilot project.

Acorns are often targeted by insects; Thayer's book covers this in detail and has recommendations for identifying bad acorns easily when processing a lot. For my pilot project I didn't need to stress about it.  I picked up some newly-dropped acorns earlier this week. I cracked three and one was good (for what it's worth, a much greater proportion of the ones I've cracked from the office park have looked good; they are very clean).  I diced the Shumard into about six pieces, put the chunks into a coffee cup, filled it with water and microwaved it for a minute--not enough to make it boil, but enough to get it to simmering temperature.  Every 12 hours or so I changed the water for a couple of days.  Each time, the water was less tan-hued by the time I changed it.

After several water changes, they were edible--the bitterness was (mostly) gone.  This is less than an epic finding; all I have done is verify what others have reported.  However, it is encouraging that it's a viable process, if somewhat labor-intensive.  The taste of the nut meat itself was pretty bland.  I don't know if it would be any different if I had dried it first, but during the leaching process I assume it'd rehydrate to whatever extent it could--so that might not matter much.

I'm not sure I will do this on a broad scale, but I certainly have the acorns available if I want to.

Update:  The above obviously depicts beginner-style experimentation with the concepts.  This blogger shows the results from decanting and leaching--the latter being quicker, given sufficient equipment to process the nut meats before leaching.