New Year 2009

And so we wait for the Three Kings...

which in Puerto Rico is the day that the children receive gifts. Unfortunately, with two grown adult children in the apartment, the last 4kg of bread went by so quickly that I am baking again on New Year's day.

Baking on any day would not be a problem. However, baking on New Years means you have to consider the day before New Year's, a day that was spent on the island of Culebra. If you have not been, you should.

The island is part of the arid sub-tropical Atlantic, and therefore has no water sources. It is not what you would expect for the 'Caribbean'. However, the beaches are among the most beautiful in the world and the people, the most laid back.


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The El Eden Restaurant, Bar, Grocery Store, and Espresso

For example, you can dine at El Eden on fresh ciabatta bread with Italian prosciutto. For most everything on the menu, simply go to the refrigerators that line the walls, grab wine, beer, tuna, whatever, and enjoy. At the end of your meal the never forgetful owners simply tell you what you owe.

More views of Culebra

Back to the bread. Visiting Culebra during the 31st means you have a very late party meal, then watch the San Juan fireworks. (One of the interesting customs of San Juan is to allow only 'safe and sane' fireworks--this means that residents shoot off marine flares, 9mm pistols and the like. We left our apartment windows open to hear the noise and nearly had a parachute flare land in the living room.)

The good citizens of San Juan celebrate New Year and the new governor.
(The poster is for a Maritime Law School-not kidding.)

Back to the bread. Making bread on New Years Day means starting very late with no ingredients as all the stores are closed.


The whole recipe

For 4kg of 60% AR bread:

• 2000 gm King Arthur Bread Flour
• 500 gm Amapola Todo Uso flour (we were out of bread flour)

The above is 2500 gm

• 1500 gm water (60% of flour) at 40C
• 15 gm Dominican Honey
  
• 14 gm La Vahiné yeast
• 50 gm salt

Add the honey and yeast to the water and let proof for 20-30 minutes. When the mixture looks milky and active, add it to the flour and salt. Mix for 9 minutes at first speed. Scrape the resulting dough from the bowl, form into a ball, and replace it into the oiled bowl.

At 27C, allow the dough to rise 2 x 1hr with intermediate knock downs. On the second knock down, let the dough rest for 20 minutes, then divide into 100 gm boules.

Allow the boules to rest for 20-30 minutes, then form into braids and Kaiser knots.

Bake at 250C for 12 minutes on oven stones.

Commentary

This bread, having no whole wheat, was very light and fluffy. However the use of Amapola Todo Uso (all purpose), weakened the dough so it was less 'rustic'. Such are the needs of New Year's day.

73 %

panem nostrum qotidianum da nobis hodie...



The world eats bread in hundreds of forms. Whether it is French, Italian, tortilla, khubz, bammy, or rainbow colored cereals, it is really just water and some type of flour, manipulated under the conditions and tastes at hand.

It would be an interesting history to study bread and energy. Does the shape of bread depend on the oven or fuel at hand? That question comes later.

It is time to work on skills for a very wet dough called ciabatta, or 'slipper' in Italian, obviously due to the dough's inability to hold any form other than flat...

This dough uses an additional 13% of water by weight of flour when compared to regular Italian or French bread. The net AR (Absorption Ratio) is 73% versus a nice, manageable 60%. The extra water allows for good gluten development, active fermentation, and an almost unmanageable, droopy dough.

Pre Treatment

The dough started with an 'enzyme' dough made from 60% AR with Amapola bread and pizza flour:

• 1kg Amapola Harina por Pan y Pizza
• 600 gm water

Note, there is no yeast, so it is not a real Biga. Lengthened activity of malted flour on itself causes conversion of flour starches to sugars and thus reduces the need for yeast.

The mixed pre-treatment

Leave this 12 hours at approximately 27C (the temperature of Puerto Rico)

Mixing

The next step is to build the pre-treatment to a 73% water percentage dough by calculating the total weight of flour we will use. In this case: 2500 grams.

• We already have 1000 gm, so add 1500 gm Amapola
  
• 73% water by weight equals 2500 x 0.73 = 1825 gm water
• We already have 600, so add 1225 gm water
• 8 gm yeast
• 15 gm Dominican honey
  
• 50 gm salt
  

As usual, heat the water 40C, add 8gm Nea Magia yeast with 15 gm Dominican Honey. Let stand for 15 minutes, then pour into the pre-treatment and mix at 1st speed 2.5 minutes. When the mix looks like a thick batter, add the salt and mix for about 2 minutes to dissolve.

Nea Magia yeast in water

Add flour and mix 3 min at 1st speed, then stop, shift to 2nd speed for 3 minutes to drive and develop gluten. The high amount of water precludes some mechanical coupling of energy common in thicker doughs. The dough will be very fluid, almost jelly like.

Rising

The small amount of yeast means three risings with intermediate knock downs to let the yeast grow. At each rising, the expansion of gas stretches glutens and ' strengthens' the dough slightly.
Freshly mixed:

At the first rising, the dough is less sticky. Knocking down is best accomplished by lifting the dough out of the 10-quart bowl and folding it over onto itself.

The second rising nearly fills the bowl:


And the 3rd is even higher after its hour...



Forming and Baking

This dough is not going to divide into nice little rolls. Most likely, the dough was turned out onto a floured peel, formed into a loose 'slipper' shape and slid onto the hot floor of the oven. After the final rising, the dough was not knocked down or degassed. Rather, it was laid onto a floured board and cut into 1425 gm splits. The splits were formed into loose 'slippers' and placed on lightly greased cookie sheets. Let rest 20 minutes.

Lay out on floured board

Then form onto cookie sheets

Baking

Set oven to 225C. Due to high amount of water, the first bake was estimated at 40 minutes. This was too much and the final time was set to 32 minutes. Due to oven load, the pans were rotated top to bottom and front to back at 20 minutes.

Results and comments

The final results were very aromatic due to the amount of steam generated during baking. At 32 minutes bake time, the crust was golden hued, complex and nicely crunchy.

The crumb is very delicate and ideal for the panini press. However, the next attempt should try to divide these into smaller ciabatte for handling. Bread the size of a small boogie board is very hard to place in a freezer.

Explicit cumpanis September 1.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water

On smelling an aroma with the nose... On tasting a flavor with the tongue... On feeling a tactile sensation with the body... one considers aromas, or flavors, or feelings that can act as a basis for joy, that can act as a basis for sadness, or that can act as a basis for equanimity. These are the six properties: the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, the wind property, the space property, the consciousness property.

Majjhima Nikaya, The Discourses of the Buddha, Discourse 140

Before I tell you about the new convection oven and finding a cazuela, the son and I joined the AIPPR (The Bread Baking Industry Association of Puerto Rico) convention. The picture above lets you know the seriousness of this pan-Caribbean event. Besides celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Tres Monjitas Dairy (above), exhibitors were busy stuffing all the attendees with various forms of bread, hot dogs, and Medalla Light Beer. All the while, extremely pretty ladies (in very short dresses) were employed explaining baking technology they did not understand to people who were not listening.

This note is mainly about heat and how it gets to food.

This week we received our long promised convection oven, a new GE model PK916WMWW with multiple wall heaters and a convection element. Total input is 2.1kW in bake mode and 2.5kW in convection mode. Actually, the oven has been with us over a month, being used by the cats as a handy table to look out the window. The installer finally arrived, but that is another story...

Convection ovens increase the availability of heat to the food being cooked by forcing air circulation in the oven cavity. Regular ovens rely on simple convection around the chamber. This convection can be disrupted by irregular pan placement or other factors. Forcing air around the oven creates strong vortices and increases the production capacity. There are very good laser particle tests showing this effect by Spence et. al. presented at the Australasian fluid mechanics conference (why this subject, I do not know).

Please note--Do not use convection mode if you have baked goods such as meringues or delicate pastries that cannot stand a blast of hot air.

The second great arrival was the cazuela de barro, which are readily avaialable and cheap at your local True Value Ferretería

Una cazuela (from www.latienda.com, should you not have a True Value Ferretería available)

The cazuela is fired from terracotta clay, whose defects as a mechanical material are compensated by its thermal properties. Terracotta cannot be fully vitrified in a kiln, therefore it remains weaker than other materials. To compensate, terracotta cookware is made thicker and heavier than conventional material. Our cazuela weighs over 3.2kg, which is the equivalent of 3 large aluminum saute pans. However, the thickness and weight give the cookware a huge thermal mass. It takes a long time to heat up, and equally long to cool down.

A sample calculation:

• Terracotta has a specific heat Cp of approximately 1kJ/kg C
• Aluminum is about the same, 0.87kJ/kg C
• The aluminum pan has a mass of 1.1kg
• The terracotta has a mass of 3.2kg

So, what do the other 2.1kg do besides making the cazuela strong enough to handle? It serves as a huge store of heat. Heat up both pans from 25C to 150C (125C change)...
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-solids-d_154.html

• The terracotta takes longer to heat, but stores (1kJ/kg C) * 3.2 * 125 = 400 kJ = 111 W-h
• The aluminum heats quickly but stores only 120 kJ = 33 W-h

If you open the oven door, the terracotta releases its energy to keep the food hot. This means you can have slow, steady cooking even if you open the door to peek.


The Recipe

The gentleman in the picture is Irving J. Pflug Ph.D., who over the last 50 years defined the science of industrial and food preservation. He also operates the Ponderosa Farm in Minnesota.

I had a chance to have dinner with Dr. Pflug and his daughter while taking a course in industrial sterilization. The conversation soon moved from medical sterilization to food, and then to home canning. Dr. Pflug then leaned over and said, "you should try canning your tomato sauce at 70-80C, put a thermocouple into it, then calculate an F0 to get about 12. This will make it canning safe, and you will not believe the flavor." After doing the numbers, this meant cooking it for about 24 hours, but the flavor was excellent.

To try this, take:

• Two small onions, minced (2-5 mm)
  
• 6-8 cloves of garlic, coarse minced
  
• 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded, deveined, and minced
  
• 1 carrot, in small dice
• One Puerto Rican pepper (capsicum annuum var. cubanelle, sometimes called Anaheim, or Italian frying pepper)
• 45 cc virgin olive oil.
• ~1% salt by weight of vegetables
  

Place these in the cazuela and let the convection oven do its magic at 95C...

Place the cazuela with the oil and vegetable mixure in the oven at 95C and leave it for 2.5-3 hours. The vegetables will effuse their flavors into the oil without evaporating them.

At the end of the 2.5-3 hours, add:

• 1 6-oz can organic tomato paste (the label should say only tomatoes)
• 1 780 gm can VITER chopped tomato
• 150 cc red wine
• Pepper to taste

Mix, and return the covered cazuela to the oven for another 4-5 hours at 110C. At the end of this period, the sauce will have turned deep red, almost to a paste.

Pass the cooked paste through a coarse manual food mill to make a homogeneous paste that still has interesting texture.

The Bread

The bread is pizza dough, strictly to hold the sauce. It is a direct mix of 60% AR using Amapola harina por pan y pizza.

• 1 kg Amapola harina por pan y pizza
• 600 gm water heated to 40C
• 10 gm sugar
  
• 20 gm salt
• 16 gm La Vahiné yeast (for faster action)

Rehydrate the yeast in the water sugar mixture. Let stand 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, add the salt and pour the mixture into the flour. Mix for 9 minutes at first speed.

Allow to rise for two one-hour risings at 27C. At the end of the second rising, form into eight 200- gm boules and let rest for 20 minutes. Hand stretch four into pizza rounds and spread the sauce onto the rounds.

Pizza rounds on wire racks. Note the consistency of the sauce.

Since the son likes seasoned mozzarella, mix chopped mozzarella with virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and other spices and toss in a bowl. You can use this on the pizza.

With the scrap dough another great discovery in Puerto Rico is the broad variety of garlic preserves and spread. One of the interesting ones is ground fresh garlic mixed with lemon and oregano into a paste. You can mix this with virgin olive oil and use it as a spread on extra dough:

El Isleño Ajo Adobo on pizza dough

Baking

This is a high temperature oven. Bake for approximately 8 minutes at 250C.

Note the convection fan in front of a 2.5kW circular element.
Nice crusting.

Garlic-olive oil roll (200 gm wet weight)

Solanaceae, Supply Chain, Slavery?

...y que hay oro y cobre. También hay mucho aji, que es su pimienta, della que vale más que pimienta, y toda la gente no come sin ella, que la halla muy sana; puédense cargar cincuenta carabelas cada año en aquella Española.

Diario de abordo, El Gran Almirante, 15 de enero 1493, isla de la Española

... and there is gold and copper. There is also a great deal of aji, that is their pepper, that is worth more than pepper, and all the people cannot eat without it, they find it very healthy; there could be fifty caravels loaded every year in that [island of] Española.

Ships Log, The great admiral (Christopher Columbus), January 15, 1493, Hispañola (Current Dominican Republic)



Thus the great admiral was filled with visions of riches. Offhandedly he mentions gold and copper. However, he computes the number of caravels that could be loaded with aji, the native pepper. Imagine the demand for pepper in Europe, and how Spain could establish their own trade monopoly without encountering the Portuguese, who held the sea routes to India!

There was one problem with the plan. Pepper (piperum nigrum) grows only within 20 degrees of the equator, and only with 2 meters of rainfall. The pepper plant is a climbing vine that requires careful cultivation for 3-5 years before it bears fruit. Realistically, the East Indies were only reasonable source for the spice. To get the valued black pepper needed the power of kingdoms, navigation outposts, colonies, and of course, implied state monopolies. Not to mention the labor required to tend the plant, which would come from slaves.

Chile, or capsicum annuum, however, could grow without much effort in southern Spain. Within a few weeks of planting anyone could have hot spice. Within a few years of Columbus bringing visions of "fifty caravels a year" to Spain, peasants in what is now Hungary (40-45 degrees north) were growing peppers. No navigation outposts, no colonies, no monopolies. Decentralized.

Which suggests today we will make red pepper (capsicum annuum) bread...

The plan

In the last baking we found it was difficult to mix and bake over 5kg of dough. The mixer was more than adequate, but the lack of a convection oven slows the baking. Since we want a vegetable bread with a Italian rolls, we will make a common mix, then divide and hand mix the vegetables into one part of the dough.

Pre-Treatment for 1.6kg of dough
Add yeast, salt, water and flour to make 4.8 kg total
Divide into equal parts
Rising and forming for Italian rolls	Hand fold vegetables into dough
	Rising and forming
Bake

Pre Treatment

This is a 60% AR dough without yeast that allows the amylase in Amapola Harina Por Pan to work on the flour overnight to permit a faster rise with less yeast.

• 300 gm whole wheat flour

• 700 gm Amapola Harina Por Pan

• 600 gm water at 27C

Mix for 9 minutes at 1^st speed and allow to stand

Mixing

The pre-treatment dough was allowed to act for 12 hours. At the end of the period, bread flour, salt and yeast mix was added. The ingredients were computed to make 4.8kg of dough

• 1.2 kg of water at 40C

• 24 gm La Vahiné yeast. (This is 0.8% of total flour weight, a little high for my personal practice, but recognizes the additional salt that may be in the vegetables. Additional salt causes water to flow out of the yeast cells by osmotic pressure and slows their action.)

• 10 gm sugar
  

Mix the above and let stand for 20 minutes then add to the pre-treatment. Mix for 5 minutes to make a batter. Then:

• 60 gm salt (2% of flour weight)

• 2.0 kg Pillsbury bread flour

add the salt and mix

The filling


We are estimating about 2400 gm of basic dough that will need approximately 10% of its weight in filling. The idea is to build layers of flavors that cook with the dough and infuse the bread with aromas.

Take

• 100 gm whole clove garlic
• sprinkle of whole cumin seeds
• 30 cc of virgin olive oil

Place the garlic, cumin seeds, and toss in olive oil in a small cast iron pan. Place the pan in a 180C oven for 18-20 minutes, or until the garlic begins to turn lightly golden. There should be a complex smell of roast garlic, dominated by toasting cumin.

Near the end of roasting in the oven

Then add cold:

• 100 gm drained Pimiento Morron (Vitter Brand) chopped
• 60 gm diced fresh onion
• 3-4 gm coarse salt
• Strong dash of black pepper
• Strong dash of crushed oregano leaves
  
• 15-20 cc wine vinegar

Another great VITER S.A. product

Ready to toss together

Toss this mixture and let stand so the salt draws water from the onion and rehydrates the oregano.


Rising and forming



One-half the dough is left to rise in 1-hour periods (at 27C) while the other have is stretched on the board until it is 2-3cm thick. The pepper, onion, and garlic mix is spread on the stretched dough, draining as much liquid as possible. (Dusting the spread with flour at this point is also OK.)

Then, fold the dough in half, and half again, and begin kneading by hand until the mixture is incorporated into the dough. This will be messy and needs frequent dusting with flour. It will be sticky on the bench! Mixing in this way allows good gluten formation and good yeast dispersion without disrupting the dough structure with vegetables or salt.

Near the end of hand kneading (~8 minutes)

This mix was also allowed to rise through two 1-hour risings and knock downs. At the end of the second rising, it looks like this:

The garlic, pimiento, and onion dough was divided into 4 loaves of approximately 660gm each and placed in couchette to rise.

En couchette et en repose

Baking

Regular Italian rolls were rolled from boule into small pistolet type rolls, docked, and baked at 450F (232C). The loaves were carefully placed on baking screens, docked, and baked at the same temperature.

Baking time for rolls was approximately 15-18 minutes. Baking time for the loaves was approximately 22-25 minutes, rotating top rack with the bottom rack after 15 minutes.

Results

Bloom and color were excellent with a wonderful aroma when baking. The crumb was well formed with well defined pieces of garlic and pimiento.

Now, just go to Meats-and-More or La Ceiba, get some pavochón o lechón asado and have a sandwich.

Magnificent crumb

Blacksmith Hell (part II)

In the search for flour, we found a bag of Pillsbury Whole Wheat Flour. The idea for today is to recreate a more rustic bread by mixing 10% whole wheat plus 90% of Amapola bread flour in a higher absorption ratio recipe of approximately 65% (65 parts water per 100 parts of total flour).

Pre-Treatment (biga)

The evening before, mix (this is a 60% absorption ratio):

• 360 gm WW flour
• 640 gm Amapola Harina por Pan

The above makes a total of 1000 gm of flour

• 600 gm water
• 8 gm La Vahiné yeast

The following morning, the biga, has fallen and is ready for mixing.

Mixing, and the overdose of whole wheat

The total recipe was designed around a 65% absorption ratio. Ideally this would mean:

• 3600 grams of flour
• 2340 grams water (0.65 x 3600 = 2340)
• 72 grams salt (2% of flour weight)
• yeast

Since 1000 gm of flour were already in the mix, all we needed was 2600 gm of bread flour.

We did not have 2600 gm of bread flour. And, since the only store that carries Amapola bread flour is 40 minutes away, the only option was to add whole wheat with this result.

• 3600 gm flour = 360 WW + 800 WW (due to lack of bread flour) + 2440 gm bread flour
• 2340 gm water
• 72 grams salt
• yeast

The overdose of whole wheat

So, rather than 10% whole wheat, we have 32% whole wheat. Whole wheat takes more water and so the dough becomes drier. The additional water that should have made the final bread very 'open' was used instead to wet the whole wheat. I have normal bread.



Rising, Forming and Filling

There is one divine ingredient that does exist in Puerto Rico that does not exist in other parts of the US and it is Tomate Frito. This is tomato sauce that has been fried in olive oil and spices until it thickens, then finished with a touch of real sugar (not high-fructose corn syrup). The result is a true ketchup, referring back to Carver's orginal recipes for the tomato. Add spices or chipotle peppers and you have an adult hot sauce.

The great Vitter Tomate Frito

A filling was made by olive oil sauteeing onions, garlic, and diced carrots (for sweetness), then adding a dash of habañero sauce and a can of Tomate Frito with additional sugar.

Sauteing onions, garlic, and carrots in olive oil

The dough was allowed to rise for 2 one-hour proofings at 27C with intermediate knock-downs.

Dividing was into a variety of forms:

• 24 x 100 gm boules for filled rolls, made Parkerhouse style
  
• 10 x 150 gm pizza discs that will be half baked, then frozen
• 4 x 500 gm batons that will be stretched and made in to ciabatta

For a total of ~5900gm

First division of dough prior to weighing

Baking and finished product

The finished rolls were allowed to proof 20 minutes and baked in a 450F (230C) for 18 minutes. The pizza discs were coated with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, then baked for 4 minutes to set the dough. Crumb was good, although unremarkable due to the overloading of the dough with whole wheat.



Coating pizza discs, partially baked discs, parkerhouse rolls filled with tomate frito

32% whole wheat--stringier bubbles, tighter crumb

ζ approves (albeit with an abscess)