Coleman and Carver and Pizza

Mose Coleman grew onions. In 1931 Georgia, onion farmers were not paying their bills, but, Mose Coleman grew onions. At harvest, as I think all people who work with food will do, Mose cut one of the flat, yellow bulbs and tasted. This onion was sweet!

Part of the American dream is to prove to the world you can make lemonade when life deals you a lemon. But for Mose Coleman, he had to prove to the world you could do something with a sweet onion. Finishing the harvest, he began to sell his onions to the roadside passers-by. "Vidalia Sweet Onions", the onion that was not hot, the onion that was good in a cool summer salad, the onion that would perfectly match a fresh grilled hamburger... Mose Coleman ended the season selling Vidalia Sweet Onions for $3.50 a fifty pound bag, a remarkable price, and an industry was born.

Mr. Mose Coleman was white.

A few years before, George Washington Carver at the Tuskegee Institute, pondered how to remedy vitamin deficiencies in rural Alabama. He wrote "every normal person should make the tomato a very prominent part of the weekly diet". Inspired by his friend and co-worker Adella Hunt Logan, he published a circular on 115 ways to prepare the tomato for the table.

Mr. Carver was black.

Mose Coleman and Mr. Carver possibly never met. However, the onion Mr. Coleman cut on that summer day in 1931 and the tomato that Mrs. Logan convinced Mr. Carver was a solution to malnutrition had crossed several times in the prior 400 years...

The Crossings

Scientists do not know the exact origin of the tomato. However, if we believe Vavilov's theories, the region with the widest genetic diversity of a species will most likely be the area of its origin. If this is the case, tomatoes come originally from Peru, where numerous variants to Lycopersicon peruvianum are found growing as berry bushes. These berry bushes were carried north by natives so that by the time of the arrival of the Conquistadores in 1509, the Aztecs were making a mix of tomatoes and chiles as the first 'salsa'.

Cortez's scholars (for Cortez was only interested in gold) took the tomato back to Spain where it diffused through Europe, missing England. In Spain, the fruit was called pome del Moro, the Moor's apple (you could tell what was on their mind). The French, not understanding Spanish very well, corrupted this to pomme d'amour, the love apple (you could tell what was on their mind). The Italians shortened this further to pomodoro (mangia! mangia!), and published the first recipe using tomatoes in 1698. For some reasons, the English could not pronounce either the Spanish or French name and considered the tomato "rank and stinking", and so continued centuries of culinary excellence.



The onion that had been cut open in that Vidalia field in 1931, sighed, and recalled its beginnings as a transplant that came from Texas. If it could have remembered further, its ancestors came from Bermuda, an island whose human inhabitants were skilled at building fast schooners from native cedars. Fast schooners were good for trade, and the US Civil War made Bermuda a haven for smugglers and their providers who valued the anonymity of the island as well as the speed of their boats.

However, in the 1870's, smuggling had collapsed with the Southern states and Bermuda was in an economic crisis. A bright soul noted the islands temperate climate and a surplus of fast boats suggested Bermuda become New York's garden. Seven hundred sea miles separated the two, but this was only three days sail for the fast island schooners. A new industry was again born. Hamilton, the capital, was known as 'Onion Town' until another bright soul in Texas noted that they could also grow 'Bermuda' onions there.

The reason 'Bermuda' onions could be grown in Texas is that their seeds came from the Canary Islands, the world's source for onion seeds until 1949, since the Romans and Spanish brought the onion from Europe in 100 B.C.

Texas became the new onion capital of the western hemisphere by 1900. Its universities began to cross breed onions. One particular experiment crossed the 'Excel' onion from Valencia, Spain, with the 'Grano' Texas-Bermuda-Canary Islands onion to form the 'Granex'. Texans exported large quantities of Granex transplants (seeds were uncommon before the use of herbicides--weed seeds grew faster than onion seeds), one of which, when planted in the low-sulfur soil of Vidalia, Georgia, grew to be very sweet and unfortunately, would end its existence cut open by Mr. Mose Coleman.

Pre Treatment

We will prepare a standard 100:60 (60% AR) bread with the difference of using re-hydrated #1 bulgur to give the dough nutty wheat bits. The large size of the bulgur compared to wheat bran should protect the glutens and give an good rise and crumb.

• 150 gm King Arthur Whole Wheat
• 450 gm King Arthur All Purpose Flour
• 360 gm water at room temperature

Mixed at second speed 7 minutes to form a thick dough

• Bulgur #1 120gm rehydrated with 240 gm water

Both dough and re hydrated bulgur were maintained warm at 40C for 12 hours













Rehydrated #1 bulgur wheat




Mixing

Prepare a mixture of

• 1800 gm water at 40C
  
• 7 gm yeast La Vahiné
• 30 gm melao

• 72 gm salt (=3600 gm total flour @ 2%)
  

This is allowed to mix for 5 minutes, then blended with the bulgur and pre-treated flour using the paddle attachment for 20 minutes. At 5 minutes before the end of mixing, add the 72 gm of salt. The entire mixture should be foaming. Then:

• Add 3kg of KA Bread flour

and mix using a dough hook for 7 minutes or as needed to meet the farinograph specification of the flour, typically 7-9 minutes.

Forming

La Vahiné is very slow yeast and it is used at about 0.2% concentration, well below the 'quick' recipes that use 1%. Therefore, this dough will need to rise and be knocked down repeatedly. Fortunately, all the risings add flavor and stretch gluten.

This batch rose (at 27C) 2.5 hours (real estate agent was here), 1 hour, and 1 hour before forming.

Formed into

• 40 100 gm rounds= 4 kg +
  
• of which 8 were formed as Parkerhouse rolls with a drop of tomato and onion paste in the center
  
• 5 250 gm mini-loaves = 1.25 kg
• 3 200 gm pizza rounds = 0.6 kg
  

The rounds were allowed to rise 40 minutes before being formed into French pistolet rolls and immediately baked.

The mini loaves rose for 40 minutes before docking and baking.

The pizza rounds were allowed to rise approximately 1 hour

Parkerhouse rolls looking at you

Baking

Rolls were baked at 230C for 12 minutes
Mini loaves were baked at 230C for 18 minutes (and could have used less)
Pizzas were baked at 230C for 9 minutes. (Unused rounds were baked for 4 minutes, then frozen for later use.)








Very good bloom and grigne on the stones








Thin sliced topping

Structure on a pizza is more interesting. Marinated tomatoes and onions will be moist and spicy and will resist the heat of baking, concentrating their flavors.

Use:

• Two vine-ripened tomatoes (they should smell like the tiny hairs of the tomato leaf)
• One half a larger Vidalia onion
• Salt
• Dried basil
  
• Balsamic vinegar

Thinly slice the tomatoes and onions latitudinally. In a small bowl, layer tomatoes, salt sprinkled on the layer to taste, basil, then a layer of onion. Repeat until the bowl is nearly full, then add 15-30 ml of balsamic vinegar.

Allowing this mixture to stand for 2-3 hours will let the salt draw the water from the tomatoes and mix with the spices and balsamic vinegar.












Results

Parkerhouse rolls with a touch of tomato and onion paste baked inside

Mini loaves and raw pizza