My girlfriend is graduating today with a BS in Biochemistry, so congratulations to her. She’ll be starting medical school in August - she’s pretty smart. On a side note, because she has nothing to do all summer, she is going to do a few guest posts here about wine. She just finished a class on wine tasting, so what she has to say should be interesting. Her roommates and their families are all getting together for a dinner in their apartment tonight and I will be making guacamole. Let’s hope I don’t mess it up.

Recipe of the Week

Simple Strawberry Dessert - This recipe from Jill at Simple Daily Recipes looks delicious. I like it because it is so simple and easy, not to mention it uses my favorite fruit, strawberries.

Links

• How to Cook Like Your Grandmother has a great technique for testing when a baked potato is done.
• I’ve never celebrated Cinco de Mayo, but Ben at What’s Cooking? has an interesting post with some history of why it is so popular in the US.
• The Kitchen had two helpful posts from this week, one on how to taste cheese, and the other on salting to taste.
• Start Cooking has an article on making proper portions. It seems like sound advice and something that I need to work on. If my meal contains meat, it is often the most substantial part, which is something I would like to change.

Have a great Saturday.

On Monday I searched through the University of Cincinnati’s online library catalog for some of the technique-based books that I was considering for a new series on, well, techniques. They didn’t have Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques or The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America, but they did have a few others that caught my eye. I thought I’d give a quick update on what I’ve received so far.

On Cooking, by Labenksy and Hause

This book is a tome of information and recipes. It gives a good amount of explanation on techniques and has great photos. Another cool feature is a ‘Mise en place’ box in its recipes that shows you what to have prepped before cooking. The downside is that it might be a little recipe heavy for me at this point.

Culinary Fundamentals, by the American Culinary Federation

This is a another textbook of culinary basics. I like this book because it is less recipe based and focuses more on techniques. A recipe doesn’t even appear until page 304 and the chapters are mostly divided by technique, not food. I also like that it explains the technique first in detail, and then provides what it calls a benchmark recipe - the basic one you need to know.

At the end of each chapter it not only has questions (like On Cooking), but it gives a cooking assignment. The chapter on soups, for example, asks you to prepare one soup recipe but portion it into hot, medium, and cold temperature cups, taste the soup as it cools in each one and notice how the flavor changes. These could be fun.

The Professional Chef’s Knife Kit, by the Culinary Institute of America

I wasn’t planning on a book about knife skills, but I remembered a reader (ntsc I believe) recommending this one or one close to it. It is a pretty cool book with good illustrations on how to cut using a variety of techniques. It also goes into some detail on cutting individual foods, although it focuses more on fruit and vegetables to the neglect of meat, poultry and seafood. I am considering doing a series on this as well.

What do you think? Any opinions on what you’d like to read?

Maybe I should have called this ‘Bread Week,’ but I wanted to highlight a comment from the post on my attempt at no-knead bread.

None other than Jeff Hertzberg himself, co-author of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day - the source of my recipe, left two comments with advice on how to tackle my problem:

Andy: I’m Jeff Hertzberg, one of the co-authors of “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.” Two tips I can give you. First, we never have the drying-out problem if the batch is covered well. In the fridge, I use Tupperware-like buckets, which I keep cracked for the first 24 hours; thereafter I close if fully and they don’t start inflating. That should take care of the drying-out problem.

But the small dense loaf… I’m not sure I can put that onto the Rapid-Rise yeast (which should work fine), or to the fact that you let it go for five hours in the initial rise. A longer rest after forming the loaf will probably help, try 1 hour and 20 minutes. Also, test your oven temp with a thermometer; that could be the likeliest culprit.

I may not be able to check back here, but please let us know how you make out by posting into any of the “Comments” fields in our blog at http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com

Jeff Hertzberg

(His second comment asked if I was baking at a high altitude, which I am not.)

I can’t believe that not only did he find the blog, but he was nice enough to comment and help me out. Jeff seems like a great guy and his bread blog looks good if you are into baking. Depending on how well I can get this bread to work, I am going to consider picking up his book. I just thought it was neat that the author of the book left a comment.

Also, thank you to everyone else who commented and gave me some advice/encouragement too - the blog is nothing without you.

This is a cost analysis of the no-knead bread recipe that I posted on Monday. As a student my funds are limited, so I wanted to know if making my own bread was economically advantageous. I know it tastes better, but if it costs too much, it may not be feasible for me to make it frequently. The prices may be slightly different for you due to regional variations, but the cost of ingredients will probably rise with the cost of store-bought bread, so the comparison should be similar.

The ingredients needed for two small loaves of bread or one medium-sized loaf:

• 3 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast (one normal packet)
• 2 1/4 teaspoons of kosher salt

Flour

At the Kroger near my house, a 5 pound bag of flour costs $1.69.

1. 5 lbs x 16 oz/lb = 80 oz of flour per bag

Using the conversion table found here, a cup of all-purpose flour weighs 4 ounces.

1. 4 oz/cup x 3 1/4 cups per batch = 13 oz of flour needed per batch
2. 80 oz per bag / 13 oz per batch = 6.15 batches per bag

I will round this down to six since you might need a little more for dusting your loaf when cutting and baking it. And the cost per batch?

1. $1.69 / 6 batches = $0.28 per batch for flour

Salt

(Note that the price I have is for table salt. Expect kosher to be a little more expensive, but there can’t be too much of a difference.)

A 26 oz container of salt costs $0.59 and using our handy chart, a tablespoon is 2/3 of an ounce. There are three teaspoons to a tablespoon, so:

1. 2 1/4 tsp. per batch x 1/3 tbsp./tsp. = 3/4 of a tablespoon of salt used per batch
2. 3/4 tbsp. per batch / 2/3 oz/tbsp. = .5 oz per batch
3. 26 oz per container / .5 oz per batch = 52 batches per container
4. $0.59 per container / 52 batches per container = $0.011 per batch for salt
   

I’ll go ahead and round that up so it is $0.02 per batch.

Yeast

The yeast is much simpler. Each packet contains 2 1/4 teaspoons and a group of three packets costs $0.97, so it is $0.33 per batch.

Total and Comparison

$0.28 for flour + 0.02 for salt + 0.33 for yeast = $0.63 per batch

So, it is 63 cents per batch of no-knead bread. I know this is not including time, and perhaps more importantly, the cost of electricity to heat your oven, but it is acceptable for now.

Where I live, you can get a 20 oz loaf of sliced, white bread for a dollar. So what is the cost per ounce of each bread?

• No-Knead: $0.63 per batch / 13 oz per batch = $0.048 per oz
• Store-bought: $1.00 per loaf / 20 oz per loaf = $0.05 per oz

So, they are equal at $0.05 per oz when you don’t include the electricity for your oven. I have no idea what an oven costs to run, but either way the electricity would make the homemade loaf a little bit more expensive. Still, they are so close that the great increase in quality from the homemade bread is probably worth the few extra pennies for me.

In a few months I am going to eat only home-baked bread for a month. The cost is nearly equal and it will be much more delicious - I’ll let you know how it turns out.

photo credit: Paco Espinoza

I have mentioned a few times that fresh bread is one of my favorite foods. This past summer I was in Greece for nine weeks on a couple archaeological projects, and for six of them we bought fresh bread at the bakery every day. Sure, we lived in tents, but the bread made up for any deficiencies.

I’ve been considering trying to make bread consistently - perhaps to the extent that I don’t need to buy any at the store at all. The two obstacles to this, of course, are time and money. No-knead bread then, is quite appealing to me for its low time requirement.

I found this recipe from a link on Mark Bittman’s blog at the NYTimes. Here is the original, adapted from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The best part about the recipe is that you make a batch for 2-8 loaves and can leave the dough in the refrigerator for up to two weeks according to the author. My attempt didn’t last quite that long, but I may not have covered it well enough.

I halved the recipe so it only makes two loaves. You’ll need 3 1/4 cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour, 2 1/4 tsp. of yeast (this is the amount that comes in one of those small packets), and 2 1/4 tsp. kosher salt. I used a rapid rise yeast when I tried it, which may have contributed to its downfall. Later this week I am going to try again with regular yeast.

In a large bowl, mix the packet of yeast with 1 1/2 cups of warm water (somewhere around 100 degrees Fahrenheit), then mix in the flour until everything is moist.

Cover your bowl with a towel or something else that isn’t airtight and let it rest for 2-5 hours. With my rapid rise yeast, I probably should have gone closer to two, but I accidentally left for work and it sat for five, which is why it collapsed I think.

At this point you can bake the whole thing as a big loaf, put it in the refrigerator, covered, for up to two weeks, or bake half of it for a small loaf. I wasn’t ready to bake it, so I put it away for a couple days.

When you are ready for your bread, sprinkle a little flower on it and cut off half of the dough (or use all of it if you want a big loaf). Turn it in your hands, letting the dough drag slightly on your counter-top. You want it to stick a little when you do this so it makes a smooth surface - I’ll have this illustrated when I try the recipe again. Finish forming it into a ball with the seams on the bottom. Because I don’t have a pizza peel, I just turned over a baking sheet and put a piece of parchment paper on top. Set your dough on the parchment paper and let it rest for 40 minutes.

Now, prepare the oven with a baking stone on the middle rack and some sort of pan that can hold water on the lowest rack. Turn on the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

After 40 minutes, when the dough is warmed up, slice the top of the dough a few times with a sharp knife and slide the dough (with parchment paper underneath) onto the hot baking stone. Take a cup of hot water and pour it into your pan on the bottom rack of the oven and shut the door quickly. The steam helps create a crunchy crust.

Bake it for about 30 minutes, or until the temperature inside is in the vicinity of 200-210 degrees Fahrenheit.

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of my finished loaf, but it turned out small and dense because the dough was allowed to rise too much at the beginning and collapsed. It did taste good though. The remaining half of my dough didn’t last two weeks in the refrigerator. It dried up and was not usable.

I am going to hold off on my tips and preferences and the printable recipe until I try this again and get it right, but feel free to give it a shot. It still tasted good and probably would have been fine if I just didn’t let it rise too long. If you try it, let me know how it turns out.  There is also a variation for using a bread pan if you don’t have a baking stone, which I’ll try with one of the two loaves later this week.  Also, I’ll post a cost breakdown later and how it compares to store-bough bread.

Another week down, and another week of great links up. I have started the process of looking for a comprehensive, technique focused cookbook and have requested On Cooking from the library. I am going to try and get a hold of each one I listed on Thursday through the library first before I make any purchasing decisions. Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques is tempting though, as it’s only $16.  Maybe I won’t even need to buy one since I am lucky enough to be a student and have OhioLINK at my disposal. OhioLINK essentially is a statewide library network where I can request any book from any other school library - so I don’t think I’ll have much trouble finding anything.

Coming up this week I will post my first attempt at a no-knead bread.  I love fresh bread, and this might be a way to have it frequently.  Also, I planted some basil, parsley, dill and tarragon, so I’ll show you how that goes.

Recipe of the Week:
Galaktoboureko - Peter at Kalofagas created a great looking pastry that is very similar to my favorite Greek pastry, bougatsa. I have never tried what he made, but it looks similar enough that I would love it. Just sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top and it is perfect.

Links:

• Jerry at Cooking by the Seat of my Pants has a basic recipe for fried rice. Sounds good and easy, something that I could memorize.
• Lisa at Start Cooking has an excellent article on the ins and outs of buying fish. I am not much of a seafood eater, but I would like to learn to buy and cook it. Not to mention, you get to look like a chef if you ask to smell the fish (or maybe you just look pompous, I don’t know).
• The Kitchn has a series on learning to cook without recipes. I haven’t actually red through all of it yet, but it is good so far.
• Cheap Healthy Good has tips on saving hundreds on groceries for only an hour a week.  Do you make meal plans for week?  How do you deal with not wanting that night what you have planned?

For any new visitors, feel free to subscribe at the top of the right sidebar.
Have a great weekend.

I love fresh bread and have started experimenting with no-knead recipes (of which one attempt you’ll see on Monday), but I thought I’d first do a quick run-down of the different types of flour out there. Flour is essentially any sort of ground grain, seed or legume.

White Flour

This flour, the one you’ll probably use most often, is finely ground wheat without the germ or bran. It can come unbleached or bleached, but you want to stick with the unbleached. The bleaching process is an addition of chemicals used only to make the flour whiter - and unbleached flour is pretty white to begin with. White flour is further divided into three groups based on the percentage of protein in each one.

All-Purpose

All-purpose flour is a blend of different wheats, including hard (high protein - “bread flour”) and soft (low protein - “cake flour”). It can be used in most recipes and contains between 8 and 11% protein. If you are only going to keep one flour on hand, this is the one to have.

Bread Flour

Bread flour is ground from hard wheats and usually contains 14% protein. As its name implies, it is best for making bread with a thick crust and crumb.

Cake Flour

As you probably guessed, cake flour has the least amount of protein (7% or less usually) and is best in foods where you find a fine, crumbly grain - like cookies. The lower amount of protein means there isn’t much connection or elasticity between the flour, which creates the fine grain.

Non-White Flour

There are a variety of non-white flours, and most will add more flavor and weight to your breads. Still, you usually want to use some white flour too if you are baking a loaf of bread. A loaf completely made from a non-white flour will be heavy and dense. I don’t have any experience baking with these, but I am interested in trying them.

Whole Wheat Flour

This is made from the same wheat as white flour, but it doesn’t have its bran and germ removed. The bran and germ add nutritional value as well as flavor. Whole wheat flour can come in a variety of grinds (from coarse to fine) and a little bit can even be substituted in most white bread recipes if you want to add a little nutrition. There is a whole wheat pastry flour (with about 10% protein) that can be used for cakes, cookies, etc., but it will produce a slightly heavier product. Last, a “white” whole wheat flour has a milder flavor and is made from a white wheat instead of red wheat.

Rye Flour

Rye flour comes in different shades of darkness (based on the amount of bran that is removed), with the darker varieties containing more nutrients and protein. Overall though, rye flour has a low level of protein, so it is usually mixed with white flour.

Cornmeal

Apparently cornmeal is a flour - something I didn’t know. It also , like rye, comes in a variety of grinds. Some cornmeal has the hull and germ removed, which allows it to keep longer without spoiling, but the varieties that keep the hull and germ have more flavor and nutrients. You can substitute up to 10% in yeast breads, and 50-100% in cornbreads.

There are a host of other flours available, including rice, nut, soy, and oat, but this is where my investigation ends…for now. A quick note on storage though - your white flours won’t spoil, but Mark Bittman recommends not keeping them longer than six months. The non-white flours, on the other hand, have oil from the ground germ, so they can go bad. Store them in the freezer for up to a month.

P.S. I made that Challah loaf in the picture - I know, it looks awesome.

Here is a quick review of the highlights from April at The New Cook and a discussion of things to come.

Top Posts

Most Commented:
The Minimum Equipment for a Kitchen, Part 1 - Thanks for the excellent advice. I am actually using my final list now to start thinking about what I need when I move into my apartment this summer.

Most Viewed:
Where Cookbooks Fail - This was actually published in March, but I got a wave of StumbleUpon users in April which bumped it up.

My Favorites:
My Recipe for Mush - A spectacular failure that was eventually revived.
What is Browning Food? - A look into the science of cooking and why you always “brown” things.

Favorite Recipe:
Iranian Basmati Rice - I don’t know why, but it was great.

What’s Happening in May?

I thought April was relatively successful, but not to the degree I was shooting for. I didn’t put in enough time as I wanted to - something I want to rectify this month. My goal for the month is to write six posts a week (everyday except Sunday). Posting frequency (about every other day) is not going to change though. This is more a test to see if I can post everyday in the future and a way to build up a nice backlog of posts. So we will see how it goes.

Also, I have been contemplating how I want to focus the site. So far I just write about whatever I find interesting or what I cook and try to mix up the topics of posts. The Amateur Gourmet has started a Tuesday Techniques series (posted on Wednesdays) where he looks mainly at Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques. I think something along these lines could be great for the site as it would give structure to what and how I am learning. I am considering a few books:

• Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques, Jacques Pepin
• La Varenne Pratique, Anne Willan
• The Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America
• Le Cordon Bleu’s Complete Cooking Techniques, Le Cordon Bleu
• On Cooking, Labensky et al.
  

Does anyone have any suggestions for a technique focused book?

Anyway, I think this month I am going to try to write more and find a good technique book on which to possibly start a series. Thanks for reading!

Sometimes I just don’t feel like cooking, whether I am getting home late, contemplating what I should pack for lunch, or just feeling lazy. It can be a hassle. I also like restaurants - greasy pizza, the perfect burger, a well crafted omelet. Convenience can be a strong temptation, so I came up with 10 reasons you should put the keys back on the rack and turn on your stove when you are standing there hungry, frozen between options - Chinese take-out or cook?

1. Cost - Restaurants are expensive! Beyond perhaps the McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger, whatever you get at a restaurant can be made cheaper at home. You are paying for convenience - rarely do I (and most) visit restaurants where a chef’s skills are actually required. I am not arguing that you should only eat beans and rice to save money, but if you want a delicious filet, a restaurant will charge over $20 while you could probably buy one at the supermarket for less than half of that. (Maybe I am wrong on this, I don’t really know the average price of filets, but the theory stands.)
   
2. Health - You know what you’re eating. Whether you’re into organic or not, you know the ingredients and how much oil, butter, etc. is going into everything you eat. I have no problem eating unhealthy foods - but odds are what you make at home will be healthier than what you get in a restaurant. Fat tastes good, and restaurants know this. They also know that you can’t see how much they are using.
3. Taste - I will admit that I love restaurant food - it is delicious. But everyone has those recipes that are just better than anything you’ll find in a restaurant. Not every recipe will be better, nor will you be able to duplicate everything you find eating out, but look to those recipes that you love. One of these for me is butter chicken. I don’t know why, but I love it and would gladly give up restaurant food for it.
4. Satisfaction - I don’t know if everyone else is like this, but I feel good after I make a tasty meal. I’ve accomplished something - a feeling you won’t get sitting in a restaurant.
5. Fun - Cooking is fun. I think I enjoy it because I like creating things, and on top of that you get to eat. It is a great combination and even more fun if you are cooking with someone else.
6. Time - I’ll admit that the fastest of fast food is a little bit quicker than making your own meal, but there are plenty of great foods that can easily be made within 30 minutes, and no, I am not referring to Rachel Ray (although her recipes are actually quite good). If you are going to sit down at a restaurant, you will probably save time by just cooking yourself.
7. Learning - I find that I learn something new every time I cook. Maybe this doesn’t happen for more experienced cooks, but this experience and education adds up the more you cook, making it even easier to throw together a meal the next time you are contemplating going out.
8. Leftovers - Although you sometimes have leftovers after eating out, you can plan for them when you cook. You can ensure that you have a delicious lunch of leftovers the next day by cooking more than you will eat. Kill two birds with one stone.
9. Convenience - I know this is an odd one, but going anywhere other than fast food is probably less convenient than just making something at home. When you include the driving and waiting, you could probably have been eating sooner had you not left.
10. Variety - This is a tough one to achieve when you cook regularly at home, but you are limited only by what you can find in the grocery store. There are many more options to what you can make than you’ll find in any nearby restaurants. (I recognize that this isn’t always the case based on what you actually have on hand, but in the long run I think it holds true.)

I don’t want sound like I am condemning people who eat at restaurants - I really like them - I just hope this can motivate me (and maybe others) to put the keys down the next time the urge to to go out kicks in.

photo credit: giovanniscanavino

The safety of nonstick, Teflon coated pans is a topic that I’ve mentioned recently and I decided it was worth looking into.

My cookbooks offered a little information, but nothing extensive. Mark Bittman voices his worries in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, explaining that he only uses nonstick for eggs or sauteing, and even then his cast iron works nearly as well. Harold McGee explains that Teflon and its copies are long chains or carbon atoms with fluorine sticking up, interspersed along the chain.

From my quick research, I have learned that there are two issues with nonstick coating. The first issue regards the fumes given off by overheating. The sources agree that fumes arise when the temperature reaches 500 degrees Fahrenheit and the coating begins to seriously degrade at 660 degrees. These fumes can produce flu-like symptoms, although DuPont (the creator of Teflon) touts that there has been only one case of reported side affects from the overheating of Teflon. One study conducted in 1959 concluded that the fumes from cooking oils and fats when overheated are more harmful than those from nonstick coatings.

Oils and butter will usually burn at a temperature below 500 degrees Fahrenheit, so as long as you have a little bit in the pan, you can ensure that you are not overheating it to an unhealthy temperature. Another recommendation is to not heat a dry pan for long. Empty pans can easily reach temperatures above 500 degrees Fahrenheit, so leave some sort of food or oil in the pan to make sure it does not get that hot. DuPont even recommends to only use your nonstick pans at or below medium heat.

Also, a chips or flakes from a scratched pan should not be harmful. They will pass right through your system.

The second safety issues concerns PFOA, a chemical used in the production of nonstick coatings. Although unpublished (as far as I can tell), the EPA believes it is a carcinogen. This is probably nothing to worry about, as most of the concerns came from the companies releasing the chemical after production, which is being halted. DuPont says there should not be any measurable amount of PFOA on nonstick pans after the manufacturing process is complete.

So, to use nonstick pans or not? The health concerns seem to be pretty minor. Just be sure not to leave an empty nonstick pan on the burner. Of course, if you choose not to use them just in case there are problems we don’t know about, I think that is pretty reasonable too. Do whatever you are comfortable with, but at this point there are not known serious side effects of nonstick coatings.

Sources:

• Polytetrafluoroethylene
• Is That Newfangled Cookware Safe?
• Harmful Teflon Chemical To Be Eliminated By 2015
• DuPont FAQ on Teflon Safety