Saturday morning my wife got to sleep in and I got up with Baby Harbat. With breakfast I made a pot of chai. Then made a fire in the fireplace—after all, it’s the only time of day when it’s cold enough for it. Then the caffeine kicked in.
Over the course of the weekend I managed to do a hundred tasks that I’ve been avoiding. Maybe it was the caffeine, but from that first pot on Saturday morning, I got stuck in high gear and embarked on an almost non-stop chorefest that included getting the oil changed on both cars, cars washed, cleaning and conditioning my leather seats, buffing out and polishing my headlights to restore clarity, rebuilding the innards of the guestroom toilet, installing a wood threshold in the bathroom door, vacuuming, bunny cage cleaning, grocery shopping, fresh dinners from scratch, and laundry. Even on Sunday, on my day to sleep in, I woke at 8 and my mind raced with the things to be done. And the weird thing is, I wanted to do them. Still in my bathrobe, I tackled the toilet rebuild.
Luckily it all wore off by Sunday afternoon, as we took Baby Harbat and a friend with her daughter to a nearby lake. As the sun set, we collected rocks, picked at the last crumbs of a pumpkin muffin, watched the ducks, climbed boulders, chased Baby Harbat down the path, and got stared-down by a strident coyote as the sun set. In sum, a great weekend.
This week I’m going to try out a whole new bread method. I got a birthday present from my step-mother, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which brings me back full circle to where I began: no-knead bread. I’ll be making a large batch of dough then refrigerating it for a few days and cutting off pieces to make periodically. This method has several great things going for it:
1. More time. Every instance in which I’ve given my dough an overnight stay in the fridge, it’s turned out to be more flavorful.
2. Less time. You mix it up, give it two hours, then it goes into the fridge. No kneading. When you are ready to bake a piece, it only needs a twenty-minute proof then it goes into the oven.
3. Dishes. By mixing everything up in the storage container, you eliminate most of the dishes to be washed. For a typical bread I use two bowls and several scrapers, plus the cleanup on the board. I’m fast at it but the dish drainer gets filled to overflowing far too often for my wife’s liking.
4. Scheduling. If I’ve already got some dough in the fridge, I can bake with one day lead time, which is better for my customers. And better for me if I get a hankering for fresh bread for dinner.
I am curious to see how the flavor profile of the bread turns out. When I tried Hamelman’s overnight sponge and folding technique, I found the bread taste to be sweet but shallow. If this new method can get me a more mature flavor, somewhere between Hannah Montana and the Crypt Keeper, I’ll be impressed.
Ecce panem nostrum quotidianum!
This brioche is as rich as it looks, flaky and with just enough sweetness. I was worried the cranberries and walnuts would leach out odd colors into the dough but it turned out a beautiful creamy yellow. This braid grew really fat in the final proof, and it just barely fit in the oven. I think I may need to make wider braids, rings, or some other decorative shape that’ll fit on my baking stones.
Here is the potato rosemary bread. Though the recipe didn’t call for steaming, I did it anyway and am happy with the results. When you lightly toast this bread, the crust is crackly without being chewy, and the rosemary is just strong enough to make your mouth water. Both of these have been market-tested to high praise, so they’ll be added to the Aurora Bakery menu.
P.S. The Latin quote in the beginning translates to “Here is our daily bread.” Someone will undoubtedly correct me by saying that “ecce” should be “eccus” when used with the tertiary generative form of quotidianum. To which I’ll say, “…um…uhhh…wait…what?”
Last night I made two new breads. First was the potato rosemary. It came out prettier than I expected. I would show you a picture here…
…but I don’t have my camera. Imagine, my children.
Second was a brioche base with walnuts and cranberries. This one loaf of bread uses a half-pound of butter and five eggs. It had better taste good cuz that’s like…um…one thousand hundred dollars or summat. That dough is chilling in the fridge now and will be made into a braid tonight. Maybe by then I’ll get my act together and take some pictures too.
In local San Diego news, a woman and her boyfried (but not baby daddy!) went out for dinner, leaving their two kids with a baby sitter. When they came back two days later they were all shocked when the police was like “Wazzup wit you two?” and the mom was all about she “…could do whatever she want.” That second quote is real. Parenting: F. Giving people on the Union Tribune website something to bitch about: A+.
Disclaimer: If you have any intelligence, morals, faith in humanity, or common sense, please don’t follow the link. If you slow down at car wrecks so you can see pieces of viscera and crushed metal, click away.
I’m hoping to add a few new breads to the Aurora Bakery menu: potato rosemary, cranberry walnut braid, and maybe brioche. I’m going to make the potato bread tomorrow night and maybe try the braid again tonight. If I’m clever I’ll be able to make a simple brioche that can be the base for several different rich dessert-type breads like the cranberry walnut. I’ve noticed that people go for the sweeter breads, so I might as well feature them on the menu. And since I’m a piggy piggy fat fat I’ll be forced to try out all these new breads myself.
I should explain. Yesterday my stomach was upset most of the day because I ate too much Halloween candy the night before. So after a day of gurgling belly and regrets, what’s the first thing I do when I get home? Eat four Reese’s Penaut Butter Cups from the candy basket! Then I felt sick all the rest of the night. So this morning I’ve decided to eat a more sensible diet. Last night at the grocery store I bought, with the exception of some granola, only raw ingredients: eggs, milk, yogurt, meat, vegetables, flour. We’ve been cooking bigger batches so it’ll last two days, and by making everything ourselves we can eliminate those things that cause stomach issues. (See what I did there? Eliminate?...moving on…)
I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and I keep repeating the mantra printed on the cover: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” I realize that I still eat a fair amount of processed foods. Besides not tasting as good, they are really bad for you. Pure chocolate, rich sauces, fresh greens, natural cheese, grilled meats, homemade bread—all these things are real food. Hydrogenated soybean oil, guar gum, soy lecithin, high fructose corn syrup, blue lake #5—these things are not food. I imagine if I had to see and taste the individual ingredients that go into something like a Twinkie, I’d get sick.
I’ve still to figure out whether it’ll be more expensive to eat real food. If you’ve browsed the aisles of a convenience store, you know how cheaply you can eat crap food. Last night I spent almost $70 and only had about six bags of groceries. But a lot of that money went towards meat that will last 2-3 meals each. And since I enjoy cooking and spending time in the kitchen, making stuff from scratch will be more rewarding than buying it pre-made.
Now gimme sommore dem Reese’s! NOMNOMNOMNOM!
Halloween may be over, but the overconsumption of processed sugars is still underway. Baby Harbat enjoyed trick-or-treating, which mostly consisted of walking around, riding on shoulders, and seeing everyone in the neighborhood. I felt a little bad going to doors since she was obviously not the ultimate recipient of the candy, but people liked her costume. And how couldn’t you?
On Sunday we went to the park and BH demanded swing time and, interestingly, alone time. I was hanging around with her near the slide when she gave me the hand and told me to, “Go play, Babbo!” So I sat on a bench while she sang songs and climbed on the stairs. I knew it would happen: I’ve become uncool dad who is “cramping her style” while she’s “trying to hang out with her friends.” Though in this case her style involved sitting on climbing blocks and the only other living things at the park were chattering mockingbirds and some trailing rosemary bushes. Fine. [picking at fingernails and kicking dirt] I’ll just do my own cool thing over here.
In the afternoon we went to the zoo with hours of build-up and promotion. When we got to the petting zoo area, she just sauntered over to the goats and sheep, gave them a quick pat, then looked at me. I was hoping for some more excitement, but she did get a few laughs chasing after a goat’s waving tail. Good thing she didn’t pull on it and get a treat.
Lately BH has been learning more vocabulary than I can keep track of. This morning she laughed at a playing card and said, “It’s spinning!” The flip side of this new lexicon is that she’s still not able to pronounce things well, and without obvious cues and context, I often have no idea what she’s saying. Like I’ve said before, it’s like having an excitable foreign exchange student in the house. I often laugh at what I presume is a joke, say “Oh really?” to what turns out to be a question, and sing along with re-purposed songs. To the tune of Frere Jacques, Amalia sang “Where is lemur?” at the zoo. I love that little pumpkin. Now if I can just teach her to eat from a spoon without turning it upside down on the long trip up to her mouth.
They actually ship children into our neighborhood for Halloween. No joke—apparently it’s so safe and walkable that kids from the metro area are brought here. Last year I ran out of candy just after 8 pm and had to lock the door and turn off the lights. Since we hadn’t finished moving in, I was alone in an empty house with no candy.
This year I’m prepared--$20 of candy plus some backups. I imagine we’ll last until 8:30 before we have to pretend nobody is home. Since I’m a bit of a candy aficionado (sounds pretentious, like I should have a pencil-thin moustache and a cane) I tried to buy candy that would be placed in the “high quality” pile by kids the morning after trick-or-treating. If you didn’t sort your candy as a kid, well, you missed out. Reese’s products and mini candy bars went to the top of the list, except oddballs like Whatchamacallit and Zagnut. Next came old reliables like Hershey bars, Mounds, Almond Joy. Next were Hershey’s Kisses, Smarties, and smaller wrapped candies. At the very bottom in the untouchable caste were the loose candy corn, raisins, apples, and 50s retro candies like Necco Wafers and Honey Bees. Once the candy is sorted, you can then go all out and make yourself sick.
Since Baby Harbat is only two, I can’t decide if it’s immoral to take her trick-or-treating. Since my neighbors will know they’re really giving candy to me. Which I could then re-gift to all the shipped-in kids. Or I could give them some of my back-up treats which include nails, leftover mini-soaps stolen from hotels, handfuls of mulch, used Post-it notes, foreign currency, mystery medication from the back of the cabinet, soy sauce packets from the late 1990s, and dust bunnies. Trick’s on you, non-neighborhood kids! Happy Halloween!
We originally though this costume would be a bit longer, thus the protruding pot belly and last-minute striped green tights. There’s something to be said for one-piece slip-on costumes. And that something is “convenient”. Especially when you’re trying to get in and out of the costume for potty breaks.
Watching Baby Harbat ease herself down onto her potty is like real-time footage of the space shuttle docking at the space station. Three meters…rotate one-decimal-one degrees…two meters…looking good…robotic arm is extending to steady…fire aligning burners decimal-five seconds…and…we are docked. Since she is two years old with the attention span of a cocker spaniel with ADHD, she immediately gets up, and we get to do the whole docking maneuver again. So maybe a bottomless costume isn’t so bad.
I have some good news for all my readers: the recession is over! Papa Radio told me so this morning! Okay, here’s what I don’t understand, and maybe it’s because during macroeconomics in college I was distracted by the hung-over frat guy who was spitting chaw juice into a soda can. Sales figures are up mostly because of government stimulus. Where will the government be getting that money? From taxpayers, who are currently paying less in taxes because they are un- or under-employed. And from taxes from businesses, who have not been selling well over the last year, but are currently showing an increase in sales from Old Testament wretched to merely awful. With me so far? One thing Papa Radio was kind to point out is that this still doesn’t account for labor figures which form a part of the recession. No %$#! Silly old me, I thought labor figures and employment are the KEY part of the recession. If people are unemployed, they spend less, so companies can’t sell as many products and services, so they need to fire more people.
But hey, if the news says the recession is over, I’ve got some credit cards burning a hole in my wallet.
Every year my wife gets out the Charlie Brown DVD series. In October we watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Every year I’m horrified by Lucy’s behavior. You’ve probably heard about her pulling the football away as Charlie runs up to kick it, resulting in Charlie falling and breaking several vertebrae, shattering both legs, and waking up from a coma several months later to find he’s a paraplegic. That’s one level of mean. But Lucy kicks it up a notch. In one scene, Charlie gets an invitation to a Halloween party in the mail and is so happy he does an excited dance.
“There are two lists, Charlie Brown: people who should be invited and people who shouldn’t. You must’ve gotten put on the wrong list by accident.”
Ouch. So she’s good at psychological harm as well. Charlie is the perpetual whipping boy, getting rocks while everyone gets candy, having people laugh at him and his costume. But Lucy seems to get her jollies by systematically tearing him apart. Maybe I thought this was funny as a kid, or it just flew over my head. But now I can hardly watch her. She dresses up as a witch for Halloween but I think her costume idea was one letter off.
So I’m posing the question to my readers: do you remember the worst bully from your school days? Was it better to be punched in the face or the psyche? Chime in and let’s see who has the worst scars!
Baby Harbat turned two this weekend! All week she was ready for the big event, singing “Happy birthday” to herself and talking about cake and presents. On Friday afternoon she yelled for me to come into the laundry room.
“Sit down, Babbo!” she said as she patted the floor. Then she got mini tea light candles from the pantry, laid them on my leg in a row, and sang “Happy birthday” with gusto, blowing out the candles at the end. This girl knows how to party.
On the big day, she was too excited to take a nap. Which is really great when you’re trying to clean the house for guests, decorate, make cupcakes and other food, and wrap presents. At T-minus thirty minutes, my wife brought her into the dining room where she saw: A)decorated cupcakes, B)decorations, C)presents.
“Not yet, sweetie, just hold on.” Yeah, sure. This is the equivalent of balancing the dog biscuit on the dog’s nose. Cruel, cruel punishment. We managed to hold her off with some other snacks an distractions, but it was dicey for a moment.
The party went off superbly well and she was an angel throughout, dispensing kisses and hugs to all present. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!
On the baking side of life, I made some ciabatta on Saturday before the party. This is probably the most rewarding and simple bread to make. When you toast it, the crust is crackly and flaky, the sweet nutty flavor of the crumb a beautiful fragrance. I’ve said it before but…
TEAM USA! TEAM USA! CIABATTA! CIABATTA!
I also put together some wheat sandwich and cinnamon
raisin. It’s hard to be making these for
customers and not getting to slice them open in the morning.
On Sunday I took BH to the lake to see ducks. She woke up at 5:49 AM. As soon as I walked in her room and heard a perky voice I knew I wasn’t going back to bed. No matter, we read books, had a lazy breakfast, then put on her Wellies so we could go to the lake. After a brief confusing moment—“Wait, you DON’T want me to take off my shoes before I go in the water?”—she was off and splashing, ready to strike out for deep water. Then she rode on my shoulders and put her fingers in my ears, and I realized I have perfect happiness with her.
Then I stepped in dog poop and ran over it with the wagon wheels. The Dalai Lama would be able to make a lesson out of this, I’m sure.
I made a braid last night, a loooooooong braid. I wanted to experiment with a cranberry nut bread that I thought up, and somehow decided that a double batch of bread would be needed to make a braid. Now before you judge, please realize this is UncleF$#!-Up talking. So in answer to your question, no, of course I didn’t think it through. I could tell there was going to be trouble when I couldn’t braid the bread on my board because of the length. Then when it rose I couldn’t lift it with the peel—it was much too long. I got it into the oven by pushing it against the back and pressing the door shut on it. Remember Topper Harley getting his head smashed in the ambulance door in Hot Shots: Part Deux? Here’s the result:
Not as bad as you’d think, in terms of looks. Which is just what it said under my high school yearbook photo. And my college yearbook photos. And on a handwritten note in my wedding album.
I will report on taste tonight. We are bringing it to dinner at a friend’s house. “Are you sure you want to try out a new recipe on the first time we are invited over?” my wife asks.
Umm….uhhh…wait…what?
The other bread I made is the multigrain struan.
I think this needs some kind of topping, like steel-cut oats. It smells and tastes good, I just need to give it that final over-the-top-belt-it-out-to-the-back-row flourish. Right now it’s Shelley Duval and it needs to be Liza. Or Barbra!
