lox on cardamon bread

Flour and water with a trace amount of commercial yeast are brought together for bread dough, late the night before the morning of baking. A large amount of cardamon relative to flour is included in the dough to test the effect that cardamon has on plain bread. I am trying to teach myself what cardamon does.

*  1 level cup scooped A/P flour

*  1/2 cup hot water

*  1 teaspoon kosher salt (3/4 teaspoon regular table salt)

*  1/8 teaspoon commercial dry active yeast

*  1 level tablespoon cardamon.

Dry ingredients except yeast are whisked in a medium-size bowl. Whisking takes the place of sifting. Water and yeast are combined. Water with yeast is added to the dry ingredients and mixed.

This is 100% hydration by bakers percentages. 

The dough was insufficiently wet so more water was add, nearly 1/4 cup more. This is 125% hydration by bakers percentages. Using the same measuring cup for both flour and water, the ounce markers on the cup are unreliable because the cup indicates ounces but dry measure is not the same as liquid measure. One cup of flour generally weighs 4 oz, not 8 oz as indicated on the cup. The weight of your flour may vary slightly if you live in a humid environment. That is what the weight of flour here in Denver, and flour here is dry. Very dry. That affects its weight. 

1/2 cup water will reliably weigh 4 oz. So 4 oz. water to 4 oz. flour is 100% hydration. 

Add 1/4 water as I did here then that is 25% more, total 125% hydration.

MATHS !

That is very sticky, loose, wet dough indeed. It can be adjusted later if we feel like it, but we probably won't feel like it. We're into baking exceedingly wet dough at exceedingly high temperature in exceedingly steamy ovens around here these days. It's a kick we're on and it's a kick that is probably going to last because the results have been so encouraging. 

Here is the dough the morning following mixing. It is a very small amount of dough. The tiny amount of yeast added at the beginning had sexual relations when we weren't looking and made babies all over the place inside that dough. ← Not really. It's more complicated than that, but I am trying to appeal to your base instincts. The yeast cells bud a clone of themselves, and they do unite with other yeast cells of their their corresponding type when in serendipitous propinquity for the purpose of duplicating their DNA packages which are already double, but it is not actually sexual, and that is the brilliance of their survival mechanisms. When catastrophe strikes these bundles of quadruple DNA packages dramatically separate and compress upon themselves and surround their code with a protective shell. These reduced but complete portions blow about the vicissitudes of harsh existence hither and yon until they chance upon conditions favorable to their expansion whereupon they set about multiplying by their twofold methods of extension like the brainless little maniacs they are. 

Have I ever shown to you a set of tiny animations I made that pictures these curious happenings? I have? Well here then, have it again. Milliford Flaxonridge starts off the set by peering through his microscope. The cell division words are in Spanish because the text I studied was in Spanish and I don't know what the words are in English.

Of course you can skip these bread-baking steps and buy yourself a baguette, but you'll be saah-reey, besides, what is the fun in that? This meal is excellent because the bread is excellent. The bread is intriguing. It is bread for bread bakers. For bread lovers who distinguish between ordinary commercial bread and outstanding unique blow-your-mind artesian bread. Without it, the whole thing would be just another lox on bread meal which any moron could produce. With it, you are dining with the gods, without it, you are slumming with the plebes. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The choice is yours to make. 

This bread is like a dinner roll except slightly bigger and stretched out. It is not a proper baguette, although it resembles one. There are significant differences. It will produce small hors ďœuvre size bread slices. If larger pieces are desired then of course more flour and water would start the dough and the loaves would be formed differently, not like a stretched out dinner roll but more like a stretched out boule of whatever size is needed. 

I have never before included diced jalapeño in a topping lox but today I am living like a wild man, a crazy person. Two new weird things at once! How's that for going out on a limb, eh? 

This is the Aerogarden herb kit started -- oh, when was that? -- The very end of January. Now is the beginning of May, so let's say a little over three months. The dill was cut from the tall stuff in the back.