Showing posts with label yeast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yeast. Show all posts

Friday, October 15, 2010

flatiron breakfast

  

Flatiron held over from a previous meal described here.

Hamburger buns, slider-size actually, held over from a previous baking episode described here

Okay, here's the dealio.  The yellow squash and the zucchini are baby specimens from plants like this:

  

Those plants are very similar. The chief difference between them is color. Baby specimens are chosen because those do not yet have seeds. They also tend to be less bitter. Plus they're a convenient size. They were combined with tomato which grows on a plant like this:



The fruits of those plants, vegetables if you must, were rolled as they were cut to result in irregular shapes which the cook prefers to steady discs which in the cooks view are boring. They were flavored with basil which grows on a plant like this:



So that's that for the vegetables, which usually one does not see at breakfast in the United States, and that is a cultural thing that does not make any sense in a society that apparently prides itself on knowing how best for everybody else in the world to live.

The bread was made mostly of flour that comes from wheat grain which is the seeds of a grass plant that look like this:



Which was leavened by hyperkinetic yeast cells which are strange microscopic organisms that lie somewhere between a plant and an animal and which replicate rapidly under ideal conditions in three very different ways due to the cells unique property of containing two full sets of DNA along with other outstanding survival propensities. One method of replication, the most common,  is asexual, by duplicating its double-dose DNA within its own cell structure and then creating a wall between itself and the new bundle of DNA a bud results that is a clone attached to the original. The other method is sexual wherein either a single strand of DNA is sent off packing to unite with its opposite corresponding strand of DNA that was sent packing from a different cell, or sexually by sending off a full double-strand set to unite with a corresponding double set of DNA that was sent off from another cell. In either case the result is not a clone. But it may as well be, they are so much alike. The third method used by yeast cells to duplicate does also account for their stupendous ability to survive extremes that would kill less adaptive organisms, and for this they have our respect. Under duress, the yeast cell can shrink upon itself and form a hardened wall around each individual strand of its DNA, break apart its two complete sets, that's four strands in total, and wait out the trial, being blown hither and yon, being lifted into the high atmosphere, chilled to freezing, and then at last, after an age, finally dropped by the whirlwind into a moist warm spot that is favorable to loosening the shell it had formed earlier for survival, whereupon it eagerly seeks to use available material to duplicate its single strand DNA into a double-strand set of DNA and to do that again and again, to both bud from itself and to send them off to unite with other available single and double-stranded cells. It's an awesome sight to behold, and a real thing of beauty. This is why bakers stretch the dough and fold it. It facilitates the redistribution of cells, it puts the cells in proximity to other cells so that they do not have to bud so much in order to travel. In this, the baker acts as a dating service setting up blind dates for yeast cells. FACT!



This is what I'm talk'n 'bout. This here is a table of 6 animations wot I dun to show the miracle of yeast cell replication. I wrote it a long time ago in Spanish because ... I do not know why ... I suppose I read it in Spanish so that's how it stuck.  You can view a larger and much lovelier version of this with piano music, because I believe that is what the yeast are hearing if they only had ears.


The eggs were produced by a chicken that looks like this:



Okay, fine, I just made that up. I'm kidding. Hopefully the chicken that laid my eggs isn't this ugly.

Monday, December 7, 2009

100% of whole wheat bread

3rd attempt. No salt.

wwbread_plated.jpg

wwbread_loaf.jpg

whole-wheat_starter.jpg

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whole-wheat_dough.jpg

This is 100% of whole wheat grain milled at home. The grain is soft white Spring wheat of moderate protein value. It does not behave the exact same way as hard red Winter wheat, which I prefer.

I'm disappointed in 100% of whole wheat loaves because they simply do not rise in the way we expect when a considerable percentage of refined flour is included with the dough.

Having said that I must hasten to add this is among the most delicious bread I have ever tasted, and I do believe this is the bread of history. This is the bread pictured on the walls of numberless ancient Egyptian tombs in a wide variety of shapes. See Gardiner's hieroglyphic sign chart section X 1-8. (Incidentally, after 100 years of concurrence that first sign, the small semicircle that stands for the phonetic "t", it is finally being disputed as representing a small loaf of bread due to it usually being painted black when the walls are painted with a full palette of colors. It is now thought by some present-day experts to represent the primordial mound. Colors do mean something.) But this is all a little bit off the point, in'nit?

It's impossible for me to believe the ancients had any more success than I do in getting loaves to rise much more than this, given their mills were more rudimentary and their yeast cultures were no different. There is no way they could have kneaded the dough as thoroughly as I can do right here at home with a machine that can work far beyond what any person could do by hand. I'm saying throughout history right up to modern era, it was not possible to mill grain as finely or work the dough more thoroughly than I can do right here at home. That's my story, and I'm stickin' with it.

In fact I think damage to the teeth of ancient people shows that it was not uncommon for tiny stones to make their way into the dough, being abraded by the mill stones used to crush the grain, either huge ones or small home types. Can you imagine what a drag that must have been, and how coarse their standard bread must have been? I'm certain if they were presented with a loaf of, say, Wonder bread, they wouldn't even consider it to be bread at all.

I only got as far as I have because I didn't add salt. My second failure, pictured below, taught me that salt was retarding the progress of the yeast and bacteria. One way to avoid that is to add the salt later but that risks forgetting it altogether which I've done several times, and it deflates the loaves, which isn't usually a problem unless it took a day to rise the first time, in which case I'm reticent to start over.

Forlornly pondering the situation of dough suddenly stopping all progress caused me to have an insight related to aquariums. In the Takashi Amano style of heavily planted aquariums, CO2 is introduced to the water along with powerful fluorescent lights above the tank. CO2 can be sparged throughout the tank a couple of ways, one with a separate metal gas tank, another using a smaller plastic jar outside the aquarium that hold water and yeast fed with sugar connected with aquarium hose to the tank. In the second case baking soda is included to retard the yeast so that 1/4 teaspoon yeast feeds on 1 cup of sugar for nearly a month. That's what I was doing by adding salt with the flour for the final feeding of the dough. Duh. The tender delicate little yeasties didn't much care for that.

Even without salt, I almost didn't bake this salt-less loaf pictured above because it failed to rise to the top of the bread pans which would have doubled its size. It rose less than double. It rises fine as a wet sponge in a jar, but hardly rises at all as a dough with much more weight bearing down on it, flattening it. The yeast really does need a lot of liquid to multiply effectively. There was no oven-rise either as expected with refined flour loaves.

The loaf was not fermented either, save for the unusually long period it took to proof.

Still, I would be proud to serve this cut thinly as the base for small canapés. Its natural flavor is truly astounding, and I can imagine small sandwiches, cut thinly, of course. And that's without salt. Usually bread without salt is the most bland thing you can put in your mouth, but not so with these slices. Salt added to individual slices enhances the flavor even more.

Below are three trials of sourdough starter cultivated directly from grain. The first two used heat, the third one at room temperature. There was little activity for nearly twelve hours and finally, out of impatience I put the third one with the other two near the heat source and went to sleep. When I woke up, they were all active. The third one the most, so I discarded the other two and went with the strong one that started at room temperature.

I made dough from it. I added salt along with the last doubling of water and flour mixing to the consistency of dough. It failed. I threw it all out. Pondering the situation, it occurred to me that salt was probably arresting the yeast growth. I started again, the third time with no salt added to the dough. The result is pictured above.

heatheatroom temp./heat
These were mentioned in an earlier post.
The first two jars were discarded in favor of the third. The second trial failed due to salt, but the third culture, the one on the right, went on to a third trial that succeeded partially although it failed to rise satisfyingly.

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These loaves were discarded due to failed rising.
It seems salt is responsible.

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