Rye update . . .

I have now settled into making the best Ryvita replacement ever, and am ready to share. I enjoy the act of making this so much that I make one loaf at a time, using sourdough starter that I keep in the fridge and feed every few days. Michael prefers other breads, so I can adjust this bread to have the taste and texture I prefer.

Here's what I do:

I soak one cup rye berries in a mason jar filled with water and fitted with a screen. After an overnight soak I rinse and drain the rye berries, wrap the mason jar in a clean dishtowel, and let the berries just begin to sprout, rinsing and draining once or twice a day.

(Some organic rye berries that I got from an Amish supermarket on a Friday morning started to sprout by Sunday morning.)

Next, I cover the sprouted berries with water and grind them up with an immersion blender until they are very smooth. I pour all but three-quarters of cup or so into a big bowl. I add a cup of my sourdough starter from the fridge to the newly-pulverized berry and water mixture, and put the remaining three-quarters of a cup of ground-up fresh berries into my starter jar, which I put back in the fridge.

I add a little under two teaspoons of salt to the mixture of sourdough starter and freshly ground berries in the big bowl, and then I stir in one cup of high protein (winter wheat) flour, and one cup of dark rye flour.

I mix it all up, put a plastic lid on the bowl, and let it sit in a warm place all day, checking it from time to time to see if it needs some mixing. If it does, I mix it around with a spatula.

Before going to bed I transfer the dough into a loaf pan, cover it, and pop it in the fridge.

I bake it in the morning at 350 degress for an hour. Then I take it out of the pan and let it cool. Then I let it sit for a day or so before slicing it into thin slices, putting it a freezer bag, and putting it in the freezer (not waiting results in bread that has uneven moisture).

Every few days I take half a loaf or so out of the freezer, put the slices on a half sheet pan, and toast those slices at 350 for about 20 minutes (less or more depending on the thickness of the slices), and then I store the resulting crunchy, chewy, nutty, tasty slices in a covered container, where they would last for at least a week if I didn't eat them all up first.

When the supply looks low, I measure out a cup of rye berries to soak and sprout again.

If bread is the staff of life, this process gives my life a wonderful rhythm, and loaves that sing (literally--like French bread they crackle and pop when they come out of the oven).

Rye crackers hanging out to dry

Here's my portrait of thinly-sliced and oven-dried sourdough hanging out in the kitchen air so that it stays crispy. The holes in it are the perfect size for passing a string through.

More on rye

Since my last post about rye I got an excellent recipe from Kevin Hart, and I found a reliable and inexpensive source for whole rye flour. Life is good. I slice my rye thinly and dry it out in a 350 degree oven for five or ten minutes, and the resulting crispy bread has totally replaced my need for ryvita.

After a little encouragement from Michael, who had just listened to a podcast about sourdough (the podcast is, oddly enough, called "Sliced Bread"), I began a starter last week.

Sourdough takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. There is also the fear of failure, brought about partially from looking at too many photos of beautiful-looking sourdough breads on the reddit sub called "breadit." I am amazed at the way mysterious wild yeasts develop when you add water to flour. And when you let the mixture sit in a warm place, and feed it with flour and water for a few days, those wild yeasts form whole colonies of living organisms. Whole worlds.

While washing out a bowl the other day I started to wonder if all of life from the big bang onward is simply a bit of sourdough starter in a giant mason jar that we could call the "universe." And if that is the case, what happens to the bits of dough after they are washed away? And what about the mass destruction that happens when you subject those living beings to extreme heat and then consume what is left behind?

At first the sourdough taste overwhelmed me, but then I started to like it. My starter is living in the refrigerator now, and I will use it again. Working with sourdough has been an emotional roller-coaster for me, but now I feel balanced and kind of proud for having some kind of success my first time around. I took pictures:

The top example in each photo is the sourdough, and the bottom is bread made with commercial yeast. Both loaves are made with the same flour: about 2/3 dark rye flour and about 1/3 stone-ground european-style bread flour that is whole wheat but looks off-white. I baked them the same way in the same bread pans, but they look and taste so very different from one another.

Crackers

2023 has been a challenging food year for me. Two of my favorite foods, fresh cranberries and Ryvita rye crackers, have become scarce because of weather issues and political issues. Rye flour, the major ingredient in Ryvita, is now really expensive. It is so expensive that the Ryvita company seems to be diversifying in its choice of grains. This package, which came a few months ago in a shipment from the UK, expires in October. I fear that Ryvita won't be available again at any kind of affordable price for a long time.

How I long for the days when I could top my Ryvita crackers with homemade cranberry sauce with reckless abandon!

Since I can no longer rely on Ryvita for my cracker habit, I decided to take matters into my own hands and oven. I didn't have rye flour handy, but I did have some nice whole wheat pastry flour from Bob's Red Mill. I mixed 1 cup water, 1/2-1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and around 2T olive oil together. I added enough of the flour (I never measure flour when making bread) to make a smooth dough, rolled it out on a half-sheet pan lined with a silicone mat, and used a pizza cutter to cut rectangular pieces. I poked holes in each piece with a fork, and baked the crackers at 400 for 20 minutes or so. Then I lowered the heat to 350 and let them cook until they were golden brown (I tend to time by instinct). Then I cooled them on a rack.

They had the taste and texture I love in a wheat cracker. Next time I am able to buy some rye flour I intend to try making them with rye.

I might need to raise the amount of baking soda and salt, but we'll see. And I'll post the results.

Rye update: The results with rye were disappointing for me. It might be the taste of the baking soda. I'm sticking with whole wheat pastry flour for these crackers.

If I could only post the flavor . . .

Words and pictures fail, but I'll do my best:

Some fresh tomatoes (brought over yesterday by a student's grandmother) cut into pieces

Some fresh basil (from a plant on the window sill)

Some good, strong, grated parmesan

Two Ryevita crackers, broken into pieces. I imagine that non-rye crackers or croutons would do, but I love these rye crackers, and think that their amazing taste in context is what makes this salad sing.

Some extra-virgin olive oil

Some white balsamic vinegar

I had this for lunch yesterday, and will have it for lunch tomorrow, and maybe even the next day.

Oatmantaschen for Purim

I haven't posted a recipe for a while. This one is more of a sculpture, and also an excuse to make up a word. A bit of levity helps these days. You could use any oatmeal cookie recipe, but here's what I did (my personal alternation of the recipe on the lid of the Quaker Oats container):

Heat oven to 350. Blend half a stick of softened butter with one half cup brown sugar and one half cup of cane sugar. (I actually had to add a tablespoon of molasses because the brown sugar in the cabinet was too light for my taste.)

Add three eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and mix.

Combine 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and half a teaspoon salt with a cup and a half of flour (I used two parts whole Bob's Red Mill whole wheat graham flour and one part King Arthur white), and mix together to form a dough.

Then add a cup of raisins, and three cups of rolled oats.

This is just a normal oatmeal cookie recipe for me (lots of flavor and texture, without being too sweet). I made one sheet of normal ones, and while they were cooking I put about half a cup of raisins in a glass dish with a splash of vanilla and a splash of water. I cooked this mixture (covered) on high for about 30 seconds.

I formed some slightly larger cookies with the remaining dough, made a little thumbprint-sized well in each one, and put a little of the raisin/vanilla mixture in each of them.

I cooked these for ten minutes. I could have taken them out a minute sooner.

Playing with my food

I haven't written about food for a long time. I enjoyed what I made today for lunch so much that I took a picture, and am making a post (so I don't forget about it in times when I might need a little lift).

In homage to my paternal grandmother, who I don't recall ever meeting, I am not listing exact quantities. I have heard that my grandmother was a great cook, but that she never used actual recipes, and never wrote anything down.

I used some cold cooked wheat berries (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 cup), a handful of chopped walnuts, some sprouts, a few grape tomatoes cut in half, and some steamed and cooled broccoli.

The dressing is made from the juice of a lemon and almost equal amount of sesame tahini. Mix them together until they form a thick tan-colored paste (it is magical the way they combine), and then add a little water until the paste is smooth and white. Add a little salt and a few thin slices of jalapeno pepper (I keep a jar of dried slices on hand).

Arrange the ingredients into an attractive circle. This plate could easily have served two people, but I ate it all myself.

Let me take this opportunity to share another picture and recipe of a recent meal that brought me tremendous joy:

For this I sliced three or four mushrooms and cooked them in a little butter over medium heat in an omlette-sized pan. Then I added a little salt and half a bag of spinach. I let the spinach cook (covered) for a minute or so, and then I lifted the cover and slid on two eggs (which I had alrady broken into a bowl). I put the cover back on the pan, and let everything cook until the eggs were just done. When I slid it onto the plate, the mushrooms moved magically and attractively to the side. I ate it with Rye Vita, but any bread or toast would work just as well.

Unforgettable Banana Bread

 I'm sharing this recipe here so that I don't forget what I did yesterday while making (up) a recipe for banana bread!

WET

6 over-ripe bananas
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
3/4 cup cane sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

DRY

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon instant expresso
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. In one large bowl mash the bananas, and then add the rest of the wet ingredients. In another bowl combine the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix well.

Pour into two greased loaf pans, and bake for an hour.

Rainy Day Peach Muffins!

I haven't posted a recipe for a long time, but the peach muffins that I made from what we happened to have in the house today are so great that I just had to share the recipe.

Yield: twelve amazing muffins

Preheat oven to 375 F, line a muffin tin with muffin cups.

Mix

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Blend together

1 stick (8 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup cane sugar

Add

1 egg
1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
2 cups smashed up and thawed peaches that had been frozen with their skins on

Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Spoon into the muffin tin, and bake for 25 minutes. Take the muffins out of the tin, and let them cool a bit before eating.

(I could have used a little less butter, I guess. But then they probaby wouldn't be quite as delicious.)

Michael hasn't tried one yet. But I know he will want to link to this post. Welcome Orange Crate Art readers (and future muffin eaters).

Minimal Yeast Bread

Yeast is scarce these days. Our household is fortunate to have a few envelopes, and I have managed to make one standard envelope last for many, many loaves. It took about 1/4 teaspoon (or maybe a little less) to make all this today.



The "secret" is that you really don't need much yeast at all when you make bread, as long as you make a sponge of flour, water, salt, and a small amount of yeast, and let it rise slowly (eight hours overnight will do) at room temperature in a tightly-covered container (I use a big stock pot with a glass lid). In the morning start stirring in flour, and then kneading the flour in, until the dough can't absorb any more. Let it rise for a while, and then form it into loaves or rolls, and let it rise again.

I baked the rolls at 400, and they were done in 20 minutes. Then I lowered the oven to 375 and baked the bread for about 40 minutes.

My flour of choice is half King Arthur white flour and half Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour. And I use kosher salt. We have mineral-rich water, which isn't good for beans, but it is good for bread.

King Arthur flour is scarce as well these days. You can't even buy it online. I'm hoping to find some Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour when we next go to the store, because we don't have enough left to make bread with.

But my hopes are not high. For the nonce I guess we might have to make do with whatever flour we find. And when the yeast is almost used up (we had three envelopes, but put one in today's mail for our bread-making son), I'll try using it for a sourdough starter.

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Bread of Affliction and Technology

I had a burst of insight the first time I made Matzo for Passover. It must have been around twenty years ago, a time when there was no Matzo to be had in my town during Passover (not to mention no internet for guidance). So I decided to make some myself. I knew the ingredients: flour, water, and salt. I knew that the Matzo had to be thin, and I knew the oven had to be hot, but I didn't know much else.

What surprised me that first time was how quickly the dough would try to rise even though it didn't have yeast added to it. I understood at that point that before the Exodus making Matzo probably wasn't a matter of not having enough time for bread to rise, as we have been led to understand. It was a matter of preparing the best road food. The people who wrote the first set of Passover instructions were probably not bakers. They probably didn't know the ways of dough.

In order to make Matzo work you have to be fast. You have to have the very hot oven ready. You have to handle the dough minimally: just enough to be able to roll it out so it is very thin. You have to have something (I used two forks) ready to make the perforations in the top that keep the Matzo flat. You have to pop it in the oven, watch it (listening to the hiss of the steam as it escapes through the holes), and take it out before it burns.

I read that the natural yeasts start doing their work at about eighteen minutes. In our house the natural yeasts in my Prairie Gold white whole wheat flour start doing their thing instantly. I would say that making one sheet of Matzo, including cooking, took about eight minutes.

If I were to go on a family trip through the desert I would certainly want to strap a lot of Matzo to the family camel's back. It is light and rigid because all the water has been cooked out of it. It also doesn't spoil or get moldy. You can have it with hummus (another good road food made of bulk dry ingredients that can be carried by camel) thus avoiding the need to carry plates and eating utensils. [I am fond of the Sephardic tradition of not excluding beans from Passover.]

I documented this morning's Matzo making:

Girl Meets Farm

I'm writing a few words of praise for the new Food Network show that features Molly Yeh. About 30 years ago I watched an episode of Julia Child's "French Chef" show on PBS, and I got inspired to cook. I made a terrific lunch that day, that featured the soup that she was teaching her television audience how to prepare. I have been impressed by cooks on television, and I have been entertained by them. I have learned things from them, but I haven't had the kind of creative reaction I had to Julia Child's show until now.

I watched Molly Yeh make hummus yesterday morning (this is not a picture of her making hummus), and I headed straight to the kitchen to soak some chickpeas. I made the hummus today according to her directions, and it was the best hummus I have ever made.

I'm excited to make stuffed challah soon (each of the braid strands is stuffed with garlic and onions).

Molly is my friend John Yeh’s daughter, so I started reading her blog, which was mostly about the food she was eating in New York while she was studying at Juilliard. But I learned from reading articles about her (after she became "famous") that around the time she started her blog (her third year at Juilliard) she had already decided not to pursue the traditional "auditioning for orchestra" route that most musicians see as the path to professional life after graduating from a conservatory. It wasn't because she didn't love music, and it wasn't because she wasn't good enough (she's good enough, I have heard her play). She simply looked at her strengths and saw other possibilities.

She moved to rural North Dakota to live on a sugar beet farm with her now husband, a trombone player/farmer she met at Juilliard.

She became part of the "food blogger" culture, and her blog won well-deserved awards.

She worked in a bakery in her small town and developed recipes for Betty Crocker.

She started writing cookbooks.

Now she is a bright spot in my Sunday morning when I see her on television.

I could be writing about her show here because Molly's father, a clarinetist in the Chicago Symphony, is an old friend of mine (I have known him since I was a teenager). I could also praise her show and her work because she is a musician who found a path outside of music to make a living, while continuing to play. But I'm writing about it because it is excellent.

Greens and Eggs

If you love poached eggs, but don't feel confident about the poaching part, and you love greens, I have the breakfast (or lunch, or dinner) for you. I have been making this for a couple of weeks now, and this morning I decided to document the process to share here.

I use a mixture of pungent greens: mustard, kale, turnip, and who knows what else. This mixture is always satisfying. The mix of flavors (sweet, bitter, spicy) is so interesting that I don't feel the need to add salt (though I have used salt, onion, pepper, and garlic on occasion).

Fill a non-stick pot (that you can cover) with greens.

Cook on high heat with a little bit of olive oil until the greens turn bright green.

Carefully slide in the eggs, turn the heat to medium, and cover.

Cook until the tops of the eggs are no longer transparent (2 to 4 minutes--I never keep track).

Using a flexible spatula, slide the contents of the pot onto a plate, and there you have it!

Rice Pudding Scone Muffin

Yesterday I tried to find a recipe for muffins that incorporated leftover brown rice. I found several recipes of the gluten-free variety, which didn't interest me. Since I wanted to use a combination of wheat flour and rice, I ended up making up a recipe. The result was delicious and satisfying muffin that tasted like not-too-sweet rice pudding, and had the texture of a scone.

2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup leftover cooked short-grain brown rice

2 tablespoons coconut oil (you could also use butter, but I had some coconut oil around and wanted to experiment with it)
2 eggs
1 cup milk (I used soy milk because that's what I had around, but I imagine regular milk would also work)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup (or so) of raisins
lots of cinnamon to shake on top

Warm the eggs and the milk to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a 12-muffin muffin tin with paper liners. Melt the butter or coconut oil so it is warm, but not hot.

Mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl, and mix the eggs, milk, butter (or coconut oil), brown sugar, and vanilla together in another. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, then mix in the rice and the raisins.

The batter will be very stiff (I imagine that it would hold up if you dropped spoonfuls on a greased cookie sheet like scones). Divide the mixture among the 12 muffin tins (it won't rise very much), and shake a generous amount of cinnamon on the muffins. Bake for 25 minutes.

Apple Amaretto Cake

This may be one of the world's best snacking cakes.

Here's the recipe:

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F, and butter a rectangular baking dish.

Peel and finely dice two apples.

In one bowl mix 2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

In another bowl mix 1 cup slightly warmed milk
1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs
2 tablespoons Amaretto.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and mix in the apples. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, and cook it for 25 to 30 minutes (27 worked for me).

You can, of course, use brandy instead of the Amaretto. Or you can use vanilla or almond extract.

Some Cookies

I haven't posted a recipe for a while, so in honor of the upcoming food holiday I'm sharing the recipe for the very best batch of oatmeal raisin cookies I have made to date. I futz around a little with the recipe each time I make them, and after a few months of making them at least once a week, I hit cookie perfection tonight. These cookies are not too sweet, not greasy in the least, very satisfying, and actually probably healthy to eat. [The photo makes them look a lot bigger than they actually are: the wooden board is only about 6 inches long.]

People who have come here from Michael's blog will certainly get the reference in the title, but for those who have found their way to this post by other means, you can get some context here. But don't forget to come back for the recipe!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Find two mixing bowls, a set of measuring cups, and a set of measuring spoons.

Cream 1/2 stick of softened unsalted butter with 3/4 cup brown sugar. Add 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

In another bowl mix 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. Mix the dry ingredients together and add them to the creamed mixture above. Once everything is incorporated, add 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats (not the quick-cooking kind) and 1 cup of raisins.

The real secret to cookie baking is using the right pan. The right pan is made by USA Pans. Mine is called a "Half Sheet Pan," but it is pretty much the same as the jelly roll pan in the link above. You flip it upside down and use the bottom as a cookie sheet. I also just noticed that they now have an actual dedicated cookie sheet in their inventory, which I bet is just as good as their half sheet pan.



Make tablespoon-sized balls and flatten them out onto the un-greased cookie sheet. I aim for getting 20 onto one cookie sheet, which is about half the batch, and then I put the remaining dough in a covered container, which I pop into the refrigerator to bake in a couple of days. Or the next day.

Bake the cookies for 12 minutes. Take them out of the oven, but leave them on the cookie sheet for a minute or two. Then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. They will be crispy in about five minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before storing them in a covered container.

Here's a final noble portrait:

Harissa Revisited

Given the number of people who like to talk (and read) about food versus the number of people who like to talk about music, it does not surprise me that one of the most popular posts on this blog has to do with a condiment recipe I invented out of necessity.

I decided to make "Easy Harissa" the other night, just to see if it was as good as I remembered. I found it a bit too salty, so I adjusted the recipe) a bit.

The only problem with having Harissa around is that you will want to put it on EVERYTHING: eggs, salads, toast, vegetables, sandwiches, you name it. It can take over your life.

Preparing Music

A headline in the musical blogosphere tells us that our obvious problem is that there is too much classical music. If you were to magically remove electronically-generated music from the world, there would not be too much. There would probably not be enough to satisfy and entertain all the people who have come to enjoy music as part of their daily lives. People would have to go about making it themselves and with their families and friends. People would really learn to appreciate the people who have talent and ability, and really learn to understand all that goes into becoming a professional musician. People would have to go out of their way to arrange to have concerts in their communities, and would have to hire musicians to liven up celebrations.

[I know that I am communicating through an automated medium, and that I have learned a great deal about music through automated media, but lately, unless I am listening to recordings to review or watching a movie that has a musical soundtrack, I mostly "consume" music that I generate myself (either alone or with friends), or hear played in real time.]

I know that I am not alone when I mention that I enjoy eating good food. I enjoy eating food that I make myself, and I enjoy eating food that other people make for me. I really enjoy eating in restaurants, particularly when I can eat food that I would have difficulty making at home. Since I re-entered the world of the omnivore, every single meal is a celebration.

A few days ago I discovered a podcast called The Splendid Table, where the brilliant host Lynne Rossetto Kasper talks about food with people who grow it, cook it, and write about it. She also answers call-in questions from listeners, and gives them terrific ideas about what to make and how to prepare food. She often does it on the spot.

[Yes. I know that it is through the gift of automation that I can take this podcast on my walk with me.]

While listening to one of Ms. Kasper's podcasts today it occurred to me that if people thought about food the way they think about music, very few people would be interested in preparing food themselves. They would occasionally to restaurants (good ones and not-so-good ones) but mostly they would buy ready-made meals to eat at home.

If people asked questions about music the way they ask questions about food, with the intention of going home and "making it" themselves, we might have a very different kind of musical culture. It would be a culture where nobody would be in a position to say that there is too much classical music (or any other kind of music).

Sam I Am Eggs

I was talking with my father about making deviled eggs with Avocado for the picnic before our Summer Strings concert this evening, and he suggested I could make "Sam I Am" eggs.

So I did.



I also drew this nifty little sign, and made a few extra eggs to have for lunch with Michael. He liked them a lot, and he suggested that I should put the recipe on my blog.

So I did.

Here's a close-up shot to click on so that you can see the details.



I can't give you exact amounts, but I don't think that exact amounts really matter in a recipe like this.

I cooked eggs in a steamer (which makes them easier to peel) for 20 minutes, and let them cool completely. Then I cut the eggs in half and discarded half of the yolks. I mashed the remaining yolks with a whole avocado, and then added some lime juice, a tablespoon or so of cilantro paste, a generous amount of finely-chopped red onion, and a bunch of finely-cut-up, thinly-sliced smoked ham. I then added a bit of salt and pepper (to taste), and spooned the mixture into the egg-white shells.

So there you have it.

If music be the love of food, write on!

Michael and I had some tremendous meals while we were in New York and New Jersey last week. One was in an Italian restaurant called "Tony's" in Wayne, New Jersey where the chef (named Anton Testino) is one of the competitors on this season's television show "Hell's Kitchen." We went there while the show was on the television, but very few people were watching because the food was just so good. I had a risotto with scallops and figs.

There were more meals, all of them memorable, but the most spectacular one was at Cucharamama in Hoboken, New Jersey. I could call the chef, Maricel Presilla, a Renaissance woman, but with her background as a Medieval scholar, it might make more sense to connect her with everything spicy, interesting, creative, and sensual from the the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages.

Maricel is a good friend of Jim and Luanne Koper, our dinner companions, so we got to meet her.



After returning to Charleston I sat down at the piano to play some Beethoven, and all of a sudden I had a Cucharamama-inspired musical idea, thus ending my "sabbatical" from writing music.

Maricel's cookbook will be arriving in tomorrow's mail.