Accidental Hedonist

Now I’m not much of a food porn kind of gal, but as I sat at one of my favorite pizzerias for lunch last week, I realized that the very epitome of my own personal food porn was waiting on the plate before me. The heavenly scent, the doughy texture, enough garlic to fend off a whole hoard of vampires – behold, the glory of garlic knots!

Sure, the quirky Bella Faccia Pizzeria, located on Portland’s northeast side in the Alberta District, is well known for it’s fabulous 18″ round pies, but me, I prefer a decadent plate of bite-sized goodness for my noon-time cravings. The knots, lovingly tied together and served with a red dipping sauce, are perfect with a fresh Caesar salad and the sweet nectar of a Henry Weinhard’s root beer. If you haven’t had a chance to stop in, I encourage you wholeheartedly. And feel free to note your (or your child’s) height on their orange wall as well, where many a past patron has left their mark.

Bella Faccia Pizzeria
2934 NE Alberta St.
Portland, OR 97211
(503) 282-0600

Ah…well.

Ahem.

Pumpernickel – From two German words. Pumpern, which translates into “To break wind”. And Nickel, which means “Goblin, devil, rapscallion”.

In other words…pumpernickel means “farting bastard”.

References here, here, here, and here.

This post on the etymology of Pumpernickel has been brought to you by Beano! Beano, for all of you bastards out there.

Okay, don’t tell anyone (so I can at least try to uphold my façade of snarky rudeness a little longer) but in truth, I am a big ol’ soft-hearted sap. So, when I was recently researching sourdough starter, I came across the Carl Griffith Sourdough Page I had to know more… once I stopped being all choked up over it.

Born in 1919, Carl Griffith wrote that his interest in making sourdough bread started when he was “10 years old and learned to make bread in a dutch oven in a hole in the ground,” using the sourdough starter his family brought with them when they emigrated west along the Oregon Trail in 1847. According to his friends, before the advent of the internet, Carl would gladly share his family’s starter with anyone who asked, but the earliest record of Carl offering his starter to anyone online, is the following post by Carl, made on July 28, 1994 to the Usenet group rec.food.sourdough:

I have dried and will mail out a bit of the starter that my family brought west on an Oregon Trail wagontrain in 1847 along with instructions to revive it and a few recipes if anyone is interested ???? Carl.

Carl sent his starter to anyone who sent him a self-addressed stamped envelope for the next number of years, until he suffered a stroke in early March of 2000 and died a few weeks thereafter, at the age of 80.

I talked to Charles Perry and Darrell Greenwood to find out more about how the 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Preservation Society — or “Carl’s Friends” for short — and its website came into being after Carl’s death.

“It all started as a memorial to Carl,” said Charles, while Darrell remarked that “[fellow Usenet member] Dick Adams came up with the idea and made it happen, including getting the website up and running.” Charles continued: “We wanted to continue his tradition. There are probably as many reasons or more why we continue as there are participants in the project. Personally, I prefer to live in a world where people are willing to share information or something useful, such as starter, with a stranger who asks.”

And that’s pretty much what Carl’s Friends have been doing for the past six years. Because they’re scattered throughout the US, they keep a central post office box, at which a volunteer bundles the requests and forwards them to another volunteer who is then responsible for growing, packaging, and mailing the starter in the provided self-addressed stamped envelopes — at a rate of up to 50 a week during the winter baking season.

When I asked Charles what was the most distant request they’d received, he replied with the following:

I have not kept track of all the individual countries where we have sent [sourdough starter], but we have mailed to every continent on the globe except Antarctica. In addition to individuals wanting sourdough for their own personal use, we get requests from teachers, county extension agents, and museums to use in demonstrations or exhibits. We have had correspondence from a leader of an Australian commune who was interested in the back-to-nature spiritual aspect of sourdough, from an Asian chef who was having some difficulty with his starter because of the high temperature in his location, and an Austrian food writer who sent us some Hungarian paprika in exchange for the starter.

And now, chances are, somewhere on Earth tomorrow morning, someone will make a loaf of bread (or pancakes or biscuits or coffee cake) with a sourdough starter brought west over the Oregon Trail in 1847 — all thanks to just one guy, puttering around on Usenet back in some of the earliest days of the user-friendly Internet, wondering if any fellow sourdough bakers wanted to try out his family’s very old sourdough starter.

[I just... I got something in my eye, okay? Don't look at me for a couple minutes.]

If you want to try Carl’s starter, simply send a self-addressed stamped envelope (or $1US) to the address listed on the Carl’s Friends site.

(Photo courtesy of LeJeune Whitney)

They say (whomever they are) that banana bread is a quick bread. But let’s be honest – it’s a cake. A tasty, scrumptious cake made in loaf pan and served in slices, but a cake nonetheless.

This is a good baseline recipe from which one could improve upon with additional spices(cinnamon) or other pieces of fruits (raisins).

• 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temperature)
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside.

In a smaller mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add to the dry ingedients and mix together. Whisk in the eggs until the batter has the consistency of wet sand.

Add the bananas and walnuts and mix in thoroughly. Pour batter into a greased 8 1/2″ by 4 1/2″ (or 6 cup) loaf pan.

Place the pan in the oven and bake for 50-55 minutes. Remove from the oven to cool for 10 minutes. Remove from loaf pan and serve.

Serves 8 – 10

“Americana” is one of the most nebulous of terms, as different people apply different things as examples of the word. Some use jazz, other use rustic needlepoint, still others use baseball as the best reflections of America.

Personally, I think Buttermilk biscuits work quite nicely. We most assuredly did not invent the biscuits, but did perfect. On the frontier, where excessive cooking equipment was a luxury many could afford, or in the south, where families had to make due with less, the buttermilk biscuit became the way that many folks got their grain intake. With only six ingredients, it was a simple recipe to learn.

This recipe is my first attempt at them, and they came out fairly well. I would have prefered for them to be a little fluffier, but I’m still working out the nuances of the stand up mixer.

• 3 cups All Purpose Flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup vegetable shortening, diced into 1/2″ pieces
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees F.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda.

Mix in the pieces of the vegetable shortening, until the the shortening looks like dough coated peas.

Slowly pour in the buttermilk into the dough and mix well. When thoroughly combined, place dough onto a floured counter top. Knead the dough if necessary, until the dough is the consistency of play-dough.

Flatten the dough, either by hand or by rolling pin, until the dough is about 2″ high. Cut out with a cup or circular cookie cutter. Place on parchment paper that has been placed on a cookie sheet. Repeat until all dough has been used.

Place cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 12-13 minutes.

Makes about 12-18 biscuits

Technorati Tags: Recipes, biscuits, bread,

Guess who got a new stand up Mixer?(hint: It’s me!!)

For the past two years, I’ve made doughs by hand and was quite tired of it by the time I did the perogie recipe earlier this year. You could only imagine how happy I am to enter into the twentieth century.

This is the first recipe made with said mixer, a nice little brunch bread that goes well with your coffee or tea. It’s not complicated, but will take up about half an afternoon. If your pressed for time, it’d be best to wait until you have a day off.

• 1 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 oz. dry yeast (1 package)
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 tsp. ground cardamom
• 4 cuo all-purpose flour
• 3 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 egg white, lightly beaten

Cover raisins with water and soak. Set aside.

In a small sauce pan, scald 1/3 cup milk. Remove from heat and allow to cool to 105 to 115 degrees. Sprinkle yeast in milk, and stir until yeast is dissolved. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup sugar, egg, salt and melted butter. Stir in yeast mixture.

In a different bowl, combine the cardamom and flour, and then gradually add to milk mixture, stirring until a soft dough forms.

Turn dough out on a lightly floured board; knead until smooth and elastic. Or you can place in your brand spanking new mixer and allow the dough arm to do all the work here for you.

Once kneaded, place the dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Let rise until doubled in size, 60-90 minutes. Punch dough down and place on a lightly floured board. Roll into a 14 x 12 inch rectangle. Combine the tablespoons of sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over dough. Drain raisins, and sprinkle over cinnamon mixture. Roll up jellyroll fashion. Place roll on a greased baking sheet, seam side down. Cover and let rise in a warm place 35 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Once the load is ready, brush dough with egg white. Score as desired.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Yield 1 loaf

Technorati Tags: Recipes, Raisins, Raisin Bread, Bread

And now…an admission.

I don’t have a large mixer in my collection of kitchen gadgets. Typically this doesn’t affect me all that much, as I am quite adept at using a hand mixer for various cake mixes and the food processor for pie doughs.

But alas, when I wish to do breads, this lack of a mixer becomes highlighted by my grousing and muttering (I’ve been known to say “Mruver frackin’ mruzzle fruzzle” as I am trying to clean up the language that I learned in college).

So, if you wish to make homemade pretzels, you should have a mixer with a dough hook attachment. It’s not required, as the results here clearly indicate, but it will make your life a heck of a lot easier.

The Pretzels themselves came out quite nicely and were gone within 24 hours. You can make them as big or as small as you wish. The trick to elongating the dough is to keep your hands moistened with water as you roll the dough at with your hands.

Oh, and don’t worry about the color of your pretzels too much. Chances are good your oven can’t get high enough to do the browning that we’re accustomed to seeing in our pretzels.

• 1 packet yeast
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 3 cup bread flour
• 1 egg white
• coarse salt
• Vegetable shortening (for greasing dishes)

Mix the yeast and sugar into the 1 cup of warm water. Allow to sit for 10-12 minutes, when it should start to lightly foam.

In a large glass mixing bowl that has been greased with shortening, combine the yeast-water with the bread flour. Knead together well for 7-10 minutes. Cover with a damp dish rag, and allow to rise for at least 90 minutes.

Place the dough on the counter and separate with a knife into 6 – 12 pieces (your discretion). Roll each piece into a manageable length (12-18 inches). Shape each length of dough into a pretzel and place on a greased cookie sheet.

Brush each pretzel with egg whites and salt liberally. Allow pretzels to sit another 30 minutes.

While the pretzels are rising for the last time, heat your oven to 475 degrees F. Bake the pretzels for 10-12 minutes. Remove and allow to cool for 5 minutes before allowing family members and room mates to dig in.

(Serves 6 – 12)

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipes, Pretzels