A&S 50 Challenge : Project 3

Once the first blush of this wears off, I am going to have sad children (and boyfriend), but for now, the baking just keeps on going here in Solveig's Kitchen!

For today's project, I chose two sweet breads.  One is a Portugese recipe which contains dried currants and lemon juice, an interesting concept!  The dough, according to the recipe, is traditionally coiled and baked, called "caracois."  It can also be baked in a plain round loaf, or a braid, called "tranca a tricana."  Of course I opted for the braid and the coil!  The dough is a little softer than I expected, but it smells buttery and sweet when it comes out of the oven, and I'm looking forward to tearing into it tonight an A&S Sewing Circle (don't you wish YOU lived in Afonlyn? lol)

Here's the braid, before it went into the oven.  Notice the healthy slathering of butter!  And below, the coiled loaf, also liberally brushed with butter:

The loaves feel light to the touch, and smell divine!

The other recipe I chose is an Oat-Cinnamon swirl bread, except I abhor cinnamon (and besides, one of my Quality Assurance Engineers... err.. Shire members... is allergic, anyway, darn the luck) so I replaced the cinnamon sugar with a mace/ginger/clove mixture instead.  It's also a sweet dough, and you roll it out into a rectangle, butter the top, sprinkle the sugar mixture on top and roll it up, jellyroll style.  I added currants to that dough, as well (since I only had about 1/4 cup left, anyway), and I left one loaf intact, and turned the other into.... sweet rolls!  The house smells divine from the sweet breads rising and baking all afternoon!  Overall, today's baking has been a huge success and I can't wait for sewing circle to share these sweet treats with my A&S friends!

                                   

Feather Bread-Take 1

A&S 50 Project #2:  Feather Bread

Here's the recipe, from "Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads." (1995 edition)

Ingredients:

• 4 to 4.4 cups bread flour
• 2 pkgs dry yeasr
• 1 TBSP each salt and sugar
• 1.5 cups hot water (120-130F)
• 1/3 c. butter or other shortening, room temperature
• 1 egg white, slightly beaten, mixed with 1 TBSP water

In mixing bowl, place 3 cups flour, the salt, yeast, and sugar.  Stir to blend.  Pour in the hot watrer, and stir with a heavy spoon for 2 minutes, until batter-like dough is smooth.  Cut the butter into 2-3 pieces and drop into bowl, stirring until butter is absorbed into the mixture.

Add the rest of the flour, 1/4c at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition.  When the dough is a "shaggy mass" and can be lifted from the bowl, place on a floured work surface.

Knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.  Add sprinkles of flour is the dough is sticky.  place in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until it doubles in volume, approx 1hr.

Remove plastic wrap and knead for 30 sec to press out the bubbles.  Divide into two pieces.  Roll pieces out under your palms, into 18-20" baguettes.  Place on greased baking sheet, and cover lightly.  Allow to rise until loaves are doubled in volume, approx 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425F 20 minutes before baking. 

Make a 1/2" deep slash down the length of the loaves with a razor blade or sharp knife.  Or, cut diagonal slashes like you would for a French loaf.  Brush the loaves with the egg mixture and bake until they are shiny brown, about 25 minutes.  Turn over one of the loaves and tap firmly.  A hollow sound means the bread is baked.

Remove from the oven, and place on metal rack to cool.  (Clayton says this loaf freezes beautifully for later consumption.)

My thoughts:
When starting off, 2 cups of flour would be a better starting point.  Three make for too stiff of a dough right off the bat, and there's no "batterlike" consistency at all.  I was able to simply knead the dough until all the flour was incorporated, however.  Also, my kitchen was a bit cold, and it took *forever* for this dough to rise, so the finished product ended up with a slight "sour-doughish" hint, which is delightful, but not what I was looking for in this batch.  I'm going to try this again with a warmer kitchen, and see what impact that has on the bread.  Overall, however, this is a lovely bread.  I made a much deeper cut, to create more surface area for some toppings, and sprinkled coarse kosher salt on one loaf, and raw sesame seeds on the other, and they turned out very pretty.  (Sorry the picture is fuzzy, my camera doesn't like heat, I guess!).  The "Quality Assurance Engineers" (ie, the kids) approve of the flavour!  It's denser than a typical baguette, but it's also softer on the outside, which is nice.  I will definitely make this again, regardless!  It's PERFECT to go with our pasta dinner tonight!

A&S 50 Challenge - Hooray!

So, I was perusing the monthly A&S newsletter (I highly recommend this!  You can sneak a peek yourself here: Midrealm A&S NewsLetter ) and noticed the big "A&S 50 Challenge!" article smack in the middle of the page.  I guess I'd heard about this, because it wasn't so much a "Wow, what's this new thing?" as a "Wait... Let me read that again!" dawning of actual awareness.  So, I bee-bopped over to the A&S 50 page (Here: A&S 50 Challenge Home Page ) to read up on it. 

Serendipity!

Just this past weekend I picked up a new book, "Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads" (1995 edition... I found it in my favourite used books store!) and have been re-inspired.  I do love to bake, and this has a frillion (technical term) recipes for 27 total categories of breads. 

At the Crown Tournament, I displayed some breads I'd been working on. 

I've been dabbling in baking here and there, nothing serious, really, though.  We had several types of bread available at our recent feast, which was fun! 

I've approached a few laurels about perhaps apprenticing in bread-making, but there's no real interest, it seems.  So, I've decided, rather than pound my head against the brick-walled oven hunting down a Laurel, I'm going to seek personal fulfillment this way.

Yep, I'm taking up the challenge.  To quote the A&S Challenge site:

The Depth Challenge -

*50 of any one type of thing, in order to push your skills and knowlege to new levels (how broadly you define this is up to you)

Sounds good to me!  I'm fairly certain I can find people willing to taste-test my results, AND since group efforts are completely permissible, I'm enlisting my children as capable kitchen assistants.  This fulfills my personal mission of getting kids involved in cooking, as well as passing along the skills of this particular culinary art to the next generation.  I'm excited!  It's good to have a project, especially one that builds upon itself!

Now the hard part... narrowing it down to just 50 types of bread!

Momentum

One of the biggest hurdles I feel we face as medieval cooks is getting people past their initial resistance to trying new things.  Chicken cooked in an unfamiliar way can be a little "weird" to people, but at least chicken is a known quantity, so when you tell people you've stewed the chicken with apricots and beer, they may think "Huh?!" but they're more likely to be willing to take that first bite because of the existing comfort level with the main ingredient.

The same is rarely said of more "exotic" dishes, and here in the Midwest, aka The Middle Kingdom, "exotic" covers a LOT of territory.  A significant portion of the people I serve at feasts will be unfamiliar with at least one of the ingredients I'm using.  Actually, that "wha..?" process usually starts at the supermarket, when i have to explain to the cashier or the person in line behind me that that weird knobbly-looking thing is a rutabaga, and the "green onions on steroids" are actually leeks (and so on, and so on, and so on...).  I try to encourage people to try those ingredients at home, providing hyper-simplified suggestions for prep, such as, "If you peel the rutabaga and cube it up, you can boil it and serve it much like mashed potatoes, with butter and salt and pepper.  It has a little more of a spicy flavour to it, but the texture is somewhat similar, and it's fun to mix things up.  Plus it's a gorgeous goldenrod colour when it's cooked and looks so pretty on the table!"  I'm not sure if any of the cashiers or "Random folks in queue" have ever taken me up on my culinary snippets of advice, but I do try to be an Ambassador of New Flavours, even there in the mundane world.

It's a pleasure to find that by now, having just completed our "Third Annual" Norse-inspired feast, I have a lot of repeat guests in the Hall.  This has many benefits, not the least of them being that those people know they are going to find GOOD FOOD on my tables.  This makes them more likely to try those scary unfamiliar dishes, because there's at least an even shot that it will be palatable!  Then, because humans are very, very good at picking up on safety cues from the crowd around them, the "newbies" in the group become a little less freaked out by this platter of Strange And Unusual Stuff they're being served.

There's something almost magical about the phrase, "Wow!  I never even heard of but that was GOOD!"  It warms my heart, not just because I am on a mission to bring Flavour And Fun to this region, but because I feel so very fortunate to have grown up in a household where an incredibly wide assortment of flavours, textures and ingredients were routinely included in our menus.  I love having that variety of options in my personal kitchen when I'm feeding my family, and I am delighted to broaden other people's horizons, as well. 

So what was on the menu this time? 

We started the evening with fairly basic (and familiar) items.  Edible bread baskets (that is... the baskets themselves were made of bread, and meant to be eaten!) held barley flatbread, and whole grain bread, and wheat bread (all home-made by our Cooks Guild as we sat around my dining room table kneading and chatting...).  There were bowls of cheese, olive oil and za'atar.  Za'atar is a combination of thyme, sumac, sesame seeds and salt, and this herb mixture is eaten by dipping a piece of bread into olive oil, then into the dried herb mixture.  It's delicious, and personally, I eat it for breakfast at least four days a week!

To this mix, we delivered apples and pears, drizzled with local wildflower honey (we have an AMAZING source of local honey here!), a pureed vegetable soup with an optional addition of pan-seared cod, and "Valkyries on Horseback," which has been mentioned in this blog before.  Now, I will tell you, when you suggest that people eat prunes, there is often some resistance.  I think most people consider prunes a medicinal tool reserved for those of ancient and decrepit status, and shy away from this most lovely of fruits.  This recipe got a lot of converts that night, however.  Bacon makes everything better, apparently!  The hesitance quickly evaporated after one bite, and the "Valkyries" were a huge success.  I recommend them as an easy appetizer for any setting, medieval or not!

Now we're just warming up, at this point.  My Lord, Uisdean, is truly blessed by the Gods when it comes to his skill with the fire, and he made smoked beef brisket which was so good it almost brought tears of joy to my eyes (and offers to "take him off my hands" from several people... ha!  Not likely!).  Ten and a half hours of slow smoking, we had three separate grills going in the backyard, and it was worth every nanosecond.  A mustard and wine sauce was served to complement the meat, along with rice-stuffed cabbage rolls and leeks, carrots and mushrooms lightly sauted in olive oil and lightly tossed with a wine sauce just before being served.  I love listening to the ebb and flow of conversation and general merry-making during feasts.  I try to wander the crowd, gauging reactions, explaining the ingredients (although NOT the recipes... you have to come cook with us for that!), trading quips and humorous comments, and the like.  For me, watching people enjoying their meal is the best possible reward, and bragging about my Lord's amazing grilling skills is icing on that cake.  ~grins~

Now, this is a FEAST, not just a dinner.  In the Old Days, slaughtering would have been completed, harvests all brought in, and people would be joining to celebrate the time of plenty, so you know there has to be more food to come!

Lamb and barley stew is a classic dish, and one I expect to find at most Norse events including my own.  It can be spiced heavily, or lightly, allowing the natural succulence of the lamb to shine.  This year, we opted for a more simple combination of flavours, but we had some really stellar quality fresh lamb to work with, and at an even more excellent price, so we took advantage of that opportunity.  To complement the lamb, we served mashed rutabaga, and a light, refreshing "compote" of cabbage and beets (really, it was more like a relish, with an apple cider based pickling brine for the vegetables).  The bright flavour of the compote, and the gorgeous ruby colour, alongside the golden rutabagas, added a nice visual presentation to the stew which, though delicious, is rather drab in appearance, making for a well rounded course!

Bellies were getting full, but dessert was still on the way!  The Cooks Guild had made shortbread cookies, but with a twist.  For this Norse feast, the cookies were "carved" with runes before they were baked, adding a touch of whimsey to the tables.  Also, bowls of bread pudding were served, along with custard sauce and brandied fruit.  My standing joke is that the brandied fruit has to be good... I was tipsy for three days just from cooking it!  For a little additional fun (What?  Fun?  I know!  Don't tell!) we had imported a rare delicacy all the way from far-off Sweden.... Swedish Fish!  (I'm fairly positive they didn't have gummy-fish candies back in Denmark, but... kids and adults alike understood the joke!)

Norse cooking can be challenging.  We don't have any existing "cook books".  We have some sagas which talk about food that was served, and we have grave finds and midden pit excavations to tell us what ingredients were used, but from there?  It's all speculation.  There is a very narrow range of "traditional" Norse dishes which are common at feasts, but my goal is to broaded my *own* horizons as a cook, as well as offering new and intriguing experiences to the people I feed, and I think we balance that well.

Now, what will we serve next year, and how will we push the envelope?  We are already planning the menu... and can't wait to do this again!  Watching people get braver and braver in their dining experiences is well worth the work, and we're creating that momentum here!