I mostly don’t worry to much about what my bread looks like, as long as its tasty.
But every now and then a loaf turns out so pretty I have to share.
This morning’s bake: a pair of mini, mostly white, sourdough loaves:
Food
Egg free cupcakes
I think one of the worst parts of developing a new set of intolerances at this point in my life is having to figure out how to modify my baking and cooking to produce the recipes I enjoy without eggs.
When you start looking for egg substitutes and substitutions EVERYONE tells you to use applesauce. I’m here to tell you that applesauce may work in some limited ways, but it is NOT a general purpose egg substitute, and honestly, I’ve not liked it in any of the attempts I made of it. And we won’t discuss using mashed bananas, ew. I haven’t tried tofu yet, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve had a hard time finding commercial egg substitutes at the store. I’m not sure if I’m not looking in the right section, or if its a 2020 thing and they’re just harder to find right now.
However some things do work.
That is an egg free cupcake with nutella buttercream frosting.
Cupcake recipe here (note, the link here will take you directly to the recipe portion of the page). Frosting recipe here (ditto).
Note the lack of “egg substitutes” in the recipe. Instead she uses BOTH baking soda AND baking powder (in the self rising flour), BOTH butter and oil, sour cream, and vinegar to help boost this recipe in place of eggs. It works, it works beautifully. The big key is to not over bake them, the pictured cupcake actually only baked for 18 minutes, only bake them till the toothpick comes out clean and not a minute longer. To long and they turn dry, and it happens very quickly.
For the frosting you can use off brand chocolate hazelnut spread, but be aware that the differing oil contents do affect the final texture of the frosting.
ALSO, the pictured cupcake had been frosted and then frozen for a week! After being pulled back out of the freezer I let them set on the countertop for a couple hours and they thawed out very quickly and with no melting of the frosting at all!
Food Intolerance
Last summer (2019, to be clear), I suddenly started experiencing some fairly significant stabbing intestinal pain. It would come out of nowhere, leave me curled up in a ball wanting to die for a day or two, and then fade back out and disappear and I’d be fine for weeks before it would hit again. It was accompanied by random diarrhea, extreme gas and bloating (also excruciatingly painful btw), and weird headaches and weird brief bouts of vertigo. Though I didn’t actually put all those symptoms together as being caused by the same thing till at least several months in. I’d previously had a diagnosis of diverticulitis, and worried that the intestinal pain was because of that, so I called the gastro specialist (several times), went into urgent care (twice), saw my regular doctor (once), and had a phone conversation with my rheumatologist. CT and god only knows how much bloodwork and time later the diagnosis was: there’s nothing wrong with you that we can find. Over the last several years I’ve come to highly dislike the phrase “well, your bloodwork is normal”, and this didn’t help with that. We briefly thought that the intestinal pain might be caused by, or at least aggravated by, the methotrexate that the rheumatologist was trying for my hand issues. But nothing else seemed to be anything we could pinpoint.
It was November or so before I realized that clearly SOMETHING external was triggering the problem, food being the most likely, and easiest to track, culprit. My brother had a severe lactose intolerance as a child, so I probably should have recognized the symptoms sooner, but who expects a new food intolerance at the age of 40?? I tend to eat a fairly boring diet, much the same thing over and over, but there is some variation. I also tended to eat a lot of fast food for work lunches, supplemented by the vending machines in the break room. The occasion where I wasn’t eating fast food for work lunches it tended to be pre-packaged meals from the grocery store rather than home made. I attempted to start tracking what I was eating, but struggled to find a format that would work for tracking. I carry my cell phone everywhere, so some sort of app seemed like the obvious solution, but none of the pre-done food tracking apps seemed to be what I wanted, and I hate typing out long lists of things or paragraphs on that tiny keyboard. Late December I finally ordered a set of pocket notebooks, specifically I ordered a set of fancy ones that wouldn’t be ruined if they got wet.
January and February my hours at work always crash. The downside to being part time in a department that basically requires good weather to get good sales. But this year it was a good thing. It made it ever so much easier to eat completely homemade, starting the week after Christmas.
Within two weeks of eating completely homemade my symptoms almost completely disappeared.
Then I decided to make myself popovers one day. I love popovers, but they’re just fussy enough to make that I don’t actually make them often. Specifically using a mini muffin pan so that I could have popovers to eat all day. Had 3 or 4 mini popovers for breakfast. About half an hour after eating I had a mild vertigo moment, like I’d stood up to fast. Then suddenly my head was pounding. The headache faded back out quickly enough, I shrugged it off. Had another 3 or 4 mini popovers for lunch. Had another vertigo moment, and another brief headache. WTF. Then a couple hours later I suddenly developed severe gas bloating. Ended up taking a double dose of GasX. By supper time I was starting to notice some intestinal discomfort. It wasn’t to the stabbing pain stage yet, but I could tell it was getting there.
The ingredients in my popover recipe: AP flour, milk, butter, eggs, salt. I’d also grated cheese on the popovers before eating them.
The flour was the same flour I’d used to make the bread I’d been eating for the previous couple weeks without any symptoms. The butter was the same butter I’d been putting on my toast every morning. Salt, well, if I was reacting to salt I was probably screwed, but since I’d been eating things with salt in them for the previous couple weeks without issue I was pretty sure I could ignore that too. I don’t drink much milk, but I do put real cream in my coffee every morning, a fair bit of it too, I like my coffee light, I was pretty sure I could ignore the milk as a risk. And I’d been eating the same cheese regularly for the previous couple weeks too.
Eggs. I’d previously, several years ago, had a brief issue where eating eggs (of any kind) had given me some severe gas, but other wise no other problems with them, and that problem had faded back out in a couple months with no issues since. But sure enough, the day after making popovers I had severe stabbing abdominal pain that took several days to fade back out. My egg intake has always been variable. I LIKE eggs, but sometimes I’ll eat them alot, and other times I’ll go weeks without eating any except as a possible ingredient in something.
The only good part of the problem being eggs is that eggs are one of the “major food allergens” that the FDA requires be explicitly listed on labels, including when the possibility of remnant traces could be present. So while frustrating to avoid, due to eggs being a very common ingredient, it wouldn’t be impossible to avoid them at least.
I started adding back in the occasional processed food item to my diet once the reaction to the popovers had faded. No gas, no bloating, no headaches. Occasional, minor abdominal/intestinal discomfort, but it was really minor, I shrugged it off, it would probably take my system a while to completely return to normal.
Then I bought a package of Friendly’s Mint Chip Ice Cream. Now there are some fancier ice creams that contain eggs as an ingredient, but Friendly’s isn’t one of them. Friendly’s is pretty cheap ice cream infact, with alot of additives for texture and flavor and preservatives. Half a bowl of ice cream later and I had a swing of vertigo and then a pounding headache, feeling flushed, as if my blood pressure had dropped and then spiked. A check with my husband’s home blood pressure cuff confirmed that my blood pressure was higher than usual (though not in the range of needing immediate treatment). I hadn’t thought to check my blood pressure with the previous headaches. The next morning I woke up with stabbing abdominal pain that took a week to fade back out.
Fuck.
I put together a spreadsheet of the ingredients, and started working my way down the list of thing that were easy to test as individual items. Its not dairy. Its not soy. Its none of the mint flavorings I’ve been able to try. Its none of the chocolates I’ve been able to try. Its none of the food colorings I can get ahold of. None of the seasonings I’ve tried individually. None of the cocoa’s or cocoa butters I’ve tried. This leaves me with a fairly short list of texture, flavor, and preservative additives.
I bought a loaf of Italian bread with garlic spread from a local grocery as a treat to myself (I love the stuff, but have been known to eat half a loaf in a sitting, so I don’t buy it very often). No eggs listed in the ingredients, possible traces of egg from things made in the same factory. Either there was more than a trace of eggs, or I was reacting to some other ingredient in it, the reaction wasn’t as bad as the popovers or the ice cream, but it wasn’t minor either. There was no overlap between the suspect ingredients in the ice cream and the garlic bread.
Bought a package of Pillsbury’s freezer biscuits (they’re just like the ones in the can, but you can pull out however many you want at a time to bake instead of having to bake the whole can, yes I can make biscuits, I was feeling lazy). No eggs listed, not even traces. I didn’t get any blood pressure swings or gas/ bloating from them, but I had stabbing abdominal pain from them for over a week. Almost no overlap with previously suspect ingredients. Or rather, the overlap is “natural flavor”, which isn’t helpful.
I have also confirmed that just egg whites will set me off, as will duck eggs.
I’m back to eating home made and whole foods (nuts, fruits, vegis, meats) as much as I possibly can. While this is quite likely healthier than my previous diet it’s also frustrating as hell. On top of dealing with the chaos that is 2020? It has been hell.
The first allergist I saw was no help. Blood work says you don’t have a food allergy, go back to your gastro specialist. Gastro specialist says he can’t find anything wrong. My regular doctor is sending me to a different allergist, but I’m not holding my breath.
I’ll note that figuring out a food intolerance is not “essential”, which in the year that has become 2020 means I get to deal with it almost entirely on my own, regardless of anything else. Thank god I’m not especially prone to depression.
Everyone who thinks that we need to shut down all “non-essential” services and businesses in order to survive a pandemic that has a tiny death rate can go fuck themselves.
One Day Sourdough bread
The below recipe was the result of exhaustion and error that worked out beautifully. Also note: the below loaf of bread is sized to fit into my 2.5qt dutch oven. You’ll want to double things if you’re baking in a 5qt.
In case you haven’t figured it out from reading the rest of my blog, I work at Home Depot. As soon as the shutdown hit Home Depot’s sales went absolutely batshit. Someone described it as “Black Friday Weekend for 3 months straight” and I haven’t come up with a better description. Except it was worse than a normal Black Friday weekend. A normal BFW we know when its going to happen, we know when its going to end, we know what we have to sell, we know when we’re getting more, and what we’re not getting more of. On a normal BFW the average customer knows that things are limited quantity and that they may not be able to get what they want. None of that was true of this last 3 months. The last 3 months have been retail hell. My pedometer app on my phone clocked me at over 24,000 steps one day. Over 20,000 became my “normal” for most of this. The brand new shoes I bought back in March look like they’re a year old.
And to top it off, store bought bread is no longer an option for me on any sort of a regular basis (great big long post coming on THAT), and you STILL can’t reliably get yeast at any of my local grocery stores.
So, I’ve been making sourdough bread for most of this. Which is fine, I LIKE sourdough. But its a time/labor intensive bread. I have to plan ahead by several days in order to bake on my day off. Which is a pain!
One week, back mid-May, I got out the sourdough starter to feed up, so I could start sourdough bread so I could bake on my day off. Except that I was so exhausted that I never got the dough started. I managed to keep the starter on the counter fed twice a day, but anything more complicated than that just wasn’t happening. So my day off came around and we didn’t have any bread in the house, and I hadn’t started any sourdough, and I didn’t have any yeast, and I can’t do store bought bread any more, and……fuck it, lets see what happens.
(the below % are what I’m currently baking with, it did take some trial and error to get them right, but you get the idea)
pull starter out of fridge the night before and feed*
the morning of baking day:
~350 grams of flour (I use 100 grams of Red Fife Whole Wheat, the rest King Arthur’s All Purpose)
225 grams of warm water
6 grams of salt
~60 grams of recently fed sourdough starter (ok, I don’t actually measure this, I tend to just dump in a nice sized glob)
mix till reasonably cohesive and no clumps of flour remain, adding extra flour as needed to keep it from being to sloppy wet
cover and let set for 15 minutes, then fold the dough in half, turn the bowl 90 degrees and fold the dough again, turn and fold. Repeat 15 minute set and folding a total of 4 times
cover and let set in a warm spot till mostly doubled. I’ve had this happen in as little as 1.5hours and as much as 3.
prepare your banneton, if you don’t have a banneton then a properly sized pyrex bowl will work – spray bowl with oil and then dust heavily with flour
shape dough into round loaf** and place seam side up with banneton/bowl, cover and place in fridge
I’ve let it set in the fridge for as little as 5 hours and as much as 10, both work just fine***. I imagine overnight would work too, but I wanted a same day loaf.
When you’re ready to bake place your empty dutch oven into the cold baking oven and set the oven to 500 degrees (F). When oven is up to temperature take the dough out of the fridge and carefully flip out onto a piece of parchment paper (I like to sprinkle cornmeal on the parchment first), and slash the top.
Pull the dutch oven out of the oven (careful, its HOT!) and, using the parchment as a sling, place the dough into the dutch oven, place the lid on, and put back into the baking oven, turn temp down to 450 degrees, and bake for 20 minutes.
At the 20 minute mark remove the dutch oven’s lid and bake bread for another 20 minutes.
Pull out of oven and carefully remove bread from dutch oven and remove parchment, place bread back into the baking oven, directly on the rack, and bake for another 5-10 minutes till properly golden. Let cool before slicing, no matter how much like heaven it smells.
*while pretty much everyone agrees that you can feed your sourdough starter with plain white/all purpose flour I have found that you’ll have a MUCH happier sourdough if you feed with at least half whole wheat or rye flours
**if your no-knead/sourdough breads tend to flatten in the oven instead of poofing properly you’re most likely not shaping the loaf of bread correctly. There is a temptation with these to just wad them into a ball and call it done. Don’t do that, hit the internet search engine of your choice and watch some videos of the pro’s shaping loaves. Or here, this is one I like.
*** this produces a nice mildly flavored sourdough loaf. The longer it sets in the fridge the stronger the flavor will be. If you like a stronger flavored sourdough then experiment with longer set times.
Bread
A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I’d never gone looking to see if I could get bread flour locally. It would be odd if I couldn’t, considering the region, but my work schedule means that I can’t usually get to the farmers markets, so if I want something locally I have to actually go looking for it. Did some poking around, and found a very local farm that grows its own Red Fife wheat, corn, and oats. AND they grind to order and sell right on the farm. Done!
I mentioned not to long ago that I’ve been playing around with sourdough, specifically I’ve been playing with King Arthur’s No Knead Sourdough recipe. That recipe calls for KA Bread flour, but I’ve been making it with KAs All Purpose Flour, because that’s what I usually have on hand. And because I can’t help but play with a recipe, I dust the dutch oven it’s baked in with corn meal, and I use warmed milk instead of water, and occasionally toss in an egg. And most recently I’ve been adding a spoonful of local honey.
So, take that recipe, replace 2 cups of flour with the Red Fife whole wheat. Dust it with the cornmeal from the same farm.
It doesn’t quite have the POOF of the all white loaves, but yum! I’m not normally a HUGE fan of whole wheat, I don’t hate it, but I generally prefer white breads. But this? The flavor of the Red Fife is pretty damn awesome.
I’m alive!
Really! Just very brain dead.
The co-worker who had medical issues is back to work, however he shouldn’t be. I’m not entirely sure if he didn’t explain his job very well to the doctor, if the doctor didn’t believe him, or if the doctor is an idiot. To be fair, I’ve found that when you tell your doctor that you work at “big box store with orange aprons” they hear “I’m a cashier” no matter what you say afterwards. I now tell my doctors that I work in a warehouse. It’s a much more accurate description of what my job entails when it comes to physical demands. So yah. At any rate, I’m still working his job, hopefully only for another week, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve now found that the management’s apathy in regards to the folks on the sales floor is totally beaten out by their apathy towards the folks working in the receiving department.
At home I’ve been experimenting with sourdough bread again.
As much as I like a good homemade sourdough I’ve struggled with it in the past. Struggled to keep it alive, struggled to use it, gotten frustrated by the discard-feed cycle.
This time around I armed myself with King Arthur Flour’s list of recipes for discarded sourdough. Reminded myself that even if I didn’t want to do a true sourdough bread I could always add a scoop or so to my regular bread recipe. And made a very interesting discovery about keeping it alive. Every sourdough recipe out there says that once you get past the initial buildup you can use white flour to feed your sourdough. And this is technically correct, you can. However, feeding your sourdough starter with whole wheat results in the happiest sourdough starter EVER. Wow. So my sourdough starter is whole wheat. It was an accident, I ran out of white flour and somehow forgot to buy more at the store, so shrugged and fed it with whole wheat, and wow!
isn’t that pretty? That is a true sourdough bread, no added commercial yeast. Specifically its KA’s No Knead Sourdough. This particular loaf will be going with me to the family Easter party tomorrow. Yum.
On the subject of spring: FB reminded me that on this date last year I got snow, so I’m delighted by the green grass I’ve got today. In addition the Bluebirds are definitely nesting, though as of yesterday afternoon there were no eggs yet. And I’m back to trapping House Sparrows.
Home Made Hot Sauce
As my supply of home grown hot peppers has grown so has the things that I’ve made out of them. Husband likes Franks Red Hot sauce, so I’ve played around with home made versions of it using the home grown peppers, usually whatever peppers I have, which makes for a fair bit of variation in flavor. I’m not interested in playing around with the fermented sauces, but the home grown red ripe peppers make for some nice flavors anyway.
This past summer of course I grew Cayennes, so this year I did up actual Cayenne based hot sauce for him.
A note on making hot sauces. There are alot of recipes out there that make me cringe. And alot of home hot sauce makers who have no understanding of what makes things safely shelf stable. The good news for those folks is that botulism is rare. The bad news for those folks is that if they get unlucky some day they’re going to end up either dead or crippled for life. Before you decide to follow some random hot sauce recipe you found online please make sure you understand how acidity protects you from botulism, and how to tell if your sauce is acidic enough. I can do that whole rant if need be, and if you all reading this actually want it, but I won’t in this post.
This recipe is a modification of the hot pepper jelly recipe that I use and that I know is plenty acidic and thus safe to play with.
If you have pets, or if any of the humans in the house aren’t a fan of hot things, turn on the vent fan before you start doing anything. Also, I highly recommend gloves for handling the peppers, and even if you wear gloves do yourself a favor and wash your hands with LOTS of Dawn dish soap BEFORE using the bathroom or touching your face.
1 pound of red ripe Cayenne peppers
2 cups of white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
rough chop the peppers and add to sauce pan with the vinegar. Heat up, and then puree with the stick blender. Puree to your choice of texture, commercial sauces are often mashed through a fine strainer after pureeing to remove the seeds and larger bits, I don’t bother, but if you prefer a smoother sauce you’ll want to do this. Add salt and garlic powder. Simmer down to the consistency you want. Bring to a rolling boil. Pour into hot 1/2 pint jars and water bath for 10 minutes. This made up 3 jars worth of sauce. It also smells absolutely wonderful, even to me who doesn’t care for hot things.
I’ll note, if you don’t want to water bath it, and just want something for the fridge or freezer, this’ll keep for extended periods of time in the fridge just fine.
Mandarin Orange Jam
I’ve been on a citrus kick lately. But Husband isn’t a fan. And I struggle to finish a package of oranges or the like before they start to go off. The solution of course is to buy them individually, but that costs more. Not to mention that my favorite citrus are seasonal.
In the meantime, I belong to a couple different canning/preserving groups on Facebook, and people were talking about doing marmalades, and mixed fruit jams and jellies. So I had a thought. Poked around at a couple orange jelly recipes, but wasn’t entirely enthused with what I was seeing. So, armed with the knowledge that oranges are nicely acidic and so I can basically do whatever I want so long as I don’t add anything low acid, I went to the store for oranges.
8 large mandarin oranges
1 cup of commercial orange juice.
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
a splash of lemon juice
4 tablespoons of Ball’s low/no sugar pectin
Sliced the ends off of the oranges, deep enough that I saw flesh and not white skin. Peeled them, and then used a sharp knife to slice off the white pith/skin. Broke them open, sliced off the interior pith (that white pith can be bitter, you really want as much of it as physically possible removed). Cut them into chunks, removed any particularly loose skin pieces but wasn’t OCD about it. Used a potato masher to break up the chunks a bit. Eyeballed the mass in the sauce pan, and added 1 cup of juice. Next time I’ll just buy a couple more oranges instead, but it works for now.
Added the rest of the ingredients. Brought to a strong boil for 1 minute per pectin instructions. Jarred up (this made exactly six 1/2 pint jars), and water bath processed for 10 minutes.
I licked my stirring spoon while the mixture was heating and the vanilla came through nicely, but I can’t taste it at all in the finished jam. In retrospect I should have added it at the end of the boil instead of before, and I might add a bit more too next time. Also, store bought juice has always had a slightly odd undertaste to it, and that come through in the jam. But otherwise I’m delighted with how this turned out. Its a nice loose set jam, not overly sweet, and I totally ate the first jar with a spoon the next morning.
I’ll be buying a bunch more mandarin oranges this week so I can do a couple more batches!
Breakfast food
Several years ago, before I got married (possibly even before we started dating?), I picked up a pair of these small cast iron pans. They’re tiny, but perfect for single servings of a variety of things.
More recently I’ve used them for baking of smaller free form loaves of bread on occasion. But otherwise they haven’t gotten much use since my husband joined the household.
Not to long ago, wanting something hearty for breakfast but not wanting to actually put alot of effort into it, I had an idea.
Two eggs scrambled up in a bowl, with a dash of onion powder, a sprinkle of pepper, and a hearty dash of garlic powder. Add a pinch of grated asiago cheese, a dash of grated parmesan cheese, and a healthy handful of grated cheddar. If I have them in the house I’ll frequently fine chop a small red potato into the mix too.
Get one of the little cast iron pans hot, slather with a thick slab of butter (even in a well seasoned pan the eggs will tend to stick a bit once you add this much cheese to the mix, use more butter), turn the burner down to just above low. Pour in the egg mixture, it’ll do a good job at filling the little pan. Let cook till the edges are solid. Carefully flip, the liquid center will tend to pour out into the pan, thats fine. Continue to cook till the bottom side is done to your taste (I tend to prefer a bit of browning, but some folks prefer their eggs less done, go with what works for you). Place on a slice of homemade bread toast (though I have to say, it also goes REALLY well on commercially purchased Texas Toast, you may want to go light on the added seasonings if you’re going this route) with more grated cheddar.
It’s a very filling meal in a fairly short period of time. I call it my “omlet thing”, to the amusement of my husband. I forgot, again, to get a photo, so you’re going to have to do with my description.
Florida Datil Pepper Jelly
I gave in and did a full sugar batch so that I could use liquid pectin. Should have taken out more of the seeds, its HOT. But didn’t it turn out pretty?