Poor bread is forgotten, bread from a great baker endures

I used to dine 2~3 times a week at an Italian restaurant in the San Francisco bay area called Piacere. A very nice Kurd man who quickly became a good friend ran it. I worked nearby at a lucrative consulting position with a local high tech firm. The bread his place was outstanding and so was their garlic-basil and balsamic dip that was redolent with the perfume of fresh cold-pressed unfiltered green olive oil. After several years, much to my surprise, the restaurant started making their own mediocre focaccia and ditched their splendid garlic-basil and balsamic dip. As it turned out, the bread and dip was SO OUTSTANDING, patrons would fill up on it. Dessert sales went up 23% after the stopped offering the great bread, and frankly, as good as the desserts were; I sure missed the bread and dip.

Moving out of the Bay area to North Carolina was a real experience. French and Italian breads here are hardly represented in the super market. Softer breads, cornbreads and biscuits are more readily available. For the baker, artisanal flour made from hard spring and winter wheats that characterize chewy European and Italian loaves is scarce as hens’ teeth. The Old Red Mill on Highway 68 does turn out decent hi-gluten flour that makes a loaf of French bread but it lacks the chew of Italian flour.

I am avidly looking at the North Carolina Organic BreadFlour Project with the hopes that great flour and breads flourish here as well as they have elsewhere in the nation.  On their blog spot, I read of the Annual Asheville Bread Festival where several of the recent competitions have also been instructors at the San Francisco Baking Institute and continue to be highly respected teachers, consultants, and writers. Asheville, NC even looks like it grew up in San Francisco.

Is Making Bread at Home Hard?

Residual Heat in Roasting - Getting Good Results

We are not talking radioactive fission products after shutdown but in principle, the concept is similar. The amount heat stored in a roast is proportional to the roasting temperature and the roast’s size. This means the roast must be removed from the oven at an internal temperature lower than desired final temperature. The residual heat is at the surface and successively less toward the center. The roast’s initial center temperature when removed from the oven will go up as the roast rests. The blue arrows in the chart show the direction of residual heat as the roast rests, while the moisture flow in the roast is just opposite as the roast’s protein molecules relax. Typically, resting times for a large roast is 20 minutes or more while a smaller roast maybe 10 to 15 minutes.

Looking at the figure again, the bands of color also represent a gradient of doness. For roasts roasted at high temperature, the outer rings may be well done, while successive inner layers are increasingly rarer. The secret restaurants use to get prime rib almost uniformly rare inside-to-out is to roast the meat at a low oven setting. In my cookbook, we use 220 F. which results in this uniformity. The temperature rise after resting for a 15 pound roast is only 4 degrees.

Miso is Good Food

Miso is a Japanese product made by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt using the fungus Aspergillus oryzae. The most typical miso is made with soy. Miso is showing up practically everywhere thanks in large part to the Asian-pacific rim cuisine but also because it is so flavorful. Marinades, sauces, glaze, pasta and soups of all sorts have leveraged its versatility. Even the famous Delmonico fine restuarant is selling their Sweet Miso Marinade.

There are many versions of Miso but they generally fall into red, white, and Hatcho Miso with less water and salt content and made near Okazaki castle in Japan. Red miso is aged over a year the color of this miso changes gradually from white to red or even black. White miso is the most popular miso and is made with rice, barley, and a small quantity of soybeans and has abbreviated fermentation. The taste is sweeter than red miso but has less umami.

Miso, when fresh, has a shelf life and will be found in the refrigerated section of the Asian market. This is not to say that it is not available dried or unrefrigerated. I particularly like combining shallots, fresh minced ginger, and a good demi-glace when making rich sauces with miso but when doing so, I strain the results. Miso combines well with dashi soup stock and flecks of quality toasted nori.

Miso Sauce

1/3 Cup sake

1/3 Cup Mirin

¼ Cup a good sweet white miso (South River brand®)

1 Teaspoon seasoned rice vinegar

1 Teaspoons brown sugar

1 Teaspoons fish sauce (optional)

1 Teaspoon Thai black soy sauce

3 Tablespoon of sweet butter, cut into patties

In a frying pan, reduce sake, Mirin with the white miso over medium-high heat by half. If you are baking a fish, add the run off juice from the pan when the fish has cooked. To finish, stir in the vinegar, sugar, (fish sauce if you like) and black soy. Take pan from heat and mount the sauce by swirling in the butter. Correct the seasonings. Garnish with fresh herbs.