A Food Update and New Bread Recipe

I just thought I’d give a food update on a few things.

First, no one took me up on my offer to come bake bread today, so I decided to make something new. It’s been a while since I made a caraway rye and the recipes I’ve used were either too refined or included dairy (which I wanted to avoid for Jen’s sake). So I came up with my own which stripped some of the gloss off and went back to a more peasant loaf. It turned out really well. The basic recipe is:

2 cups pumpernickel rye

¼ cup 8 grain cereal.

2 teaspoons salt

1 generous tablespoon caraway seed

¼ cup brown sugar

1 ½ tablespoon dry yeast

5 cups regular flour (approximate)

2 cups water

1 egg

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons olive oil

Next time I’ll use high gluten whole wheat flour instead of white and I’ll swap ½ cup of the pumpernickel rye for ½ cup of a medium ground rye. 

I also plan on trying a sourdough rye from a starter this next weekend so we’ll see how that goes.

The wine is a Covila II Crianza Rioja 2005. After it opens up it has some of the most developed spice notes I’ve ever drunk.

Also, last night I did a whitefish fillet in the stovetop smoker. I just sprinkled a little pepper on it and then drizzled some lemon juice on as well. It spent about 8 minutes in the smoker. I don’t like whitefish for the most part as it’s a  fairly gamy fish. It still smelled like whitefish but tasted amazing.

I opened the glass crock of corned beef, checked on the smell, and swapped the chunks of brisket around. Smells better than ever. I plan on corning it for about 10 more days and then pull it out and cook it. If it tastes half as good as it smells it should be amazing. There is someone up here who makes sauerkraut and sells it locally; I should probably track some down …

One last note; if you pop stuff into other storage containers, you might want to mark them. Brown rice was supposed to accompany the whitefish of last night. Instead, after a nice steam bath for 40 minutes, we had our fish with a nice helping of sopping orzo. So, this morning, I brought the leftovers to the chickens who were kind enough to share it with the cat. We have the weirdest animals.