a little red hen

Is this any way to bake bread?

Yes.  If one is challenged to fit two loaves into a 19.5 inch oven.  And if you have very good eyesight and turn your head slightly to the right, it's possible to note that the oven thermometer registers about 355 degrees.  Effort was made to reach 475 but opening the door may have altered that--or not.

In spite of it all, two delicious loaves were produced from another new recipe, Sourdough Whole Wheat and Rye with Seeds.  Two years, almost to the day, Ron and I went to a class at Bob's Red Mill.  Our teacher was Alan Maniscalco who had partnered with Ken Forkish to begin Ken's Artisan Bakery which then expanded to Ken's Pizza with Alan in charge.

We had returned from another great trip to California.   It was starter-refresh time. Decided to branch out, develop a new rye starter from my white one.   Having two starters in the fridge takes me back to the days in my large Baltimore kitchen with its commodious regular stove whose size I never thought about.  Ah, the past and things one took for granted.

What particularly intrigued me on Alan's recipe was the soaker (link to The Fresh Loaf site and useful explanation).  Mine contained:

pumpernickel flour, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, and water.

Similar approach--Chad Robertson's adaptation of a recipe from his book, Tartine Bread.  More memories of last year's visit to Tartine in San Francisco. "Flour Water Salt Yeast" is title of Ken's new cookbook.  Only just discovered his series of videos--very useful.  I now know why his breads are so dark.

His kitchen very nice; I should get friendly.  Thinking I might try using two small Dutch ovens--if I can find them.  Might solve small oven issue.  

California?  The Redwoods this time to meet up with granddaughter Roxie and her parents.  More soon.   

Related articles

Loaf 1: scalded rye from Lithuania

Bread Baking 3: Baking the Bread!

Types of Rye Bread

Review: Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free "Wonderful" Bread

Greatest thing since sliced bread?

Saved this page from New York Times Sunday magazine.  What was it about a slice of bread that was so compelling?  That the shrinking, obsessively up-scale newspaper paid attention to an object from everyday life?  Just a slice of  a pre-sliced white, the kind my father described as "punk bread."  He was good an naming things he disdained, ideas and objects favored by people different from him.  It's a trait passed along that I must be cautious about in my judgementalism.

The article is part of a "Who Made That?" series in the Times.  It is filled one page of odd facts that tie together many aspects of the influence of the industrialization of America in the early 20th century.  Last year a social history, White Bread, by Aaron Bobrow-Strain (oh, people, why did you do this to your offspring; the hyphenated name is sure to create relationship problems) was published.  [There it is-- the too judmenta...sigh]

"The sliced loaf becomes a kind of small, edible promise of a better world."

Much more interesting to me than recent explorations about  cod or salt, I now intend to purchase it from Alibris for hardly any money (as the almost-free economy moves on).  In a New York Times review of the book, titled  "Against the Grain," there was further exploration of how problems of unsanitary public bakeries led to the business solution:  industrialized bread. What would another review deliver?

Libby Copeland wrote a longer essay a harsher title, "White Bread Kills".  Subtitled-- "a history of a national paranoia," she addresses the present-day "...backlash against white bread" and the growing interest in gluten-free products and increase in people receiving a diagnosis of celiac disase which afflicts one in 133.  She points out that little is known about how gluten sensitivity may effect the majority of us.

In turn, there was another book also published last year, emeritus Canadian historian Harvey Levenstein's Fear of Food: Why we worry about what we eat.  This one, as one food writer explains its message, 

"...from the ‘germophobia’ of the 19th century to concerns about cholesterol and chemical residues in the 21st. Read this book and you’ll understand why warnings about the safety of your food should always be taken with a pinch of salt. (Just a pinch, though — too much could be bad for you.).”

Even though my results are not always edible--like this one (left) which looked much like the one in the book (middle), and filled with many good pumpkin seeds, I'm working on getting comfortable with major mishaps.  The successful ones are always better than packaged and pre-sliced American white bread.  In Mexico, similar product is Bimbo!

ADDENDUM  Every now and then, not often enough, bread-making is enhanced by doing it with Zoe, our seven year old granddaughter.  I have a sense that she is learning something that will be long gone by the time she has her own household.

Something grander than Google will speak to her about what the ancients once did in kitchens.

Sourdough + Buttermilk = delicious bread

How much I'd missed making bread.  My baking enthusiast friend Molly visited in February and this was to be an opportunity.  We had so much to talk about that--classes at Portland State, whether she would take a college loan because three (!) jobs and 16 credits were too much.   I refreshed my starter and sent her home with some.  

Politics intervened.. Nationally it has been all the efforts to counteract efforts to withdraw women's agency-- the equity and freedom we worked so hard to achieve in the 20th century. Petitions to sign, phone calls to make to D.C.

Locally, it's support of improved gun control legislation in Oregon.  The other local political activity was the dive I took into running for the board of my retirement community.  Though I lost--which might be for the best--the experience was a good one.  Much positive feedback from neighbors and the chance to encourage conversations among residents on ideas they had for improvements.  

Finally, actual bread-making had its moment.  B uttermilk around (do you buy certain food items that have a special appeal then have to figure out new ways to use?) that needed attention.  Found a recipe that put it together with my starter.  "Golden Sourdough" was its name and Shelene Wilhelm of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the baker. I owe her well-written instructions many thanks.

Reduced the recipe by half though used even less  salt (1Tbsp.). Otherwise followed her lead--   expanded the starter overnight. Probably crucial to how well it turned out. Produced two pretty 8x4x5 inch loaves and a mini-loaf, great sourdough taste, more delicious over a few days.

It's a lot of bread for two trying to keep waistlines from spreading.  Shared slices with neighbors, gave entire mini to another friend.  After trying others, I've settled over the past year or so on Fairhaven white organic flour from the state of Washington.  Discovered since moving to Portland where there are better choices on local shelves than in New York.  

What I'm finding as I move toward 80, is the need to be less ambitious.  Recipes that were challenging a year or two ago leave me tired when contemplating.  This one only had some combining of ingredients before long kneading with dough hook attachment on trusty 1980s Kitchen Aid.  Ron helped when bowlful of dough became too heavy for me to hold/scrape at same time.  He does much of the cooking and looks to me for recipe selection.  That works!  

 

 

My political life requires a placeholder...

Too much going on to be a frequent poster here...or infrequent.  Yet I want to stay with blogging as a practice even while I need more thought on its structure for the future. 

My neighbor Joella demonstrates a perfect solution for all those buttons we collected in second wave activity in last century--coast to coast.  Hers in Oregon, mine mostly Baltimore and New York.  Gun control is a shared focus through Ceasefire Oregon.

Marian Wright Edelman on Inauguration Day 2013 in conversation with Melissa Harris-Perry wears image of Sojourner Truth.  Takes our feminism back to the 19th century struggle for African-American equality.  Read Ta-Nehisi Coates in the March Atlantic on why the re-election of Obama matters even more than the first. 

Speaking of blogging, the life in bread has not had enough attention here. It has not had as much attention as I would wish.  Here's a whole wheat sourdough made in October 2011.

My personal challenge is should I emulate one of my favorite, 19th century feminists, Frances E. Willard of the WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union).

"Do Everything" was her motto. Is it mine?   Her unusual book,  "A Wheel with in Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle" used that newly-introduced contrivance as a metaphor for women's lives.  An excerpt HERE  with comments by a contemporary blogger.

And so you have it: Black History month (a young friend recently pointed out is the shortest month of the year) and the upcoming Women's History Month.  Both of which call out for celebration more often.  I hope to do my part one day soon but till then...  

Fressen! Fressen Brot!

Discovering Fressen Artisan Bakery at the nearest Farmers Market  extended my knowledge of German. Fressen means "eat" and "brot" is bread.  In truth there are more subleties for fressen (and its companion "essen") but I leave that to Marianna at Hattie's Web to explicate.

Some Saturday's at the market we get a roll or rye bread there and combine with pate from Chop, vending nearby.  This one is "Farmhouse" pate with pistachios.

For the past year I've talked with the young woman who works at the bakery's stand about our shared interest in taking a class with Edgar, Fressen's owner and baker. Now I've met the baker himself because he's opened a cafe next door to the ovens. Which makes him even busier than before though he assured me that after the beginning of the year, he plans to schedule a workshop.

Ron and I have lunched twice at the cafe.  In addition to the selection of "handcrafted German baking," big loaf--or half-loaf

form--there are sandwiches, frittatas, and soups, salads. Pickles include tomato, zucchini, pumpkin this time, probably will vary.  

Sandwiches we split--cheese/avocado and a hot dog (rare indulgence)-- are on their popular salt pretzel rolls; these also come as actual soft pretzels and rolls. Such delicious pastries--plum, pear, other sesonal fruits.  We could get addicted to Fressen's mochas.

A  cafe, however, is about more than the food.  Next time I'll take more and better pictures that reveal its modest ambiance along with the engaging people who work there.  Non-intrusive music! Because it's a few blocks off northeast Sandy Boulvard, the main street, you'd have to know about it to arrive there.

After our first visit, we had an encounter unusual for our life in Portland.  Standing outside, looking at the bakery production space, another customer and Ron began to talk about how much we liked the bread.   He'd come to the U.S. some years earlier from Germany to work as a tool and dye maker in Connecticut, "day and night...for a Jewish guy."

Made enough money to buy his own plumbing company in Idaho.  While his personal journey was interesting, most enjoyable was that he and Ron talked in languages familiar to each--German and Yiddish.  I stood around, was impressed, periodically asked questions in English, my only language, about his ideas on retirement. 

Pearl Bakery after hours, an imaginary movie

Another wannabe movie like an earlier one here at pizza shop.  Perhaps before my 80th birthday which gives me a year.

Time:  Early June evening

Place: Pearl Bakery, Couch Street near Ninth, Portland, Oregon

Music:  Your choice...

Voiceover:  Pearl was one of the first places that felt comfortable to linger over coffee.   Visiting Portland in the late 1990s, perhaps a year or two after they opened, we'd come for breakfast or lunch, wish we could find as delicious breads and seductive pastries near our apartment in New York.  A few unfussy sandwich selections; you know it's Portland when one is PB&J.

Living here now we most often buy their multi-grain batard; favorite treat is not-too-sweet gibassier. Their quality stays high, I think, because their goals are modest.  At the PSU Farmers' Market, the baker's wife is easy to talk to, interested in learning that artisan bakers in Vancouver, B.C., speak well of their product.

79th birthday on a dark & light Sunday

Toward the end of our trip north, my move toward 80 occurred.  An August birthday often has seemed less notable than those happening in non-summer months.  The month is know primarily for its connection to Hiroshima, our country's leap into the darkest side of "American exceptionalism."  Does that sound like an only-child sigh?  Yes.  What did my 12 year old self think as children at summer camp puzzled over the news.  We could not have understood more than that "the war was over."

From the window of our Tacoma, Washington motel on August 5, this dancing green figure sent a welcome, could pass for a birthday wish.

The heat that our son had reported from New York, our daughter from Chicago, had reached the northwest.  We searched for a spot to get a good view of majestic, mysterious Mount Ranier.

Found a local free paper, learned there was a used bookstore in the south part of town-- good views of the mountain and the industry on Puget Sound. We had a fine time among the shelves at King's Books.  I bought two bread books never seen before; talked with the young man at the counter.  He loved New York, was very involved in local theatre.  Oh, he must go to the Brooklyn Museum on his next trip--since he has friends in the now-youth-filled Williamsburg.  

Because the front window of the store was filled with feminist books, I mentioned that Judy Chicago's Dinner Party was there. "What is that?"  Always time for educational input of the feminist sort.  He immediately looked it up on the computer, "Looks fabulous!"  Yes.

What's the best thing for lunch at Doyle's Bar next door, we asked.  "Definitely, the Cubano sandwich."  He was so very right.

Driving back to Portland, we heard of the awful murders in a Wisconsin Sikh temple.  How often, people, will we allow the rationalizing to continue: that gun control is not the problem...accept that our presidential candidates slip and slid around this monumental issue?  Have you signed a petition, written your congressperson?  

Read, please, this from The Washington Post, a blog by Anya Cordell, "Sikhs bearing pizza," filled with many insights from her work against appearance-based judgments.  In 2010, she received the Spirit of Anne Frank award, is author of Race: An Open & Shut Case, a book I intend to read and share.

 

A bird's nest...recent traveling bread memories

Much going on over spring/summer that needs attention here.  Many choices for posting--ideas sparked by other bloggers, stuff in my everyday life. Deciding can get in the way of doing, don't you think?  Over at Folkways Notebook, the images Barbara posts often lead me to stuff in my own space as this one of a Carolina wren nest.  Time to consider the nest lingering, carefully saved in a container that once held roasted, unsalted cashews from the Harlem Fairway. 

Imagining-- did it land on a Manhattan street or did I find it in my Baltimore backyard in 1995 before we made the final move to New York.  A birder was visiting, so I opened it for the first time so we could examine it closely.  From the front and the back, a bit of dental floss?  Birder took out her book and delivered a lesson:  "It's probably a Blue gray gnatcatcher " (link is to actual bird sound).   

    

BREAD  Have neglected writing about it lately.  Was I so bowled over by my encounters in northern California that I felt inadequate to homemade efforts? The loaves at Acme Bread in the Ferry Building at the San Francisco wharf were good but the five-grain loaf  and pastries at Pearl Bakery here in Portland are more flavorful. 

Tartine on Guerro Street in the Castro District?  This is complicated. I was especially looking forward to this.  Much hullabaloo on food sites about the book the baker there had written.  Delightful ride on crowded trolley in the late afternoon, then startled by naked gay men preening in the sunlight at the last stop, finally a very long walk through friendly neighborhood to arrive for the moment bread was removed from ovens--at 5 p.m.  Different.

"Our bread is available Tuesday through Sunday after five o'clock in full or half loaves."  Folks lined up around the block. It was also possible to order earlier by phone, then get in line.

Staying in a motel, eating out, we were not up for even a half loaf. Here's the only photo we managed of quickly-purchased intact loaves--on the way back from the restroom. We ate an early dinner in the tiny Tartine cafe alongside the waiting bread-buyers.  Had delicious quiche, followed by an abundant and tasty bread pudding.  

From what we could discern, bread was good  but with so many other ingredients surrounding, it was hard to compare with our favorite so far on this trip, Wild Flour in Sebastapol--out in the country in Sonoma.

Finally, on our trip on our return to Santa Rosa, our friends said we had to have THE experience.  And we did.  We went to the  Sonoma Farmers Market where the bejkr (may be Esperanto for "baker") holds court, along with a clay, wood-fired oven for pretzels attached to his vehicle.

Cult Sonoma dscribes him as an "artisanal god."  Hyperbole but  the quirky Mike Zakowski is both an unusual character who grows his own wheat (little red hen could relate) but also makes fabulous bread and pretzels.

Our encounter was soon after he'd won a silver medal in a bread-making competition in France.  Movie is in the works.

On returning to Portland, my first effort, oft baked sourdough graham recipe from from some mix of flours , looked remarkably like a torpedo. Used French bread pan,carried from our place to our baby-sitting gig at our daughter's.  Best part was six year old Zoe joined grandma in working with the dough.

Stopped for a while.  Last week used my sourdough starter to make another starter for a Sourdough Semolina bread recipe I found online. Gave the entire process far more time for autolyze and fermenting.  Excellent result--even though I turned the oven too high at beginning.  But no illusions I'll reach the level of the bejkr in this lifetime.    

 

 

 

WILD FLOUR Bread, a California happening

Remember the talk of "happenngs" back in the 1950s?  My own intro to the idea, (according to Wikipedia a concept "difficult to describe") was in the spring of my last semester in college, 1955.

My friend Sylvia Cary often had leading roles in Oberlin Drama Assocation presentations.  She'd challenge me to try out for one.  In our last semester, she reminded me again, told me something new had been selected by the less official, student-run group, Finney's Follies.*  None of us knew anything about the very old idea, commedia del arte,** which was being re-discovered around the country.  "Improvisation," I recal saying to her, "I can do that, have always been able to talk my way through stuff."  I'd also been sent to drama classes in New York when a pre-teen, co-produced our junior high graduation show in St. Louis.

So brilliant was I in try-outs (seriously) that I was asked to direct the production. Sylvia was one of the judges.  As a performer, I was assigned the stock role of the "worldly older sister."  Masterful type-casting but halfway into rehearsals I had to morph into ingenue when that student performer dropped out.  It was a challenge for all of us, and our trouple had a great time.  

I have memories of practicing how to stay on my feet when given a push by the old woman  character and struggling not to laugh when we did bits intended to provoke hilariity in the audience. The review in the student paper was mostly complimentary and a bit arch as written by a faculty member from the philosophy department. I had barely passed my sophomore year class with him.

Bread, what does this ramble have to do with the staff of life in California? The pictures on this page, mostly Ron's, were taken at Wild Flour Bread in Freestone, California.  Our friends Toni and Al who live partly in Portland and Santa Rosa, CA., were our generous hosts in the latter. They responded to my interest in discovering artisan bakers.  A bumpy ride took us near Sebastopol, sort of a 21st century style hippiedom (more affluence than the 20th) to Wild Flour.

Bakery as a happening.  From the hand-carved sign at the entrance to the limited hours and days open for business.  "We want to meet our customers," the message reads on their website.  Friday through Monday, 8:30 to 6 but you better get there before noon because there is a very, very long line coming out of that door and into their pretty garden.

Cannot find my notes to name the delicious loaf we took back to Santa Rosa from this hardworking brick oven that produces about 900 loaves each day. There was the biscotti like none I've ever had, two kinds--one with hazelnuts, six inches long, $2.50 each and worth every nickel.  Why do I remember something as inane as the price and forget to take a photo?  

Right behind the door was one long customer table.  People related and not sat there and attacked the pecan sticky rolls.  The next time.

The art on the walls enhanced the bakery's Happening feel.Their poster looked as if it had been adapted from a production of "Angels in America."  Alongside the bucolic paintings of cows and my personal  favorites: chickens.

A woman who worked here told me there is a plan in the works to open another in Portland.  Could it be...that would be wonderful.   

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*Irreverently named for second president of the college and the chapel named for him, Charles Finney (1792-1785), evangelist of the Second Great Awakening. 

**In searching Oberlin archives for the influence of commedia on other graduates I discoverd Elena Day,late 20th century graduate, who developed the college's "...first comedy improv group, was rebuked by the great Jacques Lecoq, and developed a real cute character for Cirque du Soleil."  Perhaps our paths will cross.

Clouds over PDX...returning home

Nine days in northern California (Santa Rosa & San Francisco) were sunnier than Portland from all reports.  On our return these singular cloud formations welcomed us at the airport, a/k/a PDX.  Hint of a little rain out there but we are lucky again.

More to follow about our adventures in visiting, walking, BREAD in coming posts.