English Bacon?

On the weekend we headed out to the other side of town to Gartner's Country Meat Market because they claimed to sell 'English' Bacon. To our surprise, it was a real butchers with knives. Not the usual supermarket with shrinkwrapped pre-cut meats. We found the English bacon at the end of the counter, next to a couple of other types of bacon.

In Britain we don't call bacon 'English' bacon. We have a much more diverse set of bacon types than in the US. Back bacon, side bacon, streaky bacon, dry cured, wiltshire cured etc, etc. So British expats in the US soon begin to miss the good bacon from back home, when faced with the poor selection in the US. It is almost all streaky, smoked bacon. There is also 'Canadian' bacon, which isn't bacon at all.

So it was time to test it. I pulled one out of the wrapping and put it in a pan

The butcher claims it is like English back bacon. The first thing you notice is that it isn't shaped like back bacon. It is much larger and rounder, filling my small pan. Presumably this is because they cut up the pig differently in the US and just processed meat from the same general area as normal back bacon. It was cut very thick, which is fine. It certainly smelled right.

There is a lot less fat than you find on typical American bacon and it is mostly situated around the outside rather than running through the middle.

I started cooking it the usual way, first on high to get it going, then down to low to continue cooking. Three minutes later it started smelling like proper bacon and started to darken a bit. Being thick, the fat hasn't started rendering yet.


Another three minutes things start bubbling and it shrinks a little:
Another three minutes, more shrinking and fat rendering, it's time to turn it over:

So here's what the other side looks like. It doesn't cook like American bacon which turns curly and brittle and crispy very quickly. It cooks like a normal meat, browning on the outside and staying chewy in the middle.

This bacon then takes on the nice property of lifting up in the middle instead of curling up at the edges, so the sides cook well and the fat renders well. So it's much less fussy than American bacon to cook. As you can see, it's cooking nice and uniformly.
Three more minutes and its looking better with most of the fat rendered out.

Time to turn it over again and see what's happening underneath

Another 3 minutes and it looks done.

Pat it off on a paper towel. It's not crispy, it's proper bacon you can chew instead of the typical American bacon flavoured tortilla chip.

The taste test. Slap it in between some white bread and give it a go.

Success! It tastes like proper bacon. Even quick quality, fancy, thick, proper bacon.

There isn't an inch deep oil slick in the pan either. So we'll be coming back for more when the bacon we brought runs out.

What beer?

A controlled and scientific study, operated out of my fridge, has established that Newcastle Brown added to dough makes better bread than Heineken. If you send 6 packs of other beer types, I will test them on your behalf.

The Bread Recipe

This recipe is a variant of the popular no-knead bread cooked in a crock pot recipe but has undergone a lot of tweaking to get consistent results and optimum crust, following a few months of experimentation.

I'm not in the habit of posting recipes on the internet, but I get asked for this recipe a lot, so I can just point people here when they come asking.

The original recipe as invented by Jim Lahey and propagated by Mark Bittman can be found here.

They call for 3 cups of flour, but cups are not a reliable measure and the hydration level matters here.

They call for 1 5/8 cups of water. Fine, but measuring to 1/8 cup in normal kitchen measuring jugs isn't easy.

The show 'America's Test Kitchen' did a segment on this bread. They claimed it was hard to get consistent results, so they reduced the hydration a bit and added vinegar and beer for flavour. To compensate for the lack of hydration, they had to knead the dough a bit after the first rise. Unfortunately, this messes up the glorious crumb texture, killing the random big holes that make the crumb so perfect. They also suggested heating the pot to 500F then reducing the oven to 425 when you put the dough in. That bit works perfectly.

I merged the two recipes and did a bit of pre-mixing to easily get the consistency of results that ATK stated is hard to get.

The Rules...

The pot
Use a big Le Creuset Style pot. Do get the metal knob. Le Cruset sell them. I don't think the brand matters. Steam is steam and dough is dough. Neither cares what brand the pot is.

The same dough in a smaller Le Cruset will not work out the same. It probably reduces the rate at which moisture gets out, because there's less volume of air above the dough and the dough is more spherical and climbing the walls, so there's a smaller volume to surface area ratio. The risk is that you get a grey, over moist, tasteless crumb. I get around this by leaving the smaller pot in for five more minutes than in the larger pot. Experiment to be sure.

The Ingredients

• Weigh your flour and liquid. Don't measure by volume.
• 15 oz of bread flour
• 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar.
• ~3 oz light beer
• Enough water to make the liquid up to 13 oz with water.
• 2 teaspoons of Kosher salt.
• 1/8 teaspoon of yeast.

All other recipes call for instant yeast, but good luck finding it in your local supermarket. I use Bob's Red Mill Active Dry yeast. Yeast lore suggests that a smaller amount of instant yeast == a larger amount of active dry yeast and the active dry needs to be proofed. Whatever the truth of that, 1/8 teaspoon of Bob's active dry works great. Keep the yeast in the fridge. Mine's going strong a year later. In this bread, less yeast really is more. You want the stuff to grow slowly, giving time for enzymatic action to have a go before the yeast gobbles up all the food.

The procedure
This probably could be described as the - "measure by weight, assemble like Lahey, ingredients like Americas Test Kitchen but keep the full hydration" - method.

I follow these steps and get consistent results.

• Put the dry goods in your biggest bowl and stir it up. I use a whisk. You want the yeast and salt to be well distributed before you start the sticky phase. This is one of the important steps that leads to consistent results.
• Pour in the liquid and mix it up with your hand until it is well integrated. Try not to get dough on the rim of the bowl, if you do, wipe it off. You need a clean edge for the cling film.

I use a spatula to clean off the dough club hand and scrape the sides of the bowl down to the dough and push the edges of the dough in, making a more spherical shape.

• Cover the bowl tightly in clingfilm and leave in a warm place for 18 hours.

The typical recipe says leave it in a warm place. My kitchen isn't warm at night and I don't have a bakery where it is warm. So the bowl goes on the counter on top of the dishwasher and the dishwasher is started. The heat from the dishwasher is just right to make the yeast happy. You will thank me for this, because it not only guarantees a rise, but you're sure to have a clean bowl for your Wheetabix in the morning, since you've just run the dishwasher.

You then need to shape it and put it in a proofing bowl.

Spill out the dough onto a heavily floured surface. Other recipies say 'lightly floured' I don't know what they are thinking. The dough will stick to anything. Be generous with the flour underlay if you want to to go easy. Spread it out a bit. Use your fingertips and try to avoid degassing it. Fold in the four sides. Try to pull and stretch a bit as you lift an edge to fold it. The original video shows it well at around 2.23 into the action.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU .

Here's where the America Test Kitchen version comes back in. Lahey messed with cloths and polenta which seems messy and the polenta burns. America's Test Kitchen lined a proofing bowl (a skillet in their case) with a square of parchment. I just use the bowl I did the first rise in (for less washing). So I do this..

• Spray the parchment with some pam.
• Line the bowl with the parchment, pam side up.
• Dump in the dough to rise for a couple of hours. 3-4 hours rise won't do any harm and will give a bit more lift.

The genius here is you can use the parchment paper to lift the dough into the scorching hot pot and use it to lift the bread back out again when its done. This is a lot better than fiddling with oven gloves.

I had experimented with a range of temperatures and landed on 425 as giving the right crispy, chewy crust while avoiding the over dry, slightly burnt edge. But the lift wasn't perfect. ATK solved this. They suggested heating the pot to 500F, putting in the dough and reducing the temperature to 425 to bake. The initial higher heat gives a better lift. The 425F bake gives a good crust. So do that.

• Heat the pot in the oven for 45+ minutes to 500F.
• Remove the very hot pot from the oven.
• Take the dough from the proofing bowl and put in the very hot pot by lifting it on the parchment. Lower both the parchment and dough into the pot. The parchment acts as a lining to stop it sticking.
• Put the lid back on on the pot and return it to the oven.
• Reduce the temperature to 425 F.
• Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on.
• Bake for another 20 with the lid off. 25-30 if the pot is small.

Do dump in the dough with the parchment and all. If you don't do that, at least put a bit of lining parchment in the bottom. I was happy to find that the bread didn't stick to my shiny new Le Cruset. I was less happy to find that it stuck hard to my less than shiny Le Cruset after I had used it a few times resulting in a torn and non pretty loaf.

Once you have the loaf out and on a cooling rack, do not cut it before it has cooled. Leave it until tomorrow preferably. If you take a loaf out hot and cut it right away, it will be grey, over moist and tasteless. The carry over is important.

The pitfalls...
Here are the things that I can confirm from personal experience, will make your day worse:

Too much water/Too little flour == Wet nasty bread. Do weigh your ingredients.

A small pot runs the risk of over wet crumb. Do use a bigger pot, or leave a smaller pot in longer.

Too much yeast == a small, hard loaf with less flavour. The excess yeast chomps down on all the available food and then runs out. The action is over before any enzymatic action came in to improve the flavour and by the time you get to the dough 18 hours later, it has risen and deflated again.

Too hot == nasty crust. People seem to like recommending astronomical temperatures. Don't listen. 400 gives you supermarket bread. 425 is much much better. 425 is better than 450 and 500 will give a thick, bone dry, dark, semi burnt crust.

The wrong beer is bad. Don't use your special import Theakstons old Peculiar. Do use some lightweight, light coloured larger/pilsner thing from the local supermarket. Quality beer was never intended to be baked.

No lining in the pot == A torn loaf the third time you try, because it sticks to the inside of the pot.

Dead yeast. It's dead. It won't rise your dough. By some quality yeast from your local Whole Foods store. I like Bob's Red Mill Active Dry. It's magic.

The Summary
There's quite a bit of stuff there, but once you've done it a couple of times, you'll find it's just 5 minutes assembly in the evening. Then five minutes operating the oven the next day, with lots of waiting in between. So it's not a lot of effort to produce better bread than you can buy.

Thanksgiving Bake-a-thon

A huge baking session is over. 4 loaves of bread started yesterday, second rise and baking this evening. With some luck these will turn out to be an improvement over all previous attempts, following some tweaking of the liquid mix (the vinegar/beer/water ratio) and resolving on 425 as the best temperature for crust and crumb. We will find out tomorrow.

This was followed by 6 Peter Reinhart style delayed fermentation pizza dough balls being assembled and frozen, awaiting a 24 hour thaw in the fridge to enable enzymatic action, before warming up for the yeast to kick in, thus making a perfect pizza crust.

All done while juggling with wifey for access to the oven, who was baking apple pies and pumpkin pies.

Sharp Cheese

I cut my thumb on cheese today. It is possible.

Fidelity Investments Can't Count Money

Fidelity Investments is a pretty frustrating stockbroker to use. They keep finding new and inventive ways to prevent you investing your money.

Today's example is something of a classic..




Enough said.

Views of the Sky

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the sunroof in the oversized, behemoth of a truck is functional and fully slidey-back-and-forthy.

At the used car dealer, the sunroof looked bad. It was covered in duct tape. The shade inside wouldn't slide. The dishonest car dealer informed us that the previous owner found it was leaking and so taped it over.

The real reason it was leaking was because the glass wasn't in one piece any more. It was shattered into a million little pieces. These glass shards were not in evidence inside the car, but the were pretty much packed into every raceway, slider track, crevice and corner of the sunroof mechanism.

This wasn't clear until the duct tape and bailing wire cover was removed and I climbed on a ladder to get a view from above. Obviously I wasn't going to remove the cover until the replacement glass came in, since it was that that was keeping the rain out. So by that time the money had changed hands for the truck and we were back on the other side of town.

I'm not bitter. The price was right.

So Thursday, the $400 bit of glass arrived in the mail from a wrecking yard in Nebraska. Filthy and dusty, but in one piece. Of course, shortly thereafter, anyone who set eyes on it proclaimed that I should have gone to so-and-so's yard and talked to so-and-so. They could have got me a better deal. This is all very well, but until such a time as they get off their behind and put their automotive parts on Ebay, Craiglist or something I can find with google, they don't get the sale. This Nebraka wrecking yard not only put the thing up on the web to be found, but included which models and years it fits into. Thus proof that information is not only power, but it gets the sale as well, especially when it is posted on Ebay.

I expect all the physicists, computer scientists and information theorists out there to wince a little, since you know full well that information = a measure of disorder = entropy = heat energy not available to do work. It certainly isn't power in the work*time sense, but bear with me, I'm writing for a lay audience.

Back to the point. Yesterday was spent on a ladder with tweezers, pulling out every bit of glass I could find. I would clear them out, get in the car and move the sunroof back and forth. Each time it would move a little further and push another pile of glass bits into view before locking up. Repeat ad nauseum and after an eternity (time runs more slowly when on the top of a ladder with the neighbor peering on) it started to lumpily slide all the way back and forth. After some more fiddling, it slid almost smoothly, but no more glass to pull out was appearing.

A bucketful of goof off was employed to remove the duct tape glue from around the seal line and the new glass was screwed in. Another half hour of fiddling with the position and it would sit in its hole correctly.

This morning, right on time, the sky's opened and rain, the big, blatty, wet sort or rain came down. So back into the truck for a look-see and yay, it doesn't leak.

So I now have a fully functional sunroof through which I can see the rain and cloudy sky.

Celebrations were held at the McMenamins Oak Hills Brewpub. Wifey had the black bean, tortilla dip thing. I had the hamburger, to go with my new truck driving image. Nestled under the menus and specials was a small slip of blue paper advertising Penney's Gin. McMenamins are doing their own gin now. A G&T was ordered and it turned out to be quite good. Very fruity. Not quite Hendricks, but you can't expect miracles. Kudos to McMenamins for not fluffing it up, like most gin vendors do.