Garlic Mozzarella bread ニンニク、モッツァレラチーズパン

Somehow my wife found a YouTube video of this recipe and I follow the link to the recipe. The next day which happened to be Sunday, I made this bread. Although I followed the recipe and baked at 400F for 20 minutes, it was a bit over done (I used "intense heat" setting for the oven and the baking stone was in place. Next time I will bake this bread at 350F). The surface was nicely crunchy (essentially "fried" with butter).

The melted Mozzarella cheese made nice layers.

We started enjoying this bread as soon as it came out of the oven and it was still steaming. Since this was evening, we had it with a glass of Napa Cabernet. Within an hour the loaf had been reduced by 2/3's to the the size shown below. If you are wondering 'was the bread good' this should say it all.  This was sort of modified pizza or focaccia and yes, it was really good.

This recipe came from the blog "Baking and cooking with Ninik".


Ingredients:
Dough:
250g (2 cups) all-purpose flour/plain flour
5g (1-1/2 tsp) instant yeast
25g (2 tbsp) sugar
1/2 tsp salt
42g (3 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted
125ml (1/2 cup) warm milk
1 egg, whisked
Flour for kneading, if necessary

250g lactose-free fresh Mozzarella cheese (125g of each) (I just used cow milk fresh Mozzarella) .
Slice into small pieces.
Other cheese could be used if Mozzarella isn't available.

Garlic Scallion butter:
2 tbsp softened butter
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp chopped scallions
1/2 tsp salt
Mix well

A sharp blade or regular knife.
Egg to brush the edge, if you are using.
Freshly cracked black pepper

Method for the dough:
In a mixing bowl, stir all the dough ingredients into a soggy dough.
Transfer to the counter, use flour if necessary to fold the dough with your fingers, fold, and press to guide the dough into a ball.
Put the dough ball on a baking tray (or we can use a round baking pan/pizza pan).
Cover until almost doubled (#1). After the dough expands, flatten with hand into a circle (#2).
Using a sharp blade, score the dough crisscross style (#3). Brush with egg at the edges if you like.
Spread garlic butter on the surface evenly (#4). Mark again the scored with a spoon for easier putting the cheese.
Insert pieces of Mozzarella cheese to fill the scored dough (#5). Add freshly cracked black pepper on top.
Bake at 200°C (400°F) preheated oven, top-bottom heat, for 20 - 25 minutes. An oven may vary.
During baking, you might find the butter leaking out to the baking tray (#4) (My oven appears to be hotter, I will bake it at 350F next time).
Best to eat warm to get the stretchy melting cheese. (Although, believe me, it is mighty-fine even when not piping hot.)

I think the scallion butter really made this bread special. The scallions became caramelized in the butter. The dough itself was very tender and almost slightly sweet. It made a nice contrast to the crunch of the crust and the toasted cheese. Wine and this bread, what else do you need? I will try it again for sure.

Version #2: The first version of this bread did not last long so fairly soon I made a second version with some various tweaks to hopefully improve an already pretty good final product. I decided to include my notes as an addendum to this blog. One of the changes I made was to score (cut) the loaf after I spread on the garlic onion butter as seen below (instead of before as suggested by the original recipe). This way, the cuts stayed open and it was easier to stuff them with the cheese.

Cheese stuffing is still a bit tedious but easier than with the previous version.

Another change was that I lowered the temperature to 350F. The original recipe did say the temperature may vary based on the oven. The oven I use is a convection oven and may run a bit hot. As shown below the loaf came out much better.

As before we had this with a glass of red wine. As before the bread was great and the changes I made were an improvement. The cheese was better distributed and cooking at the lower temperature resulted in a better texture to the bread. It was much more tender with an almost cake like crumb that was very pleasing.  As before the scallions caramelized beautifully and permeated the flavor throughout. As before, the only problem with this bread is that it pulls a pretty quick disappearing act. It's hard to resist going back for just one more piece--just another little one.

Homemade yogurt 自家製ヨーグルト

We do not like low-fat or non-fat yogurt. We go for the full fat version. Our favorite is Seven Stars Farm Yogurt from Pennsylvania. The only place we can get this is at Whole Foods. Even before Covid-19, we had periods when even regular plain Dannon yogurt was not available at our grocery store. This occurred at the start of Covid-19. In the face of this shortage, my wife decided to start making her own yogurt again. This is something she did many years ago as a means of milk inventory control. She used a recipe given to her by a Palestinian friend whose family used it to make yogurt in the middle-east. Unlike other recipes which require pedantic small jars heated for a long time in a yogurt heating appliance, this recipe can make large quantities of yogurt overnight in "one sitting". This recipe uses commercial Dannon yogurt as the seed. We remembered it as a success but my wife has not made it for sometime. Nonetheless, she found the old recipe and made a batch.

According to this recipe you can use any quantity of milk with any fat content. If using low fat milk, however, add 1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk (NFDM) for every 1/2 gallon of low fat milk. (This boosts the volume of milk solids in the milk making the resulting yogurt thicker). Bring the milk to a boil. Add the NFDM and allow the milk to cool in a bowl until it reaches 110 to 115 degrees at which point add 4 oz. of Dannon plain yogurt. (The same amount is used regardless of the quantity of milk). Wrap the seeded bowl of milk in several towels to keep it warm overnight. The next morning you have yogurt.

My wife used to heat up the milk in a dutch oven but this was the most tedious part of making yogurt since you have to continuously keep stirring it to keep it from boiling over and to prevent scorching on the bottom. She read somewhere that a slow cooker could be used to heat up the milk. So, we took our slow cooker, which we have not used for ages, out of storage. She heated the milk in the cooker set on low for three hours then turned it off. She took about a cup of the hot milk and using an immersion blender added the NFDM whipping it until all the NFDM dissolved. She then added the whipped portion to the rest of the milk and stirred it until everything was incorporated. (She did this because she found from experience sometimes the NFDM does not dissolve completely and forms an unpleasant layer in the yogurt on the bottom of the bowl). She let the milk cool for two hours until it was about 110 to 115 degrees before inoculating with the seed yogurt. She put the slow cooker bowl with the lid on into an ice chest to keep it warm overnight. The final product is shown below.

As you can see the consistency of this yogurt is quite different from the original Dannon. It is, nonetheless, quite firm and creamy. A major difference as shown by the yogurt dripping off the spoon is that it is very elastic. When the bowl is gently shaken it jiggles almost like jello. My wife made some Greek yogurt from this batch. The resulting Greek yogurt is very creamy and a dip we made using the Greek yogurt was much better than one with just strained Dannon. I also made some salmon salad and potato salad using this yogurt and it was much better and creamier than when I use the regular Greek yogurt.

My wife also learned that she was not alone in this yogurt making endeavor. While people were stuck at home during Covid-19, they were making yogurt in addition to baking bread. She read an article in the Washington Post about yogurt starters from "Culture for Health" and ordered some. The heirloom yogurt starter she got contained 4 different kinds. She used the "Viili" starter first which is described as "A Finnish yogurt variety, very mild and creamy, with a fairly thick consistency. It’s a versatile favorite that’s perfect on its own or in any yogurt recipe." According to the recipe, this starter does not require a heated environment. Following the instructions she used one cup of cold 4% milk and dissolved the starter in a glass jar, covered it with several layers of cheese cloth fastened by rubber band around the opening.

After 24 hours, it was still basically a glass of milk. The instructions said it could ferment for up to 48 hours. By then it had congealed a bit but was still basically a drink of milk rather than yogurt. She moved it to the refrigerator. The instructions recommended refrigerating it for at least 6 hours before tasting. The picture below shows the batch after a few days in the refrigerator. It firmed up a bit and had some curd. It also had a nice tangy/acidic yogurt flavor without any "off" taste. But it was way too runny.

Somewhat disappointed she fired off an e-mail to the company explaining the situation and asking for advice. They responded very quickly saying that the dried starter may take some time to fully "wake-up" to its full potential. As long as the first batch still smelled good they recommended starting a new batch using the ratio of one tbs from the 1st batch to 1 cup of cold milk. They recommended making 1 to 2 cups with that ratio (no more no less). Then they suggested she make successive batches with the most recent batch as starter until the desired consistency is attained. My wife used 2 cups of 4% milk with 2 tbs of the first batch for the second batch. After 48 hours it congealed significantly more than the 1st batch. The picture below is after 1 day in the refrigerator. It coagulated a bit more with a creamy consistency.

She then used 3 tbs from the second batch with 3 cups of milk for the 3rd batch. It was yet more solid (below picture). In addition it firmed up in 24 rather than 48 hours. We thought this consistency was not bad. She then used 4 tbs of batch 3 with 4 cups milk for batch 4. As shown below, after 24 hours this is just the right consistency and has developed a more pronounced tangy yogurt flavor. Success!

Well, now we have no shortage of yogurt. We have two options for making it and both are very good; one for low fat milk that results in yogurt that tastes like full fat and one for "high-octane" i.e. 4 % fat milk. It's a good thing we like yogurt and eat a lot of it. As long as milk is available we will no longer ever be without yogurt.

Crumpets クランペット

My wife came across an article about using sour dough starter discards to make crumpets. Although we are not making sour dough starter (yet), making crumpets sounded interesting. We have never made them before and, to the best of our knowledge, nor have we ever eaten them. But they look like English muffins and our recent success making English muffins encouraged us to make crumpets. Also, we happened to have English muffin baking rings. These rings did not work out so well with English muffins because the batter is so sticky, it is almost impossible to get it into the rings. But they are necessary for making crumpets because the batter is so runny it won't hold its shape without them. We found a few recipes on line and, we ended up combining two recipes. The cooking part is a bit tricky and we finally came up with a method by combining the two recipes.

Both sets of pictures show the second batch of crumpets toasted served like English muffins (two layers separated, see below "How to serve"). The first batch did not go so well. You can see the nice crunchy surface with all the little nooks and crannies that capture the melted butter.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups milk
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 cups water (lukewarm)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

Direction:
1. Warm the milk in a saucepan. Make sure that it is warm but not boiling (I was not sure how hot the milk should be but the milk gets mixed into the dry ingredients including the yeast. I reasoned that if it was too hot it would kill the yeast so I made sure the milk was about 110F.
2. Whisk together the warmed milk, flour, yeast, and sugar in a large bowl. (#2) I used a stand mixer with a paddle.
3. Once combined, add half the water and beat into the batter.
4. Continue to add more water until the batter is thick and smooth. Stop adding water once the batter reaches the consistency of thick cream. (I was not exactly sure what that consistency was, but I used up almost all the water so I decided that was enough).
5. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm, draft-free place until foaming. This should take about 1 hour (#2). After one hour, it smelled very yeasty and looked bubbly.
6. Whisk the salt and baking powder into the batter (I added the salt in the dry ingredients).

How to cook (this is the most tricky part):
My wife carefully buttered the inside of the English muffin rings. Then, we melted the butter (my wife insisted it had to be butter not vegetable oil) in a large cast iron skillet on medium low flame.  The recipe I was following suggested if the batter seeps out from the bottom of the ring, it is too watery; add more flour. Conversely, if the surface of the cooking crumpet does not form many little bubbles the batter is too thick, add more water.  I started with one ring as a test. There was no seepage out the bottom (#3) and bubbles formed on the top. I concluded it was just right. So I went ahead and filled 4 rings (#4). The recipe said, fill the rings to just below the upper edge which I did.  After a few minutes, the batter expanded and started running over the top edge of the rings. The recipe said to flip the crumpets over with the ring still on to cook the other side. This resulted in the excess batter going all over the bottom of the pan (#5). The crumpets were too thick and the center remained somewhat wet and doughy even after cooking them for over 20 minutes. This batch was deemed "a lack of success".

So, the next batch we adapted some ideas from the King-Arthur website recipe for crumpets. We filled the rings just half full (#6). After a few minutes, the batter expanded coming close to the upper edge of the rings (#7) (this looked much better than the previous batch). But for some rings, the batter did not come up to the upper edge, so flipping them with the ring still on would not have worked out well. The King Arthur recipe indicated that after 4 minutes cooking, as the edge of the batter dries out a bit the ring could be removed using a tong. We thought removing the ring would be difficult but as long as the batter did not expand to reach the top edge of the ring, it was surprisingly easy. We then flipped the muffin to cook the other side (without the ring) (#8). This worked much better than the method suggested in the previous recipe. We let the muffins cool on the cooling rack (the first picture above).

Tips for cooking:
1. Fill with batter to half height of the rings.
2. After 4 minutes, remove the rings using a tong.
3. Then, flip it over.
4. cook each side for 5 minutes for a total to 10 minutes. Then take another 5 minutes, as needed, to make sure both sides are evenly browned.

How to serve:
The crusts of the crumpets we made were nice a crunchy with a lovely browned butter taste. But even with the second and third batches, the insides were a bit wet and doughy. So my wife decided to separate the crumpet into 2 halves like an English muffin using her special fork method and toasted it. This was much better for us. The inside dried out and added to the lovely crunchiness of the crust. In general these were pretty good but in the future, we may just stick with our previously successful no knead english muffin recipe.

No Knead English muffin イングリィシュマフィン

We were offered a digital baking cookbook from Washington Post by email to use during the covid-19 stay-at-home period. (We subscribe to the digital version of WP having given up on the paper version many years ago). One of the recipes in the cookbook was for no knead English muffin, and it piqued our interest. I used to make English muffins and even have metal rings in which to bake them. But the dough was so sticky just getting a portion of it into the rings was a struggle.  My wife, started baking English muffin bread so I stopped making English muffins.  Even so, getting the dough into the loaf pans requires a pair of scissors and some finesse. This recipe, however, sounded interesting and also looked easier to make despite taking a long time for the dough to rise. The picture below shows the final product toasted and buttered after my wife carefully separated the muffin into two halves using a fork.

Digression alert: according to my wife this fork method, which she learned eating many English muffins as a child, is "de rigueur" for cutting them into halves. It's done by inserting the tines of a fork from the edge of the muffin toward the center multiple times around the entire perimeter. Once this is done it easily pulls apart with just a gentle tug.  As you can see from the picture it works pretty well. The two halves remain intact and the nice nooks and crannies are preserved. The original recipe calls for pulling them apart by inserting your thumbs and pulling with your fingers...needless to say, my wife quickly vetoed that method after she saw the mangled mess that resulted from my attempt to implement it. 

Ingredients:
2 cups  bread flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1⁄4 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1⁄2 cups cold milk (any percentage)
1⁄4 cup honey
1 large egg white, cold

1 cup fine cornmeal, for dusting
2 tablespoons or more unsalted butter for cooking

Directions:
Mix together the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients, mix well with a spatula until smooth but sticky dough forms (#1). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 4-5 hours in warm place. Dust a rimmed cookie sheet with the corn meal and drop on scoops of the dough using a large spoon (#2). Dust the surface of the dough with additional cornmeal and cover with a plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator for 12 hours (we did this over night). The dough spread out so each dollop was almost touching each other (#3). Heat up a large cast iron skillet on medium low flame and when it is hot, add the butter (#4). Using a spatula, put the dough portions into the skillet (#5) and cook 6-7 minutes turning the dough 180 degrees half-way through cooking to get an even browning (our first batch was a bit over browned). Flip the muffins over and cook the other side (#6). My wife inserted a bamboo skewer from the side to the center to make sure the muffin was cooked. We put the cooked muffin in the wire rack to cool.

These muffins were our combined effort. The next morning, we cooked up the muffins and they were great. Although it takes time to prepare the dough, it is much easier to make than what I went through before. The addition of the whole wheat flour made it much better than just making it with white flour. The whole wheat flavor really came through with a mild nuttiness. Also, the butter became richly browned and added another wonderful taste dimension. We will make these again for sure. We can improve these in two ways; 1. reducing the salt in half (above we reduce to 2 tsp)--it tasted too salty to us and 2. Use lower heat to cook the muffin. The heat was too high and especially the first batch- came out too brown. Making the English muffin reminded us of naan we made which was also very good. Maybe we should make that again.

Buttermilk muffin with biga ビガで作ったバターミルクマフィン

My wife's baking. This is a variation of buttermilk muffin she made previously. During the Covid-19 induced yeast shortage, she made this with biga/starter to mostly to conserve the amount of yeast we had. Although the taste and texture are very similar to the original, this one appears to have a much more pronounced slightly tangy buttermilk flavor.

Ingredients:
Biga
1 3/4 cup flour
2 cups buttermilk
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough
Biga
1 tbs. sugar
2 tsp. salt
3 tbs. butter
2 1/4 cups flour or more as needed to make smooth dough
additional 1/8 tsp yeast (optional)

Directions:
In the evening mix together the ingredients for the biga, wrap the bowl in towels and leave overnight.

Next day mix the biga and other ingredients to make the dough. Rise in a bowl until doubled in size. Punch down. Measure 2 1/4 pieces of dough and form into a bun. Place buns in heavily buttered pyrex baking dish. Let rise again until buns are touching and about doubled in size. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden and sound hollow when tapped. Remove immediately from pan to cool.

These buns were fantastic. Again the lovely biga dough resulted in a richly flavored muffin. We'll definitely be making this again.

The picture below shows a combination of baked goods we had for breakfast one day. We freeze the bread and muffins we bake. Then in the morning we just briefly microwave a selection of what we have available in the freezer in a silicon container. Left upper is buttermilk muffin made with biga, right upper is sweet potato bread with ricotta sweet potato filling and the lower is mint cake. This mint cake was made with only mint and no spinach as was used in the original recipe since spinach adds nice color but not much taste.

Of course, no monrning is complete without our cappcino (or more like latte).

This type of assorted bread/muffin is getting to be our regular breakfast on weekends.

Japanese sweet potato muffin Version3 サツマイモ マフィン バージョン３

This is the third iteration of Japanese "Satsuma-imo" sweet potato roll/muffin. In dealing with various food shortages during the covid-19 crisis we took an inventory of the foods we had in the freezer. My wife discovered a package of prepared satsuma-imo which she had prepared in the fall but forgotten about. She immediately decided to make sweet potato muffins. She basically used the recipe for the first version of sweet potato muffin and did not rise the dough over night in the refrigerator as she did in version 2 . The good news is that we finally have regular yeast again (from Amazon, Fleischmann's instant yeast* 1 lb) so she did not use biga to make this. She used the usual amount of active yeast.

* Digression alert:
This is the largest amount of yeast we ever bought but this was the only package available. We usually buy a 4 oz jar of Fleischmann's active yeast. We are bit confused about  the differences between "active", "instant" and "rapid-rise" or "rapid-acting" yeast. This is a somewhat confusing subject but this web site appears to provide the most clear explanation. The following is what we understand from reading this article.  The only difference between "active" and "instant" yeasts is the size of the granules. The granules in "active" yeast are larger than in "instant" yeast and require "proofing" or "activating" before being mixed into the rest of the ingredients.  Because the granules in "instant" yeast are finer it can be mixed into dry ingredients without proofing. In addition, instant yeast unlike active yeast can be frozen--which we will have to do since this is such a large quantity. "Rapid-acting" and "Rapid-rising" yeasts are brand-specific names. These yeasts include additional ingredients that make rising faster and these yeasts are not suited for long fermentation such as overnight rising in the refrigerator or making over night pre-ferments.

This 3rd iteration of sweet potato muffin, is basically the same as the first version. The major difference is the mixture used for the stuffing. My wife didn't have enough sweet potato to just use that in the stuffing as she did in the original version so she used a mixture of ricotta cheese and sweet potato instead. As you can see, as it cooked steam made a space over the stuffing but the muffin tasted really good. We like this stuffing better.

She brushed the top with melted butter before placing into the oven.

Ingredients:
for the bread
1 cup of processed sweet potato (1/2 cup for the bread and about 1/2 cup to use as filling in the bread)
4 1/2 teaspoons (two 1/4-ounce packets) active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 to 3 1/2 cups flour, plus more for the work surface
Oil, for greasing the proofing bowl.
an additional 1 tsp butter to brush on the muffins before baking

for the stuffing
1/2 cup processed sweet potato
1/2 cup ricotta cheese

Directions:
Process the sweet potato by cooking several Japanese sweet potatoes either in the Weber grill or microwave. Let cool, peel and thoroughly mash in a food mill so it is smooth. (Since we made this batch of sweet potatoes in the Weber one weekend to have with barbecued chicken it had butter and soy sauce previously added).

Combine the yeast with 1 tablespoon of the sugar and the warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer; proof for 5 minutes.  Add the eggs and beat on low speed, then add the remaining sugar, the butter and salt. Beat on low speed for about 2 minutes (no need to scrape down the bowl), then add the sweet potato and beat for about 1 minute. Add 1 cup of the flour at a time, beating to form a slightly stiff dough that has pulled away from the sides of the bowl; add flour as needed to form dough. Knead on speed 2 for 7 to 10 minutes. 

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface; knead for 2 to 3 minutes. When it is smooth and springy, shape it into a ball. Use oil to lightly grease the inside of a large bowl, then place the dough in it, turning it to coat evenly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap; let the dough rest for about 1 hour or until it has doubled in size. The dough will be ready when you can push 2 fingers into it and the indentations remain.

Meanwhile mix the remaining processed sweet potato and ricotta cheese in another bowl and set aside. (shown in picture below).

Punch down the dough. Cut into pieces weighing about 2 oz. each (about 56 g). Flatten the dough and put a small scoop of the sweet potato ricotta mixture in the middle. Pinch the dough around the sweet potato ball and form into a muffin. Place in a greased baking dish. Cover with plastic wrap; let the muffins rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until doubled in size. Just before baking brush with 1 tbs of melted butter. Cook in a preheated oven of 375 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes until golden.

These sweet potato muffins are definitely one of our favorites. They are very nice when stuffed with just excess processed sweet potato but these stuffed with sweet potato and ricotta cheese are even better. The ricotta cheese picks up the flavor of the potato and seems to accentuate it. It has a mild sweetness. In addition the filling is very smooth and creamy. This goes very well with the tenderness of the bread's texture.

Three "otoshi" appetizers お通し３種

There is nothing really new in this line up. These are the three starters we had one evening.

The left and below are Fried salmon in sweet vinegar 鮭の南蛮漬け.  I added salt-broth soaked snap peas スナップ豌豆の塩びたし.

Digression alert: because of social distancing during the covid-19 crisis I have not been able to go to the Japanese grocery store and I was running short of rice vinegar. I bought what I thought was rice vinegar at the regular grocery store but it turned out to be basil and oregano flavored rice vinegar (?!!) I used it in this dish anyway and it actually added a very nice flavor dimension that was an interesting twist on the traditional. We actually liked it. I may have to stock in basil flavored rice vinegar...heaven forbid.

In the dish below I used brazed crunchy cauliflower モンパルナスのカリフラワー炒め, blanched broccoli with sesame sauce ブロッコリの胡麻よごし, and Japanese style omelet with "aonori" 青海苔入りだし巻き.

This dish is braised cabbage, onion, and strips of agura-age or deep dried tofu pouch seasoned with soy sauce and mirin, I posted similar ones with daikon green.

All simple Izakaya affairs but perfect opening of the evening with cold sake.