The BBC doesn't like Beer!

The BBC, supposedly the source of all good things British, seems hooked on flogging plonk.

According to the article linked below, they only talk about wine from high street sellers and refuse to talk about beer, let alone pairing it with food.

Somehow, I get the feeling that it's some kind of leftist 'snobbery'. Then again, it's hard to call it snobbery when it's the crap wine that is usually sold in the high street.

Drink British Beer!


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/28/beeb_beer/

Beers In Spaaaace!

Beer in Space?

Something that only an Australian can think of.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/space-the-final-beer-frontier-20110407-1d5kr.html


Thank God I'm Australian!


Beers to You!

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Beer. Is there anything it can't do?

In short, beer saved a horse's life. Well... almost beer... it was Queensland's (in)famous XXXX.

Not a lot to say about this one other than click the link.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/xxxx-beer-brings-horse-back-from-the-dead-after-bout-of-colic/story-e6freoof-1226031616394

Russians Classify Beer as Alcohol - FOR THE FIRST TIME!

Russia is a wonderful place. Top food. Awesome vodka. Cheap vodka. Lots of vodka.

I don't remember much about their beer, to be quite frank. And neither, it seems, do they.

Finally, beer is being classified as alcohol. Kind of a shame because if it was still classified as a soft-drink/soda, it wouldn't be an employment contract violation to have a few litres with lunch, would it?

Read the article at the other end of the link for more edifying prose about this momentous occasion in beery history: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8342920/Beer-to-be-classified-as-alcohol-for-first-time-in-Russia.html

Not yet beer o'clock - Yeasty.

Vegans, Overmarketing, Lies and Bullshit.

The debate about veganism vs vegetarianism vs omnivorism has raged on for a long while.

Some people choose one or the other, or the choice is made for them, on religious grounds. Those who make a dietary choice for religious reasons are certainly welcome to their faith and their reasons for that choice. It is the right one for you.

The strongest objection towards those who encourage others to choose veganism is towards those persons and organisations who over-market, and with great fervency, falsehoods, misquotes and misinformation in order to further their particular cause.

Having been in the selling profession for a very long time, I've noticed that when someone is selling something - an idea, some goods, anything - that if they over-sell then there is a huge chance that they need gullible customers to achieve their goal. It's the flip-side of "if it looks to good to be true, then it probably is". It's the "if it looks too horrific to be true, then - yep - you guessed it" situation.

Not long ago, I found a link that offered a free CD about food production in the USA and promised to tell the truth. I thought it interesting enough to write away to receive it and perhaps to learn more about that. After all, food is very dear to our hearts and slightly essential for sustenance of human life. I'm keen on quality food, well grown, ethically produced and harvested and doing it at a fair price so that everyone can be healthy and happy and productive.

I received that disc in the mail. It was a shonky, low-rent collection of pro-vegan propaganda with more copyright violations than I would care to mention. I think Pink Floyd wants their song back, guys. And probably the other 'artists' and their emo-tastic content too.

Propaganda? Yes. Not even thinly veiled. It was pure "if you eat meat, you hate animals" white-hot hate. If a religious organisation was uing similar methodologies, they would be extremists.

It's fair enough to mention that any kind of propaganda like this, regardless of which side of whatever argument is presenting, is quite likely to be weighted to suit their particular and peculiar agenda. Perhaps as a reference, former Soviet era and present North Korean 'news' and 'morality plays' might be a fair representation of propaganda.

Weighting of information? Understandable - it can part of forming a persuasive argument. Marketing spin? So long as it's plausible, factual and ethical then OK, I'll listen and weigh and measure. However, when the content relies on ignorance or innocence to falsely market an ideology - well - that's when I call the material a lie.

The video content was emotive. There were inaccuracies, footage was obtained unlawfully and it was old. Real and accurate visual representation of events? Yes. Majority of meat production occurring in the manner demonstrated in those videos? No. Sorry guys - your content is more sensationalist than some major syndicated 'news' channels.

The audio content? Reprehensible and so full of falsehood and overstatement as to render any good and useful facts and truth therein indistinguishable from the bullshit, extrapolation and misrepresentation. If you listen to the content with an open mind, take the time to assess each 'fact' stated by the speaker and compare the claim to both scientific neutral evidence, WHO data and recommendations, and the anecdotal fact that our species seems to keep surviving... draw your own conclusions.

Excessive non-vegetable content in one's diet? Yes - detrimental. Draw a line in the sand and listen to your body. Eat meat, fish and chicken and pork and all of God's tasty creatures (as permitted by law), but eat plenty of leafy greens, orange vegetables, root vegetables, rice, fruit and all of God's tasty plants too. If you eat three to five more times volume (not weight!) of plants matter compared to the amount of meat you eat, you'll feel better, be healthier and live longer. Give fast food and restaurants a big miss - they don't give a crap about how long you live, just about how much you spend with them.

If you live longer, you can give these nutbag vegan propagandists the mouthful of sensible living advice they deserve. One group decided to rename 'fish' as 'sea-kittens'. I kid you not. Google it. Be prepared to be amazed how much of that amazing vegan THC-containing plant their marketing department must have been consuming to come up with such material and how much completely vegan organic Colombian marching powder the officer who signed off on it may or may not have been consuming. Fish == Sea Kittens? Get outta here.

Go watch "Food Inc" and be wiser about the US food production chain and the errors in quality and management in favour of profit therein. Take the time to find out about bull shit in your food supply. It and the pathogens therein may be in your preferred source of processed meat. Buy local and fresh, if you can.

Ladies and Gentlemen - choose whatever diet you prefer for the reasons you prefer it - but do not let yourself be badgered into a meat-free diet by bullshit.

Cracker-tastic!

Everyone loves crackers! They're crunchy and tasty and ever-so-nice to snack on. Snack crackers!!


Out here in Australia, 'cracker' is a savoury biscuit of some kind. In the USA, I hear it's a derogatory term for white folk. So, if I put some additives in my crackers and they come out a less pale colour, can I describe them with another adjective?


I don't like what I've been tasting from the supermarket on the few odd occasions I buy crackers. Maybe the quality is changing or maybe I'm more discerning, but the taste is no longer as appealing.

I thought to myself, "So - why not make your own crackers?" After all - I've made rather a lot of very tasty bread. Time for some crunchy savoury goodness!


Sourcing around for different recipes, and trying those, has caused me to form the impression that Americans can't cook. Ingredient combinations, flavour errors, cooking times, dough thicknesses and even worse errors were culled out by testing to arrive at a simple, plain and tasty recipe which anyone can do with a minimum of equipment. If you remove the parmesan from this recipe, it becomes the most basic of crackers which can then be re-tailored to any taste.


Here's the recipe for you:

• 100 grams plain flour
• 20 mls olive oil
• 45 mls water, room temperature
• 10 grams dried parmesan (yes, that crap from the 1970s)
• A sprinkle of whatever fancy salt you like
• Some dried herbs to suit your taste

Combine the flour, water, oil and knead until it becomes a silky dough. Adjust flour and water to suit, adding oil to maintain the proportions.


Leave the dough to relax for about 30 minutes.


Preheat your over to 220C.


Roll the dough nice and thin on a sheet of baking paper, place onto a baking tray (a nice flat tray with low walls). Sprinkle the salt and herbs on top and allow to rest for a further five or ten minutes while the oven warms up.


Cut the dough with a blunt knife, pizza cutter or cookie cutters into the shapes and sizes you prefer. They will shrink apart naturally.


Cook in the oven for 8 - 12 minutes, or until the crackers are coloured to your liking.



Have fun with mixing and matching flavours with whatever you sprinkle on top of the unbaked dough.


The recipe is scalable. As always, be aware that different batches of flour need more or less water or oil or other additives to make the same result.

And yes, the recipe is quite similar to the piadina recipe in an earlier post. I wonder why...


Happy Cooking!!

Piadina - Italian Flat Bread - A Hot Trend.

Want to know what the hottest trend in cafe eats is these days? Piadina!


Years ago, it was focaccia. Then came Turkish bread. Somehow, panini slipped its end in and then the cafe sandwich press made all of these bready dishes common and horrid. And let's not forget wraps and lavash and other abominations that happened after the ingredients became available commercially.


Face it: a real focaccia, lovingly grilled or at least toasted under the broiler and then filled with fresh ingredients was a very tasty thing. Ditto the other formats. Now? They're all as cheap as chips and really not tasty at all.


I'm not a food snob at all. I used to be! However, food is all about practical, economical and sensible ways to deliver a top grade and healthy feed every day for yourself and your household, with the occasional frippery and fun, just to keep everyones' mouth happy, isn't it?


Enter the piadina! It's just an unleavened flatbread, which in itself is unexciting. How it can be loaded with all kinds of exciting and tasty  fresh and seasonal ingredients is another dimension in flavour and texture that really needs to be explored. Trendy, tasty and about three minutes of actual cooking time. Fast food that's actually healthy!


This is where you do some Google-fu. There are some places around Sydney, and certainly many other cities, who have cafes who charge ridiculous amounts for a piadina. So, if you want part with at least ten bucks for some meat, cheese, snow pea sprouts and trendy ingredient du jour, then you go ahead, you fashionable fool. For everyone else who has a brain, loves to cook and loves to entertain with something new, I'll show you how to make them for only $0.30 each - plus fillings! You can even make only one for yourself to try out at if you like. It's a top way to use up cold cuts from Christmas roasts. Check out the trendy places online so that you can get some hot ideas for tasty ingredients.


Traditionally, piadina are made with lard. Purists will say that only lard can be used. In these health conscious days, I'll base the recipe on olive oil. It's almost as tasty, and you'll live longer and not be quite so lardy (pun intended). You can cook them on the flat part of your bbq, if you can make it hot enough, or you can cook them in a non-stick frypan. The results will be quite similar.


Here's the insanely simple recipe for 2011's trendiest bread item:

• 100 grams plain flour
  
• 20 mls olive oil
  
• 35 mls warm water (hotter than you would use for yeast dishes, say 45C-60C)
  
• 1 gram salt - very optional
  
• The above makes one only. You can scale it up to make more. Adjust water to match your chosen flour.

Making the dough:

• Put the flour in a pile, make a hole in the middle, pour in the water and the oil (and salt if that's your thing), combine and knead until smooth.
  
• You do not need to flour the bench as the oil will make the dough slippery enough.
  
• Wrap the smooth and well kneaded dough in cling film, let it rest for about thirty minutes. Kneading is done in about one to two minutes.
  
• After resting, press the dough out into something like a circle and finish rolling it out nice and thin and as close to a circle as you can manage. Perfection isn't a requirement here - rustic is cool.
  
• Get your bbq hotplate or frying pan nice and hot and prep your fillings because, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to happen quickly!

Here's some hints for using festive roast leftovers:

• Ham, cheese, snow pea sprouts, apple sauce
  
• Roast beef, hot English mustard, lettuce, sliced Roma tomato, cheese
  
• Turkey breast, cranberry sauce, Camembert or Brie, snow pea sprouts, cheese
  
• Chicken, salami, dried pressed tofu - not in the same dish - and more
  
• And just about anything else you can dream up!

Cooking time:

• Drop your thinly rolled dough onto the cooking surface and let it get a few good dark brown spots from cooking on one side. Don't try to brown the whole thing else it will turn into parchment and be inedible.
  
• Flip it over, and start adding ingredients on one half. You can keep the greens and crispy ingredients out until after it's off the heat, unless you like soggy greens.
  
• After adding fillings, fold one half up and over, to make a 'sandwich'.
  
• Give it about thirty seconds to one minute or so and then flip the whole arrangement over so that the top of the sandwich is cooked a little too.
  
• Serve and enjoy.

Usually, your meat fillings should be precooked. There is not enough time during this process to cook meat adequately. It's better to prepare fillings after making the dough, during the dough resting time. It will make a much better result and be far less harrowing for you, especially if you're trying to make six lunches on one frypan.


If you're into stone-ground flour, macro-organic, wholemeal, and other exciting and purportedly karma-improving flours, then you go right ahead and use those. I'm sure that they will be extra tasty and will give a whole new and exciting mouthfeel to this traditional and simple flatbread. Tell me how you go with those - and tell me how you had to adjust the cooking process. I would love to share your success with other readers!


Best of luck, and if you have any questions, please post those in the comments section and I'll be ever so happy to help!


Cheers!!

Play with your food.

For a long time now, the majority of the posts I've made about bread have been pretty straight forward and plain.

Simple recipes, simple techniques which are all part of the learning curve to making bread. Experimenting with ingredients, experimenting with techniques and combinations of both.

There have been some highlights and some less palatable results. No disasters thankfully.

Furthering the progression of simple bread making I thought to talk a little bit about shaping bread.

In short, play with your dough.

In earlier articles, I've mentioned a pretty straightforward recipe that just plain works, is low in sugar and salt and that can last up to a week just sealed in an air-tight container without refrigeration. Here's a quick version of that so that we're both on the same page:

• 500 g plain flour
• 20 g sugar
• 5 g salt
• 2 level tablespoons yeast
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 310 ml water
• Combine in your dough-capable food processor or bench mixer
• rise 30 minutes
• bake 24 minutes @ 180C fan forced
• cool on a rack for 30 - 45 minutes
• enjoy guilt free low cost bread.

See? It's an obscenely simple recipe which doesn't need a second rising so it's much faster to make and less troublesome than other methods. The artisan breadmakers and other hardcore bakers will be laughing themselves silly at this point, decrying it as an impure and imperfect recipe. It is. It's about convenience, better quality than can be had from the supermarket and a fraction of the cost.

So - on to the playing part!

A regular loaf of bread is a thing of simple beauty. A well formed dinner roll is rather appealing. A hand formed Kaiserbrot is a moment of joy, but once you step into the dark side of plaiting and more, you will not only feel a greater sense of satisfaction but will certainly get a lot more adulation, oohs and aaahs from those who are lucky enough to see and eat your bread.

Here's a quick list of some of the different loaf shapes that you can possibly try and I will show you a basic plait example at the end:

• Baguette - The famous and familiar French stick
• Baton - Like a short baguette
• Ficelle - Similar length to a baguette, but only half as thick (diameter)
• Bloomer - Diagonally slash-cut UK style loaf with an eccentric oval cross section
• Vienna - Much like a Bloomer but with less defined slash cuts or none at all
• Pullman - Pretty much what you get at the supermarket before it is cut - a rectangular, squared off loaf
• Cob - More or less a rounded, blobby shape but quite traditional and very popular for certain artisanal breads
• Boule - While it's the French word for "ball", it has a similar shape to the Cob
• Fougasse - Flat bread with deep slashes and analogous to the Foccacia
• Braided / Plaited - Think of a plait of hair and you've got in a yeasty, bready form. A personal favourite.
• Ring - Yep, just like the name implies: it's a ring.

You can make the dough into whatever shape you like.

All of the unusual shaped loaves you see at your local baker come down to one thing in common: reshaping the dough by various techniques before baking. It can be as simple as rolling the dough flat and then rolling it back up again to achieve the famous baguettes and batons or hand-forming a big ball to achieve a boule.

Have fun with it. After all, it is your daily bread.

Cheers!!

Deep fried beer!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7973944/Deep-fried-beer-invented-in-Texas.html

Deep fried beer!

Seems that nothing is impossible in a Texas kitchen - and it's patent pending too!

Apologies!

'Evening all!

I've been busy with work lately so haven't had a chance to carry out any yeasty goodness adventures of late.

I should be back into it shortly with stories, pics and recipes.

Cheers!!

Spammers

OK you spam guys. Enough is enough.

Yes, natto pizza is tasty.

However, it doesn't go better with viagra, cialis or any other kind of pharmaceutical. Chances are, the combination of those substances and natto will make you very ill or maybe dead. Talk to your doctor about it.

However, please stop spamming me you piss-weak sub-alpha males.


Mmmmm-kay?


And a big "fuck you" to the impolite responder. Fuck you!


Cheers - YeastyGoodness.

Natto Pizza. Original - different - tasty!

Natto pizza? Yes. Quite true.


Yes - natto.


Natto? It has been described in very negative terms by quite a range of people. "Satan's toe jam", "Godzilla jizz", "rotting squirrel testes" and some other more negative comments have been shared with me in person by some friends who don't fancy natto. What guys like Anthony Bourdain say about it is worse. Far worse. The negative comments are personal opinions and in my opinion, they're quite over-exaggerated.


What's natto? Fermented soy beans. It looks like miniature baked beans covered in stringy mucous-like cum and has a smell and taste that takes a little getting used to. In Japan, it's a popular breakfast food. I've spent my time rocking around Asia and my wife is Chinese. However, what is marked as "one serve" is really quite plenty for both of us. Rather quite more than plenty. It may be healthy food, but it's a little bit disgusting.

Pizza is yeasty goodness. New York style pizza is yeasty goodness with uber-overload of toppings, but it includes some other ingredients that are needed in commercial pizza. Pizza from the franchise delivery guys, well, you can eat it but it helps if you have been drinking or otherwise indulging in past-times that make one rather hungry. Commercial pizza isn't so healthy and it's barely natural.


When I was in Japan on business a long, long time ago (albeit not in a galaxy far away), I was presented some natto for breakfast by friends. I ate it. Those dear friends, made me eat it with a spoon without dressing of any kind and that's it. It is more usually consumed with a bowl of rice, some mustard and soy and whatever other condiments you desire.


Plain natto is not pleasant. Acquired taste? It's quite special. And this comment comes from a guy who loves to eat durian (in the mouth it feels like custard, but somehow it's as if the custard was made with onions... an incongruous flavour combination at best and quite unpalatable to most... at best).


tl;dr? It's a strong ingredient. Stinky, sticky. The kind of thing for which only a Japanese porn actress could confess an undying enjoyment and desire.


So you ask the obvious question "What the f#%k is this stuff doing on a pizza?".


I'm going to be honest. Frank. Brutal.


My wife went away for three weeks to China... business trip and visiting with family. I like natto for breakfast - to share with her. One pod, two people each day, plus nuked fresh greens, mini-Jap-omelette and rice. I bought natto. The usual amount. However, staying home alone...

Other more conventional western breakfasts sought my attention. Think of my breakfasts as my "sly affair" in the absence of my wife. Waffles. Pancakes. Bacon and eggs. Eggs Benedict. You feel me?


Therefore, I have leftover natto. Four pods.


Tonight, I want pizza.


I'm not usually afraid of an ingredient but this is one that I have some caution about. Good grief - even the mighty Iron Chefs have some caution about this one.


So here, dear friends, is how to dispose of the evidence - natto in this case - on a pizza.


Start off with a basic dough mix:

* 150 g plain flour
* 15 gluten flour
* 5 g salt
* 10 g sugar
* 15 g yeast
* 120 mls warm water.

Make a nice firm dough, knead it until your arms ache (about 15 minutes) then oil it, place it in a bowl in a warm place, cover it in cling wrap and let it rise for about 30 - 40 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 22C fan-forced (240C+ for conventional).

Throw the risen dough-ball onto a well-oiled tray on which you wish to bake the pizza. Stretch the dough by hand until it matches the baking surface or the shape you want the pizza to be.

Add your sauce, cheese and other preferred ingredients and then - the natto.

Bake.

Eight minutes on the pan.

Eight minutes on the rack.

Done.

Tasty pizza and healthy natto.


Best thing? The natto stink is lost in the cooking. There is still some flavour from it, but the healthy aspects of it are still mostly present.


Enjoy!!!


Cheers - Fermented.

Non-stick pans for baking

The one thing we all desire as bakers of cakes, breads and anything else we shove into the oven is that it won't stick.

Our forebears managed to use some really strange enclosures and not have the baked goods stick to that enclosure.

Somehow, in these recent times with greater cooking power (hotter ovens and all)  we suffer our baked goods sticking to the pans.


There are two main ways to side-step this problem.

[1] Quality baking paper.
The low-cost and discount stores sell 'baking paper' and 'grease proof paper'. It sort of kind of works. With a heap of oil it still only sort of kind of works. Forget it. Spend the other two dollars and buy a roll of paper that works and is kinder to your health.

[2] Oil and lots of it.
Use the cheap baking paper. See [1]. Expect at least 30 grams more fat per dish baked in this manner.


Do you want to know the biggest objection?

Here it is - for free - anyway. The biggest fail of low cost commercial non-stick cookware. Read it and weep.

Low-cost non-stick pans work for one or two uses only. The first time or two you use them they seem to be utterly awesome - nothing sticks! Perfect results. Cook again, once or twice and it's quite possible that you will experience some rather less pleasant results.

Use it more? The only thing more sticky than those cheap cooking pans is dog poo. Dog poo on a baby blanket. Cheap non-stick is not worth it.

Go buy some quality non-stick pans from a commercial store for chefs, cooks and other kitchen bitches paid by the hour. It will cost more initially, but you can be quite sure that you will deliver the top-grade result which you had in mind when you commenced that recipe for that special occasion.


Best of Luck!!


Cheers !!!

Tasty PIzza and Bread - from one batch!

Sorry for not having posted for so long.

Business has been busy and I've had a reasonably lengthy sickness, There's a nasty respiratory bug doing the rounds and I had the misfortune to catch it. I can only guess that I got it owing to advancing years and being in my office more often than not rather than around people.


Want a fast recipe for a pizza and a loaf of bread for the next morning? Here's how!


Make a standard bread dough (500 g cheap plain flour, 30 g gluten flour, 15 g sugar, 15 g salt (if you're sensitive to salt or prefer lower salt foods, use only 5 g - the high dose in this case is for flavour rather than as a preservative), two level tablespoons of yeast, two tablespoons of olive oil) but add two teaspoons of dried mixed Italian herbs (or similar) and three very finely minced or crushed cloves of garlic. Combine the dry ingredients and those listed above. Hydrate at around 60% (i.e. 300 mls) with 25 - 30C water. Knead manually or mechanically and move on...

After you've made the dough above, give it thirty minutes or so to rise. Pinch off one third and flatten and shape it onto a well oiled pizza tray.

Finely spread a tablespoon of herbed tomato paste and a tablespoon of bbq sauce (or HP sauce if you like). Top with cheese, salami, olives, anchovies and thinly sliced onion (white or red is best, but use what you have). Add whatever you like - it's pizza and there are no rules.

Preheat the oven to 220C fan forced, cook for eight minutes on the tray, pull it off the tray and give it eight minutes more just on the oven rack. Tasty, healthy pizza goodness. Enjoy!


And for the bread stage...

By now, your pizza is cooked and there's 2/3 of a bread batch of dough. Gently roll it into a shape you like, slash it with a pattern you like, throw it onto the oiled pizza tray and cook at 180C fan forced for eighteen minutes.


Result?


You get a lovely Mediterranean style pizza for dinner and now you have a small loaf of bread for breakfast, brunch or lunch. Sure, it will be strongly herb and garlic flavoured, and maybe a touch salty, but with some cheese and meat it will make an awesome and flavoursome meal for cheap.


Enjoy!

Vegetarian Vietnamese Cold Rolls.

Yes, you're right. It's not yeasty, it's just tasty goodness.

Fear not - I have not become of that strange fraternity - "The Vegtarians". I was just looking for a fast and tasty alternative while making dinner the other evening.

Alternative to what? Vegetables. I'm becoming a little bored with certain kinds of vegie dishes and wanted to mix it up.

In short, it's tasty, fast and fun.

If you're into serving food that is delicate and complete, you can assemble these prior to serving. Something that's more fun is for everyone to assemble their own at the table.

Sorry, no pics this time. My hands were wet and busy mostly as I was making the evening meal.

Here's the recipe to make only 8 pieces. You can scale it up quite easily as eight is really only enough for two people as part of a meal.

The roll and filling:

• 1 small carrot (15 x 2 m), peeled and julienned
• Bean shoots
• 1 medium Chinese Shallot
• 15 g finely chopped mint (Vietnamese mint is preferable, but spearmint or common mint can suffice)
• 30 g finely chopped coriander leaves (it's OK to leave the stems in if you like)
• 1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled, seeds removed, thinly sliced then chopped in thirds
• Vietnamese fish sauce to taste
• Packet of rice paper sheets.

The dipping sauce:

• 15 ml squid sauce (like fish sauce, but much milder)
• 5 ml line juice
• 10 ml Thai sweet chilli sauce.

Toss all ingredients together for the roll (except the rice paper you ninny!) and allow to sit for about thirty minutes in the fridge. This will help draw off some of the excess moisture.

While that is happening, make the dipping sauce. The recipe above is not hard and fast. You can adjust any or all of the ingredients to suit your own taste. I tend to increase the lime juice by 50% and add a freshly chopped peri-peri / bird eye chilli as I like a bit more bite

To assemble, pour some cool water into a wide shallow dish so that you can easily wet the whole paper in one go. Slide a paper in, wiggle it for a couple of seconds, remove and shake off the excess moisture. It will feel slightly firm as you being to fill and roll it, but trust me - it will be soft and limp and tasty in no time flat. Do it one at a time and assemble each one, one at a time. You can't pre-wet all the wraps or you will end up with a gooey mess. 

Add a spoonful of the mixture to the wet rice paper about one third in from the edge. Roll.

Dip.

Eat.

Repeat.

Enjoy.


And remember, "vegetarian" is Australian for "shitty hunter".


Cheers!!

Flour quality.

So many baking articles talk about the need for strong flour or special bread making flour. They cry out that you can't make bread without these special flours. Lies. Damned lies.

While it is more difficult and it does take a little more effort to get a decent loaf out if you're inexperienced, it can be done. In fact I can assure you that all the loaves shown in this blog to date do not use strong flour, special flour or anything more than yeast, salt, water, oil and occasionally extra grain left over from brewing or decorative grains that I use in other cooking anyway. The results have been pleasant, flavoursome and very inexpensive.

Think of it this way - 'Defiance' brand flour is up to $3.80 per kilo for plain flour. It's nothing special. It's just flour. Various brands of bread flour are north of $5 per kilo. If you're spending that much on flour then you're not saving any money by making bread at home.

What do I use? Generic plain flour. $0.96 per kilo.


Here's a quick price comparison for a loaf of bread including all ingredients and electricity:

Supermarket plain white loaf	$3.00 (can be as low as $2 or as high as $4)
Premium brand plain flour	$2.20
Bread flour mix	$2.80
Generic plain flour	$1.30

I think we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen!


While baking bread with plain old cheap flour can be done and has been done successfully, by making a small change you can improve the result dramatically.

Plain flour sold in the supermarket is very weak and low in gluten. It has been made as a 'one size fits all' product. After all, it's not just for making bread - it's for making cakes, biscuits, pastries, thickening, etc, etc. It needs to be softer. As a result, rather than getting a good rise, the dough can tend to spread more like cake batter than a firm dough.

Those special flours don't have that problem. They are higher in gluten which assists in giving the dough more structure and therefore more resistance to spreading. This is especially important for free-form loaves. In other words, if it's being baked on a stone or a sheet and doesn't have side-walls holding it up then gluten is the main key to a better result.

I don't like spending money needlessly and I'm sure you like to keep your hard-earned a while longer too. I can only see these flours as an expense which influences how I think about baking. My first priority is quality and less adulterated ingredients. This is achieved. The second priority is cost.

Here's the cheat you need to save money and still have 'strong flour': gluten. Go to the health food shop and buy gluten flour. If you add only 30 grams per loaf (i.e. 60 g per kilo) then you've improved the flour from a basic soft flour to something far closer to a flour made from hard wheat - the wheat which makes high gluten flours which are more prized for bread making. About $6 for 500 grams - enough for 16 loaves.

Experiment. Have fun and enjoy the smell of fresh bread baking in your home.

Cheers!!

Perfecting your extract brewing technique

Brewing your own beer, hand made beer, is one of the most rewarding and inexpensive creative hobbies you would ever hope to find and could ever hope to enjoy.

Using basic techniques derived from brewing K&K and K&B there's a big chance that you're going to develop a non-optimal work flow and tire yourself of the hobby. The reason for this is that between the hop boil, the steep and the malt boil it's quite possible to over-work yourself. I was guilty of it, but by taking a moment longer to think the process through it's possible to reduce your workload, reduce the total boil volume and therefore shorten the time to cool the concentrated wort to pitching temperature.

Here's a concise technique that will save you time and money:


The Hop Boil
Obviously, as an extract brewer (or a partial dude or an AG'er), hops are a critical part of the process. However, this is where time and effort can be trimmed and enhance your result.

First off, extracting the hops - the prime purpose of the hop boil - works better is they are boiled in a mini-wort of around SG=1040. The easiest way to achieve that is to put 100 grams per litre of liquid malt (or 80 gm per litre of dry malt) onto the boil and then commence your hopping schedule. Higher SG meads to less efficient extraction, lower is better but 1040 is a happy number that is proven to work. Adjust it to suit your preference through experience.

If you do this with say two litres of water (you could even use one litre if you're a watchful chap as the evaporation can be a bit severe at smaller volumes) and 200 gm of liquid malt, then it's a far smaller thermal mass to deal with and you have the chance to strain out the hops when you pour off the completed boil to your main boiling pot (the big one!).

It can take quite a while to get your malt to the boil. After all, 3.5 kg of liquid malt is quite a big job for small gas burner or an electric stove. So while your hop boil is in progress, weigh out your malt and start the heat under it gently. Strain off the hop boil result into the malt and increase to full heat to get it up to the boil.

Which brings us to...


The Steep
This is just the stage where you steep any specialty grains (Carapils, etc) and then sparge (rinse) those into your big pot.

Usually, this is about twenty to thirty minutes at around 70C. If you bring your water up to say 72C, add the grain, put the lid back on the pot and turn the flame off then you're on a winner.

Just like the hop boil, strain out the liquid into the big pot with the malt and then sparge with warm water to wash out any remaining sugars and desirable elements. Don't use boiling water for the sparge as you may introduce tannins to the wort. Tannins are that mouth-drying, puckering sensation you get from overbrewed tea and some some red wines. Not a good thing in beer.



The Boil
By now, the pot containing the malt, hop extract and the steep should be coming close to the boil. Keep a lid on it so that it can reach the boil sooner and so that you don't get caramelisation of the malt. Stay near by and check it often as when it hits the boil with the lid on it can and usually does try to exit the pot in a column of sticky, sticky foam. Let my mistake be your advantage.

Let the whole lot boil for fifteen minutes so that you can be certain that it's all nice and sterile.


At the end of the boil, you have somewhere between 7.5 and 12 litres of boiling, sticky liquid. Using some other methods, you could have more than 15!

You can either let it cool naturally or you can help it along. It's up to you. There are practical advantages and risks in both approaches, but we can talk about that another time.


Happy Brewing!!

Cheers!!

Proper drunk.

I've heard of a tale (as in the link below) where someone got so drunk that they required medical amputation of their legs.

It wasn't the drunkenness that did it. It was the immobilisation of the legs for an extended period while they slept it off.

In a UK motorcycle rag a few years ago, the tale of a fellow patient was related by one of the journos who, well, crashed a bike and ended up in hospital. The other patient, a Yorkshireman if I recall correctly, had been on a binge and had passed out with his legs tucked underneath him very reduced circulation. End result, amputation.

I had thought the tale to be made up, to put it mildly.

Well fear not! For what they can in northern England they can do in the USA too.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/strangebuttrue/woman-sues-over-drinkfuelled-leg-amputations-20091210-kkeq.html


So remember - enjoy your drinkies this Christmas, but consider lying down flat or stay standing (hah!) while you sober up. Drink, but not to excess.


Cheers!!

Those nutty Japs and their crazy beer.

I love beer. I kinda like Japanese beer. I'm really fond of Sapporo. And no, I'm not sponsored by Sapporo but I sure wish I was, especially at around $7 a tinnie!





Sapporo now sells 'space beer'. It's made from barley that was sent out to the International Space Station and stayed there for five months.

At around AUD$20 a bottle, it's a costly drop. Mmnnn - gamma irradiated goodness!


Check it out here: http://www.sapporobeer.jp/english/kenkyu/bio/space.html

and here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/sapporo-breweries-reveals-space-barley-a-beer-grown-from-space-seeds/story-e6frfhix-1225807838417

Commercial beer coming in plastic soon.

As home brewers, we've all known about the use of plastic (PET) bottles for quite some time.

It's an obvious safe choice for us owing to over-priming risks when we're starting out. Not only that, but it's light weight and there's no danger of dropping or bumping one off the counter when we have a bench full of bottles.

However, there seems to be some perception in the commercial marketplace that beer in PET is a bad thing. People make all kinds of non-positive assertions about it, claiming taste difference among other gripes.

If we, the discerning hand made beer crowd can choose it as an economical and environmentally sound option, what's wrong with the average Joe drinking megaswill from it?

After all, it has been a very long time since soft drink and fruit juice were sold in glass bottles in the majority, isn't it?

So the same fools who swill a buddy of Coke with their fatburger with extra preservatives, chemicals and emulsifers for lunch are bitching about a beer in a PET bottle?

I don't know what the world and the hypocrisy of the people is coming to...

Check this out:

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/brewery-gives-plastic-beer-bottles-another-shot-20091203-k879.html


Cheers!!