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Bakegab: The Bellgab Bakeshop

Started by Roswells, Art, May 06, 2019, 02:53:36 PM

K_Dubb

Quote from: WOTR on September 14, 2019, 10:38:09 PM
PITA to start from scratch. You basically have to pull some out and "feed" it twice a day until the fermentation starts. Easier to buy a starter (I may look on the local classifieds...) Also, there is the "friends of Carl" if you google that and sourdough. I may actually try that this time- they have been around forever.

I generally make a french bread or a rye bread. Lots of recipes use some sourdough for flavour and add yeast. I was, for no apparent reason, somebody who refused to add yeast to my dough. Let the wild yeasts do their thing, and trust that will be sufficient. I bought the book "the taste of bread" by Raymond Calvel. Expensive, out of print and difficult to find- but worth it.

I actually did not spend as much time reading it and doing some experimentation as I would Have liked...

Cool, thanks!  I will try to find your book.

I suppose that is why I have never tried it as there is an excellent French bakery near me, and the ladies at the Russian grocery sell fresh, home-made sourdough rye (they call it, confusingly, "without yeast" which, of course it is not) that is better than anything I could turn out.

I would dearly love to make that brick-like Danish whole-berry rye, though, which is basically soured porridge baked into loaves.  Grandma used to fake a sourdough flavor with buttermilk in hers but, honestly, it wasn't very good if you've had the real thing.


K_Dubb

Quote from: SredniVashtar on September 15, 2019, 03:55:19 AM


You know, a chocolate filling in one of these babies wouldn't be half bad.

WOTR

Quote from: SredniVashtar on September 15, 2019, 03:55:19 AM

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 04:15:23 AM
You know, a chocolate filling in one of these babies wouldn't be half bad.

I cannot imagine there is another baking thread anywhere on the internet to compare to the one found on Bellgab...

WOTR

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 03:48:48 AM
Cool, thanks!  I will try to find your book.

I suppose that is why I have never tried it as there is an excellent French bakery near me, and the ladies at the Russian grocery sell fresh, home-made sourdough rye (they call it, confusingly, "without yeast" which, of course it is not) that is better than anything I could turn out.

I would dearly love to make that brick-like Danish whole-berry rye, though, which is basically soured porridge baked into loaves.  Grandma used to fake a sourdough flavor with buttermilk in hers but, honestly, it wasn't very good if you've had the real thing.
For sourdough, I think I will try the "friends of Carl." They are old fashioned, and you only need to send a self addressed stamped envelope if you are in the US. https://carlsfriends.net/source.html

The book is probably your speed. Written by a French professor and translated into English. It goes into unnecessary, but interesting detail and talks about both the history and the science behind bread. I have to say that I have enjoyed it, but likely not reaped the benefits as I had confined myself to sourdough.

Looking over it again, I find recipes for Croissants, brioche, Kaiser rolls, savoury breads, and on page 149, a recipe for SV's "snail rolls." If I were a reasonable man and not given to intense single-mindedness, I would likely have explored some of the other breads in this book.

I found my old invoice used as a bookmark... Purchased from a shop in Berkley in 2013 for $75. Damn, I'm getting old and life is progressing at what feels to be an unreasonable speed.  :(


Quote from: SredniVashtar on September 15, 2019, 03:55:19 AM


MUST you repeatedly visit that creature upon us here, while we are engaged in preparing food and eating it?  I realize that fine dining for you is a cock hanging through a glory hole, but some of us here are not godless sodomites.

                             

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: DigitalPigSnuggler on September 15, 2019, 08:00:16 PM
MUST you visit that creature upon us here, while we are engaged in preparing food and eating it?  I realize that fine dining for you is a cock hanging through a glory hole, but some of us here are not godless sodomites.

                           

He’s British.

K_Dubb

Quote from: albrecht on September 15, 2019, 05:04:33 PM
http://bellgab.com/index.php?topic=12587.msg1354904#msg1354904 

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-midwest-s-finnish-triangle-is-a-land-of-saunas-and-squeaky-cheeses?utm_source=pocket-newtab 

The "Finnish Triangle" in the Upper-Midwest trying to keep Finnish traditions alive.

Thanks!  I love stories like that.  Those Karelian pasties are strange beasts which, I imagine, date from a time when white rice was a rare and exotic import up north -- think of our own rice porridge saved as a treat for Christmas Eve -- and suitable for a pie filling as a luxury item.  I guess compared to the usual barley gruel it would be something special but it's a wonder people keep eating it.

I feel sorry for the Karelians as a people.  For a brief, shining moment it looked like they could have been Finns (to whom they're cousins, same as Estonia) instead of Russians.

It's funny, there is a similar whipped-berry dessert traditional in the Indian tribes out here made from soapberries -- more fodder for Bill in Madison.

p.s. I loved her correcting her husband on the rags used to send the yogurt culture to America -- "oh they were probably finely woven textiles; the Finns are great weavers."  That is precisely the just-so mythmaking we are known for.  Also the pejorative sense of "rags" is why the Sami are not Lapps any more, since lapp is a rag or a patch or a swatch (like what you make testing a knitting gauge) and may have been (nobody knows for sure) an insult.

K_Dubb

Quote from: WOTR on September 15, 2019, 01:22:43 PM
For sourdough, I think I will try the "friends of Carl." They are old fashioned, and you only need to send a self addressed stamped envelope if you are in the US. https://carlsfriends.net/source.html

The book is probably your speed. Written by a French professor and translated into English. It goes into unnecessary, but interesting detail and talks about both the history and the science behind bread. I have to say that I have enjoyed it, but likely not reaped the benefits as I had confined myself to sourdough.

Looking over it again, I find recipes for Croissants, brioche, Kaiser rolls, savoury breads, and on page 149, a recipe for SV's "snail rolls." If I were a reasonable man and not given to intense single-mindedness, I would likely have explored some of the other breads in this book.

I found my old invoice used as a bookmark... Purchased from a shop in Berkley in 2013 for $75. Damn, I'm getting old and life is progressing at what feels to be an unreasonable speed.  :(

Well sourdough is the bread of the Northwest (and San Francisco by osmosis, I think) so it is a reasonable focus.  I remember the first time I was in Alaska anxious to try sourdough pancakes like the pioneers ate.  They're not that great, clearly sustenance rather than pleasure sort of like your bannock, I suppose.  I addressed myself to the reindeer sausage instead.

pate

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 09:13:55 PM

Thanks!  I love stories like that...

I feel sorry for the Karelians as a people.  For a brief, shining moment it looked like they could have been Finns (to whom they're cousins, same as Estonia) instead of Russians...

Why Immanuel Kant?  They be Karelians?  Can't grow rice?  Can't grow oats?  Can't grow barely?

Worst traders ever, bet they were pallid red-heads.

/spiTigust

Apogees.  So disquested I could spit.

ediot: why do they have to be anything other than Karelian?

K_Dubb

Quote from: pate on September 15, 2019, 09:45:35 PM
Why Immanuel Kant?  They be Karelians?  Can't grow rice?  Can't grow oats?  Can't grow barely?

Worst traders ever, bet they were pallid red-heads.

/spiTigust

Apogees.  So disquested I could spit.

ediot: why do they have to be anything other than Karelian?

Because the Russian government wouldn't let them, same as Estonians.  Under the Tsars it was Orthodoxy instead of their Lutheranism, and under the Soviets it was ethnic Russian apparatchiks and other carpetbaggers systematically diluting the population.

I took an Estonian friend to a bakery here run by a couple from Tartu, thinking to give him a taste of home.  He took one look at them and muttered "they're Russians."  Even generations later, they know the difference.

Taaroa

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 10:04:18 PM
Because the Russian government wouldn't let them, same as Estonians.  Under the Tsars it was Orthodoxy instead of their Lutheranism, and under the Soviets it was ethnic Russian apparatchiks and other carpetbaggers systematically diluting the population.

I took an Estonian friend to a bakery here run by a couple from Tartu, thinking to give him a taste of home.  He took one look at them and muttered "they're Russians."  Even generations later, they know the difference.

I spent a week in Estonia earlier this year, and it's not hard to tell which are the Russians. A large number of them seemed to be drunk constantly, kept well apart from the Estonians, and expected everyone to speak Russian. The years under the Russians weren't kind to Estonia, and they're making an effort to bury or let rot any reminders from then.

Didn't really encounter "Estonian cuisine" anywhere, but this savoury pancake was pretty good.


pate

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 10:04:18 PM
..I took an Estonian friend to a bakery here run by a couple from Tartu, thinking to give him a taste of home.  He took one look at them and muttered "they're Russians."  Even generations later, they know the difference.

Yes.  I notice that our fiends of the "liberal" bent are conspicuiously absent.

Asa montage oaf you wil frum d'Anglais perspect/aspeckt'defect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhEUBgu9j5Y

"all viddy props BBC"?
\
mon queill non

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E

Sumtheen's groan ohm>?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFMpySg_UrM

circle d'oblieque

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--KSEkC8Ik

I hate to say ol' Auntee Sully, yoar baking treads, but the tanks due to US are a little underwhelming...

#aMasheen!
ediot: dis beuat, ono changez lira!  APOGEES

K_Dubb

Quote from: Taaroa on September 15, 2019, 10:45:43 PM
I spent a week in Estonia earlier this year, and it's not hard to tell which are the Russians. A large number of them seemed to be drunk constantly, kept well apart from the Estonians, and expected everyone to speak Russian. The years under the Russians weren't kind to Estonia, and they're making an effort to bury or let rot any reminders from then.

Didn't really encounter "Estonian cuisine" anywhere, but this savoury pancake was pretty good.

That does look good.  I'm guessing based on how white the pancake is that it is made with one of those innumerable kinds of fresh cheese they have over there?

I get a kick out of the stacks of frozen pancakes in the Russian grocery I shop at, imported from Russia.  I mean, who doesn't know how to make a pancake?  Russians.

The only foods from back home my friend pines for at Christmas are blood sausage and pickled pumpkin.  I brought him blodpølse from the only Scandinavian deli in town, which he did not like (it's not that great IMO, either), and my own syltet gresskar, which he did.

K_Dubb

Quote from: pate on September 15, 2019, 11:19:43 PM
I hate to say ol' Auntee Sully, yoar baking treads...

Oh goodness, it is not mine!  It is Roz's and, since she doesn't use it, might just as well serve as a catch-all or cesspit lest the topic police rear their ugly little heads again.

pate

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 11:25:41 PM
...I get a kick out of the stacks of frozen pancakes in the Russian grocery I shop at, imported from Russia...

Karelians taught the Russians to freeze baked goods;  ability and need!



Almost Swedish, I love it!


ediot: almost Fannish...  Eye keed!

pate

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 11:29:41 PM

Oh goodness, it is not mine!  It is Roz's and, since she doesn't use it, might just as well serve as a catch-all or cesspit lest the topic police rear their ugly little heads again.

Jungian mang, advice and dissent are welcome.  We all know baking is a science;  there is no "pinchez thus" &tc.  Repateable resluts are scaleable, nothing beats Momoa though...



Moar Posesidion/Neptunish than Mercurial/Nike?

Erhm, nay lester I lapse inuit Anglasi.

Common Bisucuit recipe?  Perhaps two facile for a folded doughy type?

Qaxing, fora fien!

K_Dubb

Quote from: pate on September 15, 2019, 11:49:19 PM
Karelians taught the Russians to freeze baked goods;  ability and need!



Almost Swedish, I love it!


ediot: almost Fannish...  Eye keed!

Haha they do look like something out the Precambrian, don't they?

K_Dubb

Quote from: pate on September 15, 2019, 11:59:16 PM

Common Bisucuit recipe?  Perhaps two facile for a folded doughy type?

Qaxing, fora fien!

I'm afraid I don't come from biscuit people, pate.  The closest thing I make are shortcakes for strawberries and there I'm embarrassed to say I use Bisquick, though with butter (cut in rather than melted as their recipe instructs) and cream and extra sugar -- Bisquick has a chemical bite to it that I like (I suspect Cream of Tartar like in snickerdoodles) and I haven't been able to reproduce it with plain ingredients.

albrecht

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 15, 2019, 09:13:55 PM

Thanks!  I love stories like that.  Those Karelian pasties are strange beasts which, I imagine, date from a time when white rice was a rare and exotic import up north -- think of our own rice porridge saved as a treat for Christmas Eve -- and suitable for a pie filling as a luxury item.  I guess compared to the usual barley gruel it would be something special but it's a wonder people keep eating it.

I feel sorry for the Karelians as a people.  For a brief, shining moment it looked like they could have been Finns (to whom they're cousins, same as Estonia) instead of Russians.

It's funny, there is a similar whipped-berry dessert traditional in the Indian tribes out here made from soapberries -- more fodder for Bill in Madison.

p.s. I loved her correcting her husband on the rags used to send the yogurt culture to America -- "oh they were probably finely woven textiles; the Finns are great weavers."  That is precisely the just-so mythmaking we are known for.  Also the pejorative sense of "rags" is why the Sami are not Lapps any more, since lapp is a rag or a patch or a swatch (like what you make testing a knitting gauge) and may have been (nobody knows for sure) an insult.
What is also so interesting how it is often emigrants who keep various traditions alive (whether food, religious, language dialects, etc) while the mother country's population has often "moved on" -aside from maybe certain holidays or celebrations especially if they are prosperous, modern countries now. Why I have some objections to multiculturalism and exporting the worst of what the USA has to offer (fast-food and Hollywood 'programming'.)

Weird about the Lapp/Sami deal. I wondered why it seemed suddenly it was all "Sami" now.

K_Dubb



Revisiting the lardy cakes I find that I was wrong; they are actually delicious the next day, being sufficiently unctuous from what lard remains within.  The tops of the dough, unrelieved by any filling, are dry (though I hate the stuff I might try margarine next time as in DH's ingredient list instead of butter to see if that helps) but, provided you careful to organize your bites to include a portion of the base, entirely pleasurable.

I remember reading one recipe that advised cooling them upside-down so that the pooled lard can baste the upper parts of the cake and so the toffee-crusted bottom remains hard, presumably after the hot bubbling tarn in the middle has solidified and won't just run out, but I forgot about that when making them.

The bottom (shown), which was so crunchy when fresh it seemed like it would crack if hit with a spoon, remains brittle around the outside but is pretty wet towards the center.

SredniVashtar

Quote from: albrecht on September 16, 2019, 01:14:34 PM
Why I have some objections to multiculturalism and exporting the worst of what the USA has to offer (fast-food and Hollywood 'programming'.)

That's your cultural gift to the world. We give you Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth, Byron. And then you bastards piss in our faces with McDonald's and Justin Bieber. Bunch of cunts.

K_Dubb

Quote from: albrecht on September 16, 2019, 01:14:34 PM
Weird about the Lapp/Sami deal. I wondered why it seemed suddenly it was all "Sami" now.

It kind of makes sense if you think of it as referring to the traditional appliqué work on their clothing which, though beautiful, must have seemed primitive and patch-like to the proud needleworkers down south.  It is a very old term, though, and there is no consensus as to its origins.

Even earlier they were simply called Finns which, in my view, is accurate -- the languages are related and they probably represent that portion of the Finnish migration into Scandinavia that remained herders.  Similar to the "Forest Finns" of the Finnskogen/Finnskogarna in Norway and Sweden who occupied what land wasn't claimed for agriculture by the Norwegians and Swedes, a prime example of how language and culture followed occupation (or "lifeway" in modern parlance).

A lot of folk music traces its roots to the Forest Finns in what I think is a parallel to the Southern European gypsy tradition:  itinerant people who lived on the margins of settled society and specialized in music-making to be hired for weddings and other celebrations, to the point where, in Hungary for example, "gypsy music" is nearly synonymous with Hungarian folk and everybody is a gypsy, at least musically.

albrecht

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 16, 2019, 01:33:03 PM
It kind of makes sense if you think of it as referring to the traditional appliqué work on their clothing which, though beautiful, must have seemed primitive to the proud needleworkers down south.  It is a very old term, though, and there is no consensus as to its origins.

Even earlier they were simply called Finns which, in my view, is accurate -- the languages are related and they probably represent that portion of the Finnish migration into Scandinavia that remained herders.  Similar to the "Forest Finns" of the Finnskogen/Finnskogarna in Norway and Sweden who occupied what land wasn't claimed for agriculture by the Norwegians and Swedes, a prime example of how language and culture followed occupation (or "lifeway" in modern parlance).

A lot of folk music traces its roots to the Forest Finns in what I think is a parallel to the Southern European gypsy tradition:  itinerant people who lived on the margins of settled society and specialized in music-making to be hired for weddings and other celebrations, to the point where, in Hungary for example, "gypsy music" is nearly synonymous with Hungarian folk and everybody is a gypsy, at least musically.
"Bill from Madison" has some literature he would like to send you. It makes sense though that the Finnish emigrants would take to the forest and mining ranges in the upper Midwest also since that is what they knew, labor was needed, and also where land was cheap and available.
Interestingly the Finns who emigrated also brought them with their political feud ("White Finns vs Red Finns" to some degree)

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199706/10_losurem_finnpoor/finnpoor2.htm

albrecht

Quote from: SredniVashtar on September 16, 2019, 01:22:03 PM
That's your cultural gift to the world. We give you Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth, Byron. And then you bastards piss in our faces with McDonald's and Justin Bieber. Bunch of cunts.
I think Beiber is Canadian, so a royal subject like you.

K_Dubb

Quote from: albrecht on September 16, 2019, 01:42:28 PM
"Bill from Madison" has some literature he would like to send you. It makes sense though that the Finnish emigrants would take to the forest and mining ranges in the upper Midwest also since that is what they knew, labor was needed, and also where land was cheap and available.
Interestingly the Finns who emigrated also brought them with their political feud ("White Finns vs Red Finns" to some degree)

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199706/10_losurem_finnpoor/finnpoor2.htm

I would love to read his literature!  Hoping he had a website or something but unable to find it.

Yeah that reminds me of my own squinty eyes -- really just heavy eyelids -- that betray far-north Finnish ancestry to anyone in Norway, though thankfully I have the near-vertical forehead and narrow face and jaw of a real Norwegian instead of a disturbingly Slavic-looking pumpkin.  Both my grandpas had actual epicanthic folds, though on the outer corners rather than the inner like Asians.  I don't like saunas, though, and my efforts to control the weather have been futile so I didn't inherit that part, sadly.

albrecht

Quote from: K_Dubb on September 16, 2019, 01:54:59 PM
I would love to read his literature!  Hoping he had a website or something but unable to find it.

Yeah that reminds me of my own squinty eyes -- really just heavy eyelids -- that betray far-north Finnish ancestry to anyone in Norway, though thankfully I have the near-vertical forehead and narrow face and jaw of a real Norwegian instead of a disturbingly Slavic-looking pumpkin.  Both my grandpas had actual epicanthic folds, though on the outer corners rather than the inner like Asians.  I don't like saunas, though, and my efforts to control the weather have been futile so I didn't inherit that part, sadly.
Ha. Norwegians seem to have more diversity in looks (hair color, eye folds, earlobe differences) than other Scandinavians I think due to Viking conquests and trade, being involved for a long time in nautical work and discovery, and being property and/or union with other countries/kingdoms. The Finns are a totally other folks then their Scandinavian or Slavic neighbors and seem to be kicked around a bit migrate and stuck to forests and mines.
It is unfortunate that "Bill from Madison" has no website that I can find. I hope he is still with us as I haven't heard a call in to any shows recently.  Once I did look up some of his references and they were very academic works in detail of minutiae of Finnish stuff. 

K_Dubb

Quote from: albrecht on September 16, 2019, 03:28:35 PM
Ha. Norwegians seem to have more diversity in looks (hair color, eye folds, earlobe differences) than other Scandinavians I think due to Viking conquests and trade, being involved for a long time in nautical work and discovery, and being property and/or union with other countries/kingdoms. The Finns are a totally other folks then their Scandinavian or Slavic neighbors and seem to be kicked around a bit migrate and stuck to forests and mines.
It is unfortunate that "Bill from Madison" has no website that I can find. I hope he is still with us as I haven't heard a call in to any shows recently.  Once I did look up some of his references and they were very academic works in detail of minutiae of Finnish stuff.

Yeah I am referring the "classic" phenotype, to the extent such a thing exists, which goes back to the Viking era.  Viking-age skeletons were notoriously difficult to sex prior to DNA testing as they showed less dimorphism (more androgyny) than normal in facial structure, with comparatively dainty males and robust females.  A few feminist scholars got excited finding "female" graves with swords in them, thinking they found the legendary amazons of the North, but they were just gracile males.  Add that to Al-Tartushi's report that both sexes in Hedeby (around the turn of the first millennium, smack in the middle of the Viking era) wore makeup and you get a rather different picture of the guys with the axes.

I didn't get the blond hair, either, but my blond cousins are all going bald early and at an alarming rate, so I'll gladly play the hand I was dealt.

Roswells, Art

Quote from: WOTR on September 14, 2019, 01:48:31 AM
Perhaps it is time to start another sour dough culture? I used to enjoy baking bread when I had time- and then life got too busy for sour dough.  :(

I don't think sourdough is the right flavor for a sweet dough. As far as I know it's usually used for good ol' regular savory bread. A poster here limited on budget (not Mrs. MD) said a long time ago that s/he always made bread with sourdough starter for frugal reasons. No need to buy yeast. I liked learning that there were people out there that made sourdough for traditional reasons.

I've had a tough mostly unsuccessful time trying to make a lively starter. As WOTR stated, life gets in the way. I procrastinate on feeding the poor thing and it goes the way of Art Bell. One of my first attempts was doing something my baking teacher taught me, putting unwashed grapes in water, then straining and adding flour once it starts fermenting (a few hours). The unwashed grapes are used because you want the yeast covering the grapes (I think). I also tried recipes that say to start with water and coarse rye flour (coarse because of all the crevices that yeast settle in and rye because, well I don't know but I'm sure there is a reason.) then after feeding it rye for a week or two you can start feeding it wheat flour. When I added wheat flour the ferment died. My personal hypothesis is that wheat and rye have two different yeasts that aren't compatible. Or it could be that I'm just really bad at taking care of sourdough starter. Soooo, I bought a starter (something I thought I'd never do) but it was from King Arthur Flour that was started 200 YEARS AGO!!* How cool is that? Very, I say. The resulting bread it made was very lively and made such a great loaf of bread.

Also, I thought this was interesting: when I asked the teacher about buying starter from lets say, San Francisco which is famous for it, then bringing it back home to use in a different part of the world, would it still taste like San Francisco Sourdough, his response was that it would the first time but then your starter would pick up your local wild yeast that's in the air and then it would become your local sourdough flavor, not San Francisco.

*Here is a link to the starter. https://shop.kingarthurflour.com/items/classic-fresh-sourdough-starter-1-oz .
It says now that it's over 100 years old which is still pretty cool but I swear when I bought it the first time (yes, I killed the first one) it was something like 175 years old.

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