Day two of me pulling my finger out is another local hero from our stay in New York late last year, and trades the buttery crusts of pies for another American obsession. Barbecue.

I’ve wanted to visit Fette Sau since I read about it three or four years ago. Last time I was in New York, I failed to get my ‘cue on, so this time I vowed not to fly home without coating my face in barbecue sauce.

Tucked away down a side alley in Williamburgh, Brooklyn, Fette Sau is a temple to meat. The walls are adorned with scrawlings of different cuts of various four legged beasts, knives hang behind the bar, the white tiled walls are all butcher shop, and they sell their wares by weight as opposed to portion, which is great from a trying everything point of view. It also exposed the tactical eaters we overheard rejecting anything on the bone as it’s “…dead weight, man…”, which means no ribs, which is crazy right??

I wanted to try as much as I could, so after much deliberation I pulled together what I figured would be a killer selecta. Black Angus Brisket, Spicy Berkshire Pork Sausage, Pulled Berkshire Pork Shoulder, Duroc baby Back Ribs, Burnt-End Baked Beans and some green stuff to keep my digestive system alive. Now I was pretty pleased with the ribs that I made earlier in the year, but this was some next level business. The words that follow are not going to do what I ate justice, because I loved every friggin’ mouthful so much, but here’s a taster.

Brisket. Dense, smoky, tender with a wicked spiced and charred crust. Spicy Berkshire Pork Sausage. Almost like a Polish smoked sausage, porky, moist with a kick at the end. Pulled Berkshire Pork Shoulder. Just how I like it; not drenched in vinegary liquor, slightly sticky, smokey and nicely spiced. Duroc baby Back Ribs. Sweet, sticky, meaty, again nicely spiced with a great barbecue crust, just like a good rib should be. Burnt-End Baked Beans. Wow. Possibly the best thing I ate. Sweet, tangy, with flavour deeper than the San Andreas Fault, enhanced with a bit of a chilli kick and little hunks of pork. I’d go back just for the beans alone. Insane. You know what broccoli, chilli and garlic tastes like, and you’ll be going for the meat, so I’m not even going to bother.

I’ve made myself really hungry by reminiscing about that meal, so I need to go and eat something before I start dousing my laptop in Tabasco, but needless to say, I can’t recommend Fette Sau highly enough. It won’t be to everybody’s taste, and in my mind barbecue is something that you’ve got to be in the mood for, bit if you have got a hankering for it, and you’re in New York, or indeed North America, get yourself down there.

The first of these is Four & Twenty Blackbirds in Gwanus, Brooklyn. Now, as I’m sure you know, ‘pie’ is an American institution. It’s an old school love affair that has outlived cupcakes, macarons, whoopie pies and whatever sweet thang is currently de rigueur. The Yanks love it, and the queue outside Four & Twenty proves the legend above the door, ‘this must be where pies go when they die’.

Run by two sisters who cut their teeth working at their family’s restaurant in South Dakota, before slinging pies from their apartment in Crown Heights, NY, they set up Four & Twenty almost two years ago, and have been rammed ever since. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the place itself. It’s got all the trademarks of your typical hipster cafe. Bare brick walls, stripped back wood, tattooed serving staff etc, but it has a really welcoming, homely vibe. I guess you could describe it as pie in atmosphere form.

The pie on the other hand is unusual. And in a good way. We tried a selection including the plum crumble, brown butter pumpkin and the salty honey. All the pies are hand made, and come with the same crust, which is totally the right combination of tenderness and crumble, with a great buttery flavour. The plum crumble was amazing. Sweet and crunchy with a tart punch of local plums, all smoothed out with some lightly sweetened whipped cream. The pumpkin was everything a pumpkin pie should be. Dense, deep, moist, pumpkin-ey custard filling spiked with cinnamon and the surprise addition of a nutty richness supplied by the brown butter. And finally, and I have to be honest my least favourite, the salty honey. Richer than Daddy Warbucks, the custard filling was packed with butter and honey, set off with a generous sprinkling of salt crystals on the surface. It wasn’t in any way bad, but just too much for me.

I’m not going to lie to you, Four & Twenty isn’t exactly in what you’d describe as a ‘handy mid-town location’ but Gwanus and neighbouring Red Hook are areas on the up and up and well worth a look around, and I’m telling you, the pie alone makes the trek a no brainer. Special Agent Dale Cooper would be a very happy man.

I immediately thought of this amazing clip of an inebriated Frenchman on the streets of Paris opening a bottle of wine with just a shoe. Not sure how it would have gone down on the train, but incredibly it works, so I thought I’d share it. You never know, it might come in handy in the run up to Christmas.

Vive la France!

Anyway, I have managed to pull my finger out a bit, so here are the first couple of things I wanted to share from New York, Smorgasberg & The New Amsterdam Market.

New York doesn’t really seem to have the same kind of street food culture as San Francisco. In SF there were trucks and pop up stalls on every corner, and sure NY has their regulated the hot dog carts for decades, but much less of a mobile scene that pushes the boundaries. That being said, the street food scene is far from undeveloped, in fact it has given birth to something a bit different. The closest thing I can think of to describe it are the Hawker Centres you get in South East Asia. Smorgasberg is one such example, a weekly event on the same site as the famous Brooklyn Flea which collects all manner of food vendors selling some fantastic, and if I’m honest also some not so fantastic, grub.

But I’m not going to dwell on the negatives, as there were two stalls in particular that blew our tiny minds. First up Bon Chovie, which has to be the best food stall name since I saw a kebab van called ‘Jason Donnervan’ in Essex many moons ago. A bit like large whitebait, these guys sell deep fried achovies and boy are they good (picture above). They dip them in egg and then flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika , and serve them up with a wedge of lemon, pickled peppers and a smoked paprika aioli. You can eat them head off or on (Jersey style), and they are the perfect combination of crunchy, fishy and salty. They are seriously nice guys too. They give fish a good name.

The other winner on the day, were the doughnuts from the far less imaginatively named, Dough. But what they lack in inventiveness of their name, they more than make up for in their product. The doughnuts come in killer flavours from hibiscus and blood orange, to passion fruit curd and our favourite, coconut. But what makes them so good is the texture. None of the heavy, greasy fairground muck we’re used to. These guys are light, fluffy and pillowy soft. I’d give my left nut, and probably a couple of arteries in the process, for the recipe and technique.

If you’re lucky enough to be in NY or are going soon, I believe Smorgasberg is closed for the season, but will be open again in 5 months or so. But if you fancy a street food fix, I believe there’s something similar going on in Kings Cross now in the shape of Eat Street. I need to go check it out at some point.

New Amsterdam Market is something a bit different again. Part farmers market, part food fair, everyone there is an independent producer of some kind. Bread, chocolate (Mast Brothers have a stand there), cakes, pickles and pork products were just some of the tasty treats on offer. On the Sunday we visited, there was a ‘hard’ cider festival, so we could wash it all down with some booze.

There was so much good stuff to chose from, but again there were a couple of stalls that really caught our eye. the first was Nordic Breads. Baked by a Finnish artisan baker, they sell simple but amazing organic whole grain rye rolls and loaves which have a really good, deep nutty flavour. The stall and branding are pretty awesome too.

The other was Brooklyn Cured. Butchery and all things meaty are definately pretty cool in New York right now. Places like The Meathook in Williamsburgh (which deserves a post all of its own) that offer butchery classes and all the tools of the trade you might need, are testament to this, as is Brooklyn Cured. They describe their business as being inspired by the holy trinity of French Charcuterie, German beer garden and Italian-American pork store, and they make a killer selection of sausages, pates and of course bacon. I was so busy sampling, I forgot to take any pictures.

Having eaten my fair share of sliders in the US, I’ve been musing over the idea of doing an Anglicised version of these over grown amuse-bouches. I hit on the idea of doing an Ox Tail version around a week ago, but didn’t really have the perfect vehicle for the meat. Then the other day, almost as if he sensed my bun based anguish, Dan Lepard sent me a recipe for his slider buns that are in the Hawksomoor At Home book to try. The recipe will appear in this weekend’s Guardian, and you’ll discover that it contains custard powder. Yep, you read that right, custard powder. As crazy as it sounds, it’s actually a work of evil genius as it makes the buns tender, gives them a brioche like colour, and is vegan to boot.

The Ox Tail gets slow cooked for around 4 hours, so this definitely isn’t a 30 minute meal. In fact some might describe it as ‘a long walk for a ham sandwich’, but I think it’s worth it, and is a great way to use a much under appreciated cut of meat. I’ve served it with a crunchy, sharp, almost Summery slaw to cut through the fatty, sticky meat a bit, but these guys are still definitely winter warmers.

Ingredients (makes 10-12)

For the meaty bit

1 kg Ox Tail

300 ml red wine

300 ml beef stock

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 carrot, roughly chopped

2 sticks celery, roughly chopped

1 chilli, sliced down the middle

3 sprigs of both rosemary & thyme, tied together

1 tsp Chinese five spice

1 tbs redcurrant jelly

Salt & pepper to taste

Seasoned flour – 2 tbs flour, 1tsp smoked paprika, salt and pepper

For the slaw

1/4 head red cabbage, finely sliced

3 spring onions, finely sliced

1/3 cucumber, finely sliced

Dressing -  100ml olive oil, 50ml lemon juice, 1tsp Dijon mustard, salt & pepper to taste

Method

The first thing to do is get that meat on. Turn your oven on to 160 c, and then in a freezer bag, dump in 2 tablespoons of flour, one teaspoon of smoked paprika and the salt and pepper. Give it a shake to mix it all together, then add the ox tail joints and give it another shake to coat them. Take them out of the bag, pat off the excess flour, and set aside.

Next, in a heavy casserole dish, melt a good nob of butter in some olive oil. Get it good and hot and then brown off the ox tail evenly on all sides. Do this is two batches, and when done set aside again. Roughly chop the veg and garlic, slice your chilli down the center, and add to the hot dish along with the five spice. Stir for a couple of minutes, being careful not to burn the spice and then de-glaze the pan with the red wine and beef stock, and bring to the boil.

Now add the tied herbs, the tomato puree and redcurrant jelly, and once the latter have dissolved, add the ox tail back into the pot (the liquid in the pot should almost cover the joints). Place on the lid and stick it in the oven to slow cook for around 4 hours.

Next make the slaw. Slice the red cabbage, cucumber and spring onions as finely as possible, and then make the dressing with the olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon and seasoning. Give it a good mix and then pour over the vegetables, making sure to coat them all thoroughly. Ideally you should do this a couple of hours before you eat, as the dressing will soften the cabbage and give all the flavours a chance to mingle.

After 4 hours, take the casserole dish out of the oven. Prod the meat, and if it falls off the bone, it’s ready. Remove the joints from the pot, and then pass the cooking liquor through a sieve into a bowl, discarding and bits of herb and vegetable, and then set aside.

When the joints have cooled a bit, remove all the meat from the bones, shredding it as you pull it off. Once you’ve got it all, pop it into the bowl with the liquid, and give it a good stir. You should be left with an unctuous, sticky, very thick, meaty sauce. You’re now ready to assemble the sliders.

Cut the buns in half, and then dollop a generous portion of the meat on the bottom half. Top this with a good helping of the slaw. Pop on the top, and eat. Now wasn’t that worth it?

That’s right, Hand To Mouth is back. Despite missing San Francisco like crazy, and Home Sweet Home not really feeling that sweet right now, it is good to be home. Kind of.

We got back to London a week ago, and its been a hectic. Along with flat hunting and catching up with friends & family, I’ve been lining up a bunch of interviews, meetings and trial shifts at bakeries across London. I had my first trial on Monday and have two more lined up this week, along with a couple of meetings. And I’m also meeting up with an old work colleague who wants to get me involved with a food based iPhone / iPad app he’s developing. Exciting times.

I’ve also got a bunch of posts to write when I get the chance, including a round-up of our New York eatathon, a couple of great finds from the city that never sleeps, and a killer rasberry tart recipe, amongst others.

So I promise I’ll pull my finger out and will be back here very soon.

Until then.

I saw this video about New York based Mast Brothers Chocolate about a year or so ago, and have desperately wanted to visit their shop ever since. As someone who’s interested in starting their own business, I found the approach they discuss really inspirational. I love the romantic idealism of treating their business like a boys own adventure, and striving for something that feels nostalgic and hand made, as opposed to mass produced and uniform.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I managed to satisfy my desire by paying their Williamsburgh shop a visit. I was hoping to take the factory tour they mention on the site, but alas they aren’t doing them at the moment as they are in the process of expanding their operation. However, when the lovely guy behind the counter saw we were a bit bummed out about not getting to do the tour, he snuck us in to have a look at their new space. It’s a really lovely big, open brick walled warehouse unit, but what hits you first is the smell. It’s like being in a chocolate cloud. I’m pretty sure I started to drool almost instantly. The room is filled will sacks of cocoa beans, a roasting oven, ‘conching’ drums (these heat and grind the beans for 3 days until the chocolate is beautifully smooth), and this awesome mad scientist-esque glass vacuum pump device that separates the cracked beans from the husk. It’s very cool, and feels really nicely old fashioned.

Obviously you can’t visit a place like this without sampling the goods, but as well as trying their small range of bars, we also got to sample a few of their new products including an amazing chocolate pecan cookie, a couple of different types of caramel, and the craziest brownie I’ve ever tasted. It’s consistency was like a ripe soft cheese, and equally as pungent in a chocolatey kind of way. Pretty incredible. When the guy who gave us the tour hear we were from the UK he told us that they are just about to export a shed load of chocolate to Paul A Young for him to make truffles with, which will give those who don’t know Mast Bothers an indication of the quality of their product and their standing within the chocolate community.

But by far the coolest thing that Mast Brothers is doing (which they allude to in the video) is taking their romanticism to the next level by actually sailing their cocoa beans over from their suppliers. The maiden voyage of The Black Seal, a 70-foot cargo ship that they had converted into a three mast shipping schooner, docked in New York a couple of months ago after two weeks on The Atlantic bringing with it 20 or so tonnes of cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic. Amazing. And they are already planning subsequent voyages in the near future.

Maybe I’ve been in the US too long or I’m getting cheesy in my old age, but I’m going to end this post on a Mark Twain quote that I’m sure Mast Brothers are familiar with and I’ll be taking as words of encouragement as I endeavor to set up my own business in the future:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I unbelievably forgot my camera when we went to the shop, so…chocolate photo courtesy of mastbrothers.com and magazine spread is a photo story on the Mast Brothers that appears in this month’s edition of Edible Brooklyn.

From Nashville we headed for the ‘Low Country’, with a quick overnight pit stop in Atlanta to break up the journey to Savannah. In the short time we were there, we didn’t get much of an impression of Georgia’s capital, but it seems like a modern city that’s expanding pretty fast.

One thing we did get to check out was Varsity, which is (apparently) America’s largest drive in. I was pretty excited about visiting as it’s one of those old school places where they have people bring out your food and do the whole tray on the window thing. Unfortunately we were disappointed. Definitely go and check it out for the spectacle and atmosphere, but don’t go for the food. It was average at best. The burgers were no better than a basic McDonald’s hamburger, the fries were limp, and god alone knows what was on in the chilli on my chilli dog, but I’m not sure it was of this World. Bit of a shame really, because it’s a pretty cool set up.

After a 5-hour drive South East of Atlanta we hit Savannah, which was the first purpose built town in the US and is home to the US’s answer to Delia, Paula Deen. It’s a really pretty place, but as we arrived the heavens opened and it didn’t really stop raining for the 48 hours we were there. Yep, we managed to time our visit perfectly with the Low Country’s storm season. This being the case, we didn’t really feel like killing ourselves to get out there and sniff out Savannah’s more interesting food spots, so I don’t have that much to report, but we did have some really good Italian comfort food at a place called Leoci’s. Great prosciutto, mozzarella and lovely pasta. Just the thing when the hurricane nights draw in.

We were worried that we’d encounter similar conditions two hours up the coast in Charleston, but when we arrived it seemed like the clouds and winds had shot their load, and it was pretty pleasant, in a hot and sticky kind of way. Charleston is where the American Civil War started, so it’s steeped in history. But it’s also steeped in shrimp and grits. I’d got a small taster of this Low Land’s classic in New Orleans, but I had to get stuck into the real McCoy whilst we were here, and I got my fix at a great little place called Hominy Grill. For the uninitiated, grits are a America’s answer to polenta, but is usually white instead of yellow, and generally coaser ground. The grits I had at Hominy were creamy, slightly cheesy, with a tang of Tabasco and lemon,  and served with lovely juicy shrimp, bacon and mushrooms. Serious comfort food. We also tried their fried green tomatoes, another local favourite, she-crab soup, and every Charlestonian’s beer snack of choice, boiled peanuts. Really good stuff.

Whilst we were in town, someone also recommend that we check out a cafe called Dixie, a no frills kind of place known for it’s tomato pie. When we showed up for a late lunch, they were closing up the kitchen, but typical of pretty much all the Southerners we met, the lady and chef who ran the place were very accommodating and let us sit down for a slice before they finished for the day. Made with a beautifully tender dough, and layered with heirloom tomatoes, cheese and basil, it was a really satisfying lunch, especially when served with a nice hunk of sweet potato corn bread. I’ve got to say that it wouldn’t win many awards for it’s looks, but it delivered where it counts. Hmmmmm.

Of course, one of these posts wouldn’t be complete without a mildly terrifying fried chicken experience, and Charleston managed to deliver one of these too, in the shape of Hannibal’s Kitchen. Another little shack, in the rougher North East of the city, we yet again got to sample one of Southern cuisines most famous exports. The chicken was probably the mildest we tasted. Really balanced seasoning, with a small hint of spice, not too dissimilar from the Colonel’s Original Recipe. Fried fresh (we had to wait 20 minutes) and served with sides of corn and collard greens, it was yet another quality feed in less than salubrious setting, even if my greens did come with an unexpected addition of an unidentifiable pig part. If you look closely at the picture below you can see something pink poking out. For a moment I thought it was someone’s thumb, but it was definitely hog based, but no idea from where on the animal. Answers on a postcard please.

So that was the Low Country. I’m writing this from a VERY cramped sleeper berth on the ‘Silver Meteor’ train to New York, New York, our final destination. It’s going to be bitter sweet.

We’re ‘enjoying’ some the South-East coast’s famous storm season weather, so you’re going to get to read another post.

From LA we flew to New Orleans. After seeing all the news about Katrina and subsequent storms and floods, I really didn’t know what to expect, but I’ve got to say we were really impressed. Aside from Bourbon Street which is a bit of an abomination, it’s really cool and interesting place, that literally sweats music and good times from ever pore. We arrived with a fist full of recommendations of places to go from my mate Graison who I met on the  SFBI course and who used to live there, so we set about munching our way through town.

We had three really memorable meals in ‘The Big Easy’. The first was at Dante’s Kitchen. It kicked off in style with some stellar ’spoon’ bread, which is a kind of corn bread, and was absolutely delicious. So much so that I had to know what was in it, and the chefs kindly printed me out a recipe. This was followed by fantastic shrimp and grits and then ox tail. Small dishes, really nicely done. I’d go back in a shot.

The second was at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, which is famous for it’s fried chicken. Very famous. In fact some argue that it’s the best in the US, which may or may not be backed up by the James Beard ‘American Classic’ award they won in 2005. Whatever the case, Willie Mae’s is a tiny white shack in a slightly dodgy part of town (our cabbie warned us not to wonder around too much) but it left a big impression. The chicken isn’t traditional Southern style, it’s coated in a spicy batter (lots of salt and black pepper), not too dissimilar to chippie batter back home. Crispy, salty, spicy, moist and tasty as hell. The green beans side I had was pretty awesome too, but you really go for the chicken. Well worth running the gauntlet for.

The third was totally unexpected. We’d been out for a typically light dinner, and headed to a bar called The Maple Leaf to see some live music. When we arrived, the guy on the door told us entry was $10 which included the band and a ’shrimp boil’. We didn’t really know what he was on about, so paid the fee and sat down for a couple of beers.

After an hour or so, we were told that dinner was served and were led through to a room at the centre of which was a 20 ft table literally covered in a mixture of boiled shrimp, local andouille sausage, pork steak, corn and potatoes. Seconds later we were chowing down with 50 people we’d never met before chewing the fat and piles of shrimp, sausage and other assorted delights. It was lip tinglingly spicy from pepper and paprika, salty, smokey and really deeply flavoured. At one point, someone else produced a tray of stewed turkey necks, which I’d never tried before. They were sticky, sweet and gamey. A bit like mini ox tails, and maybe even more tasty. The whole evening was a totally brilliant experience. We felt like we were on an episode of No Reservations.

From New Orleans we got back behind the wheel and headed for Memphis, Tennessee. The birth place of Rock & Roll, realm of The King, and home to some pretty fine ribs too. Gracelands was pretty much exactly what you’d expect, and totally worth the visit. It also gave us the chance to sample one of Elvis’ favourite snacks, the fried  peanut butter and banana sandwich. It wasn’t bad, but on more substantial bread and with a rasher or two of candied bacon, it would have been better. Now, back to those ribs. Whilst we were in New Orleans, on two separate occasions, we were told that we HAD to check out the ribs Rendezvous. So we did. They specialise in dry rub baby back ribs, which I’ll take every time over the wet ones (too sweet and vinegary for my palette), and they didn’t disappoint. Succulent, juicy, and beautifully smoky. I find the strong flavours of US barbecue often mask the taste of the meat, but you could definitely taste these bad boys came from a pig. I could have easily eaten another rack. Turns out Rendezvous’ ribs are also a favourite of Bill Clinton and Barry Obama, and if they’re good enough for them…

The last stop on this part of the tour was Nashville, and I’ve got to say. Did. Not. Get. It. I was expecting (maybe foolishly) that it would be like a bigger Memphis, but that wasn’t really the case. It was more like LA. Really spread out, and fragmented into lots of little insubstantial feeling ‘hoods. But I’m pleased to say there was some good eating to be found. We discovered a really great modern Italian place called City House. Awesome pizza and great starters like octopus with butter beans and breadcrumbs. Super tasty. And it also afforded us another slightly dodgy fried chicken experience at Prince’s Hot Chicken. A good 10-15 minute drive from the centre of Nashville in a rather sketchy part of town lies a tiny kitchen and dining room that, like Willie Mae’s, has a big reputation. The chicken is more traditionally fried at Prince’s, but the key ingredient here is cayenne, and it’s available in Mild, Medium, Hot and Extra Hot. I opted for the medium, and I can’t for the life of me imagine the inferno that the Extra Hot creates because mine was pretty damn spicy, but it was good. Crispy and moist in all the right places, with a really good heat and served with a much needed cup of cooling slaw, some pickles and a couple of slices of dirty white bread to mop up the juices. The fried chicken of my dreams.

That’s it for now. Next stop Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston. See you soon.

So we are exactly a week into our road trip across the ‘States, and so far, so amazing.

From San Fran we drove to Yosemite which is just incredible. I visited the valley before with my folks as a young child, but I didn’t remember much of it. Probably too young to appreciate it, but it’s a jaw dropping place. Everywhere you look, there are unbelievable postcard views. It really is the big country. Food wise we had to pretty much fend for ourselves, firing up the barbie or gas stove at our camp and packing lunches, which was all good ‘back to nature’ stuff.

Next into Death Valley. Everyone had told us stuff like ‘…it’s just a long road…” or “…there’s not much there…”, so we were unprepared for how beautiful it is. That’s beautiful in a kind of brutal way. En route we stopped by Schat’s bakery cafe in Bishop and gorged on his famous sandwiches. The turkey club was the bomb. We stayed in the heart of the valley in a little settlement called Stovepipe Wells, which felt a bit like a theme village you might get at an amusement park. It was as hot as Hades, and the food wasn’t up to much, but the setting was incredible and they had a pool. Nuff said.

We then drove to Las Vegas. What a contrast. From the serenity and peace of Yosemite and Death Valley into the belly of the beast. I think we knew what to expect from Vegas, but weren’t really prepared for how we’d react to it. In short, we didn’t really get it. The novelty of the tacky glitz and glamour wore off pretty quickly, and it just began to feel a bit empty. We tried our best on the food front, but failed to find anywhere with much soul. Vegas has some World class ‘dining experiences’ from the likes of Alain Ducasse and Wolfgang Puck, but fine dining ain’t really our thing, and and all the restaurants seemed a bit personality less, which is a shame. However, there was one highlight we uncovered in the Venetian hotel. The Reuben Sandwich at Tower’s Deli. A seriously delicious oasis in a culinary desert. We could have been in Katz’s.

From Vegas we drove to Venice Beach, LA for a night. It felt good to be back in California, and the beach, skaters and sunset made in a pretty cool place to hang out for an evening. Not much to report from a food point of view. We wanted to eat at this place called Gjelina which did look seriously amazing, but my hangover, the long drive from Vegas and over an hours wait for a table wore me down, so we decided to get some take-out and retire to our hotel room.

Our next leg is going to take in New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville. See you soon.

I’m writing this post with a very heavy heart as tomorrow we leave San Francisco.

The five or so months that we’ve spent here have been so amazing, and the missus and I have totally fallen in love with the city. The hills, the fog, the history, the food, the people, the atmosphere all combine to make San Francisco a totally unique place. Having visited before for a short time as a tourist, I think I was a bit worried about being bored, but far from it. There may not be a huge quantity of ‘must do’ sights, but it has to be one of the best cities in the world for just hanging out and chilling. No wonder the hippies loved it here!

So yeah, we’re basically totally gutted to be leaving, and if things were different with visas etc, I think we would have stayed for a couple of years. But we can’t. C’est la vie. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as we’re heading on an awesome road trip that will take us across country to New York before we head back to London in late October.

So before we bid San Francisco a very fond farewell, I thought I’d give you my top 10 culinary highlights.

1. Mission Chinese Food – I’m pretty sure you’re all sick of me talking about MCF by now, but humour me. I love everything about this place. The food, the venue, the buzz. It’s been wining every time we’ve been there. Wonder if they’d deliver to London.

2. The Burger at Citizen’s Band – The best I tasted in San Fran. There’s something that really works about the combination of the Kobe beef patty, caramelised onions and challah bun. Killer.

3. Outerlands – We only went a couple of times, but this it’s such a cool place in a really interesting part of town. Fantastic bread descended from Tartine’s original recipe, great soups and sarnies, lovely atmosphere.

4. The Bread at Tartine – Three words. Believe. The. Hype. It really is great stuff, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend a few days behind the scenes with the team there. Great product, great cafe, great people.

5. BiRite Market – San Fran’s finest indie supermarket. It ain’t cheap, but it is f**king amazing. Such great produce, and their Brown Sugar ice cream is the bomb.

6. The Sandwiches at Rhea’s deli – Possibly the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. Both me and the Missus have felt high after eating The Delores. Maybe there’s something in the mayo.

7. The Swan Oyster Bar – A slice of San Francisco’s culinary history, and an old school classic. Great fresh fish, smoked fish, white wine and banter. Love. This. Place

8. The Temple O’ Spuds at Boogaloos – The true breakfast of champions, especially when topped with a poached egg and served with a side of bacon or sausage and lots of hot sauce. Goodbye hangover. Hello late morning snooze.

9. The Carnitas at Taqueria Cancun – I don’t know how they cook that pork, but it’s magic. Have it in tacos, tortas or burritos, but make sure you have it. Just delicious.

10. Last but not least, The SFBI - I’ve said it all already, it was such a a great and tasty experience. I’m still getting used to not going to school every day. I feel like there’s a quite a large hole in my life, but looking forward to filling it when I get back home and (hopefully) start a new career.

Notable mentions should also go to Delfina Pizza (awesome starters and ‘pies’), the Farmers Markets (’real’ people shop there, not just the wealthy) and Chairman Bao (amazing bun based street food).

So that’s it. Goodbye for now San Francisco. I sincerely hope I’ll be back soon. Very soon.

Every now and again, you get a really good feeling about a restaurant just by walking past it. In our first week in San Francisco, we walked past The Swan Oyster Depot on our way home after a boozy night out. Even through our alcoholic haze we could tell we were going to like it. It had this really lovely old-school feel to it, so the next day we decided to give it a go. As you can probably conclude from this post, we weren’t disappointed, and we’ve been back a few times since.

But before we get down to the nitty gritty, a short history lesson. The Swan has been around since around 1912, and by the look of the place not much has changed since. The original oyster bar was bought out by a guy called Sal Sancimino and his three cousins (Al, Pat and Frank LaRocca) in 1946, and in turn their kids took it over in the ’70’s, and it not surprisingly has a really friendly, authentic family feel to it.

It’s a ‘hole in the wall’ style place, with a long marble bar, original tiles, wood paneling etc and it only sits around 20 people at a time. So if you’re going to pay it a visit, prepare yourself for a wait. Possibly quite a long one. But don’t let this put you off, you can have a drink in the queue, and with a bit of banter from the owners, the time passes pretty quickly. And once you’re sat down eating, all is forgotten.

Now the fact that they serve oysters, and they’re good, local and fresh is kind of a given. So I’m not going to waste time talking about them. But what I will tell you about is their famous Boston style Clam Chowder. Less creamy and heavy than others we’ve tasted (we’re guessing the use milk instead of cream), powered by a really good stock and chock full of clams. The only thing that improves it is a few drops of Tabasco. Winning.

On our last visit we also had the most amazing plate of the Swan’s take on Sashimi. Absolutely beautiful hand cut slices of salmon, scallops, albacore and red tuna, all drizzled with olive oil, capers, shallots, and a little bit of salt and pepper. So delicate and fresh. Bloody delicious.

Once you’ve got the taste for it, it’s kind of hard to stop so we also ordered a plate of their smoked salmon and trout. The salmon came just as I like it, mounted on some buttered brown bread with a bit of black pepper and a couple of generous lemon wedges. The Yanks definitely go in for a heavier smoke than the Scottish style that I’m used to, but it makes a nice change, and if I’ve got a plate of smoked fish in front of me, I’m usually pretty happy. Which brings me to the smoked trout. Served as a fillet with a bit of shredded iceberg and some prawns, a fitting end to our meal, and all washed down with the house ice cold Sauvignon Blanc (I’m not sure what it is is).

The only real downsides of The Swan Oyster Bar are the queue (or ‘line’ as they’d say over here), and the fact that it’s a bit expensive. But for the heritage, atmosphere, banter and the fresh as you like seafood, I’m more than happy to overlook these things.

I hope that it’s still going in another 100 years and being run by the next generation of LaRoccas and Sanciminios.

Us Brits may have invented the humble sarnie, but the Americans have taken it to a whole new level. Here the sandwiches are a proper meal, lots of good stuff slapped between whichever kind of bread you fancy. The fact that burgers sit in the same section on a menu kind of sets the tone. Now I’ve tasted the brave new world, I feel kind of sad when I think about the Prets and Eats I used to visit so often back home, especially as most of the really good ones come out of small independent shops and delis.

Anyway, to prove the point, I thought I’d show you the evidence by showing you a few of our favourites (excluding burgers) from the recent months. GET READY TO DROOOOOOLLLL.

The Delores from Rheas Deli

Smoked peppered turkey, spicy cranberry sauce, muenster, bacon, tomatoes, red onion, pickles, pickles jalapenos, spinach on Dutch crunch bread.

The Golden Gate Sandwich from Whole Foods

Smoked turkey, bacon, provalone cheese, avocado, tomato, spinach, sun dried tomato mayonnaise on sourdough.

Fresh crab, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, cress, lettuce, mayonnaise on sourdough

The Korean Steak Sandwich from Rhea’s Deli

Rib eye marinated in soy, garlic, honey & spices, swiss cheese, chili garlic sauce, pickled red onions & jalapenos, fresh onions, lettuce, garlic aioli on an ACME organic roll.

The Eggbert from Saul’s Deli

Organic egg salad, olive tapenade, shaved fennel, arugula (rocket) on toasted challah.

Mayoose’s CA-BLT from Ike’s Place

Bacon, avocado, jack, lettuce, tomato, dirty sauce on Dutch crunch.

So that’s it. It’s over. 4 and a half months, 18 weeks, 90 days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes of hardcore baking action. We graduated from the SFBI Professional Bread & Pastry Programme last Friday, and I’ve go to say it was a bitter sweet occasion.

In the week running up to the graduation, as a group we made over 160 products, and most of them in multiple numbers. We were split into four groups as usual, with two groups concentrating more on bread and the other two predominantly on cakes and pastry. It was a full on week of late nights, early mornings, little sleep and lots of coffee. We all started on pastry, prepping stuff to be frozen and items with good shelf life, and the production schedule steadily ramped up over the week to fever pitch, particularly on Thursday and Friday for us bread people. It was full on, but hugely enjoyable. I have to admit, I felt pretty emotional as I scored the very last loaf that went into the oven.

The graduation ceremony itself was a fitting end, with a great turnout. Michel gave a fantastic speech, after which we each had to talk about our favourite product from the 18 weeks. I managed to forget why I’d chosen mine (I blame lack of sleep and having to stand near those bloody ovens), but think I pulled it back in the end. We were then treated to a bit of a skit / awards ceremony that two of my fellow students, Anthea and Justin, had put together. Each classmate was given a ‘Golden Baguette’ award, of which I received ‘Most Likely TV Chef’, which was flattering…I think. We then feasted on all that we’d made, as well as fresh pizzas from the wood fired oven, and a well earned drink or three.

Overall the course was a fantastic experience. It was pretty much everything I hoped it would be, and more. I’ve learned so much, and genuinely feel prepared and ready (or as ready as I’ll ever be) to take what I’ve learned to the next level. I’ve got to say a final big thanks to everyone at the school, but in particular Frank, Mac, Juliette and Le Grande Fromage himself, Michel. They run a pretty unique programme at The SFBI, and it’s been a great privilege to have spent the last few months in their company.

I’ve also made some great new friends from all four corners of the globe. I’ve got high hopes for each of them, and hope that they go on to do great things, and realise their hopes and dreams. Christ, I sound almost American! It must be time for me to come home.

So on that subject, what’s next? Seems odd that a few months ago, I thought that quitting my job and actually getting out here was the tough part, but I guess it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got a couple of weeks work experience at Tartine before we leave, which is great, but when I get back to the UK at the end of October I’ll be looking for work. So if there are any bakers who need an extra pair of hands, or anyone who wants to help me fulfill my Golden Baguette award, you know where to find me.

If you want to see more pictures from the graduation week, click here.

ICEBERG DEAD AHEAD!!

The poor old Iceberg lettuce is a pretty unfashionable leaf these days, but the Americans still have a lot of love for it, particularly when it’s served in big old wedges and drenched in blue cheese dressing. This twist on the American Classic uses a local Californian goat cheese called Humbolt Fog, which is lovely and creamy, and has a blue-ish tang to it. Paired with some applewood smoked bacon candied in maple syrup, and a few thinly sliced red onions, it’s pretty much the perfect starter. It’s pretty easy to throw together too. Lets begin.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 large iceberg lettuce

200g Humbolt Fog, or your favourite mild blue cheese

300g Buttermilk, or sour cream

Juice of 1/4 – 1/2 of lemon, to taste

1 teaspoon Tabasco

Salt and pepper, to taste

4 rashers of thick cut streaky bacon

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced

Method

First up, make the dressing. It seems to taste better when it has a bit of time for all the ingredients to get friendly.  Pour the buttermilk (or sour cream) into a bowl, and crumble the cheese into it in small chunks. Then with a fork, give it a quick whisk to mix and break down the cheese a bit more, but don’t over do it, you want your dressing to have a bit of texture. Next add the Tabasco, lemon juice and seasoning and give it a taste. It should be creamy with some bite from the cheese, and a bit of heat from the pepper sauce.

Next, prep the bacon. Dry fry the rashers in a hot pan on both sides until it’s got some good colour and caramelisation, then pour off the excess fat. Turn the heat down, pour in the maple syrup, and toss the bacon in it until it’s all nicely coated and shiny. Remove the rashers from the pan to cool.

You’re now ready to prep your veg. Slice your red onion as thinly as you can, use a mandolin if you’ve got one, and then sprinkle with a little salt. This helps mellow them out and soften them up a bit. Then take your iceberg. Peel off any ugly outer leaves, chop into 4 equal quarters, and remove the heaviest part of the stalk from each wedge.

Place a wedge on each plate, scatter a few onions on top of it and then generously spoon over the dressing. Finish with a chopped rasher of the maple bacon per serving. Then eat.

Last week felt like a pretty quiet one compared to the previous 16. I kind of got the feeling that our tutors were taking it easy on us as next week is graduation when we’ll be making pretty much everything we’ve made on the course. But in one week. That’s right. One frikkin’ week. We’re going to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest.

The earlier part of the week, we spent prepping and making ‘baked custards’ of the world. France was repped by the crème brûlée and crème caramel, Italy by the panna cotta, and the good ol’ US of A by a rather tasty baked cheesecake. But where was the British custard tart I ask you? Nowhere. A bloody outrage!

The above was the pre-cursor to the plated deserts section of the course, which we were led through by Frank and Juliette, both of whom have worked as pastry chefs at some pretty fancy places. And it showed.

We learned a bit about what a customer expects, some thoughts on seasonality, how to come up with a desert including flavour combinations and then ideas on how to name it and put it together on a plate. All pretty interesting, especially as it felt more like cooking than baking, which is a different perspective to what we’ve been up to over the rest of the course. But enough of that, here are a few of Juliette & Frank’s creations:

Caremelised pineapple crepes with vanilla ice cream, candied hazelnuts and tuille baskets.

Pain Perdu with strawberry sorbet, mascerated strawberries and brioche coutons.

Caremelised apple tarts with sorrel and cinnamon sabayon and panna gelato.

Sable Breton and caramelised fig tart with strawberry sorbet and frozen yoghurt ice cream.

Chocolate mousse and anise marshmallow tarts, with tapioca, micro greens and crispy, caramel croquant wafer.

Caramel and vanilla poached pears, vanilla ice cream and  pastry crumble.

Pistachio frangiapane with fresh mint parfait, white chocolate ice cream and pistachio dragees.

So that was our penultimate, and I’ve got to say it, very tasty week. Next week’s the big one, and I’m sad to say, the end of the course. I have a feeling its going to get a bit emotional. Until then…

A real mixed bag last week at SFBI. Monday & Tuesday were dedicated to making all kinds of Petit Fours, Wednesday & Thursday we were set a two day practical, revisiting the pastry section of the course, and then on Friday we rounded off the week with a tour of the great and the good of the Bay Area’s bakeries. Tell Tale, ACME, La Farine, Semifreddi’s and Firebrand.

So, rewind selectah to the beginning of last week. A big part of Petit Fours is chocolate based, from mendiants and molded chocolates to truffles, you need a lot of the stuff, and being more accustomed to eating it than making it, I wasn’t really aware of one of the key skills of the master chocalatier, tempering. I’ve got to to tell you, it’s a tricky business.

If chocolate isn’t tempered properly it lacks gloss and sheen, and doesn’t set properly, so it’s more prone to melting. For properly tempered chocolate, you need your choc to have a concentration of the right kind of crystals (I’m not going to get into the science, so you’ll just have to trust me), and this is achieved through the combination of time, agitation and temperature. Whilst tabling is a valid method, for us this equated to A LOT of stirring. And don’t I know it. My right arm is still aching, and not from self abuse for once! I think I’ve contracted Tempeperer’s Elbow. But once you’ve got your chocolate right, you can create some pretty tasty morsels, as you can see. But it wasn’t all chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. We also made caramels, more macaroons, a rather unsuccessful peanut brittle, marshmallows, and some mouth-wateringly delicious passion fruit pâtes de fruits. Diabetes alert!

As mentioned above, we then had a two day practical. We revisited a lot of good stuff from the not too distant past to make sure that we’d grasped the main concepts, and again we were able to run our own schedule for a couple of days, which was cool. Our team was a pretty well oiled machine, but it was a hectic two days. Amongst other things we made choux, including a re-appearance of the Paris Brest which I was happy about, pies, tarts, puff pastry creations like the Pethivier, cookies, scones, muffins and so on. All in all, I was really pleased with how we did. The guys at Lost Weekend Video seemed to approve of the haul which we exchanged for Step Brothers (terrible film, don’t bother), and my pie got the thumbs up from my buddy Matt, who is a total pie addict.

Then on Friday, we had what can only be described as a dysfunctional, but very enlightening school field trip to visit a bunch of bakeries. I found it a really inspiring and eye opening trip, and whilst I’m not going to go into too much detail, I thought I’d mention the things that I liked about each of them.

Our first stop of the day was Tell Tale. They are a relatively new outfit, with mostly wholesale accounts. The space that they’ve set up is pretty incredible. Lots of space, great machinery, and from what we tasted, great products. Their croissant and financiers were the bomb. They also have really good branding, which was good to see.

Next up, we went to ACME. We were really privileged to be given the tour of one of their facilities by one of the founders, Steve Sullivan. He talked a bit about he got the baking bug, and how his business grew from it’s humble beginnings to the baking tour de force it is today. Really cool guy.

Next we went over to La Farine, a more customer centric operation with four outlets in the Berkley area. We met with the operations manager, Stan Dodson, at the Fruitvale location and what impressed me about La Farine was how they produced so much bread from such a small kitchen, and how involved they are in the community. It really is a customer business, and thats what makes them tick.

Our next stop was Semifreddi’s. Again like ACME, they have come from humble beginnings, but they recently moved to a new facility which is like a spaceship. A huge space, very clean, and runs like clockwork with a combination of automation and craftsmanship. The majority of their bread is still shaped by hand, but they have a bunch of labour saving devices that keeps them running a smoother, and from what we could see, a more pleasant operation for their staff.

Our final stop was Firebrand, a small wood fired bakery in deepest, darkest Oakland. It became pretty clear that the life of the wood fired baker is a hard one, and to a great extent it’s a lifestyle choice. Despite the style of baking not really floating my boat (I’m far too lazy), I was really encouraged by the fact that they have succeeded in making a business out of it, and that they had done so with such a small range of equipment and resources. Good on them.

So all in all, a varied and interesting week. Next week is plated deserts, before we batten down the hatches for the final week of hard core production in time for graduation.

For those of you that read this blog regularly, or follow on twitter, you’ll know that Hand To Mouth has a BIG restaurant crush on Mission Chinese Food. So when we saw that the guys behind it had written a sort of cookery book and were having a ‘food and chat’ style book launch, we were all over it like a rash. So much so that we bought tickets #1 and #2.

The book, Mission Street Food, is the brainchild of Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz, who despite their tender years and relative inexperience, have already left a pretty sizeable legacy on San Francisco’s culinary map due to their DIY approach to the restaurant trade. As a couple who are also thinking of opening a food-based business, we were as keen as mustard to hear them speak about their experience, and basically get inspired.

Their story begins in late 2008 when Myint (previously a consultant who re-trained as a chef) was working as a line cook at Bar Tartine, the restaurant arm of SF’s famous bread emporium, and was looking for a more creative outlet in his down time. So he sub-let a Guatemalan taco truck on Thursday evenings and launched Mission Street Food, slinging phenomenal sounding gourmet sandwiches to a hungry and ever growing crowd of San Francisco foodies. Pork belly and jalapeño (PB & J), Pigs trotter and cornichon, 40 clove chicken, fried catfish and kimchi are among some of the sarnies listed in the book (I’m gutted I wasn’t around to sample them) and before long MSF had become as hot as Hades and demand was outstripping resource.

So Mission Street Food ditched the truck, and moved in to a rather scabby looking Chinese Restaurant in the Mission district called Lung Shan. The deal that Myint and Leibowitzt struck up with the restaurant owners was that they’d take over their dining room on Thursday and Saturday evenings, sharing the kitchen with the restaurants existing chefs who would still be knocking up take-away for deliveries. A pretty improbable arrangement, but it seemed to work. With an already strong social media fueled fan base, they were packed from the first night they opened, and despite what they described as a pretty shambolic opening, they served more food to more people than they ever could with the truck.

Over the next few months, MSF went from strength to strength, but it also continued to evolve. Myint was still working at Bar Tartine, and Leibowitz as a lecturer at Berkley University, which made planning, preparing and cooking for their weekly extravaganzas challenging to say the least. So they threw ‘their’ kitchen doors open to other chefs, inviting them to contribute to the weekly menus, whilst taking a bit of pressure off.

As a couple who seem to have a constant desire to innovate, Mission Street Food was never going to be a permanent fixture, and in June of 2010 it served it’s final meal. But it wasn’t game over for Lung Shan as Myint handed over the reigns of the dining room to friend and co-conspirator Danny Bowien and Mission Street Food became Mission Chinese Food. Since then the couple have been busy consulting, opening other restaurants (Commonwealth) and pop ups (the now closed Mission Burger), developing links with food based charities and writing a book. Slackers they are not.

As we hoped, hearing their story was really inspirational. I’m not sure what the other people at the event took away, but our feeling was that, talent aside, their success is due in great part to a few key factors. Neither Myint or Leibowitz had that much experience, but they had (and still have) a desire to do something different, and they went for it. Secondly, they were flexible in realising their goals. Without this flexibility, they probably would have run themselves into the ground, but they saw the benefit of switching things up, working out deals, finding collaborators and so on. Our third observation was that San Francisco played quite a big part. It’s a city that LOVES food and supports this kind of ‘can do’ attitude, and not just on a faddish level. I wish I could say the same of London. Finally, we were impressed with the idea of the democratisation of fine dining. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m no fan of fine dining. The snobbery, fussyness and atmosphere of fine dining restaurants don’t sit well with me, but part of Myint and Leibowitz’s mission was to apply the classical techniques and traditions of such places to food that is more accessible to the general populous. Smart thinking both from a point of view of keeping costs down, but also in terms of keeping their army of fans happy.

Speaking of being kept happy, over the course of the evening we were also served a very tasty three course meal by Myint. We started with a beef carpaccio, featuring very thinly sliced beautifully seared rib eye steak (cut against the grain – a technique he elaborates on in the book), a mozarella mousse dispensed from a C02 charged siphon (natch), a very tasty relish of olive, caper, pistachio, parsley, shallot, lemon juice and olive oil, and some insanely spicy crisps. A slightly odd combination, but it all worked well together.

The main course was a chicken Caesar salad, which was pretty traditional, but had some nice little touches. The chicken was ‘confited’ in chicken fat, before being grilled, and was served with some chicken skin crisps (if only Walkers would make these). There were also a few slices of avacado, a couple of boquerones and a generous shaving of Parmesan.

The meal was rounded off with a dish created for one of MSF’s theme evenings, Breakfast For Dinner, their take on Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Made with a doorstep slice of ACME’s pain de mie spread both sides with butter, and then dredged with sugar and cinnamon before being brûléed with a blow-torch and floated in a pool of condensed and regular milk. Sounds odd. Tasted great.

So, a great evening with plenty of food for both body and mind. Towards the end of the evening, were lucky to have the opportunity to have a good chat with Leibowitz as she helped her hubby dish up the desert, getting more on her perspectives on starting a business amongst other things. But I’ve written far too much already, so this may have to wait for another time.

Week 15. More cake. But as the title of this post ‘hilariously’ suggests, we moved away from the predominantly flour based sponges and in to mousse cake territory.

Most of these cakes followed a similar format. Some kind of sponge base, ‘inserts’ made either from more sponge or set crème anglaise based layers flavoured with anything from lemon and raspberry to mint, surrounded with some kind of mousse set with gelatin. These cakes get finished with different techniques. Glazes, cake walls, ‘pate decor’, we even got to get the chocolate spray-gun out.

Here are a few examples (for some reason I didn’t get as many pics as usual):

Fresh Fruit Charlotte: Lady finger base and walls, separate lemon and berry inserts, diplomat cream, all topped with fresh fruit. One of my favourites of the week.

Lemon & Blackberry Mousse Cake: Full on presentation on this one. Dacquase sponge base, blackberry insert, lemon mousse, a cake wall of biscuit jaonde decorated with pate decor, finished with a marbled neutral glaze. Pheeeww.

White Chocolate, Pistachio and Raspberry Mousse Cake: Pistachio and raspberry sponge base, raspberry insert, white chocolate mousse, finished with a half scollop motif, tinted white chocolate spray, and white macarons, which we started making this week, but will do more of next.

Vanilla Bavarian: Muscavado sugar sable Breton base, vanilla sponge insert, vanilla mousse all coated in white chocolate, again applied with the spray gun, and again tinted.

I’m going to be honest, the majority of the cakes left me a bit cold. Don’t get me wrong, the ingredients are all great (cream, sugar, fruit, booze, cake – whats not to like?), but I think I’m basically not that fond of the texture that the gelatin. Also, and this may not make much sense as all the individual elements have to be made, but for me these cakes felt like they were more assembly jobs than anything.

They are also not really my bag aesthetically. Making them was fun, and it was definitely good to learn some new techniques, but most of them look to me like they could be at home on the open seas on a cruise ship circa 1987, or in a slightly pretentious restaurant. I guess I just don’t find ‘modern’ presentation that appetising.

Next week, our penultimate week of study, covers macarons, chocolate, confectionery and petit fours followed by a two day practical and a bakery tour. It’s gonna be big.

But there’s gold in them there wedding cake shaped hills, so I manned up and took on the challenge. We made two cakes, one traditional with all that white butter cream, pipe work and hand made fondant flowers (see below), but for the other we had more of a free reign.

So I decided to have a bit of fun and make a Mr & Mrs PACMAN cake. I’m not going to say its a new idea, I basically copied it off the internets, but this is my take on it, and it took quite a lot of time and effort, so you’re going to see the pictures, and you’re going to enjoy them. Capisce?

Feels a bit odd writing about cake when there’s all this shit going down in London, so to that end I’m going to do what I promised in my last post. Be brief.

So another week, another cake mountain. The cakes last week were definitely more technical than the week before. We compared and contrasted the differences between fat based and egg based sponges, including Génoise and Chiffon, as well as making a bunch of different fillings and icings.

Here are a few highlights:

The Fraisier – a light vanilla sponge sandwiching fresh strawberries and mouselline, all topped off with a marzipan disc. Summer in cake form.

Black Forest Gateaux – a modern twist on the German classic. Kirsch spiked chocolate sponge sandwiching a filling of Chantilly and brandied cherries, covered in cherry cream. Das ist gut, ya!

Sachertorte – from Vienna with love. A dense chocolate and almond sponge, a bit of apricot jam, all smothered with a pretty thick layer of chocolate. Always served with a dollop of whipped cream.

Opera – my winner of the week. Thin, dense sponge soaked in sweetened coffee. Two layers of chocolate ganache, one of coffee buttercream, all topped off with a chocolate glaze. Moist, sophisticated and tres tasty.

The Concorde – alternating layers of chocolate meringue and chocolate ganache surrounded by and topped with ‘cigarettes’ of chocolate meringue. Richer than Donald Trump, but with better hair.

The final two days of the week we made wedding cakes. Yep, you heard me right. Wedding cakes. In fact we made two, one more traditional iced with buttercream, and the other we had more creative license.

Here are a few of the results. And yes that is a Pac Man cake. And yes it’s mine. More on this in another post.

So thats it for week 14. Next week we’re doing yet more cakes, and moving into chocolate and confectionery. Until then, I hope all you Londoners are well. Don’t let the buggers get you down.

We’ve got a busy month ahead with family and friends visiting SF, and I’m already behind with my posts. This may not end well. Thinking I’m going to try and make the next couple as brief as possible so I can catch up. More photos, less words. Capisce?

So the week before last was week 13. Unlucky for some, but not for us, as this was the week we started to make cake, and as always, lots of it.

The week started off in a not entirely cakey way with baking a bunch of scones. Being the cosseted Englishman that I am, I didn’t realise how popular these tea-time treats are with the rest of the world. The Yanks and the Aussies in particular seem to love them. But unfortunately no jam or clotted cream was harmed in the making of these recipes, as they tend to be filled with dried fruit and nuts over here, and eaten dry. Also, the scones over here are almost universally triangular shaped, as they are cut from a circular slabs. The heathens! We made them in two ways (butter and cream based formulas) and in a whole range of flavours, including walnut and apricot, lemon and poppy seed, white chocolate and cranberry, currant and so on.

We then moved on to what are known over here as ‘quick breads’. Simple cakes of the kind you’d cook in a loaf tin. We made banana bread, pumpkin bread, marble cake, cake aux fruits (or fruit cake to you and me), and pound cake. I like a good banana bread, but most of them seemed a bit bland to me. My favourite was probably the pound cake, baked in a bundt pan with a simple lemon icing. It could definitely use more lemony zing taking a few lessons from my Mum’s lemon drizzle cake, but it’s a cake with some potential for sure.

‘Coffee Cakes’ came next, which are not to be confused with a coffee flavoured cakes. Believe you me, this stumped me for a while, I was tasting cakes thinking ‘yeah it’s nice, but I can’t taste any coffee’. Yes, these are cakes which are simply to be enjoyed with a cup of coffee. We made a couple of these, one with a jam filling and a streusel topping, and the other jam packed with apples, which was the better of the two in my humble opinion. A good balance of sweet and tart.

The cake making went up a gear towards the end of the week , starting with the rather curious ‘Angel Food Cake’. Again this was a new one on me. Essentially a meringue cake, it’s made from a shed load of egg whites and sugar, with a tiny bit of cake flour throw in for good measure. Insanely sweet, white and fluffy, I don’t really get the point of it, but they are hugely popular here being sold in their millions from Wholefoods to Safeway.

To make up for this cake abomination, we then made (IMHO) the two best cakes of the week. A classic carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting, and the chocolate and hazelnut dacquoise. The former needs no introduction. Moist, sweet and a bit nutty as it should be, but the dacquoise is more of a complicated beast. Two layers of chocolate sponge, one layer of hazelnut dacquoise style sponge, filled and covered with a praline flavoured butter-cream. Pretty intense, but pretty damn tasty too.

Over the course of the week, we also got re-acquainted with the dreaded piping bag with a number of boot camp style piping sessions. Learning different shapes, styles, borders and techniques it became clear very quickly that it’s a real skill, one which I’m pretty sure I wasn’t born with. But I’m getting better. We also started writing in chocolate, which is another matter altogether. The example pictured on the cake above came from the hand of Frank, our instructor, as I’m way to embarrassed to show my own efforts, but lets just say that if a report on them was written by my old school master they would have been described as ‘infantile’.

So that was week 13. I tried to be brief, but it seems I failed. We’ve got a whole more cake to come next week, so bring a fork and a plate people.

Going back in time a bit, on the last day of the bread section of my course we had a flat bread day. We made pitta, pizza, lavash and naan breads. Knowing we were going to make them, I thought I’d give my course mates a little taste of ‘home’ by making some spiced fillings for a few of the naan. Well everyone knows how much us Brits love a curry.

The breads are made with a whole wheat biga, which is a (typically) Italian stiff pre-ferment, although I imagine the Indians would use hunks of ‘old dough’ to add flavour and a bit of leavening. As the biga is made of whole wheat and has a wee bit of yeast in it, you don’t need to make it the night before, just a few hours before you make your final dough, which has a 3 hour bulk ferment, so you’ll need to get a bit organised.

I made the meat (keema) filling for the carnivores and a vegetarian version for the herbivores and we baked the breads in the schools wood fired oven, which I’m guessing most of you out there don’t have. Don’t worry, you can cook them in your oven at home. Just make sure it’s as hot as Hades, and that you bake the naans on something solid and heat retaining like a pizza stone or heavy roasting tin.

Ready?

Ingredients (makes 4)

For The Bread

380g White Bread Flour

30g Whole Wheat Flour

170g Water (temp of around 26c)

16g Ghee or melted butter

12g Salt

1g Instant Yeast

160g Goat or regular low fat Yoghurt

225g Whole Wheat Biga (see below)

More Ghee / Butter for brushing the bread with

For The Keema

400g Minced Beef

1/2 Onion, finely chopped

1/2 Hot Chilli

2 Cloves Garlic, Finely Chopped

1 teaspoon Garam Massala

1/2 teaspoon Ground Coriander

1/2 teaspoon Turmeric

1/2 teaspoon Chilli Powder

1/2 teaspoon Ground Cumin

Handful Chopped Fresh Coriander

Squeeze of Lemon Juice

Salt and Pepper to taste

For The Vegetarian Filling

2 Medium Onions, sliced

2 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon Cumin Seeds

1/2 teaspoon Ground Coriander

1/2 teaspoon Turmeric

1/2 teaspoon Salt

Method

So, the first thing to do is make your biga, which you should do around 4 hours before you’re going to make your dough. Simply mix together 140g of whole wheat flour with 90g of water and half a pinch of dried yeast. Give it a good old mix, cover and place somewhere warm.

When you’re ready to make your dough, put all the ingredients, including the biga, into a bowl. If you’ve got a mixer with a dough hook, mix on the lowest speed for 4 or so minutes to combine all the ingredients, and then turn it up to speed two for around 2 to 3 minutes. You’re looking for the dough to have a good level of tenacity. If you don’t have a mixer, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and then knead on a floured surface for around 8 to 10 minutes until your dough reaches the same strength. When ready, turn the dough out into an oiled bowl, cover and set aside for 3 hours.

While you’re waiting, prep the fillings as you’re better off using them cold. It’s all pretty easy. For the mince, fry off the spices for a minute or so being careful not to burn them, then add the garlic and onions to the pan. Fry these until they’re soft, and then add the mince. Keep cooking on a medium heat until the mixture dries out, and then stir in the chopped coriander. Set aside to cool, and then make the onions. Again fry the spices, fry the onions and garlic until caramalised and dry-ish, then set aside.

After three hours, remove your dough from the bowl and divide into 4 equal portions of 250g each. Take each piece, de-gas gently with the palm of your hand (don’t smash the dough, just reduce the volume) and then pre-shape into a rough triangle by folding over two sides to form a point a bit like you’d fold a paper plane, and then fold over the base. Flip each of the triangles over (see picture above), set aside and cover for 45 minutes for the final prove and then set your oven to as hot as it will go (preferably 260c +).

After this time, take each of your pieces of dough and cut in half. Flatten each half into a long, thin triangle using the tips of your fingers. On one, place half the mince / half the onion mixture leaving a clear border of at least half an inch around the edge. Then moisten this with some water, before placing the other half on top. Seal the edge by pinching the two halves together, and then using the tips of your fingers again, push the two layers together. This is what gives the naan the classic dimpled effect. You can afford to be quite firm, just try not to puncture the dough.

You’re now ready to go. Get your bread on some kind of transfer peel (it’s probably best to bake only one or two at a time), and then slide them into your oven onto your stone / baking tray. As the oven is so hot, they should cook in around 10 minutes, but keep an eye on them. Take them out when they’re golden brown and have puffed up.

Once they’re out of the oven, brush them with ghee or melted butter and eat immediately. Either alone, with a curry, or a bit of raita.

Using the left over Pâte à Foncer and the vanilla Sucree, as well as a chocolate version made for us by our instructor, Juliette, we made a trio of tasty treats. The first was a Pear Bourdaloue. A rectangular tart filled with frangipane, jam and topped with artfully sliced pears. Right up my ‘rue’. Next, using the chocolate sucree, a salted caramel tart. Quite a lengthy process this one, as it involved making a salted caramel with which we lined the base, a chocolate ganache which formed the bulk of the filling, all topped off with ‘black glaze’, which contrary to it’s name isn’t a new tone from Dulux, but a silky chocolate flavoured glaze which gives the finished tart a shop ready sheen.

The final tart of the trio was a creamy passion fruit tart, which had a tasty curd like filling similar to a tarte au citron, topped (slightly un-necessarily in my opinion) with blow-torched Swiss meringue, to give a nicely burnished effect. Or at least that’s the theory. For most of us, this was the first time we had used a piping bag to finish a desert, and there were some mixed results. My effort (not pictured) wasn’t too bad, but lets just say Pierre Hermé hasn’t been knocking down my door to offer me a job.

The following day we got busy making choux pastry, hence the HILLARIOUS title of this post. The good news is that choux is, comparatively speaking, a doddle to make. The bad news is that you have to pipe it to make your creations. This being the case, we started off slowly making croquembouche (choux puffs covered in pearl sugar) and a cheesy version on the theme called gougères. Luckily, both just involved piping a small ball of the pastry onto a baking sheet.

More choux shenanigans followed with the Paris Brest (pictured above), a pastry created to commemorate the cycle race of the same name which is the warm up for the Tour De France. Made by piping a circle (or as close as one can manage) of choux, filled post baking with a praline flavoured cream, and topped with flaked almonds. I love anything with praline, so I was a fan. I imagine Lance Armstrong eats a bunch of these every day when he’s training. We also made éclairs later in the day, but for me these were eclipsed by the Brest. No laughing at the back.

Wednesday was almost entirely dedicated to baking and assembling the Gateaux Saint Honoré, a French cake named after the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. The cake has no less than 6 separate elements. 1 – a puff pastry base. 2 – a choux pastry ring running the circumference of the base. 3 – choux ‘puff’ balls filled with 4 – Mouselline and dipped in 5 – caramel, finally the centre of the cake is filled with 6 – chantilly. Complicated, but seriously good stuff.

After three days of sweet architecture, the rest of the week was comparatively mundane, as we made cookies, muffins, meringues and what we would call ‘tray bakes’, brownies and ‘lemon bars’. Thats not to say it wasn’t interesting, as it’s been good to get to grips with different techniques and learning the right way of doing things. A special shout has to go out to the peanut butter cookie. Biscuit crack.

So that was last week. This week its cakes, cakes and more cakes…see you then.

A week or so ago on a rare, but none the less slightly grey and grim San Francisco Saturday, we headed to an area of the city called Sunset. It’s a part of town bordered by Ocean Beach (the local break for a lot of SF surfers) and the Pacific Highway that on paper has a lot going for it, but seems to have become a bit neglected, a bit like a faded British seaside town.

We’d read that the area is on the up again following a small cluster of new(ish) and interesting places opening up down there, one of which is a cafe / restaurant called Outerlands. I’d first heard about Outerlands from a Tartine Bread video that features the owner, David Muller. David had met Chad Robertson through a love of surfing, and Chad taught David how to make the bread that he now serves at the cafe.

We pitched up at around late lunch time, and it was busy, busy. So we put our names down and sat on the little bench outside and happily watched the world go by. After half an hour we were beginning to get a bit chilly, but before long we were sat inside the warm, wood clad interior perusing the simple but delicious sounding menu, most of which is based around David’s excellent bread.

Over a glass off red wine and a Black Butte Porter (served in Ball jam jars, natch) we quickly decided on the soup and grilled cheese combo. The delicious broccoli and potato soup had a little island of sauteed borage on the top, and was lightly spiced with either cumin or ground coriander. Properly warming and hearty stuff. Perfect food for the weather.

The grilled cheese sandwich was a thing of beauty. So simple, yet so effective. The bread was ‘toasted’ by being brushed with garlic olive oil and then seared on a skillet to give it this toothsome, super tasty crust. The twin cheese filling was a combination of (we think) Cheddar and Colby, and was melted to perfection. So tasty, and went brilliantly with the soup.

As you’ll know, I’m a lover of simple food done really well, which Outerlands seems to have pegged, but for me one of the greatest and most encouraging thing is how it has been instrumental in kick-starting the rejuvenation of an area of town. Sure, Sunset isn’t all surf breaks and hipsters, but along with places like Woodshop, Mollusk, Tuesday Tattoo and The General Store it shows how good food and a bunch of like minded people can make a difference.

A local hero in the truest sense, then. We’ll be back to sample the dinner menu.

‘Barbecue’ is a bit of a national obsession in the US. From what I can gather there’s a bit of rivalry between the North and South in terms of style. I forget which, but one part of the country favours the dry, and the other the more saucy, but whatever side you meat falls on, it can be some tasty shizzle.

This recipe is a culmination of a bunch of different barbecue recipes we’ve read and tasted since we’ve been out here. A lot of the more recent ones seem to favour balsamic vinegar and going heavy on the sugar as part of the sauce, which to my taste is a bit sweet, and you end up with almost Chinese style ‘candied’ ribs. I prefer a bit more of a balance between sweet and savoury, so have used apple cider vinegar. But be careful not to go too far the other way or you’ll end up with something that will strip the enamel off your teeth.

The ribs get a double dose of flavour from a  dry rub (which you should allow to do it’s work for a good few hours; or ideally overnight) and a wet barbecue ‘mopping sauce’ that you douse the meat with whilst it cooks on the barbecue.

Right, lets get our grill on.

Ingredients (serves 2-3)

1.2 – 1.5 kg rack of baby back (loin) ribs

For the dry rub

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 tablespoon soft, dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

For the barbecue sauce

1/2 onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

120 ml tomato ketchup

60 ml cider vinegar

60 ml water

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons bourbon (whiskey)

1 tablespoon soft, dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

First up, get all the dry ingredients for the rub together, dump them in a bowl and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Then take your ribs and rub them all over with the mixture. Once you’ve got good coverage, pack the rest of the rub mixture wherever you can on to the meat, cover with foil and then refrigerate for a minimum of 5 hours, preferably over night.

The next day, an hour or so before you cook, take the ribs out of the fridge and allow them to get to room temperature. You’re going to part cook the ribs in your oven before you get them on your grill, so set your oven to 180c, put the ribs in a baking tray, and cover it tightly with foil, and then pop them in the oven for an hour.

Whilst they’re cooking, prep the barbecue sauce and get your grill fired up. For the sauce, start by frying the chopped onions in some oil with the garlic and allspice powder in an oven proof pan (this is kind of important as you want a pan that can be placed on top of your barbecue so you can mop the ribs with the sauce without running back and forth to your kitchen). Once they’ve got some good colour on them, de-glaze the pan with the bourbon and then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for around 10 minutes. You should end up with a sauce which is both sweet, savoury and deeply flavoured.

When you’re ribs are cooked, take them out of the baking tray, add the cooking juices to your barbecue sauce, and then wrap them in foil. You want to arrange the coals on your barbecue so they’re set up to provide ‘indirect heat’. This means either scraping all the coals to one side, or creating a valley by scraping them to either side. You’re going to cook your ribs on the part of the grill that isn’t directly over coal with the lid on.

When you’ve done this, bring your barbecue sauce back to simmering point, and move your operations barbecue side. Put your pan and ribs on the grill and then give the meat it’s first coating with the sauce. Cover with the lid, and repeat the process every 6 or 7 minutes. You obviously want to avoid burning the ribs, but the sauce will caremalise, giving you layer upon layer of flavour each time you brush the ribs.

After around 30 minutes, the ribs will be done. Take them off the grill, cover with foil and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. Serve with the remaining barbeque sauce, and whatever else you fancy. We had ours with barbecued corn (cooked in their damp husks so they steam steam, and then stripped finished on the grill) and a simpler, cleaner version of this coleslaw (substitute the hummus for more yoghurt, leave out the maras biberi, and just use parley instead of the other herb combo).

Eat whilst listening to the Deliverance soundtrack, and squeal like a piggy!

Bit of a funny week last week. We returned to college on Tuesday after the long 4th July weekend, and everyone seemed a bit lacking in vim and vigour. Think maybe there’s a bit of course fatigue going down. It’s been a pretty full on ten weeks, so it’s not surprising, and it was also our last week of Viennoiserie before we move on to pastry.

We started the week week working on more croissants, continuing our lamination education. It was great to get a few more batches under our belts. Getting more used to the sheeters, tidying up our lamination techniques, and working on our shaping. As part of this, we also made a couple of batches of croissants using some more exotic flours.

Firstly, a teff variation using 60% teff flour pre-cooked into a rubbery porridge which we made into traditional shapes and pain au chocolat. And also a dough made using a buckwheat poolish. As noted here before, I’m not a huge fan of teff, but the croissants actually tasted pretty good, better in fact than the pain au chocolat variation, which is odd. To my palate, the buckwheat didn’t offer a great deal, although the danish-like shapes we filled with a mix of mashed potato, goats cheese and spring onions did taste pretty damn good.

We then delved into the murky world of competition Vienoisserie. A couple of the people at the SFBI have been involved with the US team for the Coupe Du Monde de la Patisserie, the World Cup of pastry chefs held in Paris each year. From this, a few formulas with rather exotic names like Swirling Duo, Triple Crown and Imagination, have been added to the syllabus. These combine some of the doughs and techniques we’ve learned over the past couple of weeks, and elevate them to culinary works of art. I’m pretty sure I won’t be making any of them again (I’m not holding my breath for a call from the UK team), but it was cool to see some of the techniques, and have a think about how they could be applied in other ways.

The last two days of the week, we had a practical assessment. In our groups of four, we had to run our own schedule for Thursday and Friday, making and baking a a range of Viennoiserie products, all of which we had made over the previous couple of weeks. Thursday we were tasked with making batches of sticky buns, stollen, pain au lait and Danish, as well as prepping mixes for the following day. Friday we baked croissants, both regular (traditional shapes and pain au chocolat) and whole wheat (mini traditional and ham and cheese), pumpkin and regular brioche, and the rather formidable Pan D’Oro.

Aside from a couple of hitches, a bit of over proofing here and under proofing there, we did a pretty stellar job. The majority of the products looked great, and we were all really pleased with the lamination on our croissants and Danish. It was also good to run our own schedule again, which gives you a small insight into what it might be like to do it as part of your own business.

So that’s it for Viennoiserie. We’re moving on to pastry now. So long, and thanks for all the croissants. Until next time…

My latest, greatest baking discovery is the Dutch Oven I bought a few weeks ago. Recommended by the tutors at the SFBI as one of the best ways to cook bread at home, they yet again have proved they know their onions as it’s already helped me knock out a bunch of consistently great bread in the kitchen of our rented apartment.

The reasons it works so well are two fold. Firstly, the cast iron retains heat brilliantly, and as you’re baking in a sealed vessel your bread is less likely to be subject to any fluctuations in oven temp, which means a good even bake. The second reason is that it the lid traps steam, so there’s no need to fanny about with trays of boiling water or spraying your loaves pre-baking.

You could try something like a Le Creuset, as used baking Jim Lahey’s no knead loaf (where you almost pour the dough in), will work OK, but the Lodge Combo-Cooker I acquired is the business. Firstly, it was about the quarter of the price of a Le Creuset (they are quite a bit more expensive in the UK I’m afraid), and It’s other advantage is that you can invert it using the lid / skillet as the base to bake on which helps give a better crust colour while you’re venting the loaf. NB. You don’t have to have a Dutch Oven to make this formula, but it will give you better results.

The following is adapted from one of my favourite formulas we made during the bread section of the course at the SFBI. It is basically a no knead recipe, with the dough strength being developed over a series of folds. The formula assumes that you’ve got a liquid starter on the go. If you don’t have one, there’s a whole world of bread advice out there on line, so just search, but you’ll need a week or so to get it moving. The toasted wheat germ in the recipe isn’t a deal breaker, but it adds extra flavour and colour to the crumb. I’m not sure how easy it is to get in the UK, but if you can’t find it, just sift some whole wheat flour in a fine sieve and what you’ll have left in it is the germ. Toast it in a hot oven (200 c) for a few minutes until it gets slightly darker, but don’t burn it.

Right, lets get busy.

Ingredients

For the levain (makes 189g for  final dough)

63g Strong White Bread Flour

21g Whole Wheal Flour

84g Water

21g liquid starter

For the final dough

474g Strong White Bread Flour

326g Water

12g Salt

189g Liquid Levain

5g Toasted Wheat Germ

Method

12 or so hours before you mix your dough, you need to mix your levain. So weigh out your dry and wet ingredients, mix them together well and then leave at room temperature for the allotted time. When you re-vist your levain it should have at least doubled in volume, be good and frothy and smell like there’s plenty of fermentation activity.

You’re now ready to mix your dough. Put all your ingredients in a large bowl, and get your hands in there and mix it up. You want to make sure that everything is well incorporated together, and there are no floury patches. It’ll be a bit messy, but it’s a small price to pay. One thing to note is that you want your mixed dough to be at around 26 c when you’re done, so if the room is cold / hot you can try adjusting this with your water temperature.

The dough will look pretty shaggy at this point, but fear not, it will come together. Scrape out all the dough and transfer to another well oiled bowl, and cover with a lid / cling film and set aside somewhere at room temperature. As this dough hasn’t been mixed or kneaded, it needs time to develop and ferment, which is going to take about 3 hours.

Over these three hours you’re going to fold the bread every 45 minutes (3 times in total), and I’ll explain what I mean by this now. If you imagine your ball of dough as a square, you’re going to take each side of it and stretch it slightly, and then fold it on top of itself. So you do this 4 times, and then you flip the dough over so the folds you’ve made are now underneath. The dough is pretty sticky, so make sure your hands are oiled or wet when you do this.

After each fold, you’ll notice small changes in the dough that show it’s gaining strength. It will become less ’stretchy’ and more ‘elastic’, it will start to get gassy, and also smoother and silkier. By the time you’ve done your third fold it should be slightly shiny and ’sitting up’ in your bowl with a domed appearance. Set aside and cover for the final stint.

After the full three hours, and you’re happy with your dough, turn it out onto a floured work surface, sprinkle the top with a light dusting of flour and then de-gas the dough with the palm of your hand before shaping into a tight-ish ball. Leave the pre-shaped dough on your work surface, covering it with your inverted bowl, and leave to rest for half an hour.

Return to your dough half an hour later, de-gas again, shape into a tight ball again (or what ever style you want) and place it seam side up in a well floured proofing basket (these are cheap and easy to get on-line) for it’s final proof. You now have two choices. You can either stick the dough and basket in a plastic bag for it’s final three hour proof, or pop it in your fridge to retard over night (up to 16 hours), which I would recommend as it helps develop flavour amongst other things.

Either way, and hour before you’re ready to bake, set your oven to 26o c with the Dutch Oven inside so it gets up to temperature (if you’ve retarded your bread take it out half an hour before you bake). After an hour, take out the Dutch Oven, open it and invert the proofing basket onto it. If you’ve floured it properly, the dough should fall out and sit proudly on the skillet. Now slash the top with a diamond pattern (or whatever style works for you), making sure not to cut too deep, or go too far down the side of the loaf. Now place the ‘lid’ over the top and pop back in the oven.

You’re going to bake the loaf with the lid on for 30 minutes. After this time remove it and continue to bake (or vent) for a further 10-15 minutes. This helps set the crust, and will develop it to a deep golden brown colour.

When you’ve got your colour, remove the loaf from the skillet and place on a rack to cool. Contrary to common belief, you should never eat bread fresh from the oven. It’s still cooking when it’s hot, and develops more flavour as it cools. But when it has cooled, get stuck in and enjoy the fruits of your labour. The crumb should be open with plenty of air bubbles, and have an almost translucent quality.

I know all this sounds like a bit of a faff, but once you’ve done it a few times you’ll see that it’s not much effort, and all it really takes is a bit of time and organisation. Plus, when you slice through that crust and taste that hand made, home made loaf, you’ll realise it was all worth it.

Oh and (sorry to brag) but Dan Lepard saw a (rather blurry) picture of the loaf above on Flickr and commented ‘Excellent!’. Now if that isn’t a ringing endorsement for the Dutch Oven method and this formula, I don’t know what is.

Since arriving in San Fran, we’ve heard quite a few people say that In-N-Out burger are the cream of the crop when it comes fast food. In-N-Out are the originators of the ‘drive-thru’ phenomenon, having opened the first one ever in 1948, and as a result most of their outlets tend to be in not very handy locations to those without cars like us. So when we passed one on the way home from Tahoe last weekend, we seized the day.

When we got in there, the first thing that struck us was the size of the menu. They only really have 6 things on offer. Three kinds of burgers, fries, shakes and soft drinks. That’s it. It’s pretty refreshing to have such a limited choice, and must have been a pretty bold decision for a country like the US where people are used to having things their way.

In-N-Out are also obviously pretty serious about the quality of their ingredients. I’m sure a fair amount of it is bluster, ‘hand leafed lettuce’ anyone? But they do seem to take pride and care in the selection and procurement of their meat, cheese and veg, claims that I’m sure a lot of the other big burger chains couldn’t back up.

I opted for the Double-Double. Two beef patties, two slices of cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion. Now, I’m not going to say it was a Meatwagon-esque, life changing moment, but they were pretty damn good. The burgers themselves tasted fresh, meaty, well seasoned, and weren’t greasy. The bun was pretty good too, and the veg nice, crispy and clean tasting.

We also had a tasty vanilla shake, for me a good yardstick for any diner style place. The only thing that was disappointing were the fries. I can’t really put my finger on what was wrong with them, but they just seemed a bit dry and tasteless. Meh.

But the fries weren’t enough to put us off. Next time we hire a car, we’ll be going In-N-Out again.

Croissants and Danish Pastries are the new baguettes. FACT. We made a shed load of them last week as we finally got stuck into laminated doughs.

Laminating doughs with butter is one of the key skills of Viennoiserie, and it can be pretty tricky. Get it right and you end up with beautiful, flaky, buttery pastry. Win. Get it wrong and you can end up with greasy products or a clogged up sheeter. Lose.

As before, the doughs are yeasted and mixed in a very similar way, but the new techniques came into play after the initial proof. One of the most important things with lamination is to keep everything cold. You want your butter and dough to be almost frozen with a ‘plastic’ like consistency. This enables you to sheet the dough thin and ‘lock in’ the butter over a series of folds creating alternating layers of pastry and fat.

It’s been pretty hot here in San Fran recently, so this has made the whole lamination process a lot tougher. We’ve been heavily relying on the blast freezer to quickly chill our doughs in between folds so we can work on them without the butter melting, or the dough getting too soft.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but once you’ve got lamination down (not that I’m saying I’m quite there yet), you’ve got a whole host of tasty shizzle at your finger tips based around croissant and Danish pastry formulas.

We made a range of different croissants both with and without pre-ferments. Plain ones, whole wheat ones, ham and cheese ones, almond ones, and pain au chocolat, all different kinds of Danish, lunettes, bear claws, snails, a CRAZY Breton pastry called koign-amann which contains enough butter and sugar to kill an army, and thats just the tip of the iceberg.

In creating all this new sweet stuff, we’ve learned a bunch of new techniques. Using the sheeting machines, different types and styles of shaping, making fillings for the pastries. It felt a bit like we took in enough information for a month, let alone a week.

Oh and it wasn’t all lamination, lamination, lamination. A special shout has to go out to an AMAZONGGG cake that we made at the end of the week. The mighty Bienenstich or ‘bee sting’ cake. It’s a brioche based dough, filled with diplomat cream and topped with a molten mixture of honey, sugar, butter and almonds that sets hard. Properly delicious stuff. If you ever see it on sale, buy it. You’ll thank me.

Next week we’re finishing up Viennoiserie, finishing the week with a two day practical. Wish me luck.

As you’ll see form the previous post, American Independence day fell over this weekend. So for the 4th of July, we rented a cabin up in Lake Tahoe, which gave us the opportunity to do something we’d been gagging to do since we got here. Get our grill on.

We cooked a bunch of stuff on the barbecue which came with our weekend digs including ribs (recipe soon), steak, corn, s’mores and this great little clam recipe that the missus spotted on the New York Times website a few weeks ago.

It’s a really simple and easy, a bit different, and makes a perfect starter.  We approximated the quantities as we didn’t have any on-line access whilst there, but I think we winged it pretty successfully.

Ingredients (serves 2)

20 clams (about 10 per person)

100g buter

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Small handful chopped flat leaf parsley

A wedge of lemon to finish

Method

It all happens pretty quickly, so you’ll want to get all your bits and bobs prepped before the clams hit the grill. First up, soak the clams in ice cold slightly salted water and let them chill out and ‘de-silt’ for half an hour.

Whilst this is going on, get your barbecue going. Seeing as these guys are going to cook in a couple of minutes flat, it may not be worth firing up a barbie just for these, so you’ll have to think of something else to cook afterwards (more on this soon).

So, now you’ve got the barbie going, prep the sauce. Stick the butter, chopped garlic cloves, pepper and Worcestershire sauce in a pan on the heat and melt it until it all sizzles together to form a smooth, silky sauce. Take it off the heat after a minute or so, add the freshly chopped parsley, and stir it in.

Next, drain the clams, pop them on the barbecue and close the lid. You want to get the heat intense so the mussels steam themselves cooked. They’ll pop open once they’re done, so after about 90 seconds take a look under the hood. If they’re all open, you’re ready. If not, close the lid again for another 30 seconds or so.

By now, they should be done, so take the clams off the grill retaining as much of their cooking juices as possible, and place on a plate (discard any un-opened ones). Using a spoon, carefully drizzle the sauce into each of the clam’s shells.

Squeeze over the lemon, and serve immediately with some good sourdough.

Dear America,

Happy Independence Day.

Yours sincerely

Hand To Mouth

A couple of weeks ago it was East 17, and now blam! I’m hitting you with an Ultravox reference. High brow shizzle I think you’ll agree. And why did up this 80s relic? Because last week we started the Viennoiserie section of our course.

Viennoiserie is the name given to all kinds of yeasted, enriched doughs. From croissants, to Danish pastries, sticky buns to brioche, we’re talking about doughs enriched with sugar, eggs, milk and butter. Lots of butter. I’ve never seen so much of the stuff than in the past week.

We’re going to be getting in to lamination next week, the technique for making croissants amongst other things, but the breads we made last week were mixed in a similar way to what we’ve become familiar with, even if the formulas were in some cases a lot more complicated.

We started off the week slowly, making a range of products based around brioche and sweet roll doughs. With most of these we had to adjust our mixing to incorporate the sugar and butter after the dough had developed in strength in the mixer. The reason for this is that both inhibit the development of gluten, and if added at the beginning you end up mixing for bloody ages and your dough comes off the mixer too warm, which in turn effects fermentation. Best avoided in other words.

Day one we made a bunch of straight brioche rolls, and learned how to make the classic ‘Brioche à tête’ shape, some glazed with pearl sugar and others just washed with egg. The following day, we really stepped it up, particularly in terms of sweetness. Diabetes alert. We made cinnamon rolls, pain au lait braids and the stars of the show, so called sticky buns, and these great little sweet rolls called Gibassier.

The sticky buns are basically cinnamon buns, but cooked like upside down cakes with a glaze made with brown sugar, butter, honey, cinnamon, vanilla and pecan nuts. Sticky, insanely sweet, but very good. The kid of bun that only the Americans could make. The Gibassier were a bit more restrained. A French sweet roll made with olive oil, anise seed and candied orange peel and then dusted with sugar after baking. Not particularly obvious flavours, but awesome.

Day three we got festive with a range of ‘holiday breads’. We made the German favourite, stollen. A sweet dough further enriched with booze soaked dried fruits, shaped like Mick Jagger’s lips, and then coated in powdered sugar to resemble snow-fall. A savoury Austrian bread called Kugelhopf, which we made with lardons, Swiss cheese, sauteed onions and rosemary. It was pretty delicious. Lovely, soft, rich dough with a great combination of flavours. We also made an American interpretation of the hot cross bun, which I’ve got to say was pretty average. I prefer the version I make.

Then we made something called Bostock, which was a bit of a revelation. I guess it’s nearest explanation of it would be if French toast mated with a bakewell tart and had a tasty baby. You take inch thick slices of brioche (a great way to use stale loaves) and toast them on either side. Then dip both sides in flavoured simple syrup (in this case rum) before spreading one side with frangipan, and sprinkling with slivered almonds. Bake for a short time, dust with powdered sugar and then eat with a dirty great grin on your fizzog.

Things started to get a bit more technical, and oddly Christmasy, towards the end of the week when we made Italian festive favourites pannetone, pan d’oro, and columba di pasqua. These doughs are so enriched with butter, eggs and sugar that they have to be ‘built up’ in stages so that they are strong enough to take all the inclusions. Surprisingly, the resulting doughs are actually really light and delicate, so much so that the pannetone has to be hung upside down after it leaves the oven so it doesn’t collapse on itself. Not surprisingly, with all the sugar, butter and candied fruits, they also taste amazing. But you can also understand why most Italians only eat them once a year.

So, another killer week, but I’ve got to say I’m seriously worried about my already troubled waistline. I might make a pre-emptive application to Biggest Loser now.

Last week bought with it mixed feelings. It was our last week of studying ‘pure’ bread. This week we’ve moved on to Viennoiserie, and whilst I am totally relishing the fresh challenges and new techniques we’re getting to experience dealing with enriched doughs, I’ve got to confess, I’m missing the bread ‘lab’ quite a bit.

The week was basically a review of all the techniques and baking concepts we’d covered over the past couple of months, and started where we began with baguettes. It was really good to revisit our French friends, as it helped cement a bunch of stuff that wasn’t really glued down. I guess in those first few weeks there was so much information flooding into my brain that I couldn’t really grasp hold of it all, and with baguettes being one of the most challenging breads, there was a lot to remember.

So we did a good day of mixing, shaping, rolling, scoring and baking the buggers, and I was relieved that aside from a few howlers here and there, I was pretty happy with how they turned out. For me, in many ways the scoring is the trickiest thing. You need to get the angle and depth of the cuts just right to get that spring and the famous baguette ears. I changed my technique after a bit more of an in-depth critique of my first batch, which improved results, but I’ve still got a lot of practicing to do.

Day two was all about re-visiting sourdoughs, and further crystallising the techniques and concepts around baking them. We did an interesting (again I guess this term is relative depending on how into bread you are) experiment with four almost identical sourdough formulas where the only variable was the percentage of (2 feed schedule) starter added. We made breads with 10, 20, 30 and 40% in the mix, baked them off and compared the results.

Obviously, the breads with the higher percentage were ’sourer’, but was was also interesting was the balance and depth of flavour. The lower percentages were a bit bland, and maybe could have used a bit more salt to make them more interesting, but the 40%, whilst having a pleasing twang lacked the depth as the sourness seemed to override everything else. The 30% was probably my favourite with a good balance of both, but like with many things it life, it’s a matter of taste.

We also mixed a ciabatta (revisiting the idea of  double-hydration) and a hand mixed sourdough which was probably my favourite bread of the course so far. It used 50% liquid white and whole wheat flour starter and a small amount of toasted wheat-germ in the final formula. The strength was developed through a a series of 3 folds every 45 minutes, it was pre-shaped, then final shaped in baskets and then retarded over night for baking the following morning. The results were awesometown. I made a 1.5 k loaf which came out brilliantly and made me a very happy man. Hmmm I can still taste it now.

Day three we moved in to uncharted territory. A land known as gluten flee. It was an OK place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. As with the ancient grains, through various consultation projects the SFBI have pioneered improving the quality of gluten free breads. We made various loaves with sorghum, buckwheat, teff and rice flour, which was in many ways a bit more like making a cake than baking bread. The results were better than anything gluten free that I’ve tasted before (not that I’m much of an expert), but I have to say I’m glad I don’t need to rely on them for my daily bread.

Moving swiftly on, Thursday was a mixed bag of various breads. We re-visted a bit of German rye, a bit of ancient grain action, some whole wheat, a roll recipe and another of my favourite loaves of the course, the Miche. The Miche is a classic French sourdough loaf weighing in at around 1.5 to 2 kilograms, the most famous of which is made by the peeps at Poilâne. Those that know me know that I’m a HUGE Poilâne fan and have blogged about their legendary bread before, so was pretty excited about baking this bad boy.

The loaf used high extraction flour, a high percentage of starter (almost 70%) and water, as well as a bit of toasted wheat-germ. We also autolysed the flour (there’s a pretty good explanation of the process here) to improve the flavour of the loaf, and developed strength with folds before shaping and retarding over night. Again I was a happy man. The higher extraction flour gave a tighter crumb, but a great flavour and a great sourdough tang. Trés bon.

The final day of the week was a bit of a party. The wood fired oven was stoked up again, and using the direct fire method (where there is is still a fire burning at the time of baking) we baked a bunch of different flat breads. Pita, naan (more on this in a post all of it’s own soon), lavash, and of course pizza. It was a great day, and a fitting farewell to the bread section of the course.

So that was seven weeks of bread. Big thanks to Frank and Mac who held our hands so brilliantly over the past 7 weeks. Onwards to the pastry lab…

Well maybe not everything, but it doesn’t get much better than kicking things off with an East 17 pun. So, another week, another post. Are you bored of bread yet? You better not be.

Last week was all about European, predominantly German, style breads. Which means rye. And lots of it. I’ve got to put my hands up and admit that I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan of rye breads. I don’t mind a bit every now and then, and like the flavour in small doses, but I never crave those dark, heavy loaves like I do a good bit of toothsome, tangy sourdough.

You might be expecting me to say that having got hands on with them that I’m now a convert, but I’ve got to say, I’m afraid I’m not. I also find it hard to fall in love with breads with names like Volkornbrot and Swabian Bread. Maybe that’s because I’m shallow.

Sunflower Rye

But that doesn’t mean that last week was a lost cause, in fact far from it. We started the week with some great sourdoughs incorporating increasing percentages of rye so we could see the effects on the bread making process, and taste the development of flavour. My favourites were the sunflower, Finnish and honey ryes, the latter of which went up to around 75% percent rye flower.

Finnish Rye

And then it got all got a bit heavy. We moved into the realms of the volkornbrot, the pumpernickel, Grahambrot, Heidebrot and so on. I’m sorry to say, that to me all the heavier ryes taste a bit the same. Some had added seeds, soakers and spices, but the heaviness, strong flavour and gummier mouth feel just isn’t my bag. Maybe I’ll acquire a taste for it, but I think it may be a way off.

Volkornbrot

Later in the week, things lightened up when we tackled bagels and pretzels. It was good to get involved baking some breads with slightly different techniques and processes. Shaping and boiling the bagels, and tie-ing and lye-ing the pretzels. On which subject, check this out. Pretzels are ‘cured’ in a substance called lye before they are baked off. Lye, or caustic soda as it’s known in the UK, is a pretty hardcore alkali, and involved us donning rubber gloves and laboratory goggles to dip the knotted dough. I had know idea it was used in the baking process, and even though it gets neutralised at high temperatures, it feels pretty un-natural. Still, the pretzels tasted goooood, especially the ones we wrapped around bratwursts.

We ended the week in a pretty eclectic fashion with a mixture of sweet, seriously savoury and showy breads. Starting with the sweet, we made a big batch of sweet dough that we used to make chocolate chip rolls, braided rolls (think mini challah) and a cake style bread topped with sugar, butter, almond paste and almond slivers. Very tasty.

Then Frank, our tutor for the past few weeks, blew our minds with probably the craziest bread I’ve ever heard of. Made with Beaujoulais nouveau and diced Saucisson. I’m not kidding. It’s made each year in the South East of France to herald the arrival of the new Beaujoulais vintage, and it is seriously tasty. It would kill you you if you ate it every day. But it might be worth it.

Beaujolais Bread

Finally, we made a bunch of what are called ‘French Country shapes’. Although these breads contained a small percentage of rye, their function is traditionally more about showing off the craftsmanship of French master bakers. Some are more elaborate than others, and whilst this isn’t really considered to be ‘eating bread’, again it was good to get a few more techniques and styles under our belts.

French Country Shapes

So all in all, another packed 5 days. This week we’re doing a bit of a review of what we’ve covered so far. From baguettes to the wood fired oven. So, until then…

To quote Jimmy Castor’s ‘Troglodyte‘, “What we’re gonna do right here is go back. Way back. Back into time…” because last week was all about kicking it old school, both in terms of ingredients and baking methods. We’re talking ancient grains and wood fire ovens.

Ancient wheats like spelt, khorasan (more commonly known as Kamut) emmer and, einkorn, and grains like millet, sorghum, quinoa, and teff were the precursors to modern wheat. They fell out of favour centuries ago as farmers and latterly scientists, developed the higher yield grains that we ‘enjoy’ today. However, wheats with increased yields and higher levels of protein / gluten are much harder for our bodies to digest, and less healthy. For this reason, ancient grains have become fashionable again, and are considered by many to be the future of bread.

But with less gluten, come flatter, denser breads. Or so my experience had taught me. However, the SFBI has been pioneering research in dealing with these ancient grains more successfully. They have been employed by various culinary organisations to develop formulas and techniques that use these flours to greater effect and realise results that are closer to those which today’s consumers expect.

Before last week, I had little or no experience in dealing with these kinds of grains, and I wasn’t expecting great things, but I was impressed. The breads were definately heavier in general, but with most of them we managed to get surprisingly open textures, and with the exception of the quinoa (pretty rank, sorry), some damn tasty breads. We achieved this through more careful mixing, using cooked starters (using boiling water to glutinise starches and ’set’ hydration), careful handling and lots of venting.

Again, across the week we cooked a lot of bread. We kicked things off pretty simply by doing some kamut, spelt and einkhorn sourdoughs to get an idea of the different flavour profiles, before mixing things up using kamut and spelt flours as bases for a bunch of different breads incorporating different quantities of ancient grains. These included kamut with wheat germ, barley bread, sorghum and kamut, teff sourdough, Moroccan barley fougasse, millet and pecan, quinoa sourdough, cracked kamut crowns, sorgum olive bread, we even sprouted some spelt to use in an ancient grain style pan bread. Another busy week.

Running in tandem with all this ancient grain shizzle was some ancient fire shizzle. The SFBI wood fired oven got fired up early in the week in preparation for a wood fired class being held at the weekend, and luckily we got to see and taste some of the benefits. We had a long discussion about the pros and cons of wood fired vs deck ovens, and despite the romance and the appealing flavour of the of the open fire, my feeling is that it seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. With the all the work that goes in to keeping the oven at the right temperature in addition to the scheduling and effort of making the doughs, and then getting temp and proofing times to match up, it all ads up to a huge commitment.

That being said, I did have one of the finest croissants of my life baked by Mike (mentioned in the previous post) who was manning the oven for most of the week. I don’t know what it was about it, but it just tasted richer. I’d love one at home, but not sure I could bake in one every day.

This week is all about German rye breads, and other European specialties such as bagels, pretzels and French country shapes. Until then…

So last weekend we got balls deep in our new neighborhood, and had a proper explore. We headed east on 24th street into the slightly less gentrified realms of The Mission, and basically got very excited. SO. MANY. GOOD. PLACES. TO. EAT down there. We only scratched the surface, so there will be more coming from this ‘hood for sure, but we definitely wet our whistles.

After checking out all the crazy murals plastered over the buildings down there (the missus was rather taken by the ones featuring the buff winged Navajos), we got grazing.

First up, we hit up ‘Mexi-Catessen’ La Palma. The are undoubtedly better places to get Mexican grub in San Francisco, but we liked the buzz of this deli / eatery so we decided to grab a bite. Me, a carnitas (pork) Super burrito, and the missus chicken tacos. Neither were outstanding, but definitely filled a hole, and we’ll definitely be back. They do good looking rotisserie style chickens, and tasty looking Papusas stuffed with all sorts of tasty things.

After a burrito the size of a baby’s arm, I was feeling sleepy. Coffee was needed, and fast. Thus far I’ve failed to find a suitable heir to my daily cup at Kaffiene in London. I’ve been to most of the places that people have recommended, Blue Bottle, Ritual, Contraband, and if I’m honest (sorry!) none have really hit the mark. I’ve been surprised that the flat white / shorter coffees haven’t really made much of an appearance here seeing as SF seems to be totally on point with most food trends. Anyway, the closest thing I’ve had so far was the double shot small latte from Dynamo. It hit the spot. And as they are also known for their donuts, it would have been rude not to sample their wares, so we also choked down a lemon and pistachio. Very good it was too.

After more wandering, more murals, and eyeing up more places to check out at a later date (the list is LONG), we needed another snack. So we popped in to Taqueria Vallarta. Again, probably not the best Taqueria in town, but it’s appealing in a spit and sawdust kind of way, and the smell of chorizo wafting over from the taco stand was hard to ignore. So we bought a couple, and at $1.75 a piece, you can’t really argue. Spicy, piquant, tasty as hell.

Our last stop was Mission Pie. We only went in for a look, but the rhubarb and strawberry pie was winking at us, so we had to give it a try. And it was good. In our experience so far, the American’s like it sweet, but this pie had just the right balance of tart and sweet. The crust was pretty perfect. Not too thick, and firm / soft in all the right places. And it came with a nice dollop of whipped cream. Seriously good.

A few hours well spent, and not too damaging on the wallet either. There will undoubtedly be more posts from 24th soon. Hasta luego.

I seriously can’t believe that I’m now a month in to the course at the SFBI. Time really is flying by crazy fast.

Last week we moved on from more refined flours to the healthier, more wholesome, and some might say less fun, whole grains. But as we discovered, healthier bread doesn’t have to mean slicing into a loaf with the weight and consistency of a house brick. Over the week we used an array of new flours both in doughs and in preferments, including whole wheat, semolina, type 85 high extraction flour, rye, buckwheat and corn to name but a few.

Millet Bread

But before we got busy, we discussed the various challenges of baking with whole grains. In comparison to more refined flours, there are two main factors to consider when working with them (again I’m simplifying and truncating things here). The first is the lower protein percentage / quality due to the presence of more bran in the flour. This equals less gluten, and therefore flatter breads as whole wheat doughs trap fermentation gases less readily. The second thing to watch out for are fermentation times. These are again affected by the higher levels of bran (also known as ‘ash content‘) in the flours. The minerals and nutrients in bran fuel enzyme activity, and that means faster and more intense fermentation, which effects a number of stages of the production process from bulk fermentation to final proof. Interesting, right? If not, you might be in the wrong place.

Corn Bread

Anyway, as with previous weeks we went on to bake a shed-load of breads. We’ve really picked up production from the early days of the course, making on average 5 different loaves a day. It can be pretty hectic, and I’ve made a few mistakes along the way as a result, but nothing too major. So now for the list bit. This week, amongst others, we made 100% whole wheat pan bread, corn bread, millet bread, pear and buckwheat, candies hazelnut squares, oatmeal and date, semolina, raisin and fennel filones, as well as the oddly named crown of the great valley, prairie bread and power bread.

Pear & Buckwheat

Despite the more elaborate formulas we made last week, I think my favourite was the comparatively simple Rustic Filone. A short sourdough baguette made with whole wheat, white flour, a rye poolish and a liquid starter. Great crust and crumb with a really deep flavour. One to remember.

Power Bread

On a slightly different note, I was chatting to one of the other people on the course that has also quit a ‘desk job’ to do the course about how different it is being on your feet all day as opposed to sitting down staring at a screen for hours on end. I was saying to him that I’ve noticed that when I get home I’m absolutely shattered. But not the kind of shattered I was from doing what I was doing before which was borne of frustration, boredom and the ‘rat race’ in general. But from being mentally stimulated, and physical nature of the ‘work’.  I’m not sure it’s an epiphany, but it feels pretty bloody good.

Candied Hazelnut Squares

This week we’re focusing on ancient grains, so Kamut, Spelt, Einkhorn and others are on the menu. And the SFBI wood fired oven is being stoked up too. Should be interesting.

I’ve got a lot of love for guacamole. Eating a bunch of it with some corn chips and washing it down with a couple of cold beers is, in my opinion, time well spent. Whole Foods does a pretty good one, but at 6 or 7 dollars a tub, it’s not exactly cheap, so we’ve been making our own. We’re living on a budget after all.

Before we get cracking, a quick couple of pointers. Avocados will discolour pretty quickly once cut, so prep all the other ingredients first. I also like a few chunks in my guacamole, so keep back one quarter of chopped avocado to add to the bowl once you’ve mixed together all the other ingredients.

Ingredients

2 ripe avacados

1 habanero chilli, de-seeded and finely diced

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2-3 spring onions, finely chopped

1/2 a plum tomato, de-seeded and diced

1/2 handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped

Juice of half a lime

Salt and pepper to taste

For any American readers (if I have any yet). Spring Onions = Scallions. Coriander = Cilantro.

Method

First up, finely chop the garlic, sprinkle some salt over it and then mash with the side of your knife blade and add to your bowl. De-seed the habanero and finely dice along with the tomato before peeling the outer skin off the spring onions, cutting off the ends, and finely chopping them up to where the stalks turn dark green. Then add these to your bowl along with the chopped coriander.

Now skin and chop up your avocados. Add all but a quarter of one of the pears to your bowl and mash with the back of a fork until you have a smooth-ish mixture. Squeeze in the lime juice, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Once you’re happy with your mix, add the final quarter of chopped avocado and gently stir in.

That’s it. You’re good to go. Serve with unsalted corn chips and cold beer.

What. A. Week.

Despite the past two weeks at SFBI being fantastic, one of the things I’ve been most excited about getting stuck into is making sourdoughs and science behind the rise. I’ve done a fair few sourdough experiments at home in the past, but never really nailed it, so the past week really ticked some major boxes for me.

We started our foray into the world of sour by looking into it’s history and mythology, and of course touching on the famous San Francisco Sourdough. It’s interesting stuff (at least to me), and as a few readers have expressed an interest in knowing more, here’s a potted version.

Sourdough was discovered / invented by accident in ancient Egypt at around 1500 BC. The story goes that some women making loaves on the banks of the Nile left a couple out in the humid, sunny conditions. They discovered their omission, and added the dough that had started to leaven to the rest of their batch. They liked the resulting lighter bread and it’s flavour, and kick started a great bread making tradition.

We then went on to de-bunk some of the myths that surround the art of making bread with natural yeast. There’s quite a bit of romanticism surrounding sourdough cultures. You’ll hear of ones that have been passed down from some German monastery in the middle ages, but the truth of the matter is that a starter’s life-cycle and feeding schedule means that every few weeks or so it’s a totally new beast. Any traces of ancient flours or yeasts would be long gone after a few months. Sad but true.

The same is true of cultures that use stuff other than flour and water to kick start them. Some people swear by using fruit like grapes or rhubarb to get things started, but any natural yeasts that exist on the skin of such fruit will most likely not be that happy in their new habitat, and again will die off and be replaced pretty quickly. Although, fruit may contribute some sugars that will help kick start the fermentation process, so it does have it’s uses.

We then went on to talk specifically about San Francisco sourdough. I was under the impression that the starter would have a specific formula, but no. What makes an SF sourdough is Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis, the natural yeast that’s in the air out here. Traditionally the starter is made with just flour and water and can be either stiff or liquid, but people have been known to add fruit, yoghurt, apple juice and probably all sorts of other things.

But the starter is only part of the story of that trademark tang. The other factor is the way the bread is made. The bread’s dough picks up these additional flavour profiles by retarding it overnight, which slows down fermentation and develops that taste and tang. Obviously, you can do this anywhere in the Word and create a near perfect facsimile of this kind of sourdough, but you wouldn’t really be able to call it a San Francisco sourdough as it wouldn’t contain that specific yeast. So hopefully that’s put that one to bed.

The majority of the rest of the week, we got busy in the lab. We kicked things off by starting our own culture that we managed to coax into life in time to be used in a starter on Thursday. And then be baked bread. LOTS of bread. Across the week we made SF sourdoughs, bulk and shape retarded sourdough baguettes, ciabattas, olive bead, walnut and raisin batards, sour wholewheat boules, braided challah and a chocolate bread.

I’ve probably missed a couple, but I think my favourite bread of the week was a ‘hand mix’ we did. Simple and easy, but a bit time consuming. We mixed the flour, water and starter by hand until properly combined and then bulk fermented it for around 3 hours, folding it every 45 minutes to build up it’s strength. We then divided the dough, roughly shaped it into 1.5 kilo rounds and set aside for half an hour or so. It was then shaped, popped into floured baskets and retarded over night to be baked first thing the following morning. The results were fantastic. Great crust, great crumb, great flavour, and very little effort. Time did most of the work. Probably not that practical from a big production point of view, but proper artisan stuff.

So that was the week that was. This week we’re doing whole grains. Until then…

The pre-ferments we used last week are kind of like junior sourdough starters, and mostly come in three styles. Liquid or ‘poolish’ (first developed by Polish bakers), a stiffer sponge also known as ‘biga’ (used traditionally by the Italians) and the more solid Pre-Fermented Dough (PFD). Unlike sourdough starters, they contain a small quantity of commercial yeast to kick start fermentation, and are usually left to develop for between 12 and 24 hours before being added to a final mix. Not only do they add character and flavour, but they also help aid gluten development allowing for less intensive mixing.

We used these different pre-ferments across the week to make a fantastic array of breads, starting with, you guessed it, more baguettes. The reason for doing this is that it gave us the opportunity to do a side by side comparison to see how the different styles effect the end product. Poolish is supposed to be the pre-ferment of choice for baguettes, but to my pallet the PFD tasted the best, with the biga coming off in last place.

Following on from this we incorporated PFD into a range of formulas. A Pain Meunier, or millers bread, which contains white flour, whole wheat flour, wheat germ and cracked wheat which is soaked over night, and shaped with dowel to create a ‘fendu’. Plain and toasted walnut whole wheat boules. A simple wheat and rye bread. A classic American intensively mixed, ‘pan’ bread which is enriched with a bit of sugar and butter. A braided egg bread, which is a bit like a less intense brioche, and contains as the name suggests eggs, and also sugar, milk power and butter. And last but not least a multi-grain ‘batard’ which is made with a pre-soaked mix of rolled oats, sesame, pumpkin, and flax seeds. They were all great in their own way, but I loved both the taste and the craft that went into the Meunier.

The use of PFD and ’soakers’ brings with it some interesting challenges from a formula point of view as you obviously have to take out a percentage of your yeast, water, flour and whatever else you are using to create them. I’ve found the calculating and re-calibrating element of the course the toughest part so far as the mathematical side of my brain is one that hasn’t seen any action for quite some time. But I think I’m getting on top of it. Or at least I hope I am.

The final part of the week was a practical ‘test’ of sorts where we were asked to make three different breads . Working in 4 groups of 4, we had to make two different types of baguettes in differing quantities, and one of the more specialty breads from earlier in the week. I think we all did really well. It was pretty hectic and hard work, but our baking schedules all ran pretty smoothly and everyone scaled their ingredients perfectly. There was obviously room for improvement, but as a first attempt at flying solo, it was a great success.

This week we’ve got our first introduction to sourdough, which I’m really excited about, so until next time…

Aside from the course at the SFBI, one of the things I’ve been really excited about food wise in San Fran is exploring the food truck scene. I still can’t really work out why this kind of thing hasn’t really caught on in the UK (aside from phenomena like The Meatwagon), because over here the scene is pretty big.

A couple of Friday’s ago, with empty bellies and a bit of a thirst on, we hit the Fort Mason Centre to check out one of the regular food truck events called Off The Grid. From what I can gather, Off The Grid kind of represents the food truck scene here in SF, and hosts a number of events every week for the trucks on their roster.

We turned up at around 8pm, and having opened at 5, the Fort Mason car park was already rammed. There were around 30 plus trucks, some other food and booze tents, live music and sound-systems. It was a bit like a mini food festival meets a street party, and it smelled good.

The only drawback of arriving when we did was that it had got really busy, and a lot of the trucks, particularly the popular ones, had pretty large queues. We decided to divide and conquer, and split ourselves between the queues for Chairman Bao’s baked and steamed Chinese buns, Seoul On Wheels‘ remixed Korean barbecue offerings and the beer tent. It was pretty painful queuing whilst everyone was chowing down around us, but after about 4o minutes, we’d made it.

Chairman Bao’s steamed bun-witches (sorry, that’s the only description I can think of) were insane. Two kinds of fluffy, light steamed buns stuffed with meat and vegetables. The pork belly was deliciously spiced and shredded, served with some pickled daikon, and the chicken sesame and soy flavoured with strips of picked carrot. Super tasty. Seoul On Wheel’s offerings are like Korean barbecue meets Tex Mex. We had a bulgogi ’sammy’ which was stuffed to the gunnels with salty, savoury and slightly charred ribbons of rib eye steak. Delicious. And then some pot stickers, which had good flavour, but were pretty greasy. Not so delicious.

We’ll definitely be going back. There are a bunch of other trucks I want to check out, including Brass Knuckle which I’ve heard good things about. But this time we’ll head down early, get our grub on and then sit back an enjoy the atmosphere as opposed to queuing.

I’m hoping there’ll be something like this going on by the time we get back to the UK.

So my first week at the SFBI is over, and it’s been a blast. I’ve decided to do a post a week as opposed to boring everyone with continual stream of stuff as it happens. So this is post number one. I’ve also been given the green light by the college to post formulas (recipes), so I’ll probably share a few of them as we go. The majority of them thus far deal with pretty large quantities, but most should be able to be scaled down for home use.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the college is a bit of a pain to get to. It’s based in South San Francisco, and I’m currently staying in Russian Hill. So I have to get a bus, BART and then a shuttle at the other end that drops me off at the SFBI. With classes starting at 8am, this all this means I’ve been having to get up at a slightly painful time of 5.45 every morning! This will ease off when we move into our new place in Noe Valley in a couple of weeks, but I guess bakers hours are something I’m going to have to get used to.

But once you’re through the door of the SFBI, you kind of forget about all that. The college is based around a commercial bakery called Thoroughbread, based in the Mission, so there’s a buzz in the building from the start of the day, with the ovens, mixers and bakers already busily at work when we arrive.

Day one started with a few inspiring words from Michel Suas, the boss at SFBI, outlining the course structure and introducing us to the instructors who are looking after us for the bread section of the course, Mac McConnell and Frank Sally, and then pretty much immediately we got down to business.

A fairly big part of week one is about orientation, with about two thirds of the day spent doing practical work in the ‘lab’ and the remaining third in the classroom. We’ve been covering off elements of the history of baking, the science of what makes a great loaf, formulas (formulas are the new recipes), bakers percentages, how to use typical bakery machinery from deck ovens to mixers, and making A LOT of baguettes.

We’ve been making so many of these French sticks, as they are the perfect training loaf. Making baguettes combines a range of hand skills including pre-shaping, shaping and slashing, and making them in slightly different ways provides a great illustration of the effects of various methods on the finished product. We’ve been varying mixing times from short to intense, and observing the effects of differing lengths of bulk fermentation. It’s been really interesting, and has clearly pointed out where I’ve been going wrong with my home bread baking experiments.

The above is obviously VERY top line as if I wrote everything that’s gone into my slightly addled brain over the last 5 days, I’d be here all week, but safe to say so far so good. Really looking forward to this week when we’re going to start playing around with pre-ferments and mixing up the raw ingredients a bit.

So until then…

Her new cook book ‘My Father’s Daughter’ is everywhere over here, and I can’t help but get irritated by it. It all smacks of just another way to keep herself in the lime-light. Is she really THAT needy that she needs to infiltrate every facet of our lives?

So this video taking the piss out of some of the pretentious prose from the book really made me chuckle. Enjoy.

Good morning / afternoon wherever you are.

We touched down in San Francisco on Monday afternoon, think we’re still a bit jet lagged, but we’re getting there.

We’ve only been in San Fran for a few days, but we’ve already been reminded about how much this city loves food. Every day we’re being treated to amazing grub, from stellar sandwiches, to the freshest seafood and everything in between. We’ve also paid our first, of what surely will become regular, pilgrimages to the Tartine bakery, and it didn’t disappoint.

I went to my induction morning at the SFBI on Wednesday, which was pretty awesome. Its a bit of a dog to get to, but once you’re through the doors, the atmosphere is great. It’s basically a fully functioning bakery, with a college attached. I met about half of my classmates, and there’s a really good mix of people of all ages, from all over the world. There are peeps like me who are thinking about a career change, bakers who want to hone their craft, and chefs who want to broaden their skill set. We also briefly met the don of the institute, Michel Suas. He didn’t say too much, but had a really warm and inspiring vibe about him. It’s going to be hard work, but very rewarding.

We think we’ve found a small but very nice apartment in Mission / Noe Valley to move into in a couple of weeks, which is exactly where we wanted to live, and should take some of the pain out of my commute. In the mean time, posts are probably going to be a bit sporadic, but fear not, we’ll be collecting and compiling plenty of stuff to share once we get properly settled.

Se you soon.

Photo: Dan Harrison

Having packed and said goodbye to our flat, I’ve been feeling a little bit melancholy about leaving London, and I started to think about what I’m going to miss. Particularly food wise.

Here are my Top 10 food based ‘missing you already, London’ things in no particular order:

1. Polpo, and it’s sisters in all their forms.
2. My kitchen. Hope we can find an apartment in SF with a decent range.
3. My morning cup of coffee from Kaffiene.
4. Mangal 1 for its meat, fire and eccentricity.
5. Pizza and pasta from Maletti. Still so good after all these years.
6. The St John Bread & Wine bacon sandwich. In fact, everything St John.
7. My local Italian restaurant in Battersea, Antipasto & Pasta. Family run, solid, good atmosphere.
8. Lahore’s lamb chops. Wonder if there’s any good Pakistani food in San Fran?
9. Raymond Blanc on the telly.
10. The Anchor & Hope / 32 Great Queen Street.

I think I’ve probably cheated a bit by doubling up, but its my blog so I’ll do what the f**k I like.

Things I’m not going to miss? Public transport. Living hell.

After doing a bit more digging, I found this super inspiring video on the accompanying Tartine bread site.

Tartine Bread from 4SP Films on Vimeo.

I’m not sure about all that accordion playing, but I. CAN. NOT. WAIT. TO. TRY. THAT. BREAD.

Hmmmmmmm.

Photo: Unknown

The seed for this adventure was first planted a little over a year ago when I read this post on the Chow blog. My wife and I were feeling increasingly disillusioned with our careers / industries, and had been talking for some time about opening our own cafe bakery. But with very little in the way of experience, we didn’t really know where to start. It was beginning to feel like it may always be a bit of a pipe dream, and then I read the Chow post and a large penny dropped.

So we did some research, found out more about the course, talked about it for a while, and decided to go for it. To be honest, it’s all a bit scary, but also exhilarating. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that I’ve been bitten by the baking bug, but this is a whole new ball game. I’m going to be well out of my comfort zone, and when you throw into the mix quitting a perfectly good, well paid job at one of the UK’s most respected ad agencies, you’ve either got a recipe for disaster, or the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.

We don’t have any time frame on when / if  we’re going to start our own business, but that’s partly what this trip is all about. As well as doing the course, we’re going to do some work experience, travel around the States, and generally immerse ourselves in country’s food culture, whilst getting a plan together of the kind of business we want to open. But I guess there’s also every chance that we might end up by missing our day jobs, and we’ll yearn to return to London at the end of our adventure. Only time will tell.

So can an Advertising Wanker be transformed into a Master Baker? You’ll have to keep it locked right here to find out.

My wife came across this amazing set of pictures on Flickr the other day, and I thought they were far too good to keep to ourselves.

The photo set brilliantly captures Parisian nightlife circa 1962 in all it’s soft focus glory, transporting you to another era. One of markets, smokey bars, cafés and restaurants. They are testament to France’s love and respect for all things food, and each one is packed with so much atmosphere.

The photos are uncredited, but they have been collected and collated by a photographer & theatre director called Tom Palumbo.

See the rest of the images here.

So like I was saying, after Marrakesh we took a road trip out to the coast to Essaouira, which is a bit of a funny place. Known as Morocco’s windy city, it was a bit of a hippy hot spot in the 60s and reputedly visited by Hendrix. When you visit, you can see that it would have once been a really charming place, but it’s reputation as a chilled holiday spot has led to it being over developed, which is a bit of a shame.

To be honest, after Marrakesh it felt a bit like arriving in a faded seaside town like Hastings or Grimsby (no offense to the residents of either), but after spending a few days there, we both developed a soft spot for Essaouira, and this was in no small part due to what we ate.

Having been so spoiled for good food in Marrakesh, and falling in love with the stalls on Jamaa Al Fnaa, we thought that it would probably be downhill from there, but that really wasn’t the case. We ate really well in Essaouira, and discovered some great places to get stuffed.

The first meal we had was at one of the fish stalls near the sea wall. Probably the closest thing Essaouira has to the food stalls in Marrakesh, there are 30 or so of them that sell the catch of the day, each and every day, simply grilled over coals. The owners stand out of the front, showing off their wares and giving passers by the hard sell.

We picked one that we liked the look of, and ordered up some king prawns and a decent sized lobster. The meal came with a simple salad, plenty of baguette, chips, lemon wedges and a couple of soft drinks, all for around £25, which I think you’ll agree is pretty damn good value. The shellfish was fresh, and tasty as hell with that lovely smokey barbecue flavour. It was a very good start.

Strangely, the other two places that we really enjoyed both had an Italian leaning. The first, Silvestro, was an out and out Italian restaurant. Situated in a lovely rustic dining room above a shop, and run by an Italian dude and a chef, it looked pretty unassuming (sorry, I didn’t get any pics), but the food was far from it. For my starter I ate one of the tastiest things I’d had in a while, a kind of octopus ragu. The octopus meat was so tender, almost like mozzarella, the tomato sauce really rich and deep flavoured, and a few salty capers finished it off nicely. For main, we both at a seafood linguine. We had a table near the kitchen, so we could see the chef at work, and amazingly she made all the pasta by hand to order. The linguine was too huge to finish, but not because it wasn’t good. Packed with mussels, octopus, prawns and other sea beasties, with a lovely garlicy tomato sauce, it was a winner. Our review? Molto bene.

The other place, Elizir, was more of a Moroccan – Italian fusion, which is no way near as disastrous as it sounds. Again above some shops, the restaurant is a bit like a bohemian Milanese flat from the 60s. Stuffed full of kitsch, brightly coloured modernist furniture, stacks of old records, odd artifacts and copies of Italian Vogue, it’s a pretty surprising venue to find in the middle of Essaouira’s medina. It was so good we actually went two nights on the trot, but the best grub I ate there was a fantastic pumpkin soup that was garnished with local delicacy, the nutty Argan oil. An unusual chicken tagine cooked with pear and Gorgonzola. Again, I’m sure tha sounds odd, but was really interesting and tasty. And lastly, some fantastic sorbets. Having eaten plenty of traditional Moroccan food, it was really good to sample a more modern interpretation. If I’m ever end up in Essaouira again, I’d be there like a shot. Booking essential.

The one other thing we did whilst we were there which is worth mentioning, was an excellent half day cookery class at L’Atelier Madada. Led by the charming Nouredine and chef Mona, we learned how to cook an authentic Harira soup and a very tasty fish tagine. It was really good fun, and we got a couple of recipes out of it, which I will try to re-create soon.