Only_Oli (The O_Zone)

Time for me to check on my Corona-Coppa… started this a week and a half ago. It is a piece of pork shoulder which I have started to cure about 10days ago.

I salted the meat with Kosher salt for 1 day and 1 night in the fridge. I then washed thoroughly and dried it very well.

Then I took some black pepper and blitz to a coarse crush. Covered the meat on all sides and simply left in the open air within the fridge.

I am checking on the meat regularly and turning it from one side to the other to ensure that the moisture is not accumulating anywhere. It is important for the meat to stay dry to prevent any bad bacteria or mould to start growing on the meat.

So far so good.

I can allow myself a glass of red to get me waiting …..

I need to wait until the meat is 65% of whatever it was when I started…which could be 8 weeks…

I wish I had measured it at the start….

oh well….

will simply have to wait until I cannot resist the urge to tasting it…

I am also ready for a weekend treat with a nice milky-bread bun. It is a recipe from one of my nieces (Benedicte) with who I exchange recipes regularly!

Will document this recipe properly very soon…

In a continuation of the survival to virus series….here is an essential recipe for keeping the moral on a high.

It is an international recipe with Belgian Sugar, French  Butter and Pralin, Swiss Chocolate, English eggs, Canadian Flour…probably could stretch the baking powder to be Irish.

Expect sugar rush and nice smell in the house.

Undercook for chewiness. (15 minutes)

Crispy cook. (20 minutes)

Ingredients :

• 150g of Butter (softened)
• 150g Cassonade or light brown sugar. (beetroot based if possible)
• 100g Caster sugar
• 2 sachet of vanilla sugar or a 1.5 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 240g of plain flour
• 1 sachet of levure Chimique or 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 Tablet of dark chocolate 100g (with Salt) or add salt to the recipe
• 100g of “Pralin”. ( hazelnut sugar-coated — see pictures)

How to Make:

• Mix butter and all sugars with a mixer. Medium speed to get a soft, lightly coloured mixture.
• Add the egg and mix again.
• Add the flour and mix to a soft dough. (probably manually)
• Break the chocolate in small pieces and add to the mixture with the Praline.
• Roll the dough into a long sausage shape
• Cut pieces to make cookies and put on a silicone sheet or baking tray.
• Put into oven for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees celsius. (Enjoy the smell in the house, think about your childhood etc….)
• Cool down on a rack….eat with ice cream, and-or coffee.

A family fun thing, I was challenged by a brother in law to explain my bread recipe in a short video…

Here you go: Video link

Good health to all.

This is very easy to make ….the most difficult is to wait for a few weeks so that it is ready to be sliced and cooked to crispiness heaven.

It is just a piece of pork belly which you cover with sea salt or Kosher Salt. It is best to use the coarse chunky salt (to avoid end product being “too salty”) but both work.

Leave the pork belly on a layer of salt and cover the belly with salt as well. Leave in fridge for 24 hours.

Take the pork out of the fridge and clean thoroughly and DRY very well using kitchen paper towels.

Cover the pork with the spices you like. I used black pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper and a little bit of herbs de Provence.

Put a string through the meat and hang in the fridge so that it starts drying and preserving. After a couple of weeks, the meat should not be wet at all and can be kept in a Tupperware or even outside of the fridge to air dry. (As long as you protect the meat from getting spoiled by bugs).

I like it best once it is about one month old. Obviously you must monitor the meat for any signs of spoiling, but if you have salted properly in the first step it should be fine.

Slice very thinly and cook in a pan until crispy.

Great as an aperitif with a beer or in pasta or with waffles for breakfast!

Just a quick post for savings my latest tips on how to make a piece of good bread at home.

1- Flour is critical.

• Want to make a baguette only T55 Flour will be good enough to reach crunch and structure. [Minimum should very very strong white flour].
• Good rustique bread with Cotswold Flour

I find the naming conventions extremely confusing, so I now use the PROTEIN content as the base for selecting which flour I want to use for the bread. For a very crusty bread use flour with high protein content. For a chewier pizza style bread use a lower protein content flour. Thanks to European rules, all flours have to display on the packaging the protein content.

• Bread Flour: 12-15% protein
• All-Purpose Flour: 10-12% protein
• Cake Flour: 6-8% protein
• Pastry Flour: 8-10% protein
• Italian ’00’ Flour: 7-9% finely milled/fine grind
• Italian ‘0’ Flour: 9-10% medium milled/medium grind
• Semolina Flour: 13% or more used to make pasta

2- Autolyse is not discussed in general (video) as a technique to make bread but my best loaves of bread have been achieved using the Autolyse method. Essentially it is mixing the ingredients without kneading. Some also delay the introduction of the salt into the dough. Using a large Tupperware container has delivered the best loaves of bread for me. You then fold the dough on itself like a portfolio and rotate 90 degrees. For high hydration loaves, make sure you wet your hands before so that they do not stick to the dough as you manipulate it. You should do this multiple (3 ideally) rises of 30 minutes before the final shaping rise. The dough should be stretchy and make a “window” when pulled apart. The dough is ready when if you push your finger on the dough and remove it, then it recovers only halfway through the push. Less it is not fermented enough, more it will collapse in handling/cooking.

3- Quantities of Flour/Water/Salt etc…are all percentages of the flour.
A 75% hydration bread means that the water is 75% of the weight of the flour. The higher the percentage of water the larger the holes in the final bread. The higher the water content the more difficult the dough is to manage for the final rise. (it might stick to everything). For flours with seeds or less refined flour or spelt flour, the % of water is usually higher. For general bread production, 70% to 80% of hydration is the range. Salt is nice at 2%. The picture of this blog is 75% water.

4- Quantities of yeast (as a percentage) only affect the speed of the rise, not final quality. More yeast is not better bread or better holes in the bread. 1% of Yeast is a good number. fresh yeast is usually 3X the quantities or dry yeast. Fresh yeast produces more active and faster rise. the more yeast the quicker the bread will be ready to cook but the quicker it will “over” ferment and collapse and therefore making it harder to spot the correct time to wait until cooking. A lower yeast content gives makes it easier to achieve the best bread because it is slower to develop.

5- Warm water and temperature of flour are important. Water can be warm (up to 35 degrees) and flour should be room temp. 25-26 degrees is the right average for all combined parts. Note that this is warm versus most people home’s room temperature of 19-20 degrees. Yeast is resilient and will live in low temperatures like the fridge but the rise is then slower, which might be what you need to fit within your schedule.

6- Shaping needs to be done by creating surface tension on the outside of the bread so that it rises and keeps its shape without going flat. I prefer to tuck the dough on itself until I get the surface tension. Do not use flour on the bread during shaping. If the dough is very wet and sticky use a metallic scraper to gather the dough off the tabletop or wet your hands rather than adding flour. Put your hands behind the dough and pull the dough towards you (the front part of the dough will get rolled under and create a tuck-in)  keep rotating continuously the dough as you pull it towards you. This is a good way to create surface tension to hold the bread shape during the final rise. If rising in a banneton, then flour the banneton generously with “RICE” flour. This is because RICE flour will not combine with the wheat flour and will prevent sticking to the cloth in the banneton. Put the bread upside down in the banneton. (ie the top of the bread will have the banneton circles).

7- After the final rise, generously cover the dough with flour and then make the opening cut with a razor blade / grignette. You can cut deep; It will help the bread to open up. Note that the “Angle” of the cut will make a “HUGE” difference in the way the bread will look after cooking. A very straight and square cut will simply open the bread, whereas an angled cut will create a “flap” or “ear” which is characteristic of French loaves of bread like a baguette.

8- Levain or Sourdough starter can be done on the same day and delivers the best-tasting loaves of bread but not necessarily the best-shaped loaves of bread. Multi-day sourdough starter is great but not necessary for texture. I use 50% water / 50% flour for my starters. Use an elastic band to measure the progress of the rise around the jar. If the sourdough starter has risen more than 2 times its original space, it should be ready for the bread rising. Sourdough starter will float in water if ready to be used. When a starter collapse after its rise, it is time for a feed of fresh flour and water. Again, I use 50% flour and 50% water to keep things easy and avoid weighing the starter every time.

9- A large Dutch Oven is the best cooking method to deliver crispy crust and oven puff without having to worry about steam in the oven and other complicated methods of cooking in the oven. I put a little bit of flour in the bottom of the Dutch oven to prevent the bread from sticking to the bottom. However, it never happened to me for the bread to stick to the pot. I put the Dutch oven at least 30 minutes before cooking in the oven so that it is very warm when I put the dough in the pot. If you do the final rise of your loaf on a sheet of silicone, then you can simply move the whole thing into the dutch oven, reducing the risk of collapse of the risen loaf.

10- The oven needs to be very warm. 230 degrees or 250 degrees. My loaves of bread are usually cooked within 35 minutes (20 Minutes in the Dutch oven at 240 degrees followed by 15 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees). It is possible to make them go darker by taking the lid off the dutch and leave in the oven for a few more minutes. The final trick is to leave bread out of the pot but in the oven and let it cool down in the oven slowly. (for 20 minutes but not more as it would dry the bread too much).  This makes an extra crispy crust but will make the bread dry quicker over the coming days.