Month: February 2021

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Honey Brown Sourdough (Part One)

I’ve been thinking about beer breads a lot lately.

Since the start of the pandemic lockdown, I’ve been the family baker. Nearly one hundred and fifty loaves of sourdough of varying shape and quality have emerged from our oven in the last year.

I’ve tried numerous flour blends to mix up our sandwich loaf selection.

I’ve attempted sweet breads with sugar and cinnamon mixed in for fun and fancy.

I’ve added cheeses or herbs to create savoury side loaves to accompany larger meals.

Yet, somehow, I’ve never dabbled in diverting anything but the dry ingredients.

Bread and beer have a long, entwined history. Some have rightly noted that bread and beer are essentially equivalent food stuffs: grains, water, yeast in combination and fermented. My fitness-focused friends who avoid carbs at all costs often remind me that beer is just liquid bread, after all.

Then, does it make sense to make bread with beer as an ingredient?

Ingredients for a beer-based sourdough set out on a countertop.

My experiment began this morning as I cracked open a can of lager shortly after 8am.

And as I write this, the following ingredients are hydrating in a bowl on my countertop:

1 can (326g) Sleeman Honey Brown Lager
38g of warm water (to set the desired hydration)
500g white bread flour
12g salt
250g of active sourdough starter

This is me experimenting, please note. As I write and post this I don’t know how it will turn out and I’ll link to Part Two (hopefully tomorrow… sourdough is a multi-day process) with some notes and photos on my success or failure.

As this is an experiment, my plan is to try a couple different loaves with a couple very different beers. Also, I’m sticking with 100% white flour (y’know, to control the variables in this deeply precise countertop research project) which I hope will let the beer flavours stand out. The first beer is a simple, medium amber lager, a honey brown from a Canadian large batch brewery. For a second attempt, I’m looking to try a darker beer, likely a Guinness to see how that affects the colour and taste.

The dough now mixed will take a couple hours to properly hydrate and develop the gluten on the counter. I’m going to lean on a shorter fermentation period because, again, I do want the beer flavours to stand out over the general “sour” flavours, so I’ll be looking to have this in the fridge for some of today and then do an overnight final proof before baking tomorrow morning.

And then, voila! Beer bread? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

Or should I say.. con-glut-ion!

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Can I use a cast iron pot or pan to boil water?

One of the adages of cast iron cooking is that to improve your cast iron cookware, just use it.

What is not necessarily clear in that basic advice is that to make any cast iron seasoning better, stronger, and more resilient, the use of your cast iron should follow a couple basic principles about how it should be used. Simply:

Heat and oils are good in that they improve your seasoning.

Soaps and acids are bad in that they degrade your seasoning.

So, where does water fit into these rules? And what do we mean by boiling water?

A small bottle of water sits in the middle of a cast iron frying pan.

For example, a lot of recipes call for a portion of water (or broth or wine or other neutral liquid) and instruct bringing it to a boil. Is this bad for the pan?

Or, when I first started using my cast iron dutch oven I was unclear on if I could use it to, say, cook up a big pot of pasta or if I should stick with the steel pot we’d been using for years.

I did a lot of reading on this a number of years ago and the best advice anyone gave me on this topic is simply that the strength of cast iron is not boiling water: there are better tools.

Boiling water is not necessarily going to ruin you cast iron, but it’s definitely not going to improve it. In the same vein of thinking, adding liquid to you recipe is fine, though these are not the dishes that build up the seasoning nor make it better. Water in your pan or pot does not follow the basic principle that heat and oils are improving your seasoning. And some have argued that boiling water alone (or with salt or pasta) can actually loosen the seasoning on your pan and cause it to flake off.

In a pinch (say out camping with a single pot) sure… heat up that soup, steam your veggies over the fire, and just use your iron. That’s what you’ve built up that legacy seasoning for, after all. But know that you’re withdrawing from the seasoning bank you’ve been saving into.

So again, there are better tools. Keep and use a steel pot, and save your cast iron for what it does best. Not boiling water.

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iced windows

cold draft, I shiver
and firm up my will
sunrise view obscured
through ice on the sill

sub-thirty degrees
beyond two glass panes
breach fortress of warmth
amid frosted plains

one finger to glass
turns frost into tears
releasing brief drops
from chill winters fears

raw radiant chill
bracing, brisk and bold
I draw shut the blinds
and hide from the cold

- bardo

It has been thirty degrees below zero for three nights in a row, meaning that as even as we shut up the house each night and snuggle into the warmth of our beds, the chill creeps through the cracks and turns the windows into sheets of frost.

I have reserved some space on this blog each week to be creative, and to post some fiction, poetry, art or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.

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Backpacking: Foggy Mountain Bridges

In the summer of 2017 we travelled in a group of four adults and two tweens just across the Alberta-British Columbia border to the Mount Robson to climb the Berg Lake trail.

Two young backpackers stand contemplating a bridge on a high mountain trail.
for whatever one photo is worth:

After four nights atop the mountain, camping rough and day-hiking the area we were wet, tired and running low on supplies. The kids had been champion backpackers, helping out around camp, tolerating the rehydrated meals and composting toilets, entertaining us on the day we spent hunkered in the smallish cabin with fifty other people during a torrential downpour trying to dry our clothing, and carrying their share of the weight up and down the mountain.

Kids being kids, they made up funny games to pass the long hours of hiking. They sang familiar and made-up songs to “scare off the bears.” And for most of the trek back down the mountain, a one-day descent of about eighteen kilometers of mixed terrain, they not only kept pace but led the whole group by a consistent distance.

Readers who are familiar with the hike may recognize the bridge in this photo.

From the bottom, the first third of the hike is a long, gradual climb to (and then along) a lake.

After the lake, a rolling traversal near or on a riverbed brings hikers to a second gradual ascent to the top of a waterfall.

Those who know the route usually break here because the next part of the hike is a steep, rocky climb with warning signage near the bottom. A switchback trail leads up through the rocks and trees with the sound of a waterfall in the distance. As a sign that one is nearing the top, this small bridge appears ahead marking that one is about to begin the final stretch towards the upper falls and the nearby campsite.

As the tweens forged ahead on our descent, I came upon a clearing overlooking this bridge along a switchback on the trail. The pair who had been forging ahead with vigor were just standing there waiting… resting… contemplating… who can say?