Bardo – Page 83 – Cast Iron Dreams

2021-02-202021-02-20

Guinness Sourdough (Part One)

Six months before the pandemic lockdown began, we took one of our last major family vacations. The details of that trip are best left for another day, and another post, but the point is that on a rainy afternoon in August 2019 I found myself touring the Guinness Storehouse brewery tour in Dublin, Ireland.

I’ve got a bit of Irish blood in me, so the trip was one part heritage trip and one part explore Dublin like a tourist trip. The tourist part of me drank a lot of Guinness.

I drank a pint alongside a rich Irish stew and some bread the night before my half marathon and ran one of my best times of the season.

I drank a pint sitting at the bar in Temple Bar Pub, while other tourists stood just outside the door snapping selfies in front of the famous pub.

I drank a pint atop the viewing gallery of the the storehouse tour after learning how to pour, taste, and properly drink a glass of the rich brown stout.

A year and a half later I can confidently claim I don’t go very long without a few cans of the precious brew stocked in my fridge.

So, why not bake a lof of sourdough with it?

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

most of 1 can (363g) Guinness Stout 500g white bread flour 12g salt 250g of active sourdough starter

Regular readers will recall that just last weekend I baked an amazing loaf of beer-based sourdough with a can of honey brown lager. The result of this amber ale taking the place of tapwater in my recipe was a rich and flavourful bread that unfortunately seemed to disappear from the counter in less than 24 hours. (I strongly suspect hungry family members.)

A week later, though I’ve only got a regular two-day weekend to work within, I’m repeating my beer bread experimenting with one of my precious cans of Guinness a much darker and richer beer than the honey brown lager from last attempt.

The mixed ingredients are slowly hydrating on the counter as I wait out my gluten-building, hours-long folding efforts, killing the time writing this post.

Compared to the honey brown bread dough last weekend, this batch is considerably darker and smells much more strongly of beer. It gives me hope for a final baked bread that has a more obvious beer flavour.

The next steps will be a long, cool rise in the fridge, a final proof for most of Sunday, and a scruptious bake on Sunday evening … before samples and bedtime.

Tune in Monday for the exciting conclusion!

2021-02-192021-04-22

Ten Breakfast Foods that Cook Up Great in Cast Iron

Breakfast. For many it’s considered the most important meal of the day. For others, it is a way of life. Here are 10 ideas for cooking a hot first meal of the day in your cast iron.

Eggs. Fried. Scrambled. Sunny-side up with a bit of butter, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Served over toast or with bread for dipping.

Bacon. Crispy or just a bit soft. Smokey and rich. And the grease is good for the pan.

Hashbrowns. Fried potatoes. Warm. Salt. And crunchy. Soaking up a dose of ketchup and mopping up the egg yolks.

Sausages. Grilled and spicy. Flavour dripping from the tips as you bite into them.

Ham. Thick sliced and grilled warm in the pan. Sliced into chunks, and served with a rich, grainy mustard.

Omelet. With cheese, onions, tomatoes, or seafood, folded and fluffy, fancy, too.

Pancakes. Spotted with chocolate chips or decorated with sliced banana. Drowned with fruit and drizzled with syrup.

Crepes. Thin and round, wrapped around chocolate, fruit, and whipped cream and drizzled with sauce or syrups.

Waffles. Crisp and doughy, pocketed with pots waiting to be drenched in maple syrup and adorned with fruit.

Skillet. Potatoes, cheese, eggs, veggies, and bits of everything that makes breakfast great, come together with spices and love.

_{People like lists. I like people. So I’m giving the people what they like. I ran a blog for 16 years and one of the most popular posts ever on that blog was a list of “100 things” that I’d compiled and posted. I’m trying to recreate something similar over the next couple months for the cast iron guy blog. This post will eventually form part of that mega list.}

2021-02-182021-02-18

How long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

Probably one of the most well-known bits of cast iron lore is that the more that you use your pan the better it will get.

This rule of thumb is referring to the seasoning, the thin, black layers of polymerized oil that have been converted to this state by heat and have adhered to the surface of the pan creating that famous non-stick state of cooking bliss.

Pre-seasoned pans from the factory are sold with a few layers of seasoning applied shortly after manufacture, and for many this is “good enough” to start cooking with your new pan even as you peel the labels off. But for others, a fully seasoned pan takes work, and adequate seasoning is a matter of opinion and personal evaluation. To them, no pan ever comes from the store with enough seasoning to be considered fully ready to cook on.

The most unhelpful advice I’ve ever read on seasoning basically says that a pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned.

What those folks are getting at is simply that it will feel like it cooks better. Or it will pass some kind of non-stick test. You’ll just know… y’know?

A test, you say? For example, some swear that a pan is only seasoned when it passes the egg test: crack an egg into the center of a hot pan, cook it to doneness, then slide it onto a plate… all of this without using a spatula or any other cooking tool. If it slides into the plate and leaves a clean pan behind: voila! Your pan is perfectly seasoned. If it sticks then get back to work: you’re not there yet.

But no, you insist, really… how long does it take to season a cast iron pan?

In my experience, it takes however long it takes to build up five … ten … twenty solid layers of seasoning. You’ll just know… y’know?

That might take just one quiet afternoon with a hot oven, some oil and a bit of elbow grease.

Perhaps a full weekend out camping and cooking all your meals over a fire where the hot flames meld oil to iron will find your pan seasoned perfectly.

Sometimes a couple months of casual cooking at home is required as you notice week by week that your pan gets a little smoother and easier to use each time you fry.

Or occasionally it will take years of waking up early to prepare delicious Saturday breakfasts for your still-sleeping kids until you realize that your seasoning should be considered a family heirloom.

So maybe those folks with the unhelpful advice are right. A pan is fully seasoned when you know that it is fully seasoned. You’ll just know… y’know?

2021-02-162021-02-16

Sculpting Sand & Polar Vortexes

The cold is breaking.

Where I live in Edmonton, Canada, a small city of about a million people in the middle of the Canadian prairies, it gets cold. Yet, even a stretch of brutal chill is mostly unusual. A polar vortex as they called it, where we’ve not had a day this month where the temperatures have been warmer than minus twenty degrees, has given us a February locked in our houses avoiding the bone-chilling cold even while we’re locked in our houses avoiding the pandemic.

But it is supposed to warm up today. A little. Minus twelve, the forecast promises.

Still, I’ve been dreaming of warmer places.

for whatever one photo is worth:

A few years ago, we spent ten days in Maui.

Exploring.

Eating good food.

Playing on the beach.

Maybe it was because sitting on a beautiful beach in Hawaii is such the opposite of where I am now, land-locked in a frozen city, I saw this picture and I was pleasantly reminiscent of tropical vacations on this particular Travel Tuesday.

The quality of this photo was not brilliant, but was one of dozens I took with my sun soaked sports camera after spending a hours snorkelling in the reefs, playing in the waves, and building elaborate sand castles.

The sand castles were my particular favourite. Between my then-nine-year-old daughter and I we would construct elaborate buildings, tiny temples, and sprawling relic-inspired courtyards with the collection of plastic sand tools we’d bought at the local ABC Store. And as we dove back into the salt water we would watch from afar to see how many people would stop to look or even take photos of our creations.

We can’t travel now.

And it’s far too cold to turn the crispy snow in our front yard into similarly elaborate snow sculptures, if only because the snow doesn’t stick in those conditions.

Yet, it doesn’t hurt to look through old photos and remember long ago vacations and wonder how and when we might spend our next day at the beach…

How would you spend a day on the beach?

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