Cast Iron Dreams – Page 22 – exploring the wilderness<br>in a pair of running shoes

2022-02-112022-02-11 episode 295

One Million

Call it civic pride or call it mathematical curiosity, either way the latest census data for Canada was released this week and my city officially recorded one million residents for the first time in history.

One million.

That’s a lot of neighbours, most of whom I’ll probably never ever meet. A great big crowd, busy streets and an ever-more bustling mini metropolis with which to contend.

We sometimes talk about the switch from being a big little city to becoming a little big city, and what that means for everything from being a resident here, to welcoming visitors, to building and growing and changing now and into the future.

Admittedly, it’s been a tough couple of weeks to think about the future of our city and my country. The crowds are pressing against each other and it’s getting uncomfortable in here.

If you watch the news these days, Canada is abuzz for mostly the wrong kinds of reasons, including blockades of borders and an occupation our cities by protests that have been spiraling into more complex political movements. Even last week, as I drove south of town for a family event, we passed on the highway a parade of (literally and at least) a thousand flag-waving semi-trucks, tractors, SUVs, and other supporting vehicles en route to my city to protest vaccine and masking rules. And whether you’re on one side, the other, or stuck in the fuzzy middle it’s hard to sit back and watch with anything resembling hope when such protests are driven mostly by heated emotion, divergent ideologies, and ever deeper pits of self-affirming misinformation.

Alas, my golden rule, and one that has served me well living in a big little city — and now living in a little big city too, perhaps — is whenever possible to lift those around you instead of pushing them further down.

You can interpret that how you will, but in this great big city, and this great big world, one million of us or seven billion folks spread across the globe, I recommend to try it for a few days.

Stop honking. Stop blocking. Stop insulting. Stop trying to crush others to climb for yourself a little bit higher onto the pile.

Instead, elevate someone else’s opinion, even for just a moment. Clear a path so someone else can climb a step up. Complement a friend and give a stranger a boost. Think what would happen if we all did that.

One million people might feel less like a crowd and more like a community.

2022-02-092022-02-09 episode 294

Baking Sourdough Bagels

Now that we’re a few solid days into February it seemed appropriate that I acknowledge the fine dusting of flour on the floor, walls and furniture that is my loosely stated New Year’s resolutions.

I had been lamenting the lack of variation in my sourdough adventures and looking forward to a year of bread-based experimentation in the form of baked goods like doughnuts, English muffins and bagels.

So, it’s good that I can report I’ve checked at least one of those items off my list: bagels.

My initial attempt at making bagels — not just sourdough bagels, but bagels, period — full stop was based on a blurry-lined recipe I found online that was dancing between a New York style versus a Montreal-style bagel.

Sweetened, dry dough. Slow rise. Thick and chewy exterior.

The Ingredients

200g active sourdough starter 360g warm tap water 635g bread flour 30ml honey 12g salt 60g granulated sugar 10ml baking soda 1 egg white, whisked sesame seeds, to taste

The flour, water, salt, starter, and honey went together just as I would have usually put together a basic bread dough. Blend. Hydrate. Fold. Rest. Fold. Repeat. And finally into the fridge for about 16 hours.

Things changed up on the back end, when after I let the dough warm back up for about an hour, I weighed out twelve equal(ish) portions and shaped into rings. The dough being fairly dry, this was a tough thing to do, at least in as much as I was hoping for smooth, beautiful loops. I wound up with scraggly rings that evened out a bit as they rose but even after twelve hours on the counter still bore my (trademark?) handmade look.

A pot of boiling water to which the granulated sugar and baking soda joined in to make a sweet alkaline broth gave each of the bagels, two at a time in my medium pot, a thirty-second-per-side bath before landing on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

A quick egg white wash on the top and a generous sprinkle of sesame seeds, and the dozen bagels were into the 450F oven for a solid 20 minutes before extraction.

They definitely had a homemade look, but the kid — a bagel aficionado already at age fourteen — scarfed two and declared them worthy. I guess I’m going to need to keep that recipe handy for another batch soon.

2022-01-242022-01-24 episode 293

Meta Monday & Moving Forward

The inevitable question that every blogger faces is balancing all the pieces of time, effort, content, ideas, and purpose.

You may have noticed (if you are a regular reader) that as of late my posting rate has dropped off to somewhere much lower than daily.

This has been a factor of a number of things: a vacation that spanned into the New Year, the never-ending pandemic which I assumed would end much sooner and leave me open to exploring more adventure content, a couple other little side projects that have captured my attention, work (of course) which is getting busier with a couple big new projects, and so many other little details.

That said, I love writing here and it gives me so much joy to explore cooking and adventure and running and all the other little topics I write about in a space that is my own.

But I also want that to be a quality effort.

Posting daily is a great way to be consistent and force yourself to write, but it also leads to (and I’ll be the first to admit this) a lot of filler content.

And maybe, who knows, someday I’ll be inspired to write here daily again and keep up that pace that I tried so frantically (yes, it’s a lot of work) to keep in 2021.

For now, however, I’m going to keep writing but continue as I’ve done for the first month of this year so far on longer, more carefully planned and written content that is on topic and interesting to readers. I’ll try to write, say, three or so posts per week but in doing so avoid the sidebars and more casual “filler” writing to hit a daily post quota.

With nearly three hundred posts in my archives, this blog is not going anywhere … but hopefully the next three hundred will hone closer into my original mission of bringing my readers interesting ideas about uncomplicated things, life lived, and a mindset that reflects the philosophical practicality of well-seasoned cast iron frying pan, enduring, simple, down-to-earth & extremely useful… just not daily.

2022-01-222022-01-22 episode 292

Cheesy Garlic Pan Bread

Back in December I was going through my end-of-the-year questions and spent a post lamenting the fact that despite baking up a lot of sourdough, I hadn’t spent much time exploring the potential of my starter as a starter for other recipes besides bread.

A goal for 2022 was to branch out, and the suggestions I gave myself in that post were to try some variety of recipes such as doughnuts, bagels or english muffins.

Instead, as inspiration would have it, I started instead with a crusty pan bread.

The Youtube algorithm tends to show me a lot of baking content these days, and my playlist offered up a recipe for a thick crust pan pizza. I skipped the pizza part and instead used some of the pizza advice and a half a recipe of my sourdough bread to whip up a tasty cheese bread that complimented our evening meal of beef stew.

cheesy garlic pan bread

500g bread flour 350g water 12g salt 250g active sourdough starter 250g hard cheese 3 garlic cloves 60ml olive oil 10g finishing salt

I made my basic sourdough recipe using the flour, water, salt and starter. This went through the typical hydration and folding cycle and then got covered and popped into the fridge overnight. Technically, I only used half of this to make the pan bread and used the other half to bake some simple sourdough rolls, but I’m sure any innovative baker can figure out something clever to do with half a recipe of ready-to-rise sourdough dough.

I oiled up my ten inch cast iron pan (using half the oil) and halving the dough from above, I balled and then flattened it, shaping it into a thick disk that sat about an inch from all sides of the pan. It was about 8am when I did this, and I wouldn’t go onto the next step until nearly 5pm when the dough disk had risen to a lovely volume that was closer to being ready to bake.

My folks had given us a huge wedge of gouda cheese as part of a Christmas basket, so I grated down a bunch of that. I also crushed the garlic in the remaining oil. Just like one might do with a loaf of foccacia I dimpled the surface of my dough disk with my finger tips then spread the garlic oil roughly over the surface.

Here’s the first trick I learned from that Youtube video. I took about half the grated cheese and made a thick edge right up against the edge of the disk and touching the cast iron. The point here is that as is melts it drips along the crack and gets all fried and crusty making a crispy cheesy edge.

The point is, you want the cheese (and quite a bit of it) right up to the edge of the dough.

With a saltier cheese I may have skipped this extra finishing salt sprinkled atop this whole creation. I like salty garlic bread, probably an artifact of growing up on garlic bread made from buttered toast sprinkled with garlic salt not real garlic, but it really does bring an added dimension to the finished product.

This spent 28 minutes in a 425F oven, but I was watching it carefully for the last five.

The second trick I learned from that Youtube video came right at the end. I checked the browning on the crust of the bread after I pulled it out of the oven to make sure it wasn’t too brown (it wasn’t) and then lit up the stovetop where I continued frying the bread right there in the cast iron pan for another 3 minutes. That crust just browned up a little more and it popped out of the pan glorious and crusty and cheesy as I expected.

My biggest problem was making sure there was some left over for tomorrow.

It was delicious, fresh and steaming hot from the oven, and I’ll be adding this to my regular rotation for family meals or perhaps even to share with friends some day again.