Ok, on to pate a choux. This is quite possibly one of the most versatile doughs/batters around. It’s in the dough section, though technically, I would consider it somewhere between a dough and a batter. You can’t pour it like a batter, but you can’t knead it by hand like a dough. Go ahead, try to knead it by hand. If you thought “club hand” was bad from a breading station, just get this stuff on your hands. It’s sticky and slimy at the same time, kind of like those little plastic eggs that had that “stuff” you could play with. I’m sure I’ll get cancer from that stuff, there’s no way anything like that exists in nature, except for pate a choux. And pate a choux tastes much, much better (don’t ask how I know this).
Considering how simple this is to make, I don’t know why people don’t make it more often. I guess it’s fallen out of favor because it’s got a lot of butter and eggs, things the Health Police have told us mere mortals to avoid. I’m calling shenanigans on the Health Police, because I’ve managed to lose around 48 pounds, and I’ve been eating my fair share of bread, pasta, cookies, and cream puffs from Ratio. So, to the Health Police, I fart in your general direction, and go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

The ingredients are very simple, like everything else in this book. It’s butter, flour, water, and eggs, and a wee bit of salt for flavoring (don’t leave out the salt). The ratio is equal parts water and eggs, and half as much butter and flour. Simple enough.

I should mention, please turn your oven to 425, or whatever the temperature is for making cream puffs that’s mentioned in the book before you do anything. You’ll see why later.

First step, combine the butter and water. Dump, melt, stir. Done.

Next, I added the flour. It took a while for it to come together, but it eventually did. I then lowered the heat to gently cook out some of the water. I’m trying to make pate a choux, not a roux, and I didn’t want it to start browning. That’s what the oven is for later.

Now that things have come together, I took it off the heat and dropped the whole thing into my mixing bowl. Again, I turn to my stand mixer, and again, it’s because I’m lazy and don’t want to spend a lot of time hand-mixing in these eggs. So in go the eggs, one at a time.

The next question is, is it safe? Well, if your mixture can do this:

it’s safe. This is one thing I learned from watching Alton Brown make pate a choux. If it comes off the mixer in a “V” it’s got enough liquid in it. Basically, the dough is done. Now, what direction should I go? I decided to do cream puffs, since they are relatively easy, and I didn’t want to mess with making a bunch of gnocchi. I’ll do those another time. Eventually.

Now, I don’t own a pastry bag. I hate them. They are impossible to clean, and not really sanitary. However, I do own plenty of plastic bags, and some pastry tips. If you don’t have a set of pastry tips, don’t sweat it. Just cut a tip off one of the corners of the bag, and presto, instant pastry bag that can go in the trash when you’re done.

Piping the dough onto the pan wasn’t that difficult, except for the fact that this dough is really loose, and flows very easily. Some of the puffs are a little bigger than I wanted them, but I’ll manage. Just means they’re bigger to hold more ice cream. I didn’t have enough room on the pan for the entire dough, so I made another one, partially loaded.

Time to knock down those pesky tips, and I have just the tool for that, a silicon basting brush. Ironically, this is the only thing it’s good for, which leads me into a small rant. If you want a good basting brush, DO NOT BUY A SILICONE BASTING BRUSH. They are crap. Since they are silicone, the don’t hold on to anything, so you can’t load the brush with anything. You end up brushing, and dipping, and brushing, and dipping, etc. Don’t do it. Just get a bristle style brush, and all will be well. However, the one thing this brush is really good at is knocking the tips off the tops of the cream puffs. I’m glad I found a use for it, because it works really well.

Into the oven they go, and after 10 minutes, the temperature gets reduced to finish cooking the insides.

Out they come, and yeaaaaaa, well, not quite. They certainly cooked, but didn’t puff up like they should have. In goes the second pan.

The second pan turned out much better. I’m going ahead and assuming it’s because the oven had been running longer, and everything in the oven was hotter so the temperature didn’t fall as much. Still, for a first run at cream puffs, I’ll take it.

The verdict? WIN. It’s ridiculously easy to make, and so extremely versatile. Fillings can run the gamut of sweet to savory, and this dough can be tweaked with some sugar to make éclairs and such, or add some cheese and herbs for the savory ones. Personally, I’m a fan of the plain ones with a sweet filling, because I like how the sweet and savory play off of each other. Plus, if you mess it up, you don’t have to feel guilty about throwing it in the trash, and you’ll probably have enough time to whip up another batch.

Next up is pound cake.  Should be fun, as I can’t recall the last time I made a pound cake.  Stay tuned.

If that doesn’t bring back flashbacks for my dear readers, you’re either too young to remember, or you grew up living under a rock. As I remember, it didn’t matter what kind of cookies they were, Cookie Monster liked them all. Chocolate chip, sugar, macaroons, shortbread, he ate them all, or at least tried to. I seem to recall he’d manage to get about half of them in his mouth, and the rest would end up as crumbs in his shaggy blue fur. I’m similar in his eating habits, except I don’t have blue fur, and I found a way to eat the whole cookie without getting crumbs everywhere. Most of the time, anyways.

But there’s a problem brewing in this country, and it consists of pre-made cookie dough. Just scoop it out, bake, and enjoy. Even worse, now you don’t even have to scoop, the cookies come on a septic sheet of posterboard, you just slide them onto a sheet pan. They may taste ok, but go take a gander at the ingredient list on the back. Yeah, there’s stuff on there that I cannnot pronounce, and I am a chemistry nerd.  Plus, you don’t have to have a chemistry kit from your childhood to make great cookies. However, the people who manufacture these “cookies” do in order to keep you from getting sick and ensuring that they bake up ok.

“Oh, but I don’t have time in the evening to make a batch of cookies, and there’s too many ingredients.” Hogwash. When I made the very basic cookie dough ratio, it took 30 minutes, start to finish, INCLUDING BAKING. Get your butt off of facebook, and get in the kitchen. It doesn’t take that long. Honest.  Also, cookies don’t take that many ingredients. In fact, you can strip every cookie recipe down to three ingredients and still have a cookie (and a damn tasty one, I might add). Yep, three ingredients, but that’s it, you can’t go any further. As Michael says in Ratio (and I’m paraphrasing here) “Take the sugar away, and you have a roux. Take the flour away, and you have an icing. The ratio is a diamond.”

I couldn’t say it any better. So three ingredients, that’s it. If you’re like me, you probably have salted butter. If you’re using unsalted butter, you should probably add some salt, otherwise, the cookies will taste very flat.

So here they are, salted butter, flour, and sugar. That’s it. Not even vanilla. Honestly, you don’t need it as long as you have good butter. The butter is the key in this one. And here’s where the scale is handy. There is no dirty measuring spoons, no dirty mixing bowls. In fact, I did this whole recipe with a spoon (to scoop the sugar and flour), a spatula, the workbowl and paddle attachment on my mixer, and a sheet pan with some parchment. So much for making a bunch of dirty dishes. Another excuse goes away.

First step, I weighed out the four ounces of sugar, and added the butter, which in this case was a stick (8 ounces).

Strap it to the mixer, and commence creaming, and stopping occasionally to scrape down the bowl.

This step is really important, and one of those I find that people have the most trouble with. How do you know you’ve creamed the butter enough? Well, it’s not that simple, but I find that sound is just as good to go by as sight. When you don’t hear the sugar scraping against the bowl, you’re getting close. The butter should lighten in color and look something like this.

It looks fluffy. No lumps, smooth. Give it a taste. If you have the will power to keep going making cookies and not run off into the living room and plop yourself in front of the tv and eat this stuff straight off the spatula, your willpower is strong. I’ve been known to do just this very thing in the past. Just saying. I won’t fault you if you do too.

Ok, now that everything is creamed well, time to add the flour. Back to the scale, weigh out the six ounces of flour, and mix again.

Hmmm. Fail?

It would appear so. This didn’t come together into a cohesive dough. (I’ve sent Michael an email about this, to see if I managed to screw this up.) I could pick it up and form it into a dough, but it never came together on its own. Oh well, no biggie. The instructions say to either roll it into a log, put it in the fridge, and cut later, or roll into balls and flatten them. I voted for the latter, because I wanted cookies now, dammit. The dough actually rolled fairly easily. I then flattened them out with the back of a glass, and into the 350 degree oven they went.

Halfway through baking, I gave the sheet pan half a spin, and kept an eye on them as they finished baking. Those seven minutes were torture, I tell you.

Aha!! Cookies!!!

Put them on a rack to cool, and 10 minutes later, it was time to taste.

Remember those Danish butter cookies that would get really popular around Christmas time? Yeah, I’m trying to forget them too, because these cookies are exponentially better than those. Take that, you Danes! I’ve got you beat by a mile with this. They are buttery, without being too sweet. Just like how a perfect shortbread should be. I’d eat them all if I didn’t have any willpower.

So what’s the verdict? Win. Big win. Honestly, anything you added to this would just be superfluous, though some vanilla, some ground pecans, and a dusting of turbinado sugar certainly would be great additions. But if you’re out of chocolate chips, your pecans are stale, and your baking powder is expired, fear not. Cookies are still at hand, you just need some flour, sugar, and butter. Remember, don’t forget the salt.

The variations to this basic ratio are endless, which is good, because it will give me ample opportunities to write more about cookies. Change sugars, add eggs and/or leavening, and different combinations of flavorings and spices. That’s never a bad thing.

Ingredients

King Arthur all-purpose flour
Central Market unsalted butter
Imperial pure cane sugar

Next up, that quintessential French standby, pate-a-choux. Who thought shoe paste could be so appetizing.

Ha.

I knew this day would come, that one of these ratios wouldn’t work well for me. To be fair, the dough itself wasn’t the problem, it was when it came time to cut the dough with the pasta machine. So technically, I’m still batting 1.000, but I’m afraid I’ll have to put an asterisk by my record, kind of like Barry Bonds with his single season and lifetime home run records. (But that’s another topic to be discussed over a case of beer. It will take that much to get my full opinions out.)

Homemade pasta is one of those foods that home cooks have typically left to good Italian restaurants, and with good reason. The making of the dough isn’t the hard part; it’s the rolling, cutting, and drying that is where the work is. I had made homemade pasta a long time ago, and one of the things I remember is having flour everywhere. It’s like going to the beach and trying to get rid of the sand. A week later, you’re still finding sand in places you wouldn’t think you’d be finding it. I’m that way with flour. You could dance a mean jig on my kitchen floor when I was done. Then, you’re supposed to drape the pasta over rods to let it dry, and you end up hanging pasta over your dog because you’ve run out of room.

This time around, it was a slight change for the better, but only slightly.

The ratio is simple enough: 3 parts flour to 2 parts egg, by weight. Since large chicken eggs, are two ounces, the simpler ratio is 3 ounces by weight of flour per egg, and one egg per serving. Very simple. Only two ingredients. It’s really hard to screw this up, right? Well…

Old Italian ladies will tell you to make a well in the flour, add the eggs, and mix it together with your fingers. You know why people tell you to use a wet hand and dry hand when dredging stuff in flour and egg? If you don’t, you will end up with club hand. You will end up with the exact same thing here as well. No offense to you ladies, but I’m mixing it in a bowl with a fork. Works well, keeps your fingers clean, and the sides of the well don’t fall apart with egg running everywhere. Then I formed it into a ball, and commenced kneading. So far so good.

Time to knead. I did this one by hand, because the amount is small enough, and it is quite therapeutic. This dough has enough elasticity and is dry enough to make kneading fun. After about 10 minutes of kneading, I was left with a satiny smooth ball of dough and a lovely patina of flour and egg on my counter.  A swipe with a bench scraper (which everyone should have) quickly removed it. Wrap it in plastic, and let it sit for an hour.

Next up is the rolling process. I invested in a pasta machine for this. To my dismay, when I tried to attach it to the counter, the machine wouldn’t stay attached because the lip on my counters is too shallow to allow for the clamp to fully tighten down. Fortunately, Alton Brown devised a brilliant way to attach a pasta machine to an ironing board. I thought, what the hell? Let’s give it a shot. He drilled holes though his, but I didn’t want to have to buy another ironing board. My solution was to buy the cheapest ironing board cover I could find ($5), and put that over my existing cover. Next time, I’ll remember to put a single layer of a trash bag down first to keep my existing cover clean. A small block of wood put in the clamp itself took up some extra space, and my pasta machine is now firmly attached to the ironing board. Now I have a long narrow working area for pasta, and let me tell you, it worked PERFECTLY.  It’s beautiful in a ingenious-ghetto kind of way.

Now, we roll. So far, so good. Starting on setting 1. I rolled, folded, and rolled again. Then I went to setting 2, 3, and all the way to 6.

Then it was time to cut, and here’s where things went to shit. First, I tried the spaghetti setting, and ended up with dough that was pinched, but not cut into separate strands. I ended up with something that looked like linguini with an indentation down the middle. Lame. Very lame. Looking back at the manual, it said the dough may be too wet. So I added some flour, and tried again. Same thing. Frustrated, I took all the strands, added more flour, and kneaded some more. Now, when I tried to run the dough through the roller, I thought I was going to break the handle; the dough was so tough it would barely roll through. Well crap. After enough coaxing, I finally got the dough to roll correctly, but this was quickly becoming more trouble than I wanted. I tried cutting again, and had better success this time around, with only a few of the strands failing to cut. I then laid the dough out on a sheet pan, and dusted the pasta with flour to keep it from sticking. After much profanity, this is what I ended up with.

Not bad, and the fettuccini actually cut better than the spaghetti. Bonus.

Now that we have this pasta, what to do with it? Well, I had a plethora of basil around, so I whipped up a batch of basil pesto. I boiled a pot of water, dropped the pasta in for about 5 minutes, drained it well, and added the pasta.

Oh. My. God. (Yeah, sorry about no picture.  I was so hungry I forgot to get one.)

This was heavenly. Nothing at all like dried pasta. The dough was much softer, almost dumpling-like. It had that rich eggy taste that fresh pasta should have. The pesto didn’t overpower the pasta, since pasta is typically just a carrier for a flavorful sauce. Here, the pasta actually shines through, with the pesto being a complement to the pasta. The wife loved it, saying it was quite possibly the best pasta she’s ever had.

So, is it worth it? Yes, it is, but with a small reservation. As long as you’re willing to cut the pasta by hand, all should be well. Next time, I’m going to cut the pasta by hand so I don’t have to mess with those stupid cutters. This would be perfect for tagliatelle, linguine, or pasta sheets for lasagna or ravioli.

Ingredients:

King Arthur all-purpose flour
Large eggs from HEB

Next up is cookies. That cookie monster dude is stalking me.

Ok, so I don’t really have a bible book, chapter and verse devoted to me, but I should.  Seriously.  But whoever created butter should be extolled upon high.  At least given a medal. Golf clap then?  You get the picture.

You see, I’ve been fighting a constant battle with biscuits.  I have tried forever to figure out how to make the damn things.  I’ve read recipes until my eyes blurred, and nothing has seemed to help.  I always end up with hockey pucks.  They don’t rise, and they are about as appetizing as eating glue when you were in kindergarten.  You ate the glue, and have no idea why.  I felt the same with the biscuits I would make.  They were just awful.  Sadly, no one in my family never makes them from scratch, not even my grandmother.  They all resorted to biscuits in a can.  They still scare the hell out of me when I open them.  And they are ok, but not great.  I’ve also heard the saying that if you can make pie dough, you can make biscuits.  BS. At least I used to think that way.  Turns out, making biscuits is EXACTLY like making pie dough.  And as you’ll see, I am now a believer and a convert.

If you happened to read the pie dough ratio, then you know that the ratio is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat (butter) and 1 part water.  All that really changes with the biscuit ratio is the fat and water switch places in the ratio, and the water gets replaced by milk, and some leavening in the form of baking powder is added.  Seems simple enough, and it is.  Oh yes, it really is.  The dough is wetter, which makes it a little more difficult to work with, but it’s worth it.  You’ll see.

And here’s our ingredients.  They are all-purpose flour, the afore-mentioned butter (keep it very cold), whole milk (I wouldn’t use 2% if I were you, at least the first time), baking powder, and some salt.

Just as with the pie dough ratio, we begin with cutting the butter into the flour, salt, and the added baking powder.  And again, I will use my food processor, because it makes quick work of getting that butter into the flour, and I don’t mind doing dishes.

Looks eerily familiar, and it should be.  Time to add the milk, chilled please.  Mix everything up.  I used a spatula to do this, because this stuff is really sticky, and I didn’t want to melt any butter.  To save making a complete mess of my countertop, I dumped the dough onto the plastic, and pulled the sides to the center to form something that resembled a rectangle.

So it more resembles a square, and it doesn’t look like it’s all mixed together.  That’s ok, because it needs to sit in the fridge for an hour.  You would be surprised what can happen in an hour.  Time to play some Rock Band.

An hour has passed, and now it’s time to roll.  I rolled it out to roughly three times its size like the book says, and folded it like a tri-fold wallet.  Now remember, this dough is still pretty sticky, so it will require quite a bit of flour to roll it out.  When you go to fold the dough and it’s sticking, this is where a bench scraper comes in handy.  If you don’t have one, use a knife.  Don’t worry too much if it comes up in pieces.  Just mash it together, all will be well.  Rinse and repeat.  Wrap in plastic, and back in the fridge for an hour.  Time for more Rock Band.

Turn on the oven to 400.  After an hour, do this again.  Now it’s time to cut the biscuits.  Not wanting to lose any dough, I just split it into 6 pieces.  I put them on the baking sheet lined with parchment, and into the oven the went.

And I waited.  Patiently hoping they would rise.  And they did, and it was good.  Twenty minutes later, I had biscuits.  And here’s the money shots.

You may notice they didn’t rise evenly.  That’s partly because of all of the folding of the dough.  If asthetics are that important to you, you could cut off the other edge before baking them.  But then you’d be called a loon, because you’d have to discard that dough.  There’s no way in hell you could convince me to do that.  Why?  Because these little gems are AWESOME!!!  I DID IT!!! I FINALLY MADE A BISCUIT THAT WASN’T A HOCKEY PUCK!!!! This is the best flaky biscuit I have ever had, bar none.  Any modifications you make would be superfluous.  You don’t need to, but it’s up to you.  They are so good, no additional butter is necessary.  Just a light dressing if your favorite jam or honey, or in my case, molasses, and call it a day.  Just try not to eat all of them at once.  It’s harder than it sounds, trust me on this.

There is only one teeny problem with this ratio. IT TAKES THREE STINKING HOURS TO MAKE FLAKY BISCUITS!!!  And that is a big problem, especially when I wake up on Saturday morning and decide I want biscuits for breakfast.  By the time they would be ready, it’s damn near lunch time.  It’s not that biscuits are bad for lunch (because they aren’t) but it’s something about having them with some bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee.  There are two possible solutions  I have come up with for this.  One is to skip all the folding and rolling and just make a drop biscuit.  Should work, and I’ll give it a go sometime in the future.  The other solution is to make them the evening before, and cut and bake them in the morning.  I can’t see any reason why this wouldn’t work either.  It works for bread, and pie dough, why not biscuits?  I’ll do this in the future as well.

As for variations, hell, there are probably thousands.  Add pieces of dried fruit, and you’ve got a great scone.  I’m going to do a cranberry/orange biscuit for sure.  Fresh herbs would result in a wonderfully savory biscuit to serve with a hearty stew or soup.  Add some cheddar cheese and some finely minced garlic, and you’ve got a biscuit that is widely popular at a national chain seafood restaurant with a red crustacean on it’s sign.  Oh yeah, I’m coming after you next.

Ingredients:

King Arthur all-purpose flour

Central Market butter

Clabber Girl baking powder

Promised Land Dairy whole milk

Morton’s kosher salt

Up next: pasta dough.  The pasta machine has arrived, and it’s time to take a stab at making homemade pasta.  Stay tuned.

Mmmmm, pie. Say that in your best Homer Simpson impersonation, and that’s about how much I like pie. Any kind of pie, really. Fruit pie, custard pie, hand pie, quiche, tarts, there’s too many to mention. I don’t think I’ve ever met a pie I didn’t like.

I take that back, there is actually pie that I don’t like. That’s merely a technicality, because most bad pie that I’ve had is a result of bad pie crust. It’s either too tough, too greasy, or it just flat out falls apart as soon as you put a fork to it. I did a google search for “pie crust recipe,” and I got 69,900 hits. Granted, there probably aren’t that many recipes, because some of those results have to do with pie crust and male body part enlargement pills. Nonetheless, I’m willing to bet there are THOUSANDS of pie crust recipes out there. From exotic fats to flour blends to adding vodka to the dough (a trick that, while it works, isn’t necessary if you’re doing things properly), to a bazillion techniques to make the dough itself, you can drive yourself crazy trying to find a pie dough recipe that works. Most of them will work, to some degree. Some of the recipes are so fussy that if you sneeze in the wrong direction, everything falls apart, and you’re left with a pile of fat and flour. It’s a mess, and it isn’t pretty. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution, and it’s found in the Pie Dough section of Ratio on page 25. As it turns out, this is the ONLY base pie dough recipe you’ll ever need.

To start with, there’s only four ingredients (three really, but I add a bit of salt to the dough). It’s all-purpose flour, butter, ice water, and the before-mentioned salt (I was using unsalted butter, so that’s why I added salt. If your butter is already salted, leave it out). The ratio for this is 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, and one part water, all BY WEIGHT.

HEY, I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T DISCLOSING THE RATIOS!!!!

Yeah, I said that.  But I can do this now, at least for a couple of them, because there is a nifty little chart posted on Michael Ruhlman’s blog that tells you what all the dough and batter ratios are.  I figure if he’s willing to publish it on his site, I can too.  So there.

I cut this recipe in half, because I only wanted one pie crust, and I didn’t have a use for the extra dough. Sad really, because one can never have too much pie.

The flour gets weighed out, and the butter is cubed. The butter needs to be very, very cold, almost frozen. Go from fridge to mixing as quickly as possible. Next, the question is how to get the flour and butter together. Michael says to mix these two together by hand. That’s a problem for me, because I have very warm hands, and every time I’ve tried to make pie dough by hand, the butter ends up melting before I can get it incorporated into the flour. Secondly, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m incredibly lazy. Thankfully, there is a household appliance that will do this much better than I can. A food processor can get that butter into the flour in a matter of seconds, without melting the flour. Sorry Michael, I have to stray from your method. I only do this because I know it works. If you can get the butter incorporated into the flour quickly and efficiently, by all means, do this by hand. For me, it’s food processor all the way.

Ok, now the next biggest question is when to stop mixing? I’ve read in cookbooks that is should look like anything from coarse sand to small gravel. That’s a pretty wide margin. Really though, it doesn’t really matter that much. I’ll just say this: if you have pieces of fat that are no bigger than a green pea, you can stop. Otherwise, keep going.

Now time to add the water. You can mix this by hand as well, but remember that my hands are warm. So a spatula substitutes for my hands at least at first. How much water to add? My advice for this is add about ¾ of what the ratio is. Depending on the weather, temperature, what fat you used, it can vary quite a bit. And how much is enough? This is where most cookbooks totally screw the pooch, because they make the dough too wet. While this makes the dough very easy to roll out, it also makes it tough, because more water=more gluten=tougher pie crust. This test works really well for me. Take a small ball of dough, place it in your hand, and make a fist. If the dough just barely holds together in one piece, don’t add anymore water. The dough may look a bit dry, and that it won’t hold together. I assure you that it will, but the flour needs time to soak up the water and thoroughly hydrate. It will, I promise, but it needs some time.

Dump the dough onto some plastic wrap, and use the plastic wrap to pull everything together into a disk. Put this in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, though an hour is better. Go do some laundry, take the dog for a walk, take a nap, or play some Rock Band.

Now comes the rolling part. Take the dough out, and let it sit a couple of minutes to warm up slightly. Dust everything down with flour, and commence rolling. I’ve been told I should use a French rolling pin, but I hate them. I can’t get the pressure even, and I end up punching a hole in the dough. That’s bad. I’ll stick to my cheapo wooden rolling pin. We get along greatly, and since my hands are so big, I can position my hands so that everything is rolled out evenly. As for technique, the only real advice I can give is roll from one edge, go straight across the dough, and rotate the dough ¼ turn. Turning the dough will keep it from sticking, and rolling straight across will help keep the dough even. If it starts to stick, sling some flour under it. Problem solved.

One note here. If the dough is cracking excessively around the edges, it is too cold. Leave it be for a minute or so, and continue rolling. You’d be amazed what a minute of letting the dough warm will do.

Now that the pie dough is rolled, it’s time to do something with it. You could put this on a baking sheet, sprinkle on some sugar and cinnamon, bake it and eat. My wife would be very happy with this. But I want pie, dammit, and pie we will have. So as a bonus, you’ll get one of the variations today, a free-form peach tart/pie. No messing with pie pans, creating a pretty border, or doing a lattice top. Free-form lazy is the rule of the day here. Call it whatever you want, it’s still going to be damn good.

I was absolutely shocked to find fresh peaches that tasted like peaches in my grocery store. There’s seven of the lovelies. (Instead of playing Rock Band today, I did all of the filling work while the dough was chilling in the fridge. Nice way to not be lazy.) They need to be peeled, and the best way to do that is to blanch them in boiling water for about a minute and plunge them into an ice bath. The skins should slip right off. If they don’t, boil them some more.

Peaches cut, and into the bowl they go. The book mentions to use a tablespoon of cornstarch per cup of fruit. I reckon there’s about three cups of fruit, and peaches are pretty wet to begin with, so I add three tablespoons of cornstarch. Then about two tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and about 5 seconds worth of freshly grated nutmeg on my microplane. No, I didn’t measure it, but it looked about right, and tasted good. That’s how I know it was enough.

A word about nutmeg. Everyone should be able to find whole nutmeg in your grocery store now. I know, because I bought mine at my ghetto grocery store. If they have it, everyone should be able to get it. Also, if you’re using ground nutmeg in a can, I’m going to come to your house and give you some fresh whole nutmeg so you can see how different freshly grated nutmeg is. Then I’m going to take that can of nutmeg that’s been in your pantry since Reagan took office and shove it down your throat. Bad canned nutmeg, bad!!!

Mix everything up, and give it a taste. Mine tasted good, so it’s FINALLY time to make pie. First, put the dough on a lined baking sheet. If it overhangs the edges, don’t sweat it. It’s all about to be folded up anyways. Pile the filling in the center, and start folding the edges over. This is why it’s called free-form. Just fold it and lightly crease until it holds together. Don’t press it too hard, or you’ll make cracks, which will result in filling going everywhere, and that’s not good eats.

A little egg wash on the edges (which in this case is an egg white with a splash of water, then beaten), sprinkle on some sugar, and put it in the oven.

This should be mentioned, because in the free-form tart variation, there isn’t a baking temperature listed. I checked a couple of cookbooks and recipes I have, and came to a consensus temperature of 400 degrees. A little warmer than normal, but the higher heat is needed to ensure that the crust sets quickly, or else the butter melts and the dough disintegrates before your very eyes, and you end up with cobbler on a sheet pan. Not that cobbler is bad, but that’s not we’re after here. WE WANT PIE!!!!

It took mine about 40 minutes to brown nicely around the edges. That’s when it’s done.

Looks awesome. Letting it cool is the hardest part. Don’t go poking around on it, it needs to set on its own terms so all the starches and pectin have time to hook up and gel. Patience is a virtue here.

Ok, time to cut and eat. How does it taste? Really good, like (insert profanities here) awesomely good!!! Easily, the best tasting crust I’ve ever made. Also, the added benefit of the free-form tart is that you get a lot of crust. With one that tastes this good, you’ll want plenty of crust. It almost doesn’t need a filling. Almost.

So what did we learn? First, since this dough is so ridiculously easy, I doubt I’ll ever buy a pre-made crust ever again. Secondly, it tastes so damn good, those you make pie for will likely mount a mutiny if you ever try to slip a pre-made one in on them. Thirdly, it doesn’t take that long. Put on some tunes, and make pie. If you don’t, the terrorists win.

Ingredients:

Pie Dough:
King Arthur all-purpose flour
Central Market unsalted butter
Morton’s kosher salt
City of Austin tap water

Filling:
Peaches from HEB
Imperial Pure Cane sugar
McCormick’s ground cinnamon
Cornstarch (the one in the yellow box, I can’t remember the name)
McCormick’s whole nutmeg

Next up: Either pasta dough or biscuits. It depends how long it takes my pasta machine to get here.

The VERY dedicated drinker can find the ones that open at nine. Silver Oak is the only power player I’ve found on that list, but all of the ones that sparkle (Mumm, Korbel, Domaine Chandon) open at nine, too.

They pretty much all close between four and six also. If you’re REALLY good, you may be able to get seven in a day, but by the end of the day, you’ll need someone to shave the tannins off your tongue…

But, day two, we were just beginning!

So we were on to Siduri. Being a girlie girl, I’m interested in the aesthetics, I always like going to a winery that will give me an experience—a show…

So I was skeptical as I was reading the guidebook on the way to Siduri and my Bear was leaving the beautiful mountainous landscape in order to drive into an office complex? Well, not even really an office complex… It was flat, ugly, warehouses, in a flat ugly parking lot. Why not just go to the liquor store.

I’m stubborn, and unreasonable, and it’s hard to get rid of my preconceived notions, but when dear Jonathan behind the counter started pulling out one, two, three… I think 20 bottles of Pinot and Zinfandel… I felt a smile playing around my lips.

Now we’re talking! And at ten in the morning to boot!

He takes us back into the barrel room. Really interesting place Adam and Dianna, the winemakers, don’t actually have a vineyard… decided not to deal with that kind of expense… instead they just make wine. Crazy, insanely, good wine. One after another. They are known for their reds, but I also really liked their very unusual Viognier. It wasn’t the overly floral type that I generally really like. There were a whole lot more spicy notes and almost off dry.

My absolute favorite, though, was the Siduri Parsons’ Vineyard Pinot Noir 2007. I beamed like a school girl when Jonathan said it was HIS favorite, too. Not only that, but Wine Spectator gave it an Outstanding rating! What is it about that? Why should it to matter to me if someone else likes it or not. If it gets an outstanding rating all the sudden I like it more?

It’s like when someone mentions that Robert Parker likes a wine. Here’s the funny thing. I know NOTHING about Robert Parker. Is he a sommelier? A winemaker? What’s his background. I have no idea. I just know that if I like something and then someone tells me Mr. Parker liked it, too all of the sudden I have to buy the bottle. I guess the wineries and the wine magazines AND Mr. Parker count on that to keep them employed, huh?

Whatever… I loved the Parsons’ Pinot Noir… thought it was amazing.

Speaking of grinning like a school girl. My BEAR cracks me up! I may swoon at the sight of, oh, I don’t know.. Jon Bon Jovi (Give me a break, I grew up in New Jersey in the 80’s), but when THEEEE Adam Siduri came through the room, ol’ Bear got a little tongue tied.

Regardless, I can’t think of any better way to start our trip!

Like I said earlier, there’s only four ingredients: bread flour, water, yeast, and salt. It’s called a lean dough, because there is no added fat (Take that, commercial bakers, with your trans-fats for added shelf life!). Bread flour really is necessary, because it has more gluten than all purpose flour. You’ll need that extra gluten to ensure enough structure and stability, or your bread will turn into an amoeba when you try to shape and form the dough. As for yeast, I prefer instant yeast, because you don’t have to proof it. It goes in with the water, flour, and salt.

And here’s everything. I wasn’t lying to you, just four ingredients. The amount of dough is the same as listed in the book. This makes a good sized ball of dough. For loaves and pizza dough, I would go smaller. And that’s the bonus of having a ratio. You just alter the amounts in proportion BY WEIGHT, NOT VOLUME. Again, having the scale makes everything easy. Add flour, hit tare, add water, hit tare, etc.

Looks lovely, like a cesspool. (Ok, bad simile.) Next, it’s time to mix. Michael says you can use a stand mixer, but he prefers to mix by hand. I’m naturally lazy, so stand mixer with a dough hook it is. And here’s the dough beginning to come together.

The next question is, how long should it go? With my mixer, with this volume of dough, and set somewhere between 2 and 4, it’s about 20 minutes to get enough gluten developed. Also, how do you know if the amount of water is right? For example, I’ve made this dough two other times, and both times, I needed to add flour. This time, no altering was necessary. The only difference I can figure is the weather. It was hot and dry when I made this. The last two times, it was humid. The best advice I can give for this is when you start mixing, wait at least 5 minutes before you start adding flour or water. This will ensure that the flour is fully hydrated and in balance. If your dough is sticking to the bottom of the workbowl, add flour by the tablespoon, and wait about 2 minutes before deciding if you need more. If the dough sounds like sandpaper against the side of the bowl and won’t stay together, it’s too dry, and you’ll need water. I haven’t encountered this problem, so the best advice I can give is to add water by the tablespoon until the desired result is reached. I will add that it’s a good idea to remove the dough from the hook once or twice during the kneading process. The dough hook likes to twist the dough like a rope, so removing it a couple of times will let the dough relax before you knead it some more.

Ok, so how do I know when to stop kneading? Windowpane. Take a small ball of dough, about the size of a golf ball. Stretch it into a thin membrane, and hold it to the light. If it breaks before you can get it paper thin, you don’t have enough gluten, and more kneading is needed. If it looks like the picture below, you can stop. You’ve now got enough gluten to make bread that will have a good crust and enough structure. The picture isn’t the greatest, because I’m trying to hold the membrane in one hand and take a picture with another.

Time to rise. As for shaping, you can roll it on the counter between your hands to get a tight membrane on the top of the ball. I’m terrible at this. I’ve found a simpler way. Gently place both hands on top of the ball of dough. Then quickly turn your hands under the dough, applying gentle pressure to the dough, like your making a cup with your hands, and give the dough a quarter turn. Do this until you see a tight skin form on the dough. Lube the inside of your work bowl (I prefer aerosol spray, because again, I’m lazy), place the dough ball in the work bowl, and lightly lube the dough to keep the skin from drying out. Cover with plastic wrap, and wait.

How long? Well, that depends. If your kitchen is like mine, it takes about an hour. If it’s cold, it will take longer. Remember, this thing is alive, it doesn’t play by the rules. It’s like a temperamental baby. It will rise on its own terms, when it’s damn well ready. The “rise until double in volume” is a good benchmark, but there’s another way to tell. Poke it. If the dough springs back right away, it isn’t ready. As you can see below, there’s a small indent left when I poked it. The first rise is done.

More kneading, this time by hand, but do this gently. All I’m trying to do is remove some of the bigger bubbles and re-distribute the yeast, and move them around so they have more food to eat. We arrive at the first crossroad: what kind of shape do we want? Thin and circular, for a pizza crust. Long and thin for a baguette. Circular and stippled for ciabatta. Many directions to go. For today, we’ll go with the classic boule, or ball. Again, simply shape into a ball, and we’re done. Now’s a good time to preheat the hotbox to 450.

Ok, that’s great, we have a ball of dough. What are we going to cook it in or on? You can cook it on a cookie sheet, a baking stone, or, as we’re doing this time, in a dutch oven. (Here’s that lazy part rearing its head again.) It’s one of the variations listed, and the easiest. Plus the dutch oven absorbs heat, and helps regulate the heat around the bread, producing uniform baking. The dutch oven offers the convenience of steaming the bread when the lid is on. This will ensure the dough gets enough oven spring and keeps the outside from setting too quickly. So the dough goes into the lubed dutch oven, lube the dough, and put on the lid. Rise again. No more touching.

After the second rise, it’s time to bake. Before the dough goes in the oven, it needs some slits in the top. This can be done with a really sharp knife, but I’ve found a clean pair of kitchen shears works just as well. You can make an “X”, cut a square, or carve your name in it. It just needs some places where the dough can expand while rising. Lube the dough one last time, sprinkle with some salt, clamp on the lid, and into the oven it goes for 30 minutes. Go play some more Rock Band.

Ahhhhh, it’s alive!!! No. By now, it’s quite dead. After 30 minutes, remove the lid, and let the bread finish baking. It is done when it is golden brown on the outside, and sounds hollow when you thump it. The best way to tell is to take its temperature. If it is 200 degrees in the center, congratulations, your bread is done. Remove from the oven.

And remove from the dutch oven.

The hardest part is waiting. It has to cool so the gluten can set. Cut into it now, and you’ll end up with a clumpy gluey mess. And listen. Hear that? Sounds like rice krispies when you pour milk on them. Sounds wonderful.

Finally, we can eat it!!! Looks beautiful, doesn’t it? There’s a slightly irregular crumb, but with enough small bubbles so there’s some bite and chewiness. Slice and serve.

So how easy was this? Well, for someone who never made bread, it’s awesome! The amount of labor required is minimal; it is mainly a factor of time. It is certainly not the most amazing bread I’ve ever had, but it is exponentially better than anything you can get at your local grocery store. Again, we’re not after the best bread we’ve ever had, we just want good. And good it is. It doesn’t need anything, but some butter and homemade jelly certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Ingredients:

King Arthur bread flour
City of Austin tap water
Red Star instant yeast
Morton’s kosher salt

Next up: Pie Dough, Mmmmmm, pie. Drool.

There are two pages that list all the basic ratios in the book. There are 33 of them. Some of them are extremely easy (vinaigrette, chocolate sauce), and some are a bit more work (consommé, mousseline, sausage). I didn’t count all the variations listed, because I ran out of time this morning and lost count when the dog brought me a rope to play with. Sorry, dog takes precedence. I remember looking at the lean dough (one ratio) and seem to recall 15-20 variations listed in the book. There’s not that many variations listed for each ratio, but you can see how many there might be. Also, the variations listed aren’t the only ones that can be done. You’re only limited by your imagination.

So here’s the plan. First, get all of the basic ratios done. We all have to start somewhere, and you can’t do dried cherry, chocolate, and walnut bread until you figure out how to make the lean dough first. Once all the basics are done, I’ll go back and do some of the variations listed in the book. Along with the variations, occasionally I’ll throw in a variation that isn’t in the book, but looks interesting to try. Some might be strange, but that’s the point. You have to experiment a bit and be willing to fail.

Before anyone asks, NO, I WILL NOT SAY WHAT THE RATIOS ARE!!!! Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent, not at this juncture. Michael Ruhlman spent a lot of time, effort, and sweat equity getting this book published. If he wants to publish the recipes from Ratio in his own blog, that’s fine. It’s his property; he can do with as he wishes. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to give this stuff away for free. It’s not fair to him or his publisher. Also, he’s told me to let him know if I have any problems. I’m not going to piss him off by publishing all the ratios. Plus, there is that whole copyright issue. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not going to be flooded with nasty letters from lawyers with many partners listed in their company name. Nope. Don’t ask.

As usual with other cookbook blogs, I’m going to stick to the ingredients listed in the ratio and/or recipe. That should be pretty easy for this book, because the vast majority of the ingredients listed are kitchen staples such as eggs, flour, butter, salt, cream, etc. I didn’t see any agar agar, gelatin sheets, or funky chemicals listed anywhere. I will follow the ratio listed, but may alter slightly to get the desired end product. For example, I have made the lean dough twice already. Based on my experience, I need a little more flour to keep the dough from being too sticky. I know there are some of you out there wagging your finger at me “Aha!! You’re not following the ratio!!!” Calm down. This is the POINT of having a ratio. IT’S ONLY A STARTING POINT!!! They are meant to be altered and changed as needed, depending on your weather, ingredients, technique, etc. Does that mean you will need as much additional flour for the lean dough? Maybe, but it depends on too many variables to list here. Again, we’ve just got a basic ratio to start with. Alter it as you need. Sometime down the line, I plan to put up a forum where those following along can post their own variations they’ve come up with. My hope is that with the basic ratios, I will have hundreds of variations for everyone to try out.

As painful as it might be, I’m going to publish my failures. I think they are important, as long as I learn from it. Being able to go back and figure out what went wrong is extremely important. If I find out what went wrong, I’ll publish a redux to show everyone how it should be done when the mistakes are corrected. Also, if you are going to be trying these ratios as well, don’t be upset if something doesn’t work. It WILL happen. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It could be that the basic ratio as written doesn’t work for you. Now, it’s your job to stop crying, figure out what happened, put your big girl panties (or big boy boxers) on, and fix it. There’s no crying in cooking. (They made a movie about that, I’m positive. Or was that baseball?)

There will be some equipment you will need, if you don’t already have it. First, you’ll need the book. Duh. There’s a handy link on my page to order it. It’s under $20 now on Amazon.com. There’s no excuse why you shouldn’t have it. After making a couple loaves of bread, the book will start to pay for itself. Really. I promise. The next most important piece of equipment is a digital scale. Even though volumetric conversions are given for the ratios, the ratios themselves are based on weight, not volume. There are a couple of exceptions, but let’s just assume for now that all the ratios are based on weight. It’s also very handy to be able to set your mixing bowl on your scale, add an ingredient, hit that nifty tare button, and add the next ingredient. I searched Amazon this morning, and I got 583 hits for “digital kitchen scale.” There’s one that will fit your budget, and most of them are $20-$50. Get one. Now. If you order it with the book, you will probably get free shipping. Everyone likes free. Once you’ve used it a couple of times, you will be kicking yourself for not getting one sooner.

Other things that will be handy are an electric stand mixer for making bread dough, a pasta machine for the pasta section, and a meat grinder for the sausage section. They aren’t necessary, but if you don’t have these things, don’t sweat it. You’ll be able to get by, it’s just going to be a bit more work.

Now that the basics are out of the way. It’s time to bake the bread. First up will be the lean dough. Stay tuned.

Most recipes today are terrible. They tend to be extremely vague and offer poor direction, and sadly, they don’t often turn out. Honestly, why should they? There’s too many variables presented with the modern kitchen. Gas or electric stove, aluminum or stainless steel pans, how you mix, stir, fold, or whip, what the weather is like, what kind of flour you use, etc. It’s a wonder any recipe ever turns out acceptable results. This is especially bad for baking books. If you have a baking cookbook that has a 90% success rate, say Amen! I hear crickets. Most people publishing a recipe book have kitchen testers to try out the recipes in the book and make sure they work! Then you try to make it at home using a stove that has a gas burner that doesn’t work properly, with the phone ringing, baby crying, and a young person tugging at your clothes, and the recipe fails. Catastrophically. Then you have to call for pizza or take-out. Now everyone is disappointed, and you’re left wondering if you should ever try to cook anything ever again. You’ve just defeated the purpose of cooking by using a recipe that didn’t work.

That’s all about to change. (Well, except for the crying baby part. I’m terrible at making babies stop crying.)

Ratios. They’re everywhere. From finance to engineering to even cooking. You probably use them, but don’t realize it. Ratios are what separate the chef from the home cook. They allow the chef to make a stock, and keep the home cook chained to a recipe that might or might not work. They are used so often in cooking, it would shock you to know how often they come into play. The problem is, the home cook can’t recognize it because they’ve been blindly following a recipe and don’t know how to change it when things go bad. Worse yet, some of you will change a recipe before you’ve ever made it the first time, and end up with bread that fills your oven, because you decided that the bread recipe looks too salty, so you left out the salt. Now you’re scratching your head, trying to find out what went wrong, peeling dough off your oven, and decide to try it again. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

So how do we get back on track to cooking good food and avoiding failure? We use a ratio that been in use since Escoffier wrote his book. Once we have the basic ratio and technique down, then we can start adding here and taking out there to achieve truly great things.

After reading some reviews of Ratio, there are book reviewers out there that say this book isn’t for the amateur cook. What a load of crap. I will offer that every beginning cook SHOULD have this book! Think about it. One of the first things they teach students at the CIA (not the spook school in Langley, Virginia, the Culinary Institute of America) is that stock is x pounds of meaty bones, y pounds of water, and z pounds of mirepoix. If they are teaching culinary students ratios, why shouldn’t the beginning cook start with them? They should, because if you learn how to do it right the first time, you don’t develop bad habits. Old habits are hard to break. (I think someone make a song about that.)

Next time, I’ll delve into how we’re going to approach this book, lay out the rules and guidelines, and discuss what you’ll need to follow along.

I know, I haven’t done a weekly update in a while. Deal with it. I’ve been busy, between work, Wine Tour, Easter, and anything else you can think of that I’d rather be doing. However, there are a lot of wines in the queue, so there might be multiple wines of the week. Consider it a bonus, a makeup assignment, or an act of contrition.

Texas. It’s a big state. We can do a lot of things here. Between the differing soils, rainfall, temperature, and topography, someone was bound to find out how to grow grapes in this state. Notice I left out the word “well.” Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good wines made in this state. There are also some really bad wines.  Unfortunately, no one knows about the good stuff, because they get drunk here, and aren’t exported. The reason is no one wants to grow grapes, because there are very few banks that are willing to take a chance on it. So that leaves you with people who made their money doing something else besides growing grapes. Therefore, you tend to have very small vineyards planted to every grape variety under the sun to see what will grow here. Fortunately, I think Texas is getting out of the experimental phase of growing grapes, and into the stage of “we now know what will grow here, so that’s what we are going to plant.” It should come as no surprise then that the varieties that tend to do best come from the warmer regions of Spain, France, and Italy. Someone who’s figured it out is Dr. Richard Becker and his wife, Bunny.

Becker Vineyards is located in Stonewall, Texas, about 11 miles east of Fredericksburg, Texas, and about 70 miles west of Austin, Texas. Their vineyard is planted to several varietals, but, in my opinion, their best wines are the Rhone varietals. Specifically, the Viognier and Prairie Rotie (made in the Cote Rotie style) have been my personal favorites. (I have a bottle of the Prairie Rotie waiting to be opened, review coming soon.) Today, we have the Viognier to sample.

The 2008 Becker Vineyards Viognier is one of those wines that if no one told you where it was from, you’d swear that it is grown in California. Thankfully, Viognier has found a happy home in Texas. Notoriously difficult to grow, even in the best of areas, it manages to tolerate the heat, humidity, bugs, hailstorms, and God knows what else Mother Nature can throw at it. This Viognier has a beautiful straw color, partly because this grape is allowed to get fully ripe in the heat of the summer. The alcohol hovers around 14%, which is partly due to that ripeness. The tradeoff is that you get that wonderful floral aroma that makes Viognier such a pleasure to drink. Upon tasting, the tropical and citrus flavors show forth, with the honeysuckle and other floral flavors now in the background. The finish is clean and crisp, though not as crisp because of the lower acidity. A true pleasure to drink.

As for a rating, I would give it a solid 4 stars. It’s better than it has to be, and you will have a tough time finding a Viognier that is better at this price point. As for what to serve it with, I would go with cream soups, grilled chicken, or mild Asian food.

For those in Texas, this wine seems to be everywhere, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding it around $13-$15/bottle. For out-of-staters, your best bet is to order it direct from the winery. According to their website, Becker will ship to CA, CO, FL, IL, MO, OH, TX, VA and WV.