The Soaked Bean

Seeking Nourishment, Finding Traditions

Collaboration Celebration #3: Kate & Leo’s Flat-bread

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My friend Kate helped introduce me to the world of old-world food.  The daughter of two gourmands (in the food-loving sense, not in the gluttonous one), she met the quality foods in life–raw cheeses, first-press olive oil, paper-thin slices of cured meat–early and has been playing in the kitchen with them, since.

She’s spent the past years focusing on baking, specifically sourdough bread baked from locally grown, freshly milled grains.  I was “blessed” enough to try a loaf or two when she was the driving force behind a kind of single origin bakery in Lompoc, California.  Now Kate’s created her own venture–Leo’s Breads–in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

And while I’m lucky enough to live in a place where there is no lack of out-of-sight bread,  having lived in a couple bad-bread-zones these last years, I understand all too well the need to have a good-bread recipe in your back pocket. 

This flat-bread recipe is it: it’s a bread that mimics the complexity of a sourdough bread without the fuss of a sourdough starter, one that uses up left-over grains and takes just a few minutes to cook in a cast-iron pan right on the stove.

Admittedly, I found the dough a bit difficult to work with (I think I added a bit more yeast than the recipe called for and things got kind of sticky), but the results were way, way better (in taste and texture) than my previous attempts at sourdough flat-bread, for example.

Thank ye Kate (& Leo) for making me feel like a baker!

katebread

Alright, so here is a recipe for what I think is a delicious and very versatile dough.  I had been experimenting, trying to come up with a bread dough that would incorporate a hefty amount of cooked Louisiana corn grits (I love corn).  After throwing some leftover dough in the fridge I found that it was just as good (better?) cooked on a hot skillet as a flat-bread the next day.

I think that this dough is great for the home.. It is yeasted, but the small amount of yeast, two lengthy rises and ample amounts of water create a bread with lots of flavor and without the time and labor that sourdough starter maintenance sometimes entails (I do love and make mostly naturally leavened breads).  This dough is also very versatile.. The flour can be a blend of your choice (I used a blend of almost whole grain, sifted wheat and a lighter bread flour) and the cooked corn grits could be substituted for another grain or seed (oats, barley…). Just make sure to fully cook (in unsalted water) and cool your grains before adding to the dough.

Two days before you wish to eat your bread-

make your Biga:

In a container, measure 250 grams warm water (110 degrees F) and sprinkle on 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast. Cover container and let yeast rehydrate for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, briefly mix up the water to make sure yeast have dissolved and add 250 grams flour. Mix the flour and water together well, until blended, somewhere between a batter and a dough. Cover. It’s best to let this mixture sit out on counter for 45-60 minutes before putting in fridge overnight (giving the yeast a head start).

cook your Grits (or other grains)

If making grits, I have found that a ratio of 4 cups water to 1 cup grits works well.

Bring water to boil, add grits and whisk vigorously. Lower to medium heat. Will have to attend and whisk periodically- sometimes they want to stick to bottom of the pot. Done in 25-40 minutes, when water has been absorbed and grits are no longer crunchy.  Let cool in fridge overnight.

One day before you wish to eat your bread-

Take your Biga out of fridge to let warm a little while starting to measure and mix.

Make your final dough:

Add 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast to 150 grams warm water (110 degrees F) water. Let hydrate for 10 minutes.

To this add 620 grams luke warm water and your 500 grams of Biga. Squeeze the Biga into water to help break up and mix together.  When blended, add in 1 kg flour. Mix in flour until a dough has formed. Let rest half hour.

After half hour, sprinkle 27 grams of salt on top of dough and squeeze/fold in. After salt is blended add 240 grams of your cooked and cooled grains (grits? Oats?). Squeeze/fold in until well blended.

Let this dough rest on a warm counter, covered, for about 3 hours, folding or giving a light+ quick knead every hour. Dough should become fairly active after three hours, bubbling and developing strength and character over this few hour fermentation. After 3 hours place in fridge overnight.

Bake day-

Break off a few pieces of dough from container in fridge. Let pieces warm on floured cutting board while heating a cast iron skillet on stove. Get skillet quite hot, and no need to grease it.  Once skillet is ready, gently stretch each flatbread (thick or thin is up to you) and place onto ungreased skillet. Will bubble as it cooks. Once skillet side is golden brown, flip to cook other side.  These will cook quite quickly, depending on size and thickness, anywhere from 2-5 minutes.  I wonder if this would be a good pizza dough, I bet it would be… Instead top and bake in a hot oven? I wonder…(Lauren’s Note: We drizzled the bread with olive-oil, sprinkled with z’aatar and added olives and sun-dried tomatoes.  Not quite a pizza, but close and delicious!)

Text and recipe by Kate P. Heller of Leo’s Breads.  Contact her here for more information.

Poppy-Seed Pancakes + Applesauce for Grandma Stella

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sliced pancake

My grandma Stella was a great home-cook.  In fact, she was a professional one, working as a caterer for dinner parties at a time when the dinner party, for some folks, was a catered affair.

She learned all she knew from her mother Rose, who had immigrated to New York from the Ukraine and who made everything–including moonshine(!)–the traditional way; from scratch.

Stella was a woman of the 50s, and after a childhood spent soaking beans, canning tomatoes and fermenting fruit into alcohol with her mama, it’s not surprising that she sometimes got on board with the convenience foods of her era.  Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, lime Jell-O, canned kidney-beans and the odd cube of bouillon all come to mind when I think of her kitchen.

For the most part, though, my grandma, like her mother, cooked from scratch, simmering bones for broth, stewing tomatoes for sauce, stuffing cabbages and onions with meat and rice, mostly without recipes or measurements.  From scratch meant, for her, to cook by feeling, intuition, taste and smell.

crackeggsmixmixed

This is how we should all be able to cook, free from the restrictions of a recipe, guided by our senses and able to just enjoy the rhythms of the task at hand.  Cooking was, I believe, a meditative process for my grandma–so completely focused she was when onion-chopping, potato-roasting, cabbage-braising.  S0 completely connected to her mother, her mother’s mother, her roots on the other-side of the world in the Ukraine.

So simply was she able to make meals that were nourishing, in so many senses of the word.

Cooking like this, it takes practice.  My grandma started when she was young because she had to–her mother needed her help.  These days, families spend less time in the kitchen and when a meal is prepared at home, the lil’ ones are often left out of the fun.

Bringing kids back into the kitchen means more-fun for everyone.  They’ll grow up knowing how to make themselves a nourishing meal from scratch and will eventually pass that knowledge on to their children–keeping us all linked together in this onion-chopping, potato-roasting nourishing-ourselves-and-each-other chain.

poppyseed

My grandma’s intuitive approach to cooking led her to believe that she was a terrible baker.  Maybe she was, but, to be honest, I can’t remember her attempting to bake, ever, not even once, just for the hell of it.  I think there were just too many other more-enticing ways to get a hold of something sweet or doughy in her developed neighborhood.

We’d visit her there in her robin’s-egg-blue house every summer and while week-day breakfasts were simple–cereal or scrambled eggs–, on week-ends us grand-kids would walk to the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts (yep, we were truly children of the 90s) for a half-a-dozen box and a tray of iced-coffees for the grown-ups.

My grandma loved sweets and especially jelly doughnuts.  Sometimes we’d split one (not to not have a whole doughnut, but to have a second half of a lemon custard [her], or a chocolate glazed with rainbow sprinkles[me]) and those moments–cutting into a shimmering doughnut on a summer morning–are some of my sweetest memories.

jamsselectingpancake

This is why instead of recreating one of my grandma’s recipes, I’m cooking something for her–the breakfast I would make her if she were still here.

I chose pancakes because they fall somewhere in-between cooking and baking (they are cakes, after all) while still being something you can truly cook from scratch.

I learned the golden ratio for pancake-making years ago and haven’t looked back since.  I mean, who wants to follow a recipe on the kind of morning that calls for pancakes, anyway?

jamz

The Golden Ratio for Pancakes:
x=1
Mix x cup flour with x tbsp baking powder and a dash of salt.
Mix x egg with x cup liquid (raw milk, nut milk, water if you’re in a pinch) and 2x tbsp something sweet (maple syrup, honey)
Mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients.  If you’re adding something else (chocolate chips, blueberries, poppy seeds) mix that. 
Let rest (so the baking powder can work its wonders) for at least 30 minutes.

Voila!  You’ve just been pancaked.

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Poppy-Seed Pancakes + Applesauce

Ingredients

  • 1 cup whole-grain flour (we used a light spelt)
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • dash of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk (we used raw almond-milk)
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1 tbsp poppy seeds
  • knob ghee

Directions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, then add the milk and honey and mix.
  2. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry bowl, mixing thoroughly. Add the poppy seeds and give a good stir. Let sit for at least 30 minutes.
  3. Heat oven on low.
  4. Heat a cast-iron skillet on medium, greasing with a good knob of ghee. Wait until the skillet is good and hot, then pour batter into center of skillet. Let cook for a few minutes--tiny holes will start to appear in your batter around the edges. Flip and let cook for a few more minutes. Place on oven-proof plate while cooking the rest of the pancakes.

Serve savory with an egg, pickles and sour-cream or sweet with berry jam or applesauce.

cinnamon

Quick Applesauce

Ingredients
2 soft, sweet apples (we used golden russets), diced
tbsp freshly grated cinnamon
1/4 cup water

Directions
Dice apples and place in heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Add 1/4 cup water and cinnamon.  Heat on medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Once apples have started to soften, turn heat down and cover simmering for 8-or-so minutes or until soft.