I realize this article has a hysterical edge to it, but still:
"Food Fraud: Labels on What We Eat Often Mislead" at National Geographic
Rat meat and mountain zebra? I guess that's fine if you want it; if you think you're getting goat or beef, it's not.
Via our local Special Agent For Gluten-Intolerance Intolerance, code-named "Hor-Hay":
"Rise, a biscuit and doughnut restaurant, on the horizon in Durham"
[Edit] ... aaaand the first commenter at the article is complaining that because of her gluten intolerance, she can't eat there, and it's not local food because folks don't grow a lot of wheat here, so please open someplace that doesn't use flour instead. I wrote the first sentence above before I saw her comment, but now I'm glad I wrote it.
In other words: please, get off it. No one makes salt around here, or grows black pepper (or a lot of other spices). The ocean is over two hours away by car. There damn sure isn't any commercial coffee, tea, citrus, a lot of other fruit, or really a large number of other foods grown locally. Had a banana lately? How about an almond or some vanilla? An out-of-season tomato, perhaps? We're actually lucky we live in a pretty agriculturally diverse state. But we don't make everything. Nor can we grow everything year-round. Nor can everyone afford to eat local products even for the stuff that is local (or even afford, say, organic, non-GMO, or non-irradiated spices). Take a waltz through Whole Foods, or better yet, Lowe's Foods, and throw out everything made or grown more than, say 100 miles away. Is there much left?
Tell me, do you buy jeans made of local cotton? I know of one US company making jeans from US cotton, and their jeans cost around 90 bucks a pop, and they're mail order — oops, not even being sold locally. Are you going to bitch because someone else opens a clothing store with more foreign polyester? Of course not. This state used to have a huge textile base that is pretty much shot to hell now. Don't you feel guilty? Somehow, I doubt it.
I'm sorry you're gluten-intolerant, just like I'm sorry a lot of other folks are dairy-intolerant, allergic to peanuts, seafood, or cigarette smoke, made sick to their stomach by the very idea of eating beef, or can't or won't drink alcohol for fear of losing their minds. I know how hard it is to avoid allergens: I used to cook occasionally for a friend who was actually allergic to casein, not just lactose-intolerant — try avoiding any dairy in anything. Kashrut symbols help, but it's still a pain in the ass. I've also baked for folks who are gluten-intolerant. Making everything without flour is arguably as bad.
I'd love to see more restaurants catering to individual needs. For example, Durham needs, and might could support, an actual vegetarian restaurant. And a lot of restaurateurs bust their asses to both serve local food and cater to individual needs (to name just one, Charlie Deal at Dos Perros springs to mind). But being a dog in a manger isn't ok just because the manger has wheat, salami, shrimp, peanuts, bananas, or black pepper in it. And while bitching because yet another restaurant is opening where they use flour you can't eat is probably just dumb and useless, tarring them all with a "not local enough" brush is simply elitist and self-serving. Even worse, your "OMG we're all going to die of celiac disease" whining does a dis-service to those with a serious auto-immune condition. Gliadin isn't poison, any more than casein or fava beans are. And, no, you're not raising consciousness about celiac disease. You just look like an idiot. The diseases are serious; it's at best hard to take you that way.
I think I know what you're really mad about: a restaurant opening that wouldn't even exist in your world. I can't wish away celiac disease any more than I can wish away racism, televisions in bars, or my own medical problems. I wish you didn't have celiac disease. I wish no one ever got sick from eating. I wish everyone could afford to eat out, and know how to cook well at home. But I would also like to go to Tom's new place if it opens. I'd like to eat a biscuit or doughnut there, and I'd like it to be good. Don't begrudge me or anyone else that, please. Gluten isn't poison to me, as far as I know, nor is it poison to (by your numbers) well over 99% of the population. Again, I'm sorry you can't eat wheat and its ilk. But I like it. I wish we all could eat it healthfully and well. You can't, and neither you, Tom Ferguson, nor I can fix it. We would if we could.
From the N&O:
Also, some background at Celiac.com.
Hi,
I have been looking all over for a quality durum wheat flour receipt. I have an intolerance to the common bread wheat flour and also spelt wheat flour, so I have to rely on the likes rye, barley, corn, durum and so on. I have been able to make a bread using all of the above except for durum. All of the breads come out with a of crumbly, brick like, flat and moist characteristics combinations although good in taste. What I would like to do now is to try using durum flour to create bread and the likes of hamburger or hot dog buns.
Luka,
Thanks for writing. I don't have a particular recipe/receipt. I
usually just substitute some or all of the bread or regular flour in a
recipe with durum flour. It's not exactly the same, but it's close.
One thing I've noticed is that at first, the durum flour gives the
impression that it's going to absorb more water. I think it does, but
after the dough sits a few minutes, it seems to loosen up a little
bit. So you may need more water or other fluid, but maybe not so much
as you might think.
If you don't like the texture you get with 100% durum flour, I'd
suggest substituting some of a flour you can use for some of the durum
flour. Maybe that will get you more of the texture you want.
Do you mean that you can eat durum flour ok, but not other wheat
flours? If that's the case, I'm really surprised, because durum flour
is pretty close to wheat flour. I would assume durum wheat is closer
to regular wheat than spelt, but I guess it depends on exactly what
you're allergic to. I guess it could also depend on what type of
durum flour you're using. Do you know what kind or brand it is?
Where do you get it? I'm just curious. I get mine from a local
bakery, and I've seen the bags, so I know it's durum flour. But I
can't remember right now what the brand is.
Thanks for writing. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but I wish you
good luck.
Take care,
Joe
So, anyone else have any better help for Luka? I guess I could have pointed him at a couple cookbooks, but I assume he's in Croatia and might not have access to books I have.
What I've read is that the gluten in durum flour doesn't provide so much rise as with regular bread flour. Gluten is actually a bunch of proteins (gliaden & glutenin at a minimum, I think), and the protein mix in durum flour is good, but less than ideal.
Never heard of this before: "No-time bread." Any takers yet?
[Apologies to Steven Wright for the title.]
I've been privately kvetching for a few years now about not having any Pullman pans. Pullman pans, with their square sides and lid, allow one to make a loaf with square slices for sandwiches (not that you can't make a sandwich out of a non-square piece of bread, but you know what I mean). My kvetching level increased when I started doing JLMBBC bread, because I thought maybe a Pullman pan would seal well enough to let me use the JLMBBC technique with one. Alas, I never found one nearby within my price range.
So yesterday I'm perusing my copy of The Bread Bible, looking at recipes for small rolls and the like. Ms. Beranbaum has an entire section devoted to soft sandwich style breads, and includes rolls in that section. I've certainly been spending plenty of time over the past few years making loaves of bread; the thing that's missing are the smaller items: rolls, buns, crackers, flatbreads.... Hence my making crackers and small rolls lately. Anyway, I'm looking at the pain de mie recipe, which started my Pullman kvetching again. But this time I thought, "Hey, there's no reason I can't make a Pullman-style loaf: it just won't be square." Also, Ms. Beranbaum's pain de mie recipe goes very quickly. So....
I mixed and kneaded the recipe. The volume for the Pullman pan she recommended was way more than the volume of one of my "footboule" pans, so when I got ready for my final shaping, I weighed out an amount proportional to my smaller-volume pan. I took the rest and shaped little balls for rolls, which I cooked first in a muffin tin.
The bread came out fine. White sandwich bread has very little structure compared to other bread, so having a pan that's essentially a mold helps get you the loaf shape you want. Also, having all sides pretty well cooked gives you a little more structure to hang the airy bread off of. As you can see, the footboule pan worked fine. I oiled the pan and the inside of the lid, just as one would do with a Pullman pan. The directions called for the baking to be done half with the lid on, and half off. The loaf did want to hold on to the lid a bit, but it came off with only a little coaxing.
One interesting thing: If you look closely at the pictures (all the pictures link to bigger versions, so go click), you might notice that the top of the loaf is slightly concave. It's certainly not domed like the lid itself is. I think that air was trapped in the top of the lid and had nowhere to go, and may have actually decreased my loaf volume a bit. I guess I need have no worries about how tightly my pan closes. :)
This bread, as intended, is much less dense than, say, the JLMBBC footboules I've been making. One of those usually weighs just under 1½ pounds. This loaf weighed about 18 ounces, or almost 6 ounces less. But it had maybe 50% more volume. And as you can see from the picture on the right, the crumb is much more fine and even -- maybe not so much as a loaf of store-bought sandwich bread, but certainly nothing to be ashamed of. The thin-well done crust all around helps hold together the slices, whose crumb has not much more cohesiveness than a slice of cake.
The taste: pretty good, and about what I wanted. Milk, butter, and a little honey give the bread that barely sweet, tender taste I wanted out of white sandwich bread. There's also a pleasant, acidic note; I have no idea how it got there. The bread toasts well, browning a little more quickly with the added honey. The honey also helps the loaf stay soft.
And the rolls? I wound up handling their dough a lot more than that for the loaf, so they were a bit firmer and more resilient, but not at all objectionable. I ate most of them last night -- some hot out of the oven, and a few more with dinner last night. But fortunately, I did have a few left for the pictures this morning. :)
By the way, there are Wikipedia pages for both "pain de mie" and "Pullman loaf," but they're both sub-par for Wikipedia articles. They do have smidgens of information I don't include above, so I've linked to them.
So there you go -- a non-JLMBBC bread post. Woo-hoo! :)
(For related posts, please see the JLMBBC section.)
I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've been doing in the copious free time I've had since being laid off from the abattoir and wrecking my truck. Answer: I've been baking bread. A lot of bread. Maybe a half-dozen loaves in the past week. And it's good bread: boule-like objects that come out crusty-hot, with an audibly shattering crust that flies off when cut with a knife. Do I have some fancy, steam-injected oven to get that crust? Or perhaps I'm throwing ice cubes in a pre-heated cast iron skillet in the bottom of the oven?
Nope. I'm just dumping the dough in a big pot. And I'm not kneading either. In fact, I'm not going to much work per loaf at all. And I'm not the only one making this good, low-work bread. Boatloads of people across the country are cooking this bread, and busily tweaking the recipe to get the bread they want out of simple ingredients and equipment they probably already have.
Can you do this? Well, yes. Is it hard? No. Do I have the stuff I need? Probably. Do you have flour, water, yeast, salt, a big bowl, and (this is key) a big pot with a lid that will go in the oven? If you don't already have that big pot, I bet you can get one cheaply. I saw something appropriate a few days ago in a discount grocery store for about $18, or you can use that monstrously expensive heavy Le Creuset dutch oven too. Just make sure the handle won't melt in the oven.
For those who want to get to the source, here's Bittman's original article at the NYT, the recipe he adapted from Jim Lahey's recipe, and a follow-up article with additional tips and tweaks. Go read.
Don't want to go read? Ok, but before you start, be aware that the rise time for this bread is between 12 and 18 hours, so you're looking at an overnight project. Don't be discouraged. Just start cooking.
Ready?
There. Wasn't that fun? If you want tweaking guidelines, I'd suggest reading Bittman's second article above, entitled "No Kneading, but Some Fine-Tuning." If I were a true professional, I'd give you my own guidelines for tweaking and the like. But I'm gonna go eat some bread instead. ;)