Baguette 2: The Razor Blade is Key!

Yes indeed, the razor blade for slashing is KEY! Here's what I got today.

Left to right - rounded ends, pointy end, and pain d'epi (supposed to resemble a wheat stalk). And this.

I was pretty pleased with how these turned out. Far superior to previous attempts. Here are the improvements for this batch.

• Threw a handful of ice cubes in a small metal pan at the beginning just before closing the oven
• Heavy spritzing of the loaves before putting them in the oven
• Preheated the oven with my metal tray, then slipped the loaves on parchement paper onto the preheated tray
• I think this was the real key, sharp, deep cuts with a razor blade instead of a serrated knife

I think with the knife the cut opens up immediately and bakes evenly. With the razor blade the cut slowly opens as the bread expands while baking, resulting in a color gradient in the cut, looks much more appetizing! 

The pain d'epi was kind of fun, you can see how to make it here, at about 3:08 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxdr-nIaKS4 .

Baguette Detour

So I used the blog to record some bread baking experiments back in 2010, and I'm going to do the same now. I've made a lot of bread since then, and I like to think I've made some improvement over that time. But I've never really done baguette before. So I'm going to keep a record and see how it improves over time.

Recipe - http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-baguettes-and-stuffed-baguettes-recipe

First attempt

These were good but too dense. And the crust not so blistery as I would have liked.

Second attempt

These were worse.

To do:

- perhaps try a different recipe
- use razor blade for scoring
- get crumb shots

2016 Season

Well, I was pretty neglectful of this blog in 2016. However, I did do some gardening. Mostly at the Friends community garden. First I planted peas, which did not even come up. Not sure what went wrong there. I haven't had much success with peas the past few years.

One successful experiment this year was greens. I grew kale, collards, turnip greens, and chard.

I grew 15 tomato plants, including Cherokee Purple and San Marzano. Harvest was 110 lbs over the season. To my great shame I did not start from seed, I bought plants at a local nursery. Next year!

Eggplant was a huge disappointment, I guess I got a not-so-great variety. Never really seemed to ripen fully and tasted miserable.

Zucchini was great as usual. I discovered a great new use for it as well, shredded in my microwaved scrambled eggs in the morning at work. Wow, it's great. Shredded and froze a lot of it for use over the winter. Garlic also did nicely, though the bulbs were not huge.

No cukes at all. Next year! And almost no peppers. Here's my full output this year in one photo, sadly.

The final analysis? I'll do better next year! Also really need to use some kind of landscape fabric at the garden so I don't have to weed so much. For next year: zucchini, garlic, peas, cukes, tomatoes, beans, basil, peppers.

Eating Flowers

One of the first things the garden provides that I can eat - zucchini flowers. Dipped in egg and flour and fried. Love em!

First taste of spring

The harvest of black raspberries this year was pretty solid - ended up with 1.75 lbs. You have to get to them quickly, they're around for a week or two then gone, sadly. Not sure if these are destined for pie or jam.

Yum, sweet and seedy black raspberries

Picked my first zucchini today. Lots more on the way. Kale is getting past it's prime, but still not eating it. Cucumbers are doing a fine job so far. Hope the ground hog stays away.

Cukes

Magnificent Kale

The kale is fast becoming the star of the new garden. It's grown fast and without complaint. I feared I'd killed some of the seedlings when I tried to dig them up and transplant while thinning the row. Nope. They survived, despite neglect (was out of town for a couple days and didn't water).

Kale doing great.

The tomatoes are giving me dirty looks every time I go down into the basement to water them. "Why aren't you transplanting us? Surely all danger of frost is well past!" Yeah, well, they're right. I'll try to harden them off this week then put them out next weekend. So quit nagging me tomatoes! The variety is exceedingly unimpressive this year - Cherokee Purple, a few cherries, and one measly San Marzano. I have a number of volunteers that sprang up around the zucchini, I may just roll the dice and see what I get.

Please be San Marzanos!

Soon I'll be in zucchini city. Here's number one!

First meal of zucchini!

Sure, he's only an inch long at the moment, but I figure by the end of the week he'll be the size of a baseball bat.

Also planted a row of cucumbers. All pickling. We have quite the infestation of anti-cuke bugs at the community garden, so we'll see if I get anything. I'll set up a trellis for them in the next day or two, before they get going.

Progress Report

I started plants in the basement a bit late, but I do have seedlings at this point. The bad news, I have all of ONE San Marzano. Tons of cherry tomatoes and Cherokee Purple. Not too many peppers and eggplants, but a few.

At the community garden I have garlic from last fall, which somehow survived the swampy conditions of the winter and early spring. I put in zucchini a bit before the last frost date and they're going strong. The surprise superstar of the garden is kale. Planted quite a bit, thinned and transplanted some, thought they would keel over, but they seem to have survived.

Kale post thinning.

Last Year's Tomato Harvest, This Year's Plans

So I kept a fairly careful accounting of all the tomatoes I hauled in last year, but then neglected to post it. Here's what I got:

• 7.00 lbs 4th of July
• 8.93 lbs 4th
• 12.96 lbs 4th
• 
  
• 5.65 lbs Amish Paste?
• 12.91 lbs AP
• 17.72 lbs AP
• 
  
• 11.66 lbs Cherokee Purple
• 
  
• 5.41 lbs Brandywine
• 8.28 lbs Brandywine
• 13.14 lbs Brandywine
• 14.66 lbs Brandywine
• 
  
• 0.83 lbs Indigo Rose
• 
  
• 2.45 lbs Plum Regal
• 4.46 lbs   Plum Regal
• 18.51 lbs Plum Regal
• 
  
• 8.25 lbs Roma
• 
  
• 5.03 lbs Rutgers
• 9.15 lbs   Rutgers
• 12.63 lbs Rutgers
• 
  
• 3.41 lbs   San Marzano
• 9.03 lbs   SM
• 12.54 lbs SM
• 
  
• 12.26 lbs Speckled Roman

The total was about 250 lbs, though toward the end of the season I got sloppy with my recording, so this is only about 217 of it. Not a bad haul. I was very sick of canning spaghetti sauce by the end of it. In fact, I still have quite a bit left to go through.

In addition to the spaghetti sauce, which I used a lot of, I canned up some tomato juice, which I really enjoyed. Also dehydrated a mess of them, aiming at sun-dried tomatoes, and used hardly any of those. They didn't come out too great. 

I also taste tested sauce made from Roma, Amish Paste, and San Marzano. Maybe my taste buds are inept, but there was no clear favorite. I was a bit surprised, given the reputation of San Marzanos that they weren't a clear favorite. Some folks say that the soil where they're grown in Italy makes it hard to replicate their flavor elsewhere. *shrug* I like all of them. Given that, I decided this year to go monoculture (heh) and just do San Marzanos. Them main reason being that they seemed slightly more prolific than the Romas and unlike the huge Amish Paste beasts don't need to be cut up to fit in the KitchenAid sauce making attachment. 

I liked the Brandywines, but all too often I feel like they went from green to red to rotten very fast. And they were huge, so they bent my cages to the ground too. When I finally get around to making some solid cages out of concrete reinforcing wire I'll try them again. Maybe Mortgage Lifter as well. 

For this years planting, I think I'll cut back from 4 rows of tomatoes to 3, leaving some room for cucumbers (oh yeah, pickling time!). That leaves 18 slots to fill. Here's my current though, though we'll see how my starts do.

• 9 San Marzano - sauce seems to be my biggest use for the harvest, so focus on those
• 2 Fourth of July - have been reliable and productive
• 1 Rutgers - a nice tomato
• 3 Cherokee Purple - delicious, my favorite
• 3 wildcards, time to go seed shopping