Dough and cheese

I like making bread. Kneading dough is relaxing, and also nice to punch, if you want to vent some anger. If you're not breaking a sweat, you're not doing it right. Sadly, I haven't had much time to bake recently. Even worse, I also neglected to feed my starter regularly. It's still alive (yeast doesn't die that easily) but it got a bit too sour and weak, taking too long to rise. So, I decided to kill it and start over. How do you kill a starter? Well, you bake it!

So, one day I woke up real early, and made a bread dough with all of the starter (about 3 cups), salt, and whole wheat flour. I kept the starter a bit watery, so it took around 1.5kg of flour to get the right dough consistency. That was a large batch of dough (for my standards), so it was lots of fun to knead. I left it in a bowl in the sun, covered by plastic wrap, and went to work. Sun heat did wonders, so much that I contemplated saving some of the starter, because it had risen nicely. I decided against it in the end. I think the sour starter (or maybe it was the sunlight) produced more alcohol than it used to, because the dough was softer than usual.

I deflated the dough pressing it down, and kneaded it with a bit more flour to get it back to a nice consistency. I made half the dough into a loaf, and decided to experiment a bit with the rest.

I had a camembert cheese in the fridge, and decided to make a bread with it. I thought that a whole cheese was too much for a single loaf, so I sliced it in half, rolled a bit of dough, and wrapped the two halves with dough. I also made some small rolls and a croissant with some brie cheese in the center.

I still had some dough left, so I made yet another kind of cheese pita. For this one, roll the dough into a thin long stripe, around 2 inches wide. Then grate whatever cheese you have, I used what was in the fridge, parmesan, a mild goat cheese, and some brie. I guess this will be a good one for feta, but I don't like feta. Spread the cheeses on the dough stripe, in the center, and fold it lengthwise over the cheese. Then bring the roll all around, rolling it like a snake. Ideally, you can brush it with some egg wash for color and a shiny finish, but I didn't. Let everything rise for an hour, and bake in a hot oven. Unfortunately, my gas oven has a strong flame underneath, but the heat is not evenly dispersed, and bread cooks before the top crust gets brown enough. It's still tasty though.

The small pieces were done first. Unfortunately, the cheese melted very fast, and the dough was still rising, pushing the melted cheese out. There was some left inside and they tasted good. Next time I'll use a harder cheese though, camembert and brie melt very fast.

The same thing happened with the half-camembert bread. The inside was nice and melted, but some of it escaped and got burnt.

Yet again, the pita also leaked some of the brie. It was still tasty!

Dijon mustards with tapas

It's been a while since I last posted. Work is piling up, and there isn't much time to cook, sadly. I won't be in France for long, and there's a mountain of things to finish, and many places to go, before I leave.

Despoina was here a couple of weeks ago, and we took the train to Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, or Bourgogne, as they say here. It was a nice trip, albeit a bit too long for a single day, almost four hours each way.

Dijon is a nice city, with an impressive town center, full of old, stone buildings. This is a massive cathedral that looks very medieval, especially when you stand right next to it.

The town center was all pedestrian, stone-paved narrow streets, with tightly packed houses all around. The architecture looked a bit strange, the ground floor is all stone-built, and there are stone-built pillars and chimneys above, but the rest of the building (usually two extra floors) was wood and plaster. Some even had mini-gargoyles carved on the wood of the upper floors. I haven't seen houses like in the Rhône-Alpes region, but it was everywhere in Burgundy.

Here's a funny detail that we liked. The stone-paved streets were marked with triangular arrows, depicting an owl (a local good-luck symbol). The arrows mark a "scenic path" that tourists can follow to visit all the important sights. Cool!

After walking around the old town center for a few hours, we sat at an old café on a small square, for a well-deserved rest. They served an amazing capuccino ice-cream with chocolate.

Of course, when talking about Dijon the word "mustard" immediatly comes to mind. There were small tourist shops peppered all over the center, selling small jars of mustard. We bought ten kinds of mustard.

We were famished by the time we got home, after four hours in the train. So, we made some quick snacks. We made some salad with tomato, basil, mozzarela and mushroom, served on lettuce leaves. Half of the ingredients served stuffed, and the other half finely chopped. We also made two small soufflés. Separate two eggs, and beat the whites into meringue. Beat the yolks with a touch of milk, and grate cheese in them. Then fold with the meringue and bake. I used the new serving-sized petites cocottes that Despoina bought, they're great for a personal soufflé. We grilled a couple of saucisses for each to eat the mustards with, and made a few bruschettas with sliced baguette, olive oil, mushroom, basil and mozzarela.

I remembered to take a picture only after finishing my soufflé... but you can see the mustard jars! I liked one with herbes de Provence and a spicy one with horseradish.