The finished product: freshly baked bread makes me happy.
I’m not sure how in middle age I have become a baker of bread, but it’s a welcome development. I remember marvelling every time a college classmate, Shelley, would make bread. It seemed mostly simple, somewhat complex and an awfully beautiful thing to do. But I never bothered trying myself.
Last year though, on Australia’s Masterchef, one of the judges, Matt Preston, showed the contestants how to make a very easy bread that you simply mix up, put in the refrigerator over night, and then bake the next day. I tried it a few times and it was good, but I was inspired last month to do more research.
I found a recipe in the New York Times and then see that a fellow named Jim Lahey has been inspiring thousands of folks around the world to be making bread, without kneading the dough. The trick seems to be using a Dutch oven (or a French oven, a Creuset or Chasseur), and heating it up beforehand.
The first version that I saw seemed to be done as quick as possible, in as little as five hours. I tried it out, and it was pretty good, though a little flat, and something wasn’t quite right. Then I followed some recipes that said you don’t have to bother with the Dutch oven, and in fact, a loaf pan helps give the bread a traditional rectangular shape. But I tried this, and didn’t like the crust.
Dry ingredients mixed with wet and put in a greased bowl for anywhere from 4 hours to overnight (and then some)
Finally, I watched a video where NYT’s Mark Bittman proposed to Mark Lahey that he could make a version in a few hours, rather than 14 to 20. I also tried out a few different flours in the hopes of making a bread with more whole-wheat flour. Harris Farm Markets was the saviour for finding rye flour: a kilo for $4 I think it was (it’s ridiculously expensive at About Life, and not available at all in Coles and Woolies). Bread with other flour than white flour is supposed to be a bit flatter and heavier. I’m still experimenting! I’d recommend the first time, just use white flour.
As much for my notes as to share with friends, here’s my favourite adaptation of Jim Lahey’s recipe, with various extra little tips.
Easy, tasty whole wheat and rye bread
(thanks to Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman)
1 cup of whole wheat flour (if you don’t have other flours, just use 2.5 cups of white flour)
1 cup of rye flour
1/2 cup of white flour
1/2 cup of corn meal (I love the texture that the corn meal adds to the bread)
1.5 tsp of salt
1 tsp of yeast
1.5 cups of hot water (apparently not too hot, which might kill the yeast)
1/4 tsp of red wine vinegar (Bittman’s innovation, said to speed the process, often missing from online recipes)
Mix the dry ingredients really well. Add the liquid and mix well. Transfer to an oiled bowl with a tight lid. Cover and rest at room temperature. Now, Mark Bittman says you can get away with 4 hours for this, but I’ve learned that there’s no rush for me. I’m happy to leave the dough overnight.
Then, for the second rise, you can dump the dough out onto a cutting board, and fold it over a couple of times, and reshape into a ball. Some recipes say to shape it with oiled hands, others with floured hands. My dough has been a bit too sticky and wet so putting flour on my hands and shaping the dough is a good way to get it to a better consistency.
Then I put it back into the same bowl, which goes counter to all the recipes which say to leave it on a counter with a dish cloth over it, which strikes me as kind of messy (and unnecessary really; all it needs is a cover so it doesn’t dry out). When the dough has doubled again, it’s ready. Bittman says this can be as short as half an hour, but I don’t mind leaving it for a hour or so. Another way it’s ready, apparently, is if you stick your finger into the dough and the indentation stays there (which disappears during baking). However, I’ve read a disputed of this lately that says that there should be a little spring back. More experimentation is needed (as my bread is still a bit too dense).
In the meantime, half an hour before you’re ready, heat the dutch oven, lid on, in the oven at 230C. Many bakers worry that the plastic handle on the Creuset and Chasseur will melt, and is only good up to 220C. On advice from the interweb, I found you can buy a metal handle from Creuset that fits the Chasseur pot just fine (before that, I was wrapping the handle in aluminum foil).
After half an hour at 230C, take the Dutch oven out and put the dough in; it doesn’t matter what shape it goes as it will spread out a little. I sometimes sprinkle some chia seeds or sunflower seeds on top. You can slash the top with a knife if you’d like. Then it goes back into the oven with the lid on for half an hour. Then remove the lid and bake for another 15 minutes (recipes say up to 30 but I’ve never needed this). I sometimes check to see if the internal temperature is between 90 and 100C (I’m not so precise, should I be?) and then cool it on a rack.
And then of course, the most important part: eat some while it’s still hot. It is so good, it’s like another food group! It’s not quite the same the next day, but it is fine toasted! In the meantime, I’ve upped the complexity (and flavour) of my bread, and am experimenting with this Rye and Molasses Bread. And my better half is actually making sourdough bread, from a starter, which is much more complicated but I have to admit: much more delicious.
It was clear that Alan Thompson’s new venture, Barista & Cook, would be special. But I didn’t know just how good it would be until last Sunday when I finally tried it for the first time.
Alan’s Bangbang cafe in Surry Hills was simply, a great experience (it’s been taken over and is not doing too badly in its new incarnation). It was always a great place for a cafe, but after a tasty place called Plissé, it had a year or two as a terrible cafe, before Alan took it over. As a 
former DJ, he had a huge set of headphones painted on one wall, there were super cool light fixtures, even the colour of the paint was cool. The style and detail was also applied to the menu, a fun and engaging British influenced menu, with particularly excellent breakfasts (though I often would fall prey to the white chocolate caramel slices).
The food though? What of the food? One of our party, from Perth, was very impressed with her pork belly and eggs and beans. A beautiful dish. My better half had a mac n cheese toastie, which is a pretty good concept, if you ask me.
But let me wax lyrical about the grilled mushroom on toast, just as an example of how good I think this place is. This is a pretty typical dish for an Aussie cafe, and I’ve had some terrible versions of it: a big old grilled mushroom on a dry piece of toast. But this had some sort of mushroom mixture on top of the toast, rich and savoury, like a nice pate, and then 
grilled wild mushrooms on top of that, plus some delicious salady bits. And then here’s the thing: some soft burrata cheese (one of my favourite good groups) and some bits of enoki mushrooms (the tiny stringy ones) that have been deep-fried so they taste a bit like fried onions.
Drat. On the other hand, the coffee was superb, and we both had avocado on toast, which for $12 was pretty good. The salad was lemony and light and fresh, the presentation as you can see is superb (good branding).
For the deconstructed Banh Mi was really a fantastic plate: a fresh baguette, a generous portion of pork belly, some pickled vegetables, some kim chi, a little pot of chicken orange pate, a nearly black apple and date chutney and spiced kumquat butter! I mean, that is some plate. And it was delicious. And I like food you can play with.
The food was so interesting, I asked a friend to come with me a second time only about two weeks after the first visit. I had the pho, which had a beautifully cooked piece of steak in it! It was not only full of flavour but with both the steak and some extra meatballs (and all of the wonderful fresh herbs), it gave this dish a substantial feel, which I’ve sometimes felt lacking from other pho. I thought this was a really, really good pho.
My dining mate had lobster of waffles with truffles. Yup. I’ll just let you think about that. I tried a bite. The perfectly crisp waffle went wonderfully well with the beautifully cooked lobster. My friend loved it.
In a hidden basement below Clarence Street in the City is a pumping busy whiskey bar. I’d wanted to try this, because I’m not sure the team behind Shady Pines Saloon can go wrong these days.
We first ended up in the Barbershop… another bar with an entrance in the same courtyard, which looked fun enough, but I was happy my better half pointed out that it was not, in fact, the Baxter Inn where we were milling about.
My better half had an Old-Fashioned, which was on tap! He approved of it. I myself spotted on the menu board the Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye. This was named the 
world’s best whiskey last year, and I spent more than a little bit of time when in Canada seeing if I could find myself a bottle (impossible!). So, I was excited to try it here. The waiter said he thought that the $25 for the small shot was quite a good price, considering (I assume how hard it is to get, and its reputation) and so I can’t be impartial about it. For $25, I was going to enjoy every drop of it. I found it both smooth and spicy, and very nice.
I don’t normally eat at the same restaurant twice in a week… but this was a different branch and the better half wanted to eat here before we saw Singing in the Rain (an old-fashioned musical and fun, I thought).
It’s been a while since I’ve been to Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese chain with the famous soup dumplings. There are many locations these days in Sydney, and it’s a great option both for a quick meal or to sit down and take a bit more time…
We ordered lots. The Mango Shrimp Roll was new to me, perfectly crisp and savoury. I go for the fried pork chop and egg fried rice as a regular dish. They seem to have slightly changed the pork chop recipe: it doesn’t look as crumbed and crisp as in the photos on the menu but is still delicious and I find the rice is some magical creation that doesn’t take like fried rice elsewhere: it’s really light, really tasty and somehow elegant.
I love a gimmick. So I could not resist when I saw this recipe go up online. How would this cake work, that purportedly separates into cake and custard? I once made Magic Custard Pies, where by mixing the egg custard batter with a cup of Bisquick, a crust would magically form on the bottom (one could also make a quiche in this fashion). But in this recipe, the cake rises to the top…
I admit that I was a bit nervous: I could see many possibilities of failure. Were the egg yolks and sugar pale and fluffy enough? Were the egg whites stiff enough? What was the purpose of whisking in one teaspoon of white vinegar into them? What if my technique for folding half of the egg whites into the batter wasn’t much different than the one for mixing in the other half?
Osaka Bar in Llankely Place in Potts Point really does look like it could be a casual eatery in Osaka, Japan. The kitchen, the lanterns, the lighting: it’s all right. Even our charming waiter who seems to have only been in Australia from Osaka for a few months added to the authenticity.
There’s a lot of styles of Japanese food that I think most folks won’t be familiar with: the wonderful octopus balls (takoyaki), like a pancake batter with chunks of tender octopus cooked in a waffle griddle, except instead of waffles, balls. There’s various kinds of 
omelette with artful swirls of Japanese mayonnaise and another sweeter sauce on top. Deep-fried skewers of things. Various other small plates (we didn’t try the sushi or sashimi).
Almost ordered too much food, but it was fine. There’s so much good food on this strip now… this is a good option, perhaps if you’re up for a more casual and quick meal. The 
outdoors seating area is great, and I said. This place has a lot of charm.
September 24. You’ve got two months (from the time of this blog post) to get to Moon Park, Sydney’s most elegant modern Korean restaurant. Hidden away on the second floor of a corner building in Redfern, their lease it up, and they’re offering until then, only tasting menus.
I think this was the third time I’ve eaten here over the years. Korean flavours are still unfamiliar to many people, and to refine them into fine dining is a real treat. I found it amusing and engaging to recognise or almost recognise a flavour or texture, and think about how it was applied to the dish. That bright green chrysanthemum leaf sauce was beautiful under the lamb!