Blueberry Pie With Goat Cheese and Basil

Inspired by a pie of the same name, served at a diner featured on the Food Network, I decided to go recipe-less on this one. Well, not entirely true. I did followed a guide for the pie dough. I just found Michael Ruhlman's (of the bread conversion from last post) iPhone App - Ratio. It's based on his book of the same name and provides the basic culinary ratios for things like bread, pie and pasta dough, custard, etc. It's a pretty cool little app, letting you tap in different amounts of basic ingredients (flour, fat, sugar) and calculating the correct proportion of other basic ingredients.

I followed the standard  proportions for pie dough - all proportions by weight not volume:
3 parts flour, with 1/2 tsp salt for every 10 -12 oz - I also added about 1 Tbs sugar.
2 parts fat - I made an all butter crust.
1 part water.
Lots of chilling involved in this crust. About 30 min in the fridge after the dough is first formed, 60 minutes once in the pie plate, another 30 once the dough is trimmed and the edges crimped. The result was a  fantastic, flaky crust.

But now, it gets really interesting. Blueberries, goat cheese & fresh basil. I really had no idea of the proportions for this, so I just guessed. Here's what I did. Oh, and this was for a 6 inch pie, a wee pie as I like to call it.
1 pint blueberries
About (maybe just under) 2 oz of goat cheese
About a 1/4 cup of heavy cream
Just under 1/4 cup of light brown sugar
10 - 12 fresh basil leaves, chopped.

I mixed the goat cheese (let it soften first), cream and brown sugar together until it had the consistency of a loose frosting. Added the basil next, then the blueberries, mixing enough to coat the berries without crushing them. In hindsight, I think some cornstarch mixed in before the berries would have helped create a firmer filling. Or maybe tapioca pearls?

The filling got mounded up in the chilled dough and topped with a oatmeal crumb topping. Here I followed a basic Fanny Farmer recipe. I knew that Fanny's recipe would give me more topping that I needed for the pie and more than I needed to snack on, so I pared that down as well.

For my oatmeal crumb topping improv, I ended up with something on the order of:

1/2 stick unsalted butter - room temp to coolish
A bit less than 3/4 c of light brown sugar, flour and old fashioned oats
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4-1/2 c slivered almonds
Pinch o' salt
This is easy to mix up using a pastry cutter. You are going for a mixture of a range of chunk sizes.

I made a little pie-lette, with my extra dough and filling

The pie went into a 450 oven for 10 minutes (on a baking sheet) and then baked at 350 for about 45 minutes more. I found I had to cover the pie loosely with some foil after about 20 minutes, as my crumb topping was getting a bit dark.

This was a terrific pie. The goat cheese gave it a bit of tang, but I'd say the basil was the real star. It was just enough to remind you of its presence, but it didn't overpower at all. 

This pie got me thinking about other savory/sweet mash ups to try with some fresh herbs mixed in. Good pie experimenting and eating ahead!

A bit oozy, but very tasty!

Variation on No Knead Bread

While trolling around baking sites with my coffee this windy morning, I found some more information about No Knead bread. I like the additional details in this recipe and there are some good links at the bottom of Michael Ruhlman's post about this bread. I've got my eye on the whole grain recipe, as I'm still trying to incorporate more whole grains into my baking.

Here's the link to Michael Ruhlman, and his conversion to No Knead Bread.

Creative Prep

The dilemma: My cream cheese needs to be at room temperature. Not only is my cream cheese not at room temp, but I don't even have cream cheese. And its 6:30 Friday evening, and we are hungry and craving Indian food, and I don't want to be up until midnight making cheesecake.

The solution: Stand back, I'm packing cheese.

I decided to warm my 24 ounces of cream cheese in my purse while I ate Chicken Tikka Masala. It was the only time I've ever remotely wished for an encounter with purse snatcher. It would have been worth the loss of my brick shaped cheese product.

If you ever need to do this, it works quite well. By the time we finished dinner, got home and lined up and measured out the rest of the ingredients for Cannoli Cheesecake, the cream cheese was ready for mixing.

I've linked to the recipe above, from Fine Cooking magazine. Cheesecake is easier than you think, really not difficult, as long as you are mindful of cooking time. I think it's one of the more dependable types of desserts you can make, and provides a great wow factor. As you'll see if you click through, there is no end to the variations possible. For this particular cheesecake, I think I would put more mini chocolate chips in. Another option - sprinkle the top with confectioner sugar and chips, which worked out just fine.

I'll  leave the finished product picture today to Fine Cooking, but I'll include my own "before" shot:

Having now noticed that this is a bull, it is a before, before shot I guess.

Chocolate Chip Cookie: Chapter 1

The right chocolate chip cookie may just be the most perfect food in the world.

To me, this "right" cookie has these qualities: it is thick, the outside is crispy, the inside has the right balance of chip to non-chip territory and has just enough goo to it. It is not flat, nor is it cakey. It does not contain nuts (I realize that this is a polarizing statement). It leaves a bit of a grease stain on your napkin.

There is a cookie that is almost this pinnacle of cookie goodness. Its lone flaw is that it contains nuts. Despite that, and I realize I'm contradicting myself, this is the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever eaten. It can be found at the Old World Deli in Freeport ME (at the Big Indian, or the BFI as it is called). A friend and I used to do in-depth analysis on these cookies.  All butter or butter/crisco combined, just crisco? Oven temp? Fat to flour ratio? Chilled dough or fresh? We were a bit obsessed. We used to pump the deli workers for information. They did not disclose much.

I was recently talking to a butcher who told me that he had made chocolate chip cookies with beef lard. Beef lard - brilliant. He did say that during baking you get a bit of a funky smell - think rendering beef, chocolate and sugar combined. However, this was the best chocolate chip cookie he had ever had. Unlike the deli folks, he was very willing to share his recipe. I'll give this a try at some point and let you know how it turns out.

I have come pretty close to replicating the deli cookie (sans nuts) on a couple of occasions. Like most good things, it requires a bit of pre-planning, time and good ingredients.

As good - no - as divinely sublime as that chocolate chip cookie is, sometimes I just make the basic, back o' the chip bag cookie. These are fine, they make me happy, the house smells good.The dough is better than the final product and I eat too much of it. When I make these cookies now, I don't have to scheme with anyone so someone can distract the cookie-maker while the other person sneaks into the kitchen and runs off with the dough.

Recently, I made the back of the bag type of cookie and packed them off to Molly - a willing recipient of baked treats, and a happy tester of anything new I want to try. A bit undercooked is the key to this type of cookie.

I haven't made the sublime type of cookie in a while. It has actually been so long I need to go back through my recipes, notes (yes - I have notes about this type of cookie) and do a quick baking chemistry reminder before I embark on this effort. I'll do this soon, and will update with the next chapter of Chocolate Chip Cookies.

In the meantime, get out there and bake whatever chocolate chip cookie suits your fancy, and eat some dough.

The best part.

Sadly flat, but tasty nevertheless.

Oatmeal Bread on a Snow Day

I can't say that the Groundhog Day Blizzard lived up to the hype. By early afternoon the snow was pretty well wrapped up. If I had to guess, I'd say we got 8-10 inches - a pretty standard Maine snowstorm. But...with work closed down for the day, I had the rare chance to do some mid-week bread baking.

Always a sucker for a good oatmeal bread, I decided to try a recipe in Good to the Grain for Oatmeal Sandwich Bread. The recipe included a step to let the dough autolyse - something I hadn't tried before. This step allows the water, yeast and dough a chance to rest after being mixed together. After this rest period (in this case, 30 minutes)  the dough is mixed or kneaded more vigorously. From a more technical perspective, autolysing helps the flour to hydrate and allows the enzymes to start working. All of this helps to make a good crumb.

Interestingly, most of the information I found about this process indicates that you mix the flour & water then let this mix rest, but it doesn't include the yeast or salt. The recipe I followed did include the yeast in the mixture, but not the salt.

Whatever the process, after autolysing (is that even a word?) the dough gets whipped around in the stand mixer for 6 minutes or so, resulting in a cookbook picture worthy, smooth, supple, lovely mound of dough.

The lovely dough, post autolyse, pre-rise.

Into the trusty and warm microwave for an hour to rise. Another rise once it's shaped and in the bread pan, again about an hour.

After the first rise, with a sweet little belly button!

While the bread baked, we headed out to our snowy world to do some clean up. The happy dog created multiple avalanches onto the walk I was trying to shovel. Between the dog-a-lanches and the snowblower jetsam, my initial efforts were un-done pretty fast.

The happy snow dog.

Back inside to the smell of baking bread, what could be better? Once done, the bread popped right out of the pan and went to rest on the rack. It was a lovely looking loaf, and difficult to resist for the "couple of hours" recommended by the cookbook. This rest time allows the flavors to develop more and prevents you from squashing the crumb by cutting into it too early.

Right out of the oven.

Yum.

We held out for about an hour (which is about 45 minutes than we usually do with fresh bread - major accomplishment!). Then, risking lasting damage to the crumb, we cut. We slathered - Kate's Butter again - and happily chewed away.This bread had a great crust - hearty and chewy, with a little crunch. The bread flavor had a smidgen of a sourdough taste to it. I had to use a bit of Rye flour, as I didn't have quite enough wheat flour. I don't know if I used enough Rye flour to influence the flavor. At any rate, one of the best Oatmeal bread recipes I've tried. Give it a whirl.

Oatmeal Sandwich Bread - From Good to the Grain, Kim Boyce.

Ingredients: 
1 package active dry yeast
2 cups warm water (I aim for 110 degrees or so)
3 tablespoons molasses (not Blackstrap)
2-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups bread flour
1 cup rolled oats
2 oz (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon kosher salt

What to Do:
Put the 2 cups of water, yeast and molasess into the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir and let the yeast bloom for about 5 minutes. If the yeast doesn't bubble, toss it and start over. Mix the flours and oats together, then add the melted butter and flour mixture to the yeast mixture. Stir together. Cover the bowl with a towel and let stand for 30 minutes (I put mine in a warm spot for this step).

While the dough is resting (this is the autolyse phase), butter a large bowl for the first rise.

Attach the bread hook to the mixer and attach the bowl to the base. Add the salt to the dough, and then mix on medium for 6 minutes. The dough should slap around the sides of the bowl, but not stick. Add a tablespoon or two of flour if the dough is sticking. After mixing 6 minutes, the dough should be soft and supple, slightly tacky.

Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times. Put dough into the buttered bowl, cover with a towel and put in a warm place to rise (proof). The first rise will be about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. A dough is proofed when it has risen fully. To test this, poke your finger in the dough - if it springs back, it needs more time. If the dimple remains (see belly button picture), move on to the next step.

While the dough is rising, butter a 9x5x3 loaf pan.

To shape the dough, turn out on to lightly floured surface. Press down on the dough, forming it into a square, and pressing any air bubbles out. Fold the dough down from the top to the middle, then up from the bottom to the middle. Bring the newly formed top & bottom edges together and pinch the seam in the middle and seal it with your fingers.  Pinch the sides together and roll the dough back and forth, plumping it so it is evenly formed and roughly the size of the loaf pan.

Put the dough in the pan seam side down, and press the dough into the corners of the pan.

For the second rise, cover the dough with a towel, put it in a warm place and let it rise for about an hour. The dough should rise to half again its size, or just over the edges of the pan. During the rise, pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Optional - once the second rise is done, sprinkle the top of the loaf with oats or bran (I spritzed with a bit of water so the oats would stick).

Bake for 40 minutes, rotating the pan after 20 minutes. The loaf is done when the top crust is dark as molasses and the bottom crust is dark brown. When thumped on top, the loaf should sound hollow.

Remove the loaf from the pan and cool on a baking rack for a few hours, to let the flavor develop and so the crumb doesn't collapse when it's cut.