‘Mise en place’…French for “everything in its place”. For cooks and bakers, the understanding and practice of this simple term are the foundations for all successful dishes. In many ways, ‘mise en place’ is a way of life; it provides structure and organization both within and outside the kitchen; assembling your ingredients, pre-measuring, cleaning as you go, preparing the oven, thinking two or three steps forward, not being distracted – ‘mise en place’.

I had prepared my “mother sponge” and kept feeding it, hoping that it would not die or get “infected” before I got to use it. My friend Katie had lost her “mother” while developing it into a rye based sponge, it developed a mold and she had to toss it. A week after starting me own, it was thriving and giving off a very strong smell, lots of bubbles, and had been in and out of the fridge a couple times.

So I had the sponge, now what? I needed some good advice, sound recipes, a couple of tools, and some time away from the ski hill to immerse myself in the craft – ‘Mise en place’. I did not want to just jump into a batch of bread and find out I didn’t have what I needed.

I set out one day to Barnes and Nobles and picked up Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. My step-bro Paul told me I wouldn’t need any other book on the subject and from my early readings in it, he’s right.

If you are considering baking bread or just want to see a great cook book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is it.

I also picked up a nice glass jar and lid from the store and transferred my sponge into its new home. I spent the next couple nights and mornings reading through the early chapters on bread history, ‘mise en place’, flour and yeast types, the baker’s formulas, and generally getting a better understanding of those processes I was about to engage in. After another 40″ week of snow, we got some clear weather and my legs needed a break. The time had come.

I decided to make some ciabatta for the first go round. I knew it would be a good use of the sponge, fairly straight forward, and has always been one of my favorites. The recipe called for the use of a ‘poolish’, which is just another type of pre-fermented dough starter, very similar to my ‘sponge’. Basically, you begin one dough to ferment for several hours to a day or more, and add that to the rest of the recipe. Whether its a ‘biga’, ‘pate fermentee’, or ‘poolish’, the idea is the same; you pre-ferment a small batch of dough to aid in the fermentation of your larger batch. The advantages are enhanced flavors from the prolonged development of the sugars and manipulation of the starches. I will be using other types of ‘sponges’ for other breads and will fill you in on those as they come up in later ‘chapters’.

Instead of making a new sponge, or ‘poolish’, I used my prized mother in the glass jar. I removed more then half the starter the night before and threw it out, then ‘fed’ (equal parts flour and water) more then double what I took out. I let this sit out all night and it was ready in the morning, bubbling away and looking “alive”. By letting it feed throughout the night, as opposed to just for a few hours, you get a more rich, stonger flavor from the starter. As the weeks, months, and years go by, you starter will get more complex if you feed it regularly.

Here’s a quick recipe for ciabatta:

• 3 1/4 cups ‘poolish’
• 3 cups unbleached bread flour
• 1 3/4 tsp. salt

• 1 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
• 6 Tbsp to 3/4 cup lukewarm water (90-100 degrees F)

You combine the flour, yeast, and salt together, then add the wet ‘poolish’ and water. Mix with a wooden spoon until everything is distributed equally. I then wet my hands started to work the dough in the bowl for about five minutes, using my hand like a dough hook and stretching the dough as you mix it. You have to repeatedly dip your hand in water (to keep it clean) and add flour as needed to maintain the silky texture your aiming to have by the end of the mixing. This is where a mixer would really help the home baker.

I concluded that I did not work the dough long enough in the end. It did not develop the large pockets of air (gas) that is typical of ciabatta, the length of mixing (stretching and manipulation of starches) was part of that. I also ‘degassed’ the dough a bit too much after its initial ‘rest’ of 30 minutes. Basically, I worked it too much while stretching it and some of the “lightness” of the dough was lost. I think as my starter develops more and more, it was also aid in that texture I’m shooting for.

After mixing the dough, flour your countertop and carefully put the dough on the floured surface. Then you’ll want to lightly pull the dough into a rectangle and fold like a letter (two seams). Do this twice (I did it like 5 times…oops), lightly mist with spray oil, dust with flour, and let the dough rest for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Once the dough has risen again (almost doubled in size, will depend on temp in room), pull and fold the dough again. I cut my dough ball into three, then pulled and folded. I then set up a ‘couche’ which is basically a flour sack towel used to separate the dough and let proof.

By setting the dough balls next to one another and separated by the fabric, each ball of dough “holds” the other up and provides some support during the final resting period.

After letting the dough rest on the ‘couche’ for another hour, it was time to bake. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees (550 if your oven will allow it) and set up a deep pan on the bottom rack (for creating steam). Once the oven is ready, put in trays of bread (on parchment paper w/ semolina flour) and pour about a cup of water into your steam pan. The steam helps keep the crust from over drying when baking and also aids in the caramelization of the sugars on the crust.

The final product tasted awesome, less then an hour after baking we devoured one loaf (the other two were gifts for a party!) and went out to see a show. Like I said before, there is going to be some tweaking of the process for me on this particular bread, but my first bread baking adventure was a huge success.

More to come on my Pan a l’ancienne…”bread of the ancients”

Cooking with my step-brother Paul is always a treat. He and I look at cooking the same way at times…”what do you have around? Alright, lets do it.” Of course, he’s a much better, more practiced chef, but the point is the same: once you have the confidence and a working understanding of what you got at hand, you can make anything taste good.

Couple weeks ago we got together for a “quick” dinner and some time with the ‘ol Cold River Vodka. I went to the Whole Foods down the road and wondered for a while running the options over in my head. Grabbed a few yams, some green beans (Cali isn’t too far away!), a head of kale, carrots, and some lovely looking beets. I knew Paul had some elk steaks waiting in his freezer, the rest would just come together.

We got the stuff out on the table, cracked a beer and started going for it. Paul quickly made a stuffing out of apples and some frozen corn he had left over. If you’ve never stuffed and rolled a steak (flank steak works great), then read on!

We decided to bake the beets for a kale-carrot-beet salad. I got to work on the yams, deciding to cube them and roast them as well. The green beans would be salt and peppered, drizzled with olive oil and roasted as well (thanks Mom!). Paul opened up a bottle of apple cider and put that in a pot to reduce for a nice syrup to top the stuffed elk steaks.

For the stuffing, Paul cut up a couple pieces of old bread and toasted them up. Fine dice an apple or two, throw in some corn, a little fine diced celery and onion, salt and pepper to taste. I think I saw him throw in some rosemary, a little olive oil, and some garlic. As with any stuffing, the moisture level is crucial. Since we weren’t “stuffing” this into a bird, but rather rolling it up in an elk steak…we made it a little wetter. You can achieve that with a little oil, some chicken, beef, or veg stock. The apples and corn will also give off some water, be sure to take all that into account.

Don’t laugh. The hammer was washed before and after, it sure did the job! After trimming up the steaks a bit, Paul lightly pounded the elk steaks to thin them out and get more surface area. With fresh, lean meat like that it goes pretty quick. The elk steaks were a gift from a friend around the holidays, the buck was shot the first week of November in northern Colorado. Paul had brought a tenderloin from the same animal to Thanksgiving at the Ben Hame, searing it and finishing it with a blackberry demi. I knew it was going to be good this time around too.

Once you have the steak ready, stuff it! Using cooking twine or skewers you can roll the steak around the stuffing and either bake it, sear it, or roast it. We decided to sear the steak, then bake it. You’ll want to heat up a skillet, THEN add the oil, and sear each side of the meat. Be careful with how hot the pan is, you can easily splash oil up or start a fire with the water or blood from the meat.

Once you have the steaks seared, you will want to bake them for about 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees. This all depends on the size of the steak, the thickness, and how much stuffing you have in. Get out your thermometer and give it an occasional poke, you’re looking for 140 degrees inside the roll.

Take your beets and wrap them in tinfoil. You can bake them like that for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. You’ll know they are ready when they feel “ripe” and the skin easily slides off with your thumb…careful, they’re hot!

For the yams, I cubed them and seasoned with a variety of warm flavors. Drizzles of molasses, agave nectar, and a bit of maple syrup. A light dusting of cinnamon, a touch of nutmeg, some black pepper and salt. Bake like that for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees. You’ll want to pull them and turn over at some point for equal distribution of goodness.

Sam Wolfe at the Alta Lodge prepares yams this way for pork, beef tenderloin, or even smoked salmon…they are always a hit.

The salad is so key in any meal. I love kale after eating it everyday in Cali the last two years. Beets always scared me as a kid coming out of the can around Thanksgiving, their blood red color spooked me. Now I can’t imagine a world without them. I like to saute them in a little oil and garlic, cool and then put on a salad. We baked them this time around, quickly sauteed the kale in some olive oil (if you cook it too much it looses its crispness and apparently destroys all the nutrients stored up in its stock and dark green leaf). You know beets, carrots, and kale are good for you based simply on how vivid their colors are. The carrots, beets, and kale were all sauteed in this salad, then left to cool and reassembled. Awesome combo of flavors and texture.

Not the best pic, but here is the meal! The beans were roasted with salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil for 10-15 minutes at most (again, 350 degrees).

Pile the yams up in the middle, lay the beans across one side, sliced and stuffed elk steak on the other side, drizzle the reduced cider across the whole meal. Yummy town.

Hope this meal inspires some new ideas. Roll up that piece of steak with some “stuffing”, grab the yams next time instead of potatoes, grab a head of kale and savor its leafy greenness. Another idea for rolled up steaks is to take a cheap, tender flank steak and make a stuffing of roasted portabellos, fresh basil, chevre, Parmesan, bread crumbs, and roasted tomatoes.

Winter is a great season for warm flavors, give a couple of these ideas a shot next time if the spirit moves ya!

Here’s some more Elk and rolled steak ideas:

• Kitchen Parade – Elk Meatloaf
• Mark Bittman – Matambre: Stuffed, Rolled Flank Steak
• Cuisine Capers – Braciole – Rolled Steak Italian Style

I mean, who doesn’t like fresh bread right? If you are into food – eating it, cooking it, growing it, or reading about it, you cannot deny the power of a warm slice of fresh bread. Its an elemental pleasure for us humans, undoubtedly tied to thousands of years of learned appreciation.

I’ve always wanted to learn to make my own breads. Like my run at home brewed beer (might have to get back into that as well!) or stabs at gardening, making bread seems fairly straight forward with a huge upside. After the planning, assemblage of ingredients, and carving out the room in your day to get after it, the process unfolds over the hours and becomes as enjoyable as the desired product.

As with making beer or gardening, making bread is pretty simple. Well, at least in the ingredients department. A closer look or second thought on the subject will very quickly lead you to a whole world of possibilities, from simple to extremely complicated. Its fun comparing gardening and home brewing to making bread; you could also do it with cheese making, collecting honey, pressing cider, etc… The processes are simple, but the possibilities are endless.

After living in California this past fall and eating foods mostly from the valley I lived in, as well as cooking with some incredibly talented cooks, the desire to learn to make bread came to a head. Maybe it was the fresh multigrain batarde (slightly wider baguette) we would pick up almost daily to make french toast or the grilled cheese (with a smear of locally made serrano chili goat cheese!) we would snack on every afternoon. Regardless, the thought occurred: “how tough can it be to make something THAT good?”

So, here in the middle of another stormy Utah winter…the process begins for Andy. A good friend from Cali recently sent me a sourdough starter in the mail knowing that I was hankering. The small paper packet contained a print out on how to start and care for your “mother sponge”, as well as a very simple recipe for making sourdough. Of course, there was also a small packet with sourdough culture and unbleached, hard white flour – the “starter”.

After a few conversations with my step-bro Paul (who is an incredible baker) I learned that if well cared for (not exposed to too much wild yeast or left unfed for weeks), your sourdough starter can last for years, forever potentially. Some bakeries in San Fran can trace their starters to before Cali’s statehood, even well before the ’49 gold rush. You can also freeze a certain amount of it and pull it out months later to “restart” your starter. Having recently moved down canyon and having my own kitchen, the time had come to crack it open.

Visit this link to see the product I am using: www.mccornbread.com. Its a San Francisco style sourdough, which by all accounts is the mother land of sourdough bread. Read more here on that subject.

One evening before going out I ripped it open, got my bread flour out, warmed up three cups of water and combined everything. Wrapped it up, put it in the oven with the light on (slightly warmer then room temp), and let it sit for a day. Came home after work the next night and I had a bubbling, “sour” smelling concoction. Now more then a week later, the “mother” has been fed several times and sent to the fridge for some hibernation.

Ingredients for starter:

• Sourdough starter culture
• 3 cups warm water (85-95 degrees)
• 3 cups bread flour

Mix em up in a plastic or wood bowl (metal apparently gives “off” flavors), let sit in a warm environment (light on inside the oven) for 24 hours. Once the starter has begun to “ferment” you’ll easily be able to see if you were successful…it’ll be bubbling and looking quite alive.

As for feeding it, you simply remove a cup of the starter and throw it away. You replace that with a half cup of bread flour mixed with a half cup of warm water. You have to bring the starter to room temp before doing this, so if refrigerating the “mother” be sure to pull it out for a time and then feed it.

This is all new to me and I have not yet made any bread, but I am taking good care my “mother” and planning a day in the kitchen very soon. More importantly, the process has begun on what should be another fruitful endeavor into my culinary curiosities. I look forward to giving friends a loaf of bread that I made, I look forward to making my own English muffins in the morning. I am now in a small way even more engaged with the foods I am eating, its exciting. I find myself now digging around the internet looking for bread ideas, feeding my knowledge of the possibilities.

If it would only stop snowing in Utah!!! More to come…But for now – some other cool bread ideas and sites:

• The Knead for Bread – English Muffins
• Best Bread Recipes – Red and Black Scones
• Tammy’s Recipes – Homeade Bagels