HI MOM!
She’s the main reader of what’s left of this blog and
currently stuck in a condo in Connecticut.
I’ll start with politics to get it out of the way: Ignoring the giant cheese doodle in the room and skipping right to Kentucky...
I am a big fan
of bourbon. I like a lot of whiskey styles, but bourbon might be my favorite. I enjoy
drinking it with friends at the curling club. I enjoy drinking it home. I don’t do
much cocktail drinking but a good Old Fashioned is growing on me (Lost and
Found as well as Kiernan’s Craft Tavern have good versions). The idea of me
going on a bourbon trail to visit distilleries in Kentucky isn’t a big stretch.
All that being said, here is my pledge: If Mitch McConnell gets re-elected the
entire state of Kentucky is dead to me. I’m done. No more bourbon. Definitely not
going on a distillery tour. No KFC (it’s
not good anyway). I think Reynolds Wraps are from Kentucky. Gone. Jif peanut butter is made in Kentucky. Choosy Mom's will avoid choosing anything from Kentucky. And I promise to pay extra for a flight even if the best priced airfare has a layover in Kentucky - in case you didn’t know, the Cincinnati airport
is actually in Kentucky. Seriously, fuck that guy and anyone who votes for him
in November.
If you’re still with me, great. If you are thinking about
leaving a disagreeing comment in support of Mitch, don’t bother. I won't be responding. This is not a discussion, this is a fact
(remember those?). If the schmuck gets reelected, Kentucky might as well sink
to the center of the earth as far as I’m concerned. As for the bourbon, there
is a lot of whiskey made outside of Kentucky. I’ll spend my time and money
exploring them.
Back to your regularly scheduled blog post:
The March Pizza Challenge extended into April and was “What
do you do with leftover dough?” My uses for leftover dough are stretch it into a
log and bake it like a small loaf of bread (warm, fresh bread goes great with
dinner) or I flatten in out into a rectangle and make a Stromboli. Nothing too
creative. At some point, I should try making garlic knots.
Like a lot of people, I recently tried my hand at sourdough.
Following Jennifer in Saratoga’s lead, I tried developing a starter using all
purpose flour. It looked like it was starting to work a little. Then I used
some flour that I milled from wheat berries (some time ago I bought an old mill
on E bay). The starter seemed to do a little better with the whole grain but
instead, I decided to discard the first attempt and try again, this time
starting with the fresh flour. Instead of discarding the original starter, I
tried to incorporate it into a pizza dough. Pretty sure I screwed up the math
since the dough ball I made was lighter than it should have been. In the end,
that dough ball over fermented but I tried to cook it anyway. It basically disintegrated
in the oven and made a huge mess on the oven floor -luckily it was the wood
oven and not in the house, still a mess but a lot easier to clean. You can see in the top of the picture I've already moved the coals over the mess to burn it off.
My first sourdough bread attempt came out better than the second. I need a better way for the dough to
rise. I don’t have one of those bread baskets. Maybe a floured cloth in a bowl
would work better than just a lightly oiled bowl. Might throw another loaf together tonight.
Pandemic Pizza- I’ve made two rounds of Pandemic pizza. Both
rounds with over 20 pizzas that are picked up or delivered to be enjoyed by family,
friends and neighbors.
Something gets lost in the push for quantity. There’s less enjoyment in the pizza making. It’s still fun and I plan to keep doing it, But adding the elements of speed and being ready for a set pick up time takes
something away. Also, the topping combinations get scaled back. I bought a big
bag of sliced pepperoni and it's fine, but not as good as a stick sliced by
hand. I need to find somewhere locally that will sell me Ezzo pepperoni. Or at
least the Hormel pre-sliced cup and char. I think they are coming out with one to
be sold in grocery stores.
In other pizza news, I listened to as much of PizzaZoom 2020
as I could. It was basically a parade of well known pizza people meeting
through Zoom and you could just eavesdrop in on the conversation. It was like
hanging out with them in a bar after closing. There were demos from both home
kitchens and restaurants. Parts were funny. Some stories were amazing – the back
story on Angelo’s Pizzeria in South Philly put that shop on my to-do. They also
make their own bread for their cheesesteaks which look and sound great. There
was a fun session with Chris Bianco. It is a combination of interesting and
entertaining to listen to him talk. Good stories plus a willingness to help other
pizza makers in the same way people helped him. He offered some excellent life
advice: Just don’t be an asshole. The 3 days of web conference cost $5 with all
the proceeds going to Pizza vs. Pandemic which is a new arm of Slice Out Hunger.
They get pizza to hospitals and first responders because if anyone deserves a good
slice of pizza right now, it is these people.
Also at the web conference, I saw a Dexter P177A pizza
cutter. I had to have one. I picked it up while getting some cheese and more
pizza boxes at restaurant depot. The difference between using a 4 inch pizza when
and the smaller 2.5 inch wheel I had been using is huge. I love my new pizza
cutter. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, it is so choice. If you have the means, I
highly recommend picking one up. And the P177A is also significantly cheaper
than the Ferrari that Ferris was talking about. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
I read your blog too...so you have at least 2 reading it!! That bread looks stellar and good luck with the sourdough starter!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for still checking in on my ramblings, llcwine.
DeleteEverything is cyclic. So who knows, maybe blogging will be cool again.
ReplyDeleteLilimonster...glad to see you are blogging as well!!!
DeleteMaybe blogs will come back. I felt like I was running out of things to say. Plus blogger isn't the best and changing looks difficult. Anyhow, it is nice to see you write again too. Hope the cooking school classes are going well. That's something I always wanted to do at SCCC.
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