Shortbread Cookies

New goal for the fall: bake at least one new recipe each week. Try to write about it...

It's so nice that the hottest summer in Austin's history has finally come to a close. I guess it says something about how hot the summer was to have a day like today, where it's a mere 90 degrees and have it feel so nice.

Anyway, now that the summer is over, and we don't have to worry about paying for AC to fight off those 107 degree afternoon temperatures, I can finally use the oven again. I've already baked bread twice in the last week, which is such a joy. Though one good side effect of three months forced abstinence from homecmade bread, is that you realize how great it really is, and you just how much you really did miss it.

Today's new recipe is going to be shortbread cookies. I happened to catch the "Everyday Baking" show on PBS yesterday afternoon and this is one of the things that they were making. Now ordinary shortbreads are good, but what really caught my attention was when they used the plain shortbread dough to make cranberry-orange cookies by adding orange zest and dried cranberries. That sounds good and it sounds like fall. Oh, and Patty is crazy for cranberries, so

that will win me some brownie points too ;-)

The recipe turns out to be really easy. You can see it yourself here:

http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/baking/recipes/icebox_shortbread.html

it's your basic shortbread cookie recipe:

1 cup butter (room temperature)

1 cup confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups flour

You mix the first three ingredients until they're combined and form a dough. Then you mix in the flour just to get a good dough. You definitely don't want to overmix on the flour because you want cumbly shortbread and if you mix too much on the flour it will make them tough.

After that, I divided the dough in half. One half I left plain, the other I mixed in about 1/2 cup cranberries and the zest of once orange. Then you take each half and roll it into a log using wax paper. It's sitting in the refrigerator now cooling; I'll do the baking here in a while after it's gotten

nice and firm.

--- Later ----

Wow, these turned out excellent! Even better than I had hoped/expected. Much better.

They were really easy to make; you just unwrapped the wax paper and cut the log into slices on a cutting board. About 3/8 inch thick I would say was perfect. From there, it was easy to just lay them on a cookie sheet and pop them into the 350° oven. In my oven, it took about 20 - 25 minutes; I like them with just a little bit of brown on them (I think it gives them more flavor). I'm attaching

some pictures.

And the flavor, wow! Especially the ones with the orange zest in them. The flavor really came through. The cranberries were an excellent complement, providing some texture that you don't get from the cookies themselves. I think

that adding some pecans might make them even better.

And the plain ones were great too. The flavor and texture of the baked cookies is really, really good.

Rating: ****

Difficulty: easy

Training in the Austin Summer

It's not even quite the end of July yet and already we've had something like 40 100+ degree days this summer. I've been in Austin for 20 years now, and this is, hands down, the hottes summer I've lived through yet. And we haven't even gotten to August yet.

I have to admit, that I came out of the Chicago Marathon in the fall kind of worn out. I didn't feel like I really recovered my running speed until recently. And even then, I'm not sure if speed is the right word or not. I'd like to think that there's still room to get faster, but at some point I'll have to accept that all I can do is to try to stave off getting slower. I hope I'm not there yet, but I can't tell for sure.

Anyway, training through the Austin summer is always a tough thing and this summer is the hardest one yet. I gave up running at lunch back in June. The real heat started sometime around the middle of that month, and so I started running exclusively in the mornings. However, I was still swimming at the UT Swim Center three or four days a week, so that limited the time I could focus on running. Once the Swim Center closed (it closes every August for maintenance) I was better able to set my schedule to run regularly in the morning. They closed it early this year, so I have had the last couple of weeks and have up until after Labor day to train on my own.

My general schedule has been run: Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday; swim Wednesday and Friday mornings; bike on Saturday if I can. Monday is nominally a swimming day, but I usually end up laying in bed thinking, "I need a day off..."

I feel like my running fitness has been finally coming back to me. I try to do hard intervals or tempo for my Tuesday/Thursday runs and then run long with the guys on Sunday. I should do a race at some point to see if I can gauge my running fitness, but then again every time I think about running a race in 80+ degrees with lots of humidity, I think again. Especially if I'm paying to run ;-) I can suffer like that for free, so maybe the races will have to wait until September or October when we (maybe?) start to see some cooler weather.

Black CD player

I had to grab a cd player to put in my room this evening. I got the old black one from the guest bedroom. Now I'm sitting here listening to my Loreena McKennett "Nights from the Alhambra" CD. But as I put the cd in and started to turn it on, something took me back...

I didn't know that a piece of plastic and electronics could hold a key to my past like this, but as I turned it on, I was almost magically transported back in time, way back to an earlier version of myself, circa 1991 - 1994, driving on those dark roads out 2222 to 360 and then up Shepherd's Mountain again. Back to sit in my dark office, in the dark quiet high-tech interior of my Tivoli office. Hacking away at some sort of code or build in the dark, listening to Pink Floyd, Tish Hinojosa or Todd Rundgren while I tried to help make a crazy dream of success around distributed systems management company come true.

I don't know exactly what it was about flipping the switch past FM and AM and then to CD, or perhaps the little high-pitched almost screech that the cd makes as it starts to turn, but it was an immediate feeling, "I've been here before; I can smell the carpet and the office furniture, I can see the world in it's sleeping darkness outside of the window in front of me as I stare at the bright-lit text on the screen in front of me."

I remember that feeling, being outside in the summer air and staring up at the stars outside of the Shepherd's Mountain building. I would usually head back to the office around 10:00, after getting Kelson down to sleep and telling Patty goodnight. Then it was work alone and in the dark until one, two, three or sometimes even later. Sometimes I listened to Larry Monroe on KUT; on Saturdays it used to be Howie Ritchey's "Alternative Wave" (after "The Hearts of Space" finished at midnight) in a KUT program schedule that is at least 17 years gone...

I remember best Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell," Tish Hinojosa's "Aquella Noche," and Todd Rundgren's "Second Wind." Those CDs carried me through the pain of my part of delivering 2.0:

if I have to be alone
then I should make my mind serene
after all you're born alone, you die alone
you might as well spend every moment in between alone

I can remember those nights with my mind, and I do from time to time. But the more visceral level of memory is locked up in those feelings, the memories of the smell, the night air, the darkness, the sense of loneliness that remains in me forever, just looking for a key to unlock and let it out. A black Sharp CD player is just such a key.

Speedwork

I haven't been running enough lately. Ever since the marathon last fall, I haven't been able to really get into a groove. I've had a couple of 12-15 mile weeks, but mostly I have a hard time getting out for three runs a week, and I haven't managed to do any kind of consistent interesting workouts, like speedwork, hills or tempo runs. I keep telling myself that I need to get out after work at least once a week and go to the track. The other option is to get out early in the morning, which is a great option with only one downside. It's not happening; no matter how many times I tell myself I'm getting up early, it never happens. I can manage to get out of bed for swim practice, but for running I just can't seem to do it.

Anyway, finally today I got over to the track after work. This morning started out cold and rainy, or drizzly at least. By by late morning, the cold front moved on through and it turned into one of those days that you dream about as a runner. Sparkling blue skies, low humidity and temperatures in the 60s. By the time I left work it was dark, but still beautiful outside.

I've been feeling pretty slow lately. Ever since I got well into my marathon training back in July, I haven't really done any speed work or intervals or anything like that. My runs lately, which have mostly been 4 milers with the occasional 6 or 8 miler have just felt slow. I keep telling myself that it's just how I feel, and that once I get back to the track things will feel better. Well tonight dispelled that idea pretty quickly.

I ran an easy mile to warm up and then did two sets of the standard Texas Iron drills and strides. My plan at that point was to do 6x400 with a 200 recovery between each. I've done enough 400s at the track to know that I should be able run around 1:35 and even down to 1:25 on a good day. However, tonight wasn't a good day. My first interval was around 1:45. Which might not be so bad, except that it hurt like I was running hard. And the others didn't get any better. I stopped at 4 because I didn't want to go on an more; they were all around 1:45 - 1:50.

I suppose that I could use the excuse that I had swum a hard workout in the morning, my first in two weeks. But it wasn't like I felt that bad or tired before running. I've just lost my speed it seems. But now that I know, I guess it's incentive to be back at the track every week. At least I know that things have to get better.

Oh, and one benefit of being out tonight. It really was a beautiful evening. In fact, as it got darker, I could actually see my shadow on the track cast by the moon.

Tamales

I've done the tamale thing now for several years on and off, serving mostly as labor who spreads the masa on the shucks. While this could be drudgery, it is usually accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol, plenty of good food and quality time spent with family. But with our head tamale chef (Sylvia, my mother-in-law) in St. Louis for Christmas, it was either go it alone or no tamales this year.

So, after a bit of thinking and then planning (and then calculating, as in "how many people can I trick into coming over to help spread the masa?) I decided that we would give it a go. I knew that mom would always be at least a phone call away, and also I remembered that last year she had discovered that you could buy masa that was pre-mixed, meaning that the hardest part of the job (in my experience) was already done for you.

So the first part is planning and shopping. I knew a partial list of stuff I would need: masa, shucks, a pork roast and chiles. Patty called around and found a few places that sold masa pre-mixed so I knew that I could get it. With my confidence in place, I started to make plans.

I ended up going to Fiesta Mart to attempt to get everything. This was on Christmas Eve eve, i.e. the 23rd. It was evening, but I figured that things wouldn't be too bad. Of course I was wrong, but nothing new there...

When we arrived (Bailey was with me, as I was bringing her home from swim practice) we headed to Fiesta. I bribed her by promising to buy her ojarascas, which she really likes. We showed up around 6:45 in the evening and the place was packed. We had to park a ways across the lot and then make our way in through the thronging patrons. Now if you've never been to Fiesta it's and experience. It's about as much of a third-world experience as you can get in Austin, expecially when it's crowded. They sell just about everything: clothing, luggage, cds, in addition to all of the strange foods that you could imagine. As we made our way into the store the tamale making stuff was front and center. And middle center and back center... Five pound bags of masa, lard in ever imaginable measure from one pound up to huge buckets, bags 0f dried chiles of all types: anchos, pasillas, cascabels, Guajillo, etc. I picked up a few things that I knew we needed (based on a call to Sylvia earlier in the day). This included a bag of ancho chiles, and a few heads of garlic. I searched high and low for the pre-mixed masa and also for a decent pork roast (shoulder or butt) but no luck. However, if I wanted a pig's head, well then there are more than enough to go around. I wanted to ask at the meat counter, but it would have taken 20 minutes just to wade through the line, so I gave up and picked up the few things that I had already and vowed to come back early in the morning. Oh, and they were out of ojarascas too...

to be continued...

Panettone

Every Christmas one of the things I do is bake at least one batch of Panettone. This is an Italian Christmas bread that is studded full of candied fruit and nuts. It's essentially a brioche dough with a few extras added, as are most Christmas breads for that matter.

This year I decided to go with the recipe from _ The Bread Baker's Apprentice_ (by Peter Reinhardt). I can't remember if I've made this one before or not? I think that I have at least once, but I'm not sure. I know that in the past I've used a recipe out of Bernard Clayton's book (the title escapes me right now) and also one out of _Bread Alone_ by Daniel Leader. I also think that a time or two I made up my own recipe on the fly, but this year I decided to follow someone else's lead, at least mostly anyway.

Reinhardt starts with something he calls "barm" which is a wild-yeast starter that requires a bunch of time and effort. I decided to dispense with that and just go a more standard pre-ferment starter. So I started with:

1 cup milk
a pinch (~1/8 tsp) yeast
1 1/2 cups flour

I mixed these up about 4-6 hours ahead of making the final dough. (In reality I had to call home from work and ask Patty to make this starter for me.)

When I got home, prior to starting the dough, I got the fruit ready. I took a cup or so of candied fruit that I had bought at the store plus about 1/2 cup of golden raisins and soaked it all together in 1/4 cup of rum. I also heated some water to boiling in a small saucepan and once it had boiled, I put turned it off, added 1/2 cup of raw almonds and covered the pan to let them soak. This would make the them easy to skin later on. So, in recipe terms:

1 cup candied fruit
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup rum
1/2 cup almonds

After letting the fruit soak for a couple of hours, it was time for the final dough. Here I followed Reinhardt pretty directly. As I remember, the recipe was something like:

starter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3 tsp yeast
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1 stick butter, room temperature

You start by mixing the yeast and the warm water and let the yeast soften. Then you add the starter and sugar and start mixing. Once it's well mixed, it's time to add the salt, egg and egg yolk and mix it well. Next the flour, letting the mixer mix it all well and knead it for a bit (~1 minute). At this point, it's a good idea to let the dough rest for a bit so the gluten can get started forming. About 20 minutes give or take.

Now it's kneading time. Also time to get the butter incorporated into the dough. I like to keep using the paddle attachment here because it cuts the dough a lot better than does the dough hook, and in trying to incorporate butter you need to keep the dough kind of broken up.

The butter didn't really want to go in this time, but I kept at it, even removing the beater and choping at the dough with a knive to force the two (dough and butter) to combine. Eventually thought it all mixes and comes together into one solid mass that you can knead with the dough hook. After letting it go for a bit, it's time to work the fruit and nuts in.

I was using raw almonds, which took a bit of work to peel. Even after soaking them for 30 minutes or so, some of the skins didn't come off easily. But, with Patty's help, we got them all peeled. I didn't bother to chop them as it was getting late, but a lot of them broke in half when I peeled them, and I thought that would be perfect. A nice crunch to counterpoint the soft dough and chewy flavor of the candied fruit.

I mixed in all the fruit and nuts at once, rum and all. This made the dough wet all over again, but the mixer was able to incorporate the fruit and nuts pretty quickly. I added flour, one tablespoon at a time, to convince the dough to come together and pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl. Probably four or five tablespoons at most until I felt like things were ready. The dough at this point is a nice silky smooth texture with a beautiful yellow sheen from the eggs and butter. I shaped it into a ball and put it into the rising bowl and into the fridge to wait for tomorrow.

This year I finally bought some actual panettone baking papers so I can have something that makes it easy to bake and then easy to transport afterwards. After letting the dough sit overnight, I got it out the next day at about noon and let it get to room temperature and then continue to rise. For whatever reason (probably the butter) this dough rises slowly. But rise it does, and eventually it pretty much filled the bowl, so I took it out and divided it to be ready for shaping. I had large panettone papers and small ones, so I made a mixture. My dough was enough for two large ones or several small ones, so I made one large and several of the smaller ones. Once again, it rises slowly, so after spraying down the paper with oil spray I formed it and put it in there and set it out to rise.

The bread is generally baked at a relatively low temperature (325) for a pretty long time (> 1 hour). I've taken to testing the temperature with an instant-read thermometer for these breads to be sure that they're done but not over baked. At about 195 they should be done, so that's what I did. The smaller ones were done in about 50 minutes, but the bigger one took more like 75.

In the end, the bread was much moister this year than in the past. Whether that has to do with using the papers or the recipe, I'm not sure. But I thought that it was the best I'd ever made. Here a a couple of different pictures.

Pain a l'ancienne

Pain a l'ancienne is an interesting and fun style of bread to make.  The recipe that I first learned, and the one I used here is from Peter Reinhardt's book The Breadbaker's Apprentice.  It's a different method for making bread with results in a loaf with a very different flavor, a sort of bright, sweet, nutty flavor.

The dough is a very wet one.  The general recipe is:

  2 1/2 cups cold water (i.e. ice water)

  2 tsp dry yeast

  6 cups flour

  2 1/2 tsp salt

The method I used was to soften the yeast in the water, then add all of the flour and salt to the bowl of the mixer.  I then mixed it on low speed for 30 seconds or so until the flour was all hydrated.  Then I mixed on medium speed (this is a stand-up Kitchen Aid mixer) using the dough hook for about two 

minutes.  In my case, the dough was so sticky that I added some more flour, on table spoon at a time, to encourage the dough to not stick too badly on the mixing bowl.  Still, this is a very wet dough, and it will stick at least on the bottom of the bowl.  You just want it to crawl at least somewhat up the dough hook.

You don't really want to knead it for long, the gluten is going to form in while it sits in the refrigerator overnight.  However, when the dough is this sticky, transferring it is lots of fun.  I used a silicon spatula that I wetted down with cold water to scrape it from the mixing bowl to my heavy rising bowl.  Here's what I looked like:

Looks like fun to work with, doesn't it?

Now you cover it with plastic wrap 

and put it into the fridge and leave it at least over night.  

The next day, I took it out (well Patty did) about four hours before I was going to be working with it.  That allows it to get up to room temperature and continue to rise.

  By the time I got home, it had more or less doubled in size and looked nice and bubbly, like this:

From here, I put a nice layer of flour on the countertop (like a half cup or more) and had the flour container standing by for refresh as need be.  I took my silicon spatula and wetted it again and used that to scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto the countertop.  More flour onto the top of it; you pretty much always need a

 layer of flour between your hands and the dough, because if you get into it you may never be able to separate yourself from it.

I used my dough scraper to cut it into two pieces, and rounded them each up into a ball, which I then let rest for a few minutes.  From there, I flattened one of the balls out into a rectangle, more or less 12x7 inches, always using enough flour to keep things from sticking to each other.  Then, I cut the rectangle into three strips using the dough scraper.  At this point, it comes time to shape the dough.  This is definitely my weak point with bread, and with this dough I'm not sure how much you can do anyway.  Bu

t what I tried to do here was to stretch the dough evenly  into three "baguettes" each about 14 inches long and 2 inches wide which I placed on a sheet of parchment that was set on a cookie sheet.  You can see from the picture, that even stretching didn't really happen for me...

 

At this point, I set the cookie sheet out and let the dough rise while I worked the other piece in the same manner. Now I heated the oven to 500° and let the dough rise for about 30 minutes while it gets nice and hot.  

The bread rises, but it also spreads a lot, kind of like a ciabatta dough.  I mist the oven well with a spray bottle of water and put the slip the parchment sheet right onto my baking stone, baking one group of three loaves at at time.   The baking time is on the order of 25-35 minutes, you just want to watch for the caramelization to appear.   Technically Reinhardt says to measure the internal temperature of the loaves at 205 before declaring them done.  I just look for something like this:

I know, the shape is goofy, but believe me the smell and the flavor make you forget all about that.  And perhaps with enough work, I can figure out this whole shaping thing.