Pop! Goes the Corn Muffin

A quick blast of heat gives these sweet treats craggy peaks.

Today my daughter’s kindergarten class is celebrating Thanksgiving with the requisite pilgrim/native American feast. 

Being the dutiful and somewhat over-enthusiastic mom that I am, I got up early this morning to bake off a couple of batches of corn mini muffins as our contribution.  (There’s nothing like a quick bread – which must be mixed and baked off in one fell swoop – to make you appreciate the more leisurely processes of yeast breads.  At least the latter lets you sleep.)

Corn bread is simple, with a straightforward mix and bake.  Still, being a fledgling baker, I have yet to have a baking experience that hasn’t taught me a lesson.  

The first batch of corn muffins baked
on the 350 degree stone

This morning, it was the lesson of the super hot baking stone.

For my first batch of mini muffins, I’d only just preheated the oven to 350 degrees before throwing the first pan into the oven.  Since I store the stone in the oven, I’d forgotten it was even IN there before I opened the door to put the muffins inside.

The first batch of muffins baked up fine, nothing wrong with them, but certainly nothing special either.   Maybe they were a little anemic in color and loft.  I didn’t think too much of it, but as I scooped out the batter for the second batch, something I’ve read came back to me.

The second batch of muffins, baked
on a 500 degree stone

I paused my scooping to crank up the oven as hot as it would go (500 degrees on mine) to get my baking stone super hot.  In all of my studying, this seemed to be key.  Get the stone super heated, then as soon as your bread goes into the oven, back the heat down to the prescribed baking temperature – in this case, 350 degrees for the muffins.

Wow - don’t you just love when an experiment pays off?

What a difference.  The quick blast of heat that the muffins received when the baking tin hit the hot stone was enough to pop them up sky high.  You can see in the pictures that they are practically climbing over themselves to reach out of the tin, cracking on the way up.  Not only were they proud and majestic, but the bottoms emerged from the tin beautifully toasted. 

Of course, the reward for early baking is starting the day with a fresh goodie.  I brewed a cuppa English Breakfast, slathered some tart strawberry jam onto a hot corn muffin, and sat down to wait for my little pilgrim to wake.

Love Gone Sour

When Lady Gaga wrote “Bad Romance,” it must have been in the throws of trying to make a sourdough starter – that delightful little piece of magic dough that gives loaves of sourdough bread their wonderfully tart taste.

After all, a starter flirts…it promises…it excites and enthralls…then it unexpectedly leaves you.  You remain: cruelly disappointed and wondering what you did wrong.

 

Yet even the brokenhearted ultimately try to love again.  

I like to think that the silver lining behind all of my false starts is that, every time I failed to get a little something going, I at least developed a clearer sense of what might work better next time.  Now, after months (MONTHS) of trial and error, I finally (FINALLY!) have viable starters going.  No matter which recipe you use (a Google search will yield dozens), here's what I found helped put the magic into my relationships with these little balls of dough...

The magic of diastatic malt powder:  obvious 
activity on day 3 of a developing starter

1. The steroid for starters:  diastatic malt powder.  For me, this was the solution for levains that never seemed to activate.  After reading about it in Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads, I ordered some online from King Arthur Flour and put a half teaspoon or so into new starters during the first phase Since then, the starters have clearly demonstrated the level of activity I expected, when I expected it. 
2. To cover or not to cover.  There seems to be two schools of thought here, but I found that leaving the starter on my countertop with a piece of plastic wrap lying loosely over the bowl worked best – by far.  Even once a completed mother starter was covered tightly to go into the fridge, venting it once after the first hour or two to release any carbon dioxide seemed to be important.  I imagine those poor, oxygen-starved yeast and bacteria suffocating in carbon dioxide.  I don’t know if that’s what happens, but that’s what I picture.
3.  Stir, stir, stir.  Literally – during each phase of development, stirring my mixture three times a day made a difference between a developing starter that demonstrated the activity I expected and something that seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder.

In the end, what each of these little tricks helped me solve for is my hideous lack of patience.  Maybe my past starters would have worked had I given them more time.  But I’m not a patient woman.  I need BIG, explosive signs that my love is appreciated and reciprocated.  I never was one to sit by the phone waiting for him to call me.  Clearly, nothing’s changed.

Harry Grabsch's Brioche

Here, at last, is the post I intended when I wound up with Trouble Comes in Threes. It’s a tribute to my grandfather and the bread he baked when I was a kid.

Opa, hubby Josh, me and Oma

Not too long after my parents’ divorce in the early 80s, my mother, brother and I returned from California to Virginia, where we moved in with my grandparents for a year while my mom prepared to provide for my brother and me.

What I tend to recall from that period isn’t the pain of a family splitting apart – though of course it was there – but the camaraderie and comfort of living with my grandparents afterward. We’d always been close, but that experience cemented our bond.

During that year, it was on very special weekends that my grandfather would hoist down the ceramic mixing bowl that he kept on top of the refrigerator. I imagine he kept it up there because it was the only place it would fit. Opa was a big man, and a big, thick bowl suited him. In my memory, it was about 18 inches in diameter and weighed 10 lbs before you put anything in it. (Who knows how big it really was.)

What he would mix up in that bowl – his massive frame leaning into it to stir and knead, glasses falling down onto the bridge of his nose – was some of the most wonderful bread I’ve ever had. All of the egg, butter, milk and honey in those brioche loaves gave them a fabulously decadent flavor, a beautiful pale yellow hue, and the smell…it was heaven.

When the loaves were done, Opa would slice off a piece and hold it out silently – a sacred offering. As you took it and ate it, he’d eat his own piece, never taking his eyes off of your reaction. He showed his love in his cooking, and he wanted to share that little moment of bliss with you

As a kid, bread that sweet and soft was an outright miracle. It was so good, that you pretty well knew that any other adult that happened by would take it away from you. I must have adopted some sort of protective stance, shielding the bread with my body, to prevent just such interference.

Opa's bread

More than twenty-five years later, I sit here with a loaf of Opa’s bread baking in the oven of my sunny California kitchen. (Yes, I made my way back over the years, this time in the company of my husband and young daughter). Opa won’t see this house, nor did he get to meet our daughter. But the aroma of his bread in the oven is enough to evoke his spirit for my daughter to experience.

If you’d like to try Opa’s bread, the recipe is below. It’s perfect for beginners and guaranteed to endear you to your family. It’s absolutely wonderful for breakfast, toasted, and spread with a little more butter or honey (or both).

Harry Grabsch’s Brioche
Makes two 12” loaves
2 packets (or 4.5 t) of active dry yeast
½ cup of lukewarm water
6 cups flour all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ lb (1 stick) of butter, melted
1 cup of milk (any kind – soy, whole, skim, rice - will work)
½ cup of honey
2 eggs, beaten

Dissolve the yeast in the water and let it sit for about five minutes until it “blooms.”

Meanwhile, mix together the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix the milk, melted butter, honey and eggs together and add that wet mix and the bloomed yeast to the flour mixture. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together for a few minutes in the bowl using a wooden spoon. Once the mixture has come together some, dump it out onto a well-floured surface and knead for five to ten minutes. It’s ready when the dough has smoothed out and begins to feel more elastic.

Put the kneaded dough into a buttered bowl. Opa used to cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough do its first rise on the counter over a couple of hours. I tried covering the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and placing it in the refrigerator over night. (To prevent the wrap from sticking to your dough as it rises, spray it with a little Pam before covering the bowl.)

Then next morning, remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it sit on the counter for 2-3 hours or until it comes to room temperature. Then, split the dough into two with a bench scraper. Knock down each piece of by gently pressing it out on the counter. (You want to give the yeast access to more sugars without removing all of the nice air that you’ve worked so hard to get into the loaf.) Shape the dough into loaves, and place it into two 12” buttered loaf pans.

Let the loaves rise again on the countertop covered with a towel until doubled in size. Be patient. These are heavy loaves and it will take a while, especially in the winter. Mine took over two hours. You’ll know their ready when a finger pressed lightly into the surface leaves an indentation.

Once they are doubled in size, you may opt to glaze your loaves with a little melted butter – this gives the crust a deeper warm brown tone once the loaf is baked and adds to the overall decadence.

When you’re almost ready to bake, preheat your oven well to 400 degrees. After you place your loaves in, turn the temperature back to 375 and let them bake for about 30 minutes.

When they are done, they will make a hollow sound when you thump the bottom of the loaf (yes, you should take it out of the pan before thumping). Again, be patient on the cooking time – you don’t want pale, anemic looking loaves – don’t be afraid of the rich caramel color the tops will develop. When they are done, remove the loaves from the oven and allow them to cool completely – if you can wait that long. I never can.