No-Knead Bread – With Sourdough Option.

This one is really easy, and the bread is as close to artisan as you can get.  A sourdough adaptation follows the recipe.

There are 3 books we recommend, Lahey’s“My Bread”,  Zoe Francois’ “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” , and Nancy Baggett’s “Kneadlessly SImple”. without going to all the trouble.

Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

No-Knead Bread
Yields one 1 1/2 pound loaf

Clay Coyote No-Knead Bread Bowl

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt (may take a hair more)
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky.  This can be done in the Clay Coyote No-Knead Bread baking bowl to save washing up an extra bowl.
Cover bowl with plastic wrap or put the lid on. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. If your thermostat cuts back at night, place on stovetop, set oven to minimal temp (probably 150-170) and place a dish towel over the covered bowl on the stove top (not in the oven).

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball..
Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal.
Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger. Clean up bowl, if used for rising, while bread rises under cloths

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put your Clay Coyote No-Knead Bread bowl with lid in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, use pot holders to carefully remove pot from oven and set on a cloth surface. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.

5. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

SOURDOUGH OPTION (added by Tom Wirt)
If you’ve got a true sourdough starter, instead of yeast, put a 1/2 cup of starter in initial batter. Then follow the rest of the directions. Be sure to give it the full 18 hours or more. You’ll get a tangy sourdough loaf.  (Do not use one of the friendship bread starters for this – they are not a true sourdough starter).

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery

Originally published Nov. 8^th, 2006 New York Times

Clay Coyote Vinegar Crock in Yellow Salt

The Virtue of Homemade Vinegar

“All you need is red wine, water, patience and a good mother.”

This article originally appeared in October, 2006 Food and Wine Magazine.  www.foodandwine.com

By Paula Wolfert – Used by permission

As I write this, I have six earthenware crocks of red wine vinegar in various stages of evolution tucked away in the dark corners of my kitchen. “Why go to all that trouble?” my friends ask. “Aren’t there plenty of good red wine vinegars on the market?” The answer is no. If there are any as good as the kind you can make yourself, I’ve yet to find them.

I’m not talking about real balsamic vinegar, or top-shelf sherry or Banyuls vinegars; great bottles of these are readily available. But when it comes to simple red wine vinegar, commercial manufacturers make it much too quickly and on the cheap.

So why is homemade vinegar so special? Its taste. It’s crisper, more subtle and better balanced than the acidic one-note versions you can buy, with a sparkling quality that enhances food. Used in a sauce or simply for deglazing a sauté pan, it coaxes out layers of flavor. Furthermore, homemade red wine vinegar creates superior salad dressings: I often marinate finely chopped shallots in it for 15 minutes, then add extra-virgin olive oil and salt and pepper for a superb vinaigrette.

Making vinegar is surprisingly easy. The most important component is patience, because good vinegar takes about two and a half months to develop. To begin, you’ll need an earthenware crock with a high-quality plastic or wood spigot, red wine, water and a live starter, often referred to as a mother. The chemical reaction that takes place between the mother and the wine produces vinegar.

A vinegar mother is a fascinating thing to behold. It can be a smooth, gelatinous disk or a leathery veil that ends up sitting atop the liquid inside the crock undisturbed while it does its work. Eventually, the mother layer becomes quite heavy and sinks to the bottom, and another layer takes its place on top. After many batches, the bottom layers stack up, creating an expired blob of useless mothers that needs to be removed.

Basically, there are two ways to go about finding a good mother: get one from a friend who makes vinegar or purchase one from an outfit that sells wine- and beer-making supplies. I got my first mother from Abra Bennett, a professional cook and food writer from Bainbridge Island in Washington State whom I met on my favorite food Web site, eGullet. She sent me a mother with a 40-year pedigree. It came in a jar, a dark-red blob suspended in liquid. Abra also gave me lots of good advice. Her most important pointer was to use the same fruity red wine for my vinegar that I like to drink.

I also bought a mother from my vinegar guru, Mark Larrow, the owner of Beer and Winemaking Supplies in Northampton, Massachusetts (beer-winemaking.com). I was surprised by its look—clear vermillion-colored liquid in a jar. No blob in sight. I followed the instructions on the jar and the mother came to life, just like Abra’s.

As you can see from the method detailed below, once you get yourself set up with a crock and a mother, there is nothing complicated about making vinegar. You’ll be amply rewarded for your patience, whether you bottle the vinegar to give as gifts, use it simply in vinaigrettes or use it in more ambitious dishes, like my take on the earthy, luscious French classic poulet au vinaigre that follows.

This article originally appeared in October, 2006 Food and Wine Magazine.  www.foodandwine.com

Making & Using Red Wine Vinegar

By Paula Wolfert (From Food and Wine Magazine October 2006)

1. Buy a 1-gallon earthenware crock with a top-quality wood or plastic spigot. Add water to the crock to check for leaks; drain the crock.

2. Buy an 8-ounce bottle of commercial mother from a wine- and beer-making supply shop (or get it from a friend).

(Coyote Note:  We recommend Mark Larrow at www.beer-winemaking.com or your neighborhood beer and wine making supply house)

3. Add 2 cups of good red wine and 1 cup of filtered water to the crock (or enough to at least cover the spigot), then add the mother. Cover the crock with a double layer of cheesecloth and fasten with a rubber band (or just use the lid with the hole in it).

4. Set the crock in a warm (70° to 90°), dark spot and let stand for 1 1/2 weeks.

5. Add red wine to the crock in three 2 1/2-cup installments over the next 1 1/2 weeks; the crock should then be two-thirds full. Once a thin veil has formed on the surface, add the wine through the tube of the bulb baster tucked under the edge of the veil. Let the crock stand for a total of 10 weeks. Check periodically: If your vinegar ever begins to smell like furniture polish, discard it, wash the crock and start over.

6. Bottle the vinegar when it smells sharp and crisp: Strain it into sterile bottles through a plastic funnel lines with a paper coffee filter. (If you plan to start the process over, leave 2 cups vinegar in the crock and just add wine and water.) The vinegar will mellow in the bottle and improve with age, but if you plan to keep it more than 4 months, pasteurize it: Heat the vinegar to 155° in a stainless steel saucepan and hold it there for 30 minutes. Store the vinegar in sterilized, well-sealed bottles in a cool, dry place. Use homemade vinegar for dressings and sauces and as a seasoning; never use it for pickling

YOUR CLAY COYOTE VINEGAR CROCK

By Tom Wirt, Clay Coyote Pottery

Thank you for buying a vinegar crock from Clay Coyote.  Paula Wolfert first put us on to the idea of home-brewed wine vinegars when she was preparing her article for the October 2006 Food and Wine Magazine issue.    The basic design of the crock shape has changed as we go, so your crock may differ from the web photos.  Mostly the changes are to make the crock work better or to keep the potter from getting bored.

The second lid, with the hole in the center, is to hold down a piece of cheesecloth.  Vinegar needs air for the mother to produce new vinegar.  6 to 8  thicknesses should help keep fruit flies at bay, yet allow air circulation.  It also allows easy removal of the cheesecloth to add wine.  As you add additional wine, pour it in gently on top of the mother that has formed.  You can use a spoon, turkey baster or bit of clear plastic tube to do this, to avoid disturbing the mother.  A new mother will form on top of the added wine.

The regular lid is so that, if for some reason or use (like lemonade) you need a more tightly fitting lid, you’ve got it.

At some point you should look on the web for articles on brewing home vinegar.  Just search for homemade vinegar.  one great one is www.vinegarman.com.

Cooking in clay pots results in better tasting food.  But traditionally, stoneware pots could only be used in the oven.  When Paula Wolfert started working on her book “Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking” she was looking for a US potter to make stoneware that would also go on a direct flame stovetop.  She put us in touch with Bill Sax who was extremely generous with his knowledge and experience with this type of ware.

We’ve worked well over 2 years now developing, perfecting and testing a stoneware based, ceramic stovetop cookware that will take a direct flame.  In doing this, we’ve learned a lot about how to best use this somewhat new type of skillets, pans, casseroles and specialty cookware.

It’s fairly well established, if not scientifically, that food tastes better when cooked in clay.  Actually, way back when,  the concept of cooking foods and combining ingredients, was essentially made possible by the discovery of clay as a material from which to make cookware.

Today there is a lot of cookware available made from lower fired earthenware based pottery.  Some of it is capable of  use on a stovetop.  Much of this is imported to the US from Mediterranean countries, Japan, Mexico and China.

What I’m talking about in this post is a relatively new (25 or so years) type of clay similar to stoneware, but formulated to withstand the thermal shock of use on a direct flame without any flame spreader or other protection.  So here we go:

The biggest single thing that makes flameware different is that it is an insulator compared to any other cooking utensils.  Glass is the  only thing close.  This insulating attribute is what separates it from other cookware and what requires some different handling and procedures.

WHEN HEAT IS PUT IN…It goes all the way through.  With a metal pan, you typically turn the flame up to get the pan hot, then turn it down for cooking.  The pan loses heat almost immediately.  With flameware, you go directly to the cooking temperature.  If you turn the flame high to start with, that heat will go “thru” the pot and probably burn the food.

TURN HEAT DOWN OR OFF EARLY…the heat capacity of ceramic pots means they hold heat for several minutes.  If you need to reduce heat, do so a couple of minutes early.  If you are turning the heat off, do so before the dish is done, or remove it from the pan.

HANDLES WON”T GET HOT…unless you put flame directly on them or put the pot in the oven.

NO NEED TO PRE-TREAT  or SEASON FLAMEWARE POTS…With most earthenware pots (especially unglazed)  pre-treatment is needed, either to prepare for cooking (typically soaking) or before cooking (seasoning).  A little oil for cooking is all that’s needed.

FLAMEWARE WORKS ON ALL TYPES OF STOVES…gas, conventional electric burner, glass top (both coil and halogen) and all ovens.  To use it on an induction stove, you will need a metal induction heat source.  You will NOT need a flame spreader or diffuser on any of these although you certainly can use one.

The reason for using a diffuser is that, being an insulator, the heat comes through the flameware in a more localized pattern and can, if the food isn’t stirred regularly, burn the dish.

CLEAN UP IS EASY…soak in water for a while and most food will scrub away.  It’s not quite non-stick, but it is easy clean.  If you burn something on, we’ve found the easiest clean-up is a spray with E-Z Off oven cleaner, let it sit a half hour and wipe clean.  You can use any green scrubby, Brillo pad or scouring pad.  Dishwasher cleaning is fine.

GO FROM STOVE TO OVEN TO TABLE…no need to dirty an extra pan to combine sauteed ingredients with sauces, vegetables and meats.  Do it all in one!  Saute first, add other ingredients, liquids and cover and cook on the stovetop (ala a tagine) or slip into the oven to finish cooking.

Once you get used to cooking with flameware, you’ll find yourself reaching for it more and more.

In her fabulous new book “Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking“, Paula Wolfert  provides some excellent guidance on the use of clay pots for cooking of both the wonderful Mediterranean recipes she provides, and the ability to adapt use of these pots to modern cooking.

First and foremost, there are basically two types of clay pots used, earthenware based and stoneware based, determined by the clay bodies from which they’re made.

The more traditional type of pot is from clays dug in a relatively few areas of the world.  These are considered earthenware based clays as they are generally fired to about 1950 degF (although in many cases much lower), but contain naturally combined mica and/or other ingredients which gives them the strength to withstand being heated over a gentle direct flame.  The clay remains slightly or very porous and oftentimes is unglazed.  If the interior is glazed, it is to make the pot waterproof from the inside.  Always be gentle with these pots as they were originally intended for use over charcoal fires.  A flame diffuser is generally advised on direct flames.

Clay Coyote Flameware Skillet

The second type of  pottery which will withstand direct heat is more recently developed and is called ‘Flameware”. It is a combination of clays, silica, and a lithium ore (spodumene is usually used).  It is high-fired (at least 2387 degF) and often higher.  At these temperatures, the lithium undergoes a one-way expansion which later prevents the pot from undergoing the normal, silica-based expansion and contraction when a pot is heated and cooled.

Potters don’t use these flameware clay bodies for general stoneware work, since the spodumene dramatically affects the glaze color.  Also, because the clay doesn’t have normal expansion, regular stoneware glazes can’t be used.  These clay bodies are also more difficult to work with, becoming very soft in firing and requiring separate steps to ensure there aren’t hidden cracks.  Because of all this, very few individual potters are willing to go through the development and testing of flameware pots.  There are a few manufacturers such as Nigella Lawson and Emile Henri who have also done this successfully.

Regular stoneware pottery such as bowls and baking dishes will take oven heating because the heat surrounds the whole pot, causing it to expand all at one time.  These stoneware pots will not take direct flame since that flame is heating only part of the pot, which tries to expand against the unheated part.  Only flameware will take the direct stovetop heat.

Clay Coyote Cazuela

In Flameware ceramic stovetop pots, the clay doesn’t expand nearly as much as stoneware, so it will take direct flame, electric or glasstop stove heat.  These pots are especially useful since they can go from stovetop to oven to table with no risk of damage.

I have seen online posts showing flameware melting aluminum, being quenched from high temps.  These are all things any true flameware pot will do with ease.

Be sure any flameware pot you buy is fully guaranteed.  If you have any questions, please add them as a comment and I’ll tell you what we know.  Coming posts will talk about using these new flameware ceramic stovetop pots.

The question of using a flame spreader or diffuser comes up continually.  First, since ceramic of any kind is an insulator, heat comes through where it’s applied, it doesn’t mover through the pot.  Ceramic stovetops spread it the best, then gas and finally electric, where there is little spreading.  So, if you keep the food moving, you won’t need a spreader.  For gentle simmering over any heat source (where clay pots really shine) you probably won’t need one, but it doesn’t hurt to have one.  A diffuser is a good idea over electric stovetops.