Dave's To-Die-For, Sky-High Biscuits

We are rich with talented friends who also happen to be great home cooks. Bruce's pork vindaloo. Denise's Korean mandoo dumplings. Jeff's tarte tatin. Kathryn's shrimp and grits. Wendy's cakes. Dana's curried squash.

Here at home I have the good fortune to have a husband who smokes his own bacon, bakes six loaves of organic sourdough every two weeks and loves to make breakfast on the weekend, particularly if it involves baking up a batch of scones or biscuits to go with his Julia Child-worthy cheese omelets. (Did I mention he's also become quite the home bartender, whipping up cocktails at the drop of a hat?)

So when I stumble downstairs on Saturday morning and see him bustling around the kitchen with flour on his hands and the oven warming the house, I know by the time I get the dogs fed and finish my first cup of coffee he'll be pulling out a pan of his signature baked goods and setting them on the counter with butter and jam.

I know, how lucky am I?

Dave's To-Die-For, Sky-High Biscuits

2 1/4 c. (285g) all-purpose flour*
3/4 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1/3 c. (75g) very cold butter
1 c. milk

Preheat oven to 450°.

Place flour, salt, sugar and baking powder in food processor and pulse for a few seconds to combine.

Cut butter into small pieces and add to food processor. Pulse half a dozen times and check for the size of the butter pieces. Repeat if necessary until the butter is in pieces roughly the size of peas.

Put flour mixture in a mixing bowl and add the cold milk. Toss together gently until barely combined. As soon as the dough holds together, turn it out on a lightly floured counter. Gently "knead" the dough a few strokes until it is a mostly a cohesive ball. The fewer kneads the better.

Pat out the dough with your hands into a rectangle 1/2" to 3/4" inch thick, depending on how tall you like your biscuits. Cut into 2-inch circles (you should get approximately 6 to 8), and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet or sheet pan. Leftover dough can be gently combined and patted out again to make more biscuits.

Bake at 450° for 8 to 10 minutes until tops are lightly browned. Butter and eat while still warm, preferably with honey or a selection of homemade jams.

* Dave always weighs the flour and butter rather than measuring it in cups or measuring spoons.

Camp Stories: Brotherhood of the Travelin' Scones

It's no secret that the muse of Good Stuff NW and, frankly, much of the rest of my life, is my life's partner-in-crime, my husband of 35 years—almost 40 if you're counting from the time we began dating—the meat smoker, baker and cocktail-shaker who makes so many things so delicious around here. Early on we were avid backpackers, but our camping gear has ballooned to include glassware and a cast iron Dutch oven, to which was recently added a cast iron griddle so Dave can make even more incredible breakfasts over the campfire.

Heating the Dutch oven.

Baking has become a consuming passion for him, which means that every two weeks he's making six loaves of the most delicious sourdough bread from a starter he made himself—friends, feel free to chime in here with kudos—inspired by the amazing book by Chad Robertson, Tartine Bread. That means four loaves of white-with-a-pinch-of-wheat, and two loaves of whole wheat or whatever flour he's experimenting with (bags of barley and buckwheat have been seen lurking in the pantry lately).

Checking…

Whether it's a bread weekend or not, he's always got some additional baking he wants to do. And that includes weekends we're not even at home. No matter where we go now, from the forest to a beach house with a passle of friends, he brings along his flour, a dab of sourdough starter or some ingredient he needs to make bread or rolls or scones or pancakes or…you name it…whatever is possessing his attention at the moment. And, guaranteed, if he makes it, it will be good.

This is roughing it?

One of his go-to recipes at the moment is one for breakfast scones with currants or dried cranberries or whatever dried fruit hasn't been gobbled up in our family's constant foraging for snackage. Warm and fragrant, with a touch of sweetness that begs for a smear of honey or jam, that sunrise shape when it comes steaming out of the oven defines a perfect morning served with butter (or, in his case, a pat of margarine) and a hot, strong cup of coffee.

Currant Scones

3 c. (13 1/2 oz) whole wheat flour (or 2 c. all-purpose, 1 c. whole wheat)
5/8 oz. (20 g) cane sugar
3/4 oz (22 g) brown sugar
2 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter or margarine
1 c. milk
2 eggs
1/2 c. currants
Extra flour for forming dough

In a gallon zip-lock bag or other container, mix flour, both kinds of sugar, baking powder and salt. Bring along butter, milk, eggs and currants separately, along with parchment paper. If baking in a lidded Dutch oven (footed or one with a trivet/lid lifter), bring briquets and, if available, a laser thermometer. Good heavy welding gloves also come in handy for manipulating the hot cast iron. As a friend said, "Every project requires a tool budget."

To make the scones, put the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the butter or margarine in 1/4" slices. Cut in with a fork or pastry cutter until the mixture is the texture of cornmeal. Stir the currants into the mixture. In a separate bowl, whisk the milk and eggs together. Stir the liquid into the dry mixture and mix until all the flour is moistened. Turn out the mixture onto a floured surface. Knead until the dough is smooth, about 25 kneads—this is a bit more handling than with biscuits. Form the dough into a ball.

Place the ball on a piece of parchment paper,and flatten it with your hands to form a round disk about 10" in diameter. With a bench scraper or a knife slice into  into wedges (we usually make 12 from this recipe) but don’t separate the wedges.

For baking in an oven:
Preheat oven to 375°. Put parchment paper on a baking sheet or rimmed baking pan. Form disk and cut wedges. Place in oven and bake until golden brown, 22-24 minutes.

For baking in a Dutch oven using briquets:
In a chimney starter or in the campfire, place a pile of briquets using this guide to determine the number of briquets needed. On a cleared space on the ground near your campfire ring—make sure there are no flammables nearby and that no people or pets will stumble into the dutch oven—spread about one-third of the briquettes evenly below the Dutch oven and two-thirds on the lid. After 30 to 45 minutes of preheating, remove the lid and, using the laser thermometer, check the temperature of the bottom of the oven. It should be between 350-375°. If it isn't up to temperature, remove any briquets that have burned out and replace them with fresh ones. Once the oven is up to temperature, lift the parchment with the scones (see oven method, above) and place them in the oven and cover with the lid. Every 10 minutes or so, turn the top lid a quarter turn to the right and the oven itself a quarter turn to the left for more even baking. Baking time may vary from a home oven, but check it at about 20 minutes and gauge timing from there.

Big Holiday Barbecue Begs for Baked Beans

My husband, it can be stated without hesitation, is a guy who knows what he wants. For his birthday, which happens to fall on Memorial Day weekend this year, he was given the choice of what to do over the long weekend to celebrate his special day. No restrictions…anything he wants, I'll do my best to accomodate.

No "trip to Paris" crossed his lips, no "dinner at _________" restaurant. Without hesitation, he answered, "Brisket."

Dave's brisket.

You see, Dave is a guy who loves his smoke. The last brisket he made (left) used a method called the "Texas crutch" where the meat is first smoked for several hours, then wrapped in butcher paper and returned to the smoker. After a few more hours, it goes into a cooler to rest and break down any remaining collagen that has withstood the battering of heat, smoke and time. At the end of which emerged the most succulent, tender and delicious hunk of meat he'd ever made.

Ayers Creek Farm borlotto beans.

The pressure to come up with appropriate sides then lands on me. My fallback is always my mother's potato salad, a family favorite that pairs perfectly with smoky protein. I was struggling with what else would be appropriate when I remembered a baked bean dish I'd made a couple of years ago that had the slightest bite of vinegar, an Italian-inflected version based on a recipe from contributor Jim Dixon.

So the menu is set, and if you want updates I'll be posting photos of the results to my social media feeds (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). But if you're simply want to make the baked beans for yourself this weekend, you can find the instructions below.

Baked Beans Italian Style

2 c. dried beans (I'm using borlotti beans from Ayers Creek Farm)
Water
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 bay leaves
1/4 lb. bacon
1 large onion, chopped fine
1/2 c. honey
1/2 c. red wine vinegar
1/4 c. sage leaves, chopped fine

Put dried beans in a pot and add water to cover by at least 2”. Cover and soak overnight on the counter.

Preheat oven to 250°.

Drain water from beans and add fresh water to cover by 1”. Add bacon, bay leaves, salt and olive oil. Cover, place in oven and bake 5 to 7 hours until beans are tender (a slow cooker would work well, too).

One hour before the end of the cooking time for the beans, combine the onions, honey, vinegar and sage in a small saucepan and simmer for 1 hour. When beans are tender, add onion mixture to them and combine, then bake for an additional hour. Remove the bay leaves. Remove the piece of bacon and slice it into pieces or shred it, then stir it back into the beans. Taste for salt and adjust as desired. This is great served right out of the oven but is also spectacular made a day ahead for dinner or a picnic the next day.

* My last batch had quite a bit of liquid left after cooking, so I simmered it on the stovetop for several hours, uncovered, to evaporate the liquid, stirring it occasionally to keep the beans from sticking. It worked like a charm, and the liquid turned into a luscious, beany sauce.

Smoking the Perfect Brisket

Ask my husband what he'd like to grill for any given event and, barring Thanksgiving and Christmas when he smokes a whole turkey, there is only one answer.

His birthday? Brisket. Friends gathering for barbecue? Brisket. Anniversary dinner? Brisket. Our son's birthday (assuming we can get him to agree…)? Brisket.

Six hours in the smoker, many more to go.

There's something about that giant piece of meat that calls his name, that sings a siren song of smoke and meat and juicy perfection like no other. He's grilled and smoked dozens of them over the years, and they've all been deliciously satisfying. Smoke rings, that little red line just inside the surface of the slices that signals smoke-infused perfection? He's had them.

At 170°, ready to wrap.

But recently he read a recipe by Julia Moskin in the New York Times that piqued his brisket-loving soul. It called for a very simple crusting with peppercorns and salt, smoking the brisket for several hours—and here's the part that got him salivating—then it said to wrap the meat in unwaxed butcher paper and return it to the grill for another several hours.

Further research revealed that this method, called the "Texas crutch" by purists, allows the meat to cook in its own juices and better break down the collagen so that it melts into the meat. The brisket is then wrapped in foil and deposited in a closed ice chest to rest.

Wrapped, tied and going back in the smoker.

We happened to have friends coming for a Labor Day barbecue, so I called our new favorite meat source (and advertiser on this blog), Ben Meyer of Old Salt Marketplace, requesting a full brisket from Bill Hoyt's Hawley Ranch grass-fed cattle. A full brisket includes the flat, the meatier end of the cut, and the point or deckle, which has more fat. It also includes a thick cap of fat, which adds moisture when smoking or grilling for long periods.

The result? Smoky perfection, a big hunk of heaven that was meltingly tender yet still intact enough to slice and serve. And one that was crowned "Best Ever" by a very discerning group of carnivores.

Here's Dave's adaptation with his own step-by-step instructions.

Dave's Perfect Brisket
Loosely adapted from Julia Moskin's recipe in the New York Times.

I used an 18-inch Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, for which these instructions apply. The Times article tells how to do it on a kettle grill.

1 whole beef brisket, 10-12 pounds
1/2 c. black peppercorns
1/3 c. coarse kosher salt
Hardwood briquets
Several chunks of oak wood

The night before smoking:

• Grind the peppercorns very coarsely. Sift through a fine sieve to remove the fine pepper dust. Use only the coarse peppers. Mix the salt and pepper. Trim the brisket fat to 1/4 inch if necessary. Rub the salt and pepper mix on the brisket. Wrap in plastic and place in a baking sheet in refrigerator overnight.
• Put a half dozen small chunks of oak in a pan of water to soak overnight.
• Cover outside of smoker’s water pan with aluminum foil to make cleanup easier.
• Clean cooking grates.
• Fill the charcoal ring to an inch or so from the top with charcoal.

On smoking day, flip the charcoal chimney upside down. Put 20-15 briquets in the upended chimney. Place paper in the chimney below the charcoal and light it. When the coals are flaming and are covered with ash, spread the lit charcoal over the charcoal in the ring. Open the bottom vents all the way.

Assemble the rest of the smoker. Fill the water pan 2/3 full with hot tap water. Oil the top cooking grate. Remove the brisket from the refrigerator and place on the top cooking grate. I had to place it very carefully so that it would fit.

Place top dome on smoker. Open the top vent all the way. Close bottom vents to about 25 percent open. Put three chunks of the wet oak on the charcoal.

In a half hour check the temperature and adjust the bottom vents as necessary to keep the smoker temperature to 225-240. Add the remaining wet oak to the charcoal.

I checked the temperature about every hour or more frequently if necessary. The charcoal should smolder for hours without needing a refill.

I put the brisket on the smoker at 6 am.

At about 11 am the internal temperature was 175-180. I then wrapped the brisket in butcher paper, tying it with string, and put it back on the smoker.

After an hour I began poking it with my finger, testing to see if it was becoming more soft and jiggly as the fat, meat and collagen softened. At 3:30, 3 1/2 hours after wrapping the brisket and 9 1/2 hours after putting the brisket in the smoker, I pulled it from the smoker and wrapped it, paper and all, in aluminum foil. I then placed it into a cooler to await dinnertime. At 6 pm it was still hot.

Makin' Bacon? Easy Peasy!

People who deny the facts of evolution completely puzzle me. Even putting aside the fossil record, DNA evidence and untold hours of programming on public television (Have you pledged yet?) do these people ever look around them? Stuff is changing all the time, for heaven's sake.

Cured and ready to smoke.

And I'm not even talking about the famous example of the beaks of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands, where "an immigrant first settled on one of the islands [and] it would undoubtedly be exposed to different conditions in the different islands (where) it would have to compete with a different set of organisms. ... Then, natural selection would probably favor different varieties in the different islands."

You don't have to look any further than this blog, which in geologic time has only existed for a millionth of a nanosecond, but it has evolved from a simple food blog with restaurant reviews, farmers’ market reports and recipes to a forum for discussion of issues about our food system, from the fields to our plates. And the recipes have changed, too, as I've learned more and tweaked them to fit the way we're eating now.

In the smoker.

Take Dave's bacon recipe. On the recommendation of a friend, I bought him Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, considered the primer for those interested in learning about cured meat. In the five years since he cured and smoked his first pork belly, he's adjusted it to his own tastes, to the point where we have a hard time stooping to store-bought because even the most highly-touted examples simply don't measure up.

So if you're at all interested, it's incredibly easy. The only special equipment required is curing salt, large zip-lock plastic bags, a charcoal grill or smoker and a thermometer, then a week for the curing. Seriously, that's it.

Done.

And, of course, Dave's notes, which are here in his own words:

"The bacon recipe is based on the Michael Ruhlman recipe, with a couple of changes. I use half as much kosher salt as the recipe calls for—a quarter cup makes it way too salty. I use Diamond Crystal kosher salt (I understand that Morton’s is a bit different). I use a little more garlic than called for—8 to 10 cloves, maybe. I don’t think I’ve ever made it with the optional thyme. I have made it with the optional juniper berries once or twice, but most of the time not. I usually make 12 or 13 pounds at a time, so I double the recipe as I’ve altered it. I usually have two pieces of belly, each rubbed and placed into the big plastic bags in the fridge on a Saturday or Sunday for smoking the next weekend. I turn them once a day. I put it in my Weber Smokey Mountain smoker, on the grates over a water pan, at a low temperature—I try to keep it about 200-225 degrees—over Kingsford with four or five chunks of soaked maple or cherry wood (not too much or the bacon’ll be too smoky and bitter). I smoke it until it’s about 145 degrees internally, usually about three or four hours."

As this changes—and evolves—I'll keep you posted!

The Bread Baker's Bagels

Having conquered the art of making the perfect sourdough boule, Dave decided to get back to the first challenge he set himself: making the perfect baguette. He was sitting at the computer, grazing the various recipes on the internet, when a litany of "What? Sugar? Screw you!" and "Glaze? They put glaze their baguettes? Augh!"

(Just so you know, the words "screw" and "augh" should be replaced with a common four-letter invective for fornication.)

Boiling the bagels.

A similar stream of curses flowed when he was researching bagel recipes, especially those that called for milk to be added to the dough. Flour, water, salt and yeast—or sourdough starter—are, to him, pretty much all that is necessary for most breads. Time, too, is a key ingredient, and I'm constantly shuffling the contents of our refrigerator to make room for bowls of bread (or in this case, baking sheets of bagels) to sit overnight to develop their flavor.

The recipe below is written in his own inimitable style, with instructions and notes. It was his second attempt at making bagels, the first batch somewhat lacking in proper bagel texture and that perfect round shape. This effort was much more rewarding and will probably serve as the basis for future bagel-y goodness. I'll keep you posted on how his baguette efforts turn out.

Dave's Bagels
Adapted from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

The day before you're going to bake the bagels, make a sponge:
1 tsp. instant yeast.
18 oz. unbleached high-gluten or bread flour (I used King Arthur bread flour)
20 oz. water, room temperature

In a mixing bowl, stir the yeast into the flour. Add the water and stir until you have a smooth batter, kind of like a thick pancake batter.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let it rise for two or so hours at room temperature until it's almost doubled in size and is foamy and bubbly.

Move on to the dough:
1/2 tsp. instant yeast.
17 oz. unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
2-3/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. malt powder

Stir the yeast into the sponge. Add 13.5 ounces of the flour and all of the salt and malt. Stir until it forms a ball. Slowly add the rest of the flour to stiffen the dough. (Note that I initially put the mixture into the bowl of the stand mixer, but the dough was too stiff and was straining the mixer, so I dumped everything onto the unfloured counter and kneaded by hand.)

Knead for 10 minutes. This is very stiff dough. Reinhart says the dough "should feel satiny and pliable but not be tacky." I just kneaded until my hands got tired and I got bored, about 10 minutes. Divide the dough into 4-1/2 ounce pieces. Roll the pieces into balls. Reinhart has a process for this. Cover the balls and let them rest about 20 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment and mist lightly with oil.

After the rest, form the bagels using one of two methods:
(1) Roll each ball into an eight-inch rope, wrap the rope around the base of your fingers and press the ends together, or
(2) Poke a hole in the ball with your thumb and gradually stretch the hole to about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I used the second method. In either case, the bagel should be fairly uniform in thickness.

Put the shaped bagels 2 inches apart on the baking sheets, spray with a little oil, cover with plastic wrap and leave them at room temperature for about 20 minutes. After that time, drop one into a bowl of room-temperature water. If it floats within 10 seconds, it's ready to go into the refrigerator. If not, dry the test bagel off and put it back on the sheet and let the bagels rest for 10 minutes or so until one passes the float test. When a bagel passes the test, dry it off, put it back on the baking sheet and put the covered baking sheets into the refrigerator.

Baking:
1 Tbsp. baking soda
Cornmeal or semolina for dusting

The next day, heat the oven to 500 degrees and boil some water in a container wide enough to comfortably float three or four bagels at once. Add 1 tablespoon baking soda to the boiling water.

Remove the baking sheets from the refrigerator. Gently drop three or four bagels into the boiling water for 1 minute. Flip the bagels to boil on the other side for 1 minute. While you're boiling the bagels, dust the parchment-lined baking sheets with the cornmeal or semolina. When the bagels have boiled, remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on the dusted baking sheets.

This is what Reinhart instructs next:
Put the two baking sheets on two racks in the middle of the oven. Bake for five minutes. Swap each baking sheet to the other shelf. Rotate each baking sheet so what was in front is now in back. Lower the temperature to 450 and bake for another five minutes or until the bagels are light golden brown. Remove the bagels and cool them on a rack for 15 minutes before eating.

This method makes perfectly good bagels, but if you look at them from the side they are a little flat on the side that rested on the baking sheet.

That's why there's a bagel board (Thanks, Elisha!). There are lots of websites that talk about these, but basically, they consist of a flat surface covered with burlap on one side. The bagel board is wet. The bagels are placed on it and put into the oven for a brief time, then are flipped onto a baking tile to finish baking. This allows the top side of the bagel to expand when first put into the oven, while the bottom side remains moist from the wet burlap. When the bagel is flipped, the side that was on the bottom now can expand and become rounded.

I made three bagel boards out of Doug fir (websites call for cedar or pine), cut to 4 by 13 1/2 inches, just long enough to stick over the edge of the baking tile to make it easier to flip. I found some burlap at a local store and washed it--don't do this in a washing machine, because the stuff starts to fall apart. Also, some of the fibers seemed to stick to the bagel's surface. (Maybe there's special bagel burlap?) So I tacked a white cotton kitchen towel over the burlap, which seemed to work.

The baking process is a little different from Reinhart's:
Preheat the oven containing a baking tile to 500 degrees. Boil the bagels as above. Wet the bagel boards thoroughly.

Place the bagels on the bagel boards. Place the bagel boards on the tile in the oven, leaving space on one end of the tile that is the width of a bagel board to allow room for flipping. Bake for three minutes.

Flip the bagels from the first bagel board onto the tile and remove the bagel board. Flip the next board's bagels onto the space left by the first board, etc. until all the bagels are flipped and no bagel boards remain in the oven. Reduce the temperature to 450 degrees and bake another seven minutes or until the bagels are light golden brown.

Artisan Bread: Don't Put It Away

The advertising business has a maxim that goes something like, "If you want your message to get through, repeat it. Then repeat it again. And again. And again. [etc.]" It's why we remember classic slogans like "it's the real thing," "the un-cola" and "you deserve a break today."

A few years ago I bought a giant—and I mean at least 20 inches across—loaf of artisan bread from Pearl Bakery to take on a beach weekend with friends. As she handed it to me, the sales clerk said, "Don't wrap it in plastic or put it in the refrigerator. Leave it out on the counter even after you cut it open. The outside will get nice and crusty and the flavor of the bread will continue to improve."

We got to the beach and, when we'd used some of the bread with our crab Louies and it was time to clean up, I just couldn't do it. The bread was popped into a plastic bag and went into the fridge. It was fine, of course, but lost that crusty crunch of an artisan loaf.

Years later we were on a road trip to the Okanagan region of BC to check out its food and wine scene and ran across an artisan bakery called Walla in Penticton. We bought a loaf of artisan bread from owner Benjamin Manea, a Romanian-born Israeli, and as we left he said in a stern, heavily accented voice, "Before you buy, you need to know about this bread." He instructed us to never, ever put the bread in a plastic bag in the fridge, that when it’s cut open it needs to be stored cut edge down on the counter and that it would last for four days. As we were paying, he grumbled something about people not knowing how to take care of fresh bread.

When Dave started making his own sourdough bread we remembered Mr. Manea's instructions and started leaving the bread out on the counter, standing it up on its cut side after slicing what we needed. As the clerk at the bakery said years earlier, the outside gets a nice hard crust and the inside keeps its chewy, moist texture for several days—up to a week, though a loaf rarely lasts that long.

My brother, who regularly is given a loaf so his son can have toast for breakfast in the morning before heading off to school, leaves it on the counter as instructed. But if it happens to be a day when their housekeeper comes to clean, she wraps the bread in plastic and puts it in the fridge. I guess she just hasn't heard the message often enough yet.

The Bread of Life

I was raised in the Episcopal Church in the "mission diocese" of Eastern Oregon. Oddly, contrary to that region of the state's right-leaning politics, the diocese was quite liberal theologically, which meant it didn't have the "smells and bells" of incense and ringing of chimes to signal the progress of the service. Instead, in 1979 it was among the first dioceses in the nation to get (paperback) copies of the brand new Revised Book of Common Prayer, which translated the ancient cadences (and at times indecipherable language) of King James into American English.

That new version of the old book changed everything, from the iconic Lord's Prayer to the words said during Holy Communion when, instead of receiving wafers of pressed cardboard…I mean, um…flour and water, we got actual pieces of bread torn from loaves made by the women of the church.

Though I've left those religious beliefs behind, I still embrace the idea that whole foods, whether made at home or store-bought, nourish both body and soul. Which is why I was so thrilled when Dave started making bread here at home.

At first it was hit-or-miss as he tried one recipe after another, nothing really measuring up to the rustic, hard-crusted, flavorful loaves he wanted to produce. He tried the no-knead style, which was pretty good, and the technique of misting the oven during baking, which improved the crust but still wasn't hitting the mark. He even made his own sourdough starter from the yeast left at the bottom of a bottle of Hair of the Dog's Doggie Claws.

He went through a dozen kinds of flour, from bulk unbleached to whole wheat to packaged brands, and shapes from boules to baguettes. He cruised blogs and artisan bread web sites like The Fresh Loaf, searching for hints from other folks who were on the same quest. After more than a year of less-than-stellar results, he was getting a little frustrated.

Cast iron pans did the trick.

Then, one Christmas, our friends Kathryn and Jeff got him a book, Tartine Bread, by Chad Robertson of San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery. Like the revised prayer book from my youth, it became a game-changer. Following Robertson's suggestion, Dave invested in a cast iron "combo cooker," the bottom a deep pan and the top a shallow frying pan. By inverting it, he could plop the risen dough into the shallow section, score the loaf and cover it with the deeper pan, containing the moisture released by the bread during baking. Halfway through baking the top pan was removed and the loaf returned to the oven to finish baking.

His biggest fan.

The results that first time were so startling that Dave ordered another cast iron pan and hasn't looked back since. He continues to tinker with the dough, and every two weeks he spends a day making several loaves that are stored in the freezer until we need them. It's called "Uncle Dave's bread" by our 3-year-old nephew, who asks for it every time he comes over and who invariably goes home with a loaf. Talk about nourishing body and soul…for us that's what it's all about.

To Pit or Not To Pit

There are some things that simply shouldn't be messed with. Take, for instance, a recent article where some hot Euro chef was "deconstructing" tiramisu and making it with almond foam and fava beans or something equally ridiculous. Another flagrant example is the current craze that takes the classic recipe for a martini (gin, a hint of dry vermouth and ice) and uses some tarted-up infusion like mandarin blossom vodka that is then shaken with ice to create a "Mandarin Blossom Martini."

Forget that simply shaking alcohol and ice does not a cocktail make. Forget that using vodka and calling it a martini is simply wrong and, according to NYTimes spirits editor Eric Asimov, should properly be called a "vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing."

And one other thing. There seems to be a penchant developing for using whole olives, pits and all, at certain local establishments instead of the usual pitted olives. Now, I'm not a huge fan of pimento-stuffed olives in my martinis, since they are usually inferior quality olives and taste mostly of vinegar. And we do have a huge selection of very good quality olives to choose from in this town, with olive bars springing up not only in gourmet shops like City Market and upper-level supermarkets like Zupans, but in otherwise pedestrian places like Fred Meyer and Safeway.

But, please, whole olives are meant for eating by themselves. Sticking a skewer in them and plunking them in a cocktail is not only awkward to consume but defeats the purpose of the olive, which is to gently flavor the martini and, in return, to be flavored by the alcohol as it swims in the drink. A pitted olive, because it's hollow inside, can absorb the flavor of the martini and can easily be popped in the mouth with no half-chewed pit sitting unattractively on the table.

So, you bartenders out there, please resist the siren song of the au courant. Some things are best left unadulterated. And, for good measure, here's a recipe for a perfect martini for those who want to know.

* * * * * * * * * *

Dave's Perfect Martini
Makes 2 martinis

2 1/2 oz. gin (preferably Boodles, but any good gin will do)
Splash of dry vermouth (around a teaspoon)
Olives (your choice, but we're currently fond of anchovy-stuffed Spanish olives)

Fill shaker 3/4 full of ice. Add vermouth, then gin. Shake five to six seconds and pour into chilled martini glasses. Add olives on a pick. Serve.