Last night, after a delicious mushroom risotto, Mr. Stephenson and myself decided that it was time for some bacon. Our wives chose ice cream for desert instead, but we fired up a small cast iron pan and started frying. The bacon was from the first trial run of the cold smoker, and whilst slightly over-smoked it’s still miles better than anything you can hope to buy in a supermarket.
That’s of course partly to do with the pork we’re using, humanely raised, no hormones, no antibiotics, but also do to the time and effort we put into the curing and smoking. The sweet spot for a cold smoke seems to be about a day and a half, down from the three days I smoked the first batch for. That way you’ll end up with a bacon that’s wonderfully smoky, but without overpowering the spices from the cure.
We fried our bacon with sprigs of rosemary and ate it on walnut bread with some wild fermented pickles, with the bread soaking up the fat.
Whilst we’re on the subject of fat, if the picture makes you worried about your health, let me reassure you. Between the two of us we ate really very little meat. Because bacon is so full of flavour, a little does go a very long way. In addition, bacon fat, if you start with a healthy pig, is actually very good for you. Bacon fat is about 65% polyunsaturated, with only about 11% saturated fat contained in it. It is also rich in vitamin a and e, so while you should not eat a pound a day, the occasional slice of bacon, or three, should actually be beneficial to your health.
This is the video companion to the second part of our posting on Makin’ Bacon - Makin’ Bacon – Part 2. The Big Smoke.
As food-wunder-geek Alton Brown said, “Until you’ve made your own bacon, you haven’t eaten bacon”. So kick back, light up a nice blow torch (don’t ask…just watch), and check out the movie for the second part of our Makin’ BAcon tutorial.
To follow the story, you can also check out:
Makin’ Bacon Part 1 – doing the cure
Makin’ Bacon Part 1 – The Movie
Stay tuned for segments on hot smoking, and a review/tutorial on “The Smokinator 1000″ which turns the fabulously modest and flexible Weber kettle grill into an unbelievably effective smoker for less that $100. We’re certain that you’ll love it as we do.
After some toiling, we here at Stephenson and Duess are pleased to bring you our first full video tutorial. This is the video compliment to the “Makin’ Bacon” posting from last week and its about…well…making bacon. We’re quite excited to be bringing you videos here and we’re working towards making these tutorials a regular feature.
So Without further ado, lower the lights, kick back and enjoy “makin’ bacon”. Don’t forget to pick up a dozen Stephenson and Duess pork nipples for a snack (don’t ask…just watch). For the recipes, please see the original posting.
Mr. Stephenson is a huge fan of Red Fife, an old Canadian wheat that has recently been experiencing a bit of a renaissance, and rightly so. As I was out of rye flour, I decided to try and adjust my standard rye sourdough to Red Fife – Mr. Stephenson made a light but intensely flavoured Fife yeast loaf some weeks ago, so this should be a an interesting experiment.
Recipe: Red Fife Sourdough
Summary: A tangy wheat bread, made with Red Fife
Ingredients
- 300 g Red Fife flour
- 200 g hard bread flour
- 15 g smoked salt
- 200 g active sourdough starter
- 350 ml (plus) water
Instructions
-
Day One
Take the sourdough starter out of the fridge. Feed generously
Day Two, morning
Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the starter and stir in. Start kneading, I use a kneading hook and a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, on speed 2. Add the water, adjust until a shiny dough has started to form.
Go have a shower, get dressed, feed the cats. Come back after 10 minutes and check the dough. If you can see gluten development – take a little dough and stretch it – you’re done for now. Take the dough and put it in an oiled bowl. Cover, refrigerate, go to work.
Day Two, Evening
Arrive home, open a beer. Relax. Take the dough out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature, about two hours. It should have grown a little, but don’t worry if it doesn’t look as if anything has happened.
After two hours, pre-heat the oven to 500º. Take the dough and stretch and fold three or four times. Put into a floured banneton for the last rise. After an hour, drop the dough into an earthenware cloche or on a pizza stone and bake for 40 – 45 minutes or until the bread has an internal temperature of 200º.
Prep time (duration): 30 minutes
As you can see, it worked out reasonably well. I didn’t score the dough deep enough before putting it in the oven, so the oven spring forced one side further open than the others, but the loaf tastes great and at the end of the day that’s what matters. The entire rise was done by wild yeasts, with no commercial product added.
I shot a couple of snippets with the iPhone video camera. Mr. Stephenson, who is a professional in these matters, is working on a far better looking solution but until that arrives this will have to do. It should give at least an idea of what the bread looks like at various stages through it’s creation.
PS: A note about salt, and smoked salt in particular.
Salt and smoke are the enemy of microorganisms, like yeast; that’s why we use them both to preserve meat and fish. By combining salt and smoke we’re making the yeast’s life double difficult. Salt is a necessity in bread, it makes the bread, but too much salt will kill our yeast. Smoked salt adds another layer of flavour, but you’ll have to be careful not to overdo it.
I mix smoked and plain salt in a 2:1 ratio. For 500 g flour (plus whatever starter weight I am using) I use 15 g salt, 10 g smoked, 5 g plain. That sounds like a lot, but the yeast seems to survive it and the flavour is excellent.
