Just A Slice Of The Pie: Politics And American Economics At My Table

How do you eat the crust?  I'm pretty sure this might be the next great statistical metric for analyzing such things as personality, social behavior, crime rates, and balancing the national budget.  As I sit at the table, I grow more convinced of the merits of a good pie crust.  Portioned out evenly and democratically, each one of my children are handed plates of steamy chicken pie topped with a buttery, flaky shortcrust. They are united in their appreciation for this family favorite dish.  They all want a piece of the pie, so to speak.  But how they consume the precious band of crispy pinched-edge shortcrust is where the party ideology begins to divide.

If it falls on a bell-curve, I'd say my rational, and moderately disciplined daughter (who is our eldest, at 8 years old) would fall on the thinner outsides of this curve.  I dare-say the majority of people would not be represented with her disciplined, sensible approach of portioning out bites of crust to evenly accompany the meat, vegetables and gravy.  Her consumption of the crust is predictable, fair, consistent, without risk, and...well...maybe a little boring (if you were to ask the risk-takers at the table, that is).  She would, however, make the likes of her pension-dependent grandmother, and financial guru Dave Ramsey very proud.  But let's be honest, most of us want to enjoy the fat and starch of the world with a little excitement and spontaneity.  And so the crispy crust burden grows.

In the greater population of this bell-curve you find my three boys.  The older of the three will grab his crust with his fist the instant the plate is before him, and shove the whole thing in his mouth.  He will smile at the party within; that is until it's gone.  At this point he commences with a depression that will last until his last bite of party-less filling is gone, or it is time for bed.  Whichever comes first. He often wonders why he can't have a whole plate of crust, minus the filling.  And secretly, I think, he might wonder why the crust on someone else's plate can't be donated to his cause.  The large, sentimental eyes inside his wiry frame are persuasive.

Yet sitting next to him is the opposition.  The calculating, fun-loving third child will muscle through the nutritious filling, storing up his reward for the end.  He savors the large piece of crust, appearing even greater as it is unrivaled on his plate.  We want to pat him on his back for his delay of gratification and self-control. This approach causes no drain on natural resources, provided there is no catastrophe before he reaches the end, which, as it turns out, is more common than one might imagine.

But the reality is, in this diverse community of multiple ideologies, heated debates sometimes occur.  It's hard to imagine, while staring at a dish of perfectly tender flaky crust, that someone might choose to consume it in a way other than the one held by each member. The noise is often distracting.  Which, as you can imagine, is how the fourth child has the opportunity to shimmy out of his safety strap, climb onto the arm-rails of his high-chair, and reach halfway across the table to capitalize on the federal reserves of crust in the casserole dish.  Sometimes, like a street bandit, he even manages to swipe a piece from someones plate.  Thus begins the deficit problem.  "Supply and demand," my 10th grade economics teacher would say, "It's all about supply and demand."

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients:
1 recipe for Classic Pie Crust
1 1/2 lb boneless chicken tenders
Canola oil
Salt & Pepper
1 cube of Rapunzel vegetable bouillon with sea salt & herbs
3 cups water
2 tbs corn starch
Splash of dry white wine
1-2 Tbs herbs de provence
About 1 cup each (diced small...about 1/4 inch):
  Carrots
  Potatoes
  Celery
  Onion

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare the pie crust and refrigerate (wrapped in plastic) until ready to roll out. Dice vegetables and combine with the herbs de provence.  Place in a large casserole dish.  Set aside. Pat the chicken dry with paper towel, then season with salt and pepper.  Heat some oil in the bottom of a large skillet and cook the chicken until it is browned and crispy around the edges.  Remove from the pan and dice.  Place on top of the vegetables in the casserole dish.  In the skillet, place the vegetable bouillon, three cups of water and wine.  Let simmer, stirring until the bouillon is dissolved.  In a jug, mix the corn starch with a little water and pour it into the skillet, stirring constantly with a whisk until the broth has thickened.   Pour onto the meat and vegetables.  Roll out the pastry and cover the casserole dish, rolling the extra inward, so the edge of the crust sits inside the dish.  Crimp the edges and poke several holes into the top with a fork.  Bake for one hour, or until the crust begins to brown and the filling is bubbly and tender.  Let rest for 15 minutes before serving.

Sour Dough Stone-Ground Beer Bread

The breakthrough in my efforts to learn how to bake sourdough bread came with a perfect storm, so to speak.  There was actually a storm front moving in, but it was warm and sunny last Saturday. This apparently made my sourdough starter really happy, and it doubled, bubbled and foamed right out of the bowl.  I suppose that was all the encouragement I needed to start experimenting. I also had half a growler of flat ale in the fridge that didn't get consumed in the traditional way, and I couldn't bear throwing it out.  So I wondered if magic could be made if I combined flat beer and sourdough starter...if maybe there would be a fermentation party with gifts of fluffy, tasty loaves of bread.  I googled.  Sure enough, this sort of thing had been tried before.  I found a simple dairy & egg free recipe, but it called for 1/2 cup of sugar.  I substituted 1/4 cup of honey (thinking I didn't really want cake, but rather something nice to toast), and I also added 1/4 cup of canola oil to the recipe that had no added fat.  It was pretty good, but still a little too sweet for me.  The texture was perfect though.  It rose beautifully, was not too chewy, and had a nice, soft crunch when toasted.  In my next try with this recipe, I used black strap molasses instead of honey and added 1 tsp of salt.  It was positively perfect.  That's the one I'm sharing below.

Other notes I have are about flour and beer.  I used Highland Gaelic Ale for this recipe, but I think it would be exceptionally good with a tasty porter or stout.  If I can manage to not drink all of the Chocolate Stout from the local brewery. I might try that one next.  As for flour, I have 6 kinds of wheat flour in my house at the moment.  I have not experimented baking this recipe with all of them, but I do think half of what is good about this bread is the locally grown and milled Stone Ground Whole Wheat from a local farm. Freshly milled flour has a distinctive advantage in baking, as it still has the natural oils present and the texture and flavor is more complex.  It does, however, have less gluten, so it's necessary to combine it with a white bread flour or straight vital wheat gluten if you want the loaf to hold together.

So here it is...my first successful sourdough bread recipe:

Ingredients:
1-2 cups sourdough starter (proofed, doubled and bubbly)
3 cups stone ground whole wheat flour (Sonrisa Farm Flour, if you are shopping locally)
2 cups unbleached, un-bromated white bread flour, plus extra for dusting the board while kneading
2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup black strap molasses
About 2 cups of flat brown ale, porter or stout

Method:
The day before you want your fresh loaf of bread, wake-up your starter by feeding it some flour and water and leaving it on your kitchen counter (covered) for at least 8 hours, but preferably 12.  Then before you go to bed, prepare the bread dough for the first rise.  (Of course, if you are a night owl or like to bake at 3am, I suppose you could alter this schedule to suit your needs.)

Mix together the flours and salt in a large mixing bowl.  Add the canola oil, molasses and 1-2 cups of sour dough starter.  Gently begin to mix everything together with your hands or a wooden spoon while slowly adding 1 1/2 cups of the ale.  When all of the flour has been folded into the dough, you can begin kneading. The dough will be heavy and somewhat dense, but if it feels dry and cracks you can kneed in a little more ale until the dough feels flexible but not sticky.

Kneading a bread dough seems to be a matter of preference.  I won't tell you how to knead your dough, because I've seen people make the same kinds of bread with completely different techniques.  I don't know much, but it seems to me that if you stretch and press in your favorite way, and do that until the dough feels fairly elastic, it's going to turn out just fine.  It takes me about 5-10 minutes of kneading to get this dough to a fairly even texture.  I form it into a neat ball.  Oil a large glass or ceramic bowl and place the ball of dough in the bowl, then flip it so that both sides have a coating of oil.  Cover lightly with plastic and leave overnight.

The next day, when you wake up, the dough should be doubled in size, but leave it longer if it needs to grow a bit more.  Oil two loaf pans with canola oil. Punch the dough down, divide it, and knead each loaf for about 5 minutes.  Form each into an oval and place in the loaf pans for the second rise.  Make cuts in the top of the loaves with a sharp knife and spray or brush the tops with oil.

Cover loosely with plastic and set in a draft-free part of your kitchen to rise.  This may take 2-3 hours, but the dough should rise about 1/2 inch above the tops of your loaf pans when it's ready to bake.  If you are using glass pans, you will also see larger bubbles forming in the dough.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
When the loaves are finished rising, remove the plastic and place in the center of the preheated oven.  Set your timer for 40 minutes.  Adjust time as needed, but the bread is ready when they are golden brown on top and have a hollow sound when tapped.  Remove from pans immediately and place on a cooling rack.  Slice when the loaves have completely cooled.