Sous Vide Polenta

Making polenta in a sous vide bag is easy, it just requires a bit of time and the occasional massaging of the mixture. It's a forgiving recipe: it won't overcook, it won't burn, and you don't have to hover over it with your Italian grandmother's wooden spoon.

While we've made polenta many times on the stove top, we've found it convenient to make a large batch using sous vide. You can use almost any liquid -- water, milk, stock; we used skim milk here because we wanted some flavor but not too much richness. The butter and rosemary are optional but tasty.

We made it recently with 900 g Milk, and it was a bit more dense than we'd like: it would set up well if cooled to make a slab to fry, but we wanted it a bit more loose as a base for wild mushrooms; we've increased the liquid here.

This makes enough for 12 as a side dish. It's also easy to transport in the bag: wrapped in a towel in a cooler it will retain the heat for a couple hours.

 200 g Corn meal, coarse
1000 g Milk, skim (or whole, or stock, or water)
  50 g Butter
  20 g Salt
   3 g Fresh Rosemary, minced fine

Combine everything in a sous vide bag and seal. Cook for 2 hours at 85C.  Once it starts setting up, massage the bag to break up lumps every 10-15 minutes; wrap in a towel -- it's hot.

Give it a final massage before serving to ensure it's smooth. Snip off a corner of the bag and squirt onto a serving platter.

Bagels à la Peter Reinhart

We make bagels with All Purpose and add Gluten to give strength, and
boil in an alkali water to give the crust sheen. This recipe is based on Peter Reinhart's in The Bread Baker's Apprentice; we've converted his cups and ounces to grams for easier and more reliable measuring.

The first time we made them, we used only All Purpose flour and the interior was too tender. Rather than buying Bread or High Gluten flour, we add Vital Wheat Gluten here to bring up the protein; we may need to tweak the amount over time.  If you have Bread or High Gluten Flour, use it, replacing both the regular flour and Gluten here. The dough will be quite dense and will give your stand mixer a workout -- my 325W Kitchenaid KSM5 struggled and smelled hot after the knead, and the bowl barely contained the dough.

We boil the bagels in an alkali water solution using sodium carbonate to give them the characteristic outer surface traditionally obtained with food grade lye. Harold McGee came up with the technique of baking the baking soda to create sodium carbonate: bake it for 1 hour at 135C/275F.  If you don't feel like doing that, just use regular baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

Sponge

  4 g  Instant Yeast
515 g  All Purpose Flour
 50 g  Vital Wheat Gluten
600 ml Water


Dough

  2 g  Instant Yeast
500 g  All Purpose Flour
 20 g  Salt
 10 g  Malt Powder (or 15 g Brown Sugar)

Finish

 35 g  Sodium Carbonate

Sponge: combine Yeast and Flours, add water, whisk until it becomes a smooth pancake-like batter. Cover and rise at room temperature, about 2 hours, until very foamy and bubbly; it should double in size and collapse if the bowl is tapped on a countertop.

Dough: Add to the sponge the additional Yeast, stir, then add the Flour, Salt and Malt. Mix with dough hook until it forms a ball. Knead 6 minutes by machine, or 10 minutes by hand. It should feel satiny and pliable but not tacky.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces, about 100 g each, and form into tight balls. Cover with damp towel and allow to rest 20 minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and mist with spray oil.

Shape bagels by poking a hole in the center of each roll and enlarging it to be about 6 cm. Place shaped pieces 5 cm apart on parchment pans.  Mist lightly with spray oil and cover loosely with cling film. Let sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Check to see if bagels are ready to be retarded using the "float test". Fill a bowl with cool water, place a test bagel in and it should float within 10 seconds. If it does not float, return to tray and try again every 10 minutes until it floats. 

Place in fridge, covered lightly with film and retard overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 250C/475F convection.

Bring large, wide pot of water (I used 1.5 L) to a boil and add the Sodium Carbonate or Baking Soda; do NOT use a Calphalon-style anodized pan, the Carbonate will destroy the anodization. Remove bagels from fridge and boil, starting presentation side (top) down first so after you flip them, you can place the bottom on the sheet plan. They should float within 10 seconds; boil each side for 1-2 minutes, more time gives a more chewy bagel.

Sprinkle the parchment with coarse cornmeal and place each boiled bagel back -- they will have puffed up. Top the bagels with salt, seeds, etc.

Bake 10 minutes until bagels turn light golden brown.

Knaakkebrod: Swedish Crisp Bread

I've tried this a number of times, with various results, some intensely flavored with good snap, but none with the laminated lightness you get from the commercial ones at Ikea. This is our latest attempt.

300 g Rye Flour
100 g All Purpose Flour
 10 g Instant Yeast
  4 g Salt
300 g Water (75% hydration)

In a stand mixer, whisk the dry ingredients then drizzle in the water. Knead 5 minutes: it will be loose and sticky.  Let it rise an hour, covered.

Divide into two 355 g blobs of dough. 

Place each blob on parchment, cover with cling film (it's sticky) and roll out as thin as you can. I first laid out masking tape on the counter to mark the size of my sheet pan, so I could ensure my dough would fit.

I use a rolling pin with 1-2 mm thick cross-section O-rings on the ends for spacing. I may look a bit dorky in the hardware store with a rolling pin, but this works perfectly (for pasta, too).

Dust with flour so your tools don't stick, then section with fluted cutter, and poke holes with fork (I made a little block of nails with my initials :-)

Bake at 200C/400F for about 15 minutes until crisp. Let cool and dry. Snap on the fluted scoring lines.