Paris. Vinegar. Focaccia. Bitters.
I didn’t publish anything last weekend because I was in Paris for a couple of days seeing a friend. I was hoping to have some food-related content to pull together on the train home but, other than a delicious bistro dinner at La Manufacture, there wasn’t a great deal of action on that front. I thought we might be able to grab lunch at the famous L'As du Fallafel or pick up a pastrami sandwich from Florence Kahn (a wonderful Yiddish bakery just around the corner) but our gallery-hopping schedule took us in the opposite direction. Instead, we ended up in a slightly chaotic diner close to the Centre Pompidou where we ate some lukewarm gyoza and a so-so tonkotsu ramen.
The hotel breakfast the following morning filled a hole but left much to be desired. To compensate, my friend shared a story about the best breakfast she ever had at the Scandic hotel in Bergen, Norway. It had won best breakfast for a few years on the trot. I googled images of said breakfast buffet whilst I forked my anemic scambled egg. For the journey home, I panicked and purchased a sandwich and two bottles of water from Pret.
So, I was thinking about what to write about instead and decided on combining a few smaller pieces.
Vinegar update
After three weeks of daily shakes (to reduce mould forming) and a whole lot of patience, the apple cider vinegar I wrote about at the beginning of this month is nearly ready. The pieces of apple eventually sank to the bottom of the jar and any sign of bubbling activity was absent. The smell developed from sweet, over-ripe apple to the more familiar sharp smell you associate with vinegar. It’s still a mild smell but after a bit of googling, I read that this was ok.
I strained the apple pieces with some muslin cloth and decanted the liquid into new sterile bottles. I need to keep the lid off for a couple of weeks to allow the vinegar to develop further. I added orange zest to one of the jars to see how the flavour developed and how it compares to the orange-infused vinegar I made from shop-bought cider vinegar (mentioned in the same article linked above). I’m trying hard not to tinker with the other two bottles. I’ll see how they mature first.
Three-day focaccia by Kitchen Projects
I’ve been back on the baking wagon after finding a fantastic three-day focaccia recipe and method by Kitchen Projects. I made my first focaccia at an Italian cookery class years ago when I lived in Bristol. I’ve been making it ever since with varying degrees of success. I guess a lot of folks had their sourdough phase during lockdown. I had a focaccia phase. First, there was my hydration phase where I became obsessed with developing a dough with larger quantities of water to aid elasticity. Then there was the self-starter (or poolish) phase and then the phase where I experimented with longer periods of proving in the fridge. The problem is that I never actually document whether these changes have been a success or failure…
The article linked above is fantastic and I’d recommend it to anyone in search of a solid focaccia recipe or to better understand the science behind the process. I spotted that I’d been going wrong in couple of areas. Adding the salt too early for example, and not fully understanding the role of yeast.
Here in France, I’ve been using fresh yeast as it's readily available in the supermarkets unlike in the UK where I have found that it’s harder to come by. Fresh yeast is also great for doughs that require a long, slow proving time as it stays active for longer than dried yeast. So, ideal for this three-day focaccia.
I’ve been getting my head around the different types of flour here in France, too. My go-to equivalent of strong white bread flour has been out of stock at our local supermarket for a few weeks now. Instead, I’ve been buying ‘T65’ which, according to the internet, is one of the flour varieties higher in protein. If you want to get your head around the Ts and the numbers, protein and ash percentages, here’s a useful article.
Orange bitters
My first jar of orange bitters was very popular with my other half, so I ended up making a second batch this week. My favourite part of the recipe is oven-drying the orange zest at a low temperature. It fills the kitchen with warm wafts of orange aroma. I first saw Mark Diacono’s Seville orange bitters recipe here on Substack. In the batch that I made earlier this week, I added a clove and star anise, after looking into other variations of the recipe. You may have noticed that Orange has been a theme in recent posts. Perhaps it’s down to the abundance of blood oranges in the supermarket at the moment. Nevertheless, I’ll try to diversify my ingredients and content each week. Grapefruit is next on the list…!
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