I will win. Until next time burnt ribs….
Sometimes things don’t go the way you see it in your mind. I go to all these fabulous websites with picture perfect food and I wonder, what about the fails? Surely, I can’t be the only one with fails? I am here to tell you the rest of the story….
Most of my friends and extended family are convinced everything I cook turns out beautifully and tastes fantastic. My husband and kids can tell you that is a lie. They’ve lived through the battles of the failed food wars. They have lived through the autopsies of the recipe and what went wrong and what I will do differently next time, sometimes revisiting the problem days later because the ghost of that failure is still haunting me. Food battles are an ugly war, a war that can only be fought with perseverance and determination.
I have had two recent battles lately. Stupid errors really, one was nothing but pure distraction. The other because I went against my gut feeling and stayed true to the recipe. That is something I rarely do. Always listen to your gut.
Ribs. I thought I had them figured out. But my last go round showed me I’m still green and barely seasoned. The Egg was like, “Oh yea? You got this? Lets find out.” Annnnnddddd then that Egg temp took off and got away from me. Yes, I have a fan to control temp, no, I haven’t hooked it up yet. Why? Because I have this crazy, stupid idea I want to learn the Big Green Egg in the raw first – I’ll have a better understanding of the process then – Right? It probably didn’t help those ribs that I forgot to use the plate setter as well….
Now on to my most recent wound from battle. If you’ve been religiously reading my ramblings you know I started a starter about a week ago. According to my recipes method, it should be ready to use.
I’ve been keeping it in a warm spot, its bubbling, smells good so I thought I would give it a go and make some bread. The recipe I found used the starter as an additive for flavor. There was also yeast in the recipe so I had hoped that would be a fail-safe to getting a decent loaf. I noticed the very little proofing times in the recipe. Usually you should proof until doubled in size, this recipe was like 15 minutes. Weird, but this is my first sourdough rodeo so I’ll follow the recipe. Again, not what I usually do, but this time I did not follow my gut. Even as my mind was screaming “Let it rest!!!!”, I popped it into a 425F oven, threw some water on a hot pan under it and closed her up. 20 minute bake. Again, that seemed weird as well, most of my bread recipes are 35-40 minutes.
It smelled great! The top was golden but it really hadn’t raised much in the oven, it just didn’t seem to be doing bread things, getting big and fluffy. I was hesitant to remove it because it was still quite heavy, so I gave it 10 more minutes. The extra time really didn’t see to make a difference. It still looked not quite right, it had not risen any better, and it was really dark and had a thunk when you tapped the bottom.
After cooling my thoughts were confirmed. It was heavy and doughy and nothing like what I was after or what even decent bread is considered. I started to think about what I was going to do with these loaves since they were like a hockey pucks (and rejoicing I didn’t have more than 2 small loaves). How could I hide the play-dough interior that each slice revealed? I figured bread pudding or French toast would be good attempt since both required soaking in a custard and cooking again. I opted for the French toast. A very heavy, dense French toast. Which wasn’t awful (truth be told), and it is a lovely picture!
So the moral of this story is – battles are fought to be won. And I WILL WIN (with a little more practice, searching for a new bread recipe, and digging through the accessories looking for the BBQ Guru…)