Posts Tagged ‘artisan bread’

The Morel Bombe!

 

What do you do with two huge morel mushrooms? A few weeks ago, I was confronted with this awesome dilemma but luckily I had some five-day old pizza dough lingering in cold fermentation, with Fontina cheese, local Integration Acres chevre, Parmigiano Reggiano, local ramps and a beautiful haunch of smoked red waddle ham from Arcadian Acres and some King Family Farm crispy chicken skin with just a hint of caraway, (gotta have that with any morels)!

This was gonna be….The Bombe! (Yes, the ‘e’ at the end makes it more cultured and European). Lets go and mimic a “turdunkin” with these two monsters of the mushroom world.


 

Here is a video of the finished product.

Recipe:

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Set aside a 15 ounce dough ball from the Easy Dough recipe on this blog

Ingredients:

Two giant morel mushrooms

One tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

One half cup grated Fontina cheese

One golfball size chunk of chevre

One four-ounce chunk of smoked red waddle ham cut into small dice

Five spring ramps chopped

One tablespoon Parmigiano Reggiano

Two crisp chicken skins from two roasted chickens

One teaspoon of caraway seed

Egg wash

Process of Preparation:

                        

 First cut the stem off of each morel and rough chop them, Add to a saute pan on high heat and saute for one minute. (above, I just ran them through my conveyor pizza oven at 475 for a few minutes.)

                       

Put the chevre, fontina, ramps, Parmigiano, caraway and diced ham in a bowl and mix until incorporated into a messy little ball of goo. Stuff the morel caps with the mixture and wrap the stuffed caps with the chicken skin.

   

Form a round, pizza shape with the dough. Place the two stuffed, chicken wrapped blobs side-by-side in the middle and add the rest of the cheese mix in front of the stuffed caps. Fold the top of the dough over first, then the bottom. (Note, do not use too much flour as the dough will not stick.) Turn the whole batard over and place on a parchment covered tray and form the ends in a torpedo shape. Using a sharp knife, cut a vent hole in the middle and one small vent on each end to let moisture excape.

  

Eggwash the batard and let proof, (hold between 70 and 80 degreese  for at least 15 minutes.) Bake at 450 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes. It will take alot of care to pull the batard out at the right time. Internal temperature should be above 180 degrees and the outside should have a nice golden-brown color.

Pull the batard from the oven and let rest for 10 to 12 minutes before cutting.

 

 

 

Sesame Batard filled with Baek, (white) Kimchi

 

Springtime to me is all in the crunch, the crunch of a fiddlehead fern and the spring ramp, the crunch of the asparagus and don’t forget the crunch of a great crust on a springtime bread.

 Last weekend I baked alot of stuff to sell at the Athens Farmers Market and was unable to take many photo’s because my tent kept blowing away. I was able to carry out a concept based on a wierd idea to introduce crunchy kimchi into some bread that was slit open like a gutted lizard. The problem with this concept is moisture. Any kimchi is bound to soak the hardened gluten strands of any fired-up bread. Enter some fabulous local chevre from the great cheese makers at Integration Acres, like the dollops of chevre on the pizza al metro, (above) with ramps, tomato and provolone.

                 

So along with the “Sunny-side-up” croissants that Jake the baker made with an almond pudding and apricot, (left) and the traditional Pizza Margherita, (right) I crashed forward into the hinterlands of bread sanity, until I found it.

 A great insane loaf of Asian deliciousness! Now, first the kimchi.

    

I first cooked an amazing amount of napa cabbage and kohlrabi with salt. After they became acceptably limp, I rinsed with cold water and rung them out like the laundry. I then introduced some garlic, rice vinegar, pickled Jeruselem artichoke and turnip and the rest of my pears and apples that have been “red kimchi’d” for at least three months- sweet, spicy and naughty- funky to say the least. After one day, this white kimchi didn’t really “have it goin on”, so I added alot of lime and lemon juice, cumin seed and the best thing ever- pickled cayenne peppers from Cowdery Farms! To this I made a dough of black and white sesame, Korean pepper powder and cilantro.

 

Above is the video of our crazy baking and pizza frenzy at 3 a.m. in Athens, Ohio. I do have to endure bumping into delivery drivers and pizza makers at this busy time on a Friday night at Ohio Univerisity.  Here I am rolling up these Asian batards before proofing.  (Don’t worry, I took my hat and beard net off for this video, whatta ya think, we’re some hill-jacks from…Athens, Ohio?)

 

After these great batards were proofed, baked and cool, I slit them and filled them with the Integration Acres chevre, (fresh goat cheese), that I mixed with fresh chopped ramps, mushroom stock and Chinese five spice. This enabled me to stuff the white kimchi in the loaf without turning it to mush.

 I sold out of all forty batards within an hour then thought that I wanted to take one home…dang.