Home Bake - Simple Bread

I’ve recently been burdened with a need to put bread back on the agenda. Bread baking, that is. It’s been far too long in between loaves, and whilst I’m not imagining for a second that I will now bake daily, I’m at least $7 ahead thanks to yesterday's effort.

 

My dissertation on commodity prices a couple of weeks ago (Rich Farmers The New Stockbrokers) supports my underlying thesis of today - decent bread costs shit loads. And I do love decent bread. My Sydney-centric favourite go-to loaves, in descending order, appear something like this: Bourke Street Bakery Plain Sourdough, Bourke St Bakery Rye & Caraway Sourdough, Sonoma Soy and Quinoa (the only state in which I find quinoa digestible), Sonoma Soy Linseed, and for versatility and all round popularity in our house, The Rozelle Bakery Wholemeal Sourdough which produces flawless toast, and retains sufficient moisture to make it into the lunch box the following day.

I do like the Infinity Baguette, but my nearest available outlet is Norton St Grocer and if I go in for a loaf of bread, I know I’ll spend so much on other delectables, I’ll emerge with a BBB minus credit rating.

Imagine for a minute I bought one of these loaves each day (which I don’t, as I generally retain them until they resemble an attractive new product line for Boral Building Supplies, then toast them). But if I did - depending on the point of procurement and the particular product mix - my bank balance after 7 days would be around $45-55 worse off. That’s $2500 a year, or about 25% greater than an around-the-world airline ticket.

This was not the main reason I baked a loaf yesterday, but it does mean I’m $7 richer today. I phoned my sister to enquire whether she’d baked of late, and if so, which recipe she used. It turned out she had baked, and the recipe she used, was in fact my own; which I seem to have lost in my records - somewhere underneath my collection of handwritten letters from 1994, year 8 history books, my Sturt mini-league certificate, and family artefacts including my Grandfather’s boarding school tie box which I recently dated to 1916.

I took down my recipe she recited, and then made some minor tweaks. I set to work and Olivia assisted with the "heavy lifting". I’m extremely happy with the result, but intend to put this loaf up on blocks and tinker with the mechanics as I feel I can extract an even superior performance from future incarnations.

I’m not harbouring a yeast culture on the premises at the minute, so relied on dried yeast. Otherwise, it is a bit of a purists loaf in that it doesn’t include any jazzy stuff like oil or sugar. Follow it to a tee, and you will find it is simple to make, produces a clean and satisfying bread experience, will bolster your credit rating in these turbulent times, and provides a marvellous platform for a coating of butter.

Ingredients:

3 cups double zero or plain unbleached flour

1 cup wholemeal flour

2 x 7g yeast sachets and 1/3 cup of lukewarm water

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup lukewarm water

1)   Dissolve all yeast in 1/3 of a cup of lukewarm water.  Put both flours and the salt into a large mixing bowl and combine.

2)   Create a well in the center of the flour. When the yeast has started bubbling and the granules appear dissolved, pour the mixture into the well. Slowly stir the yeast mixture with the fingers of one hand to progressively bring the flour into the mixture, then gradually add the 1 cup of lukewarm water to make a dough. You may need to add more water if it feels too dry.

3)   Once you have a mass of dough (it may still be scrappy), tip it onto a lightly floured bench and get kneading. Knead dough for ten minutes until lovely and elastic. You must do the full ten minutes, and this also negates any need for dips in the gymnasium this week. Great tricep workout.

4)   Turn the oven on to create a warm place on the stove top. Put the kneaded dough back into the bowl and cover with a tea towel dampened with warm water. Place bowl in warm place on or near the oven. Once your loaf has doubled in size (approx 50 mins), remove from the bowl, place on bench, punch the air out of it and knead again for 5-10 minutes.

5)   Place into a lightly greased bread tin or baking tray and fashion to your desired loaf shape. Lightly score with a sharp knife and brush the loaf’s top with a little milk. Cover again with a tea towel and leave in your warm spot and allow to double again (approximately 25 minutes, but will vary).

6)   Preheat the oven to 225C and once the loaf has doubled in size, gently place it in the oven, ensuring you don’t bump any air out of it. Try not to smash the door closed. After 10 minutes, carefully open the oven and place a tray with warm water, below or next to the loaf. Bake for a further 10-15 minutes. When cooked, the crust on the bottom will feel firm and the loaf will make a hollow sound when tapped with a knife. Allow to cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes.

7)   Reach for the butter.

Cholesterol-Reducing Lamb Shoulder

I’m told that until very recently, the ovine division of the CSIRO was focused on a top secret project designed to clone a sheep-like organism with numerous legs propelled by a minimum cluster of functioning organs. The historical demand for just legs was such that the industry’s marketing wing determined all other bits of the sheep were ostensibly obsolete.

As anyone over the age of about thirty four is fond of recalling, lamb shanks used to be thrown to the dogs. And despite a brief flirtation with a crumbed and fried brain, there’s been little culinary demand for the other bits of sheep excluding numerous interpretations of the lamb chop. And then at some point in the last decade, the previously neglected lamb shoulder emerged from the mist-shrouded recipe swamplands.

It seems the shoulder was previously only rarely cooked with bone-in and snuggled beneath its blanket of fat. It was usually boned and rolled, or bundled up in various forequarter contortions. In my childhood and most of my youth, I certainly only ever recall exposure to the leg.

Page 60 of my 1977 edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly Original Cookbook (first published 1970) alphabetises twenty seven different cuts of lamb, including saddle, shank, side, and stewing chops, but contains no reference to ‘shoulder’. My CWA (NSW) Cook Book has twenty one lamb recipes (including Lamb Cutlets & Spaghetti) but only one (Shoulder of Mutton with Kidney Stuffing), specifically identifies the shoulder as a food source. Then, someone (re)awoke to how much flavour bones add, how good fat tastes, and the amazing benefit of slow cooking.

  

I can’t precisely recall when the shoulder first lumbered into my kitchen, but I’m confident it was post-millennium. The shoulder is the front bit of the sheep at the top of the fore-legs and under the neck, while the leg you eat so often comes from the two rear appendages. Some older lamb "roast" recipes I did locate, suggested using either shoulder or leg. This strategy seems plain wrong, as the two are so markedly different in fat content, amount of bone, and muscle fibre variation. Surely they should be treated quite differently.

Now it seems we’re loving flaps, breasts, ribs and belly. In these bits and pieces the flavour's even more concentrated thanks to the ratio of bone and fat to meat. One of the most memorable things I've eaten this year was a quivering lamb belly at my sister's 40th at The Stokehouse in St Kilda; as were the succulent lamb ribs marinated in beer and miso I recently sucked from the bone at Gardels Bar in Surry Hills.

This chef-led descent into a region of the carcass identified by Meat & Livestock Australia as “Party Ribs”, is causing my palate to celebrate, but it is less than encouraging for those of us with cholesterol readings higher than Don Bradman’s batting average. And then, this crucial piece of data from the Journal of Nutrition landed in my inbox. According to an investigation by Sheila West of Penn State University,  adding spices including turmeric and cinnamon to a “high-fat meal” can reduce triglyceride response (ie bad cholesterol) by nearly 30% relative to the same meal without the spices.

While  less than impressed with Sheila's sample size (six overweight men), and the fact her research was bankrolled by The McCormick Science Institute (ie. the S&P listed $US6.5 billion McCormick spice people.....), I nonetheless dropped everything and went directly to a festering corner kitchen cupboard, which for the purposes of this story, I’ll call a ‘pantry’. Elbowing aside the baked bean tins and mountains of oats, I pinned down a spice-filled Tupperware container I’m now certain houses all the medicine I require for a healthy heart and long life. Olivia and I then jumped in the car, and after one disturbing report from a butcher that he “wouldn’t have any until Thursday”, we located a fine lamb shoulder specimen at Wareemba Meats, on Great North Rd Five Dock.

With Olivia's help, I set about lowering my cholesterol with the following recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Lamb Shoulder including shank – approx 2 kg (have butcher cut into 2 pieces to fit in pot)

½ cup plain flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 carrots, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

1 brown onion, diced

4 whole peeled garlic cloves, bruised on a chopping board with a flattened knife

1 cup dry white wine

1 tin of cherry tomatoes

3 fresh bay leaves (or 2 dried ones)

2 strips from an orange (use a potato peeler and avoid too much of the “white”)

1 pinch of saffron (15-20 threads)

1 cinnamon stick (or 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder)

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1) Pour 1 cup of boiling water over saffron threads and cover with cling film. (This must be done first to allow the saffron to steep whilst preparing the rest).

2) Pre-heat oven to 120C and place orange peel in the oven for 5 minutes until dehydrated. Remove orange peel and increase oven to 150C.

3) Tip flour, salt and pepper into a plastic bag (and cinnamon powder if not using a quill). Place this bag inside another, and then individually place each piece of shoulder into the bag and shake until lightly coated all over. Brush off any excess flour.

4) Heat pot over high heat. Add olive oil and brown both sides of the shoulder pieces in batches.

5) Turn down flame to low. Add more oil if absorbed by meat, tip in garlic and onion and cook gently for 3-4 minutes.

6) Increase heat to medium and add in celery and carrot and cook for further 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

7) Pour in the wine and deglaze for 1-2 minutes.

8) Add the meat back to the pot, then pour over the cherry tomatoes.

9) Add the bay leaves, dried orange peel, cinnamon stick and the saffron mixture. Pour more water into the cup to collect any remaining saffron colour and filaments and add this into the pot. There should be sufficient liquid to almost cover the meat. Add more water if required.

10 ) Bring to a gentle bubble, place a piece of foil over the meat and juice to prevent excessive moisture loss, secure the lid and place pot in the preheated oven at 150C for 2 to 2 1/2  hours.

11) Remove from the oven without disturbing the lid and allow to cool for 20-30 minutes to allow fat to rise to the surface.

12) Remove the lid and the foil and drape pieces of paper towel or tissue gently onto the surface of the liquid to absorb the fat, then discard. Continue until most fat appears absorbed.

13) Remove the meat from the bones using tongs and a knife, and shred or carve into desired-sized pieces. Remove any excess fat globules. Discard the bones and add the pieces of meat back into the pot.

14) Gently re-heat on the stove top and add the sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper. Adjust all according to taste.

15) Serve with anything capable of absorbing the magnificent juices, such as mash or cous cous. Accompany with greens and red wine.

This cholesterol-defeating recipe can be prepared the day before and placed in the fridge after the cooling step. Scoop the solidified fat from the surface and discard. Gently re-heat the remaining nice bits in the oven.  The meat will slither from the bone when prodded with a spoon.

Do you have memories of much shoulder-eating last century, or was it all chops and roast leg? I’d be interested to get your comments. And many thanks to my Uncle Geoff for providing the magnificent image of his extremely fat lambs.

Lyon - Where There's Smoke.....

Before departing on one his jaunts, travel writer and food critic AA Gill likes to apply the blinkers and ignore what other people think about his next destination. This makes a lot of sense - especially when you’re AA and the blinkers concentrate his focus on the dashboard of his Rolls Royce, the rear of the First Class seat in front of him, or the stars of the porn film he once directed. But the recent SBS French Food Safari episode on Lyon, reminded me why his approach is right.

Unfortunately I travel less regularly than Adrian (his real moniker) so I’m a bit more selective in what I learn before heading off; so as to avoid picnicking on highways, camping in industrial estates or eating Bhutanese food, in say, France. But if I’d listened to most people, and the dreary indecisive babble of the guide books, I would never have visited Lyon - where I arrived not in a Rolls Royce, but a filthy campervan after a three week exploration of  south western France with wife-to-be, our two children and an Irish speaking GPS. And the first magical thing about hitting Lyon, was that we rejoined the class of people who don’t shower in thongs. In a hotel.

The few non food-centric guide books I’d permitted myself to peruse whilst crunching around the region on the wrong side of the road in 5 metric tonnes of campervan, set my expectations extremely low. Persistent references to Lyon as an “industrial town” and “riots in the 70s” meant every person I saw who wasn’t throwing a Molotov cocktail came across as Catherine Deneuve, and each building which wasn’t a burning factory, appeared as a stunning historical relic. “Look at that gorgeous door. Why is it not in flames?” I'd ask myself.

More importantly, the women are more attractive on a per capita basis than anywhere else we visited in France, including Paris - although on a weekend, I suspect many come from there, covering the 400kms on the TGV in only 2 hours. Most are probably in Lyon to eat.  Split by the Rhône and Saône rivers, the city has cobbled alleyways I didn't expect (not very industrial) and vast tracts of eye-catching people eating, drinking and smoking flat out, rather than igniting buildings. The central streets are full of beautiful shops and beautifully dressed people. If you live in Lyon there is simply no excuse for sartorial aberrations or poorly dressed children.

Food is an incredibly important part of life in Lyon, and I’m not talking about the oft-mentioned Paul Bocuse, whose presence here holds little relevance when shackled by two children on a short two day visit. In a cruel twist, we did not manage to get to the magnificent Les Halles market, but just walking the streets and looking in windows is a gastronomic powerpoint presentation. I longed to bang one of the above truffle-stuffed fowls into the oven.

The same shop sold these poached fish, snails and terrines, alongside meat and salads, an approach to food retailing completely non existent in Australia.

But of course the downside of staying in a hotel is that you can’t cook. So take heed, if you’re in the vicinity of Lyon and hoping to lose weight, then join the ring-road, drive right past the city and don’t stop until you reach Holland. The food here is rich. Just down the road in Provence we’d been eating figs, olives and delicately sliced, cured pig in every conceivable form - and then we hit Lyon. It felt like driving along a brand new piece of tarmac at 300km/hr and suddenly running into a pit of molasses. The food is slow and heavy. Flying out of Lyon after only two days had Ryan Air demanding I pay for excess flabbage.  Fit, healthy and eating celery in Provence one minute, goitre-ridden in Lyon the next:

The two bouchons we ate at were the principle cause of my physical deterioration. The bouchon is an appellation-type concept designed to protect the integrity of traditional Lyonnaise food, with about 25 restaurants qualifying annually for the official designation Les Authentique Bouchons Lyonnais. The first evening we tried to get into the Café des Fédérations, which being a Friday, was of course booked out and we ended up in a touristy area at the Les Enfants Terribles. As always in these circumstances, it’s a stab in the dark but I’m a sucker for wooden panelling, and an otherwise full restaurant. Here, I was thrilled to be introduced to a gelatinous calves’ foot salad, followed by a liaison with a slightly disappointing sausage. But the room was convivial and didn’t just seem to be full or tourists like us. When my sausage flagged, I was able to help the girls out with their meagre offering from the kids' menu:

Because we were tourists it was required that the following day we ride the funicular up to the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon.  My calorific overload demanded a stroll so we went directly to the gardens attached to the hillside and meandered through the drizzle, down the hill  into the Vieux Lyon (the old bit) and upon the Les Ventres Jeaune (The Yellow Belly) bouchon, a recommendation from a Frenchly handsome barman the previous evening.

On a Saturday afternoon Les Ventres Jeaune was packed with what I liked to imagine were locals, all decimating towering carafes while ploughing through lentil salads, salad Lyonnaise, Bresse chicken, and a variety of internal organs.  Despite having been funiculared up the hill, and rolling back down, I managed to convince myself I’d earned a three course lunch. The girls’ meal was a diabolical sort of frankfurter and fries, but I enjoyed my pike quenelles drowned in rich seafood sauce. The carafe of rosé was bad in a good way.

Mercifully for my health, we prepared to depart the following day, and then as if on cue, a sort of mob assembled in the expansive place Bellcour right out the front of our hotel in protest at some abomination from the government suggesting the French work a bit more. There was smoke – a fatal mingling of Gitanes and Gauloise - but no fire. And it may have been the mere thought of work, or the fatigue of protesting, but by 11.30am they seemed to run out of puff and suddenly the cafes and bouchons were full, and we escaped to the airport with the most articulate and intelligent taxi driver I’ve ever encountered.

Rich Farmers the "New Stockbrokers"

In ten years time stockbrokers will be driving taxis, the smart ones will be driving tractors on their farms, and the smarter ones will set up Lamborghini dealerships catering to farmers, who, according to stock market guru Jim Rogers, will soon be very rich thanks to the decades-long agricultural boom he foresees.

This week, I’ve hardly seen Tania as she’s been chaperoning Jim around the country prior to the Australian listing of his commodity indices (they've been running in Europe for years).  This week, I've been able to get heaps of washing done (can't bring myself to put it away), but I did meet her billionaire boyfriend on Tuesday. His views are fascinating (on commodities, not washing) and have particular significance for agriculture and food.

When someone who’s made his fortune in stock markets says he hardly owns any shares, it’s worth finding out why. He’s a Yale and Oxford graduate who co-founded the Quantum Fund in 1973.  It returned 4200% over the next 10 years and he ‘retired' at 37. He rode a motorbike around the world and a few years later did the same in a custom built Mercedes with his fiancé, whom he married during the journey. Labelled “one of the investment world’s living legends” by the Australian Financial Review, Jim Rogers expects to make more money in agriculture than anywhere else.

 

He spoke at Oxford last year and advised students to abandon their City and Wall St aspirations and instead study agriculture and mining. Jim’s predictions for food and farming stem from a couple of key factors. The main one is the emergence of China. Most people, including many Chinese, don’t understand the full implications of what’s happening there. Britain reigned supreme in the nineteenth century; America in the twentieth (already teetering) and the twenty first century will be China's. As he likes to point out, China is the only country which has experienced recurring periods of greatness.

He's more bearish on America than I am on putting the washing away.  He’s sold all his property in America and moved his family to Singapore. His children are now fluent in Mandarin. He says teaching your kids Mandarin is the best advice he can give anyone.

The growth in China is creating a great demand for the commodities required to fuel the expansion. He points to the fact the Chinese are buying commodity-producing land around the world (Australia, Africa etc) because they can see commodity shortages coming.

In respect to investment markets, he delves into history to understand the cycles which underpin a lot of the positions he takes. Bonds, which tend to operate in thirty year cycles, have been in a bull market since 1981 and this is coming to an end. When he went to Wall St in the 1960s, it was a bit of a backwater, wasn’t attracting the best brains and the money wasn’t anything special. This has all changed in recent decades, but with the deep systemic problems in America, he sees stocks remaining volatile for the next few years and reckons they could go sideways for the next 15-20 years. He’s not keen on banks and finance as a whole. “The power is shifting again from the financial centres to the producers of real goods” he says.

So what about these rich farmers? Well its simple demand and supply. Agriculture has been a terrible business for thirty years, so there’s now a shortage of farmers – at a time when global demand for food is increasing. The average age of American farmers is 58. In Japan, its 66, and the government there is buying up vast tracts of empty land and trying to get people to work it. They’re even trying to attract farm workers from China to do the job. The photos featured here are of my Uncle's property in S-E South Australia. And Jim's right, it has been a tough business for many years.

Jim says that in bull markets, it usually takes 8 or 9 years before investors add capacity, but due to the GFC and “credit crunch” at the end of 2008, this didn’t happen following the pick-up in agriculture which started in 1999. Which means the required capacity still hasn’t been added. Agricultural prices remain historically low and prices will need to increase further before new investment and new farmers (stockbrokers) are drawn in.

How true is all this? At the food producer I used to work for, we had great difficulty in recent years actually getting our hands on the required quantity of lamb (which everyone knows has sky-rocketed), particular cuts of beef, and pork is increasingly difficult to acquire. The price of imported rice rose despite the Aussie dollar increasing about 20% in the same period.  A well known retail and wholesale butcher in Sydney’s inner west told me ongoing supply difficulties mean the increases of recent years are just the start. Demand is still outstripping supply for meat in this country, and the required re-stocking after the drought still isn’t sufficient to keep a lid on prices. It’s a similar story for other agricultural commodities.

Jim sees many headwinds ahead for finance and prefers commodities and real assets like rice, sugar, oil, silver and gold. Historically, as share prices deteriorate, investors head to commodities. We’ve certainly seen food prices in this country outstrip inflation and it looks like this will continue. Give your stock broker some financial advice – get out now. And buy a farm.