Making Friends (With Baguettes and Pizza)

How to make friends and influence people? Give them free bread…

(Free Baguettes offered to Residents of Dogwood Grove in Germantown TN)

Good things can come from a bad situation. The pandemic has disrupted the supply chain in supermarkets around the world. In Memphis, you can’t find yeast or bread flour.

So I went on Amazon and ordered $15 worth of yeast. The good news is that it arrived in 2 days. The bad news is that I have a 10 year supply.
I found bread flour at Costco and it is cheap. The bad news is it comes in a 50 lb. bag for $13.

The really bad news is that if we start eating the level of carbs that bulk buying of flour and yeast could support, we would be as big as a house. The easy answer is to make some new friends. Giving away pizza/focaccia dough and baguettes to people in our neighborhood was an obvious answer. (To me at least)

In our neighborhood my grilled pizzas have developed a reputation, so I started out offering free pizza doughs via our neighborhood Facebook page. Pizza dough is easy to make if you have made it 100 times. It is very challenging for the inexperienced. Baking is much more exacting than other culinary endeavors. With baking, you need to be very careful to measure your ingredients exactly or you can have a disaster. Most recipes come in volume measurements (cups and teaspoons). Really good baking recipes will provide both volume and weight measurements. I can make pizza doughs in quantity much more consistently using my digital scale.

Dealing with yeast can be daunting as well. I worked with baking experts from Nabisco and they taught me that yeast is a living being and subject to lots of variation. My sister who is a great cook told me: “My history with yeast dough is not good. I make hockey pucks”. She spends summers on the Canadian border, but that is not good.

The free pizza doughs were a big hit. I made a couple dozen doughs and got lots of nice feedback. I even sold a few books. Neighbors made some great looking pizzas and more than a few nice focaccia’s. But we still had 45 lbs. of flour and 9.5 year supply of yeast.

The second phase of our making friends effort was giving away free baguettes. (To residents of Dogwood Grove in Germantown TN) It turns out that pizza and baguette doughs are identical. With a little testing and finding an old baguette pan that my brother in law Bobby gave me 20 years ago, I have been making a really tasty baguette

Baguette Recipe (Click here for printable version)

Ingredients

5 cups flour or 684 grams
Additional flour for dusting
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons water or 502 grams
3 teaspoons yeast
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Instructions

In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients (flour, salt yeast)
Whisk vigorously to insure a good blend
Add water and using a large spoon and scraping device blend the dry ingredients and water together to form a well-blended rough dough
Cover the bowl with a towel and set aside in a dry place that is not drafty
Let the dough rise for at least one hour or until the dough doubles in size
Scrape the dough out onto a working surface that has been dusted with flour
Work the dough into a large ball and the cut into 4 equal pieces
Roll the 4 pieces into 4 balls
Set the balls into a large plastic container with a lid
Place the sealed container with 4 dough balls into the refrigerator over-night
The next day place a dough ball on a small towel that has been sprinkled with flour and shape the dough into a 15-inch cylinder
Rap the cylinder in the towel and place in a dry warm place
Repeat the process to create a second cylinder the same way
After letting dough rise for 35 minutes place the 2 onto a perforated French baguette pan
(I have a two slotted baguette pan, so I work in batches of two)
Place a pan of water in the bottom of the oven
Pre-heat the oven to 475 degrees
With a sharp knife, score the top of your dough cylinders with 4 slanted cuts
Sprinkle the top of the dough with a dusting of flour
Bake for 23 minutes or until the baguette is a dark brown (The color is a matter of preference. I like mine darker and crunchy)
Remove allow to cool for a few minutes and serve warm
Note: They can be stored at room temp, in the refrigerator and frozen. To reheat place a room temperature baguette into a 350 degree over for 10 minutes.

(Declan likes his Gramp’s baguette)

What is a better way to host a wine group gathering than have them walk into the house that smells of baguettes baking? While wine group social gatherings are limited now with the pandemic, we are making friends and getting new recruits for our wine groups when things return to normal.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Shrimp Scampi

Everybody loves shrimp. Well, unless you have a shrimp allergy or an aversion to shrimp based on religious belief, the chances are pretty good that you like well prepared shrimp. Whether it is an appetizer or a main course shrimp is usually a hit.

There are exceptions to the everybody loves shrimp rule. I hate shrimp that has been overcooked and getting shrimp cooked right can be a challenge. There is something about the frozen shrimp appetizer ring that is sold in supermarkets across the land that drives me screwy. Now while I am a big fan of bringing an app that is easy, bringing a water logged, tasteless, boiled shrimp just doesn’t cut it.

Following is a recipe that is a sure winner. Whether you serve it with toothpicks as an appetizer or as a main course, the chances are you will be delighting your guests. There are several reasons that this recipe works so well;

Brining the shrimp adds to the flavor and texture
Using the shells and wine to develop a stock adds dimension
Poaching the shrimp briefly in the stock reduces the risk of overcooking and adds flavor
The combination of garlic and lemon is delightful
The use of cornstarch adds fat like lubricity (Try the recipe without butter.)
The shrimp and sauce can be made in advance and added together at the last minute

Give this recipe a try for your next wine group.

Little Miracles

These are tough times. It is easy to get a little down with all the changes the coronavirus has brought to our world. My mom lives in an assisted living facility in New York. The other day she was telling me about all the Little Miracles in her world.

She loves something sweet with her toast at breakfast and the kitchen that makes her breakfast keeps forgetting to get her jelly or honey. That day in the mail she received a jar of organic honey from my cousin in Hawaii. It was a Little Miracle.

She loves the FaceTime calls with her great grandchildren, Emma and Declan on weekday mornings. To be able to watch and interact with them is a Little Miracle

At nights when it is quiet in her room pictures and videos of her great grandchildren Max, Dylan and Hadley will pop up on her iPhone. She doesn’t know how they get there she just loves it when they do. It is a Little Miracle.

Mom gets her focus on the positive from her father. My Gramps had every right to be a bitter man, but he was one of the most positive people I have ever known. He was an orphan, he was a major amputee losing his leg in WW1, He was a widower at an early age.

I remember visiting him when he was 90 years old and him telling me: “Paul, don’t get this old”. At first, I thought he was depressed, then he followed up with a chuckle saying: “Yup, there is more of me out of bed than in the bed when I go to bed at night. I take off my leg. I take out my teeth. I take off my glasses. I have this plate in my head from that boat accident, but I can’t take it out… He founds ways to be a positive influence on all of his 10 grandchildren.

I am a little sad seeing pictures of the drive-by hello at mom’s assisted living facility on Mother’s Day, but I have to channel a little of my inner mom-mom and Gramps. Heck, they could put Prozac in the water-system and it would not offset the negativity of the nightly news. These are tough times. We all need to focus on the positives. We all have lots of Little Miracles in our lives. I am just one very lucky guy to have had Mom and Gramps in my life. It is more than a Little Miracle.