It was with some sadness (and wistful thoughts of future Saturday mornings spent sleeping in) that Martha and I mounted our noble bicycles and set out on the ride to the last official Midtown Farmers’ Market of the 2009 season. The weather, while generally cloudy, was punctuated by bursts of sunlight and dominated by a steady autumn wind that elicited some speculation from vendors about how long they would last out there. But they are a hardy bunch and I’m sure they saw the market through to the end (I sure didn’t!).

As promised, I did a good job attacking the crisper drawer over the course of the last week such that we were left with only a bunch of celery and some lemongrass. Which meant it was time to stock up, all the more so since this was the last farmers market of the year before a long winter. Much of my buying took this long view into account by focusing on vegetables that store well: onions, three kinds of potatoes (russets, large red potatoes, and small red potatoes), carrots, parsnips and butternut squash. The real joy of the farmers’ market for me is the fresh, green food: brussels sprouts, broccoli and leeks. Those will be missed later in the year. And it wouldn’t be the fall farmers’ market in Minnesota without apples; I couldn’t resist a ¼ peck of Honeycrisps.

For her part, Martha couldn’t resist some letter press cards by regular market vendors Vandalia Street Press that make use of interesting figure-ground relationships. Nor could she resist including them in the photo of the market haul!

Although this was the last official farmers’ market at Midtown of the fall, there will be more opportunities to get delicious local produce. I will definitely be going to the Midtown Farmers’ Market fundraiser at the Minneapolis Eagles Club (2507 E 25th St) on November 14 where in addition to raffles and music and the usual fundraising hullabaloo there will be a farmers’ market set up in the parking lot. A pretty great way to support a worthy cause while selfishly stocking up on the best vegetables around! (And very conveniently situated before Thanksgiving.) But if planning ahead for Thanksgiving isn’t your thing, Brett of Real Bread informed me that there will also be a special market at the usual place on Wednesday, November 25 from 1–4 PM. Even though the official market season’s over, the Midtown Farmers’ Market won’t leave you out in the cold for great produce this winter.

True, Halloween hasn’t even happened yet, but Thanksgiving is growing near. The Wedge, the source of the turkey pictured here, has already posted their Thanksgiving hours on their homepage and will begin taking turkey orders on Monday, November 2. Tomorrow will be the last day for the Midtown Farmers’ Market, but as Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine recently noted, if you’re a Mill City shopper:

you should be aware that you can order Wild Acres turkeys from the Mill City Farmers Market. But don’t dawdle, supplies are limited and the deadline is Nov. 13.

This year we’re ordering our turkey from Clancey’s Meats and Fish in Linden Hills, where they just began taking orders. From what I know thus far, Clancey’s turkeys are never frozen: orders are taken, sent to the turkey farm, and the turkeys are slaughtered and delivered for pickup just before the big day. (Also good to know: Clancey’s can connect you with sources for heritage breeds if you’re interested.) The birds start at 10–15 lbs. and go up from there in 5 lb. increments. At this point I’m not sure how many will be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner so it’s hard to estimate how much turkey we’ll need. I’m curious—what size bird are you ordering? Are there any other great sources for turkeys we should know about?

Let me start by saying I don’t like squash. I kind of hate it. It’s certainly not an aesthetic objection: nothing brightens up the drear of the fall farmers’ market quite like all the whimsical varieties of winter squash — impossible to resist! This combination of compulsive buying and strong dislike leads me to accumulate squash in the fall. Earlier this month, our squash collection reached critical mass and it was time for desperate measures. And so the idea was born: the week of squash. We would cook and eat a different squash each day for five days. At the end of the week, we would have finished our kuri, delicata, acorn, butternut and spaghetti squashes. And I would either have learned to love squash or never need to eat it again.

Day 1 Curried Kuri Squash Soup

Not wanting to be too ambitious the first day, I went for an old standard: squash soup. Most of the versions of this I’ve had are sweetened with brown sugar and pretty fatiguing after just a few spoonfuls. To try to make it a little more interesting, I attempted squash mulligatawny; a squash-based version of the citrusy Angl0-Indian soup. After peeling and steaming my kuri squash, I pureed the flesh with some of the steaming liquid, and added ginger and curry powder. Back in the pot, I added a bit of cream and some lime juice. For garnish, I made a mint-cilantro-garlic yogurt sauce, dolloped generously in the center

Squash Hatred Level: 6. The squash was pretty passable, but I think I was a little too heavy-handed with the lime juice; the soup was overly sour. The yogurt sauce helped improve the soup’s flavor, but as is often the case with squash soup (for me, anyway) a few bites was enough.

Day 2 Delicata Squash Enchiladas

This dish was inspired by a post on Serious Eats and an email I received from my Aunt Ann talking about having made enchiladas using squash with chard, feta and onions. I kind of took the worst parts of both of these ideas, ignoring their saving graces, and added some even nastier elements. So my ‘enchiladas’ contained: roasted delicata squash, kale, never-tender-enough-sauteed chard stems, charred red peppers and onions, and cilantro. After preparing my fillings and tossing them in a bowl with the recommended enchilada sauce, I rolled enchiladas, topped them with more sauce and covered the dish with a healthy (or hopefully unhealthy) dose of pepper-jack and put it in the oven to bake.

Squash Hatred Level: 8. The squash soup was not good, but it was okay. These enchiladas, on the other hand, were just nasty. Even as I was putting the recipe together, I could feel the train-wreck beginning. Eliminating the black beans and the feta was obviously a mistake. And in my overzealous cleaning of the crisper drawer I didn’t think about why combining kale and chard stems was a terrible, terrible idea. The only salvation for this dish would have been a lot more sauce and/or a lot more cheese, and preferably just those things. At this point I was getting pretty discouraged about squash week.

Day 3 Stuffed Roast Acorn Squash

With exotic reimaginings of squash having utterly failed me in the beginning of the week, it was time to turn to a stand-by. Growing up, this was how I knew squash: an acorn squash, cut in half, stuffed with pork sausage, and roasted until both were nicely browned. Of course, as a child, I would only eat the sausage, though I did eventually learn to also eat the squash, provided it was mashed together with plenty of butter, salt and pepper.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 6. This is actually a very good way to enjoy squash: pork loves a sweet compliment and finds a great one in the flesh of the squash, and the pork fat mingled tantalizingly with the squash. I hardly needed any butter at all!

Day 4 Spaghetti Squash and Broccoli Gratin

I suppose the star of this meal is actually in the background of the above photo: slow-cooked duck legs with a red wine pan sauce. But squash is the point of this post, and squash we did have to the side of our duck. For this gratin, I combined the flesh of a roasted spaghetti squash with steamed broccoli and a generous handful of New Zealand cheddar cheese in a buttered gratin dish. I topped the mixture off with bread crumbs tossed together with parmesan cheese and baked the dish until the breadcrumbs were brown and the cheese bubbly.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 4. This dish had a good level of sweetness without descending into sweet potato pie territory, and the combination of textures — the still slightly crisp broccoli, the gooey squash and cheese, and the crunchy breadcrumbs — was interesting and pleasant.

Day 5 Butternut Squash Spaetzle

I kind of dread butternut squash because it is so popular and tends to get so repetitive. How many butternut squash raviolis have you seen on restaurant menus in the past five years? So I was very grateful when Serious Eats featured a recipe for butternut squash spaetzle. I mean, I have long wanted to learn to make spaetzle, and if I could liven up squash week in the process, all the better. I also thought the recipe an appropriate wrap-up to squash week, since squash figures into the spaetzle dough as well as being a part of the sauce (I guess the ultimate wrap-up to squash week would have involved all five squash varieties in some kind of squash explosion but even contemplating that makes me a little sick). The recipe was pretty easy to follow; I only screwed up in over-cooking the maple glaze to the point where it wasn’t so much a maple glaze as maple candy. Luckily, the dishes were for Martha.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 8. This dish did a really good job of using the sweetness of butternut squash as an accent while bringing in a variety of other flavors and textures to avoid palate fatigue. Although recommended as a side dish, it made a great light lunch on a fall day.

And so the week of squash ended. Although it wasn’t planned this way, after a couple of rocky starts the meals got progressively better; by the end of the week I could even say I almost liked squash. I suppose I will be able to eat it in the future. But five days in a row again? Probably not.

In its penultimate week the Midtown Farmers’ Market is still loaded with fresh produce: squash, cabbage, peppers, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, more squash, leafy greens, onions, potatoes, herbs — even some tomatoes of dubious quality. If the above photo doesn’t quite reflect this variety it says more about me than the current state of the market: I was feeling a little burned out this Saturday morning. For one thing, the crisper drawer in our fridge was still full of produce from last week’s trip and other trips prior. We’re also in the midst of a season whose produce leaves me uninspired. So I consult my resources and wrack my brain to try to figure out some new, creative use for that last butternut squash. I hate to sound spoiled complaining in the face of all this beautiful fall produce, but I don’t feel the same about late October veggies as I do about the late August corn-tomatoes-peppers bonanza.

In spite of my whiny depression, we did manage to pick up a decent haul of produce from the market this Saturday: brussels sprouts, a delicata squash, cauliflower, celery, honey, fingerling potatoes, and a half peck of Haralson apples (pro tip: #2 apples are half price and look the same as #1s in a pie). Martha also picked up a nice crop of CFL light bulbs from the Minnesota Energy Challenge.

Next week is the last week of the farmers’ market. I am determined to not let this week’s malaise creep into the season finale; to that end I have formulated a strategy for almost entirely clearing the crisper drawer by week’s end. Hopefully an empty larder and the threat of winter will put me in the right mindset to BUY BUY BUY.

After biking to the Midtown Farmers’ Market in the dead of winter last week, I am happy to report that winter seems to be over in Minnesota and we’ve jumped back into fall. With a sunny blue sky and temperatures that require only a light jacket provided you keep moving, this was one of those great days to be at the farmers’ market taking advantage of the last of the season’s produce.

In spite of my dire predictions due to last week’s frost (and overriding pessimism brought on by early October snow), the supply of fresh produce at the market remains ample. There are even still peppers and tomatoes, although not necessarily of the same quality they were in late August (I passed on these the last few weeks). But I was happy to see there was still red kale, turnips with their greens on, potatoes, brussels sprouts and onions; all the makings of fall feasting food.

We also bought bacon from Chase Brook Natural. You can see in the picture that it is not streaked lengthwise with long strands of fat. That’s because this is cottage bacon — bacon is made from the shoulder of the pig, rather than its belly. It is a meatier, less fatty bacon (which isn’t necessarily a good thing). It will go well alongside eggs and toast at breakfast.

There are only two weekends left for the Midtown Farmers’ Market, but I continue to be amazed at all that is available.

When someone I respect as much as Peter Reinhart claims to have discovered a technique that “has the potential to change the… bread landscape in America,” it’s worth taking notice. In The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Reinhart writes:

[Delayed fermentation] has the potential to change the entire bread landscape in America. I’ve begun teaching it to my students…. Within the next few years I fully expect to see variations of this method appearing in both artisan bakeshops and at the industry level. It is the next frontier in breads. When we deconstruct the process, it takes us beyond fermentation, actually beneath fermentation, down to the level of enzymes. It is the enzyme that serves as the catalytic converter, freeing up the sugars that are bound up in the complex starches of flour. The delayed-fermentation technique, revealed to me by Gosselin, and intuited by many others without knowing why, is all about how enzymes affect fermentation and release flavor. (24)

Delayed fermentation, also called retarding, is the method of making bread by mixing the dough and refrigerating it overnight or longer. The dough is then baked following the usual method, as if it had been  made fresh. Most of the recipes in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice take advantage of this technique in some form. By the time he published Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor, he was even more convinced of the virtues of delayed fermentation, particularly for fussy whole-grain breads:

The delayed fermentation method used in this book capitalizes on enzyme activity while also incorporating the parallel drama of the living microorganisms: yeast and bacteria. It uses a new approach to draw out the full flavor potential of the grain, delaying much of the fermentation until after the enzymes have done their work. (Conventionally, fermentation begins right away, so enzyme activity happens concurrently with fermentation.) This new approach addresses the whole grain baking puzzle by combining several distinct entities to create a dough that performs well and yields a loaf of bread with wonderful flavor. (46)

I have learned more about bread from Peter Reinhart than any other author in print; the methods he presents in these two books are the basis for the way I make bread. Many times have I made bread over two or three days, following his delayed fermentation method. I’ve never had cause to complain about the resulting bread.

But as I have learned to rely less directly on recipes in my bread baking and start to improvise and develop my own techniques, I have begun to wonder if delayed fermentation is worth the trouble: it means you have to plan to make bread over a day in advance and that you have to somehow clear enough space in the refrigerator to accommodate a covered mixing bowl of dough (or, even worse, a half sheet). Was the payoff—a supposed marked improvement in flavor—worth this effort?

I decided to do a test. I made a basic bread dough (4 oz starter, 2 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp yeast, 7 3/4 oz water, 10 1/8 oz AP Flour, 2 1/8 oz WW flour) using my handy-dandy bread calculator at 68% hydration; my standard level of wetness: not overly dry but manageable. I kneaded the dough for ten minutes. I made my first batch of the dough at 5 PM on Saturday. I started an identical batch around noon on Sunday: at 12:15, the second batch was ready to go through its first rise and I took the refrigerated batch from the night before out of the refrigerator so it could begin its first rise. At this point, the doughs looked almost identical, although up-close the delayed-fermentation dough had a smoother surface, possibly from its night of rest.

After three hours of rising time, neither dough had quite doubled but there were signs of yeast activity. The air pockets visible through the bottom of my glass bowls were more evenly-distributed than in the delayed fermentation dough, which had several large air pockets. By this time the doughs’ temperatures had more or less evened out; the non-delayed dough was a few degrees warmer. Shaping the doughs into boules and transferring them to proofing baskets I could feel no significant difference.

After 90 minutes of proofing in which both doughs seemed to grow evenly in their respective baskets, I was ready to bake. I had my oven set to 475°F and baking stone in place, with a sheet pan ready to serve as a steam distributor. As I turned the doughs out onto my peel, I noticed that the delayed-fermentation dough held more tightly to the shape of the proofing basket; the fresh dough was more apt to spread out. In order to tell the breads apart after baking, I labeled them with an F (for fermented — both doughs are actually fermented and very little extra fermentation happens in the refrigerator since yeast are nearly dormant at this temperature; as of baking time, I did not realize all this) and a U (for unfermented).

Into the oven for 30 minutes, they emerged nicely brown and crusty.

In the baked breads the differences between the two doughs are more apparent: the delayed fermentation bread was slightly taller and less spread out – it very nicely matched the oval shape of the basket. The fresh dough had spread out a lot more and was consequently a bit squatter. Cutting the loaves open revealed starker contrasts: while the delayed-fermentation dough had small holes from trapped gases, the fresh dough bread had a more even texture.

Cosmetic differences aside, what about the taste? Expecting great things, Martha and I eagerly sat down with our two slices of bread. I took a bite from the delayed fermentation dough first. It was good! Next, I tried the fresh loaf. It was also good! The flavor differences, if they existed, must have been subtle, because to my coarse palate these breads tasted the same. Martha, who is much more taste-sensitive than I, agreed. There was also very little textural difference: I thought I could detect more crunchiness in the fresh crust and more chewiness in the delayed fermentation crust. The delayed-fermentation bread also felt slightly denser.

Consulting additional references after baking, I saw that the differences I did detect — the tighter rise and larger gas pockets of the delayed-fermentation dough — were scientifically predictable results. As Shirly O’Corriher writes in Cookwise:

Reduces ovenspring and loaf volume Chilling for a period as long as overnight reduces ovenspring (oven rise) and reduces loaf volume. Alcohol that was made by the yeast from the beginning changes to a gas in the hot oven and is a contributor to ovenspring. During a lengthy cold period, alcohol simply evaporates from the surface of the dough and some goes to vinegar. So, there is a reduced amount of alcohol to contribute to ovenspring…

Opens texture slightly Chilling dough retards the action of yeast and influences texture, though much more subtly than breadmaking method. The air-bubble nuclei worked into the dough during mixing and kneading are enlarged by gases from the yeast. Initially these tiny bubbles contain air, which is mostly nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent). Immediately the yeast uses up the oxygen so you have mostly nitrogen in these tiny bubbles. The gases from yeast are essentially carbon dioxide, and they enlarge the same bubbles. The longer the dough rises, the more carbon dioxide there is in the enlarged bubbles.

After a long rise, the bubbles contain a very high percentage of carbon dioxide and a very low percentage of nitrogen. The longer the rise, or after multiple punch-downs, the higher the percentage of carbon dioxide. After a very long rise or two or three shorter rises, the bubbles contain essentially 100 percent carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide dissolves very well in cold water. So, if the dough is chilled, the carbon dioxide in a great number of bubbles will completely dissolve. The dough now has fewer bubbles for the gases from the yeast to enlarge. When the dough is warm again, the yeast puts much more gas into these fewer bubbles, creating bigger bubbles and a coarser bread. (29)

Neither of my breads had the open texture that I prefer, but of the two the delayed fermentation bread had larger air bubbles, giving it a slightly more rustic appearance.

Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking concurs about the effects of delayed fermentation, with a little less detail on the process:

In addition to giving the baker greater flexibility, retarding has useful effects on the dough. Long, slow fermentation allows both yeasts and bacteria more time to generate flavor compounds. Cold dough is stiffer than warm dough, so it’s easier to handle without causing a loss of leavening gas. And the cycle of cooling and rewarming redistributes the dough gases (from small bubbles into the water phase, then back out into larger bubbles), and encourages the development of a more open, irregular crumb structure. (539)

Both McGee and O’Corriher (just before the quoted section) agree with Reinhart that the enzyme activity engendered by delayed fermentation improve the flavor of bread. In this one test, I didn’t find that to be the case; at least not noticeably so. If I haven’t planned ahead, I know I can still making pretty flavorful bread without relying on a rest in the fridge. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on delayed fermentation. The benefits I did observe — the open texture (which can be further improved by alterations to my kneading technique) and the firmer, easier to manipulate dough — are a big step in the direction of my search for ideal loaves of bread. And as long as you’re capable of a little advanced planning, delayed fermentation can actually help with time management, since it allows you to mix the dough on one day and complete the baking on another. As long as there’s room in the fridge.

There’s something perverse about biking across a snow-covered city to get to the farmers’ market — particularly when it’s only 10 days in to October. But that was the situation we faced this morning as we headed out to the Midtown Farmers’ Market. There are a few weekends left for the market, but with snow (and, more critically, frost) here the vegetables will be thinning out (Gardens of Eagan recently tweeted about a slushy head of broccoli they pulled from the field) as will the market shoppers, until only the die-hards remain.

Frost only came in the last week, so farmers still had plenty to offer. Feeling that our diet was lacking in things green — a problem which only worsens during the winter — we bought broccoli, parsley and kale. We also bought three kinds of squash: acorn, spaghetti and delicata. With the squash from last week, I now have five distinct varieties of squash sitting in a bowl in my dining room. Clearly, some kind of squashstravaganza is called for.

As if five squash weren’t enough starchy, orange-fleshed, sweet vegetable, we bought sweet potatoes, in a 2 for $5 with Russets. We also bought garlic to store (although garlic doesn’t last long around here). And, after a successful apple tart last night, we bought more of the Haralsons that were sold to us last week as the ultimate baking apple . Finally, we got a loaf of honey-wheat bread from Brett and Mary of Real Bread.

As we were buying the sweet potatoes from Julie of Pflaum Farms she mentioned that her mom kept talking about sweet potato fries. That seemed like a good idea to us; when we got home we roasted a few of the sweet potatoes, cut into sticks and tossed with oil, salt, pepper and thyme. The fries accompanied sandwiches made on Brett and Mary’s bread with mayo, turkey from last night’s dinner, roasted red peppers and black beans. Washed down with cider, this made for a nice lunch on a snowy fall day.

As I’ll be stuck at work this afternoon, I decided to volunteer on my own this morning to get started on what Common Roots is calling the final harvest. Details below.

It’s been a great season for the Common Roots garden. The garden has already provided 1300 pounds of produce! Frost is predicted soon, so TODAY between 2:30 and 5:30 Common Roots will be harvesting most of what’s left, planting the boulevard strip on Aldrich Ave, and doing some weeding.

Danny would be happy to have as many hands as possible. If you’re interested in helping out, follow Common Roots on Twitter and give a tweet that you’d like to lend a hand, or email info (at) commonrootscafe (dot) com.

Common Roots Cafe
2558 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 871-2360

Update: “today” above refers to Thursday, October 8, 2009. If you are interested in volunteering in the future, feel free to contact the address mentioned.

Get ‘em while they’re cheeeeeeeeeep. I’m working from 10–7pm on Friday so I’ll probably miss this, but I thought I’d share. Note that the sale is NOT available at Aesthetic Apparatus’ online store, only on Snelling.

Image: theapparatus

Having waited all summer for a sale on this set of bowls, I scooped them up on Tuesday night at the Edina store. They’re graphic, bold, red, and have lids… there’s the lot to like here.You can buy one, two, or all three in a set. At $3.95 to $6.95 and $15.85 for the set, why not? Now if only they’d cut the prices on their area rugs…

Images: Crate&Barrel