Pork and beans with Alton Brown's pickled pork for #SundaySupper

I hadn't intended to participate in this week's Sunday Supper, which is all about favorite chef-inspired dishes. I was busy, overwhelmed, and trying to keep up with the regular day to day. I just couldn't think of a chef's recipe that I would want to do. The research seemed daunting. And then I got the reminder email about posting #SundaySupper recipe titles to the group. And I smacked myself on the forehead. Just that morning, I had started pickling some pork, using Alton Brown's recipe. Uh, oh yeah, duh. Silly me. Serendipity strikes again.

I haven't cooked that many celebrity chef recipes even though you could call me a cooking show addict. I especially enjoy the shows where they pit chefs head to head: Top Chef, Iron Chef, Next Iron Chef, Chopped, The Next Food Network Star. Love 'em. My husband and I try to come up with ideas for the mystery basket. Ideas that we have never tried, unfortunately.

One food show that was particularly important to us was Alton Brown's Good Eats. It taught us so much about the precise methods of cooking just about anything you could think of and make it good. The show also covered food history, culture, and science. For geeks like us, it was irresistible. And it was funny. AB was such a goof on that show, so much so that we were surprised to learn about his extraordinary skill and professionalism as a producer (which we discovered on The Next Food Network Star). (And I also enjoy his natty Southern gentleman style.)

However, more important than the specific lessons in cooking various items of food or the history and science was the insight that to cook really well requires precision, knowledge of the ingredients, knowledge of the techniques. This may seem obvious, but it isn't. In some ways it was a revelation: To get superior results, you have to understand how different kinds of pans heat food differently, that some foods need to be cooked at low temperatures for a long time and some need high heat for just a few seconds, and so much more. Understanding the differences and learning to apply patience or be careful about timing really does make a difference. It was exciting because there was room for growth. It's still exciting because the only way to go is toward continual improvement if you are willing to learn.

Another key to learning as a cook is to take risks and experiment, to try things that don't sound good or to try new methods. This dish is a perfect example. The first time I heard of pickled pork, I had doubts. It didn't sound good to me at all. Sounded kind of scary actually, like those giant jars of pickled eggs you see sometimes. Thankfully, my husband went ahead and tried it about a year ago (I am in no way to be commended for my kitchen courage in this story, but the mad scientist definitely is); cooked long and slow with some beans, tomatoes, onions, and herbs, the pork transformed into a rich, filling dish perfect to take the edge of a cold night's chill. You won't believe the rich smell that rises when you remove the lid from your Dutch oven.

This dish is not difficult or labor-intensive to make but it takes a lot of time. The initial pickling of the pork takes three days, then the dish itself needs to simmer 2 to 2 1/2 hours. But it's worth it. You will divide the pickled pork in half and freeze the unused half for another day. The pork and beans, served over white rice, last a few days (unless of course, you go back for seconds and thirds, as we did last night).

For the pickled pork recipe, head over to the Food Network's website for Alton Brown's recipe. I followed this nearly exactly (skipped the celery seed; didn't have it, didn't want it). For the rest of the recipe, read on:

Ingredients

• 1/2 batch of Alton Brown's pickled pork, drained (drain and freeze the other half for another use)
• 2 1/2 - 3 cups cooked beans (1/2 lb dried beans, cooked); I used cranberry beans, you can use pintos, white navy beans, cannelini beans.
• 1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, briefly chopped in a food processor
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 Tbsps olive oil
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 1/2 Tbsp salt (or more to taste, but add near the end of the cook time to avoid oversalting)
• 1/4 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 Tbsp dried thyme
• 1 Tbsp whole-grain mustard 

Directions

1. If you use dried beans, Pick-A-Pepper just turned me on to a great, no-soak method of cooking beans that cuts cooking time to 2 hours (at most) and leaves you with soft, creamy beans. I went ahead and cooked a whole pound at once and froze the second half in leftover cooking liquid.
2. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. 
3. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a Dutch oven until it shimmers. Add the chopped onions, cook until they are soft and just starting to brown a bit. 
4. Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir them together gently until evenly distributed. Cover the Dutch oven and place it in the oven. 
5. Leave it in the oven for 2 hours. Taste to test the seasoning (careful, it will be very hot). Add salt to taste. Remove from the oven. 
6. Let it cool while you cook some white rice to serve it over. Then eat it and love it. And try to avoid going back for seconds. I dare you. 

Please check out all the other great chef-inspired dishes on offer from #SundaySupper. Lots of tasty dishes and inspiration are on offer:

Starters or Snacks:

• Martin at ENOFYLZ Wine Blog - Oyster and Brie Soup and Wine Pairings for Celebrity Chef #SundaySupper
• Linda at The Urban Mrs. - Inspired by Bobby Flay, Lobster Chowder with Roasted Corn Salsa
• Erin from Dinners, Dishes and Desserts - Rachael Ray’s Cinnamon Popcorn
• Cindy over at Cindy’s Recipes and Writings - Jamie Oliver’s Bread and Tomato Soup
• Jeff at The Catholic Foodie - Drop Biscuits – Breakfast with Chef John Besh
• Renee over at Kudos Kitchen By Renee - Giada De Laurentiis’s Garlic Toasts with Red Pepper Aioli

The Main Dish:

• Sheila at Cooking Underwriter – Paula Deen’s  Chicken in a Crock Pot w/ Sauerkraut and Apples
• Laura over at Small Wallet Big Appetite – Martin Yan’s Beef Chow Fun
• Sarah over at Crispy Bits & Burnt Ends - Michael Symon’s Lola burger with crab tater tots
• Susan at The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen - Ina Garten’s Baked Shrimp Scampi
• Tammi at Momma’s Meals – Ree Drummond’s Sloppy Joes
• Lane over at Supper for a Steal - Bobby Flay’s Rosemary Bricked Chicken
• Tara from Noshing with the Nolands - Michael Symon’s Pork and Apple Scallopini
• Shannon at Country Girl in the Village – Simple Red Sauce over Rigatoni. Inspired by Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos
• Kris over at In the Kitchen with Audrey and Maurene - Rachael Ray’s Muffin Tin Meatloaf
• Nicole from The Daily Dish Recipes - Paula Deen’s Slow Cooker Pulled Pickled Pork Sandwiches
• Becca from It’s Yummilicious - Ina Garten’s Grown-Up Bacon Mac & Cheese
• Alice at  Hip Foodie Mom - Sunday Pot Roast with Risotto Cakes from Kelsey Nixon
• Jen over at  Juanita’s Cocina - The Neely’s White Turkey Chili
• Brianne from Cupcakes & Kale Chips - Crockpot Beef Pot Roast with Mushrooms inspired by Giada DeLaurentiis
• Isabel at Family Foodie - Polenta with Garlicky Shrimp inspired by Chef Todd English
• Wendy from The Weekend Gourmet - Shrimp Penne in Pesto Cream Sauce from Emeril Lagasse
• Bobbi over at Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen - Cheesy Poblano Chicken
• Patti at Comfy Cuisine - Tyler Florence’s Chicken Francese
• Roxanne over at The Roxx Box - Jambalaya Pasta with Penne, Chicken, Shrimp, and Andouille
• Sue from Sue’s Nutrition Buzz – Rachael Ray’s Spicy Corn Chowdah Mac ‘n’ Cheese
• Jamie at Mama Mommy Mom - Penne with Asparagus, Smoked Gouda, and Prosciutto. Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis
• Tora over at Tora’s Real Food – Pork and beans with Alton Brown’s pickled pork
• Elisabeth over at The Hand That Rocks The Ladle - Emeril’s New Orleans Style Red Beans & Rice

Amazing Sides:

• Megan from I Run For Wine - Curtis Stone’s Acorn Squash Roasted with Thyme
• Sandi over at Midlife Road Trip -  Gabriele Corcos’s Gnocchi di Patate
• Shelby at  Diabetic Foodie - Orange Pecan Black Rice, adapted from Ina Garten
• Katie from She likes Ruffles, He likes Truffles - Chef Fabio Viviani’s Spinach and Artichoke Risotto 

Sweet Endings:

• Renee over at Magnolia Days – Brownie Tart
• Conni at The Foodie Army Wife - Inspired by Ree Drummond – Scrumptious Apple Coffee Cake
• Paula over at Vintage Kitchen Notes - Bill Granger´s Cherry Tart
• Pam from The Meltaways – Savannah Sheet Cake
• Katy over at Happy Baking Days - Mary Berry’s Treacle Tart
• Jaime over at Mom’s Test Kitchen - Southern Tea Cakes
• Amy over at Kimchi MOM - Crack Pie, I Can’t Quit You
• Lyn from The Lovely Pantry - Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Squares
• Melanie at From Fast Food to Fresh Food – Sand Tarts

Wine Pairings: 

• Martin at ENOFYLZ Wine Blog

Please join the Sunday Supper group via Twitter for #SundaySupper throughout the day on December 2, 2012. In the evening, Sunday Supper members will meet at 7 PM EST for the weekly #SundaySupper live chat. All you have to do is follow the #SundaySupper hashtag, or you can follow us through TweetChat. Also check out and pin to the #SundaySupper Pinterest board, which has more than 1,600 pins with all kinds of tasty dishes. 

Baking our daily bread, step by step

When Mike and I started changing the way we eat, the first thing we did was try to eliminate high-fructose corn syrup and everything that sounded like a chemical mystery ingredient. Doing that obviously meant reading ingredient lists at the grocery store. Turns out, getting rid of unpronounceable chemicals is quite hard. This is especially true for bread. Turn those soft packages with their comforting images of farmsteads, grains waving in the winds, and grandma baking over, and you frequently discover a shockingly long list of ingredients that don't sound like they have any relation with the farm, the soil, and the sun. We must have inspected every package of commercial bread until we found one that wasn't too disagreeable, but the implication was clear: I was going to have to bake our bread from now on.

Now thankfully, I was raised in Sweden by a mother who was a great cook and spent a lot of time with an aunt who was an even better cook, so the notion of baking bread wasn't particularly spooky-scary as it often seems to be here in the United States. Bread baking is a matter of course in Sweden; people often seem to speak of it as an arcane art here (in hushed voices), as much out of the realm of typical activities as blacksmithing. Mostly I was concerned with finding/creating a recipe I liked for a regular daily bread that wasn't too much work (obviously it takes a lot of time for the various rises, but you don't have to do much). And I think I have found it and tweaked it to perfection.

So here's my recipe and instructions for baking our everyday bread. It turns out as a soft, golden-y bread that has a beautiful aroma (especially right after it comes out of the oven and you slather some butter all over it). Another nice thing is that it lasts for at least a week (if it lasts that long at all) without becoming stale or moldy. You can also freeze a loaf to use some other time.

I started with Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe for basic hearth bread from The Bread Bible, messed around with a few different types of flour and some different combinations of flour until I came up with this recipe, which my family and I really like. (By the way, if you've only got bread flour or all purpose flour, you can still make this bread, and it will be really good.) It makes two generous loaves.

Step 1: Make the dough starter or sponge

In a bowl, combine

• 1 and 1/4 cup bread flour
• 1 and 1/4 cup wheat flour
• 1 bare teaspoon dry active yeast
• 3 teaspoons honey (this is food for the yeast and doesn't sweeten the bread, although I find that using an orange blossom or raspberry honey can add a very subtle but nice aroma)
• 2 and 2/3 cups of room temperature water

Beat these ingredients together with a whisk until they are smooth (at least two minutes). You want to get as much air in there as you can. When you are done beating, scrape down the sides of the bowl.   

Step 2: Make the flour mixture

In another bowl, mix together

• 1 cup oat flour (I am convinced this is what keeps the bread soft and creates such a great aroma)
• 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
• 1 and 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons bread flour
• 1 teaspoon dry active yeast

Cover your dough starter (sponge) with the dry flour mixture, ensuring that all the wet part is covered. Sprinkle 3 teaspoons (or 1 tablespoon) salt over the top of the dry ingredients. 

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to develop flavor for at least an hour and up to four. The dough starter will bubble up through the flour mixture, and that's OK! 

(You can also let it develop flavor overnight if you like. To do this, let the bowl stand out for at least an hour to make sure the yeast wakes up, then pop it into the refrigerator. When you want to start making the bread, let the bowl sit out at room temperature for an hour before you do anything with it so that it warms up enough to get the yeast going again. I find that if I leave it overnight, it doesn't rise quite as much and isn't quite as soft, but it does taste good.)

Step 3: Mix and knead the dough

(OK, if you don't have a decent stand mixer and a dough hook, this step will be tough. Your arms will get quite the workout.) Assemble your bowl on the stand mixer and attach the dough hook. Start the mixer on low speed and slowly raise your bowl up to the hook (this helps avoid flour flying everywhere). Mix slowly until the flour and the dough starter are completely combined. The dough will be a bit sticky at this point, so let it rest for about 20 minutes to develop gluten and absorb the liquid, and then the dough will be easier to work with.

Next turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead it for 10-15 minutes. 

Ha! As it turns out, you don't have to do this. Apparently the rising action of dough will cause it to knead itself, but I still like to let the machine work it over for another three to four minutes before I set it to rise. And supposedly the amount of time that you spent kneading used to be considered a symbol for how much you love your family, so if you feel like proving that, have at it. I knead about half the time; it depends on how much time I have available and how strong I am feeling. 

Step 4: Let it rise, let it rise, let it rise

After you have mixed together the dough, let it rest for 20 minutes, and kneaded it either by machine or by hand, you'll have a nice dough ball. Oil a bowl, put the dough ball in and turn it over a couple of times to get oil all over it, and cover it with plastic. 

    

Let it rise in a warm place for about two hours (I find a sunlit window to be a perfect place) until it's about double the size:

Now turn the dough out onto a floured board and flatten it with your hands into kind of a big pancake:

Fold the pancake like you would fold a business letter (three folds). (Beranbaum calls this a "business letter turn.") Then place the seam side down and round in the edges and put it back in the bowl to rise a second time. Once again, let it rise to about twice its original size (the second rise usually takes less time, about 1 hour and 15 minutes). 

Step 5: Shape the loaves and prep the oven

When the dough has risen to twice its size for the second time, it's time to shape the loaves and start prepping the oven. First, turn on your oven to 475 degrees (Fahrenheit). If you happen to have a pizza stone, put it in the oven (that will keep the temperature more consistent). I think you can also use clean bricks. Also put a pan that will hold about two inches of water on the bottom of the oven (just the pan, no water yet).

Then oil your pans (even if they are nonstick). (I use loaf pans that are 23.5 x 13.3 x 6.99 cm. Big loaf pans, basically.) 

Turn your dough out onto your floured board and divide it in half (a dough scraper is kind of genius tool for this, but a big knife will do the trick just fine). Try to make the two halves as even as possible, but I wouldn't worry too much about getting them perfect. 

Then, starting with one ball, flatten and shape the dough into a rectangle.

Fold it like you would a business letter:

Next, roll from the narrow end with the seam on the inside of the roll. Keep stretching it out to the sides until you have a cylinder.

Place the roll into your bread pan with the seam toward the bottom. Do the same thing with the second half of the dough. 

Let the dough rise in the pans until it stands about an inch above the edge of the pan:

Step 6: Bake the bread

When it's time to bake the bread, get about a cup of ice cubes and put them in the pan at the bottom of the oven. (Ha ha, you should hear about the time when I tried doing this with an oven-safe, GLASS pan; It didn't go too well, so don't do that.) Then mist the inside of the oven with a clean spray bottle full of water. Slide the loaves in fast and close the door.

Bake at 475 degree for 10 minutes. 

Reduce the heat to 425 degrees and bake for 20-30 minutes (I usually split the difference and it works well). You will know your bread is done when the edges pull away from the sides of the pan a bit and it sounds hollow when you thump it with your finger.

Step 7: Cool the bread

When the bread is done, take it out of the oven and slide it out of the loaf pans (usually it slides out pretty well, but you may need to go around the edge of the pan with a butter knife). Let the bread cool completely on a baking rack. If it doesn't cool completely before you store it in bags, the steam generated can leave the bread damp and ooky, which will encourage mold.

Now have at it!