Recipe reviews: Sodium Girl's Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook

This evening I gave my aunt a copy of one of my favorite cookbooks, Sodium Girl's Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook by Jessica Goldman Foung, who blogs at sodiumgirl.com. I spent a bunch of time adding bookmarks for recipes I liked or loved, and little "don't do it" signs for a few recipes I don't recommend. It'd be silly to do that again the next time I give someone this book, so here are my notes.

This cookbook isn't perfect. The directions don't always seem tested, and sometimes they're unnecessarily convoluted. I suspect that Sodium Girl is a self-taught cook who happens to be a wizard at figuring out combinations of ingredients that work without salt. These recipes use tons of herbs, spices, and other flavorful ingredients, such as tamarind paste. Although not every recipe works, the ones that do are utterly delicious.

Loved it

• Tamarind "teriyaki" chicken skewers (p. 90)
• Don't bother skewering the chicken. Just stir fry and serve it over rice.
• Salad of grapefruit + avocado with toasted pumpkin seeds (p. 125)
• So good!
• Half a jicama is enough.
• Try it with 1/4 cup or less of olive oil. (It calls for 1/3 cup, but that seems like overkill.)
• Pistachio + broccoli pesto-crusted salmon (p. 196)
• Use half the amount of pistachios.
• Trader Joe's sometimes has unsalted, shelled pistachios; get them online if not in the store.
• Don't go overboard on the broccoli.
• This makes a lot of pesto; you could probably reduce those ingredients by 25%.
• Don't buy too much salmon; 4-6 oz per person is plenty.
• This recipe is very filling (lots of good fats!).
• Pork + fennel meat loaf (p. 226)
• Yum!!!
• Don't bother basting with ketchup so often. Once before it goes into the oven and once halfway through baking is plenty.
• We've made this twice in the last week.
• Whiskey orange pulled pork (p. 227)
• Cook [the boneless pork butt] until the meat falls easily from the bone??? Riiiight.

Liked it

• Mushroom broth barley soup (p. 143)
• Makes a lot (enough for 8 people, not 4 to 6).
• We omitted the dried mushrooms (probably because we didn't have any). It was fine without them but would probably be better with them.
• The whole black peppercorns were a bit much; just use more ground pepper.
• We reduced the cooking time (15 minutes simmer -> 5, 45 minute covered simmer -> 30).
• Chicken wraps with plum sauce (p. 212)
• Tasty!
• The sauce makes the chicken gray; consider coloring the chicken somehow to make it more appetizing?
• Pumpkin turkey pasta (p. 217)
• Beef taquitos (p. 222)
• I think we've made this with chicken a couple of times.
• Don't bother rolling up the stuff and baking it; the tortillas fall apart. Just bring out the meat and some warm corn tortillas, and let people roll their own.
• Moroccan lamb stew (p. 239)
• We might have loved this, but I only made it once a long time ago, so I don't remember.
• Can use > 2# of lamb, even without the bone.
• We used an entire orange (from a serious juicer).
• The couscous can wait until just before show time.
• Quick chai tea cookies (p. 250)
• Sliced almonds taste better than pumpkin seeds.

Don't bother

• Homemade chorizo patties (p. 67)
• Might have been good with some salt.
• Fraiche start carrot quiche (p. 68)
• We tried this twice, without success.
• Once we used creme fraiche, and once greek yogurt.
• With creme fraiche it was too creamy and not eggy enough.
• The crust was better the second time, when we used half shortening (and half butter) instead of all butter.
• Beef + broccoli with szechuan orange sauce (p. 225)
• Coating the beef (step 3) was a waste of time; stir frying would've been easier and better.
• We used oranges instead of mandarin oranges; mandarins would've been better.
• We didn't like it enough to try again.

Want to try

Pickles, curry, .... We haven't made even half the recipes I want to try. I'll put a list here eventually.

Sourdough, Josey Baker, & Peter Reinhart

I've been making lots of different kinds of breads lately, driven by two factors:

• Borrowed bread books
• Newly obtained starters (thanks, Lee & Andrew!)

The borrowed bread books are Josey Baker Bread (JBB) and Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads (PRWGB). I've met Baker in person (before I started baking bread) when he was dropping off loaves at my office in San Francisco. He seems the same in real life as he does in the book—super enthusiastic and energetic. Reinhart also has bay area ties, but he doesn't live here any more.

I borrowed JBB first, after I happened to notice it in the Mountain View library's bookmobile. JBB takes the approach of teaching you through a series of recipes. I skipped recipe #1 and made #2, "A two-part mix". It turned out fine, although I don't remember much about it; it's a pretty plain loaf. I made a couple of changes, using graham flour for the pre-ferment (since I was out of regular whole-wheat flour) and halving the salt.

JBB: A two-part mix (recipe #2)

Reading ahead in JBB, I saw that most of the recipes called for sourdough starter. I'd already wanted to make breads from real, time-tested sourdough starters, so I decided to use Facebook and Google+ to ask for starters.

Lee's starter (found via the Facebook post) is a white sourdough starter derived from Goldrush Sourdough Starter, which doesn't have a great reputation. Lee said that the first time he tried a Goldrush starter, it failed completely. The second time, however, it took. He has used this starter for years, even taking it on week-long scout camping trips.

Andrew's starter (found via the Google shuttle) is a whole-wheat "mother starter" from PRWGB. Andrew didn't happen to need PRWGB for the next week, which is how I ended up borrowing it. (Thanks, Andrew!)

There I was, with a bunch of starter and two books I had to return soon. It was time to start baking. However, I didn't have much time, given work and my commute, and most of the recipes in both JBB and PRWGB take multiple days to make. I was able to refresh both starters during the week, but I couldn't make most of the recipes.

So that we'd have bread during the week, I used Lee's starter to make sourdough buckwheat bread from Ruth Hensperger's The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook (TBLBMC). Sourdough buckwheat bread is a really nice loaf of sandwich bread, with flavor from buckwheat, whole wheat, and orange zest. It's not the heart-healthiest recipe (mostly white flour, with an egg and some butter), but I might well make it again.

TBLBMC: Sourdough buckwheat bread

Changes I made to the recipe include halving the salt, halving the yeast, and using buttermilk powder & water instead of buttermilk. I might've also used a little less butter than the recipe called for, thanks to spillage.

Next, I made another relatively quick recipe: JBB's adventure bread, which is made almost entirely of seeds—no gluten, and no flour. It's held together mainly by chia and psyllium. You can see the recipe on David Leibovitz's blog. I wasn't crazy about this bread, and my husband hated it, but it's certainly interesting, and it holds its shape amazingly well. If you try adventure bread, I recommend eating it warm, preferably toasted, so it isn't clammy. I omitted the salt entirely, but it'd probably taste better with salt.

JBB: Adventure bread

Finally the weekend came, and I could prepare two-day recipes from JBB and PRWGB. Saturday I started JBB's sesame bread and PRWGB's whole wheat sandwich bread. The sesame bread isn't a sourdough bread, but I'd been wanting to make it ever since getting the book, and I'd recently found the brown, unhulled sesame seeds it called for. I started a little late in the day (after noon), so I ended up staying up very late, so that after the 12 hour pre-ferment, the mixed sesame bread could rise for 3 hours before I stuck it in the fridge for up to 3 days.

The PRWGB recipe is 100% whole grain. It uses a soaker (salted, soaked whole wheat) along with a bunch of starter. I made the soaker Saturday morning, so that it'd be ready to mix with the starter and bake Sunday. Even though PRWGB featured this recipe in its "Master Formula" section, it was sufficiently complex that I wrote a 9-step timeline of what I needed to do. It felt like Thanksgiving, with less risk of food poisoning.

Timeline for PRWGB's master formula

When I started prepping to make the dough, I remembered a big pastry board I'd given my daughter. It's a beauty, but I don't think we'd used it before.

Pastry board with ingredients ready to mix

I tried using the stand mixer to mix the dough, but it didn't seem to be working, so I ended up mixing by hand. Then I kneaded for what was supposed to be under 5 minutes but went much longer, until the dough got close to passing the windowpane test—stretchy enough that a small amount you pull off can form a translucent "windowpane". Kneading must be a good core workout: the next morning my abs were a little sore!

I'm not experienced at shaping bread, so I'll spare you the pre-baking pictures of shaping the bastard, but here's the final result, which is huge, by the way.

My version of a bâtard (which means bastard in French)

The resulting bread tasted fine, but the crust was disappointingly soft. I suppose I should've expected the soft crust, since it was described as a sandwich bread, but if I'd known I would've just baked it in a pan.

I took my time with the JBB sesame bread, not baking it until Wednesday. I goofed up the flip into the Dutch oven, so it ended up folded in half. The end result looked a little weird, but it was delicious!

Not bad for a loaf that took a header

My husband and I keep eating this bread. It tastes great, it's nicely chewy, it's good in a sandwich or by itself or alongside dinner... This is a seriously yummy bread. Even though only a small percentage of it is whole wheat, I'll make it again. The sesame seeds help make up for the white flour, right?

Great by itself or with dinner

The only change I made was halving the salt. I made the pre-ferment and dough mix Saturday, shaped the dough Monday or Tuesday night, and then baked it Wednesday. (Note: Eat this bread within a day or so. By Friday evening, it tasted stale.)

The ugly side looked like a monster's face. I ate it anyway.

Both JBB and PRWGB feature whole-grain, artisanal breads. JBB is more approachable; it's breezy and doesn't require lots of reading before you get to work. On the other hand, JBB didn't answer all of my practical questions (should I cover my proofing basket? what does "fold in the sides of a circle" mean—how can circles have sides?). PRWGB is more thorough and authoritative, but you have to flip around a lot to get all the information you need.

When I started this post, I thought I'd end up buying one of the Reinhart books but probably not the JBB book. After making the bâtard and the sesame bread, I've swung the other way: the PRWGB bread was a lot of work with a disappointing outcome, and the JBB bread was delicious and easy (though not quick).

I've also discovered that I'm not really into kneading. In the future, I'll probably let the bread machine do the work.

Finally, I'm planning to buy a baking stone and a lame. Maybe a banneton basket, too. No more monster-face breads for me. 

Hunting for a good raisin bread

Although I'm not fond of raisins on their own, I love a good raisin bread. I've tried three recipes lately, with varying degrees of success. (Please tell me if you know a great bread machine raisin bread recipe! I still haven't found the perfect one.)

Here are the results of my raisin bread hunt, in order of how likely I am to make them again (which is the reverse of the order I made them in):

1. C.R.O.W.W. (Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Walnut Whole wheat), from Beth Hensperger's ever-reliable The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: Delicious, although I could've used more raisins and nuts (1/2 cup + 1/4 cup, to 3 cups flour). Besides the usual ingredients and those listed in the title, this recipe also uses egg whites, buttermilk, oil, and a vanilla powder that I couldn't find in local stores, so I bought it online. For the raisins I used "jumbo mixed medley" raisins from Berkeley Bowl's bulk section.
2. 100% whole wheat fruit bread, from the Zojirushi cookbook: Also delicious, and kept fresh for days. Instead of raisins, I used dried sour cherries from Berkeley Bowl. Yum. I might've liked to have more fruit (it had 2/3 cup, to 5 cups flour) and maybe nuts. I might try changing the butter to hazelnut or walnut oil. Instead of cinnamon, this recipe used allspice, which tasted great with the cherries. Every recipe I've tried from the whole grain section of this cookbook has been really good. (The party bread is another story, but that came from another section.)
3. Raisin, cinnamon, and nut wheat bread (aka fail bread) from Beatrice Ojakangas' Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand: Such a tasty failure, I had to make it twice to believe it. Both times, almost all the fruit and nuts (3/4 cup of each, to 4 cups flour) ended up at the bottom of the pan. I don't know if this was because there was too much fruit/nuts, or because the consistency of the dough was too thick or thin. Whatever the cause, this recipe must not have been tested with a Zojirushi—or maybe with any bread machine. Also, this bread went stale quickly. I'll think twice before making another recipe from this book.

The C.R.O.W.W. bread was my dinner the day I made it, and breakfast the next day. I should perhaps lay off, but at least it was a reasonably nutritious substitute for a real meal. I made the 1.5-pound loaf, changing the salt to a scant teaspoon, and yeast to 2 teaspoons.

C.R.O.W.W.: Dinner and breakfast in a loaf

The Zo bread was their typical, gargantuan size. It was supposed to use 100% whole wheat flour, but I ran out and used about 1/3 bread flour. (I reduced the gluten from 4T to 3T to compensate.) I reduced the salt to 1 teaspoon, and the yeast to a heaping teaspoon.

Zojirushi ~67% whole wheat fruit bread

Finally, we come to the fail bread. Take a look at it.

The bottom of the fail bread

Spectacular, isn't it? I think that's my second version, which had cranberries and walnuts. My first try had jumbo raisins and pecans, I think. Both tasted good, if you ignored the fact that the only fruit was on the bottom. (Some of the smaller nut pieces made it into the dough.) I didn't record my alterations the first time, but the second time I made the large-loaf size, reducing the salt to 3/4 t and the yeast to 1 t.

Because you just can't eat enough gluten, I've also started working my way through Josey Baker's bread book, which I've borrowed from the library. I'll blog about that next.