Arturo's Osteria & Pizzeria Blog

Our new NJ starter culture is ready!

Our friends at Zone 7 have procured some wheat berries from Oak Grove Mills in Pittstown, NJ.  They arrived at Arturo's two weeks ago and since then we have been hard at work!  We milled the wheat berries by hand with our new, not-so-fancy grain mill.  After milling, we were left with a whole wheat flour that was unlike any flour I had ever seen.  The grind was course and it seemed like the color was darker than the whole wheat flours I've used in the past.  Maybe it's because I milled the flour myself.  Or maybe it's because I know the farmers who grew the wheat and I am friends with the middleman who delivered it.  But, I am positive that this flour is far superior to any that I've ever seen.  Only a few hands have ever touched this flour and the distance between the raw earth and our bread is as short as it gets.  This mentality of utilizing an ingredient grown so close to its final destination is indicative of the true principles and ideology behind AUTHENTIC Italian food.  It's not about a recipe or a particular dish.  It's about ingredients and technique.  Find the best product and learn how to cook it.  Clearly, I'm excited about this flour.

So now we have freshly milled whole wheat flour.  We then mixed the flour with an equal amount of water and mixed vigorously to incorporate as much air as possible into the pancake-like batter.  We left this to sit for 24 hours after which we discarded half of the mix.  We added more flour and water to the remaining half and let it sit for another 24 hours.  We repeated this for days and each time, bubbles grew more numerous and more rapidly.  By the seventh day, it was obvious that the starter was fully active.  Within three hours of feeding the culture, it had doubled in size and its smell changed from acidic to sweet and milky.  A few hours after that, the starter deflated and smelled acidic again.  This is the cycle of a wild yeast culture.  It was now hungry and ready to ferment a batch of dough.

I mixed the first batch of dough at 2 pm yesterday and let it ferment for a full 24 hours.  I then shaped a loaf of bread and let it proof in a cloth-lined basket.  While I was at it, I cut off a small piece and rolled it into a ball for what would become a pizza (my dinner).  The dough proofed (secondary fermentation) for another four hours.  Then, I threw my cast iron pot into the oven to preheat and started stretching my pizza.  I topped it with just a few cubes of our handmade fresh mozzarella, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil.  I made sure that our wood ovens were cranked up to 800 degrees and baked the little pie.  It came out of the oven just a few minutes later and was just as I like it:  Crispy and deeply caramelized on the outside, tender on the inside with big, open holes in its structure.  The colors on the outside ranged from golden to auburn to the darkest browns; the inside was a creamy off-white that could only be achieved with a thorough understanding of proper bread making technique.  The toppings obviously were not important to me at this point.  They were like ketchup on a french fry:  accentuation but definitely not necessary if you have a great french fry.  The soul of pizza is the gentile manipulation of flour and coaxing it into something etherial through a complete understanding and execution of proper fermentation.

After I had eaten my dinner, the cast iron pot was thoroughly preheated and ready to go.  I swiftly flipped the dough from its proofing basket into the pot and quickly covered it.  I gently pushed the tightly-covered pot into our wood fired oven for a quick twenty minute bake.  I curiously removed the lid and was amazed at the sight of this beautiful loaf of bread!!  It still needed another 25 minutes or so of baking to properly caramelize and dry the crust.  

I cannot explain the level of satisfaction that I took from this whole process.  We've created something so innately human from the grain of what was once a wild grass.  As I learn more about the fermentation process and of bread making technique, I find myself more intrigued and ready to dig deeper.  

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Monmouth County Meat Factory

Monday morning I woke with the brilliant idea of going to what I thought was a goat farm in Monmouth county.  As it turned out, they sold birds of all sorts, goats, pigs, sheep, and cows.  This was such an interesting place and could have been incredible.  They just don't do it the right way.  I walked into the small building that was overly subdivided into pens housing birds of all sorts.  There was a television in this "barn" (I struggle with calling this structure a barn) that was blaring Jerry Springer reruns.  The tv was so loud that when I was asking about the different varieties of birds, I couldn't hear a thing that the shopkeeper said.  He was completely uninterested in anything except Jerry.  Thankfully there was a not-so-lovely spanish speaking woman who reluctantly helped me with my many questions.  Somewhere in the conversation I picked out a duck and purchased it.  She not so gently carried the duck down the driveway to another building where the animals were processed.  She passed the duck to a man with a knife.  Emotionless, he cut the ducks throat and let it bleed out in a giant plastic garbage can.  The lifeless duck was then tossed into a bath of hot water to scald its skin.  This helped with removing its feathers.  Most of the feathers were removed by hand but just to be certain, he threw the duck into a giant mechanical spinner.  The machine threw the duck around like a pair of jeans in a clothes dryer.  He then brought the duck to his cutting board where he removed its organs, stuffing the good ones back into the cavity.  He asked me if I wanted the head, which of course I did.  He stuffed the duck into a plastic bag.  He surprisingly double bagged it without having to ask.  I gently placed the duck in the backseat of my car and quickly left. 

On the drive to back to North Jersey, I couldn't stop thinking about the lack of care and how factory-like this experience was.  My first experience of this kind was last winter in upstate New York.  This was eye-opening in a very different way.  It was pure and almost ritualistic.  The farm was run by an older man and his three grown children.  They took care of the animals properly and loved them.  There were chickens waddling around the barn and surrounding property.  There were horses, goats, and cows and pigs.  Some of the animals were free to roam the property and others were kept in enclosures but were not overcrowded.  While we were there, we took one of the pigs and a horse for a walk and fed a baby cow.  This was a farm.
Getting back to the Monmouth County "farm", I was under the impression that the eggs were laid on the premise.  Not the case.  I thought the animals were raised on their property.  Not the case.  This was basically a facility to kill, clean, and sell.  They purchased their animals from "somewhere" in the midwest and killed them when necessary.  The workers were emotion-less, uncaring, and devoid of any passion.  The animalswere unimportant and the life that they took was meaningless.  

This experience was equally as eye-opening as last years pilgrimage to the NY farm.  Meat is an animal that once had life.  It should be treated with respect, dignity, and care.  It should be consumed with this understanding and eaten in small quantities.  I know that this Monmouth County "farm" is a much better place to buy meat as compared to a local supermarket.  I am certain that it is not nearly as bad as other meat "factories" that just line up and kill animals like they are widgets.  I want to see these factories and experience this.  Maybe then I'll think differently about the Monmouth County "farm".  But until then, I'm going to appreciate my meat for what it is: an animal.

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