Monday, April 24, 2006


the los lirios c.o.e., part iii

sometimes it's downright terrifying how events conspire against a great cup of coffee! so i'm sorry it took so long to deliver the promised results of brewing scott & jessica's wonderful los lirios colombia c.o.e. from their latitudes line in the cafetiére.

i brewed it both ways: the scaa standard and also by the staub method. in this case, i think i preferred the staub method personally.

the problem with staub's method is that there's not a good guideline yet as to how much finer to grind, which leaves so much to trial and error. and when you have only a precious 12 oz., you hate to waste even 14g.

so i just guessed: on my saeco 2002 burr grinder, instead of using setting number 11 as i normally would, i dialed it back to 7.5; not that this helps you out, gentle readers, since you probably don't have a saeco yourself and even if you did, your burrs probably have different wear than mine, resulting in a different grind on your machine. sigh.

thus i pressed my 60 g coffee/1 l water brew after 2-1/2 mins., and the java was good! in the cafetiére i thought the coffee developed a beautiful body, as you'd expect, even more muscular, but still sleek.

and the brightness was somewhat reduced, as you might also expect. it stayed sweet and crisp, but lost its sparkle.

since that sparkling quality is a highly desirable attribute, as much as i love press coffee, i think the los lirios may still be best displayed in the chemex.

if you're a big sugar fan, you can of course use some in this coffee, but frankly, i don't think it needs any, due to its astonishing balance.

and for you pizza fans: what's astonishing is that with the same dough, i can make a better pizza at home than the famous local pizzeria. working with that dough in my home oven and with a simple pizza stone, i made a good pizza.

of course, it's because i can use much higher-quality ingredients in the sauce and toppings than they profitably can.

the situation with their dough was interesting. it was exactly as st. hamelman describes commercial pizza dough: puffy (due to the use of chemical leaveners in recipe); extra moist (due to the use of dried milk powder, most likely); almost too easy to handle (due to the use of additives and dough relaxers).

what was astonishing was how quickly it baked. in just 2 minutes it was quite brown and in 3 one edge scorched -- this is probably due to a lot of sugar in the dough.

and yet it remained just as flavorless as it is at the pizzeria. working with this dough completely convinces me that it's worth every minute to make your own no-additive dough at home from organic flour with a biga.

while it's a little tough to roll it out quite as thin, the taste and texture are much better. much better.

but of course you'll have to check that out yourself.

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posted by fortune | 7:05 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 2 comments