St. Paddy's Stripy Cat

As a little preview for St. Patrick's day and for my first time participating in Bread Baking Day, I've decided to make a sweet variation of Irish soda bread. Thanks to Mansi of the Fun and Food Blog for hosting this most appropriate event of making quick breads in the month of St. Patrick's Day!

The recipe comes from Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course. Darina Allen runs a cookery school in Ireland. She is a leader in the movement towards eating local, organic cuisine and has been for a lot longer than it has been in fashion.

Simply put, I cannot say enough good things about this cookbook. It seems to be on the shelf in every house I visit in Ireland (about 6), but I have never considered buying it. I have a lot of cookbooks and having skimmed through it, I decided that it was too similar to the Joy of Cooking in its encyclopedic coverage of every topic under the sun. Having lugged home too many cookbooks in my suitcase, I was also put off by its massive bulk. But it couldn't be avoided - we were given it as a gift this last Christmas.

And boy am I glad - in a few short months it has become one of two (Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food is the other) that I turn to almost daily. What's so great about it?

Ms. Allen is a passionate advocate for eating locally and seasonally, which is reflected in most of the recipes. The recipes generally group foods from the same season, which means that I can easily find a recipe to match whatever happens to be in my cupboard.

The sheer number of recipes at first seems like overkill, and I thought it would be hard to choose between recipes. For a reasons I can't understand, the number of recipes seems exactly right - for example, there are 13 recipes for preparing cauliflower, one to fit every mood.

So enough about my cookbook - what is Stripy Cat? It's a variation of Spotted Dog, which is a variation of Irish Soda Bread. Soda bread is a traditional Irish white flour bread, leavened with baking soda and buttermilk. It's a crunchy, rustic, tender, flavorful loaf, a little lighter than the delicious Irish Brown Bread, about which you already know I have passionate feelings.

Spotted Dog is a slightly sweeter version of soda bread, containing an egg, a little sugar and raisins, mmm. Good, but I was looking for something a little richer, and apparently so were they....

Stripy Cat is Spotted Dog but with dark chocolate chunks instead of raisins - even better!

We've made it before, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for ... today we added about 50% more chocolate, a handful of nuts, and a few more teaspoons of sugar. It turned out exactly as we hoped. Rich, crunchy, moist, chocolaty, but not too sweet.

Here is the recipe, with my variations.

In a few of my past bread posts, I've discussed the necessity to reduce flour if you're in Colorado. I do not find that to be the case with soda leavened breads. A friend of mine in New York who experimented with Brown Bread after my first post found that she had to reduce the liquid in order to get the same texture. The takeaway from this is that you should cut in the liquid slowly and stop when the dough seems only just moistened but picks up all the flour.

Stripy Cat

• 450 g (1 lb) plain (or all-purpose) unbleached flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 120g (4 1/2 oz) best quality, bittersweet dark chocolate, chopped roughly
• 1 handful walnuts, chopped
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  
• 350ml (12 fl oz) buttermilk
  

Preheat the oven to 425⁰, with a baking stone if you have one.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well by lifting everything with your hands repeatedly to aerate the flour.

Mix the egg and buttermilk in a small bowl. Pour half of them over the dry ingredients and use a spatula to gently cut them in. Pour the rest of the milk mixture over the dough bit by bit, cutting it in - be sure not to overmix or add to much liquid.

The dough will be very thick and sticky and have lumps of unincorporated flour. Pat the dough into a rough ball and then drop it on a cookie sheet or pizza paddle. Flatten the ball a little into a loaf, and then cut in a deep X.

Cook on the sheet or stone at 425⁰ for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 400⁰ and cook for 35 minutes more. The finished bread will look golden and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

This recipe is a basic summary of instructions - my older post on Irish Brown Bread gives helpful tips which I didn't want to repeat here. Also, if you haven't tried this bread - you're missing out. But that's not the topic for today...

This rich, buttery, crunchy bread is a nice contemporary twist on a great traditional Irish bread. Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Where to Start Looking for Real Milk?

The next step in my quest for eating real food will be the exploration of milk. As I've mentioned before, my son isn't drinking a whole lot of milk, but he does drink some, and he eats quite a bit of homemade yogurt. Because this is an important part of his diet, I'd like to give it a little more thought than I have in the past.

Based on my prior research, I know that I'd like to find milk from cows that are pastured, or 100% grass fed. A cow is a ruminant; grass is the food source to which they are adapted, and I subscribe to the belief that milk and meat from cows/cattle that have eaten their natural diet is far more nutritious than that from cows that are fed otherwise. Also, cows that are pastured live in their natural habitat, which is the least we can do in exchange for what they're doing for us.

So what are my choices?

My investigations in this area so far have led to more questions than answers - specifically one major question, why is milk pasteurized and is it safe to drink raw (or unpasteurized) milk?

Why do I ask this, you might wonder? Because raw milk shares (I'll explain this later) are becoming increasingly common in my area, and in my search for pastured milk, raw milk dairies seem to follow pasturing practices more strictly. So the question of whether or not to drink raw milk has been on my mind for quite some time.

When my son was younger, I simply wasn't comfortable experimenting with this topic. I'll confess that I didn't research it much. While I do believe that it is important not to over-sterilize a baby's environment because they need to build their immune system, I was reluctant to go against a century of common acceptance of the pasteurization process and potentially introduce a foodborne illness to my son.

So until now, we've been getting milk delivered from an all natural, but non-organic, local dairy. I decided that a compromise of getting fresh milk from a local, all natural source, with zero waste due to the use of glass bottles, was preferable to buying organic milk from a large company at the local health food store.

Now that my son is almost two, it's time to reconsider this decision. But first I need to answer the question of whether or not I'm comfortable giving him raw milk.

I found a few commonly cited sources in favor of drinking raw milk:

• William Campbell Douglass II, MD. wrote a well known book called The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. After quite a bit of surfing, I've noticed a few things - first, this book is commonly cited as the sole source of evidence in favor of drinking raw milk. Second - Dr. Douglass has written a lot of literature, including a book touting the health benefits of tobacco. Hmmm, I'm open minded, but perhaps not that open minded. Maybe I'll keep looking for sources.
• The Weston A. Price Foundation runs an interesting website devoted to raw milk. "The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports a number of movements that contribute to this objective including accurate nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies." This mission describes a number of my beliefs and passions perfectly. Their website contains a number of interesting articles challenging FDA publications promoting pasteurized milk. They also publish their board of directors, which looks like a reasonably qualified group. So... this looks like a good place to start reading.
  

Against drinking raw milk, I found quite a bit of information on the FDA website, for instance Got Milk? Make Sure It's Pasteurized.

When I began putting this post together, I planned on doing only a single entry on milk. But I've been doing research for two nights now and come up with a wealth of interesting information. So I had a think... if I was reading someone else's blog, would I want to read a list of sources followed by the writer's ultimate conclusion, or would I want to read a more detailed analysis of the two sides? Given that I couldn't find any blogs or articles that I felt compared both sides objectively, I'd like to do that here (I'll try to be objective!). Which means that one post isn't enough. (You might have guessed that after reading my egg posts.)

So stay tuned for the rest of my milk posts - in the next one, I'll try to outline the major arguments for and against raw milk, primarily using sources from the FDA and the Weston A. Price Foundation.

Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli

Pleased by the positive results with my sourdough bread, tonight I thought I'd build on my knowledge of dealing with dry flour in Colorado and tackle something I've had a lot of trouble with of late - homemade pasta.

A little background info on tonight's meal: believe it or not, we still have winter squash left from our fall CSA. I can't bring myself to eat any more squash soup or roasted squash. I guess I need to put in a little more thought as to what to do with the last few. Then I remembered ... why hadn't I thought of this before? I LOVE butternut squash ravioli, and I've never tried to make it. The butternut squash are long gone, but acorn squash will probably taste almost as good.

I started looking for a recipe. NONE of my many cookbooks has a recipe for butternut squash ravioli, not even any of my five trusty Jamie Oliver books (Ok, I like him, but not that much - two of them were gifts). Next I looked online. Sure enough, I found a pretty good recipe on epicurious. If you haven't used epicurious before, I'd highly recommend it. I've had pretty good luck with most of the recipes I've tried.

So now I've got a plan for the filling, which brings us back to the problem of the pasta. I got a pasta maker about 6 years ago. For the first few years, I used it quite a bit, as you do, and I could do no wrong. It must have been beginner's luck. After a while, my pasta started getting worse and worse - tough, chewy (not in a pleasant way) and dry. I've tried a few different recipes, but always with the same result.

I've already learned some this weekend about holding back flour while paying attention to a recipe's instructions for how the dough should feel. I thought I'd try to apply this idea to pasta, going back to the first recipe I ever tried, from Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef. I'll write more on him another time, as he deserves an entire entry. But here is the short version of the recipe.

• 1 lb bread flour (3 1/2 to 4 c)
• 5 fresh, large eggs (preferably organic)
• semolina flour for dusting

Pile the flour on a smooth surface and make a well in it. Crack the eggs into the well. Use a fork to mix the eggs together, slowly drawing in more and more of the flour until it forms a dough. Once it is incorporated, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Let dough rest in the fridge 1 hour.

Divide the dough into 4 balls, then use a pasta maker or rolling pin to roll each ball into a sheet. From there cut it or shape it as you want.

I decided to hold back about 25% of the flour. After that I paid close attention to adding only enough flour to keep the dough from getting sticky as I kneaded it.
Success! When I rolled it out in the pasta maker, the dough felt soft, tender and elastic, not tough as it has in my last attempts. In the end, I kept back about 1/3 of the suggested flour amount.

Here is a VERY important tip for those of you that are still with me... after rolling out each sheet, you need somewhere to put it. Jamie always shows beautiful sheets hanging on the backs of chairs in his books, but don't try this unless you want to eat one giant chair shaped noodle. It is way too dry in Colorado - the pasta dries in position almost immediately. Instead I lay the pasta flat in sheets covered in (very wrung out) damp dish towels. Here is the important part, dust flour very generously between each sheet, including under the bottom one. Otherwise, they stick together, which is a nightmare if you're trying to make ravioli, as you don't want any holes. Semolina is the best flour for dusting, by the way, as it is course, almost like sand, and doesn't get absorbed by the pasta.

Now on to the filling. I pretty much followed the filling part of the recipe exactly, except for using the acorn squash. I also followed a few of the review suggestions and subbed fresh sage and goat cheese, the delicious local Haystack Mountain Chevre.

I am really lazy when shaping the ravioli. I saw a Good Eats episode once where Alton measured each ravioli to perfection using a ruler. Where is the fun in that? Mine are much more "artistic."

Ok, instructions: lay out one sheet of pasta and then put scoops of ravioli down about 1 to 1 1/2 inches apart. How big should the scoops be? Use your best judgement. Put the line of scoops slightly off the center line. Flatten each scoop so that the top layer of pasta doesn't have to stretch far to touch the bottom layer. Then gently brush water on the pasta around each scoop.

Finally, fold the other half of the sheet over the tops of the scoops. You want to do this slowly, cupping your hand around the back of each scoop then rolling the cup of your hand over the scoop to the other side. You're trying to force out any air bubbles before making the final outer connection between the layers, as air will expand during cooking and possibly pop the pasta open. I wish I'd taken a picture of this step, but I was in a little bit of a panic due to the aforementioned sticky sheet hole problem. Cut between each covered scoop into individual raviolis.

Oh yea, put a big pot of water on to boil about ten minutes ago. Once boiling, lower the heat to a bare simmer.

To cook the pasta, gently place about 7 or 8 raviolis into the water at a time. Don't let the water come back to a boil or it will break up the raviolis. I cooked them until al dente, about 4 minutes. Drain the water from the raviolis gently, then immediately coat them in either olive oil or whatever sauce you're making.

Which brings us to the sauce. I was really lazy with the sauce... basically I threw a few tablespoons of butter in a saute pan on medium low heat with a handful each of walnuts and fresh sage leaves and a pinch of salt. I let it cook gently for about 5 minutes, tossing occasionally, until the butter, the nuts and the sage were all browned and toasty. Then pour over the ravioli.

Colorado Sourdough from Scratch

Today was attempt #2 at using my sourdough starter to actually make bread. As much as I love tending to it and seeing it grow, I'm not looking for a new pet - it's time to put it to use.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was trying that very day to make my first ever sourdough bread. Many, many hours later, my "boules" were about as risen and tender as slightly misshapen softballs. Yumm. I decided not to waste the electricity to bake them - there was no hope.

What went wrong?

The recipe I used was suggested as the easiest one to start with for new sourdough bakers in the King Arthur book -

Pain Au Levain with Whole Wheat.

• 1 c. (9 oz) ripe whole wheat levain - yes, I have that finally!!
• 1-2/3 c. (6-5/8 oz) whole wheat flour
• 2-2/3 c. (11-1/4 oz) unbleached bread flour
• 1-1/2 c. (12-oz) cool water
• 1 Tbs honey
• 2 tsp salt
  

I am not going to recount all of the steps in detail here as the recipe is actually FIVE pages long with a few extra sidebars on other pages. If anyone is interested, let me know, and I can provide more detail.

Actually the recipe wasn't hard - easy steps with short risings in between, followed by one long rising. So I was surprised that my dough was so leaden.

After thinking back on each step in the process, I had an idea for what the problem might be. This recipe is a little unlike other yeast recipes I've used in that it suggests that you add all of the flour and water to your rising agent in the first step, stir it slowly and then let it sit for 20 minutes. This step is called an autolyse and is apparently quite important.

Heartland Mill, supplier of organic grain products, says, "This pre-hydration allows for better links between gluten and starches and results in shorter mix times and improved dough extensibility. Loaves made with autolysed dough will be easier to shape and will have more volume and better crumb structure."

In other recipes I've used, which don't happen to have this step, when the flour is added to the liquid, you only start with about two thirds of it. The remaining flour is added during the kneading process so that you can judge whether or not it is necessary.

Well, being a bit baffled by the autolyse step, I thought I'd better just follow the instructions and added all of the flour.

And this, I think, was the problem. Colorado is extremely dry, which makes the flour here extremely dry. The drier your flour, the more liquid it will need. When making bread, your liquid amount is predetermined, so all you can do to get the right balance is use less flour. When I make yeast bread, I typically add about 1/2 to 1 c. less flour than suggested for a two loaf recipe.

Rather than pay attention to this previously observed pattern, I just dumped in all of the flour. As soon as I began the first kneading step, I sensed a problem.

Whole wheat bread dough is extremely wet and sticky to knead, which is quite different than white bread dough. After a good kneading period and the right amount of flour, a white bread dough will feel smooth, warm and elastic - maybe a little tacky, but definitely not sticky. Whole wheat dough will feel elastic, but it will be much more sticky. If you add enough flour to whole wheat dough to make it smooth, the dough will be so heavy that the yeast won't be strong enough to make it rise.

And that was my problem... my dough felt exactly like white bread dough.

So today I started over, which brings us to the present...

Man, this bread takes a long time to make. I am not kidding, here are (roughly) the steps:

• Mix the starter, water and flour slowly.
  
• Let rest for 20 minutes
• Add salt and honey, knead for a few minutes
• Let rise for 45 minutes
• Put dough on floured surface, spread into a rectangle, fold up like a letter, twice, put back in bowl.
• Let rise for 45 minutes
• Repeat folding step
• Rise for, surprise, surprise, 45 minutes
• Turn onto surface, divide in two, draw up edges and pinch together
• Let rest for 20 minutes
• Shape into boules (long, long explanation here which I don't really understand, basically I ... shaped them into taught rounds)
• Put into bowls or baskets lined with heavily (didn't do it heavily enough!) floured, smooth tea towels and cover
• Let rise for 2 to 2-1/2 hours
• During rise, preheat oven to 450⁰ for half hour with baking stone on middle rack and iron skillet on bottom rack
• Bake loaves on stone for 10 minutes at 450⁰, then 20-30 minutes at 425⁰. When putting loaves in the oven, put 1/2 c. water into iron skillet to create steam, which makes the crust crispy.
  

The only modification I made was to hold back about 3 oz of the bread flour from the first step. As it turns out, I never needed to add it back. The dough seemed to fit the description pretty well from thereon out.

How did it turn out? ... It was everything I hoped for: chewy, tender, crusty, and with the extra flavor of a whole wheat loaf.

So ... living in a town with great artisan bread available, was it worth it all the effort? It tasted quite similar to expensive breads I've bought. The one extra characteristic I noticed was that it tasted fresher. I don't know why, given that any bakery bread I'd buy around here would have been baked that morning, but my husband and I both agreed that it definitely tasted fresher. And it's pretty cool that I made the whole thing using flour, water, honey and salt.

Notice that in the picture, the loaf is half eaten. That picture was taken about 3 minutes after we cut into the first loaf. That might give you an idea of how it tasted. So at this point, I'm thinking I'll keep my little pet around for awhile.

Yeast Gone WILD!!!!!

And now for my next baking adventure. I've introduced brown bread - a simple soda leavened bread. I've had a first attempt at using sprouted wheat (haven't tried sprouted wheat bagels yet, still on the list).

These aren't quite doing it for me... I really have a craving for a nice, chewy crusty loaf.

Through all the research and experimentation I've done (OK, I admit - not that much, but I have read my two baking cookbooks and I have really good reading comprehension) , I've come to realize that this is not such an easy thing to come by. Soft, tender, yeast leavened sandwich bread is pretty easy to make at home, and it generally only takes a few hours. But this wasn't what I wanted. The more recipes I read, the more I realized that the crusty, chewy texture of French, sourdough, and other types of artisan bread comes from growing a starter for a minimum of one night, and often more.

After browsing a few choices, I decided to attempt a sourdough starter completely from scratch - no yeast, nothing except water and whole wheat flour. I've heard that sourdough starters can be extremely finicky and difficult to make, but what's the worst that can happen... I'll throw a bunch of flour away? Thank goodness for Boulder's Curbside Compost Pickup - that helps alleviate the guilt!

I chose a method from King Arthur's Whole Grain Baking. The basic steps are as follows:

• Combine 1 c. (4 oz) whole wheat flour and 1/2 c. (4 oz) cool water. Cover and leave at room temperature.
• The next day and the day after, feed the mixture by discarding half of the mixture and mixing in the same amount of flour and water. Cover and let sit. By the third day, the mixture should show signs of expansion and smell fruity.
• Every day thereafter, the mixture needs to be fed every 12 hours with the same amount of flour and water.
• After the 5th day, the mixture can be used as a starter.

What does all of this mean? It sounds so mysterious. Why do I have to wait for 5 days if the mixture starts to expand after two? Well, I found lots of conflicting information, but the explanation that seems to make the most sense to me is a great explanation I found from Mike of Sourdough Home.

Basically, whole grain flour is loaded with lots of different yeast and bacteria. Through regular feedings, the two that you are interested in - yeast and lactobacillus bacteria will eventually thrive and kill of all of the rest. This takes about a week. If you aren't regular with your feedings, your starter will either stop growing or start growing other things you don't want, like mold. He recommends that you use a starter when it is at least a week old and doubling in size every 12 hours.

By the way, you discard half the mixture at every feeding unless you want an exponentially growing starter (doubling every 12 hours and doubling the amount of flour needed to keep it from starving). I like bread, but I'm not planning on making that much.

So how did mine go?

The initial mixture was a very thick, dry paste. I was skeptical. See picture on the right...

The next day, I didn't see any sign of activity, but it did smell distinctively yeasty. That seemed positive. I fed as instructed.

By the third day, it was growing like crazy. It looked bubbly and smelled fruity, just as described.

I faithfully fed it every 12 hours (or so!) and by the sixth day it was still going strong and I was dying to use it. To the right are pictures of my growing blob after this morning's feeding and this afternoon when I got home from work. You can see why I call it a blob - I could have nightmares about this.

So it seems that in Colorado it is not so hard to get a sourdough culture started... I would have liked to have said that my next post would be about the great bread I made with it, but I'm afraid this will take a little more practice. I attempted my first bread tonight and after about 2 hours of rising, the dough hasn't risen at all.

Well, I'll have another blob of excess starter ready in the morning for attempt #2. If it doesn't get me first ...

Find a CSA near you

If you haven't heard the term CSA before, now is a good time to learn a little about it, because the summer sign-ups are starting.

If you have, then don't worry, I'll keep this short.

In my own words, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a way that members of a community can join together to support a farm and its farmer(s) and reap its benefits. The farms draw members from a small local area. They usually ask for a lump sum payment from each member at the beginning of the season (and sometimes even a few days of labor) for the purpose of supporting the farm and its workers through that season, and in return, distribute their wares to each member in installments. When you buy a CSA share, that is really what you are buying ... a share, as opposed to a regular guaranteed delivery of vegetables. If the farm has a little trouble due to weather, you'll get less of a share; if the veggies are great that year, you'll get a little more.

Having said all that, there are thousands of CSAs in the US, operating on many different models and for many different types of farms, including everything from veggies, fruit, flowers to coffee, bread, milk and meat.

What is the motive behind all of this? To build a network of local, small scale, non-industrial farms in your area. These farms will supply you with healthier, often organic, food that is grown in your own backyard rather than being trucked in from thousands of miles away. Long term, you're guaranteeing that this supply will be around because by giving a guaranteed payment to a farm at the beginning of the season, they'll become more stable than if they were to strictly sell produce at farmer's markets, especially in a problematic season. And an additional bonus is that you're supporting your local economy.

Believe it or not, the USDA estimated based on data collected that in 2007 there were 12,459 farms in the US selling through a CSA arrangement¹. This movement is growing. Maybe someday it will actually be more common to buy food locally than from the supermarket.

A few resources - The USDA has an interesting older article on the origin of CSAs as well as many up to date references and Local Harvest is a great website for finding a CSA near you.

So which CSA did we go with? If you've been reading this blog, you can guess that we are in awe of the veggies from Abbondanza. We did a fall CSA with them last year and had great luck - beautiful, delicious produce and a lot of it. It is $650 for 22 weeks.

But I don't think we can expect that this will always be the case. Our summer experience wasn't quite as good. We joined a different farm, that I'd prefer not to mention. Maybe we just weren't in the right mindset (which is why I'd rather withhold their name). It's hard not to look at the price you're paying per week, especially when you've just picked up chard and pea shoots for the 3rd week in a row and compare it to the price you'd pay at the supermarket for a week's worth of veg. It's hard to remind yourself that you're not in it for the deal - you're in it for building a long term, sustainable food supply. I guess what we objected to was the selection of produce grown - either Colorado produce takes some getting used to or they grew weird stuff.

Having said all that, I'm very excited for this year. Even if it turns out exactly the same as last year, I'll have a better idea of what to expect and what to do with the food. (Put the chard in the trade basket!)

In fact, this summer I plan to feature a vegetable of the week centered around what I got in my pickup. It'll all be very exciting!

So, in summary- join a CSA and do it now, they fill up fast

Ok, one more thing... what is the deal with snap peas? Every CSA around here features them prominently. Last summer there were basket loads at every stand at the Farmer's Market (31 days!). People seem to refer to them in reverential tones. WHY? They are not nice at all. To me, they taste like sugar water in a fibrous green shell. Whereas fresh English peas are simply divine, seem to be growable around here, and are quite hard to find! Ok, rant over. Goodnight.

¹USDA website on Community Supported Agriculture

Eggsaustive Eggspose - The Final Chapter

Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for - the final installment of my series on finding and eating all natural eggs. This is where we put it all to the test - get the free range eggs, get the feel good factory eggs and compare how they cook and taste.

The contenders:

- Cyd's Nest Fresh Free Roaming Organic Brown: As discussed in the previous posts, this was the grocery store brand I chose based on a few factors. They're local, they use organic feed, the hens aren't caged, and while the chickens are pretty far from what many people would consider truly free range, at least they've gone to the effort to get certified by an independent organization as following humane practices.

- Jay Hill Farm's free range eggs: This nearby farm sells organic vegetables and free range eggs year round. I had a few email exchanges with Rowan of Jay Hill Farm regarding what free range actually means to them. Their chickens eat weeds and veggie scraps from their farm, commercial feed, non-organic due to affordability, but at least non-gmo, and whatever they can get outside. They roam around in a large enclosure from early in the morning until evening. She said that they tried letting them truly roam free in their fields, but there were too many predators around. I can believe that, as I live nearby and frequently have foxes in my backyard. So, while I was disappointed that their feed isn't organic, these chickens are probably leading contented lives and getting a substantial portion of greens and insects in their diet, which seems like a reasonable compromise.

The challenge:

• Poached - this most difficult cooking method would be a good test for comparing the freshness and firmness of the the two varieties
• Fried - this, the most delicious of all egg cooking methods, would allow me to taste both eggs at their best.

Quick diversion - frying an egg is easy right? That depends on who you ask. It seems easy, once you are practiced enough not to break the yolk, but achieving that elusive balance of crispiness and tenderness, softness of the yolk and firmness of the white is not easy. My husband pointed this out to me a few years ago. Pre-kid, we used to eat breakfast out every week or two. I liked to bounce around, trying different places, but he always wanted to go to this greasy place near our house called Marie's. It's been an establishment in Boulder since the 70s, I think. One day, I asked him what he saw in Marie, and he said, the fried eggs (always the same cook, not Marie) are better than anywhere else, in fact, they're always perfect. After a few years of paying more attention, I have to say I agree - Marie's makes perfect fried eggs.

You know who else does?

Not me. Mine aren't bad. They're passable to the untrained eater. But they don't have that je ne sais quoi thing going on.

It's my husband - the expert critic is also the expert chef. So I recruited him for the experiment. I poached, he fried.

Round 1 - Poaching:

I've decided to give my poaching method here because I've tried many different methods, only one of which works for me.

Bring 3 inches of water to a boil in a wide, deep saucier and then lower the temperature until the water is barely simmering. A saucepan will also work, but the flared edges of a saucier make getting the eggs in and out a little easier. A saute pan doesn't work because the eggs don't cook on top if the water isn't deep enough.

Add 1 Tbs. of white vinegar to the water.

Grease a ladle, then holding the ladle upright (I use my mouth to hold the ladle), crack the egg carefully into the ladle. Lower the ladle into the water, hold it without submerging for a few seconds until the egg white starts to color on the edges, then slip the egg gently into the water.

After about 4 minutes, remove the egg with a slotted spoon, tipping the spoon for a few seconds to drain off the water.

Season lightly with salt and pepper.

So how did it go? I don't know if there were about 10,000 stars aligned perfectly that night or what, but I made two perfect poached eggs, an unusual feat for me.

The whites of both held together tightly in the water, the yolks of both were incredibly rich in color. I did notice that the yolk of the free range egg was much bigger in proportion to the white than the other egg. When I first started cooking the Jay Hill egg, you can see that the white looked sloppier than the other egg, but it actually help together nicely.

Cyd's	Jay Hill

Round 2 - Frying:

So what is the secret method of my husband, egg snob and chef? I don't know exactly, as it's a tightly guarded secret. I have picked up a few clues though:

• Equipment: small, non-stick pan. Wide, flexible, silicone spatula.
• Olive oil for the fat.
• Cook mostly on one side without touching before turning.
• Low to medium low heat

As you can see from the pictures below, both eggs turned out nicely. By the second set of eggs, we knew we weren't imagining the larger yolk on the free range eggs - the difference is quite noticeable in these pictures.

Cyd's	Jay Hill

The decision:

Well, I am sad to say that after my exhaustive search for the perfect egg, and our carefully planned scientific experiment, I couldn't taste one bit of difference between the two eggs. In retrospect, I should have added a third contender - the cheapest factory eggs I could find - you know, 69 cents a dozen in a styrofoam container.

Ah well, they may taste the same, but I'm still going for the Jay Hill eggs for all of the other reasons I've discussed.

This may seem like an anti-climactic way to conclude my long, suspenseful series on finding the perfect egg in Boulder if it weren't for one thing... take a look at those pictures above. Those are some fine looking eggs, and we got to eat all of them for dinner.