Roosterkoek

Grilling over live coals 77 recipes

• The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
• The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
• Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
• The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
• What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.

Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.

Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes

• Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
• The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
• The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
• Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
• It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.

Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.