Wild Yeast

See this week’s yeast spottings…

Well, so much for originality.

Google “coffee brioche” and what do you get? A lot of stuff about having coffee with brioche, right? But not really anything on coffee in brioche. So that was my brilliant idea: if coffee and brioche are so good together, why not make a true marriage of the two and put the coffee right in the bread?

So I did, and it was good, but then I thought to Google “brioche au café,” and lo and behold my idea wasn’t so original after all. A lot of recettes come up there. Damn.

Also, would you please just pretend not to notice that these rolls and pull-apart brioche look pretty much exactly like the butternut squash brioche I made last year? And don’t look too closely, or you’ll see that the recipe is the same as this brioche, except with coffee concentrate and milk powder standing in for the liquid milk, and crème fraîche and sugar instead of egg wash.

Oh hell, I can’t even come up with anything original to say, so I am resorting to the words of Bill Watterson (author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes):

“I used to make original snowmen, but it was time consuming, hard work. So I said, heck, this is crazy! Now I crank out crude imitations of what’s already popular! It takes no time or thought, and most people don’t care about the difference, anyway! And what good is originality if you can’t crank it out?”

So fine, I cranked out some coffee brioche.

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Today is the second anniversary of my first post on this blog. Since it’s my party and I’ll indulge myself if I want to, I thought I’d take a look at my very first post, which was about why I love to bake and why I wanted to start a blog, and see how things have changed, or not, over the past two years.

This is the entirety of that first post, with today’s annotations:

What It’s About

Let’s be clear up front: I really have no credentials, no business writing a blog, much less one that has anything to do with food. I’m not young, hip, witty, artistic, or visionary. I’m not a foodie, a chef, a writer, a critic, or a photographer. I can’t cook, although I sometimes try, but I don’t eat out much either. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the concept of a “trackback.” [At least I've pretty much got the trackback thing down by now.]

Yes, the sad truth is that I possess a solitary qualification: I bake a lot of bread. [Still true enough.]

That’s all about the bread, of course: perhaps the most universal of foods, a thing virtually synonymous with food itself. Infinitely versatile and varied, everyone likes it, every cuisine includes it, and no meal is complete without it. [I dare anyone to argue with that.]

But I’m a stone’s throw from San Francisco, and great bread of all kinds is in no short supply here; you don’t have to bake your own to eat very well indeed.

So, as it turns out, it’s equally about the baking.

It’s about a process that engages and satisfies every single one of my senses. Really, how many activities do that and don’t scandalize your mother when you let it slip that you gave some to your husband, your boss, and the guy next door, all in one day? [Ooh, talk gluten to me, baby! And let's not forget the tutor, the carpet cleaner, and the window washer.]

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The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.

Talk about a no-brainer.

No, I don’t usually use that term in conjunction with a Daring Bakers’ challenge. But in considering what I would use to fill this month’s Bakewell Tart (pudding, whatever)…well, if it’s June in this part of California, we’re talking cherries. No need to pull out the old thinking cap for that one.

And what a glorious cherry season we’ve had this year. You know how you always feel like you need to taste cherries before buying to make sure they’re not too sour, or too mushy, or just plain tasteless? Well, not this year. I mean, I don’t think I’ve put one single bad cherry in my mouth.

From farmers markets, from roadside stands, from the open-air market across the street from my clinic, even from the supermarkets, they’ve been good. And by good I mean perfect. And by perfect I mean firm, sweet, juicy, and 100% reliable. You just can’t do any better than reliable cherries. Like a good night’s sleep, reliable cherries make your problems a little less problematic, and the sweet stuff just that much sweeter.

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See this week’s yeast spottings…

Within the first week of my being bitten by the bread bug about three years ago, my oven had (quite literally) a meltdown, and the sight of poor ovenless me mooning around forlornly for the three weeks or so it took to get it repaired was a pretty pitiful one. Too bad I didn’t know about grilled pizza at the time.

I wouldn’t suggest waiting for an oven disaster, though, to make pizza on the grill. It is seriously, seriously good.

The idea is that the crust is placed directly on the grill grate to cook one one side, then turned over and the toppings added while the other side of the crust grills. Toppings should be simple and light, both because they don’t have a lot of time to cook and because, if you’re like me, you want the summer flavor of the lightly charred grilled crust to be front and center.

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Thank you, thank you!

I am overwhelmed by your kind and supportive words, your own stories of how cancer has touched your lives, and your donations to my Team in Training fundraising. Thanks to you, my motivation and confidence that I can do this marathon thing are higher than ever, and I have already raised over $1900 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

The Sony camera raffle will close once my fundraising total reaches $2500, so if you’d like to get in on it, now would be a good time. Donate here and get one virtual ticket per dollar.

Some people have asked me to post my training progress. These first couple of weeks have been all about learning new skills, mostly ones I thought I had mastered a few decades ago. My teammates and I have been schooled by our wonderful coaches and mentors in how to:

• walk
• get dressed
• tie our shoes
• eat and drink
• act like a dead bug
• say please and thank you

Please know how much your support is appreciated, and thank you for everything!

See this week’s yeast spottings…

Do these baguettes look like award winners? Maybe not as I’ve made them, but their formula and execution by Sam Fromartz, author of the blog Chews Wise, recently earned Sam’s loaves the title of best baguette in Washington D.C.

With that impressive credential behind it, I wanted to see for myself how Sam’s baguettes compared to the poolish-based ones I usually bake. (I’ve never posted those on Wild Yeast, but it’s the same formula as the poolish boule I guest-posted on Baking and Books a while ago.)

Sam’s recipe contains small amounts of whole wheat flour and sourdough starter (along with some baker’s yeast), and the final dough is fermented overnight in the refrigerator. I found the resulting flavor to be less sweet and a bit more assertive than a poolish baguette, without being overtly sour. Crisp crust, light interior, definitely a winner I will keep in my repertoire!

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This month, Jen of use real butter challenged the Daring Cooks to make potstickers from scratch. That means wrappers too, and that means dough, and that means I love it!

Although we could fill the dumplings with anything we liked, I chose to stick with Jen’s pork filling, following her recipe exactly. For anyone who thinks this was not daring enough, let me just point out that pan-frying potstickers involves pouring water into a pan of hot oil and, in Jen’s words, “duck[ing] while everything spatters violently.”

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