Wild Yeast

See this week’s yeast spottings…

My friend Jamie (Life’s a Feast) is throwing herself a birthday party for BreadBakingDay this month. A very special bread is therefore in order, and I think this fills the bill. Distinctive in both appearance and taste, it derives an earthy flavor and rich deep brown color from buckwheat flour, and sweetness — but not too much — from toasted walnuts and wine-soaked pears.

Before making these loaves at home, I had made the bread several times at SFBI — including for my bread practical exam — and it never disappoints. As a testament to its universal appeal, I’m thrilled to congratulate my friend and classmate, David E, who just today won the SF Food Wars People’s Choice Honorable Mention with his interpretation of the bread, presented to 200 discerning tasters at the  SF Food Wars artisan bread bakedown. Go David and go Pear Buckwheat!

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See this week’s yeast spottings…

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

There isn’t much gluten-free baking around here — in fact, I’m usually all about the gluten. I have to admit there was a little scene playing out in my mind as I prepared these gluten-free graham wafers, my first foray into a world where wheat flour is taboo and things like sweet rice flour, sorghum flour, and tapioca flour rule the oven.

If anyone asked for a taste, I would, with shuffling feet and downcast eyes, stammer out an apologetic explanation for why these tasted more like graham cracker box than graham crackers.

Well. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” The wafers tasted fantastic — just like “real” graham crackers, only better. Even though I was in a rush and messed them up — well of course I did, this is a DB challenge, isn’t it? — by not letting them chill thoroughly, so it was impossible to cut them into squares and they (it) ended up looking like a giant ginger snap — even then I found myself wishing I’d made a full batch instead of just the half I’d need most of for the Nanaimo bars. I actually wanted to eat these.

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Hey Bay Area bread fans, what are you doing next Sunday?

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ll be putting my bread on the line at SF Food Wars‘ Yeast Affliction! All-out Artisan Bread Bakedown & Craft Beer Tastiness. My Semolina Sourdough with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts will go up against Dark Horse Bread’s Black Pepper and Fig Sourdough, Go Nuts!’ Nuthing But Net, The Itty Biddies’ Nutty Sourdough, and 17 others to see which loaf will be the cat’s pajamas.

Tickets were a quick sell-out, so maybe you thought you missed your opportunity to come, drink beer, taste all the breads, and vote for mine. But I believe in second chances, so I saved two tickets to give away to one of my yeast-loving friends in a random drawing.

– Update 1/26: The drawing is done. Congratulations to Erin Beller! –

Get the scoop on how to enter…

See this week’s yeast spottings…

For Christmas Eve dinner I made chili and corn bread. Because we were ten people and I thought to save a little time on after-dinner clean-up, I made sourdough corn bread bowls to hold the chili. I mixed the dough at about 7 a.m. and the bowls were baked, cooled, and hollowed out just in time for dinner at 6 p.m. Uh huh, it was such a time-saver over washing ten dishes.

OK, so I may not win the Ms. Efficiency title this year, but everyone said these bowls were good. So good, in fact, that they ate them before going back for seconds on the chili, so we still ended up with a bunch of dishes to wash. But isn’t that, after all, what the holidays are about — baking and cleaning?

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See this week’s yeast spottings…

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day. I opted to use goat instead of pork.

These Daring Cooks escapades always involve lots of education. Let’s just cut to the chase with what I learned this month:

• Bamboo skewers should be soaked for longer than 20 minutes before putting them under the broiler.
• A broiled bamboo skewer does not make a bad charcoal stick if there isn’t a pencil handy.
• My kitchen smoke detector is in good working order.

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Have I mentioned that some of my favorite blogs are in French? Le Pétrin, Bombance, …au levain! and Makanai are some fantastic francophones that you must check out if you don’t know them.

You don’t speak French? No problem, neither do I, really. Oh, my high-school French serves in a pinch and yours probably does too, but why knock ourselves out when Google Translate is such an able servant? Thanks to this tireless polyglot-bot, a mouse click gets you the translation of any text or web page in any of 45 languages.

This came in very handy the other week when I spotted Sandra’s dazzling and decadent chocolate salami and had to have it. Feeling lazy, I called upon our trusty GT to produce the English translation of the recipe, and commenced reading through the ingredient list:

• 200g dark chocolate 70%. Check. I actually had exactly this amount left over from my Christmas baking. Sitting untouched for over a week in my cupboard. I amaze myself sometimes.
• 100g butter. Check.
• 2 egg yolks, extra costs. I checked the fridge. Yes, my eggs were from Whole Foods, and those are more expensive than Safeway eggs. So I was good on the pricey egg yolks.
• 2 tablespoons Amaretto. Check. (In the end I only used one tbsp.)
• 2 pinches of dried chili flakes. Check.
• 8 grandchildren butter (80g). What?

What is a grandchild of butter? Read on…