Wild Yeast

The first days of November mark Mexico’s Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos), a lively and rich tradition in which departed loved ones are honored and the cycle of life is celebrated.

Although I have never had the opportunity to visit Mexico during this festive time, I wanted to try my hand at making Pan de Muerto (Bread of the Dead), which is traditionally sculpted in a representation of bones. I adapted this one from a recipe in Diana Kennedy’s My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients, as posted on Epicurious. My changes reflect what I discovered worked best for me in making the recipe twice.

The bread is sweet and eggy, similar in texture to a yeasted coffee cake. This one has no anise seed, although other recipes I have seen include it. I didn’t use orange blossom water, only orange zest, and the result was a subtly citrus-scented loaf. (Read more…)

When I joined the Daring Bakers, this was exactly what I was afraid of, and exactly what I was hoping for.

I’ll come right out and admit it, I’m afraid of cake, my number one baking nemesis! Although the name of this month’s challenge is Bostini Cream Pie, it’s cake alright, individual orange chiffon cakes no less, atop creamy vanilla custard and drizzled with smooth chocolate glaze. I’m quite sure Mary (Alpineberry) didn’t mean to freak me out on my very first challenge, but goodness, did it have to be cake? With me and cake, it’s always something: it sticks to the pan, it falls, it cracks, it’s too wet, it’s too dry. It’s always something with cake.

But as much as I was dreading cake, I was also hoping to learn some things and have fun exploring new baking territory. And this challenge did not disappoint in those departments. Who better than a cadre of Daring Bakers to help me face my cake phobia and come out with something that was lovely and delicious? (See the recipe here.)

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Chef Jeremy Shapiro of Stir the Pots has talked with some of the most prominent bread bakers/authors/teachers you can think of. I’ve found it so interesting to listen to their different personal stories, what draws them to baking, and their perspectives on the current state of baking in the US and around the world. Check out Jeremy’s podcasts of interviews with:

• Emily Buehler, author of Bread Science
• Noel Comess, Tom Cat Bakery
• Jeffrey Hamelman, King Arthur Flour, author of Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes
  
• Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery, no-knead bread guru
• Daniel Leader, author of Bread Alone and Local Breads
• Dan Lepard, author of The Handmade Loaf
  
• Michael London, Mrs. London’s
• Craig Ponsford, chairman of the Bread Baker’s Guild of America
• Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
• Amy Scherber, Amy’s Bread
• Steve Sullivan, Acme Bread Company

Zorra has posted the roundup for World Bread Day, and it’s one for the books. More than 200 entries from 183 participants in 28 countries! It’s going to take me some time to visit them all, but the amazing Zorra already has, and I want to thank her again for initiating this event in celebration of bread and bakers.

And in case you didn’t know, Zorra is also the founder of BreadBakingDay, which returns in December with Manuela from Baking History hosting “Bread & Spices.”

Today is World Bread Day. The International Union of Bakers and Bakers-Confectioners designated this day to celebrate and honor the food that is, in many phraseologies, synonymous with “food.” So it is no accident that World Bread Day was chosen to coincide with Word Food Day, October 16, the anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

The theme for World Food Day 2007 is “The Right to Food.” The FAO’s message is that regular access to sufficient, nutritious, culturally appropriate food is a basic human right that is currently denied to 850 million people worldwide.

The recipe is coming, I promise. But first:

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Oh my goodness. When my daughter went to Sevilla, Spain two summers ago, she brought back some tortas de aceite, the crisp, lightly sweet olive oil wafers traditionally made there, and I was in love.

Imagine my delight when, paging through Penelope Casas’ excellent La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain, I found a recipe for tortas de aceite that calls for leftover bread or pizza dough. I had that leftover dough! And in short order, I had those tortas. I was in love all over again.

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If you think you can’t bake bread (which is probably a false notion, by the way), grissini are a sure-fire way to fast success.

These thin bread sticks could not be simpler to make. If you love playing with dough, you’ll get plenty of opportunity here. And who doesn’t love their eminently nosh-able crunch, not to mention the visual panache a bouquet of these babies adds to the dinner table?

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A few days ago I brought one of these miches to dinner at the home of people I’d never met before. In retrospect, this was one of those “what was I thinking?” ideas, because it could have been awkward if they had turned out to be bread wimps. Luckily, they weren’t, or they were very gracious about hiding it. Huge and chewy and sour, with a crust so dark it might be mistaken for burned by the uninformed, this miche is some serious bread.

I’ve had trouble pinning down the exact definition of “miche” (French slang for “butt-cheek,” according to Daniel Leader’s Local Breads). I believe that nominally it is a large, round, somewhat flattened loaf, but beyond that it seems that most breads that call themselves miches involve sourdough and a substantial proportion of whole-grain or high-extraction flour.

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