Wild Yeast

It’s time for another BreadBakingDay, and host Eva (Sweet Sins) chose “Shape” as this month’s excellent theme. I opted to make a couronne Bordelaise (Bordeaux-style crown), because it was about time I put my oddly-shaped couronne banneton, which I’ve had for a few months now, to use.

What I wish I had figured out before I spent a small fortune ordering this 12″ linen-lined banneton from France, however, is that you absolutely don’t need it. You can rig up a perfectly good stand-in with an inverted cereal bowl inside any flat-ish basket (even a large pie plate would do), and a piece of linen draped over them. I made one couronne in the “real” banneton and one in the mock-up, and I truly couldn’t tell the difference in the final loaves. The diameter of my basket is about 11″, and of the bowl, about 4.5″.

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In her Christmas stocking this year, my daughter found a post-it note pad that says “If it weren’t for the last minute, I’d never get anything done.” She feigned offense, but she grudgingly admits it’s true. The rest of that truth is that she inherited the procrastination gene from her parents.

With my three previous Daring Bakers challenges, I’ve fought it off successfully. I’m on shaky ground with most non-yeast baking, so the threat of public humiliation has been enough to stir me to action plenty early in the month. I had time to re-make the Bostini Cream Pie when the chiffon cake didn’t cooperate. Made the Potato Bread three times. And although I had some decent beginner’s luck with the Yule Log, I made darn sure my schedule could accommodate a take-two before the deadline, if needed.

Well, my true nature was bound to catch up with me sooner or later. I waited until the last possible (for me) day to bake the lemon meringue pie that is the January challenge, hosted by Canadian Baker Jen. And it was a day we had company for dinner, proving that, in addition to the procrastination gene, the stupid gene was also at work here. (In my defense, it was an old friend, a good sport not likely to be easily fazed by scary pie. Also, I did have some nice pistachio gelato on standby, just in case.)
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If you’re anything like me, you may still be feeling the effects of those holiday indulgences that just kept adding up and up. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but it’s definitely time for a few changes for the healthier around here.

These 100% whole wheat pitas are not only 100% good for you, they also taste 100% better than the cardboard discs that somehow wind up in bags labeled “pita bread” on store shelves.

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If you’ve made or read through any of my recipes, maybe you’ve noticed that when they call for commercial yeast, it’s the unfortunately-named “instant” kind. Unfortunately-named because doesn’t “instant,” when it comes to food, connote inferior and inauthentic? Can instant hot chocolate, instant onion soup, or instant rice ever measure up to the real stuff?

But instant yeast isn’t like that. It’s the very same organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as fresh compressed (cake) and active dry, the other two forms of commercial yeast commonly available to home bakers. And plenty of professional artisan bakers use instant yeast too.

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After six weeks or so of indulging my sweet tooth and my fat tooth in the name of holiday permisiveness, followed by a relaxing week-long post-Christmas vacation, I’ve been looking forward to getting back into the kitchen and on track with some nice savory, healthful breads.

My immune system, it turns out, had other plans, and the bread’s just going to have to wait until this nasty whatever-I’ve-got sees fit to decamp and I’m free to leave my bed.

In the meantime, have a meme: I was tagged for Fantastic Four by Zainab and Meedo, the sisters behind the fantastic Arabic Bites. I had a lot more than four choices for most of the answers, and why I picked the ones I did I cannot explain (I’m delirious, after all).

Four Jobs I Have Had:

• Mathematics tutor/teaching assistant (in college, when I could still differentiate between differentiating and integrating).
• Software engineer/systems analyst/academic computing consultant.
• Hand weaver.
• Nurse practitioner.

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