Wild Yeast

Well, it just figures. The one time — the one and only time in my ever-hopeful-but-never-successful cheesecake-attempting career — that I manage to bake a cheesecake that doesn’t crack, I can’t show it off. I can’t carry it triumphantly to the table to admiring “ooh”s and “aah”s and “look, no Grand Canyon in that cake”s and “she’s such a cheesecake star”s. Nope, I’m obligated to transmogrify this one beyond all recognition. Not only that, but I didn’t even have the brains to take a photo of it in its pristine, glorious smoothness.

I had to get that off my chest, but I’m really not all that broken up, because the mutation was in service of a good cause. Elle (Feeding My Enthusiasms) and Deborah (Taste and Tell) gave us Daring Bakers an excellent challenge this month: Cheesecake Pops. It’s a recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor.

The idea is that you bake a cheesecake (and it doesn’t even have to be a lovely, crack-free, perfect cheesecake) and scoop it out into little balls which you then impale on sticks, freeze, and dip into chocolate plus any other coatings your heart desires.

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Can anyone tell me what I should call these cute pointy-ended mini loaves? I would not call them rolls because that connotes something round-ish. Or am I making that up? They’re 7 or 8 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter — not long enough to be called baguettes or ficelles, I think. So what are they?

I used the recipe for Semolina Bread with Currants, Fennel, and Pine Nuts, with some changes: I toasted the pine nuts (make sure they’re cool before adding them to the dough), and I substituted anise seed for 2.5 g of the fennel. I also used a bit less water than in the original recipe, because my flour was not as absorbent today. They were baked at 440F for 12 minutes. Dividing the dough at 50 grams, the recipe made 21… things.

Despite being nameless, they’re pretty good. A lot of crunchy crust for the buck, and quite sweet, despite having no sweetener except the seeds (anise makes it sweeter than the original) and currants.

I’m prepared to catch a lot of flak with this post, because I’m going to challenge some of the most cherished and prevalent beliefs about my favorite type of bread and that mysterious microbial ecosystem that makes it possible: sourdough.

I’m not saying these Sourdough Stories are False with a capital F or Myths with a capital M, nor am I proclaiming myself the grand arbiter of high sourdough truth. But there are credible sources that refute or question a good amount of the prevailing lore. If you don’t want to give these Sourdough Stories up, that’s fine. But if it would make your life easier or more interesting to let a few of them go, then feel free to do that, and know that you’re in good, if perhaps not abundant, company.

Sourdough Story #1: San Francisco sourdough bread can only be made in San Francisco. OK, I suppose you could say this one is actually true by definition. But the lactic-acid-producing bacterium (Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis) that supposedly makes SF sourdough unique is found in sourdough starters all over the world, and is in fact the predominant bacterial species in many of those starters. So if you’re not lucky enough to live in San Francisco, or to have a “geniune” SF sourdough starter, don’t despair; a fine sourdough is still attainable. Conversely, some sourdough breads made in SF are positively mediocre. A good sourdough bread has as much, if not more, to do with the skill of the baker than with the specific organism species in the starter. Read this Discover Magazine article to see why sourdough researcher Frank Sugihara said, “I think you can make San Francisco sourdough pretty much anywhere.”

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We got up at 4:30 AM today and made it to Tsukiji, Tokyo’s wholesale fish market, by 5:30, early enough to watch the tuna auction.

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As promised, this installment of the Baker’s Percentage Tutorial focuses on how to make a given amount of dough from a BP formula. I’ll also discuss how to make dough that uses a given amount of a certain ingredient.

If you didn’t catch Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial, you may want to do so before reading any further. I’m assuming that you’re familiar with what BP is and how to convert a recipe into a BP formula.

A couple of things are helpful to have before getting started: a calculator and a “math is fun” attitude. Smile and repeat after me: “Math. Is. Fun.”

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I made granola for BreadBakingDay. You may be thinking: Ahem, this is BBD, not BCD (BreakfastCerealDay). To which I would reply: True, but this granola is so much more than a breakfast cereal. Bear with me.

Ten days ago, I had never made granola. I hadn’t eaten granola in years. Granola was merely a faint shadow lurking at the periphery of my long-term memory. Then I read about Molly’s favorite granola on Orangette, and I thought, this looks good. In fact, this looks great! Not to mention ever-so-easy. And, modulo a substitution or two, I had all the ingredients on hand.

A couple of hours, a batch of homemade applesauce, and nearly three pounds of oats, nuts, and seeds later, I could confirm that Molly does not exaggerate: the stuff was amazing. My family thought so too. We ate it with milk. We ate it with the rest of the applesauce. We ate it with yogurt, with almond milk, and right from our hands. We ate it in the morning, yes, but in the afternoon and evening, too. We showed no restraint whatsoever. Within two days, it was gone.

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