Wild Yeast

This is a bread I’ve had on my list for a while, and now I’m wondering what took me so long. Besides looking pretty, it’s heaven on earth for garlic lovers. That would be me, and this summer I’ve been lucky to have a virtually unlimited supply of garlic from my brother-in-law’s prolific garden. I’m happy to share this loaf for the World Bread Day event hosted by Zorra (1x umrühren bitte).

The recipe comes (with a few adaptations) from one of my favorite baking books, Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking. Whether you are a beginning baker or an old hand, I think you’ll love the meeting the farmers, millers, and bakers profiled therein who share a wealth of baking knowledge, skill, and recipes. This bread is from Della Fattoria, a small northern California bakery featured in the book. We don’t get their bread in my immediate neighborhood, but I can tell you that on the occasions when I have picked up one of their loaves at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, I have not been disappointed.

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Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers of every persuasion are tasked with writing about a common issue. This year’s issue is Poverty.

There were quite a lot of things I thought about writing about. I thought about my patients, who are mostly poor and uninsured and often don’t take their medications because feeding their children is a higher priority than buying their blood pressure pills. I thought about organizations such as The Hunger Project, which is dedicated to sustainable strategies towards ending the chronic hunger and poverty that affects over 800 million people worldwide. I could have written about climate change, which exerts its largest effect upon the world’s poor and is the theme of this year’s Word Food Day (which is tomorrow). Or how about about the shame I feel that in my own country, one of the world’s wealthiest, more than one in ten people lives with hunger and poverty?

I decided to write about none of that and all of that at once: I decided to use this post to urge you to vote, because our vote is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the fight against poverty.

I won’t tell you who you should vote for, but I’ll tell you who I voted for for President (I mailed in my ballot last night, and I feel damned good about it).

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If you want to win friends and influence people, you could read Dale Carnegie’s book and get some excellent advice. But I’ve found a faster way: bake cinnamon rolls and sticky buns.

Which is not to say that my way is at all inconsistent with Carnegie’s. Here are some of his principles:

• Arouse in the other person an eager want. Simply pulling these rolls out of the oven should do the trick.
• Start with questions the other person will answer yes to. “Can I interest you in a cinnamon roll? How about a sticky bun?”
• Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest. “I suggest you clean the garage and then you can have one.”

See how that works? They will be putty in your hands.

You can of course tailor the recipe to your own tastes and those of your influencees. Substitute another spice, or a combination of spices, for the cinnamon. Add chopped dried fruits to the filling. Try a little citrus zest in the dough.

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See this week’s yeast spottings …

Chances are you can have these mixed, shaped, baked, and on the table before you can master saying “flaxseed flatbread” five times fast.

I’ve been a little busy this week and haven’t had time to wait for yeast to do its thing, but unleavened flatbreads are an easy and quick way to still have fresh bread for dinner. These very crisp breads are adaptable to a wide variety of flour and flavor combinations, and are in fact a variation on the Sesame-Semolina Flatbreads I wrote abut a few months ago. Roll them in a pasta roller or with a rolling pin, as thinly as possible for maximum crunch.

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Peter Reinhart, author of several wonderful books including The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads, is looking for recipe testers for his new book. If you’re interested, see Peter’s blog for more information.