Wild Yeast

The challenge for this month’s BreadBakingDay #18, hosted by Mansi (Fun & Food Blog) and Zorra (1x umrühren bitte), was Quick Breads. When I think of “quick bread” I usually think of a giant loaf-shaped muffin, not really a bread at all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wanted a bread. Or as close as you can get to bread without involving some sort of yeast.

I thought of soda bread, but with Saint Patrick’s Day well over by the time I got to doing this, it just didn’t seem right. I scanned my books and settled on Pain d’Épices from Nick Malgieri’s A Baker’s Tour. The recipe contains no fat whatsoever (no eggs, no butter, no oil, no milk) so I knew it would not bear much resemblance to a muffin. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was how much I would love this.

There’s no question that this a very homely looking loaf, but the plain-Jane appearance belies its seductive nature. The flavor derives mainly from anise, complimented by mustard powder and cinnamon, and from honey. I’m going to be living and breathing that anise-mustard-cinnamon-honey combination for quite some time to come. I’m going to be sleeping with it and injecting it into my veins. If I run out, I’m going to be trading my first-born child for it. Really.

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If you like to start your morning with a little kick, may I suggest these English muffins? Made with both sourdough starter and yogurt, their tang can be toned down with a little raspberry jam, or turned up with a gloss of unsalted butter.

Either way, maybe they will rock your morning like they rocked mine — as I was finishing my muffin, I felt that rumbling and shaking that in this neck of the woods can only mean one thing: earthquake. It was a little one, as most of them are, but an earthquake nonetheless.

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See this week’s yeast spottings…

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Lasagna

A Daring Bakers Film
Produced and Directed by Susan
Screenplay by Mary (Beans and Caviar), Melinda (Melbourne Larder),
and Enza (Io Da Grande)
Based on “Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna”
from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper
The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

The Good:

• It tasted great. The family loved it. There was not a single sliver left over.
• The Béchamel sauce was lump-free.
• I tried, I really tried, to roll by hand. I rolled a quarter of the dough by hand. Therefore, I think I was a good, or at least semi-dutiful, Daring Baker.

The Bad:

• My hand-rolling was a complete and total failure. I just could not get that thing to roll without ripping. I think my dough was too wet, because the directions said it should feel sticky. When I make pasta to roll by machine, it doesn’t feel sticky (or maybe my definition of sticky is different), but I thought maybe something about hand-rolling needed the dough to be stickier. In retrospect, I don’t think so.



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People who work in family planning have an aphorism: Hope is not a method. That is excellent advice when it comes to birth control, and it applies pretty well to baking too. Think things through, have a plan, protect yourself from unintended consequences.

For example, one thing you might think about, if you have some yeast that’s sat in the refrigerator for a while, is to check the expiration date before blithely throwing it into some brioche dough that you plan to use for a rhubarb tart. This could go a long way towards protecting yourself from the unintended consequence of unrisen dough.

Sometimes, though, things just happen. You get caught up in the heat of the moment, in the passion and excitement and anticipation of that perfect … brioche, and your careful plan is suddenly miles from your consciousness, and before you know it … well now, wasn’t that a big “Oops!”

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If you’ve looked around Wild Yeast, you know that I frequently adapt and post recipes from some of my favorite baking books. This is common practice among food bloggers, and OK from a legal standpoint, as recipes are not subject to copyright protection.

Legality and prevalence notwithstanding, doing right is important, and it has always been my belief and intention that when I post my take on another person’s recipes, I respectfully communicate my admiration for that person and their work, while sharing my own thoughts and processes. However, my recent posting of an adaptation of Flaxseed Rye, from Jeffrey Hamelman’s wonderful book Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, prompted a reader to challenge me a little. Wasn’t it impolite and disrespectful to reference another person’s work in this way without his permission?

Taking a deep breath, I decided to ask Chef Hamelman what his thoughts were. He has given me permission to share his eloquent and gracious response:

“I’ve given some thought to your emails. To me, bread is rich and deeply historical, and is one of those very fundamental things that has lineage. And part of respecting the lineage is in doing just what you have been doing—giving attribution of recipe sources and inspirations. This is how we keep the links intact. It’s a value thing, an ethic … If you read the introduction in the book BREAD to Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel and Miche Pointe-à-Callière you will get a sense of what my personal values are. So I’m saying yes, continue with what you are doing.”

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Is anyone out there interested in guest-hosting the April 17 edition of YeastSpotting on your blog? Please email me: .

See this week’s yeast spottings…

Unless this is your first visit here, you probably know what a big fan I am of the San Francisco Baking Institute, where pros and bread geeks like me go to become better bakers.

Now you can hear my friend Jeremy Shapiro’s interview with Michel Suas, SFBI’s founder and artisan baking luminary, on Jeremy’s blog, Stir the Pots.

Go listen! (And while you’re there, check out Jeremy’s other interviews with bakers, chefs, and other stars of the food world.)

So, how was your day yesterday? Let me tell you about mine. (Be warned, it’s a long story.)

It started well enough. Finding myself in my minimalist sometime-kitchen with a few bottles of Guinness Extra Stout and Saint Patrick’s Day on the horizon, I thought I would try a bread that made an appearance in last week’s YeastSpotting: Mary’s (One Perfect Bite) Rye Bread with Guinness Stout and Fennel Seeds.

I mix it up (with a couple of adaptations); so far so good. I must say the aroma of the dough catches my attention, and I know this is going to be one mighty bread. I decide to go with two larger loaves rather than Mary’s three, and here’s where things start getting interesting. In this kitchen we have no brotforms, no bannetons; in fact, we have no baskets of any kind except a couple of plastic chip baskets that are way too small for these two-pound loaves. But we do have a couche; let’s see, here it is. Uh-oh:

The mice have been here, apparently. And let’s just say I cleaned the couche up a bit before the photo. Normally I don’t wash it, but I think I will make an exception in this case. Before I use it again.

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It must be my old age catching up with me; I just realized I forgot to post the winner of the Fibrament Stone giveaway:

Congratulations to Lisa, whose new blog about handcrafted cards is worth checking out: dahlhouse designs.

Even if you do not have a new blog about handcrafted cards, you can still have a stone; order from Fibrament!