Wild Yeast

If anyone can tell me what to call this, please speak up.

Here we have a whole fresh apricot filled with almond cream, wrapped in lightly sweet yeast dough and deep fried. Topped with rum sauce if you like your… thing… extra decadent.

Is it a dumpling? Every definition I could find says a dumpling is either boiled, baked, or pan fried; not deep fried. But then, I am certainly no dumpling expert.

Is it a fritter? Fritters are deep fried yes, but aren’t they batter, not dough? Clearly I’m no fritter expert either.

Is it a bread? Well, this dough does contain yeast, and I am sending it to Nick (imafoodblog) and Zorra (1x umrühren bitte) for BreadBakingDay #23 (theme: something you haven’t made before), but it’s a stretch, isn’t it?

How about a filled doughnut? When I brought these to work, one person pronounced it “the best doughnut I’ve ever had.” I hadn’t thought of them as doughnuts, but she knows more about food than I do.

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The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

If you had a bakery and needed something sensational for the window, this Dobos Torte would be it. It just looks amazing.

Because it it so beautiful, I wish I could say my cake was an unqualified success. But those toffee pieces on top, the ones that arrange into such a fabulous pinwheel, were responsible for more fits than I have had over cake in quite some time. (And that’s saying something; it’s pretty much a given around here that where there is cake, there are fits.)

For starters, I did not care for the flavor of lemon juice in the caramel. It just tasted sour to me. And then there was the question of how to eat them. Too hard to cut and to chew without fear of dental disaster. And I won’t even mention how long it took me to cut these babies apart. Once again, it appears that caramel and I are simply not destined to be friends.

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If I had to choose one word to describe this bread, it would be “wheaty.” Now that may seem odd, because isn’t most bread made with wheat flour, so isn’t all bread wheaty? Well sure, but but the four different wheat flours — “regular” white flour, whole wheat flour, white whole wheat flour, and semolina (coarsely ground from durum wheat) — and two preferments (sponge and poolish) give the bread an extra wheaty flavor. (OK, so it’s late at night and I’m not feeling very imaginative. It’s still good.)

I used white (hulled) sesame seeds, which lend a delicate sesame flavor and are not visually prominent in the bread, just because I had some on hand that needed to be used up. Regular sesame seeds, and toasted if you like, would also be lovely. You could also leave them out altogether. We’re nothing if not flexible.

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First, a huge and heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to my Team in Training fundraising to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You all rock! With your help, I reached my $2500 goal with plenty of time to spare before my marathon in October. Of course, additional donations will not be refused and will go to a most worthy cause.

I am happy to announce that my friend Patricia, author of the wonderful Brownies for Dinner, is the winner of the Sony camera fundraising raffle. I’m also happy to announce that my friend Cora (Cora Cooks and says she doesn’t bake, but she really does) has won the BlogHer Food ticket that I am unable to use because I will be out giving my feet a 22-mile trial on conference day.

Last weekend I did my longest training walk so far, 16 miles. If my daughter M were here, she would say “Do you want a cookie?” Yes, I do, thank you very much. Chocolate chip will be fine.

Find YeastSpotting this week at Macheesmo. Thanks Nick!

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Attention food bloggers!

You probably know that BlogHer Food, the eating-blogging-meeting-eating conference to be held in San Francisco on September 26, has been sold out for a while.

Here’s your chance to bypass the wait list and the $99 pass price, and get in on the action. Back in May, I grabbed a conference pass while the grabbing was good. Little did I know at that point that I would be having to walk a 22-mile training walk on September 26, and somehow I don’t think I’ll be back in time for a 9 AM conference start. Bad news for me, but good news for you.

I checked with the BlogHer people, and my ticket is transferrable, so I’m happy to pass it on to a lucky random winner. In order to be eligible for this giveaway, you must:

• have a food blog, or at least a blog that mentions food once or twice.
• be sure you can attend the conference.
• give (not sell) the ticket to another deserving blogger in the event that something comes up such that you cannot attend.
• understand the pass is for the conference only; you will have to make your own arrangements for accommodations and transportation.
• leave a comment here by 11:59 PM PDT on Friday, August 21. Don’t forget to enter your blog’s url in the comment form.

Finally, if you like that I’m giving up this conference in favor of a 22-mile hike in preparation for walking a marathon, please feel free to donate to my Team in Training Fundraising to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. There’s no obligation, of course, but I’d sure appreciate it!

Daring Cooks is supposed to be all about learning. And I have to say, I did learn something important with this month’s challenge: I am lazy.

The dish proposed by Olga (Olga’s Recipes) was José Andres‘ Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish, and Artichokes, accompanied by allioli (kind of like a garlic mayonnaise). And a very lovely and wonderfully tasty dish it was, its shortcomings fully accounted for by my own indolence:

• I did not perform an exhaustive search for cuttlefish. After calling three fish markets and finding none of them to have it, I went to Whole Foods and bought frozen squid. It was not bad but I would still like to know what cuttlefish tastes like.
• I used canned artichokes, even though this is very much artichoke country. Canned artichokes do not compare with fresh at all. Shame on me.
• I made the Modern Allioli (blender, less garlic, with egg) rather than the Traditional (mortar and pestle, more garlic, no egg) even though this is very much garlic country and I actually do own a mortar and pestle and I do worry about raw egg. It was good, though, and I suppose if the egg were going to make me sick, it would have by now.
• I had to cut down on the water because I knew the rice wouldn’t all fit in the pan with all the water. However, I was too lazy to then recalculate the rice amount, so I just threw it all in. Consequently, this did not end up being what you would call a moist and creamy rice dish.

Thanks  to Nick (Macheesmo) for volunteering to host next week’s edition of YeastSpotting while I’m in Switzerland searching for rye croissants and making sure my daughter gets off to college on a good foot.

Please include a link to Macheesmo in your submitted posts during the coming week. You can still send entries via the submission form, which will automatically forward them to Nick.

See this week’s yeast spottings…