Wild Yeast

See this week’s yeast spottings…

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

When I was introduced to macarons in Paris two years ago, the puffy almond meringue sandwich cookies and I became fast friends. I was captivated by the delicate smooth crisp shell, ruffled “feet,” chewy-soft interior, and shiny, creamy fillings, of these oh-so-French confections. But mostly I was seduced by the dazzling array of colors and flavors that beckoned from bright displays at the likes of Pierre Hermé, Ladurée, and countless other patisseries around the city.

Blackcurrant Violet. Chocolate Passionfruit. Pistachio Caramel. Oh, the limitless possibilities…

So this month’s Daring Bakers challenge excited and inspired me. I can do that! With almond meringue as my medium, my creativity will be unleashed and I too will present an eye-popping parade of macaron artistry.

And that is exactly what I did. I managed to make several varieties of macarons, and I’m pretty excited about how they turned out. I figure my line is broad enough that I’m all set to open my own macaronerie. Soon I’ll be taking orders for:

The Underbaked Macaron
A thin, crisp shell (with feet!) surrounding a wet, sticky, married-to-the-silpat mess.

(Read more…)

Congratulations to Ephraim S. of Jamiaca Plain, Massachusetts, winner of the Super Peel random drawing.

Now for all of you who didn’t win, listen up! Sometime in the next two or three weeks, Gary will be offering the Super Peel at a great price just for Wild Yeast readers. I’ll let you know, but it will be for a limited time only. So watch this space, get ready to order, and start planning your pizzas!

See this week’s yeast spottings…

This is a loader.

It’s what we use at SFBI to deliver about 20 loaves at a time into the deck oven without harming one strand of gluten on their pretty little heads. This canvas conveyor belt does a great job of ensuring, for example, that our lovely pear-shaped loaves don’t wind up becoming oranges or bananas on their way into the oven.

This is a Super Peel.

It’s what you can use at home to pick up your own pears, pizzas, or pains de campagne and deposit them onto your baking stone equally unscathed. And although it’s modeled after those big conveyor belts, it’s far more versatile. The SFBI loader can’t pick up a rolled-out pie crust from the counter and move it onto the pie dish, or transfer a freshly-ganached cake from wire rack to serving plate, but the Super Peel is great for these tricky jobs.

Check out videos of the Super Peel in action at the Super Peel website.

Thanks to Gary Casper, Super Peel’s inventor, you can have a chance to win a Super Peel (your choice of original maple or gorgeous new butternut) just by being a US resident and leaving a comment here by 11:59 PDT on Friday, October 23. Gary will even upgrade to a gift set — including a cloth storage bag and an extra cloth belt — if the comment I pick at random is super good (as judged by me).

Can you imagine? It’s World Bread Day and I have no bread.

Well, I mean, of course I have bread. I have bread all day every day. I have more baguettes, boules, batards, and other assorted loaves than I know what to do with. I come home from class in the afternoon and scrape dough from my fingernails, brush flour from my hair, and shake crumbs out of my clothes.

But for World Bread Day, I wanted to contribute my own bread from my own kitchen. I actually did bake last night for the occasion, but the taste wasn’t really what I wanted. I will eat it, but I won’t post it, not now, not until I can tweak it until it’s right.

So here I am, breadless on World Bread Day. A breadless brat. “I don’t like that bread. I want a better bread.”

Now imagine if I were really breadless. Imagine if you were too. Imagine if we were among the world’s one billion people that are affected by food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which has designated today, October 16, World Food Day. Imagine that. And now imagine something you might do about it.

Now stop imagining and go do it. And be thankful you have any bread at all.