Wild Yeast

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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.

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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.

See this week’s yeast spottings…

The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

At least once a game, I find myself thinking that “pho” really ought to be a valid Scrabble word.  After all, “sushi” is legal. So is “carbonara.” Ditto “paella.” And in my town, the noodle houses that specialize in this traditional Vietnamese soup can be found sometimes two or three to a block, at least as numerous as sushi restaurants and easily outnumbering those serving Italian or Spanish fare. In other words, pho is a legitimate part of our multi-ethnic American culinary lexicon.

In fact, pho is so easy to come by around here that it never crossed my mind that I could or should make it at home. Thanks to Jaden and this month’s Daring Cooks challenge, I now know I can have her delicious, quick version of pho ga (chicken pho) on the table in less time than it takes to go get some at Pho Quyen Noodle House. Throw in the crispy chocolate wontons (with green tea ice cream) for dessert and I’m still ahead of the game, time-wise.

(That is, of course, assuming that I ignore Jaden’s instruction that the tails should be pinched off the two cups of bean sprouts that are one of pho’s important garnishes. That’s, what, about 1,843 sprouts? Call me a bad Daring Cook if you must, but if we’re talking that kind of time, I’ll just go straight to Viet Nam for my pho, thank you very much.)

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SFBI Update: It’s the end of week four, and we’ve been off baguettes for a week, but that doesn’t mean we have any less bread at the end of the day. Plain sourdough four ways, sour rye, multigrain sour, buckwheat levain, ciabatta, overnight baguettes (did I say we were off baguettes? liar!), egg bread, Portuguese sweet bread, more baguettes (I kid you not!), pan sandwich bread.

I give away as much of the stuff as I can. My freezer is now almost completely ruled by bread. Torta di Pane was good but didn’t make an appreciable dent in the supply. Only one thing to do: make toasts. Or if you’re Italian, call them crostini.

What’s not to love about thin crisps that can be made from even stale bread, keep for days-to-weeks, and serve as a platform for just about anything else you might feel like putting in your mouth?

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See this week’s yeast spottings…