Wild Yeast

My friend Jamie (Life’s a Feast) is throwing herself a birthday party for BreadBakingDay this month. A very special bread is therefore in order, and I think this fills the bill. Distinctive in both appearance and taste, it derives an earthy flavor and rich deep brown color from buckwheat flour, and sweetness — but not too much — from toasted walnuts and wine-soaked pears.

Before making these loaves at home, I had made the bread several times at SFBI — including for my bread practical exam — and it never disappoints. As a testament to its universal appeal, I’m thrilled to congratulate my friend and classmate, David E, who just today won the SF Food Wars People’s Choice Honorable Mention with his interpretation of the bread, presented to 200 discerning tasters at the  SF Food Wars artisan bread bakedown. Go David and go Pear Buckwheat!

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See this week’s yeast spottings…

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

There isn’t much gluten-free baking around here — in fact, I’m usually all about the gluten. I have to admit there was a little scene playing out in my mind as I prepared these gluten-free graham wafers, my first foray into a world where wheat flour is taboo and things like sweet rice flour, sorghum flour, and tapioca flour rule the oven.

If anyone asked for a taste, I would, with shuffling feet and downcast eyes, stammer out an apologetic explanation for why these tasted more like graham cracker box than graham crackers.

Well. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” The wafers tasted fantastic — just like “real” graham crackers, only better. Even though I was in a rush and messed them up — well of course I did, this is a DB challenge, isn’t it? — by not letting them chill thoroughly, so it was impossible to cut them into squares and they (it) ended up looking like a giant ginger snap — even then I found myself wishing I’d made a full batch instead of just the half I’d need most of for the Nanaimo bars. I actually wanted to eat these.

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Hey Bay Area bread fans, what are you doing next Sunday?

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ll be putting my bread on the line at SF Food Wars‘ Yeast Affliction! All-out Artisan Bread Bakedown & Craft Beer Tastiness. My Semolina Sourdough with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts will go up against Dark Horse Bread’s Black Pepper and Fig Sourdough, Go Nuts!’ Nuthing But Net, The Itty Biddies’ Nutty Sourdough, and 17 others to see which loaf will be the cat’s pajamas.

Tickets were a quick sell-out, so maybe you thought you missed your opportunity to come, drink beer, taste all the breads, and vote for mine. But I believe in second chances, so I saved two tickets to give away to one of my yeast-loving friends in a random drawing.

– Update 1/26: The drawing is done. Congratulations to Erin Beller! –

Get the scoop on how to enter…

See this week’s yeast spottings…

For Christmas Eve dinner I made chili and corn bread. Because we were ten people and I thought to save a little time on after-dinner clean-up, I made sourdough corn bread bowls to hold the chili. I mixed the dough at about 7 a.m. and the bowls were baked, cooled, and hollowed out just in time for dinner at 6 p.m. Uh huh, it was such a time-saver over washing ten dishes.

OK, so I may not win the Ms. Efficiency title this year, but everyone said these bowls were good. So good, in fact, that they ate them before going back for seconds on the chili, so we still ended up with a bunch of dishes to wash. But isn’t that, after all, what the holidays are about — baking and cleaning?

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