Wild Yeast

Weights and Measures

Susan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:52:02 +0000

If you know me at all, you’ll know I am big fan of the scale over the measuring cup. Sometimes, though, for whatever reason, you need to know the weight-volume equivalent for a particular ingredient.

The best one-stop resource I’ve found for this information is the searchable USDA Nutrient Database. It contains more foods than you knew existed, and it gives the gram weight of a standard volume or unit (e.g., a cup of nuts or a whole large egg).

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YeastSpotting 11.14.08

Susan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:01:50 +0000

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Google Eyes

Susan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:01:36 +0000

The following open letter to Google may contain objectionable adult content. Reader discretion is advised.

Dear Google,

Thank you. You have lifted a veil from my eyes, and made me see what a truly loose woman I have apparently become.

When I discovered that not one, not two, but all of my photos are censored from Image Search with SafeSearch enabled, I admit I was baffled at first. All along I wanted this to be, and thought it was, a family blog. My mother reads it, and so do my kids. Now that I see, with your wise and perspicacious guidance, the lasciviousness I have so foolishly and publicly permitted myself to exhibit, I don’t know how I’ll be able to look them in the eye again. Never mind go to PTA meetings. And God help me if I ever decide to run for public office.

Like I said, I was baffled at first. But then, after a good night’s sleep (and I do mean sleep in the “not awake” sense, just to be clear), I sat down to take a look at my blog through fresh, objective eyes — through Google eyes, if you will — and I must say I was shocked at what I saw. The more I looked, the more lewdness I found. Oh, the shame!

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Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel, Take One

Susan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:59:44 +0000

Meet my new mission in life: Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread. I made this for the first time over the weekend (yes, it took all weekend) and can verify reports that it is not a breeze. It wasn’t a disaster; I definitely have something edible, but it could be so much better. I’ve been bitten and I know it will keep after me until I get it right.

This is a heavy, dark, dense bread made from rye meal sourdough, soaked and cooked rye berries, cracked rye (which I substituted for unavailable rye chops), a small amount of high-gluten wheat flour, and an old bread soaker. It tastes fantastic. So what’s wrong with it? Two words: overhydrated and underbaked. Instead of being pleasantly moist like pumpernickel should be, mine could be called downright soggy.

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YeastSpotting 11.7.08

Susan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:01:37 +0000

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A More Sour Sourdough

Susan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:01:18 +0000

Norwich Sourdough, which was My New Favorite Sourdough when I wrote about it last year, is still my number-one no-fail go-to bread. (In fact, I was thinking of renaming it Three-Compound-Adjective Sourdough.) It’s mildly sour and goes with just about everything.

For those times when a more assertive tang is the order of the day, this variation serves nicely. It’s essentially the Norwich sourdough formula but with 50% more rye flour and 33% more levain. Just as Norwich Sourdough is based on Jeffrey Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough, this is adapted from Vermont Sourdough With Increased Whole Grain, both from the essential Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes.

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Brotforms

Susan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:32:00 +0000

Proofing bread in a basket gives support to an expanding loaf and helps it maintain its shape. When the basket is a brotform, it also imprints the crust with a beautiful spiral pattern that lends the finished loaf a rustic European flair.

A brotform (German for “bread mold” – see why we stick with the German name?) is a coiled cane basket that holds the shaped dough during its final proof. My brotforms (or brotformen, if you want to keep strictly to the German) are round and oval, but they also come in rectangular, square, triangular, and a variety of other shapes. A 7.5- or 8-inch diameter round brotform is a good size for up to a 1.5-pound loaf.

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YeastSpotting 10.31.08

Susan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:01:25 +0000

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It’s A Toss-Up

Susan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:01:37 +0000

There are times when a toss-up is definitely not a good thing. The upcoming election, for example. You want your candidate to earn an unequivocal win, right? So get out there and vote on November 4, if you haven’t done so already. I’ll be really ticked off if I have to stay up until 6 AM while “too close to call” remains on the lips of every news anchorperson in the country, because you didn’t bother to vote. So go, no excuses. That means you!

This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge was a toss-up of a different kind. Our host Rosa (Rosa’s Yummy Yums) delighted me by choosing pizza, but terrified me by stipulating that we had to shape the crust by tossing it up in the air like a real pizzaiola. The last time any crust of mine was airborne involved a few choice expletives and a pretty extensive patch job. Thenceforth, until Rosa stirred things up, I resigned myself to being a more relaxed, if inauthentic, pizza crust roller.

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Little Bones

Susan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:51:42 +0000

Pan de Muerto, the sweet bread traditionally made for Mexico’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), is typically shaped into a round loaf and decorated with huesitos (little bones). In a variation on the theme, I made this “bread of the dead” into individual bone-shaped rolls.

Because the dough is rich and soft, the shaping is a bit tricky. I suggest dividing the chilled dough into the individual roll portions, rounding them into balls, and chilling them again for an hour or so before the final shaping. Periodically cooling your hands on an ice pack while shaping is helpful.

The bones are shaped by rolling a log with knobby ends, then using a sharp knife to make a small cut in each end, forming the condyles (for all you anatomy geeks). I rolled my bones about four inches long; in the future, I would shape them longer and thinner, as they expand outward considerably (but not much lengthwise) during proofing.

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