Wild Yeast

Today is the one-year birthday of Wild Yeast. Holy crow, time flies! I’m not one for elaborate birthday bashes, so let me just say this: Thank you to all of you who read here, and to all of you who share your fabulous blogs with the world. A year ago, I never could have imagined that I would ever meet so many extremely cool people from every corner of the earth, let alone count you among my friends. You’ve made my year!

Now, about that Danish:

The Danish pastries I made last month were good, but not as flaky and crisp as I like them, because the dough wasn’t laminated. I had planned to try again, with lamination; little did I know that Kelly (Sass & Veracity) and Ben (What’s Cooking?) were plotting to force my hand by choosing Danish Braid for this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge.

When I read the recipe (from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking), I was a little surprised to see that the roll-in butter for the Danish dough was to be softened by beating it (plus a bit of flour) in a mixer to give it a spreadable consistency. The lamination in my (admittedly short) past has involved whacking a block of chilled butter with a rolling pin to shape it into a still-firm rectangle around which the dough is wrapped.

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This is how I used my sprouted wheat. The bread is easily adapted to any taste by including your favorite dried fruits and nuts. I chose blueberries, plums, walnuts, and orange zest. Try apricots, raisins, cherries, figs, almonds, pecans, or whatever else strikes you, or omit the fruit altogether for a more savory bread.

Date molasses is available in Middle Eastern grocery markets. If you don’t have it, substitute thawed fruit juice concentrate. Wheat gluten can be found in the baking section of many markets, or ordered online.

This submission for BreadBakingDay #11, bread with sprouts. This one-year anniversary edition is hosted this month by BBD’s founder, Zorra (1x umrühren bitte). I have loved seeing all the breads everyone comes up with each month and I’m sure this month will be no exception!

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Last Sunday’s baking was some brioche-crusted peach tarts. Just as the first one was ready to go into the oven, the early morning sun came streaming in through my dining room window.

I thought the streaks of light falling across the yellow fruit on yellow dough evoked the hopeful theme of Click! Yellow for Bri. This month, the photo event hosted by Jugalbandi supports a fundraiser for Brianna Brownlow (Figs With Bri). Please go read about it and donate now if you haven’t already. The tart will be here when you get back.

This is what the baked tart looked like:

The tart is very simple in construction: a disc of brioche dough spread with a thin layer of crème fraîche and topped with sliced fresh peaches. This is a great way to eat brioche because, as a crust, a little goes a long way. Although the butter content of the dough is quite high, the tart overall is not what I would call very rich, nor is it terribly sweet.

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Do you know Briana Brownlow of Figs With Bri? I don’t know her well, but I have enjoyed reading her blog over the last few months, and now she needs help. Bri is battling breast cancer. I am pleased to turn over today’s post to a group of Bri’s friendsGarrett (Vanilla Garlic)
Shankari (Stream of Consciousness)
Manisha (Indian Food Rocks)
Bee and Jai (Jugalbandi) who have organized a fundraising event to help meet her medical expenses. Please be as generous as you can in support of Bri and her family.

The Daring Bakers Light Opera Cake Company

presents

L’Opéra, A Cake in Five Acts

__________

Composed by Louis Clichy

Original Libretto by Dorie Greenspan, Tish Boyle and Timothy Moriarty

Libretto Adaptation by Ivonne and Lis

Conducted and Directed by Susan

__________

This evening’s performance is dedicated to cancer survivor and honorary Daring Baker Barbara, creator of LiveSTRONG With A Taste of Yellow, in recognition of her inspiring strength and love of life. The performance is also dedicated to Susan’s dad, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2002, and among whose favorite things were opera and cake.

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Remember when you were twelve and you broke your arm skateboarding? You had a cool cast that everyone signed, and you got to have your mom write out your homework, and within a month you were back out there on the skateboard, good as new. No big deal.

Osteoporosis isn’t like that. It’s a huge deal. It doesn’t take a major trauma to break osteoporotic bones, and fractures related to this devastating disease are a leading cause of hospitalization, disability, and even death. Did you know that an adult over age 50 who fractures a hip has a one in four chance of dying within one year?

While those most likely to suffer the effects of osteoporosis are women over age 50, the time to think about preventing it is now, no matter what your age and gender. Bone mass is largely acquired before the age of 20, but good health habits at any age will help. Don’t smoke. Do regular weight-bearing exercise. Get enough Vitamin D. And three words at the top of the list: Calcium, Calcium, Calcium! Many people just don’t get enough of this critical bone-forming mineral.

In recognition of National Osteoporosis Prevention Month and to promote awareness of the disease, Susan of Food Blogga is hosting Beautiful Bones. The task is to make a dish with one or more calcium-rich ingredients. I chose to give hummus and pita bread, a favorite around here, a calcium boost by making a few adaptations to my everyday recipes.

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Like desserts, pastries are not something I bake often. We eat crusty hearth breads around the clock, including for breakfast. But for some reason, the BreadBakingDay #10 theme of Breakfast Breads, hosted this month by talented baker Melissa (Baking a Sweet Life), put me in mind of Danish pastry. The flakier the better.

I intended to make a traditional laminated dough (many discrete layers of dough and butter). I don’t have a lot of experience with this, and definitely need to practice. Keeping the dough cold so the butter does not melt into it during the rolling and folding process is critical, and it takes the better part of a day because the dough has to be thoroughly re-chilled between roll-and-folds. So I set aside a day to work on this.

As it turned out, the weather on the designated day was uncooperative. A heat wave plus an un-air-conditioned kitchen do not create ideal conditions for laminating dough, and I chickened out wisely decided not to set myself up for failure. However, just as I convinced myself that I didn’t really want Danish after all, I serendipitously tuned in to the latest episode of the wonderful 1990’s series “Baking With Julia” [Child], which my PBS station has been airing lately.

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Rustic fruit desserts are my favorite, and I almost always order one if it’s on the menu when we eat out. (My husband likes to guess what dessert I’ll choose, and he’s usually right because my taste is so predictable.) However, unless there’s a birthday or holiday to be celebrated, or a Daring Bakers challenge to try to conquer, I rarely bake desserts of any kind at home.

But the rhubarb and kumquats that were yesterday’s impulse buys at the farmer’s market got me pining for something chunky and tart and sweet and coarse and juicy and messy and perfect in its imperfection. A galette of the rhubarb and kumquats along with some of the other market bounty — strawberries and basil — seemed about right.

I’m submitting this as my first entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, the venerable and popular event founded by Kalyn (Kalyn’s Kitchen) and hosted this week by Anh of Food Lover’s Journey. I think both rhubarb and kumquats are interesting enough to merit “featured plant” status, so I randomly picked the kumquats.

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Well, it just figures. The one time — the one and only time in my ever-hopeful-but-never-successful cheesecake-attempting career — that I manage to bake a cheesecake that doesn’t crack, I can’t show it off. I can’t carry it triumphantly to the table to admiring “ooh”s and “aah”s and “look, no Grand Canyon in that cake”s and “she’s such a cheesecake star”s. Nope, I’m obligated to transmogrify this one beyond all recognition. Not only that, but I didn’t even have the brains to take a photo of it in its pristine, glorious smoothness.

I had to get that off my chest, but I’m really not all that broken up, because the mutation was in service of a good cause. Elle (Feeding My Enthusiasms) and Deborah (Taste and Tell) gave us Daring Bakers an excellent challenge this month: Cheesecake Pops. It’s a recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor.

The idea is that you bake a cheesecake (and it doesn’t even have to be a lovely, crack-free, perfect cheesecake) and scoop it out into little balls which you then impale on sticks, freeze, and dip into chocolate plus any other coatings your heart desires.

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I made granola for BreadBakingDay. You may be thinking: Ahem, this is BBD, not BCD (BreakfastCerealDay). To which I would reply: True, but this granola is so much more than a breakfast cereal. Bear with me.

Ten days ago, I had never made granola. I hadn’t eaten granola in years. Granola was merely a faint shadow lurking at the periphery of my long-term memory. Then I read about Molly’s favorite granola on Orangette, and I thought, this looks good. In fact, this looks great! Not to mention ever-so-easy. And, modulo a substitution or two, I had all the ingredients on hand.

A couple of hours, a batch of homemade applesauce, and nearly three pounds of oats, nuts, and seeds later, I could confirm that Molly does not exaggerate: the stuff was amazing. My family thought so too. We ate it with milk. We ate it with the rest of the applesauce. We ate it with yogurt, with almond milk, and right from our hands. We ate it in the morning, yes, but in the afternoon and evening, too. We showed no restraint whatsoever. Within two days, it was gone.

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