Wild Yeast » giveaways

Parchment Love

Susan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:46:18 +0000

I used to have a love-hate relationship with parchment paper. I love that it keeps all kinds of things (bagels, hamburger rolls, grissini, cinnamon rolls…) from adhering to their pans. In fact, parchment is indispensable if you bake in or on metal pans. But I hate that the rolls of paper parchment are difficult to tear off cleanly, need to be cut with scissors every time to fit the pan, and can’t be reused more than two or three times, if at all.

Since I discovered reusable parchment sheets from Regency Wraps, there’s a whole lot more love going on in my kitchen.

The sheets can be reused hundreds of times, according to the manufacturer. I’ve had mine for a few months and they show no signs of wearing out.
They’re easy to clean with a damp cloth, and a little soap if they’re sticky or greasy.
They are easy to cut to the exact dimensions of your pans. The uncut size is 13 x 17 inches, large enough for a sheet pan, two 8-inch cake pans, or two 9 x 13-inch pans (which are usually a little smaller than that at the bottom). It’s worth having one for each pan you use regularly.
Once they’re cut to size, they can be stored right in their pans.
They can be used in oven temperatures up to 500F. Paper burns at 450.
They are more “nonstick” than paper parchment. I used to need copious amounts of semolina to keep bagels from sticking to the paper. With these sheets I don’t need any.

And here’s even more for you to love: Forget flowers and chocolate — I would love to send some love to your kitchen in time for Valentine’s Day, in the form of two reusable parchment sheets, courtesy of Regency Wraps.

Continue reading for giveaway details…

Bagel Miter Review and Giveaway

Susan — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:30:19 +0000

Cutting a bagel is dangerous business. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2008 there were 1,979 bagel-related emergency room visits. This makes bagels the fifth most dangerous food (behind chicken, potatoes, apples, and onions). If you’re partial to your fingers, I suggest a bagel-cutting aid.

I’ve used a guillotine-style bagel cutter for a long time, but sometimes it doesn’t give the cleanest cut. A serrated knife does a better job, but the risk of accidents is high, especially when your bagel is the right kind (that is, shiny-slippery-firm, not squishy-soft-pudgy). The good people at BigKitchen sent me this Ironwood Acacia Bagel Miter, and I was anxious to see if it would cut it.

Read on for my opinion, and a giveaway

Green Market Baking Book Review, Recipe, and Giveaway

Susan — Tue, 03 May 2011 07:44:12 +0000

The Green Market Baking Book : 100 Delicious Recipes for Naturally Sweet & Savory Treats by Laura C. Martin is premised on the idea that baking with fresh, seasonal ingredients, and without refined sugar, is better for both our bodies and our planet. If you like that idea, you’ll like this book.

The majority of the recipes are treats of the sweet variety (cakes, pies, cookies, puddings, muffins, etc.). All are made with one or more “natural sweeteners” such as honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and barley malt syrup. The book includes a section on substituting these ingredients for refined sugar in your own recipes. Whether or not you believe (and I’m not sure I do) Martin’s assertion that these sweeteners are more healthful than sugar, you may still wish to “support the small producers of alternative sweeteners — the honeybee keepers, the maple syrup farmers, and so on.”

The recipes — some Martin’s own, but many contributed by bakers and chefs around the country — are grouped by season, and most, though not all, feature fresh produce. Some are designated as low-fat, gluten-free, or dairy-free, and many contain a good proportion of whole grain flours and/or heart-healthier fats such as olive oil.

For me, though, what any baking book that focuses primarily on desserts comes down to is not whether the recipes are healthful, because I’m not going to go looking to dessert to fill my nutritional dance card. What it comes down to is do the recipes work, and do they taste good? The answer here, as far as I can tell, is yes they do (mostly).

Continue reading for recipe and book giveaway…

Real Men Bake Bread, and Sing About It Too

Susan — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:44:19 +0000

For a cute song, and a giveaway of a cool shirt, read more!
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ThinkFood Giveaway

Susan — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:01:42 +0000

I’m going to make this short and sweet. These are my flaxseed grissini:

Because flaxseeds are good for your brain, the recipe got to appear in this cookbook:

You can also find the recipe here.

You can enter to win a copy of the book, thereby getting all 50 brainy and beautiful recipes from 50 brainy and beautiful bloggers, by leaving a comment below.

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HomeGoods Review and $50 Giveaway

Susan — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:47:16 +0000

I get a lot of emails asking me to spend my money, but rarely do I get one asking me to spend someone else’s money. So when BlogHer and HomeGoods offered a $50 card for me to spend on gifts, they didn’t have to ask twice. And letting me give away a second $50 gift card to one of you made the deal even better.

Find out what I bought, and how you can enter to win.

Bag Clips Giveaway

Susan — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:59:43 +0000

I love these things.

Not the flours, grains, and seeds (seen here dragged from their beds so I could assess which ones are fit to make the 6-mile move to my new home next week), although I do love them too. But I’m talking about the colorful bars that clip the bags closed.

If you don’t already know about these little hinged pieces of plastic, your life is about to be changed forever. Okay, maybe they’re not life-changing in the same way as, say, a credit card and Velcro are, but still. Not having to grapple with knots, twist-ties, rubber bands, tape, or springs is huge. I can clip these one-piece guys on and snap them off again with one hand tied behind my back, and when they’re on they stay put.

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Amuse Brunch Giveaway

Susan — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:13:18 +0000

Attention Bay Area brunchistas:

In case you weren’t lucky enough to score tickets for Amuse Brunch, next Sunday’s SF Food Wars tournament of tiny tastes, don’t despair. I have a pair of tickets that may have your name on them.

If dishes like Amuse Brioche (yeah, that’s me), Green Veggs and Ham, Pork in the Hole, Dosa Rox My Lox, and Hare of the Benny intrigue you, read on and keep your fingers crossed.

– Update: the drawing is now closed. Congratulations to Ellen Burchett! –

Get the scoop on how to enter…

Be My Guest

Susan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:20:00 +0000

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…

Fruit and Nut Bread, and Bread Matters Giveaway

Susan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:13:40 +0000

If you’re wondering why bread matters and what’s the matter with modern commercially-made bread, Andrew Whitley spells it out in Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own, and he doesn’t mince words. He spends the first 50 pages or so explaining why the commercial bread baking process (specifically in Britain, although I think it largely applies to most industrialized societies) is “a nutritional, culinary, social, and environmental mess.”

But maybe you knew that already, if you’re into baking your own bread. In that case, you might be drawn to this book’s unassumingly beautiful and wholesome breads, its chapter on gluten-free baking, or the recipe for kvas, a slightly alcoholic Russian drink made from rye bread, sourdough starter, and molasses.

Aside from looking like it would be just plain delicious (which it was), the recipe for Fruit and Nut Leaven Bread intrigued me because it includes the nuts (along with the dried fruit) in the soaker. This is unusual — most recipes call for nuts to be toasted or untreated — and Whitley promised the soaking would lend them “an almost buttery eating quality.” Also, the fruits and nuts constitute a wonderfully high proportion of the overall dough. I must say this was a really satisfying loaf to bake and to eat.

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