Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

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Menu for Hope 6

MFHPhoto09450

It’s that time of year! Once again, I am honored to be a part of Menu for Hope, the international food blogging community’s annual fundraising event to benefit the United Nations World Food Programme. This is a unique opportunity to donate to a most worthy cause while bidding on some fantastic culinary raffle items.

MFHLogo09Proceeds from this campaign will go to a new WFP initiative, Purchase for Progress, which gives small farmers a market for their surplus crops at competitive prices in their own developing countries. Since its inception, Menu for Hope has raised over $230,000. Please help extend this stunning success by giving as generously as you can.

Each $10 you donate to Menu for Hope between now and December 25 gets you one chance on your choice of bid items from an incredible lineup hosted by food bloggers around the world. The more you donate, the more virtual raffle tickets you earn, and the greater your chances of winning.

You may bid on any items you like, but I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to resist mine, both very generously donated by the San Francisco Baking Institute:

UW18: A 2-Day Artisan Baking Workshop, or 40% off a 5-Day Workshop, at SFBI

sfbimosaic Read more to see how you can win this and other fantastic prizes...SFBI is the only school in the US dedicated exclusively to artisan bread and pastry baking (and also happens to be where I’m spending a very large chunk of my time these days).

If you win this item, select any 2-day workshop (or get 40% off any 5-day workshop) that SFBI offers in 2010, on a space-available basis.

Choose from weekend classes on baguettes, sourdough, French macarons, and more, or go for a week-long introductory or advanced artisan baking course. Check out the SFBI course calendar for a complete list of offerings.

abap.jpgUW19: Advanced Bread and Pastry

If you can’t make it to the school for a course, SFBI founder Michel Suas’ book is the next best thing to being there. He’ll even sign it for you.

This incredibly comprehensive text lays out the theoretical and practical foundation you will need in order to understand and execute its 300 or so bread and pastry formulas, many of which are staples of the SFBI curriculum.

From baguettes, bagels, and brioche to chocolate, ciabatta, and Chartreuse marshmallow lollipops, it’s all in here. Prepare to be inspired!

Find out how to bid…

My Fall Macaron Line

ganache-filled macarons

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.

sfbi-macarons

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.

underbaked macarons

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Imagine

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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.

Just Pho Fun

pho

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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Career Options

dosa

I would like to thank this month’s Daring Cooks host, Debyi (The Healthy Vegan Kitchen), for not only offering such a tasty challenge in Indian Dosas, but also for reassuring me that if I can’t make it as a Daring Cook (and my utter inability to produce a round dosa definitely points in that direction), I may have a very bright future in psychoanalysis.

In my hands, these thin Indian pancakes are better than inkblots, don’t you think? Feel free to interpret them any way you wish and to leave your interpretations in the comments. Also feel free to draw whatever conclusions you like about me from my own perceptions of my edible little Rorschach tests, but please keep these to yourself.

And if my career as an analyst doesn’t take off, there’s always recipe translation work. I have a natural talent for this. For example, it was quite effortless for me to translate “ladle 2 tablespoons of batter into your pan until it is a thin, round pancake,” into “plop 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of your pan and swirl the pan around until the pancake looks like something the cat dragged in.”

dosa-4

If Jaws and Ms. Pacman had a child

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DBs Do Dobos

dobos-torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

If you had a bakery and needed something sensational for the window, this Dobos Torte would be it. It just looks amazing.

Because it it so beautiful, I wish I could say my cake was an unqualified success. But those toffee pieces on top, the ones that arrange into such a fabulous pinwheel, were responsible for more fits than I have had over cake in quite some time. (And that’s saying something; it’s pretty much a given around here that where there is cake, there are fits.)

For starters, I did not care for the flavor of lemon juice in the caramel. It just tasted sour to me. And then there was the question of how to eat them. Too hard to cut and to chew without fear of dental disaster. And I won’t even mention how long it took me to cut these babies apart. Once again, it appears that caramel and I are simply not destined to be friends.

caramel-layer

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