Wild Yeast

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

Good News, Bad News

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: unless you are WAHiker, aka Michael of Snohomish, Washington, you didn’t win the Super Peel. Congratulations to Michael!

But I have two pieces of good news, so the good news wins.

First, it’s not too late to put that excellent Super Peel on your holiday wish list. Come on, you know you want it.

Second, there is plenty of other free and fantastic stuff being given away all over food blog land, and to make it easy for you to find it, I’ve launched a new blog, Compliments of the Kitchen. It’s a list of food blog giveaways in a straightforward, just-the-facts-ma’am format. Take a look and tell me what you think. And if you know about any current giveaways that I’ve missed, please feel free to let me know!

Pistachio-Anise Wafers

I’ve been making the same Christmas cookies for more than 20 years, and I figured it was time to add a little something new.

These are a different kind of cookie, actually sort of a cross between a cookie and a cracker. I like them because:

  • their only sugar is what’s sprinkled on top, adding color and shine
  • they’re leavened (a little) by yeast, and wild yeast at that
  • they have no butter, only olive oil

(To any members of my household who may be reading this: Don’t worry, we’ll still have Candy Cane Cookies, Peanut Butter Bonbons, and a few of the other old favorites.)
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Super Peel, Super Giveaway

Last week I mentioned the Super Peel in my Gift Ideas post, and I’d like to tell you a bit more about it, as it’s one of my favorite tools.

If you bake bread or pizza you know that a peel is used to transfer a loaf or pizza onto a hot baking stone. A traditional wood or metal peel must usually be quite heavily dusted with flour or cornmeal to allow the dough to slide off the peel and onto the stone without sticking — and sometimes it still sticks, especially if the dough is quite wet. Parchment paper can help, but it’s expensive, disposable, and burns at high oven temperatures.

The Super Peel is a clever answer to those problems. Modeled after the cloth conveyor belts that professional bakeries use to get loaves in and out of large deck ovens, the Super Peel has its own pastry-cloth belt that gently and efficiently picks up a pizza, loaf, or any other delicate or sticky item from a flat surface and deposits it, unscathed, anywhere you like.

Read more about the Super Peel and how you can win one…

Chocolate Panettone Baked in Folded Paper Baskets

I had three goals in making this Chocolate Panettone, a new bread for me:

  1. To make a panettone that my daughter would like. M has an inexplicable dislike of fruit in bread, (indeed, in most baked things; this is inexplicable because she is my flesh and blood). Although fruitless chocolate panettone is not traditional, I have seen it now and then, and I thought M might give it a thumbs-up.
  2. To bake a panettone that, unlike the wild yeast one I usually bake (and love), does not take a good 30 hours to make. While that is a delicious panttone that keeps quite a long time, and the weekend-long process is starting to feel like a necessary holiday ritual for me, sometimes you just can’t invest that kind of time, and why should that have to mean going without home-baked panettone completely?
  3. To try my idea of making folded paper baskets to bake the bread in. You can of course buy paper panettone molds and other decorative, bake-in-to-give-away, paper “pans,” but they’re expensive (and I just like to make things).

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Gift Ideas

Is it just me, or does gift-giving season always sneak up on you too? Are you stumped for gift ideas for the bread baker in your life, or are your people hounding you for your own wish list? Here are a few off-the-beaten-path items that bakers might not know about or buy for themselves.

I would love it if you would leave your own unusual, beautiful, or fun gift ideas in the comments.

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Cake Fear

I think we have established by now that I am generally afraid of baking cakes. I fear that it won’t rise, or it will fall, or it will organize its temperamental little self into foam, sauce, and jelly-jammy layers because I failed to beat the egg whites just so. I worry that it will stick to the pan and come out in pieces so I have to make a “German Chocolate Trifle” for my husband’s birthday. Or it will be underbaked in the middle and I will not discover, until it is already on my guests’ plates and on its way to their mouths, that my lovely apple upside-down cake is actually apple upside-down pudding. (All theoretical concerns, of course, not that any of these things has actually happened to me.)

Well. This month’s Daring Bakers challenge (or “mob bake,” as my husband calls it) brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “fear of cake.” The way I see it, any recipe whose author admonishes you not to slip up or you’re looking at a trip to the ER definitely warrants an extra dose of serious baking anxiety. Not to mention full body armor.

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