If you’re wondering what I meant when I said that I generally let my starter ferment for five days to make sure I “clear all the suckers out” it’s because starter bowls can occasionally grow some funky stuff. Actually, maybe I should take part of that back. They always grow some funky stuff, but occasionally […]
READ ONA good friend from the ol’ hometown, Chef Tim, writes in to ask: Are all commercial yeasts the same, meaning will they not only act the same but produce the same flavors? Is there anything on the market that bridges the gap between the simple convenience of commercially made yeast and the flavor-producing goodness of […]
READ ONAt Papa John’s it seems. The chain, which is based here in Louisville, has announced that it’ll be adding chocolate puff pastries to its product line. In related news, a London pizza joint has taken the concept a step further and is putting sweets like ice cream directly on top of their pizza…at least for […]
READ ONA starter is a home-grown yeast culture. One which, by virtue of the way it’s made, contains a much higher proportion of acid-producing bacteria than a commercially-acquired yeast culture (one of those little packets). It’s the addition of these bacteria that give home-grown starters their complex flavors, which vary markedly from location to location, since […]
READ ONI’m going to have a short week this week, as an opportunity has come up for the wife and I to head off on a rare mid-week getaway. Thus I won’t be doing a whole lot of baking. However I have been experimenting with bread starters quite a bit the last few weeks. My oven-firing […]
READ ON…is that naked people tend to show up. And while on the face of it that might sound like a good thing, it really isn’t, at least based on the photos I’ve seen accompanying the stories on New York City’s clothing optional restaurant craze. (www.nypost.com/seven/07212008/news/regionalnews/the_naked_city_120845.htm). It isn’t the Jessica Albas and Matt Damons that populate […]
READ ONFriend, reader and blogger extraordinaire Rachel Lauden writes in to say: This is all music to my ears because growing up in an English farm family, the late summer was spent making jam and bottling fruit (never called either canning) and that was what we had for the next year. The one exception was marmalade […]
READ ONWhen I was a child, there was a woman on our block who used to bring my mother small jars of various jams in the summertime. It was good stuff…mostly marmalade as I recall. Yet the thing that made the jars so memorable to me wasn’t what was inside, but what was on top. Under […]
READ ONTwo years is the rule of thumb, assuming the jars stay in good shape and have been stored properly. By that I mean in a relatively cool and especially dark spot away from direct sunlight. When I canned in my apartment back home in Chicago (it contained a gloriously outdated white enamel stove from the […]
READ ONunny how so many innovations in food preservation can be traced to armed conflict. But it’s no wonder why. Une armée marche à son estomac, as Napoleon famously said. A large force sitting still will consume every edible resource within reach in two days’ time. Historically, keeping such an army from starving has required either long supply lines or on-the-go, off-the-land foraging. But there are drawbacks to each. Long supply lines make easy targets for the enemy (see Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow), and foraging has a way of ruining civilian morale (ask anyone in the South about Sherman’s March to the Sea…150 years later at they’re still P.O.’d about it). But if you can take your supplies with you, you have a tremendous strategic and tactical advantage.
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