P I C N I C

Went for another long run yesterday and brought a new variation on the running bars. The granola base is the same, it has nutmeg, cinnamon, almonds, a multigrain rolled oat blend, and no sugar.  Instead of caramel or marshmallows I used a peanut butter sauce intended for rice crispy treats. Corn syrup, sugar, and peanut butter. The recipe made it a little sweet, but on the run my taste had changed and it didn’t seem overly sweet at all!

I stopped by Martha’s house at the end of the run, she lives just off the Springwater trail. Her father John is a granola fanatic, (no one is allowed to touch the equipment over the multi-day production) and I left with a bag to sample. He uses a very low proportion of oats, instead nuts and seeds dominate. Peanuts, raisins, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, and in particular a large amount of sesame seeds, which give the granola a very unique flavor. There is a very crisp and fine grain texture to it and it’s very eatable, not as crunchy and dense as some other types, including mine. I will have to reverse engineer the recipe as he was not forthcoming with a description.

I think I’ve been getting better at making bread. It’s all about the fermentations. I’ve realized that the texture of really good bread is all about having the yeast eat away and transform the chemical structure of the grain. These loaves were fermented in stages over three days. It’s not a sourdough at all, on the contrary it tastes sweet and nutty. The process involves leaving some dough behind for the next days production, so I’ll keep making this bread for a little bit. Next batch I might make baguettes.

I want to try culturing a sourdough, which seems like a complex thing, as it’s apparently a symbiosis between a yeast and a bacteria. To capture a wild yeast seems like a good start. One method I’ve read about involves collecting rainwater and mixing this with flour. Another method is to simply mix flour and water and then let this sit outside for a few days. I’m currently trying both of these. Other methods call for soaking various edible and inedible things in a very watery dough. I’m also trying to make some sauerkraut. My last batch turned moldy, but with this one I’m going to be scrupulously clean. There are two methods. One involves coating the cabbage in salt, the other by submerging in a light brine solution.

I thought that with Riley a fun project would be to inoculate petri dishes with bread yeast, wine yeast, wild yeast, etc… and then to try looking at them through a microscope. This would ultimately be the only way of identifying whether I had captured a real sourdough or just a wild yeast.

After making the mozzarella I brought the whey to a boil and added some lemon juice. This precipitated more solids, and after straining and draining I collected about 4 oz of ricotta. With the now very clear whey I made some bread rolls. It was a recipe from Bernard Clayton, for buttermilk bread. They came out very fluffy and soft. In the past I think I’ve been over baking the loaf style breads. Instead of 205˚ I think they are done when the internal temperature is only about 160˚.

For breakfast I made an egg sandwich with melted chevre, black trumpet mushrooms, and baby bok choy.