My Dad sent me this cute email yesterday,
Hey Daughter,
Hope you're having a good day. I had a head cold in January and had been better for about two weeks and now I have it again, only this time it's worse. Poor me.
Our little librarian, Bre, suggested that my wife might like to read, "Cinnamon and Gunpowder", by Eli Brown. So, I picked it up at the library and read it myself (she was finishing something else). The story is: (read the red line)
A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.
To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.
But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
I thought the story started slow and was a little weird, but finally it took off and I enjoyed it. But I thought of you as I read the part about cook having to get his own yeast started - just like you did it.
Later, Dad
Next to my husband, my Dad has been my greatest support as I have learned and experimented with Natural Yeast. He would call and ask how it was coming, if the yeast was rising, how the bread was turning out. He cheers me on when I'm successful and encourages me when I've failed. When I had my first successful loaf of bread last year I called him way past his bed time to tell him how wonderful it was and how delicious it tasted. I heard him groan and made note of his quiet comment that if he didn't live so far away he would have come right over to try some. A few weeks later I FedEx'd a fresh loaf to my Dad. It was so fun to call him and tell him there was a package on his front door.
Every adventurer has to have someone behind them cheering them on. I have family members and dear friends who are encouraging and supportive. Just this morning my sister reminded me that I still have so much to share and encouraged me to keep adding things to this blog. So with some fresh encouragement behind me I will continue to post my adventures and discoveries.
I really enjoy what you are sharing - there is so much more to healthy bread making than we realize. . . how do you start your natural yeast?
ReplyDeleteThank you. It's so much easier to start your natural yeast with a little starter from someone else. But if you don't know anyone who has some natural yeast to give you, you can start your own by mixing a little water with a little flour in a wide mouth glass mason jar and leaving it on your counter stirring it several times a day to mix in air. Natural yeast occurs in the air around us and settles on food (it is the white stuff we see on grapes), so by mixing your natural yeast up to three times a day you are stirring in more bacteria from the air encouraging it to settle on your flour mixture and grow there.
DeletePeople tend to think of the word "bacteria" as a bad thing. But natural yeast is a healthy bacteria that when encouraged to grow into a starter can benefit our digestive systems. Much like probiotics in yogurt.
However, getting your little flour mixture to turn into a natural yeast starter requires a lot of patience. It needs to be fed equal parts water and flour daily. In order to prevent having too much starter to work with and wasting flour unnecessarily it's a good idea to keep your starter at about 1/2 cup which means throwing out some of the mix before you feed it again.
Here is a chart that was really helpful to me when I was getting started:
http://www.andrewzajac.ca/files/sd4.png
Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions! :)