Culinary Conjuring

I've been conducting an experiment of sorts in the kitchen, a little culinary conjuring which is a lot of fun. I've always been fascinated by wild yeasts. When I first learned that the Belgian lambic beers I love so much owe their fermentation and unique taste to very specific and local wild yeasts found in the environment, I've been hugely intrigued and curious about yeast. I've been wanting to experiment with these natural yeasts myself, and last year, I finally was able to track down a few cider mills that don't pasteurize their cider, which thus contains natural yeast. The hard cider that resulted was great. It was immensely satisfying for me to realize that nature simply took its course, with a little help from me. I was curious enough about that yeast to try and see if I could get a sourdough starter for bread baking with the lees of the hard cider. I poured the cider directly into a bowl of wheat flour, and waited to see what would happen.

Nothing. It just became a hard, crusty ball of wheat flour. A tad disappointing. What I didn't realize is that I simply didn't know what to do.

Jump to this past summer at the CIA. During our session on breadbaking, I asked the chef if sourdough starters could be created from the residual yeast found in the bottom of hard cider and some beers. He answered emphatically in the affirmative. On Sunday, I decided to follow his directions, and started on my first sourdough starter. What he told me to do was to add water to the lees at the bottom of the bottle, swish it around to incorporate it all, and then pour this mixture into a bowl, making sure to place the bowl on a scale to determine the weight of the water. The next step is to add an equal amount (by weight) of organic wheat flour and then set aside for a day. If all goes well, he told me that within a week, I'll have a sourdough starter that will be strong enough for baking bread.

In order to achieve this, however, I need to feed it each day. Each day I have to pull away the top which has oxidized and hardened. From the bottom of the bowl, I scoop out four oz. of yesterday's starter and place it into a clean bowl. I then add an equal amount of water (not tap) and whole wheat flour, stir to incorporate, then set aside. I've been doing this for two days now, and today, there's no doubt fermentation is taking place. My starter is taking off!

My source for yeast came from my favorite beer: Bell's Oberon. If all goes well, this weekend I'll be baking a loaf of bread, Oberon bread. I'll let you know how it turns out.

This technique is something I'm hoping to use for a party I'm planning. I have plans for an "apple party" this fall, to celebrate all things apple. I found a recipe for apple cider bread, which is not a sweet quick bread, but a savory rye/wheat bread that uses both apple cider and a sourdough starter. I'm going to experiment with this recipe, and make a sourdough starter from hard cider. That's a recipe for fun in my book! If I can make this work, I'll use this bread for sandwiches featuring pulled pork BBQ, using an apple cider BBQ sauce that I have.

Beyond that, I'm on a quest to find the perfect steak rub, at least for my palette. I've grown tired of the storebought rubs I've purchased in the past. They all have something about them that I don't like. It's all about personal taste, and I'm just on a quest to find a taste I like. I've made up rubs in the past, but never wrote down what I did, so I could never build on it. I think my blog will be a good repository of my experiments.

So here's my Steak Rub #1 (which needs tweaking, but isn't bad).

6g Hungarian Sweet Paprika
1g Smoked Spanish Paprika
2g coarsely ground black pepper
2g cumin
2g ground chipotle peppers
3g garlic powder
3g onion powder
1g freshly ground coriander seed
1g dried thyme leaves
2 tsp salt

I discovered that one gram is equal to 1/4 tsp. The gram measurement was just more easy to keep track of, since I kept the bowl on the scale the whole time.

This wasn't bad. There was too much paprika, however, and I think it would be better with Spanish paprika, which I'll try next time. I think I need to use coarse salt, too, instead of kosher. I'm not there, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a starting point. I'm going to go to Penzey's spices and think "steak" to see what jumps out at me. I think a good combination of different types of peppers would be a nice addition, as well as bringing a little more heat.

So this week is about fun in the kitchen. And I'm newly resolved to never go to bed until the kitchen is clean. That would be an amazing feat, but I'm determined!