For the Home Baker, Time is a Friend

Norwich Sourdough

In the age of speed and instant gratification, time is an enemy. We want things now. We don't want to wait. We want results. And so, for time-pressed bakers, we have products like yeast that can speed things up.

But if you are concerned about things like the flavor of bread, the texture of the crumb, and the crunchiness of the crust, and even its color, speed is an enemy. Rushing will mean an inferior result. So many of the techniques artisan bakers use, either with sourdough, which takes successive "feedings" to grow into a loaf, or refrigeration, which dramatically slows down the activity of yeast, are meant to stretch out time so that all the crucial characteristics of a great loaf can develop.

I brought all those processes to bear in the "Norwich Sourdough" batard pictured above, with a recipe courtesy of Wild Yeast, a wonderful bread blog I've recently been following. (I especially like her yeast spotting pictures of breads around the Web). It's based on a recipe from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes.

For someone always in a rush, slowing down the baking process can be irksome. But for a home baker, the slow development of dough actually works in your favor.

How so?

Because it means you can fit baking into your own schedule, mixing the dough after dinner, putting it in the refrigerator, and then baking off the next day, when you have time.

For example, for the batard pictured above, I refreshed the sourdough late Thursday night. Then I mixed the dough with the bubbly starter early Friday morning. While I was working, the dough went through a 2-1/2 hour first rise, and then I shaped the loaves around lunch time on Friday, when I had another window of time. Since I couldn't bake in the afternoon, I put the loaves into the refrigerator to slow down (or retard) the dough.

They rested there, for about 8 hours, the sourdough doing its mojo - the flavor, crust, internal holes all developing - until late Friday night when I baked them off. (I was a bit skeptical they could be baked straight out of the refrig, as Susan at Wild Yeast suggested, but they turned out just fine -- oven spring, crunchy crust, with a hint of rye.)

I often time this process to bake on Saturday morning, but I had a compost meeting at the garden (no joke!) so I decided to bake Friday night instead. And since the loaves were made purely with sourdough, they tend to improve with a bit of aging and were scrumptious for breakfast the next day. Sourdough loaves will also last a week without going stale -- one of the qualities of working with natural yeast.

"Norwich Sourdough" is an advanced recipe, so I wouldn't steer a beginner to it. But even if you start with a recipe like Jim Lahey's fantastically popular and easy no-knead bread (which makes a decent enough loaf) you can follow my point. Mix the dough at night, then bake it off the next day, when you have time, since the no-knead dough can rise from 12-20 hours. (I'll probably write more about no-knead dough in the future, but if you do follow Mark Bittman's recipe in the Times, add 1/4-1/2 tsp more salt than he recommends. If you're starting out baking, the video is also worth a look.)

In Lahey's recipe, you don't knead. The long rise of the dough develops the gluten necessary to make the loaf. So if you're trying to fit baking into a busy schedule, time is on your side. The slow rise always wins the race.

- Samuel Fromartz

 

Department of Good Reads - Sandra Tsing Loh's Class Warfare

Instead of linking to news items for the sake of stuffing your mind with more and MORE information, I'm going to start occasional links to what I think are particularly good reads (whatever the subject). After all, I know cooks and farmers who are aspiring writers ... and many writers who are aspiring farmers and cooks.

Sandra Tsing Loh is neither, but what the heck. Last night I was lying in bed laughing out load about her piece "Class Dismissed" in The Atlantic. She's a performance artist who does NPR rants and has a book, Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! (interview here) that trusted sources (OK, my wife) tells me is hilarious. It's on my list. Here's the lede of her Atlantic piece:

Some 25 years have passed since the publication of Paul Fussell’s naughty treat, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,and I think this quarter-century mark merits the raising of either a yachting pennant, an American flag, or a wind sock with the Budweiser logo (corresponding to Fussell’s demarcations of Upper Class, Middle Class, and Prole). For readers who somehow missed this snide, martini-dry American classic, do have your assistant Tessa run out and get it immediately (Upper), or at least be sure to worriedly skim this magazine summary over a low-fat bagel (Middle), because Fussell’s bibelot-rich tropes still resonate... (read more)

Is Organic and Local "so 2008"?

By Lisa M. Hamilton

Organic and Local is so 2008—or at least that’s the case that journalist and “The End of Food” author Paul Roberts makes in Mother Jones this month. The gist of his argument: because the food system’s problems are so deep, the food movement needs to mature beyond its one-dimensional, at times robotic devotion to Organic and Local and instead adopt a broader range of solutions.

He offers the example of Fred Fleming, a noted Washington wheat farmer whose masterful no-till system has greatly reduced erosion from his land. Fleming remains outside the foodie circle because his system depends on using herbicide, but Roberts argues that he is just the sort of farmer we should be embracing.  Roberts does make an important point: agriculture faces many more issues than whether or not farmers use pesticides; to boot, all of those issues are currently being compounded by climate change.

Wes Jackson of the Land Institute recently made a related point underscoring the threat we face from soil erosion. He argues that the most damaging climate-change-related weather events we’re seeing are not hurricanes hitting the Eastern seaboard, but heavy rainfall and floods in the Midwest. In Jackson’s view, even the destruction wreaked by Katrina did not compare to the long-term loss we suffer from having millions of tons of farmland topsoil washed away in floods, as happened last March and April. I can imagine Roberts chiming in to say that if using some Roundup would hold that soil in place, the tradeoff would be worthwhile. It’s hard to disagree with that. 

But after hearing Roberts make his case live at Organicology in February, I would argue that he’s too near-sighted with his remedy. Rather than embrace farmers’ lesser-of-many-evils practices within the existing system, we need to overhaul the system itself. As it is, farmers are expected to be purely economic beings that fit into the free market alongside mortgage securities; the true solution instead lies in seeing them as the ecological caretakers we so desperately need them to be.

Think of it roughly like the National Parks: Years ago, we as a nation recognized the need for large areas of land to be taken out of the real estate market for the express purpose of maintaining them according to a different set of priorities; we saw that wild lands served the public good, and that not protecting them was to our detriment. Well, now we’ve reached the same situation with our working lands, as the constant pressure of the market system has led them to a threatened existence.

I’m not suggesting we buy up farmland and make it government property, but rather that we recognize farmers and ranchers as a kind of public servant. To begin with, replace the Farm Bill’s provisions for subsidies and incentives for commodity production with a true support system of financing, education, and farmer-centered research and market development; that could enable growers to switch their focus from bank notices to caring for their lands long-term. In time, probably most would gravitate to ecological methods such as the organic no-till farming system that Rodale has been developing for the past decade. 

Some, though, might choose herbicide-dependent no-till as the suture that would hold their land in place. In that lies the greatest challenge of supporting farmers: trusting that given the proper tools, they know and will do what’s best for the land. I believe that trust is where Roberts’ argument was leading, even if it didn’t quite reach that conclusion in the MoJo article. If so, it’s a step in the right direction.

Northern California-based writer/photographer Lisa M. Hamilton focuses on food and agriculture. Her book "Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness" (Counterpoint) comes out in May. 

What Is it about Baking Bread?

sourdough demi baguettes

I’ve been baking a lot of bread lately and I’ve begun to think about why. Of course, there’s the immediate aroma and taste of fresh bread. There’s the delight in giving bread to friends and neighbors. And then there is the work itself, tactile and supple and real at a time when we're battered by things we can't control - like the the financial implosion of the economy. At times like this, it's good to be close at home, working with water, flour, yeast and salt and feeding your family.

I’ve been baking now for about a decade, with periods where I baked little, or like now, when I bake rather constantly. Working at home, it’s not hard, since the “work” part of bread is rather minimal. For the breads I make, I mix up the dough in the afternoon or evening, and then let it rise slowly through the night, baking off the loaves the next day. This breaks up the work and lets me control the schedule -- which isn’t always the case when you’re working with a living thing.

I’ve also wondered how to explore this activity, whether it was right for ChewsWise or another blog, but decided, I’ll just write about it here, so I’m launching a new category, “bread,” to talk about this activity. After all, what can be more “sustainable” than making bread.

So I’ll start off with a few pictures, and in the future will be posting some recipes and thoughts about techniques for the home baker.

I also had the opportunity recently to visit Paris and to work at the elbow of a master baker at boulangerie Arnaud Delmontel (whose baguettes are in the bin on the left). I will be writing about this in a new magazine being launched this summer, Afar, but will expand on it here too before too long.

It’s funny, but recently I've been getting more and more requests from people to learn how to bake. In the past few months, I’ve got four people hooked and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. People are looking for something real and solid to sink their hands and teeth into. What is better than bread?

Sourdough pain de campagne with pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds

Pollan's New Project - Your Family's Food Rules

Michael Pollan pressed readers of the NYT Well blog to post their family tips on smart eating, pursuing his thread that traditional, ethnic or family wisdom has more to offer than scientists and nutritionists.

In one day he got more than 1,200 comments (though a tech glitch prevents most of them from appearing, for the moment). Here are a few:

• When (my grandmother) made her famous babka, you were never sure if it was a ‘cake’ or a ‘bread’ because she only used enough sugar to give you the illusion of it being sweet. TOO SWEET was never an option in her baked goods.
• Eat a little of everything; take your time; enjoy your food.
• “Don’t eat plastic food.” In other words, if it’s not a real ingredient, you don’t want it–this applies to faux sugars, chemical additives, fake colors, etc.
• My main food rule is “cook your own food from scratch.” This was as much a food rule growing up in my family as it was a budget rule.
• My grandmother always used to say: “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.” She always kept her slim figure and she never had to diet.
• Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, my family got a wok and made a lot of stir fries. We learned a little bit of meat goes a long way -- a rule I live by today. Another rule I try and live by though admittedly don't always succeed in following -- at least two sides of veggies with dinner; if we're eating vegetarian that night, it means at least three (including easy ones like raw carrots or hummus).
- Samuel Fromartz

Whole Foods, FTC Bury the Hatchet (finally...)

After, what, nearly two years now, the FTC and Whole Foods settled their legal battle over Whole Foods acquisition of Wild Oats.

As I wrote many times previously, I thought the heavy handed federal action was misguided because its premise -- that Whole Foods would control the natural and organic marketplace -- was flawed. They didn’t then and certainly don’t now.

So here’s what happened to the original 109 Wild Oats stores bought by Whole Foods in February 2007 for $565 million.

- 14 stores were closed and 6 were relocated.
- 35 stores were sold to Apollo Management in June 2007.

That left 54 stores, 12 of which are now for sale (plus one additional Whole Foods Market store) under the deal. If the stores don’t sell in one year, then Whole Foods gets to keep them. If they do sell, then Whole Foods ends up with 42 of the original 109 stores it bought.

In addition, the closed stores -- which total 19 if you include those shuttered by Wild Oats before the deal -- will be sold, along with Wild Oats trademarks. Presumably those shuttered stores were already on the auction block.

The FTC said:

The consent order will restore competition in 17 geographic markets that were impacted by the acquisition. In addition to requiring the transfer or divestiture of all rights to 32 stores, Whole Foods also is required to divest related Wild Oats intellectual property, including unrestricted rights to the “Wild Oats” brand, which retains significant name recognition and loyalty among consumers. These assets will allow one or more Commission-approved buyers to re-establish competition with Whole Foods in the majority of the markets in which the agency alleged the acquisition would reduce competition and harm consumers through higher prices and reduced quality and services.

But the way I see it, this battle costing untold millions came down to 12 operating Wild Oats stores  -- or 11% of the total Whole Foods acquired. Those stores created a monopoly? Go figure.

- Samuel Fromartz

How Much Water Does it Take to Make a Latte? A Lot

There's an interesting thread I blogged on over at Beyond Green about the amount of water in a latte. How much? Over 200 liters for one cup, according to WWF (via Marc Gunther's blog.)

Does this mean we should stop drinking lattes? No, but it does mean we should start thinking more intelligently about water usage. One commenter mentioned that the data requires no action. That's true on the consumer level perhaps, but awareness and knowledge breeds action upstream with producers.

Image source: Economist

White House Garden by this Summer?

Neil Hamilton, a law professor long active in the local food movement, predicts that the White House will have a vegetable garden by this summer.

"I believe that by this summer there will be a garden – another garden,a vegetable garden – on the White House lawn,” Hamilton said at a weekend legal seminar at Yale University.

If he's right, a lot of activists and foodies - from Alice Waters on down - will be quite happy. My only question is who the farmer in chief will be and whether the Obamas will upset the produce industry by going organic.

My guess: the garden will use "sustainable," low-input practices, but won't be fully organic to side-step the issue. But either way, it will be a boon for the community garden movement in this nation, showing that it ain't real hard to grow your own greens, tomatoes, peppers and okra.

So what unusual variety should the Obamas grow? My vote is for the long Asian cucumber and would suggest that Sooyow Nishiki variety sold at Kitazawa Seed Company. Sweet and prolific, one cuke can make a nice lunch salad.

Big Win for Sustainable Ag! Merrigan tapped for No. 2 Post at USDA

President Obama named Kathleen Merrigan, a Tufts professor and a central figure for more than two decades in organic and sustainable farm policy, to the No. 2 position at USDA.

This amounts to a major win for organic, sustainable and local food advocates, since Merrigan is not only well-versed in these issues but has been a tireless advocate for them. Most notably, she wrote the Organic Food Production Act -- the law that governs the entire organic food sector -- as a staffer for Vermont Sen. Leahy back in the 1980s, then worked at USDA and the Wallace Center, before moving to Tufts.  

Although she had put forth her name for an undersecretary position -- I blogged about her here -- I hadn't heard any talk that she was in the running for the No. 2 position. 

"Sustainable and organic farmers are excited ... that someone who has been associated with these issues her whole career is going to be at that level in the department," said Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

That sentiment will be echoed far and wide.

- Samuel Fromartz

Fish on the dish in a warming planet

Global warming has started to erode coral reefs, churn up more storms and drive salt water into fresh water sources - such as this threat to the Ganges in India.

Now a new study shows that while fisheries in the northern hemisphere may bear the brunt of the impact environmentally, people in the poorest countries will suffer the most hardship as fish populations decline. Worldwide, more than 2.6 billion people rely on fish for at least 20 percent of their protein intake. 

Two-thirds of the 33 most vulnerable nations are in Africa, where fish accounts for half of all protein intake in many countries. Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo were most at risk, though Russia stood out ranking third. Peru and Colombia in South America; and Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam in Asia also made the list.

Add this report to the pressures from overfishing - from the hungry demand of Asian and European nations -- and Africa may well be at the leading edge of unsustainable fisheries.

For another perspective check out this video of a lecture by researcher Daniel Pauly, a fisheries biologist who studies populations trends. 

- Samuel Fromartz

On the Mall at Obama's Inauguration

I was on the mall in D.C. yesterday, in the frigid temperatures, in the packed crowds, with a five-year-old on my shoulders getting a glimpse of a historic moment. When I asked my daughter today what she thought about the inauguration, she said: "music, music, speaking, speaking, flags wave, yeah Obama!" And that about sums up what happened. But then, I also recall the men and women crying nearby, mostly African American, the laughter when the MC said, "now you may be seated" (we had been standing for about 2 or 3 hours by then and would continue to stand); the tidal wave of cheers when Obama first appeared on the giant TV screen; the boos at Cheney and Bush; and the loud, "yes!" and "you're right!" during Obama's inaugural remarks.

So yes, it was a historic occasion, unlike anything I can recall, having lived in DC for more than a decade now, and having come down here as a child to participate in very different kinds of gatherings on the mall - the peace demonstrations during the Vietnam War. This was far bigger, far more moving, far more inviting than anything I've seen and it literally turned our town upside down.

We live 2 blocks from the Capitol dome, our street the first one outside the security perimeter, which meant that buses were chugging down our block all Monday night. I woke up at 5 a.m. and looked out the window to see streams of people already heading down to the mall. We let the kids sleep in, so didn't forge out into the crowds until about 8:30 and by then it was like Time Square in NYC, but with the gridlock of packed crowds on many blocks. It took over an hour to get to a place I jog to in 10 minutes on any other day.

The air was also festive, people smiling at each other, saying hello to total strangers. I was humbled by the fact that I just had blocks to walk while others traveled all night to get here and in some cases didn't make it onto the mall. In fact, early on, we were locked out of the mall by police barriers, until by a stroke of good luck we passed by the gates of the Smithsonian Castle garden just as they were unlocked. A stream of people passed through and filled up the spaces on the mall. We were among them, rushing to witness the moment before it passed.

Then we stood, sipping hot cider we had brought, listening to the remarks all of you have now heard, cheering and feeling the emotion rip through the crowd as Obama took his oath of office. We could only see it on the Jumbotron, but it wasn't what you saw so much as what you felt. A sense really of being humbled by so many people feeling exactly the same thing no matter where they came from, no matter who they were. Even my 81 year old mother, watching it on TV back at my house, said she had never seen anything like it -- not even when JFK was inaugurated.

On Sunday we had also stood through the entire concert at the Lincoln Memorial, watched my peers in the crowd sing along with Garth Brooks on "Bye Bye Miss American Pie" (while younger folks looked on somewhat clueless), sang along again with Pete Seeger, his grandson and Bruce Springsteen on "This Land is Your Land," (my daughter joining in, having learned the words in school). We just wanted her to remember, to say years later that she was there, making history.

And so were we.

- Samuel Fromartz

"We're Booming!" Says Local Pennsylvania Farmer

By Don Kretschmann

Recently on the way back from the mailbox to retrieve the newspaper, I was struck by the headline: "Bad Trend." It seemed like the 30th bad news headline in a row: "A Fight for Survival." "Some Shoppers Go Without." "Financial Genius on Verge of Disaster." It was the last straw. It's time someone heard some good news!

The local food business is thriving -- despite the "real economy."

Demand for locally produced food is far outstripping supply. In my 30 years farming and marketing locally, this was our best year ever. More telling is that there has been no big "bubble" but just steady growth over that entire time. And throughout this fall there was a steady drumbeat -- like never before -- from those wishing to buy our local produce next season. I hear from other farmers around the state and other regions the very same thing.

What is making it thrive are some fundamental factors. Certainly these would lead one to think the boom isn't some flash-in-the-pan phenomenon but a truly sustainable movement.

It all starts with a geometrically increasing consumer base which "gets it" -- that real food from local sources can, and does, promote health. That spending those food dollars for local foods promotes many things most of us want -- the freshest things the earth can provide for our table at a reasonable price; the comfort of knowing where our food has come from and how it was produced, i.e. transparency and trust; and beautiful agricultural landscapes in one's vicinity. Locally produced food does all these things while tasting so ... good.

Observing firsthand the connection between our physical world and our own sustenance, i.e. having farms nearby, gives citizens a sense of peace, security and well-being. The practice of agriculture models characteristics in the human spirit that are worth encouraging -- hard work, honesty, connectedness, thrift, adaptability, inventiveness, recognition of the divine, artistry in the aesthetics of place and responsibility.

Yes, we can try to teach these things to our children in our educational institutions, but immersion is always the best teaching method. Farming exerts far more influence on the quality of our lives than even mere dollars would suggest. People are rediscovering this and the fact they value it is attested by this explosion of local food sales.

Agriculture is well-known for recycling dollars many times over as they percolate through the local economy. According to a Penn State University study, farms exact less in terms of municipal services per dollar of tax collected than any other type of land use. Using Ross Perot's words, local farms don't create a "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the country, but just the reverse.

Now, I said earlier that this local food is provided at a "reasonable" price. This is not the same as food provided inexpensively.

The willingness of the consuming public to pay a fair price for food reflects a fundamental change. They see nutritious food is actually a bargain when compared with purchasing cheap food which is deleterious to health, or food which is shipped astronomical distances incurring hidden costs of environmental degradation and energy dependency.

Several factors can impede this unfolding ag revolution and opportunity. One is the loss of local, small-scale food processing facilities -- slaughterhouses and butcher shops, particularly. And the other is the loss of young people to enter the field (no pun intended) who've had the experience of growing up on farms.

The first might be addressed with revamping inspection regulations and would be an excellent place to spend some of those federal infrastructure dollars. Both impediments will be addressed as talent is drawn to the good agricultural and ag infrastructure opportunities.

Maybe that other economy could take some lessons from the simple economics of good old-fashioned horse sense.

I'm always amazed how deep the real pockets of our diversified Pennsylvania farmers are. It's not paper wealth that has been created but the durable hard capital of topsoil, woodlots, cattle, orchards, fences, barns and machinery.

It's pretty typical of these farmers not to live beyond their means, to be adverse to borrowing, to take responsibility, to see beyond rhetoric and schemes too good to be true, and rather than expecting a free lunch, they provide it. Instead of spending their grandchildren's inheritance, they build it.

The "real" economy seems to have forgotten these basic lessons.

Don Kretschmann is an organic farmer from New Sewickley Township in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. He serves on board of directors of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. This article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.