The chef has been a bit addicted to baking for the last few weeks. Rather than using store bought yeast he has been cultivating his own - the kitchen bench is filled with tupperware containers overflowing with bacterial goodness. The funny thing is that chefs traditionally name these petrie dishes - and traditionally they are either called 'the mother' or 'the bitch'. I find this terminolgy kind of interesting. I get the female metaphor - they are associated with growth - but the Madonna/Whore distinction is an interesting one. I'm not really sure if ours is the maternal kind, or the slutty kind - but we certainly have more bread than we know what to do with. No worries - the swans on the river are enjoying it.
3 comments:
Yes, an interesting thought! I wonder how the 'whore' terminology came about? Perhaps a batch of yeast that didn't work quite so well? So, how does the Chef get the natural yeasts? I do make my own bread but always use store bought yeasts, I'd be interested to hear more of the experiment...
Hi Toffeeapple...
It is quite a fun process - you need to start of with some sort of sugar - the chef used persimmon (sharon fruit) for one and raisens for the other and then you use some yoghurt to start off the fermentation, and add some water and flour. It takes about 6 days to get really frothy. You also have to feed it every day - so you have to take out some of the old mixture and add fresh water and flour to keep things going.
If you are keen I could send you the exact recipe
Cheers
Crikey, that's a lot of effort! I think I'll pass on the recipe if you don't mind; my life is spent, for the great part, in an office and all I want to do when I get home is have a snooze then read all the glorious blogs I know!
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