Doin' Dough the Hard Way... + Recipe: Blistered Shishito Salsa
Doin' Dough the Hard Way... + Recipe: Blistered Shishito Salsa
Issue No. 86
This week, Jackie does things the hard way, Matt gushes over his annual fat bear obsession, and Georgia peaches ask the existential question on all of our minds: Can I continue to function in a changing world?
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I had a particularly harrowing bake day in July. I woke up bleary-eyed at 7 a.m. (I have the internal clock of a teenager). I got a splinter in my palm while loading the oven with wood. When I went to brush out the ashes a few hours later, the sun was so strong I could barely see straight and the heat was making me woozy. By the time the breads were ready to go in the oven, the weather had turned and it was absolutely pissing down rain. I was worried about slipping carrying the tray of breads down the slick back steps, and made Matt stop his work to come help me. The loaves still got soaked, and getting them off the peel and into the oven in one piece was extremely frustrating. I thought to myself, “this is absolutely not worth it.”
Learning to use my outdoor oven has been an adventure. How do I keep the steam in? How do I not burn myself when plugging up the chimney? How do I not get ash on the bottom of each loaf and concrete dust on top of them? With time I’ve figured out solutions to many of the oven's quirks, but occasionally I’ve had to accept that there simply is no solution to a particular problem. No matter how much wood I burn and how long I soak the oven floor in hot embers, I can’t get the thing to an appropriate bread-baking temperature for long enough to bake more than two successive batches of bread.
Still, I’ve been able to find a creative ways around even the biggest of stumbling blocks, and after months of trial and error, the breads are, imho, totally rockin’.
When my little electric deck ovens finally arrive in December, I know I’ll be grateful for a fit-to-purpose environment to bake my breads. My new ovens will preheat in a mere 20 minutes, no building of raging fires needed. And if it’s 100 degrees out or there’s a thunderstorm happening? No big deal.
But I also know without a doubt that I’ll miss baking in my outdoor oven. I helped build the darn thing (thank you Brett!!), and I successfully R&D’d my way to producing top notch bread (not to mention divine pizzas) in it. And all of the time and work — tending hours-long fires and the many burns on my arms and Cinderella soot marks on my face and the physical act of sweeping out the ashes — I’ll miss that too. Just flipping a switch and turning the temperature dial could never compare to the sense of accomplishment I feel after each bake in the wood oven. Rainstorms be damned.
I feel similarly about hand-mixing my dough. This Tuesday I mixed about 100 pounds of dough on my own. That is a ton of dough to mix by hand! I know a big commercial mixer would make my job a lot easier, keeping the early-onset carpal tunnel at bay, and honestly, probably produce better bread. But the feeling of having my hands in the dough — of putting my body so intimately into the work, is such a special part of the process for me.
Don’t worry. This is not the part where I tell you to eschew all modern convenience for some fairytale about how things were better before when we all had to do back breaking labor to feed ourselves without the assistance of electricity or the internet or refrigeration. Doing something the hard way or the long way can be frustrating. But sometimes I’m reminded it’s really satisfying. And I think too often we forget that there can and should be pleasure in our labor, particularly when the end result is feeding yourself something wonderful.
love,
jackie
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🐻 Why We Need Fat Bear Week | Gizmodo
Each year certain circles of the Internet erupt for Fat Bear Week — where brown bears at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve finish plumping up for hibernation from October to March. The chunkiest bears not only have the best odds to survive the winter, but also have the best shot to win the National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week contest.
Fat bear fanatics, who watch the event on live nature cams via explore.org, feel inner peace watching the bears pratfall down slippery rocks, share salmon with their cubs, and go for swims. After 18 months of pandemic life, the bears provide an escape from covid-19-related responsibilities and frustrations. A public school teacher in St. Louis, Mo. found a link to the nature cams after another teacher placed a link in a chatroom designed for sharing calming recommendations. That teacher noted “This must be what people who care about sports feel like when their team is advancing toward a championship.”
Fat bear buffs enjoy this way of connecting with the natural world without facing the ecological despair that often accompanies today’s news about the climate and environment. And everyone gets to pick their favorite bear to root for:
When I’m watching the bears, I find myself going to a tranquil place. It’s incredibly beautiful and peaceful,” one woman, Secret Meier, said via Facebook Messenger. “I laugh watching Otis, who’s much older, as he sits in what I call, affectionately, his office. He waits for the salmon to jump near his face and he actually falls asleep in the water when he’s not eating. His antics make me laugh out loud. I call Otis ‘my main man.’ He’s definitely a favorite.
This year’s Fat Bear Week wrapped up Tuesday. Elder bear Otis won for the fourth time, undergoing an incredible transformation, even while he’s nearly toothless. All hail King Otis!
🍑 Can the iconic Georgia peach keep growing in a warming South? | National Geographic
From “I voted” stickers to state fair pageants to license plates, the Georgia peach stars in all types of publicity for the state. Peach farmers and peach lovers alike fear what a changing climate could do to their beloved fruit, and it’s motivating agricultural researchers to find a solution.
A peach’s growth depends on a factor known as “chill hours,” which help build sweetness in the fruit. In fact, the “average Georgia peach needs anywhere from 650 to 850 hours of cold weather in a season.” The available number of chill hours available each year are diminishing. Central Georgia used to see on average 1,100 chill hours per year from 1980 to 2010. In 2016, just 600 chill hours were available to soothe those peach trees. Spring frosts, disease, and drought also threaten the peach.
While the South has not been hit as badly by warming temperatures as the west coast, temperatures during the Georgia winter have increased by 5 degrees since 1960. Experts fear the Georgia peach could face an existential crisis in a couple decades without breeding a more climate-resilient peach. A new peach variety could take seven years to come to market...if you’re lucky. Which means scientists are up against the clock to save the peach and all it represents for Georgians. Because nobody wants to see the end of the World’s Largest Peach Cobbler tradition.
🍿The Most Unholy Snacks People Invented While Working From Home for a Year | Slate
Those of us lucky enough to work remotely have spent the last year inside the home — in sweatpants, without shoes, without bras, etc. At times, we’ve also allowed ourselves to get lazy and a little crazy in the kitchen too. Why not? Nobody is watching.
Writer Julia Craven crowdsourced on Twitter the strangest pandemic snack inventions. I agree with Julia that the idea ofdunking Hot Cheetos into spinach dip sounds like the experiment most worth trying. I’d try chili crisp and Wheat Thins too. I’ll pass on the dill pickles and peanut butter. Variations on nachos seemed to be the most popular grub to trial:
Perhaps it’s the simplicity of the dish that allows for multiple iterations and bizarre combinations. One tweeter sang the praises of nachos that subbed pork rinds for chips and another claimed that they put peaches on their nachos. (I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I believe that!) Outside of the nacho space, people are dipping Dots candy in Nutella, adding cheese to a PB&J, and combining Fritos with cream cheese and caramel sauce.
Still feeling hungry for something real weird? Here are a few other ghoulish #pandemiclife treats:
Blistered Shishito Salsa
I love a satisfying roasted veggie salsa. Here’s an adaptable recipe starring a deservedly trendy vegetable — the shishito pepper, which my friend Mike happens to be growing in abundance right now over at Colab Farms. Feel free to replace shishitos with poblanos or bell peppers (remove seeds), cherry or roma tomatoes, tomatillos, or mix them all up! But all the cool kids are into blistered shishitos these days.
Ingredients
4 cups shishito peppers, stems removed
1 red onion, skin removed and cut in half
2-10 garlic cloves, peeled (make it as garlicky as you please!)
1/2 cup cilantro, roughly chopped including stems
juice of 1-2 limes
apple cider or other light vinegar
olive oil
salt
optional: 2-3 jalapeños or other fresh hot peppers, seeds removed (the shishitos are plenty hot for me, but you do you)
Step-by-Step
Preheat oven to 425 °F.
In a roasting pan, add shishitos and fresh hot peppers (if using), onion halves, and garlic cloves. Coat veggies with several generous glugs of olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Use your hands to massage and toss to make sure the veggies are fully coated in oil. Make sure onion halves are cut side down on the pan.
Roast for 15-25 minutes, until softened and shishitos are beginning to blister. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a bit (you don’t want them to melt your blender!).
Place roasted veggies in blender along with cilantro, lime juice, a glug of vinegar, and salt. Pulse to combine until it has reached a consistency that you like. I like mine on the smoother side of chunky, but by no means fully blended. Taste and adjust by adding more salt or vinegar if necessary.
Looking for a salsa sampler? How about something fermented?
Finally, the greatest invention of our time.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is a cook and kitchen educator based in Stuart, Fla. She runs Otto’s Bread Club and is co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a communications strategist at the ACLU of Texas. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.