Fermentation is Alive! | Okay to Bidet | Recipe: Pizza Dough
Fermentation is Alive! | Okay to Bidet | Recipe: Pizza Dough
Issue No. 19
In this week’s Sunshine + Microbes, we bid goodbye to a successful Ferment Fest 2019, bid hello to bidets, heed the call of Jane Fonda's Fire Drill Fridays, and enter the next stage of our sourdough sojourn. It’s pizza time 🍕
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I’m still feeling effervescent from last weekend’s third annual Florida Ferment Fest. Every year my co-conspirator, Sarah of St Pete Ferments, and I work hard to put on a great event. I love planning big events (truly I would be such a good socialite, if only I could bring myself to put on a bra and shave my armpits), so I always have a ball with the spreadsheets and brainstorming and fitting together of various puzzle pieces. Then 48 hours before the event, a cold dread washes over me. I wonder why I got myself into this mess and mourn what is sure to be an epic disaster. At last the fest begins and I can’t wipe the smile off my face for the duration.
It’s such a pleasure watching folks interact with fermentation, and to see this community grow in my home state. Here are some personal highlights from the weekend:
Taking the koji masterclass with ferment.works’ Kirsten Shockey, a woman I very much aspire to be like when I grow up. I’m new to koji making, and wouldn’t have felt brave enough to try my hand if not for the Shockeys’ wonderful book on the subject. I was the annoying person that asked too many questions, but it’s such a fascinating topic and Kirsten’s knowledge runs so deep.
Judging the ferment competition. So many tasty treats! Personal favorites included a bomb berry kombucha, fermented garlic honey paste (which it turns out was made by my no. 1 hero Jennifer Holmes of Hani Honey Co), a turmeric-spice sourdough, and a carrot top chimichurri from Chef Alex of Cyprus on Ocean in Stuart.
Catering a ferment-forward feast at the super dreamy Bandit Coffee Co. I made a salad with cultured buttermilk and herb dressing, a familiar green gazpacho with sourdough focaccia, mole tamales with tempeh and queso fresco, an udon bowl topped with black garlic-miso sauce and multitudinous veggies and pickles, amazake rice pudding with fermented honey and citrus, and my favorite orange and olive oil cake with pickled papaya butter and chocolate ganache.
Collapsing on the cold kitchen floor in joyful exhaustion at the end of the feast, and having a quiet moment hidden away from it all with some of the amazing women that made the event possible.
My heart is full up with gratitude for all the people that made this event possible - the teachers, vendors, brewers, volunteers, and of course the participants. Thank you a trillion times. We are already hard at work on the fourth edition of the fest, which will once again take place in St Pete — dare I say Florida’s coolest city? Until next November, happy fermenting!
love,
Jackie
Sunshine + Microbes’ Holiday Gift Guide
The end of the decade is nigh. In December, we’re launching our first annual Sunshine + Microbes Holiday Gift Guide. Jackie will share her favorite foodie books, cooking gadgets, and DIY fermentation tools. But we want to include your favorite items too.
🥄What’s the shiny, new kitchen thingamabob that you can’t imagine cooking without these days?
📚Do you have a beloved cookbook with vegetarian and vegan recipes that blow away even your most carnivorous friends?
🌲Is there an awesome eco-friendly product that we should know about?
Don’t be shy! Tell us. We’ll of course credit you for whatever we use in the guide. Send your best gift suggestions sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com.
Reduce, Reuse, Replace
🚽Feel so fresh and so clean with a bidet
Here’s a Thought Experiment that convinced me to get a bidet: You’re making a pie, and get chocolate and peanut butter all over your hands. It’s everywhere: Do you take a paper towel and just wipe your hands off? Or do you use water to wash that brown stuff off for good?
If we use water to wash our hands, why not do the same for the bum?
Then, there’s the other reasons for purchasing a bidet: They’re cheap (though high end options do exist), easy to set up, and reduce paper waste (you’ll save loads on toilet paper). Don’t worry about wasting water. Manufacturing toilet paper uses much more water than the small amount that spurts out of the bidet. Most of the world already has one. Check out these bidets to join the party.
Fresh Links
Our favorite food and environment reads from around the internet. Give’em a click👇
📽️Jane Fonda on the Climate Change, Getting Arrested and Five Decades of Activism | Teen Vogue
Thanks to Gen Z, a surge in union membership, and just the Hellworld in general, activism is on the rise in the United States after a long period of near-dormancy. In light of all this exciting agitation, here’s a Teen Vogue Q&A with one of the OG celebrity activists Jane Fonda about how she’s so inspired by all the young people out there pushing for change.
Fonda, at 81, is a star again on Netflix’s “Grace & Frankie” (with Lily Tomlin), which happens to be one of Jackie’s favorite shows. But she’s also garnering attention for her “Fire Drill Fridays” protests in the nation’s capital, which were inspired by Greta Thunberg. The Hollywood star said she tries to use her privilege to get other older white women involved in this multiracial, multigender movement by approaching them “in a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental way to understand what is really going on” with the planet and who’s behind these threats.
She doesn’t plan to slow down. For Fonda, activism in a time of planet-level anxiety, is a form of self-care.
🏔️The Latest Dreams of 88-Year-Old Adventurer Barbara Hillary | New Yorker
At age 75 — after a self-driven donation campaign — Barbara Hillary made it to the North Pole in April 2007. She was the first African-African woman to reach the pole. The experience brought her such sheer joy that she was “screaming, jumping up and down, for the first few minutes.”
Now an octogenarian, Hillary’s sense of adventure hasn’t relented. She has visited the South Pole too. Last summer she traveled to Outer Mongolia, along with a documentarian filming a story about Hillary’s life. Despite experiencing health problems on the trip, she felt the need to keep going and met with nomads whose way of life is threatened by desertification of the steppes and participated in birthday rituals with young children in the region.
The native New Yorker wants others to feel inspired to see the world too. She recently journeyed with two friends to Montana, and they had their own motto for the trip, “We call ourselves ‘By Invitation Only’—we don’t want to hear about your miserable marriage, your boyfriend. You wanna talk about polar bears and the state of the world? You’re in.”
📝What I Learned When I Lost 50 Pounds | GQ
So much of “‘wellness’ is about the process” that Rohan Nadkarni had no idea how to feel once he actually reached his own goals. His insecurities didn’t fade away with bicep curls. New anxieties began to pop up. Were people judging him for the way he ate if he ordered a pizza? Would he need to count calories for the rest of his life? Why did people need to keep asking, “what’s the number?”
Nadkhami acknowledges these anxieties are likely significantly worse for women, but adds that they are “more conscious of the issues that surround body image. I don’t think men really talk about this stuff.” Fitness advice tells people how to look a certain way instead of what to do once feeling healthier and more confident. His advice on the latter might sound familiar to any regular reader of Sunshine + Microbes:
What I wish someone had told me in August 2018 is: Be healthy, but also broaden your definition of what “health” is. Not every decision you make about food or your diet should be made in service of being thin. You should value your comfort and mental well-being just as much. Be physically healthier, for sure, but not at the cost of your sanity. These days, I’m focusing on living a certain way, as opposed to looking a certain way. I’m probably never going to have a six-pack like Hrithik Roshan, but I’m more comfortable with that reality now than I ever have been in the past. I care less about the Instagram comments (though you’re always welcome to tell me I’m handsome) and much more about trying every bubble tea in Southern California. I want to be able to play with my kids one day, or go for a long walk, or not worry about serious medical concerns. Those are great, tangible benefits of making a lifestyle change. What I regret is trying so hard to look a certain way that I never really considered whether I was taking care of myself along the way.
Sourdough Pan Pizza
How is your sourdough starter doing? If it’s aerated and happy, get ready for some pizza bliss. This recipe can also be used for focaccia and even bread dough in a pinch. (Stay tuned next week for tomato sauce and pesto.)
Ingredients and tools
500 g flour (I use 100 g whole wheat flour and 400 g white bread flour, but feel free to play)
10 g salt
350 g lukewarm water (around 90 °F, depending on factors like the weather and flour temp)
75 g active sourdough starter
1/4 c extra-virgin olive oil
Step-by-step
Add all ingredients together and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Squish the dough between your hands and fold it over onto itself until there are no more bits of flour. Place in an airtight container that’s large enough for the dough to roughly double in size. Place in fridge for 24-72 hours.
Two to three hours before baking pizza, remove dough from fridge. Line a rimmed baking sheet* with parchment and cover with a generous amount of olive oil. Fold the sides of the dough onto itself so it forms a little package, and place, smooth side up, on baking sheet. Coat dough with a bit more olive oil Every hour or so, gently and evenly press down the dough with your fingers until it fills the pan.
Note: Got a pizza stone? Skip the pan and make a lovely crisp crust. YouTube has a million pizza shaping tutorials.
Add toppings and bake in a screaming hot oven for 25 minutes.
*For a thin crust pizza, I recommend using roughly 600 g of pizza dough on a half pan baking sheet. For smaller pans, use less dough.
The meeting won’t begin until someone brings the pita.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue