Radical baking | Ancient Egyptian Yeasts | Recipe Filter App
Radical baking | Ancient Egyptian Yeasts | Recipe Filter App
Issue No. 4
Have any cooking questions, sustainability insights or any comments on what’s in the newsletter? Send them and any other thoughts to our mailbag at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com.
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British baker Kimberley Bell buys every single ingredient from a small, local, sustainable producer, right down to the salt. Then, she bakes everything from scratch. Bell’s shop Small Food Bakery in Nottingham, England offers a radical alternative to the global industrial food system. It’s not just her extreme commitment to quality. Bell limits open hours so her employees can have a healthy schedule. She’s devised a multi-year scheme to condition her customers to choose whole wheat bread over white. She is a champion for regenerative agriculture, working with farmers to grow wheat crops that make far more sense for the planet than typical commodity varieties. She’s doing everything the right way.
I had the chance to listen to her talk last week at Maine’s Kneading Conference, a two-day bread festival hosted by Maine Grains. Bell was the keynote speaker, and she spoke as a philosopher-foodie in the vein of writer and conservationist Wendell Berry. Like the whole experience at the Kneading Conference, what she had to say felt so grounding and reminded me of just what it is I love about baking.
There is a lot of peacocking in the bread community, especially on ye olde Instagram. (If you want to read an amazing deep dive into the bro-ification of bread, I highly recommend this piece.) The Kneading Conference felt like a big F-U to every perfectly lit photo of some dude showing off the crumb structure on his loaf of white bread. Cool bro. Those are some big holes.
But big holes in your bread are not nearly as important as flavor, quality raw materials, and the pleasure of the long, slow, meditative process of baking. I felt inspired to be around people focused so intently on the real core of the craft. Folks baking not just to produce amazing bread, but to strengthen regional agriculture systems and grow a more sustainable, equitable local economy.
Tomorrow morning I’ll get up early again to get my hands in some dough for the new batch of artists here at work. My time in Maine reminded me that in so many ways, that is a pretty radical act.
love,
Jackie
Hanging out in Maine’s gorgeous Acadia National Park
Reduce, Reuse, Replace
🙅📮Reduce junk mail from the post office by opting out of unwanted mail.
Individual measures to stop climate change don’t often result in immediate benefits. Even if there’s one big benefit down the road — saving the ******* planet. But this tip from NY Times’ Climate FWD newsletter can save trees, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and defeat a longtime nemesis: unwanted mail.
Here are some ways to opt out:
OptOutPrescreen.com - Federal Trade Commission-recommended site that lets users opt out of prescreened offers of credit or insurance for up to five years.
CatalogChoice.org - Cancel specific catalogs that keep landing in your mailbox.
DMAChoice.org - Pay $2 to remove yourself from all types of direct marketing lists.
Yellowpagesoptout.com - Opt out of receiving a physical copy of the phone book.
Sign up for electronic delivery for statements from your bank, credit card, and other service providers.
There’s not many reasons to receive physical mail these days anyway. (Some rebels figured this out decades ago). And yet, the offers for “cheap” internet hooks up and pre-approved credit cards and miscellaneous catalogs never stop coming. According to Climate FWD, “last year the United States Postal Service delivered more than 77 billion pieces of marketing mail.” All those mailers add up to a lot of trees and wasted energy (due to both production and transportation). Some environmental groups have started advocating for a national ban on unsolicited mail that would be similar to the Do Not Call Registry, but it’s an uphill battle against lucrative industry.
An App for That
The best in foodie apps
Recipe Filter
A modest but magnificent fix for those overly verbose recipes where one must scroll…and scroll…and scroll to find the actual ingredients and step-by-step of how to cook the meal. Skip the life story — hey, not everyone can be as fascinating as Sunshine + Microbes — with Recipe Filter (hat-tip to Miss Micah).
Try it here (Chrome)
Fresh Links
Our favorite food reads from around the internet. Give’em a click 👇
🍖The Vegetarians Who Turned Into Butchers | New York Times
Meet these ex-vegetarians and vegans who gave up meat for the environment — and then returned to eating it for the same reasons.
Ms. Kavanaugh, 30, is one in a small but successful cadre of like-minded former vegetarians and vegans who became butchers in hopes of revolutionizing the current food system in the United States. Referring to themselves as ethical butchers, they have opened shops that offer meat from animals bred on grassland and pasture, with animal well-being, environmental conservation and less wasteful whole-animal butchery as their primary goals.
It’s a sharp contrast to the industrial-scale factory farming that produces most of the nation’s meat, and that has come under investigation and criticism for its waste, overuse of antibiotics, and inhumane, hazardous conditions for the animals. The outcry has been so strong that some meat producers say they are changing their practices. But these newer butchers contend that the industry is proceeding too slowly, with a lack of transparency that doesn’t inspire trust.
Read the full story here.
🍞The ancient Egyptian yeasts being used to bake modern bread | BBC
What happens when you wake ancient Egyptian yeast microbes from their slumber and try to bake with them? This:
Blackley notes this attempt was only for practice. He and his colleagues plan to try to “bake like [ancient] Egyptians” in the future.
Read the full story here.
🍳Meatless meat is having a moment. Will eggless eggs be next? | Vox
Eggs can be hard-boiled, scrambled, fried or served sunny-side up. They can be put in desserts or salads. But can eggs be eggless? Kelsey Piper explores whether “one of the most astonishingly versatile foods out there” can thrive as a plant-based product. That would be great for factory-farmed hens who mostly live out pitiable existences in cages.
But getting an eggless egg right means it must taste right in all the various ways that eggs can be cooked and crafted. Food scientists are finding success with mung beans. The Southeast Asia favorite has similar texture and “the scramble-ability” of eggs from chickens.
The vegan egg makers haven’t perfected their creation yet. For example, the plant-based egg company JUST recommends their product for scrambling or fried rice but not for baking. Nevertheless, an eggless egg becoming the next Impossible Burger doesn’t seem as impossible as it sounds.
Read the full story here.
RECIPE: Avocado Salad with Dried Fruit and Nuts
With the season still getting started, here’s another lovely avocado number. This recipe came from somewhere in my way-too-large cookbook collection. It’s so easy, and I’ve been making it for so long that I can’t remember nor find its exact origins. So thank you, unknown cookbook author that has inspired many delightful meals
Ingredients:
1 Avocado
A handful of dried dates
A handful of dried apricots
A handful of almonds (or any nut of your choosing)
A small bunch of parsley (or herbs of your choosing; cilantro and mint would be nice)
Half of a preserved lemon (optional, but instructions below)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
A bit of minced garlic and/or pickled onions
Salt & pepper to taste
Step-by-step
Cube the avocado into meaty chunks that will fit on a fork. Roughly chop the nuts, dried fruit, and herbs. Mince the preserved lemon.
Toss in a bowl with remaining ingredients. Taste and make sure everything is zippy and yummy!
How to Make Salt-Preserved Citrus
Ingredients:
Citrus, any kind will do
Salt, you’ll need a lot, so use something affordable like Diamond Crystal
Step-by-step
Prep the citrus by washing it, slicing off the little nubs on the ends, and cutting into the shape of your choosing. Options include: 1) Slice into quarters but not all the way through. Make sure the quarters remain attached at one end of the fruit. 2) Slice, dice or chop. 3) Keep the fruits whole for small citrus fruits like kumquats or finger limes.
Find a jar that your fist can fit inside. Add about a half inch of salt to the bottom.
Douse each citrus piece in salt (if using the semi-attached quarters method be sure to get salt all up inside of the citrus) and pack them tightly in the jar. If feeling adventurous, add whole spices to the jar during the packing process.
Smoosh each additional piece of citrus into the jar. The goal is to remove any air bubbles and replace them with a salty brine created by the juice that’s expelled through the smooshing process. If the citrus isn’t fully covered in liquid, add more salt and smoosh more.
Once at the top of the jar, add another half-inch or more of salt, seal tightly, and stick on the counter for a few weeks or a few months. The longer the better. The salt will preserve the citrus and transform the flavor and texture of the fruit. After a while, the salty-brine will thicken into a pleasing goo. If left out for more than a few weeks, open it up and press down the contents of the jar (with clean hands) every once in a while to ensure the citrus stays beneath the brine.
If the citrus isn’t completely submerged in the brine, a bit of mold might grow on the parts of the fruit exposed to oxygen. Not the end of the world. Remove those pieces and keep going. Everything underneath the brine will be A-OK.
These sour bad boys will keep in the fridge indefinitely.
The definition of a salad apparently used to be a lot more flexible back in the day.
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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 others scraps to each issue.