Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

In most years, my wife's brother Marty comes a few days before Christmas until a few days before New Years to cook. And cook. And cook. A brief look at the breads, all of which played supporting roles to Marty's main meals, will give you an indication of the week of extravagance. Part of Marty's spreadsheet for when things get prepped. Here's what happens in our kitchen (may take a while to load the video.). Our first specialty bread was fougasse to accompany Marty's frikadeller.  Frikadeller are oblong, exceptionally tender Danish meatballs and despite my best efforts I could not make a plateful of them look photogenic. Isaac is my professional fougasse shaper. As soon as fougasse comes from the oven we coat it with olive oil.  This year's olive oil was donated by Wisam.  His family pressed it on their farm in Palestine.  The oil is sumptuous, light, and tastes partly of vanilla. After the olive oil was brushed on, we sprinkled the war...

When I learned that Fazer , a Finnish Bakery, planned to be the first commercial bakery to sell insect bread to the public, I had to try it. Fortunately, Professor Beth Choate, in my department, is an insect ecologist who finishes her class every year with an insect meal.  She gave me some cricket flour. Before you lose your appetite, consider the fact that on average , every 50 grams of flour (about 1.7 ounces) contains 75 insect parts.  Makes some sense, really.  Only fields that have been sprayed to death with thick coatings of insecticides are completely free of insects when harvesters take grain.  Thus, you have always been eating insects, with the approval of the FDA, pretty much with all your food.  You just don't know it. I wanted to see if students would be able to tell the difference between cricket bread and a bread made with buckwheat flour that looked nearly the same. Two of these loaves were made with 15% cricket flour (about five tim...