What’s cooking?

I bought a new ceramic loaf ‘tin’ – my second one with a lid. I like lids on loaf bakers a lot – they create really good crusts.
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I have an @emilehenryfrance baker I bought 3 years ago. It was a splurge as they are not cheap…but I’ve never looked back. I wanted another, as I often bake 2 loaves at once (and freeze one) and turned to @tescoma_italia where I found a reasonably-priced one.
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Here’s one of my first loaves in it – the dough hit the top of the lid! It’s created all sorts of crust magic, so I might try it again 😉
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I’ve posted a pic of the crumb and the loaf from my other tin in my story today. The recipe for the bread is in my profile.

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I have been on a quest the last six months: To find raw cacao beans that I was happy with. I want to roast, process and turn them into 100% cacao chocolate here at home.
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They needed to be:
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Single-origin, ethically-farmed.
Not the favoured Criollo variety (it has way too much caffeine for me)
In bags that aren’t 75kg!
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After a lot of virtual digging, I found these Nicaraguan beans grown close to @tropical_homestead and I’ve got myself a 3kg sack.
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They *nearly* fit all my criteria. The only bonus would be to have them come over to Europe on a sail boat @fairtransport.shipping 🙂
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I’m likely to transform my chocolate into one of the pre-Columbian drinks I’ve learnt about in the wonderful book The Secret Life of Chocolate. If you want to hear more about how to drink cacao like our ancestors did, go to the interview @farmandhearth and I did with the author @nocturnalherbalist on the @ancestralkitchenpodcast (link to the podcast is in my profile).

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Have you ever fermented sweet potato?
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Most @sandorkraut fans know about sweet potato fly, the fermented drink from Guyana, but here I’ve instead fermented cooked sweet potato.
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I started doing it when Gabriel was a baby, inspired by a recipe in the wonderful cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Here, I’ve used whey as a starter (in cubes that I’d previously frozen), but you could use any starter – if I didn’t have any whey, I’d have used kraut juice or some of my ginger bug.
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After mashing the skinned cooked potato with the whey, I covered and left it in a warm spot for a day. We then reheated it for breakfast. I topped mine with ghee, took a picture and then liberally doused it with ground linseed and soaked, dehydrated almonds.
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Here’s a reference I think only works for those who grew up in 1980s UK (but perhaps I’m wrong?) – it tastes like prawn cocktail Skips. Remember those? If not, I can try to elaborate: It’s delightfully fizzy and sweet with tomato-acid hints. Delicious!

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What an epic episode today’s podcast is. I had my notes, as usual, but @farmandhearth and I went ‘off-piste’ pretty early in the episode and it was fascinating to see where we ended up!
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I have a chequered history with comfort foods, having spent my teenage years obese. As you will hear, I used to stir white sugar into extra-creamy yogurts and eat condensed milk out of the tin.
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And I found it amazing, talking to Andrea, to realise just how far I’ve shifted. That old me is so far gone…but not without many, many years of conscious research, change and effort, really good quality food and much support from my hubby, Rob.
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Listen in to hear us talk about the difference between a comfort food and an addiction, snacking, Epicurus, instincts, and how, the deeper we delve into ancestral foods, the more real pleasure we get from food.
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You can find @ancestralkitchenpodcast on your favourite podcast app or you can stream/download it from the link in my profile.

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Have you tried black garlic?
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If you have, maybe you get why I’d have a go at fermenting it into a drink. It’s got a deep, dark, smoky, molasses-like flavour.
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This experiment is something @savage.craic enthused me into! It’s black garlic, unrefined sugar and a lot of ginger bug. I whizzed mine up with an immersion blender. Within 24 hours of leaving I could hear the tiny bubbles doing their thing.

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Crusts: Love them or hate them?
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I’m in the love camp. A fresh crust from a just-baked loaf is heaven for me but an end-of-the-loaf crust is still a treat.
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Here’s a sourdough spelt loaf with a oat porridge stirred into the dough. I claimed the crust and topped it with home-rendered lard, scrambled egg and a lot of parsley.
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If you are the bread-maker, never feel guilty for nabbing the crust 😉

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There’s been an ancient beer lull here. My grains stopped sprouting. No sprouting means no malt and no malt means no beer. Rob’s been pining for it, so I had to do something!
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Step in @molinobongiovanni who sell organic grains. I bought (from top left, clockwise) farro spelta (spelt), avena (oats), miglio (millet) and segale (rye). a little bit of each has gone in to soak, and then hopefully to sprout!
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In the meantime, I’m heading off on a beer starter culture adventure. So far, I’ve been following @sandorkraut’s Bouza recipe in #wilfermentation, which uses a sourdough starter. The sourness in the resultant beer is sometimes overpowering and I’m ready to spread my wings and try another way of inoculating my ferment that’s yeast-led, rather than bacteria-led. Will report back on how it goes!
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Luckily, Rob likes *almost* everything I create. On a good day, I think it’s because it’s generally tasty. On a not so good day, I’m sure it’s because he loves me 😉

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Still working on the sourdough non-dairy muffins!
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This latest batch – chocolate and hazelnut – went to be ‘taste-tested’ by the 12 little ones that make up my 7 year-old son’s class! Reports back were that they were great…but Mumma’s not totally satisfied by the recipe.
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I tried to make the outside less crust-like by steaming the oven. It worked well, but overall they are still a bit ‘bready’ for my liking; I want them more ‘muffiny’ – think that translates to softer.
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Next round will include fruit pulp.
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I shared the recipe in my newsletter that went out yesterday. If you want to receive it, click the link in my profile. If you do so before end of tomorrow, you should automatically get send this issue and therefore the recipe.
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You could be eating these very soon 😉

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The beginnings of a fermented gingerbread about to go down for a 2-plus month fermentation. And I couldn’t be more excited!
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I mixed this dough up alongside @elliemarkovitch (using Zoom, across an ocean!). She did hers with rye whereas here I used local spelt flour along with chestnut honey from @thecreatorscastle.
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Thanks to Annie at @kitchencounterculture for the nudge. I’d been researching long-fermented flour recipes for a while, having gone down a rabbit hole when I heard that Pain d’Epices was originally fermented for 3 months. When I saw her posting about a @sandorkraut inspired fermented gingerbread, I knew I had to get doing it.
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This dough is now on the bottom shelf of a cupboard downstairs in my apartment. Our flat is on a hill, cut into the Tuscan soil, so it tends to stay the coolest down there.
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Will I be able to resist getting it out and checking/sniffing it between now and December? Probably not. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?!
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Some pics of the process in my stories.

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