Continued from Part One on Monday April 16.

In California we have more than our fair share of live yeast in the air. Catching it and turning it into "sourdough starter" or "natural starter" is pretty easy. All one needs to do is to feed one's starter with cold water and bread flour every week or so. The concept of the 100 years old starter, though, is negligible. But I'm not here to rain on your sourdough starter parade. Although I will mention that sourdough is just that. It was not, originally, a nice thing to say about one's bread. It meant bad. It meant that your bread had gone off.

Like trifle, sourdough was originally a mistake. Or an exaggeration of a mistake. I have heard more than one Master Bread Baker disparage sourdough bread.

Also, for the sake of clarity, sourdough bread and sourdough starter are not the same. It is possible to make bread from live yeast cultures, whether they are from wheat or grapes or some other source, and not have it "taste sour." Although the nomenclature is the same, there's an argument here for saying starter when one means just that, and sourdough starter when one means the starter to make sourdough bread.

Now, who's on first?

All this being said, I had quite a lot of fun and education whilst hanging out with the humble Dylan of Sourdough Monkey Wrangler. A student of the live yeast culture, this man has come far in his self-education of all things involving bread flour. And he's neat and clean to boot.

Is there someone in your community you want to learn from? Maybe pick up a new skill? What stops you from calling them? Do you feel like they need to be paid for their time? Do you have anything to barter?

In my profession we have open doors for barter. I can give my time to just about any chef in whose kitchen I want to learn. We call this a "trail" or a stagiere.

In March, Dylan came to one of my classes, and afterwards brought me some sourdough inspired gifts. Very lucky for me there was a generous bag of homemade English muffins. I could not have been happier!

I love English muffins.

Dylan's English muffin recipe is based on one he found at Nicole's Baking Bites. He adapts his to include favorite locally grown and milled whole wheat flour from Full Belly Farm, as well as milk instead of water.

Milk is a traditional addition to English muffins, as well as Crumpets, which are basically English muffins, but griddled on only one side. In bread, milk becomes a softener. It feeds the yeast an alternative, tastier sugar, and the butterfat relaxes the crumb for a more pliable mouth feel.

When one bakes bread, a baked good of few ingredients, one must really know what each ingredient does, can do and is doing. Yeast, obviously, helps things rise. But the more you use, the faster bread goes stale. (The same goes for baking powder.) Flour and water combine to bind bread. But inherent in most flours is gluten. Gluten is protein, in its simplest terms, and, once "activated," is the structure builder, the 2X4's of bread doughs. Without gluten, there is no barn to raise. This, as we well know in Northern California, does not mean bread cannot be made without gluten. Tall, light bread, though, cannot be made without gluten.

Sugar, even the sugar that exists in the starch of the flour, feeds the yeast. Yeast is an animal, albeit a small single-celled one. (Ask the vegans if yeast is an animal they won't eat, and you will get a myriad of answers.) It eats sugar and emits gas (carbon dioxide), creating the bubbles that will, hours later, become the holes, or the nooks & crannies, in your bread. When flour has enough protein in it, the bubbles will keep their shape as they encircle the gas.

In bread, everything after yeast, flour, and water is dessert. Fat, in any form, is a softener. I'm not talking Wonder Bread here; I'm talking a palatable mouth feel. Think matzoh compared to challah, or French bread compared to brioche. Most people would rather make bread pudding or French toast with brioche, rather than ciabatta.

Flavorings are just that.

When working with natural starters one can develop far more flavor in bread. This is a funny sentence if you've not made bread. The concept is that the longer it takes to "proof" bread, or make it rise, the better the overall end result will be. Yeast does not like to be rushed. In turn, if you give it all the atmospheric elements it loves: humidity, mild warmth, time, it gives you rewards tenfold.

Bread tastes best when all you taste is bread. It's why Tartine's bread has such a following, even though it has more restrictions than a reservation at The French Laundry.

I have never been the type of person to have and keep a natural starter around. Dylan has a worm farm in his kitchen for easy apartment composting. I guerilla compost. Dylan rides his bike, I drive. Dylan feeds his starters on a schedule, I water my plants to keep them looking pretty on my window ledge.

But in the past weeks I've done some natural starter experiments. The recipes he gave me are a 3-day process. Day one you feed the starter and keep it out on the counter. Use a larger bowl than you need and make sure it's not metal. Day two combine starter with milk and flours. Day three add rest of flour, baking soda, salt and sugar, proof and begin muffin production.

English muffin production looks like this:

Knead dough a bit. The longer you knead it, the more likely it will hold it's round shape later and rise evenly. Roll dough out, cut, lay on heavily floured (or cornmeal covered) sheet, proof in a warm-ish, moist place (Dylan puts a measuring cup of very hot water in the oven for a more controlled atmosphere), and griddle until done. "Fork" to open, toast and eat with the best butter you can get your hands on. Have you eaten Clover's new Organic butter line yet? It's the bomb. So to speak.

I wouldn't call this the simplest, most efficient way to get to English muffins, but I will say that all the steps are important and worth it in the end.

Dylan and I use King Arthur bread flour, the blue paper bag. King Arthur has been extremely helpful when it comes to answering my questions about the protein contents and wheat origins of their flours. (Northern wheat is considered "stronger" with higher protein than Southern grown wheat that is considered "softer," White Lily being the best example.) Giusto's is a local company, but I can't seem to get them on the phone to answer questions to save my life. If you long to buy flour in bulk, which is less expensive than paying for the pretty packaging, head over to Rainbow Grocery in SF or Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay.

Most "sourdough" people will share a bit of their starter with you if this is the extra hobby you've been waiting for. For all your spare time.

But even if you take the time to make a starter which you keep alive for a few months in order to make two or three batches of these glorious homemade English muffins, I can guarantee you at least one happy mouth, your own, if not a messianic following. Not to mention the immeasurable learning one acquires from understanding the basics in the relationship between flour, yeast, air and water.

There's a chance that Dylan and I will co-teach a class on this very subject. Keep up with this link for announcements.

Almost 15 years ago, at the beginning of my career, I worked at Lulu (SF). Unbeknownst to my very naive self at the time, I would never work at another restaurant that would make all its own table bread. At Verbena (NYC), under the tutelage of Diane Forley, the pastry department was responsible for a number of breads, especially on the weekends when we would produce gorgeous ficelle, brioche and any number of elegant quick breads for the toast cart.

But no other kitchen would be like Lulu. With two stacks of bread ovens, a full time bread baker (who came in at 10 pm and left near 8 am) and custom designed wooden shelves to display and sell the massive pain de campagne (looking much like Poilane's signature loaf) Lulu's bread program was serious.

So serious, an entire walk-in was devoted to the bread's starter, loaf proofing, and our overstock of dairy. A separate refrigerated room for ingredients lacking in strong scents. Except the time when I backed into whole lambs hanging, waiting for butchering. But that's another story.

Because the restaurant made so much bread, our starter was kept in a plastic rolling garbage can sized container. Massively huge. Lets call it 50 gallons for the sake of a good guess. Whoever arrived first thing in the morning was required to roll it out of the walk-in, pull a few gallons for that nights bake and feed the monster. The last duty meant we had to lean over the lip, reach into the sticky abyss, and stir the gloopy gurgling mixture with a large wooden spoon.

No matter how much we rolled up the sleeves of our chef's jackets, some of the starter would creep into our uniform. But this wasn't the worst of it. Natural starter is stickier than glue. When we were done with our duties, we held out our arms like surgeons and entered the dish room, tackling skin with hot water and the high-pressure sprayer.

Even after countless showers, little teardrops of dried starter stuck to my arm hairs, eventually rendering me as soft and hairless as a Tour De France cyclist.

One day I arrived in the kitchen earlier than anyone. I turned on ovens, flipped light switches and then noticed something very weird. The 2nd walk-in door was slightly ajar. Walk-ins come equipped with self-closing doors and, for safety, door handles on the inside as well as the outside. Doors do not stay open, as they are pressure sealed and close with the fwooop! to prove it.

I was alone in the kitchen.

I stood in front of the door. I held my breath. Listened very closely. Nothing but the whir of the fan.

Then I tried the door. Although it was ajar I had a hard time getting it more open. I tried to peer inside. Nothing. Pulling as hard as I could, the door flew open, throwing me on the ground. Recovering just in time to catch the door before it closed again, I stepped inside.

Someone had not sealed the starter's lid. Usually we closed the lid and weighted it with a few half gallons of dairy. To keep the bears out.

Starter grew out of the 50-gallon bucket. Crept down the sides. Grew across the floor like lava. Scaled the cold box walls. Spread its wings, traversing 90-degree angles, and defied gravity by covering the ceiling. Starter dripped on my head, plop. Starter was everywhere. Alive, happy, wet, sticky, growing. I looked down. Like the first man on the moon I saw my shoes disappearing into foreign goo. Starter naughtily walked out the door.

The starter was having a party.

And I would spend the next many many hours cleaning up after it.

Lesson number 1:
Never leave a starter unattended. Never assume it sleeps a deep dormant sleep in a cold box. Never question the power of wild yeast you've wrangled in, microscopically, from the air. Never forget that day. Never say pshaw to a Californian sourdough.

Part 2: Monday April 23.

My birthday is tomorrow. Depending on whose age you look at in my family I am either not yet approaching middle age or will die in about 20 years. Supposedly this means I am to look at where I've been and where I'm going.

Up until very recently much of who I was, was one thing. Pastry Chef. The title, the position I'd been working for the last fourteen years, although much of the time unbeknownst to me, towards this goal. I identified myself with the restaurant I worked for. Which is a very good thing, because the second question people ask me, after learning how to pronounce my name, is, "Oh really, where do you work?"

I worked as a pastry cook and assistant for almost 8 years when I was given my first pastry chef job. Many of the assistants I worked alongside went on to be famous pastry chefs themselves. And I watched many cooks and sous chefs become chefs of their own restaurants. From my point of view one worked themselves up in the ranks before being given or holding a chef title.

In the last few weeks I have consumed more desserts at restaurants (A16, Campton Place, Rubicon, Two, Delfina.) than I did all last year. And this week I'll be eating more. In part due to birthday dinners, but also as research for a position I'm interviewing for. The object is to find out who is making what in San Francisco. The goal is to assess the palate of the person I may work with, and for him to see what I might make or what sweet things inspire me. We are both looking at where our foggy city, one of the most food and restaurant-centric in The United States, stands on the platform of pastry chef hiring.

I have even called upon the Chowhounders to help me track down the best sugary courses within these forty-nine miles. Sadly, it's been like getting a straight answer out of a lawyer. One dessert here, another there. Some have even been so bold as to tell me about the artificially-flavored butterscotch pudding at Town Hall. (An article about real butterscotch in The Washington Post here.)

I'm not looking for all the sweets to be the same. One dessert at Chez Panisse will be like another at Zuni, Quince or Oliveto. (In fact, if you look at the lineage, these restaurants practically trade pastry chefs like baseball cards.) I want to try the homey American desserts at Salt House as well as Citizen Cake's kooky innovative concoctions or straightforward, simple, seasonal creations like those found at Delfina or Foreign Cinema.

My hope is that I will be eating a pastry chef's creations. I'm not so interested in restaurants that buy their desserts from an outside source. (Think I'm making this up? Read this short article about the disappearing restaurant pastry chefs in NYC.) I'm also a little biased against the chefs who say they're not only the savoury chef of their kitchen, but also the pastry chef. I realize this saves them a lot of money, but I'm really tired of eating warm oozy chocolate cake, creme brulee and tough crusted out-of-season fruit tarts or dishes that look like they just stepped out of the pastry and baking program at CCA.

It sounds like I'm hard to please doesn't it? I'm actually the biggest fan of delicious food you might ever meet. Give me simple, complex, hole-in-the-wall, humble, bold, a quiet ice cream cone, standard traditional fare, technically seamless, fussily plated or a cookie on the go.

Just let me taste the taste of skill, perhaps a dash of inspiration and/or innovation, a love for my craft, tiny sprinkles of deference, whiffs of hope for mastery, half cup of practice, grams upon ounces of question-asking-inquisitiveness, and, although not absolutely necessary: when I close my eyes I'd like to taste that that person's hard work over the years that they've read and worked and asked questions and eaten and tasted helped them land a job where they were taken seriously, and give them the chef title they deserved.

Might you have a favorite pastry chef whose desserts I must have on my extreme dessert-eating spree this week? Any and all suggestions taken into consideration!

Between Meals: SF Chronicle's Michael Bauer blog on desserts in the Bay Area.

In this age of Google and Wikipedia, it's easy to forget the joy of getting lost for hours deep in the stacks of a three-dimensional library. To entice you back to these important anchors of our community, here's a short list of culinary exhibits and events worth adding to your list of food adventures:

READING AMERICA: Reconstructed Books by Mary Marsh

"Snack." Mary Marsh, 2004. Coffee, ink, gouache on found book.

Head to the airy, sunny sixth floor of the San Francisco Main Library to find a wonderful exhibit of new work by artist Mary Marsh. Using comfort food as an analogy, Marsh explores the intersection of eating and reading. Discarded books and old library catalog cards (remember those?!) find new lives with bits of linen tape, layers of gouache and coffee as ink. Marsh explores issues of privacy, consumption and narrative with these evocative creations. Her artwork will be on display at the library galleries though April 5, 2007.

While you're at the top of the SF Main, visit one of my favorite local resources: the Koshland SF History Center. If you can't make it there in person, it's almost as fun browsing their amazing photo collection online. Their "Picture This" series includes a line of serious-minded, long-aproned butchers at the Stadium Market in the Sunset District (1935), a proud baker at Dianda's Bakery in the Mission (1980); and a birthday party in the Western Addition, when Japanese-American families still flourished in the neighborhood (1938).

San Francisco Main Library, 6th Floor
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
(415) 557-4400

TASTE MATTERS: The Role of Food and Drink in Jewish Culture

Detail of "Pesach" by Mary Thorman

The Magnes Museum, a stately building tucked in the foothills of Berkeley, has launched a series of cross-disciplinary presentations of gastronomic narratives in Jewish culture. These intimate gatherings are open to the public ($8 for nonmembers) and offer a valuable resource both for those attempting to understand their own heritage and those trying to learn more about the history of an important but largely invisible group. Last week's conversation with Eleanor Kaufman from UCLA highlighted Eastern European homesteaders keeping kosher under harsh conditions on the plains and utopian farming communities, such as Petaluma's chicken and egg producers, that succeeded for a brief period in the early to mid-20th century.

On May 31, Alisa Braun from UC Davis will discuss the depiction of Jewish foods in films, and on August 16, Benjamin Wurgaft from UC Berkeley will show how food writers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, shape perception and identity.

In addition to its ceremonial, decorative and modern art collections, the Magnes houses an excellent research library for scholars of Jewish history and culture.

Judah L. Magnes Museum
2911 Russell Street, Berkeley
(510) 549-6950

ALICE STATLER LIBRARY

The menu cover from a 1930s "Bohemian" restaurant near Coit Tower.

To support its stellar culinary arts and hospitality program, City College maintains a reading library of books about food, restaurants and anything remotely related to the history, culture, science, politics and business of cooking and eating. Their periodical collection alone could occupy a dedicated cook for years.

Though nearly everyone in the Statler Library is wearing chef whites, it's open to the public. You're welcome to read for hours whether you're browsing for random discoveries, honing a research topic or filling up on glossy food mags.

You can also enjoy the library's beautiful menu collections online. With their covers and inside pages lovingly scanned, the menus highlight restaurants across the nation as well as concessionaries at the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco.

Alice Statler Library
City College of San Francisco
Room 10, Statler Wing
50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco
(415) 239-3460

I heard a rumor from a farmer: we're supposed to have very warm weather all week. Is it possible our government planned an environmental change? To coincide with our new, nice and early Daylight Savings Plan? Hey I'm not being paranoid, if I were them I'd warm things up a bit too. To encourage people to actually spend that new hour outside, picnic-ing, giving the dog more exercise or just basking in a later setting sun.

I love the warm weather. It makes me think I live in sunny California; the one many of us imagined when our plane landed here from coasts with harsher climes.

I'm not fooled. It's not summer. In fact Spring hasn't even truly begun. (I know this because March 20th, the Official First Day Of Spring, is my birthday.) Sure I'll put on shorts and open all my windows. Maybe I'll even tempt our foggy fate and put away my long underwear.

But I'm not about to start buying strawberries. Or any other berries for that matter. I don't care that they're in season a few thousand miles away. The fruit that makes the most sense to me right now is citrus. I had the best time going to Berkeley Bowl last week. Walked down 8 foot displays of yellows, safety-oranges, ochres, deep red-oranges, chartreuses, lime greens and red- blushing pale yellow shoulders of shiny grapefruits. I bought little tangerines with pretty leaves and stems, crinkly skinned large pored seedy mandarins, dusty wax-less outy belly-buttoned Minneolas, and baseball sized navel oranges. I perused, tasted, peeled and nibbled.

Whether fruit appreciation is your own private secret, or you could shout your love from the mountaintops, Berkeley Bowl will not disappoint; it is a temple for fruit worshipping. A church where the fruit prayer is answered. A freshly gilded Mosque dome for paying homage to seeded creatures. An outdoor pagan meadow complete with ancient rocks for free-spirited fruit raves.

And what better way to refresh one's electrolytes and vitamin C cravings, than with these bright and dangerous fruits?

As a citrus afficionado I tend to like sweets that err on the puckery side. If I'm going to eat a Minneola, I'm looking forward to a swift "kapow!" of distinct flavor characteristic as well as a brief, but perceptible jolt, like the volume has been turned up loud for a nano second.

In kind, I offer Lemon Sherbet, a dessert bridging our new gift of warm weather and the fruit that is actually in season. If you don't have an ice cream maker, check out the Glazed Meyer Lemon Cake recipe in the Winter 2007 Edible San Francisco issue.

LEMON SHERBET

1 1/2 Cups Lemon Juice
1 1/2 Cups Whole Milk
1 1/2 Cups Organic Cream (my favorite is Clover)
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
7 each Lemons Each Zested

1. In a food processor fitted with a blade attachment, whir lemon zest and sugar until the lemon scent is powerful.
2. Whisk all ingredients together and let sit overnight in the fridge.
3. Before churning, give liquid a good whisk and pass through a fine meshed sieve.
4. Churn in ice cream maker per manufacturer's instructions.
5. If you are going to make an error in the time it takes to churn Lemon Sherbet, err on the side of being under churned. If you over churn sherbet there is no saving it, as it is not an emulsion the way creme anglaise is for ice cream.
6. Lemon Sherbet is best eaten the day it is made, but like all frozen treats, it will last for an awful long time in the freezer.
7. If it becomes frozen solid, "temper" sherbet back to a scoopable consistency by placing container in the fridge until desired texture. (It's a trick we do in restaurants so that we can make perfect hand spooned quenelles.)

Happy Citrus Celebrating!

If you don't have an ice cream maker and you don't want to bake the cake, head over to Ici where Mary Canales is making some of the best citrus ice creams, sorbets and sherbets in the Bay Area!

It's that time again: time for teaching, inspiring, educating, and eating delicious Spring and Summer produce. Who's not looking forward to rhubarb, strawberries, cherries? Besides the obvious: eating them out of hand, fresh from the farmer's market, wouldn't you love to know how to whip up some Pavlovas, Angel Food Cake, creme anglaise, pannacotta and smooth, silky pot de creme to go with those long awaited warm weather fruits?

I'm teaching two classes this month that may be able to help you with these, and many more sweet projects. By popular vote, the first class on Sunday March 11 will be on the subject of Egg Whites. Understanding what egg whites can do, as well as knowing how to get them to do it might pose a daunting task. Perhaps you've already attempted egg white based desserts? A short, but incomplete, list of confections where egg whites play a starring role: buttercream, mousse, Angel Food Cake, meringue, cupcake frosting, Pavlova, French Macarons, and sponge cake.

And, by perfect reciprocity, the second class on Sunday March 25th will be on the subject of Custards. On that day we'll learn how to use and get to know the whole egg. Achieving light, gorgeously smooth, rich custards is no easy job. But pastry chefs and Jell-O shouldn't have the corner on the market. Learn why water baths are necessary when baking custards, how to get the most out of infusing various flavors and scents, just how rapidly to whisk pastry cream, and more.

I am a student of the egg and have been studying it for almost 15 years. For a post written about my classes from the perspective of some of my previous students, check this one out on pate a choux.

My hope is that those who take my classes will go home and have the confidence and foundation knowledge to not only replicate what we made in class, but more importantly, to understand enough of the "whys" to be able to correct mistakes and experiment further. My hope is that my love and my passion for sweet things will be infectious, touching you with the bug to make beautiful desserts at home.

Future classes include, but are not limited to: more Knife Skills classes, seasonal fruit desserts, chocolate, caramel, and whatever you're in the mood for... Many of the class subjects come from past and future students' requests.

These classes will take place in North Berkeley (exact location disclosed upon registration) on Sundays from 12:30-4 PM. They are $100 per person with two spots in each class for "assistants" at 1/2 price. The format is a mixture of lecture, demonstration, hand-on, and eating the end results. Classes are small, usually no more than 12 students.

If you're interested in signing up for my March classes, or just want to learn more, head over to Eggbeater. There's both an email link for correspondence as well as the Paypal link for direct registration.

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!