Manic Autumnal Baking

Though it was in the 80s again on Saturday, I was in the mood for autumnal baking.

It might be because I was reading MFK Fisher's Alphabet for Gourmets. Despite her reputation as a French and/or California writer, one can find a Russian cast to her alphabet: although she disdainfully rejects the too-easy B is for Borscht, she does end the alphabet with Zakuski, the ubiquitous Russian appetizers. Zakuski generally serve as the beginning to a meal, and she does note that irony.

MFK Fisher may have known an "extravagant hunger,"
as her biographer has it, but she surely didn't know the
extreme thirst of a true Russian alcoholic.

What Fisher may not have known is that sometimes, if the purpose of the gathering is drinking, zakuski may be the only food available... And I'm quite certain her circle of acquaintances did not extend to the truly hard-drinking Russian -- the kind who can drink even without zakuski, merely by sniffing a piece of bread or a cucumber after taking a shot, or in a worst-case-scenario, sniffing a slightly sweaty and possibly hairy forearm...

Here amidst the soybean fields of a late rural Ohio summer, we have belatedly joined our usual summer CSA. We finally bought a share in the community shared agriculture of Patchwork Gardens in Dayton. Thus our consumption of root and other vegetables is about to increase exponentially. I am ready to make some borscht soon (and will post the recipe I use, from my idol Darra Goldstein, on the 2014 Recipe Project blog), but on Saturday with the farm box in mind I headed right for the Zs and Chocolate Zucchini Bread.

But I began first thing in the morning by making the dough for Whole Wheat French Bread from Laurel's Kitchen. That bread requires a cool rise, which is good, since our house stays cool much of the time (especially in this transitional moment when the windows are wide open during the day, and then we forget to close them overnight...). Laurel -- like MFK Fisher -- has a way with words. Here's a gem from this recipe:

The cool rise makes the splendid flavor of this bread possible; if hurried at all by warming the dough, the bread will be astonishingly uninteresting.

Nice. Could we make a generalization from here, that many things we hurry become bland and uninteresting? This bread requires a lot of patience: the first rise is 2 1/2 - 3 hours, the second two hours, and another hour for "proofing." I am perfecting this dough not just for the French country loaf, but because I use half of it for English muffins.

(At my farmer's market here in Ohio, a new bakery showed up this summer with amazing breads, including the best English muffins I've ever had. Shocked that it had never occurred to me to make my own English muffins, I rushed home to consult Laurel.)

A wonderful day of manic autumnal baking was rounded out by a shallot-tomato quiche, a salad of arugula, lettuce, and tomatoes from the farm box, and an apple pie for dessert (Ginger Gold apples with their skins on, plus a little brown sugar and some raisins). And I still had time during that key "proofing" stage of the bread to take a 25 mile bike ride and enjoy the last of the soybean fields at their best golden color.

Manic baking is good, but when combined with manic biking -- and with reading some wonderful food writers -- autumn truly tastes good.

RIP Randy Nolde

In everyone's life there is a teacher who motivated her to try harder, strive for more, reach beyond. Or in my case, a teacher who teased, goaded, poked, pried, laughed, lampooned, and somehow created an atmosphere where I was ready to work my tail off to make him proud. Randy Nolde, we will miss you. Mr. Nolde was my Russian teacher in high school. I first got to know him as a younger person -- the Russian Club Banquet was quite the event in my home town, and my grandmother used to take us regularly even before my sister enrolled in Russian language class. Every year, the high school cafeteria underwent a magical metamorphosis. Huge murals of scenes from Russia -- fantastic, colorful onion-domed churches, and young peasants reaping wheat, and Armenian maidens with long braids and colorful costumes -- hung all around the edges of the room. On the menu: chicken Kiev made by the cafeteria ladies, supplemented with cafeteria salad, but also khachapuri and piroshki made by the

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