Your kitchen, like mine, is crawling with wild yeasts. But before you call the exterminator, you should realize that this is not a bad thing.
If you know how to deal with them, wild yeasts can produce smashing results.
Like in wine. A pioneer in making wild yeast Chardonnays, Janet Myers, Franciscan Estate winemaker (at right), calls wild yeast "another element of terroir."
Yeast is everywhere in a winery, on the walls and ceiling, in the air and the drains, waiting anxiously for the grapes to arrive. "The winery is the mother," she says. "The grapes are ferment-ready packages."
But you can't just turn grapes over to whatever is hanging around, because wild yeasts don't work with all wines. Myers has given up using them with bolder red wines, because the subtle nuances the yeasts contribute are lost to stronger components.
Chardonnay is another matter. "In Chardonnay, those nuances come through" she says. To see what she means, try her Cuvée Sauvage Chardonnay 2010. In side by side taste tests, this wine wins out over wine fermented with commercial yeasts, she says.
There's a reason for this, aside from good wine-making. Myers explains that fermentation with wild yeast is longer and slower, a cooler process that yields better flavor by preserving more of the aromatics.
Such fermentations result in higher alcohol too. Because not all yeasts can tolerate alcohol, the fermentation may involve a succession of yeasts, each contributing different compounds. This makes a more complex wine--"more instruments in the symphony," as Myers puts it.
Myers spoke at a seminar on "The Art and Science of Wild Yeast" that focused on wine, beer and bread. The seminar took place at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
You may not be a budding winemaker, but those wild yeasts in your kitchen can help you make bread.
Jack Bezian of Bezian's Bakery (at right) says, "Juice a peach. Let it sit several days until bubbly. Add gluten (flour) and you have a sourdough mother." Measure the starter and use it as 10 to 20 % of the flour added to make bread.
Obviously, there's more involved--it took Bezian 40 years to develop his San Francisco sourdough bread.
You can find out how to proceed by talking to Bezian himself. I see him every Sunday at his bread booth at the Hollywood Farmers Market. He also goes to farmers markets in Pasadena and Santa Monica (Wednesday). All of his breads (some of them are at the top) are naturally fermented. He uses no commercial yeast.
If artisanal beer is your thing, you may have tasted the beers from Telegraph Brewing Company in Santa Barbara, whose founder and president, Brian Thompson (at right), spoke at the seminar.
Telegraph has a line of beers produced with wild yeasts. Some of the yeasts come from old barrels that Thompson gets from a neighboring winery.
Beer, Thompson says, is a more friendly environment for microorganisms, because it is lower in alcohol. That leads to "wild, untamed flavors that are fascinating to a drinker."
One of the Telegraph beers that I tasted was intensely sour, or perhaps dry is a better word (I'm not a beer person). Another tasted spicy, like ginger, at least to me.
Thompson explains: "Wild yeasts can consume more complex sugars than cultured yeasts, and so the beer finishes dryer."
Both beer and bread can tolerate more edgy flavors from the yeasts (than wine), he says. I guess that's why those I tasted seemed so intense.
Also speaking at the seminar was Susan Forsburg, professor of biological sciences at USC. Yeast is "a general term for a huge variety of organisms," she said.
And stop worrying about those inhabiting your kitchen. Forsburg, who has seen them up close, says yeasts are "beautiful."
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