Posted by Deb Harkness, July 18, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Last week, Eric Asimov’s weekly column in the New York Times and corresponding blog post on The Pour extolled the greatness of one of the most underappreciated wines in the U.S.: sherry.
Not only do Americans not drink much sherry, they don’t know much about how it’s made, either. I certainly didn’t until a few months ago, when I was a guest of Bodegas Osborne in Spain and had the chance to visit their vineyards and cellars in El Puerto de Santa Maria south of Seville. After I saw the indigenous yeast at work fermenting the grape juice and the solera system of blending wines from different vintages, I realized that sherry, like a good loaf of sourdough bread, is the product of unique yeasts and the mixing of old and new to produce something that can never be replicated in any other place or at any other time.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, June 27, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Photograph by Robyn Lee
Via Jason Kottke, here's Nelson Minar's take on sourdough bread:
It's sour because in the US, particularly in San Francisco, it's hard to buy good bread. About 75% of the decent bread in my grocery store, both fresh baked and industrial, is sourdough. Consumers think sourdough is shorthand for quality. It's not. In fact, sourdough is seldom the appropriate bread for a meal. It makes lousy sandwiches, lousy breakfast, it clashes with cheese. It's good with creamy soups, and it's good plain with butter. But the premium bakeries all push sourdough, and so sourdough becomes synonymous with "good", when it's not.
So, serious eaters: What do you think of sourdough? Personally, I side with Minar.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 22, 2007 at 3:21 PM
Carl T. Griffith gave his 1847 Oregon Trail sourdough starter away for free to anyone who asked or sent a self-addressed stamped envelope; he passed away in 2000 but his friends are keeping the tradition (and the sourdough starter) alive.
If for some reason you'd like your sourdough starter younger or slightly more international, this site will sell you cultures from twelve different countries from Finland ("The wonderful and distinctive flavor and aroma it imparts are truly "indescribable".) to Egypt ("The bakery where this sourdough was found dated straight back to antiquity and was literally in the shadow of the pyramids. This culture could be the progeny of the one that made man's first bread and is similar to the one we used to recreate that first bread in Egypt for the National Geographic.").
[via Boing Boing]
Last week, Eric Asimov’s weekly column in the New York Times and corresponding blog post on The Pour extolled the greatness of one of the most underappreciated wines in the U.S.: sherry.
