Trappist Pizza

Posted by Sean on December 27, 2011

My family has a new holiday tradition that we’ve enjoyed the last couple years – Christmas pizza! This year we took some inspiration from the famous Trappist beers of Belgium and the Netherlands. Here’s a little recap from the Mother Sponge holiday baking laboratory…

Instead of a wild yeasted sourdough starter (A.K.A. the “mother sponge”), I infused the dough with some Trappist Ale Yeast from White Labs.

A lazy pizzaiolo’s best friend, the stand mixer.

Shaping the dough balls. We made three 10″ pies per the Cheeseboard Collective Works recipe… gotta make sure we had plenty of leftovers.

The dough was more dense than my usual sourdough mix… the yeast probably needed more time to get the dough to rise. Next time I’ll make a new starter with the Trappist yeast and give it plenty of time to reach full strength.

Tossing the pies! The dough may have not risen as much as I would have liked, but it made stretching and tossing the dough really easy.

Our favorite family recipe is a “New Mexican” pie, with roasted poblano chiles, corn, pine nuts, goat cheese, mozzarella, and cilantro. Nothing like 70 degree San Diego weather for a camp stove session on the front porch!

We don’t have a wood fired oven (yet!), but a pizza stone helps to finish the bottom of the pie to get a nice balance of crispy and chewy. If you were curious, that beautiful tea kettle was designed by Sori Yanagi, and you can get one at Halcyon Tea in South Park (it’s our workhorse for tea & coffee).

The Cheeseboard usually tops their pizzas with Italian parsley, but the New Mexican pizza calls for something more complimentary to roasted chiles, and cilantro delivers.

Here’s one of the pies, fresh outta the oven. Much thinner and mild than my usual tangy sourdough, but still incredibly tasty. That bottle of Chimay Grande Reserve snuck into this meal through mere coincidence as a stocking stuffer, but rounded out our Trappist inspired Christmas feast beautifully.

The finishing table, where the pies were showered with fresh chopped cilantro, avocado oil (from Bella Vado), and kosher salt.

A big thanks to White Labs for providing the yeast for this experiment! If you brew beer at home (or wine), check them out. We’ll report back when we try a few of their liquid yeasts for more baking and homebrewing adventures in 2012.

From our family to yours… we hope you’ve had a scrumptious holiday thus far. Cheers to a tasty New Year!

Photos courtesy of Stacy Kelley.

Filed in: Beer, Berkeley, Books, California, Food, Homebrew, New Mexico, Pizza, San Diego, Sourdough Comment →

Home-made charcuterie… it’s what men do (in Italy).

Posted by Sean on September 13, 2011

Last year we were fortunate enough to spend a few weeks galavanting about Tuscany. Like any foreign land, it’s best to know some locals who can show you around, and we were lucky enough to connect with some great people well before visiting Italy. They shared some incredible meals with us, and clued us into some interesting food culture that seems to be a rarity in the US – home-made charcuterie.

While there are plenty of hardcore foodies who’ll get their DIY panties in a bunch because they’ve been curing their own pancetta since they were in diapers, I think it’s safe to say that while home brewing is rampant in every corner of this country, making salami in your bathrobe is a rarity for American foodies. It’s even become difficult for chefs to operate legitimate charcuterie programs in New York City restaurants!

But in Tuscany, and almost certainly across Italia, making your own salume is what men do. It is the Italian equivalent to the home brew craze. Pretty rad, right?

Not only are they making salume, they are making some GREAT salume. Our new Tuscan friend Andrea and his buddies have access to a tiny farm that raises a handful of pigs each year specifically for artisan salume-making, so their ingredients are some of the best you can dream of. Unlike San Diego, Tuscany of course is stocked with old stone houses complete with cellars that provide an ideal environment for curing. Add some charcuterie-nerdiness and a healthy dose of patience (good pancetta takes at least a year and a half, says Andrea), and you’ve got yourself some world-class salume.

Now maybe I misunderstood the broken English of our new friends, since I’m a wee bit unlearned when it comes to the Italian language. And yes, home-charcuterie is undoubtedly more rare anywhere compared with home brewing in the US. And yeah I know that other Italian home-curers probably don’t have access to meat that good.

But either way, there are some people crafting some incredible cured meat in the traditional Italian style, making good on the promise of Slow Food in the country where that movement was born. And of course we at Mother Sponge can’t help but share tasty stories such as this, for we are unable to share Andrea’s hard-earned salume with you in the literal sliced sense.

I hope to see these kinds of food traditions grow in America, and we’d love to hear about anyone out there making salume at home.

Filed in: Charcuterie, DIY, Food, Homebrew, Italy, NYC, Salume, Tuscany Comment →

Why are there yams in my beer?

Posted by Sean on August 27, 2011

Because Patrick Rue wanted them there – that’s why.

Rue and his cohorts at The Bruery have been brewing beers with very unconventional ingredients with some great success, and getting a lot of attention for their innovation and craftsmanship. Luckily for San Diego beer dorks, Mr. Rue will be speaking today at the first ever BEER-CON, a new conference for the brewing industry and its fans taking place at the Handlery Hotel.

Mother Sponge says, you’re a home brewer or local bar-hand looking to bolster your chops, you best head down to soak up the knowledge while partaking in the “Tap Heaven” beer garden.

Check out some more cool photos of The Bruery’s Autumn Maple beer (the one with the yams).

Filed in: Beer, Booze, Events, Food, Homebrew, San Diego Comment →