One little mystery solved

According to the folks at Kourtaki wineries, 85% of retsina is made from a grape called Savatiano. So now I just need to track down a flavor profile and try to approximate it with the kit wines on the market. Oh, yeah, and find pine resin suitable for food use. But if wine-making isn't an adventure, then you're doing something wrong...

Another reason to diet

So I scratched soda nearly 100% from the menu--I think I've had two cans in six months, maybe even longer than that. Now corn oil and corn syrup products will be drastically cut back. (Fortunately, I wasn't looking at corn-based alternative fuels because they just aren't efficient.) Here's why: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/286357

Biologically, your senses of smell and taste are supposed to diminish as you age. But I'm instead finding that my palate is turning into a right snob. So I'm having a hard time feeling particularly virtuous about ditching the dumbed-down, hyper-hydrogenated, cloying concoctions that pass for nourishment in our franchised food wasteland. But if I arrive at the office door and my body is surprised that it's already climbed three floors of stairs, that's All Good.

Not that I expect to be down to my college weight anytime soon. Dearest and I are far too fond of wine with dinner, real butter, sour cream, red meat, etc. for me to be in much danger of that. But hacking back the calories that are as tasteless as they are useless (and, apparently, environmentally devastating) isn't the worst thing I could do for my body--or the world at large.

Another quirky quest

On Steely Dan's 1977 album--I'm old enough that they'll always be "albums" and not "CDs"--Aja are two songs that you probably never heard on the radio. One is the Homeric hat-tip "Home at Last," which includes the line "She serves the smooth retsina."

"Retsina"? Mind you, this was not the first time that the Dyspeptic Duo has sent me to the dictionary. Which, coming from the sequipedialian who sent at least two college profs. to the dictionary, is saying something.

So after about thirty seconds and two tasteless banner ads on Dictionary.com, I had my answer. Retsina, it seems, is a Greek wine flavored with pine resin. (The story is that wine was transported in amphorae sealed with pine pitch which helped to preserve the wine as well as flavor it.) The Mediterranean restaurant downtown (which has gone sadly and ironically downhill since relocating from its hole in the wall to grander surroundings) serves it. And I find that I like the astringency because it's not part of the wine itself.

So the question for this inveterate take-it-apart-to-see-how-it-works maven is: How can I approximate that with the wine kits that are currently on the market? I'm not an accomplished enough oenophile to be able to take a sip of retsina and think, "Oh, this tastes rather like a Gewurtztraminner." (And, in a way, I hope that I never become that much of a wine snob. ) In the quick search that I did, I came up with a list of Greek wine grape varieties (http://www.greekwinemakers.com/czone/varieties/redvar.shtml). So the next step in the process is more research to find a grape that will approximate one of those. (And if I can find Aleppan pine pitch, which allegedly was the original barrel-sealant, so much the better.)

Two out of three ain't bad...

... if you're Meatloaf, but two out of four just does not cut it for sourdough bread.

I've tinkered with sourdough quite a bit over the years--the starter in my refrigerator will be ten years old sometime this year, in fact. Mostly it's been an exercise in tweaking an existing recipe. But this time I tried something completely different from usual. Last night I dumped a cup and a quarter of starter into a bowl, then stirred in a random bit of sugar and about a cup of flour, and covered the bowl with two damp towels.. This morning it was a nice bubbly mass of goo, which is what I expected. So I reserved a cup of flour for the kneading-bowl, and added about half a cup or so to the goo.

The goo refused to absorb even the half-cup, so I dumped the lumpy lot into the kneading bowl and fought it until I had dough that had that familiar smooth, elastic quality. At the time I figured that the starter must've been more flour-laden than I'd thought.

I've been trying to avoid introducing any fat into the recipe because I want the tough outer crust. The dough was barely even tacky, so I just plopped the smaller-than-normal mass into a larger serving-bowl, covered it with the re-dampened dishtowel, and let it have about four hours of rising time (normal for the sourdoughs I've made).

When it was time to transfer it to the baking pan, what a mess! Somehow my barely-tacky dough had morphed into The Blob. As the size didn't justify dirtying a full cookie sheet, I just transferred it (as best I could) to a greased layer-cake pan and baked it.

The results are mixed. The crust is definitely tougher. The characteristic sourdough "tang" is excellent. But the crumb is somewhat spongy, most likely because the dough was so damp when it went into the oven. Moreover, it rose quite a bit while baking, resulting in cracking on the sides (a problem I've had with other versions of the recipe--a real hit-or-miss thing) and crazing on the bottom.

Next time I think that I will let the dough have its first rising in the kneading bowl and add more flour after the first rising. Then I will either a.) allow for a second rising before transferring to the baking sheet/pan, or b.) allow at least two hours for the final rising.

But it's supposed to be the journey, not the destination, y'know. And butter melting into still-warm bread covers a multitude of sins.