Over the weekend, I was browsing around the farmer's market. It's always an entertaining thing to do especially if it's a nice day outside. The farmer's market provides a chance to meet and speak with the providers, and see what's in season. Most farmers markets involve the local farmers and producers, usually within a certain radius, but may include small farmers from surrounding states as further defined by an acceptable radius. Some larger markets can involve dealers and resellers or farmers from a more distant areas, they just don't call themselves local.
While looking through the stalls, I finally found the stall that had gluten free baked goods. It was mid to late in the day for a farmer's market (1pm) and the market was slowing but there were still a few cookies left to buy. I bought one of the two remaining packs and spoke with the baker. It was interesting to find that along with the more common gluten free ingredients (rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch) but also used coconut flour. I've seen, and even purchased coconut flour (from Bob's Red Mill) intending to use it for my own baked goods but I just couldn't decide on an application. She had said that it creates a softer, chewier cookie since all of us bakers who have used the standard mix of rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch have tasted how grainy the cookies turn out to be due to the physical structure of pulverized rice and lack of liquid to soften it.
The cookies were delicious, so unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of them, and the person getting the other cookies said how the brownies are even better and we talked about those. I'll be certain to try those next time, but in the meantime it turns out that she got the chocolate she used in them from a local chocolate maker.
I wandered further and found the Mindo chocolate makers. What's interesting about them being local is that they purchase from a source in Ecuador and ferment their beans in Ecuador where they had purchased land after living in the US for many years. On their land, they have a resturant where they may process and sell chocolate in Equador, but the fermented beans also are shipped up to Michigan where they process (roast, ground, conched etc) all the way to finished chocolate. This also means that they sell the fermented whole beans, the roasted nibs (the inside part of the bean), chocolate liquor (the pure chocolate in liquid form after the beans have been roasted and ground, doesn't contain alcohol), and of course chocolate. This refers to unsweetened chocolate at 100%, dark chocolate at about 77% and 66%. It also refers to some chocolates that contain nuts, fruits and other ingredients. I didn't think to ask if they sold the cocoa butter.
I picked up some cocoa nibs as one of the ingredients for a gluten free stout that I'll be making soon. Only a few ingredients left to figure out.
Here's the reason why I haven't been writing about, or creating any gluten free beers lately:
The plastic jugs are ciders where I added some champagne yeast and have been letting ferment as well as the mead that I described creating last post.
Soon, I will get to the point of detailing out my measurements and dates so I can reference them better.
As for my prior beers, I had some people test out #3, 4, 5 and 6. My earlier batches. It seems that #3 was the most well received so I'll have to see if I noted down anything about the recipe to find out what it was. Ah, poor note taking procedures, how did I ever get through school?
