by Josh Evans.
Our linden flower season is over. The heavy, abrupt summer rains spent the last couple weeks flushing every yellow blossom to the gutters, oxidised and sole-sticking.
It’s made me think of last summer, when one of our interns, Pete, was working on sourdough bread. One day during July, when the linden trees were in full bloom, he foraged some around the city to inoculate a sourdough starter. There was a bunch extra so he stuck them in the dehydrator to dry.
They grew stickier, their sweet nectar intensified. One afternoon a few days later, quite spontaneously as these things often happen, Pete took some of these dried linden flowers, blitzed them to a powder in the thermomix, and added some water. It turned into a gel.
It was quite a stable gel too. We smelled, prodded, tasted. The flavour was quite strong, compared to, say, linden flower tea.
When we came back to it the next day in the fridge, the gel was as strong as ever, holding its shape even when shaken vigourously around in its container. It’s surface had oxidised, and it smelled exactly like blueberries. Exactly.
Then, he made it again, and used it to make bread.
