Peach and cereal

There is more peach than cereal.

An imperfect peach that is perfectly ripe. 

I have no idea what these peaches cost. They are perfect and have been all season. Not at the regular grocery store, no, those things are already hard, already mealy, but somehow Tony's manages to keep fresh ripe peaches and tomatoes in stock all through the season. I think they have agreements with local producers. So I buy them by the dozen and I do not even look at the sales slip.

But they do get bruised up by packing them into a bag and jostling them home.

Within another day, maybe two, these bruised areas will begin to ferment, and when they do that then fermentation will add another layer of extraordinary flavor to the whole peach that already drips all over the place with its wet soppy ripeness. 

I nicked off a portion of overly ripened bruised and fermented peach and tossed it into my sourdough culture whereupon it disappeared entirely. I was reminded of Anthony Bourdain's description in Kitchen Confidential of Adam the bread maker tossing into his sourdough starter overly ripe grapes, rotting mushrooms, basically all types of compost that you would not consider for sourdough levain, but then Adam did produce the most flavorful bread that Anthony Bourdain ever tasted, and that description of Adam's work left a lasting impression on me. 

So, imperfect indeed, leads to perfection. I have a newfound respect for bruised crushed and old fruit.