Charcuterie & Bread Boards

After a lengthy drought, I've had a burst of motivation. An idea popped into my mind which I thought I might accomplish. In my household I'm rather infamous for jumping into projects without much research. Yesterday was one of those times. I happened to see a fb ad for some ambrosia maple and became enamored with the beautiful grain. I thought a charcuterie or bread board would be beautiful made with the wood. I dreamed I could make many with various wood species and sell them to deli style meat markets, gourmet stores, and local farmers markets. Of course I had to have some of the wood. So I talked Gary into going to get a few boards. 

While Gary was gone I learned there's more to making a stable and beautiful bread or charcuterie board from fresh wood than meets the eye. There's the drying and trying to prevent warping and checking, flattening the slabs, sanding, rounding corners, design, cutting, and making sure the surface is food safe, etc. What have a gotten myself into this time? We happen to live in an area with many resources for various species of hardwoods having fallen, succumbed to disease, or downed when clearing for home building. What better way to honor mother nature than to turn the wood into a useful item of beauty.

Do you have a favorite wood? Is it walnut, maple, popular, or oak? Maybe you love an exotic wood. Perhaps a relative had a table or china hutch of a certain species and consequently that's the wood you love. I remember when Gary and I were first married. We moved to the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California. Even though I studied plant identification for my landscape contracting career, I was unfamiliar with the Pacific madrone tree, Arbutus menziesii.

Pacific madrone is a rare broadleaf evergreen with limited habitat which has interest in every season of flowers, berries, peeling bark, shiny leaves, and an asymmetrical growth habit. I fell in love with this tree; an added benefit is the berries are edible. Folks near us would cut the trees down because they deemed them messy since they dropped their leaves in summer. Sometimes I can cry at the unthinking practices of mankind. Oh to have a charcuterie board of that wood (of course only sustainably harvested).

Today slabs of ambrosia maple and red cedar are stacked between stickers (not peel off stickers) and drying in our solarium. Tomorrow I need to get some end grain sealer, to prevent checking and cracking as the wood dries. Also I plan to use a fan to encourage even drying of the wood. We got a moisture meter and after a day in our solarium our wood is at 25 percent moisture content. Need to get down to 7-9 percent. We also painted the ends of the boards with titebond glue (there are expensive sealers but watching a couple of youtube videos informed me this glue will work. Painting the ends of the slabs prevents checking and cracking if the ends dry quicker than the center of the slab.

Wouldn't you know it, though, last night I sliced off the tip of my index finger on a sharp mandolin making ingredients for a poached mahi dish for today. I'm having a hard time typing this post with a band aide on my pointer finger (not to mention both the m and back space key were damaged by Bonkers). (update my finger seems to have healed over night). Stay tuned for more about this project. (borrowed images for this post). I need to heed my own words of 

Be Safe, Be Well