Since the subject of my upcoming Kindle eBook will be natural yeasts and whole grains, I thought it appropriate to post a picture of the little guys that make it all possible. Say hello to my yeasty friends! These are yeast cells from a raisin yeast culture that I've been maintaining for over a year. I've used this culture countless times to grow a mother, convert the mother to a 'chef', turn the 'chef' into levain, and the levain into wonderful bread. In a few days I'll show you how to start your own natural yeast culture and begin your journey into the fascinating world of baking without commercial yeasts.  Have patience, my children, and the Yeast Priest will reveal his secrets!

For those of you that are science geeks, the image was made by staining yeast cells with methylene blue. The microscope is an Omano (http://www.microscope.com -- great people!), the camera is a Nikon D5100 with the Omano 'CamAdapter' kit, and I used ControlMyNikon (http://controlmynikon.com) software for image capture. The final shot was cleaned up and tweaked using Adobe's LightRoom 3.