Baking Today

It's a rainy Saturday and we're out of bread, so I'm making a new sourdough sandwich loaf from a friend who got it from The Kitchn today.  It's kinda cliche, right, to be making sourdough bread right now?  Though, I'm pretty late to the party.  In fairness, I've had a sourdough starter for years but only used it for a biscuit recipe that we made irregularly.  I think a sandwich loaf would be great, especially with us eating more sandwiches and toast these days.  It's kind of a cheater recipe, because it also adds commercial, but so does my biscuit recipe.

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Beginner Sourdough Sandwich Loaf

YIELDMakes 2 loaves

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 2 cups (16 ounces) ripe sourdough starter (or any amount up to 2 cups, add equivalent flour and water by weight)
• 4 to 4 1/2 cups (18 to 20 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt (or 1 scant tablespoon table salt)

1. Combine the water and the yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large mixing bowl. Give the yeast a few minutes to dissolve completely. Stir in the sourdough starter until the starter is mostly dissolved (a few stringy bits are ok).  

   Add 4 cups of the flour and the salt, and stir to make a shaggy dough. With the dough hook attachment and your mixer on low speed, knead the dough for about 8 minutes. Alternatively, turn the dough out on a lightly floured counter and knead by hand. Add flour 1 tablespoon at a time as needed if the dough becomes sticky like bubble gum, but try to avoid adding too much. The dough is finished kneading when it comes together into a smooth ball that's slightly tacky to the touch and holds a ball-shape in your hand.

   Clean out the mixing bowl, film it with a little oil, and return the dough to the bowl. Turn it a few times to coat with oil, then cover. Let the dough rise at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.Once risen, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and divide it in two. Shape each half into rough balls and let them rest for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, grease two 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 loaf pans.Shape each half into a sandwich loaf.  Transfer the loaves to the loaf pans and cover loosely. Let the loaves rise until they're starting to puff over the rim of the pan, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Alternatively, put your loaves in the refrigerator and let them rise slowly overnight. When you see the loaves just starting to reach the rim of the loaf pans, begin preheating the oven to 450°F.Slash the top of the loaves a few time with a serrated knife or baking lame, and slide them immediately into the oven. For a crispier crust, spritz the inside of the oven with water using a water spritzer before closing the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 400°F. Continue baking for another 25 to 30 minutes, until the tops of the loaves are deep golden brown and the loaves sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. (Total baking time is 35 to 40 minutes.)Shake the loaves out of the loaf pans and let them cool completely on a cooling rack. 

 

S.O.S.

Saved our starter!

After weeks, months even of being neglected in the fridge while I could neither reach it nor bake with it, my starter has been resurrected! See, I saw that NYTimes article on biscuits--with baking powder and lard, or cake flour and butter--neither of which much resembles my own sourdough biscuit recipe (which link describes the last time I had to revive the thing)--and just craved biscuits. And remembered my sad starter.

It was dark in its little crock. Dark gray-green. But it smelled clear and sour, not funky. And it was not red. Apparently, red is the starter color of death (death for the eater, that is. It's the color of harmful bacteria). Using tips from King Arthur Flour's sourdough primer, I gave my starter a big meal and a warm place to stay (very easy today). And within a few hours, it was bubbly again. YAY! I was so happy. Now it gets to stay out overnight and eat again tomorrow.

At which point, we will probably make those biscuits!

. . . And Crumpets

I'm still using my sourdough starter regularly, about every two weeks, and am looking for other things to make besides a loaf of sourdough bread. On Saturday, it was a toss up between sourdough pizza crust and crumpets. The crumpets won! And they would've have been so good with your prizewinning marmalade, Lambeth!

Maybe pizza next week . . . .

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Sourdough Crumpets

1 cup unfed starter (When I feed my refrigerated starter and save out a cup, I wait 2 hours so that the unfed cup can come back to life, so to speak)

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Mix starter with sugar, salt, and soda. Whisk thoroughly and then wait for bubbles. Whisk again right before you cook them.

Heat skillet on stove. Make crumpets like pancakes (or, use 4" crumpet ring filled with 1/4" batter). Cook over low until tops are full of holes and then flip and continue cooking.

When crumpets are cooked, pop them in the toaster to brown and crisp. This is key. Serve with butter and jam.

King Arthur Flour website

Rise and Shine

I didn't go back to sleep. Instead I migrated downstairs, wrapped in my long fleece because the cool morning air was barely 60F, and made myself a cup of tea. Drinking that and eating a piece of sunflower butter toast, I read Lonesome Dove. The Hat Creek band is just about to set out for "Montany" and Gus is sorry to be leaving his sourdough, just as it has hit its prime.

Mmmmm, sourdough. At 5:15, there is plenty of time to put out a cup of starter to warm up in time for breakfast biscuits. Which is exactly what I did. Then for two hours, I read my book until the house started to stir. In fact, it was a relatively calm and relaxing way to start the day, with a little bit of peace and solitude. I don't particularly recommend insomnia--I'm going to be suffering later on only 4 1/2 hours of sleep--but it does at times have its upside (which I believe some of the recent essays on sleeplessness in the NYTimes pointed out; I'm remembering the woman who would reminisce while baking brownies in the middle of the night. I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, either the lack of sleep or the daily biscuits, though. Not too healthy.).

The biscuits are now in the oven, getting plump and eventually golden. In a little while, we'll all gather around the table to tear apart their warm goodness and lather them with butter and honey, perhaps a new family ritual. A pretty good way to begin the day.

I guess the sourdough can start more than biscuits.

Rise Up: Restarting My Starter

So I'm reading Lonesome Dove, which is not my usual fare, being both a Western and a novel. But I'm completely entranced by McMurtry's ability to draw characters and evoke imagery so strongly and clearly.

And then he mentioned sourdough biscuits. See, one of the main characters, Augustus McCrae, likes a good breakfast and makes his own biscuits every morning. Only one morning, some cowboys miss breakfast and he refuses to "stress his starter" to make another batch. I suddenly had a hankering for biscuits--I was missing them just like the tardy wranglers. But I didn't know you could make them with sourdough so I rushed to my cookbooks, including the new one I bought at the George Ranch, which exceedingly vivid evocation of the 19th-century cattle world encouraged the reading of the Pulitzer-prizewinning novel. (I know, I know, what's with a lesbian vegetarian being interested in cowboys and cattle drives? Crazy, weird, and completely intoxicating for now. And you know, there were some women on the trail . . . Mama says, "The answer is: it's a Texas thing.")

So this morning, I needed to refresh my sourdough starter that has languished unfed in the fridge these last two weeks. And with the cup of starter I removed, I knew I would make sourdough biscuits. And Sis helped. She measured ingredients, helped knead the dough, enjoyed rolling out the dough with my new French rolling pin (which I bought at Kalustyan's and is amazingly easy to work with), determinedly cut biscuits, and then ate several with honey when they were done.

They're all gone now. We ate them after lunch, for afternoon snack, and with Mama for dessert after dinner. The sourdough gives them a nice tang, more depth than plain ol' biscuits, and, call me crazy (again), but they seemed more tender on the inside with a flakier/crisper crust than usual. I can see how a cowboy could sit in a saddle for 16 hours with a stomachful of those biscuits. I won't be doing any horseriding anytime soon (even though I loved the ranch with its three period houses from the 1830s, 1860s, and 1890s), but I'll be making biscuits again as soon as it won't stress out my rejuvenated starter!

(which, if I understand it, is no sooner than 18-24 hours after being fed. Or, oops, 12 hours. Either way, Gus was right.)

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Golden Sourdough Biscuits

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup cold butter
• 1 cup Sourdough Starter
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (I substituted dry buttermilk powder and water, adding the powder to the flour and the water to the starter)

• In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine Sourdough Starter and buttermilk; stir into crumb mixture with a fork until dough forms a ball.
• Turn onto a well-floured surface; knead 10-12 times. Roll to 1/2-in. thickness. Cut with a floured 2-1/2-in. biscuit cutter. Place 2 in. apart on a greased baking sheet.
• Bake at 425° for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan to a wire rack to cool. Yield: 1 dozen.
• Taste of Home