Tag Archives: sourdough

February 6, 2013

Drunken Sourdough

This is bread you can make when you get home from the pub, a little the better for drink. That’s what I did, and it worked out beautifully. It rises overnight, as you slumber, and it only needs a little of your input the next day when you might be feeling a little delicate and disinclined to do much of anything that involves fast movements or loud noises. It’s a no-knead bread, based on the recipe from Steamy Kitchen that I’ve tried before to great effect. The end result is full of flavour and chewy texture, and loads of little bubbles that are great for catching mini puddles of Scottish salted butter.

For this to work, you have to have a sourdough starter that’s at least mostly awake – I think it will work even if your starter isn’t active and bubbly when you begin, but I’m fairly sure it won’t work if it’s been languishing in the fridge. So, step one is to take your starter out of the fridge, if that’s where it lives, and give it a wee bite to eat – a spoonful each of flour and warm water, say – and let it sit out and warm to room temperature while you’re off gallivanting. If your starter is in frequent use and lives on the counter, you should be able to use it even if you forget to do that before you go out.

Here are the ingredients for a Drunken Sourdough loaf:

1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups wholemeal bread flour
1 1/2 cups plain bread flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup warm water

When you get home, start the dough off – all it takes is throwing your ingredients in a great big bowl, mixing them together, then covering in clingfilm and leaving in a warm place. It doesn’t have to be an airing cupboard or next to your water heater – as long as the temperature of your room is pretty average, this will work. If you live in a cold house, consider putting a radiator on low and setting the bowl next to it. In a push, you could try setting the bowl over some very hot water and wrapping it in a few tea towels, which should kick things off. The dough will be a sticky, shaggy mess, and that is OK. You might be much the same. It might also be quite dark…

Twelve hours later, which may well be around the time you’re getting out of bed, your dough will have risen up and look bubbly. If you use a glass bowl, you’ll be able to see the bubbles round the sides, which I always like. You will now tip and, if necessary, scrape the dough out onto a well floured surface and sprinkle a little flour over the top, then gently work it until it’s robust enough to form a boule without collapsing into a very big pancake when unsupported. Again, you may be feeling in a similar way yourself.

Now prepare a place for this dough to rise again. I use a colander lined with clingfilm, which I coat with a fine film of oil and then sprinkle with cornmeal. You can also use a teatowel, but this will encourage sticking no matter how much cornmeal or flour you try to sprinkle over it – I speak from experience. You can use a pot, a cake tin; anything that’s roughly the width of the utensil you will be using to bake the finished loaf. There is a nice section on choosing the right receptacle at Steamy Kitchen. Scoop that lovely round of dough into your chosen and prepared raising place. Don’t worry if it gets a bit bashed en route.

Cover it over with a layer of clingfilm and a tea towel, and leave in that warm place again. You can have a nap, or watch daytime TV, or have a soothing bath with essential oils. After two hours, your dough should be risen and plump and a bit shoogly. I will refrain from making any personal comments here.

Make sure the dough has risen up, and then get your oven heated up to a very hot 230C. Put your baking dish in the oven, too, so that it’s hot when the dough goes into it. Cover the dough again while you wait, and then when your thermostat light blinks off it’s show time. This next step is probably the hardest bit. You have to transfer the dough into the hot dish without burning your hands or dropping it on the counter or, worse, floor. This is why it’s important that it rises in something that’s roughly the same size and shape as your baking dish, the risk of spillage is minimised that way. You basically just want to tip it over in one quick motion and hope for the best. Mine got an extra foldy bit. That’s OK.

Cover the dish and bake for half an hour, then uncover and bake for another 15 – 20 minutes, until golden brown and crunchy on top, and hollow sounding when tapped. Cool it on a rack before slicing and slathering in butter.

It’s absolutely full of flavour and remarkably good with a nice bit of cheese. The crust is especially good, crisp when it comes out of the oven and chewy once it’s cooled down.

It’s toothsome. I think this is the first time I’ve used the word toothsome, I’m not sure how I feel about it. But, my feelings aside, it is. Yum.

8 comments | tags: no knead, sourdough | posted in Bread, Dairy free, Original recipes, Other people's recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

June 13, 2012

The Year of Bread Part Sixteen: No-Knead Sourdough

By Rock Salt

I bought a loaf of bread last week. AND I bought another one the week before that. The shame! The horror!

Fact is, I don’t always have the time I would like for baking. Especially on weeks where there are birthday cakes or sorry you’re leaving cakes or some other kind of cakes to be made. Most weeks seem to be like that, just recently - by the time I get in from work there aren’t enough waking hours left in the day to put together all the home made things I’d like to. One day I’ll be independently wealthy and own that beautiful cottage by the sea… One day…

Anyway, I have bought some ready made bread, and I’m trying to make my peace with it as best I can. I did find myself with a whole day free last week, though, courtesy of the Queen’s Jubilee, and I put it to what I thought was good use – I made a sourdough loaf. And ice cream. But for now let’s just look at the bread. First of all, a quick look at how Louie’s doing these days. He’s been getting on really well, living in the fridge and coming out for a snack and a heat every couple of weeks.

The night before I had my day of rest and peace, I decided I’d do a no-knead loaf. Having made one before with great results, I was keen to try a sourdough version. Remembering my mistake from the first time round – namely, not reading the recipe properly and realising at the last minute that it needed an overnight rise – I was prepared this time and began the process at about 10pm. I found a likely looking recipe for no-knead sourdough at Nourished Kitchen. At first, all you have to do is mix some ingredients together into a ‘shaggy dough’.

I followed the recipe for the most part, but added about another half a cup of water to get what I thought was a good, rough dough. I also used a mix of wholewheat and brown bread flour. I’m really stating to understand the difference between flours, when it comes to bread – a strong flour (bread flour) will make a stiff, chewy bread, while plain flour (the kind you’d use for cakes) will give you a soft, fluffy bread.

I left the dough for fourteen hours before checking back in. There was quite a difference!

The next thing you do is fold the dough over on itself, I think this is to encourage height in the final bread.

Once the dough has doubled again, you shape it and let it rise for a final time. The recipe stresses that you should shape your dough very gently to achieve the best end result. I wanted to make bread rolls so I had to handle mine a little more than was ideal, but I still tried to use minimum force and be careful with it. I sprinkled some cornmeal over the worksurface to prevent sticking, and once they were shaped I sprinkled some more over the top.

After two hours the rolls had risen and cracked across the surface – this was unexpected but quite cool.

I put them in the oven to bake for fifteen minutes, at which time they were very browned and sounded hollow when tapped.

I was initially quite disappointed when I sliced into the rolls – they were extremely dense with tiny, tight air holes, and were still a little doughy in the middle. Still, they looked edible so I made up a cheese sandwich with one and took it to work for lunch.

I was apprehensive, come lunch time, but pleasantly surprised. Basically, I’ve accidentally made rye rolls without using any rye flour. The brown flour has a much stronger taste than the wholemeal, and the overall flavour and texture was very like my first sourdough rye loaf. I will say that the strong taste does mean it’s not ideal for a daily packed lunch, unless you really love the flavour of rye bread, but it’s good to know that I can get a similar taste with cheaper brown flour as with rye.

14 comments | tags: baking, rye, sourdough | posted in Bread, Dairy free, Healthy, Other people's recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

April 16, 2012

Herman the German Friendship Cake

By Rock Salt

Herman the German Friendship Cake is cropping up here and there – he’s obviously come into fashion again! I was explaining him to people at work today, and one of the ladies says she remembers her mum making him (though he wasn’t called Herman, then) about thirty years ago! I said, wouldn’t it be nice to think that my Herman was a descendent of your mum’s? She kind of looked at me a bit funny. I think people who don’t have sourdough starters don’t really know what to make of the whole business.

Anyway, if you’re not familiar with Herman, he’s a sourdough cake that’s said to have Amish origins. When he comes to your house (assuming you know someone who wants to give you a Herman baby, or like me you’re willing to come out and ask for one to be POSTED to you…), you keep him in a big bowl at room temperature for ten days, stirring often and feeding twice with flour, milk and sugar. When the ten days are up, you use part of him to make a lovely, moist cake, and pass on three parts to other people who would like to make their own Herman. They do the same thing, passing on three parts and baking the fourth, and the people who they pass on to do the same, and so on. Yes, it’s like a chain letter, but much nicer and there’s cake involved.

I had a bit of trouble finding people who were interested in taking a Herman baby (or a Hermanite, as Fee so wonderfully phrased it when she asked for one). I think it sounds like a lot of work, which it isn’t, and I know at least one person said it sounded like mass food poisoning. I tried to explain that this is how bread and cakes were risen, before we had commercial yeast or baking powder. I think I just came across as a bit of a smart arse… But it’s true! People also seemed afraid of killing Herman, which is in fact very difficult to do unless you completely ignore the instructions that come with him – yes, he comes with a list of very clear instructions. The main one is ‘do not put me in the fridge!’, though you can freeze portions of starter for later use, if you like.

I took a photo of Herman every day, while I had him. They all look more or less the same, but you can see a bit of rise and fall and rise again in how bubbly he looks – on the last couple of days he was really active, very keen to get baking if you ask me.

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As I mentioned, I saw that my friend Miss T had a Herman in her house, and cheekily asked her on Facebook if she would send one my way from her home in West Chiltington to mine in Glasgow. I’m glad to report that Herman made it safely all that way, having been sealed up in a tub and wrapped in a padded envelope. I would like to thank Miss T for passing him on to me, and I have done my bit in the Karmic chain by posting him a little further up the road, to Fee in Perthshire.

Apart from the part where you have a house guest for ten days (Louie was glad of the company), you get to make some lovely cake at the end of it. In fact, you can proceed directly to making the cake without growing and feeding your starter, if you prefer. My instructions for Herman came with lots of different variations, and I made two of them, with a little adjustment to each. What I didn’t do was get great pictures of the cakes, so we shall have to make do with what we have.

Firstly I made a spicy triple ginger loaf, as follows:

portion of Herman the German friendship cake
150g self raising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
60g dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
60g chopped crystallised ginger
1 tsp ginger extract
150g agave syrup
1 medium egg
1 heaped tbsp sour cream
150ml milk
60g butter, softened

Simply put all of those ingredients in a big bowl and mix until combined. The batter will be very loose.

Pour into a greased and floured loaf tin and bake at 170C for 40 minutes, until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool in tin for half an hour, then carefully remove and finish cooling on rack for several hours before slicing.

The second loaf I made was double chocolate and cranberry. I definitely don’t do things by halves. This recipe was of my own devising and was very much put together on the spot. Luckily I took notes:

one portion Herman the German friendship cake starter
150g self raising flour
60g unsweetened cocoa powder
100g golden caster sugar
pinch of salt
100g white chocolate chips
60g craisins (dried cranberries)
60g butter
150ml milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Again, combine all the ingredients in a big bowl until mixed with no streaks of white. This is a more standard cake mix, the kind that drops off your spoon in big splodges when you lift it out of the bowl.

Scrape into a greased and floured loaf tin, and bake at 170C, uncovered for 35 minutes and then covered for a further 20, or until a wooden skewer comes out clean from the middle. For this cake, it’s best to cool it completely in the tin for several hours or overnight, before turning out and slicing. Don’t try to slice it while it’s still warm. I’m serious about this.

Both of these cakes were highly praised and thoroughly enjoyed – people came round to the idea of Herman more when there was moist, full of flavour cake in evidence. I was initially worried that the ginger cake would be too gingery but it wasn’t at all – in fact, it could have stood a little big more heat without being over the top. Perhaps a splash of ginger beer or wine in place of some of the milk? Quadruple ginger cake, now we’re talking. The double chocolate and cranberry cake was chocolatey without being dense or too rich, and very soft – this is why you need to wait until it cools before you slice it. I was too eager and ended up with a bit of a mess on my hands. I soon cleaned it up by eating almost every last crumb that fell by the wayside – it was a good chocolate cake.

Thus end my adventures with Herman! If you’re offered a starter yourself, don’t be afraid of taking it and looking after him for a while. You’ll be rewarded with cake and with the knowledge that you’re part of a chain that, in spirit if not in actual factual reality, unites bakers around the country and, indeed, the world. It’s a nice thought. Plus, being able to bake sourdough cake and bread will be a bankable skill come the zombie apocalypse.

28 comments | tags: Amish Friendship Cake, baking, cake, Herman the German Friendship cake, sourdough | posted in Cake, German food, Original recipes, Snacks, Vegetarian

April 7, 2012

The Year of Bread Part Twelve: Cranberry Chai Sourdough Hot Cross Buns

By Rock Salt

An extra post for Easter! Had intended to have it up earlier today, Holy Saturday, but what can you do? Time gets away from us all sometimes… These hot cross buns take a reasonable amount of forethought, being sourdough, but I’m willing to bet you can convert them to commercial yeast pretty easily, you’d just miss out on the chewiness and extra flavour that the sourdough brings to them.

I had real trouble on deciding what to call these hot cross buns. They are flavoured with spiced chai, citrus zest and cranberries. They are sourdough risen, they have brown sugar in them, and a honey glaze gives them their lovely shine. There are so many flavours that I’m not sure which ones to highlight. Cranberry Chai is all very well, but what about the citrus? Citrus Cranberry Chai Sourdough Hot Cross Buns seems too much of a mouthful. I do like the abbreviation HXB, but it’s a bit vague and futuristic. CCC HXB? No.

I stuck with the Cranberry Chai option, in the hope that it would sound interesting enough to draw people in, whereupon they could marvel at the full luxurious list of flavours in these little beauties. I started off with this sourdough hot cross bun recipe from Spice and More. I followed the method closely when it came to rising and folding the dough, but I made my own way with the flavours.

One of the key things I changed was to use orange, lemon and lime zest in the recipe – triple citrus! The smell was delicious in my kitchen, and I loved the colours, especially when they were mixed through the dough next to the big red cranberries and the speckles of tea and spices.

Here’s my recipe to make 18 buns:

250g sourdough starter
400g plain flour
100g wholemeal bread flour
100g dried cranberries or Craisins
50g brown sugar
zest of 1/2 lemon
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lime
the contents of 1 spiced chai teabag
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 egg
100ml warm water
100ml soy milk
1 tbsp honey

Interlude: here’s a recent photo of Louie. He’s going strong! He’s been living on the worktop and getting fed at least every other day. I went back to warm water because it made him bubblier and happier. He eats plain, rye and wholemeal flour with no issues. It does add up though, so I’ve put him back in the fridge to live for a while.

For the crosses:

75g plain flour
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp water
2 tbsp oil
juice of 1/2 orange

To glaze:

1 tbsp honey

It’s quite a long ingredient list, but it’s worth it – besides, how often do you make HXBs? You may as well make them extra special. I did consider calling them Extra Special Hot Cross Buns but it wasn’t enough of a hook… I mean, *everyone* thinks their baking is extra special, right? Also that sounds a bit like I might have put drugs in them, which I haven’t.

Method:

Put the sourdough starter and all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Put the remaining wet ingredients in a jug and whisk together.

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl and mix everything with a spatula to make a sticky dough.

Put the dough in a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and knead at a medium speed for 10 minutes. You can also knead by hand for fifteen to twenty minutes, making sure to keep your hands slightly wet to stop the dough from sticking. You will end up with a wet, slightly sticky but smooth and shiny dough.

Oil a large tupperware box, and place the dough in the centre, turning it over once to coat it with oil, then cover and sit in a warm place for 90 minutes.
Open the box and fold the dough. This is easier to do than to describe but I’ll do my best. The dough will have settled and expanded into a rectangle to fit the box. Sit the box with the long edge facing you, then lift the right hand edge of the dough up and over, until the edge is resting in the middle of the dough. Do the same with the left edge. The centre third of the dough will not have moved, you are just piling the rest up.
Cover again and rest for a further 9o minutes.
Fold the dough again, as above, then cover.

Dough ready for its overnight fridge adventure

Place the tupperware in the fridge overnight. This is what it should look like in the morning:

In the morning, pull off chunks of the dough and shape into balls, as equally sized as you can make them. Slightly flatten them out and place them on a baking sheet which has been lined with oiled greaseproof paper. Leave space between them to allow for rising.

Before rising

Put the baking sheets in a warm place to rise for *another* 90 minutes. This is a slow, gentle process.

After rising

In the last ten minutes of rising time, pre-heat your oven to 200C and prepare the batter for the crosses.
To make the crosses, whisk all the ingredients in a jug to form a sticky, stiff paste. Fit a piping bag with a narrow round nozzle, and scrape the paste into the bag. Pipe crosses on the buns.

Bake the HXBs for 15 minutes, then remove and place on a rack to cool. Heat the honey for glazing until it’s very runny – about 20 seconds in the microwave, and brush over the top of each bun before they cool. Your buns will magically transform into something beautifully shiny! Er… the hot cross buns, that is…

I’ve actually reserved half of the dough to try and make tiny HXBs on Monday to take into work on Tuesday, so we’ll see if the dough will survive in the fridge OK until then. I hope so, because these are a pretty special something, borne of much thought and time, and many ingredients. I’d hate to waste any of them, but it’ll be good to experiment and see if the baking can be delayed – it’s always a bonus to be able to prepare ahead of time.

Happy Easter, if you’re celebrating, and just a plain old Happy Sunday if you’re not.

20 comments | tags: baking, Easter, hot cross buns, sourdough | posted in Bread, British food, Cake, Dairy free, Original recipes, Snacks, Vegetarian

April 4, 2012

The Year of Bread Part Eleven: Dutch Crunch Sourdough Bagels

By Rock Salt

That is quite a mouthful – Dutch Crunch Sourdough Bagels. I’m combining two great bready traditions of San Francisco, right here in Glasgow, Scotland. Why? I’m not really sure, except that all the components of this bread – dutch crunch (or tiger bread), sourdough and bagels – have caught my imagination and I wanted to experiment with them. This is one of the great things about Daring Bakers, it introduces you to new things that you might never have done on your own, but are so glad that you did. Without the Daring Bakers I never would have made Louie, or heard of Dutch Crunch bread. This post has been made possible by my participation in DB, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The other enabler for this post is Susan at Wild Yeast. You’ll be familiar with Susan from me mentioning YeastSpotting, where I will be submitting these bagels – her blog is full of great bread recipes and stunning photos of loaves she’s baked. A huge source of inspiration and admiration, and the source of this 100% sourdough bagel recipe. I read over hers and then made a few adjustments of my own, mainly using a mix of white and seeded flours, plus some extra rye flour as required to get the dough to the right texture. I also made them into tiger bagels by adding the same topping from the Dutch Crunch link above.

I won’t copy out the recipe for the bagels, mainly because I can’t remember the exact adjustments I made, but I will share a couple of the tips from it. One is that to make your bagels the correct amount of chewy )(ie, enormously chewy), you have to really work the dough until it’s really firm, though still pliable and smooth on the surface. Another thing I learned from the post was a new technique for shaping bagels, one that I prefer. The first time I tried them, I spun the dough round a spoon handle to make the hole in the middle, but this time I followed Susan’s instruction and rolled a long strip of dough round my hand, then rolled against the counter to stick the ends together. Allow me to illustrate:

Why do my hands always look so weird in pictures?

They start off looking like they’re too wide, and a bit rangey. I patted them into shape a little, but not too much because I knew they were going to puff up as they rose. After rising they looked like this:

At which point I put them in the fridge overnight. In the morning, they looked like this:

…and I got on with rest of the recipe. I started by making the tiger bread topping and letting it rise for fifteen minutes and heating the oven. Then I boiled a kettle of water and set it in a big pot over a high heat. In fact I had to do two kettles to fill the pot, this is the kind of fascinating insight that I know you all come to Rock Salt for… I boiled the bagels for 30 seconds each, making sure to turn them over in the water half way through. The colour and texture changed a lot when I boiled them, as you can see here.

I then applied the tiger topping to them, straight from the jug – I just poured it round in a circle, then tried to scoop out the middle to preserve the classic bagel shape. They looked like iced doughnuts, and oh man, that would have been a HUGE disappointment for an unsuspecting doughnut seeker. I baked them for just a liiiiiiittle too long, they are darker than I’d have liked, but look how cool the crackling went this time! Really tiny crackles, with great variation in colour from the sides to the top.

I’m not sure if this is because the dough was hot from the water, or because of the residual water itself, but the effect is pretty cool, it’s just a shame about it getting a little too much love from the oven.

I sliced one open almost straight away and had a tuna melt. Tuna sandwich is my default sandwich position. I put some lettuce and tomato under the tuna and flashed under a hot grill so that the cheese would be melty but there would still be some texture from the salad – it worked!