One link: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/no-knead-sourdough-bread-recipe
My friend O. sent me this; his wife H., a fabulous cook, found this recipe after untold search and work (long before this crisis). They make a loaf every two days and have done for years. I made my first loaf in 30 years, and it was near-perfect. My second loaf was a little less "risen" and I'm making my third right now. If it keeps on like this, the "emergency sliced bread" in the freezer will never get thawed-out.
I forgot to add that my first loaf was a full recipe; since then I've been making half-recipes, b/c geez, lotta bread. Also, been adding 1.5x the starter.
We have yet to make bread because cake is better.
Who are you going to trust? Farting bacteria or good old chemical bubbles?
heebie!!! don't throw out any starter! starter trash is precious delicious stuff!!! in middle of work crap, will be back later with the deets, but yikes *don't throw out the starter*
Are you just supposed to let it double every day? Haven't we had enough real life lessons on exponential growth for one year?
I've actually been nibbling at it. I don't know if that's bad to admit but dq's force is making me bold.
AWB has talked about making crumpets with starter discards, at FB. I can't do sourdough because I can't eat fast enough, but if your household could absorb crumpets, or other pancaky things, it's an option.
Those look pretty easy, and yes, we have bottomless appetites.
I don't have english muffin rings but surely otherwise it's just going to be broad and floppy but still taste fine?
I heard you can use empty tuna cans if you can cut the bottom off the new style of can.
Then do I throw out half the tuna?
I've made them without rings, and they held their shape fine. (On googling, I guess those were English muffins, which have a slightly stiffer dough.)
You mix the tuna with mayo and spread it on bread.
I'm trying ciabatta. I just started the sponge. Haven't gotten into sourdough because I don't want to deal with the maintenance.
right, back for the moment. there are a ton of different things you can do with starter discard aka trash *but* the most delicious and conveniently the easiest is:
- save it up in a jar in the fridge until you have about 2 cups/500 ml
- mix it up in bowl with something like 2 TB-1/4 cup/30-60 ml tasty liquid fat (olive or sunflower or some other delicious oil, or liquid room temp butter or ghee)
- add a bit of salt, not too much as you are going to add more later
- put in some aromatics that you think will be delicious with the flours in your starter and fat you've chosen
- also add if you like some seeds or chopped/ground nuts
- have a can of delicious fried shallots? toss 'em in
mix it all up and then spread it on a silicone baking sheet (easy, and you can use a silicone brush) or parchment paper (harder but still not that tough), sprinkle with some more salt and pop into a 275-300F/135-150C oven and dry out for truly banging crackers.
the absolute best i've made, that i keep on coming back to and will mix up extra starter in order to leave it out for a extra days so that it gets extra delicious is -
- sunflower oil (we get it from susequehana mills and it is wonderful, favorite non-olive oil non-ghee cooking and salad oil)
- a good amount of nigella seeks, like a nice closed handful
- a rather small amount of ajwain seeds
- a good 60-100ml measure of green pumpkin seeds, raw
these are basically impossible to stop eating. so so so so so so good.
i feed the starter in the morning when i am making my tea, it's a nice way to have something low key to do while the kettle is boiling. basically the starter and various houseplants are providing occupational therapy. i need things to spy on/tweak/tend in order not to go bonkers, desperately need it at the moment because deprived of the pool sob sob sob. am going to research wet suits this weekend so i can swim at aquatic park, i just can't take this anymore. make way, seals! here i come!
Hey, I made sourdough, too. My starter went insane so now it lives in the fridge. I feel like I should be a more careful and precise baker, but basically: 20 oz flour, 12 oz water, 2 oz starter, ~T of salt. Mix it all up (add flour as needed so it's not too sticky but err on the side of sticky) and knead it, and let it rise... well, anywhere from 12-18 hours seems to work. Then reknead shape, and let it rise in a Dutch oven with parchment paper on the bottom until... I have no idea, honestly. 2 hours? 4 hours? Enough. Anyhow 450 covered for 20 minutes, 425 for another forty. You can leave it in the fridge between the rising steps if you're not ready to bake it.
ORRR. Divide it in half. Roll out half into a long rectangle that's about six inches wide. Cream about a stick of bbutter and cinnamon sugar and spread it on the dough. Roll it up from the long edge. Chill it, and then slice it in to rounds. Put in a buttered pie tin sliced side up, cover with a wet towel, and let it rise in the off oven overnight. Next morning, 30 minutes at 350 for some really kickass cinnamon rolls.
i follow a absurd but entirely enjoyable to me multi step first-build-your-levain process, more occupational therapy!, but honestly just make the bread that makes you happy. i've mentioned here before, but if you are interested in really good information re: sourdough, @themuffkitchen on instagram (annoying format, alas) is really excellent. i've been happily mucking around with sourdough for decades now, and she is truly great at explaining. see here for ex: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-u1LxmhJA5/
My brother swears by sourdough pancakes. Dunno if he uses the recipe at the king arthur flour site or what. Eve has made them a few times, and they are quite good.
Sourdough pancakes are so much better, and a convenient way to revive old starter.
Heebie, now that your starter has started (it sounds like it's doing great), you don't have to go to tremendous lengths for it. I've had mine for more than a decade and have been making tasty loaves the whole time.
Throw it in the fridge. The night before you're going to use it, take it out and feed it so it'll double (and cover it with a towel over a wooden spoon across the top of the bowl). The next morning, put half back in the fridge and bake with the the remaining half.
Starter is nowhere near as precious as the recipes online claim. Let it live in the fridge and make something with it at least once a week and you're great. I've gone as long as a month (between travel and distractions), and while the discolored wastes on top were a deeper pool, it was fine when I poured that off and gave it the remainder flour and water, then split it. Similarly, I use tap water -- nothing special is required unless your district is heavily chlorinating.
The three days and endless folding is... fine, if that's what they do. It's way more than I do -- before breakfast I return half of the starter to the fridge. I stir in the flour and salt into the the half I'm baking with. 2-3 hours later, it's about doubled, so flop it on the counter and knead it for 5-10 minutes, and cover it with a towel. About 2 hours later, put a pizza stone in the over & turn it to 400. Reshape the dough & cover with a cloth. In 15-20 minutes, when the oven chirps that it's hit 400, score the top of the loaf and put it in the oven (turned down to 375) for 50 minutes. Take it out, somehow resist cutting it for 5-10 minutes, then cut and serve warm slices. Butter optional; apple butter is a great treat.
The bread progresses from fed starter around 7:30 am to a loaf ready to eat by 2 pm or so. The only complicating factor is remembering to feed it on the countertop the night before... but in a pinch, I've fed my cold starter and split it a half-hour later then proceeded. It was less sour, but still rose like a normal loaf of bread.
*On kneading... one of the british baking shows kept showing people rolling their bread around on the counter, passing it from hand to hand. For this bread, that's plenty good kneading -- you don't have to do the heavy palm presses or any of the intense stretching that I learned, just roll it around.
Starter sounds like way too much responsibility.
Can I combine the starter made in @22 with the recipe in @1 ? If that's the case then that's all that's left to figure out is the exponential runway to the initial doubling so I don't end up with a sorcerers apprentice situation.
The method I'm following only takes about 24 hours, all in. About 2 hours is active and more than half of it is letting the dough rest in the fridge.
I have not yet found a discard recipe I love. I'm trying olive oil crackers right now.
I think the only difference between 5 hours and 3 days is the level of sourness and the size of the bubbles.
Has there been a horror movie yet about sourdough starter?
It seems like there should be.
Here is what I have been doing:
circa 2 hours autolyse, 500g flours and 350g water
circa 20g starter, mix in, let rest around 30 minutes
10g salt, mix in, let rest; now it's around 2pm
Fold every hour or so until bed
Shape around 8 or 9am the next day
Bake around an hour or so later
and it works pretty well!
I made crumpets. They were easy and delivered butter and jam really well.
31. Did the kids like the crumpets?
Are May day baskets really a thing? Jammies said he grew up doing them, and we have one friend who does them, and then this year we ended up getting them from three families.
Is this like how Mardi Gras is getting more widely celebrated? Are we having a massive holiday inflation? I like holidays as much as anyone but I'm not super into more of this level of holiday, the kind that's mostly for kids to do arts & crafts and leave candy wrappers all over the place.
33: They tried them un-buttered and jammed, and said they tasted like pizza crust.
un-buttered and un-jammed, to be clear.
34: We did them, probably until I was ten or so. It was mostly just us and a couple of neighbor families with kids the same age. The nice thing is they can religious (Christian or pagan), socialist, or reactionary (Loyalty Day).
You should stop feeding your kids whatever pizza they have been eating.
34: We did them when I was a kid, but I had a stay-at-home crafty, artsy mom who also liked to garden.
The Robin Sloan book linked in 30 is dope. A rare piece of culture that makes fun of Big Tech but in an affectionate way instead of an overblown apocalyptic way.
They tried them un-buttered and jammed, and said they tasted like pizza crust.
They should try the crumpets with butter & jam. I mean, plain dry toast is okay when you're ill but is pretty boring. Add butter & jam and Bob's your uncle.
That was horrifying. I mean, it is what happens to people -- look at me -- who are thought over the hill in this business. But, as always, the details of medical expenses in the US are simply terrifying. See the reader comments also.
but enough of this sourness -- here is some sweet bread from Elizabeth David, who found the original in "A True Gentlewoman's delight", by the Countess of Kent, first published in 1653. Is this the first recorded celebrity cook book?
I made this in half quantities the other day and it was really delicious. So, return to the altogether happier days of the early seventeenth century, and get baking:
* Plain unbleached flour 1 kg,
* 500g
* Bakers' yeast 30 g,
* 10g instant, or less
* Salt 2 teaspoons,
* 1 Tsp
* Cream 150 g,
* 75g
* Milk 420 g,
* 210 ml
* Caster sugar 120 g,
* 60g
* Eggs 3,
* 2 small or one large
* Currants 340 g,
* 170g
* Ground almonds 170 g
* 85g,
* Rose water 1 or 2 tablespoons,
* A smidge less than 1 tbsp
* Butter 225 g,
* 110g
* Nutmeg 1 (grated) or mixed pudding spice 3 teaspoons,
* Half a grated nutmeg
* Light sherry 85 g.
* Marsala 40ml
* Butter for the tins, milk and sugar for glazing.
*
Tin size : two [one] wide loaf tins of about 1•75 litre capacity.
Put the flour, salt and sugar into an extra large mixing bowl and put it to warm in the oven for a few minutes. Mix the yeast with the cream, warmed. Have the milk also warmed to blood heat. Stir the yeast into the flour; add the milk, then the whole eggs. Mix all to a light dough. Cover and leave to rise, until it is at least doubled in volume and looks spongy. This will take about 1.5 hours.
Have ready all the other ingredients. The butter should be cut into small pieces and put in a warm place so that it is easily malleable, and the ground almonds mixed with the rose water.
Break down the dough, knead it lightly, then work in the butter, the almond paste, the warmed currants, the spice and the sherry. At this stage the dough requires thorough and careful kneading, so that all ingredients are well and equally distributed throughout the mass.
Now the dough is put into a warmed and buttered tin or tins. In the old days a cake hoop would have been used, but I find it more convenient to use two large, rather wide loaf tins of 3¼ pint capacity. There will be sufficient dough to fill each tin by about two-thirds. Cover them with a cloth and leave them for 15 to 25 minutes, until the dough has risen almost to the tops of the tins and is perfectly light and springy.
Bake in the centre of a moderately hot oven, 375 0 to 4000F, 1900 to 205 0C, gas no. 5 or 6. After 15 minutes cover the tops of the loaves with a double sheet of greaseproof paper, and bake for another 30 minutes, or until a fine skewer plunged into the centre of the loaves comes out quite clean.
As soon as the loaves are taken from the oven brush the tops with a thick sugar and milk glaze (see p. 436 and use double quantities) but leave them in the tins until they have contracted sufficiently to be turned out quite easily. Leave them on a cake rack to cool completely. Store the loaves in an airtight tin.
I'm finally in front of a trend! I've been loving watching everyone get their sourdough going. I honestly think, as everyone says here, that you can keep it as simple or as complicated as you want it. It all does take time, but for me, at any rate, most of that time involves nothing from me and instead just space in the fridge. Have fun!
31. For future reference, if you bake crumpet batter without a ring, you get pikelets, which are a thing in northern England and excellent in their own right.
So, return to the altogether happier days of the early seventeenth century
Do you think we could persuade Parliament to behead the principal ministers while we're at it?
43: Why did Ray Suarez leave PBS and NPR and turn in to a gig worker?
||
"We still think we can reach first plasma in 2025," Bigot said.|>
Fuck
This:
https://twitter.com/kinematografi/status/1256366240341397505
Or, it's about bread. I was thinking dread.
One of the things I like about my new job is the large number of people over 60. Anyway, bread is too carb-y for me, so I'm working on meatballs over the quarantine.
That was a lot of meatballs. I'm getting much better.
52: That was a joke, right? Or staying home has curdled poor Caren-with-a-C's brains? I mean, I have moments of frustration that we cook at home mostly from scratch and now it's harder to find stuff we would normally buy, but yikes that is not my biggest problem right now. Buy all the yeast and flour you want, folks, if it keeps you home and occupied!
If you cared, you'd make methamphetamine instead of bread.
24: I suspect that Yawnoc's right in 26 -- starter is starter and should be interchangeable.
28: Not a horror movie, but in his touring live shows Alton Brown has a tale about the end of his first job due to a runaway starter situation when he worked for a bakery on the overnight shift.
I like a good prop comic in my cooking shows.
Anyway, I just ordered meat from a restaurant. I'm to text them, drive to the store, and they will drop it in the trunk without speaking a word. Very Cold War if instead of texting them I just put a chalk mark on a mailbox.
50: if you're careful not to define your terms in advance, your "functional hand-held plasma gun" could just be a Super Soaker.
Does anybody have a good resource for "debugging" your bread-making process? I'm getting fairly decent but very inconsistent results and, since both the latency and the number of variables are high, I'm having trouble figuring out how to proceed. What is the single most important change you've made to your method? Does shaping ever get easy?
Maybe get new flour and keep it sealed better.
I lobbed that one right over the plate.
Newt's making babka! Which is yeasted, even if not exactly bread. I'm very excited about the babka.
That was a Seinfeld thing, but I'm not sure what it is.
The "babka" in that Seinfeld episode was actually a challah, I guess because it looks more interesting on TV.
I've had that. I've probably also had babka, but because life is a long road full of different desserts, I'm unable to place it just now.
If you cross a cinnamon roll with a coffee cake, that's not super far off. And it can be chocolate rather than cinnamon. They're really good.
Now I want a coffee cake and a six pack of Straub.
We made some amazing dinner rolls last night that were very easy. My ciabatta was very good although it didn't have the enormous air holes I was going for, but still pretty fluffy with a crispy crust.
We made the crescent rolls from the tube. They were great.
We usually have those and the kids said they liked the dinner rolls more. We went through 5 tubes during quarantine so far and are restocking next week, but the rolls are just flour yeast butter salt water so can be made any time.
Crescent rolls and biscuits from a tube are also a staple 'round here.
While jogging today, I counted 15 high school age kids in a big gaggle, by the river. A car swung by rambunctiously and a portion of them piled in. Such innocent kid energy, but jesus christ, someone needs to shut that shit down.
If gaggles are outlawed, only outlaws will have gaggles.
Twitter has just proved that Trump is hopped up on Sudafed.
After the Supreme Court takes away birth control from health coverage, is either that or pull out.
Don't worry about keeping starter warm. In fact, freeze and heat it alternately. The harsher the conditions you keep your starter in, the more robust and effective it will be.
Sardaukar starter.
