Weekend Edition: First Sourdough in California

Yes, I brought my sourdough starter with me to California.  That's extremely nerdy in a culinary way, I know, but once you get used to a certain quality for your daily bread its difficult to go back to store-bought bread.   Ironically last weekend my never-fail sourdough pancakes kind of failed.  This weekend my first loaf of bread in the new climate looks to be a success.  It rose well and has a nice crust.  Tomorrow will tell if the flavor is good.  (Its always a good flavor, some weeks its more sour than others).  

Culinary Chronicles: Bread

This week's sourdough.  I usually like to make it half white and half whole wheat because I think it improves the flavor, but I was out of whole wheat flour.  I also got distracted yesterday by hosting a brunch for friends and then rescuing a very scared puppy from the street outside our fence, and I totally forgot about my bread dough.  It rose for a long time as a result, and I had to refrigerate it overnight for it's final rise because it was getting too late to bake it.  I think it rose better than most of the recent loaves.  Don't know if it was the overnight refrigeration, or the fact that I baked it on this pizza stone instead of in a dutch oven.  It's a constant experiment, and this morning I got to enjoy that still warm piece for breakfast.

Weekend Edition: Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a lovely Thanksgiving despite the cold.  It should be cold on Thanksgiving, right?  It's late November after all!  We celebrate Thanksgiving most years with a large group of family friends, all of whom are excellent cooks.  The day is spent in an idyllic New Mexico location, and always includes a hike before dinner.  Can't get any better than that!  No photos because sometimes its nice to just live life, not document it for others.

Meanwhile with the extra long weekend I did fairly typical things.

I read an actual letter from a friend.  Visited a local nursery and brought home a beautiful gardenia that has been perfuming my kitchen and fooling me into believing that I'm in the tropics.  (Tried a ridiculous number of times to capture a photo that was in focus, and could not do it.)  Baked the third week's worth of sourdough bread.  Many other completely non-photogenic things as well, like mowing the lawn for an hour until the gas ran out in the mower and it could be cleaned and stored for the winter, and obsessing over really great furniture deals on ebay that I couldn't partake in because they were all local pick-up only in locations that I can't easily get to.  Sigh.

Weekend Edition: All About Bread

The weekend had non-bread related moments, of course, like battling the pre-holiday crowds at TJ Maxx.  That was hellish, but resulted in the purchase of a really great gift for a friend, as well as a bag of Lindt White Chocolate Lindor truffles for me.  So good.  The older I get the lighter I seem to like my chocolate.

First bread related item: Afghani Bread, $3.00 from Ariana Halal Market.

Huge (my computer is in the photo for scale), chewy and still warm when we took it out to the car.  I'd eaten this bread before when friends had brought it to work, but I'd never stopped into the market myself.  The owner (I'm assuming) was really nice, and the café menu looks delicious.  I'm definitely going to have to go back to eat someday soon.

Second bread related item: This week's loaf of Sourdough.

I thought the sponge was too dry last week, so this week I made sure that it was less so.  Instead of just tweaking last week's recipe, I defected to this one from Clotilde of the Chocolate & Zucchini blog.  I like her detailed instructions, and the fact that the bread had fewer ingredients (no oil or sugar).  Due to my lack of a kitchen scale, I had to wing it a little with measurements, but stuck to her basic 1:2:3 ratio and ended up with a delicious and large loaf of bread.  Less dense this week than last, and a better flavor, possibly due to the folding technique that she recommends.  

Third bread related item: Sourdough Starter Cake.

I had a little bit of sourdough sponge left over after I'd mixed up the bread, and not wanting to waste it, decided to make up a little cake.  Flour, eggs, baking powder, sugar, orange zest, rose-water and crushed cardamom made a very tasty cake.  The glaze was orange juice, powdered sugar and a tinge more rose-water.  Yum.  

Brr, now I have to go sit closer to the wood stove because I've caught a chill today and can't seem to stay warm.  I blame the nasty wind we're having.

Culinary Chronicles: Sourdough Starter by Accident

It's not much to look at is it?  I'm really excited about it nonetheless because it's my very first sourdough starter and it sort of came about by accident.  My mom makes her own yogurt, which is super simple.  When you do so, you always keep about a half cup of yogurt to add into the mix for the new batch.   The live cultures are what ferment the new batch into yogurt.  A couple weeks ago, a batch went kind of off.  It smelled and tasted really yeasty.  She decided that it was probably better to throw it out and start again using a jar of yogurt from the store as the starter culture.  Due to the yeastiness I decided to add in some flour and water and see if I could make a sourdough starter.  I mean if it smells like yeast it probably is yeast, right?  Success!  I've already used some for pancakes, the recipe for which I'll share in a future post.  Meanwhile I've been feeding the starter everyday, and growing it, so that this weekend I will have enough to take half and bake a loaf of bread.

I've been wanting to try to start my own yeast culture ever since I saw Martha Stewart do it way back in the 90s, using a leaf from a cabbage.  Apparently that white film that you see on cabbage leaves is a source of active yeasts.  The thing that always held me back is that if you read enough about sourdoughs they start to sound like an incredible amount of work.  You have to feed them and keep them at the right temperatures, and if you don't bake a lot, you end up throwing out starter and therefore wasting a lot of starter.  It always seemed like a project that I'd be better off starting later.  Then fate stepped in with that yeasty yogurt.  I guess I'm going to start baking more.