A Busy Week in the Kitchen

This has been a busy week in our kitchen.  There has only been one day that I wasn’t in the kitchen baking or cooking.  It’s been a busy week, but a good week.  It went something like this:

More Sourdough

As much as I want to continue my attempts at perfecting French macarons, sheer economics dictates otherwise.  In my last attempt, I had come to the conclusion that my food processor simply can’t grind the almonds finely enough and that using purchased almond meal would be necessary.  However, at $11.65 per pound almond meal is rather pricey – much more so than the 25 pound bag of bread flour we recently purchased for under $7.00.  So.  Macarons on the back burner; bread on the front.

Yesterday I decided to try a new sourdough bread recipe from King Arthur Flour.  (I’m still using the starter from the Tea & Cookies sourdough challenge.)  After I printed the recipe for Rustic Sourdough Bread, I realized it was scarcely different from the Extra-Tangy Sourdough recipe I’ve been using.  Still, I wanted to bake bread yesterday and the Extra-Tangy requires overnight fermentation.  But then I had the idea to make both recipes and compare them.  The overnight fermentation of the Extra-Tangy is one of the differences between these recipes, another is that the Rustic Sourdough has added yeast.  I was curious as to how the yeast would make the final loaves different.  The mixing methods are slightly different also, but since I don’t follow the instructions very well anyway that wasn’t much of a consideration. 

Rustic Sourdough

The dough for the Rustic Sourdough was simple to make (dump all the ingredients together, mix, and knead) and was quite lovely in texture:  smooth, supple and very easy to handle.  It’s what my baking instructor would have called a “sexy dough”.  At the time I didn’t really understand what he meant by that.  I get it now.  That’s pretty much where my infatuation with the dough itself ends though.  The addition of the yeast apparently meant that so much as looking at the dough the wrong way caused it to deflate.  I still ended up with two nice loaves of bread.  The crust was crispy and the interior was chewy, yet tender, with a coarse crumb.  But it didn’t particularly taste like sourdough.  Good bread, just not good sourdough bread.

Extra-Tangy Sourdough

This was my fourth time making the Extra-Tangy Sourdough.  I’ve been very satisfied with the results of this recipe.  Although I did use a small amount (1/4 teaspoon) of citric acid in this batch, the starter has aged enough that I’m curious to know if it has developed a sour flavor that can stand on its own.  The next time I make this recipe (which may be later this week) I’m going to omit the citric acid.  I’m also going to try halving the recipe to make just one loaf.  Occasionally, two loaves is a little much for two people to eat within a reasonable amount of time.  Not to mention four.



The boule on the left was baked in the cast iron skillet;
the one on the right on the baking stone.



Because I don’t follow directions well, my method for the Extra-Tangy dough is to mix all of the flour, water and starter and then knead in the sugar, salt and citric acid.  This causes the dough to feel gritty at first and then dough gets very moist and tacky as the dry ingredients are being kneaded in.  It isn’t quite as appealing to the touch as the Rustic, but I prefer the results of this method versus how it's written in the recipe.  In addition to halving the recipe, I'm also going to try mixing all of the ingredients at once.  If I'm going to deviate I may as well go all out!  

Ordinarily, I bake my loaves on pre-heated baking stones, but this time I decided to try baking one of the loaves in a pre-heated cast iron skillet.  The loaf baked in the skillet browned more significantly on the bottom than the one baked on the stone.  And made it very difficult to peel the parchment off the bottom of the bread.  I believe I’ll stick to the baking stones. 

And as if four loaves of sourdough in two days wasn't enough, I decided today was also a good day to deal with the rapidly declining bananas sitting on the counter.  So while my sourdough loaves were rising, I made a loaf of chocolate banana bread.  But more on that tomorrow.

Sour Hit and Miss

The second day of my “sour projects” has been finished.  Sunday I baked my sourdough bread and finished some marmalade from the sour oranges picked from my tree.  The bread is a hit – total bulls eye – despite the fact that I made a mistake in the mixing method.  The marmalade is a miss – I’m not even sure it made it to the target.

not very attractive, but very tasty

The bread:  Using this recipe from King Arthur Flour, I made two slightly unattractive loaves of sourdough bread.  (One thing I like about most of the recipes from KAF is that you can view them by volume or weight in both ounces and grams.)  The instructions say to mix the starter with some water and part of the flour.  Oops.  I dumped ALL of the flour in.  Instead of tossing it and starting over, I figured I’d just go with it and see what happened. 



grilled cheese fixin's



Beyond that point, I followed the directions for letting it rest at room temperature for four hours and then refrigerating it overnight.  The next day, I had to knead in the sugar, salt and citric acid (I used 1/4 teaspoon), making sure that it was incorporated throughout my dough.  At first the dough was really gritty, but it did smooth out.  I baked the loaves on preheated baking stones for 25 minutes.  The next time I will go the full 30 as the crust could have been a bit darker. 



lunch for one, please



Overall though, given such a large mistake in the beginning, Tug and I were both happy with how the bread turned out.  We’ve been eating sourdough toast for the last couple of days and today for lunch I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich with the homemade sourdough, some extra-sharp white cheddar and slices of Pink Lady apple.  Very tasty.

Now the marmalade:  By the time I finished slicing all of the oranges, I had such a quantity that there was way to much for the pan I had.  I made eight cups into marmalade and have six cups waiting.  After I got started, I realized I didn’t have enough sugar.  I had about 6-1/4 cups when I needed about 8 cups.  This didn’t necessarily bother me as I ordinarily don’t use the full amount of sugar when making marmalade.  However, these tart little buggers needed every bit and possibly then some. 

Beyond the fact that it doesn’t have enough sugar, it’s slightly burnt.  In the middle of getting to the gelling point, Tug called me and said our neighbors needed my assistance.  (A bird had gotten into their chimney and was in their wood burning stove.  They don’t do birds and know that I am a friend of pretty much anything with feathers.  This is not the first time they’ve called me for such a rescue mission.)  While I did shut the burner off, I didn’t think to remove the pot from the burner.  And since our glass top stove holds heat so well, I came back to scorched marmalade.  It doesn’t taste scorched, but it’s quite dark.  Now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with six jars of very dark, extremely tart orange marmalade.

And now I’ve discovered that maybe they’re not the calamondin oranges I thought they were, but perhaps, in fact, Rangpur limes.  What ever they are, I'm beginning to think they’re more ornamental than useful!

Sour Dough and Sour Oranges

Since finishing my sourdough starter last week for the Tea & Cookies Cooking Challenge, it’s been hanging out the refrigerator.  Waiting.  Beyond the fact that I was busy with the caramels for the Icing Smiles Magic of a Smile gala, the starter develops more flavor and tang as it ages.  But it seemed like it was about time to start doing something with it since I have so much. 

The two recipes I chose to start with, Extra-Tangy Sourdough Bread and Sourdough Chocolate Cake, both required about a cup of “fed” starter.  To feed the starter, I measured out one-half cup of refrigerated starter for each recipe then added one-half cup of flour and one-quarter cup of tepid water, stirred them up and let them sit until doubled in size. 

In between this, I had finally made the decision that it was time to harvest the oranges off of the dwarf tree in the living room.  Some of the branches looked like they could break at any moment.  If these were sweet oranges that could be eaten out of hand, I may have left them on the tree and just used them as I wanted/needed them.  However, that’s not the case.  I’ve tried the oranges a couple of times in the last two months trying to gauge their ripeness.  Both times it was like eating lemons instead of oranges.  Through some Internet research, I think I’ve finally identified these as calamondin oranges.  They will never be sweet.  This does put some limitations on what I can do with them. 

So I’ll turn to the never-fail solution for citrus:  marmalade.  To be finished tomorrow.

In the meantime, my starters being ready, I mixed up the first steps of the bread as it needed to sit at room temp for four hours before going in the refrigerator overnight.  The chocolate cake also needed some fermentation time for the starter with some flour and milk, so that part was mixed and set aside.  Until about 10:00 p.m. when I finally had time to get back to it.

As this was a recipe I’ve not made before, I chose to make cupcakes instead of cake.  Cupcakes just seem to be easier to share than a cake with a piece missing.  I’d like to say I stayed true to the recipe, but that’s not the case.  This was one of the strangest batters I’ve ever worked with.  The addition of the sourdough starter made it gave the batter a texture that was most unappealing in its raw form.  It left me wondering what the baked version would be like.  I also had to consider that instead of using all vegetable oil, the majority of the fat I used was butter.  This may have had an effect on the final texture as well.  When I checked them during baking, I was concerned I had overfilled the cups, but fortunately they came out with perfect high domes without overflowing.  They’re not iced yet, but the one I tried seemed a little dry and not nearly chocolaty enough.  I’m wondering if the recipe would be better as written (imagine that!) with all vegetable oil and in cake form, but not enough that I’ll try it.

Sourdough Surplus

When I signed on for Tea & Cookies Cooking Challenge of sourdough bread with homemade starter, I had no idea how much starter I would end up with.  The reason I have so much starter is that unlike the instructions direct, I cannot bring myself to throw away portions of it.  So it just keeps multiplying. 

quantity of starter this morning

quantity of starter this afternoon
(the three half-pints are sitting in the dish in case of overflow)

Friends and neighbors beware.

Once I figured out that I was going to have more sourdough starter than any individual should ever need, the search for recipes using sourdough starter began.  Thus far, I’ve identified four recipes from the King Arthur Flour website to try:  sourdough chocolate cake, sourdough carrot cake, sourdough pizza crust and sourdough ciabatta.  (As my previous attempt at ciabatta didn’t work out as well as I would have liked, I thought it only fitting to include that one.)  In addition to these four, there will also be the upcoming sourdough bread recipe from the Tea & Cookies challenge.

Methinks I’m going to be more of a baker than a homemaker this coming week.  Thank goodness I have a patient and understanding husband!