Sourdough Waffles

Again, I found myself with extra sourdough starter. So my answer was to make Sourdough Waffles. Not being preparing the batter the night before, I decided to make these anyway. I must say these still turned out wonderful.

4 oz. butter 1/2 cup
8 oz. milk 1 cup
9 oz. white Sourdough Starter 1 cup
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 TBS brown sugar
6 oz. all-purpose flour 1 1/2 cups.

Combine, all but the salt, baking soda, and baking powder, and let sit as long as you can. Add the salt, baking powder and baking soda, just before cooking.

Keep the early waffles in a 250 degree oven unti l all the waffles are done.

Sourdough Pancakes

This was an excellent way to use extra starter that I did not get to use because of the long drive home in spring snow storm. Tangier than buttermilk, these made our Saturday pancakes more delicious.

Recipe for Sourdough Pancakes

Pumpernickel Rye

Pumpernickel bread is really just a variety of rye bread. what darkens the loaf is powdered cocoa, molasses, and coffee, not the flour.

Deli-Style Rye

Last night I made the Deli-Style Rye from Artisan Bread in five Minutes a Day.

The results where fantastic! There was just the right amount of caraway seeds, and even though the dough was not allowed to age, it had a good crumb, and nice crust. This will be a routine bread for me I’ sure.

March Home Brew – Red Ale

We cooked the wort for 60 minutes, while maintaining a temperature of 150 degrees; consentient stirring is required to prevent boil-over. After cooking the wort and pitching the yeast, this brew is being allowed ferment to 10-14 days.

Sour Dough Bread

Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur.

The starter is the essential element of sourdough. This reference call for a full 14 days to raise a starter from scratch – nine to grow the culture and five to build it’s strength needed to bake bread. My starter here is 9 days old, and will being it’s routing feedings tomorrow.

Routine Feeding:

1 Cup Starter

1 Cup Cool Water

2 Cups Flour

baking is a juggling act. You want the inside and outside done at the same time. Temperature cooks the crust. Time cooks the crumb.

If the crust is too dark, reduce the temperature next time. (You can cover it with foil to slow further browning). If the crust is too light, increase the temperature. (You can kick up the oven temperature and put the loaves in to brown a bit as a recovery step.) A key element is in knowing what your oven temperature really is. Over the years, I’ve had lots of inaccurate ovens, so I always put an oven thermometer in the oven. Monitoring the oven may surprise you with how much, or little, time it takes to heat your oven, how far off your thermostat is, and how much variation there is in your oven temperature during your bake.

If the crumb is too done, bake the bread for a shorter period of time next time around (you can’t unbake bread). If the bread is underdone, leave it in longer.

The trick is the two are related. So, it may take a time or two to get the time and temperature to the point where both are done at the same time. In general, I try not to do the “put the bread in at 500 for 10 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 350″ sort of thing. It is a lot of trouble, and it causes delays between batches if you’re baking more than one batch. Juggling the time and temperature lets you almost always avoid that sort of thing.