Uses for Sourdough

Part of the care and maintenance of R, my sourdough starter, involves throwing out a bit of it with each weekly flour-and-water feeding.  It's necessary:  gets rid of some of the waste products that the yeast and bacteria generate, and stops the starter from taking over its jar, and from there my fridge, and from there the world.

But it seems kind of wasteful to me to just toss it.  So I've been looking around for ways to cook with it, short of whipping up a whole loaf of bread.

King Arthur Flour has been the source of a whole bunch of inspiration on that front.  I've made sourdough waffles a couple of times and a batch of very tasty crackers.

By the way, I learned a long time ago from Alton Brown that if you've got a pasta machine, it's by far the easiest way to roll dough to any arbitrary thinness you want, and so is great for making crackers.

Most recently I whipped up a batch of popovers.  I always assumed you needed a proper popover pan to make them, and I bet they would've been prettier with one.  But, jeez, popovers are insanely easy to make.  And check them out.  They literally popped over.  The King Arthur Flour recipe made a half dozen, perfect for me to eat for breakfast for a week, with various sweet or savory toppings.

Check them out a whole pile of oddly-shaped baked deliciousness.

I've certainly seen popovers that were more perfectly hollow on the inside, but I'm not complaining.  Definitely light and puffy and slightly eggy and tangy.  My only regret is that I didn't realize how easy popovers were to make a long time ago.  I'm going to have a batch ready next time people come over for brunch, and (assuming they haven't read this) impress the heck out of them.

Fettuccine a Rachel

Two years ago now my friend Rachel and I took a pasta making class together at the Institute of Culinary Education.

A couple of weeks ago, we finally had a chance to put what we learned into practice, using her spiffy Kitchenaid stand mixer.  It was incredibly easy -- much simpler than kneading pasta dough by hand! -- and the results were fairly amazing.  Which is dumb because every single (rare) time I've made pasta from scratch I've ALWAYS said something like "the results were fairly amazing."  And yet, how many times have I made pasta from scratch?  Not enough.  Not nearly enough.

Anyway, Rachel's Kitchenaid definitely wins pasta night.  From unimpressive flour to impressive pasta dough in just a few minutes.

 And following a short rest and some liberal flouring, the rolling went super smoothly as well.

So lovely. Below is the post-cooking version, with apologies for the slightly steamed-up camera lens.

At Rachel's suggestion, we tried Marcella Hazan's famous/infamous (but new to me) tomato sauce.  It's barely a recipe: 

Take a can of whole tomatoes, 5 tablespoons of butter, an onion that you've peeled and cut in two, and a little salt, and throw them in a pot for 45 minutes, stirring and occasionally smooshing the tomatoes a bit.  Remove the onion halves.  Done.

You can see why I was skeptical.  But holy crap was that good.  It makes me rethink the whole idea of cooking Italian food with olive oil.  I insisted on adding a little fresh basil.  I make no apologies for that.

Such a good, simple, hearty meal.  And good fun to make and share it with a friend.

A couple of notes.  Since the sauce is so simple, using super-good tomatoes is imperative.  I hunted around a bit and I think Cento San Marzanos are the ones to beat.  Delicious, Italian, and the can is BPA free, which I look for in cans these days.

Also, the recipe from ICE said to use 100g of flour plus 1 egg per person.  We were skeptical, so we ended up using about 300g of flour and 3 eggs (and a small amount of salt and olive oil and water).  That made a LOT of pasta.  I had leftovers for dinner for most of the week.  I am not complaining in the least, just stating for the record that, yes, 100g of flour is more than enough for 1 serving of pasta.

Finally, I made a loaf of bread, since there might not have been enough carbs otherwise. So here's a picture of that too.

My New Pet

It's not a dog or cat or gerbil or even a tarantula, but I'm happy to introduce the world to R, my sourdough starter.  R was a gift from my friend Rob, in whose shadow as a bread baker I humbly stand. He makes his own baguettes, even. I mentioned to him a couple of weeks ago that I was thinking of starting my own sourdough starter and he was like, "really, dude, it's not worth it, just take some of mine."

And without further ado, R was, well, I was going to say "born" but that's not exactly accurate.  Decanted.

Here is R in its resting state, safely ensconced in its jar.

And here's R tucked away in my fridge, where it'll be spending most of its time.

 

Next this is R in its active, growth phase, having just been fed and about to spin off some starter for making my first ever loaf of sourdough bread.  Doesn't it look bubbly and perky? I bet R would have like a thousand followers on Instagram, like a certain pug I know.  (Digression: searching for 'yeast' on Instagram, which I don't necessarily recommend, does yield two gems:  "Yeastie Boys Bagels," and "Yeast of Eden."  Bravo!)

 

And here's the product of my and R's collaboration. Cook's Illustrated's no-knead sourdough recipe from issue 142 is what planted this whole idea in my head.  It was an almost 40 hour process to make this loaf (albeit, most of it waiting around while R did its thing and gluten formed and such).  I made a project plan spreadsheet and everything.

And check out the inside.  The crumb needs a little work -- I think maybe some (more) kneading is in order?  But I was really happy with the flavor, not too sour, but definitely tangy, and amazing that thanks to R the only store-bought ingredients I need to make a loaf of bread are flour and a little salt.  Made some superb BLTs.

 

I'm finding I like having a companion.  Even if R doesn't know me or come when I call, I still have to feed it and keep it perky.  And how many pets can you eat a chunk of from time to time? 

I will close by mentioning that R is partly named after Rob (duh) but it's mostly named after R, the undead hero of my favorite zombie romantic comedy (or "zom-rom-com" -- I didn't make that up), Isaac Marion's beautiful Warm Bodies.  Seemed somehow fitting for a jar filled with wild yeast and who knows what bacteria.

Proper British Scones

I have been feeling the need to bake.  But unfocused as to exactly what I should bake.  I thought about cookies, or a cake.  But having come currents leftover from my biryani project last week, scones jumped to the head of the list as the most natural thing to make.  A quick survey of options brought me to Cooks Illustrated's Proper British Scone recipe from issue 127.

Pretty simple, not overly sweet, I had all the ingredients in house, and it would use up most of the currents.

Here they are, raw and cooked.  They definitely did what you'd want scones to do, puffed upward but not outward, tall and, well, scone-y (as opposed to muffin-y or biscuit-y or cakey or bready).

It's worth calling out the little "bonus" scone tucked on the pan in the photo above.  I can never bring myself to just throw out the bit of dough that inevitably is left behind once you've cut, pressed, measured, or scooped all the whatever you can out of a batch.  It was just as delicious as its full-sized relatives.

I lack a biscuit cutter, so extend a special thanks to the can of black beans I made into chili last night.  Since I hadn't recycled it yet, it served the purpose admirably.

 

Below plated and ready for a test-bite.  I even had some proper orange marmalade (with champagne!) to spread on them.  Lastly, a look at the interior.  I'm really really pleased with them.  Like I said, it was totally easy to make the batter, which in turn was quite easy to work with.  I'm going to have to share them with friends -- my apartment is now chock full of proper scones.  I bet they freeze well...

 

The Christmas Babka

 

Way more photos than usual in this entry, but (a) this was a pretty involved thing, (b) I'm inordinately proud of my Christmas babka achievement, and (c) I was joined by a very special sous chef for this Hawaiian holiday cooking adventure, my niece Bella, who is 5 and a half.

Let's rewind.  When I first saw Ottolenghi's Krantz cake recipe in Jerusalem, it was the kind of recipe where my immediate reaction was "no way will I ever cook that."  Partly that's because I don't have a stand mixer, but partly it just looked hard.  And for all that I'm an ambitious and sometimes even daring cook, I'm also fundamentally a pretty lazy one.  Hence no-knead bread.

But I'd had it in mind, and when I was thinking about what I might want to try out on my family over the holidays, and my mom said we were volunteering to bring dessert for Christmas dinner, it seemed an opportune moment to attempt the Ottolenghi babka.

I don't know why I do these things, it's the height of arrogance or dumbness to try something, especially something complicated, for the first time for other people.  But, I was on the hook, so away we went.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and dough needed making.  

Were it not for the Kitchenaid, much time 'twould be taking.

Here it is freshly mixed, and again after resting

With much sugar and flour and some lemon from zesting.

We'd be making two babkas, not three and not one,
The first filled with chocolate, the other, cinnamon.



It was Xmas day and the babka dough rolled
When into the kitchen my little niece strolled.

She surveyed the scene and my own furrowed brow,
And she said "Uncle Joe, can I help you somehow?"

So together we decorated the freshly flat dough
With nuts and the toppings strewn to and fro.

And carefully I rolled a tight babka cigar,

And a split and a twist and voila there we are.

Into pans for a rest and a rise then the fire

All the work and attention had caused us to tire.



It was messy but easy, well, less hard than I thought,

And in the end vastly better than had we store bought.

Admire the crumb, look at that great braid
And this my dear readers, is how a babka is made.

Humble apologies to Clement Clark Moore and Dr. Seuss both.  I didn't really think I was going to end up in verse the whole way through.  And thank you to my sister Joelle, who documented the event.  And to Bella, for being a great assistant. Merry Babka!

Maffles!

While on my annual pilgrimage back to the land of my birth (the island of Hawai'i) over Christmas I had the great good fortune to stumble upon the latest in local hybrid Eastern-Western baking concepts, the maffle.  Maffle mix seems is basically just sweetened mochi flour with maybe some leavening in it--add milk, egg, and oil and you get a very thick batter, really more of a dough.

The recipe calls for piecing out the dough and rolling each chunk in sugar before throwing it in a waffle iron, which results in something that's crunchy and caramelized on the outside, and chewy and glutinous on the inside.  And delicious all the way around.

Dominic Ansel gets all the credit for the cronut, and I have to confess a few years ago I made a savory waffle with chickpea flour and called it the fawafel and felt very proud of myself.  But maffles are truly a yummy stroke of genius.  I bought a package back from Hawai'i with me (and one to give to my neighbors) but I will definitely be asking mom to send more.

New Fangled Dinner Rolls

This year for my contribution to Christmas dinner I took Cooks Illustrated's latest dinner roll recipe for a spin. The CI guys were all excited about something called a tangzhong, which was apparently invented in Japan and has been around for some time, but is only now getting the Cooks Illustrated treatment.  

A tangzhong involves making a paste out of flour and hot liquid, and actually cooking it together for a bit until it hits a pudding-like consistency.  This mixture is then combined back with the rest of the ingredients for a yeasty roll.

The theory goes that hot flour absorbs more liquid, and so adding that step results in rolls (or bread) that's got a super-pillowy crumb, and the layers within the roll end up almost flaky.

"That's not the only thing that's flaky here," I thought, but hey, it's not like I had anything else to do once the presents were opened.

The other thing CI does in the recipe that's a little unusual is their technique for forming the rolls--instead of just rolling little rounds of dough, you actually flatten and tightly roll sheets, before putting them in the pan for a rise and a bake.  Here's the raw material:

 And here's what they looked like post-cooking.  Very pretty.

And finally here's a roll in mid-dine.  I really liked them, though I'm not sure they were THAT much superior to just a plain old ordinary parker house roll.  Still, it was fun to try a new technique, they didn't come out of a can, and they got rave reviews at dinner, always nice validation for my baking skills.

ICE Pasta Class

Bright and early Sunday morning my friend R. and I took the second of our two planned 2015 cooking classes at ICE last weekend.  This time it was pasta from scratch, with Chef Gerri Sarnataro.

It was a good class, though the sort where everyone divided into teams and made at most 2 things, rather than everyone having the chance to do a little bit of everything, which helped make the Puff Pastry class so rewarding.

The other thing about pasta is there's really no trick to it.  one egg for every 100g of type 00 flour, maybe a little salt, and knead like crazy for 10 minutes--or a little longer if you're not a great kneader (I'm not). Still, there's a pleasing bit of kitchen magic that happens as flour and egg come together and alchemy (and gluten) turns a dusty mess into a smooth, pliable, user-friendly dough.  Here's the before picture (I forgot to take an after, but it really is like alchemy how something this unpromising becomes smooth, shiny, and totally pasta-able.

Ultimately the group made two raviolis, a tortellini, fettuccine and pappardelle, and six sauces to go with the assorted pastas. 

R. and I put ourselves on a ravioli team (butternut squash to be exact) since I wanted to have a chance to make some of those.  We also made browned butter with sage to go on the ravioli, kind of the classic thing to do. And we made a pea-and-crimini-mushroom cream sauce for some of the fettuccine.   Here are some of the raw materials.

And here's the squash, in progress, post roasting and pureeing.



I was a little concerned about the quality of the ravioli--they seemed very haphazard and irregular as we were folding and cutting away.  But they definitely looked nice all set on their pan.

The other sauces were an onion confit-based one that was terrific, a simple herb butter (for cheese ravioli), and two bologneses: one very meaty and one duck-based that actually started with a whole duck.  I kind of wish I'd gotten to participate on team duck pappardelle, as it's one of my favorites.

Still though, we all got to taste a little bit of everything.  I'd been expecting I'd have a ton of fresh pasta to take home with me after, but we pretty much ate everything we made.  I guess it's best made and eaten fresh, anyway.

I'm torn between "carb-o-riffic" and "carb-tastic" as the better adjective for the overall experience. I've owned a pasta maker for years now--my hope is that this inspires me to actually get it out and have people over sometime this winter.