aptk's blog

Today I'm making straight up sourdough bread. I use a very wet starter which I keep in an old clear glass coffee carafe. I was a bad sourdough momma and had to revive my starter, and I now believe it's all the way back.

After making my bread dough this morning, I fed my starter 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water, because I need enough sourdough for pancakes tonight. After I fed it and stirred it all up, I had a little over 4 cups. Three hours later and it's bubbling happily away, is now showing about 8 cups and smells wonderful!

The point I'm trying to make is that if you had a really good starter that you totally neglected, it is possible to bring it back! Happy breading everyone!

The pull apart bread loaf can be made with many things, it all starts with a buttered 10 X 16 piece of dough.

HERBS

Use your favorites! I generally use parsley, with a little cilantro, oregano and chives. If I'm serving it with chicken, it's parsley, chervil and rosemary. For an Italian meal, it's garlic, onions, basil.

Or you can go sweet, sugar and cinnamon. Or maple sugar, chopped apples, and cinnamon. You can get creative.

Then cut your strips length wise and stack them up. Then cut into 8 sections and place in your well oiled loaf pan. Allow to rise until doubled in size and bake!

I grew up in a household where bread and butter was served with every meal. Now granted, it rarely was a nice, warm home baked bread. More likely than not it was either Rainbo or Wonder brand sliced white bread from the corner store. Today I still like bread with almost every meal, but I've made great strides in seeing to it that it's a home baked bread.

I currently live in Interior Alaska and the corner store is a 20 mile trip to town, so I've come up with a recipe that works well for me that's quick and easy enough for a good quality daily type generic bread. One cup of warm water with one tablespoon of white sugar dissolved in it. Sprinkle with two teaspoons of yeast, let it sit until the yeast blooms, then stir in one teaspoon salt and one cup of flour and really beat it good with a fork until it's smooth. Now add two more cups of flour and work it into a dough. If it's too sticky add more flour a handful at a time and work it (knead) until you have a smooth elastic dough.

Next step, I place my dough on the counter, wash and dry the bowl I mixed it in, spray the bowl with a non stick cooking spray, plop the dough ball back in it and spray it too. I cover it loosely (usually with a piece of wax paper, but sometimes a kitchen towel) and let it raise until doubled in size. You should end up with enough dough for two loaves.

Divide your dough in half. Knead one lightly, shape, and place in an oiled loaf pan. There you go, one loaf of plain bf bread.

The other half we will turn into a wonderful pull apart loaf of buttery herb bread.

Step 1: Shape dough into a flat 10 x 16 inch square. You can shape it by hand or roll it out. Spread it well with softened or melted butter.

Step 2: Sprinkle it liberally with chopped, fresh herbs of your choice. I like to use primarily parsley, with small amounts of oregano, cilantro and chives (but that's because I grow those herbs in my kitchen window garden, you should use what you like and have on hand, and dry herbs will also work).

Step 3: Now cut your dough, length wise into two inch strips and stack them up. Now cut the stack into 8 two inch pieces. Now we're going to place them in an oiled loaf pan, sideways and alternating the way you put them in so that they face opposite directions, but always so that you can see all five of the layers.

Step 4: Cover loosely and let both loaves rise until again double in size. When they are ready, bake in a 350F oven for about 45 minutes or until done.

Enjoy!

Yesterday I had a big bunch of starter and two baking plans. One was an artisan loaf, which totally failed, it didn't hold its shape at all, I ended up with a 10 in round disk that had such a crust you could hardly cut it. Today it is bird food out in the back yard.

The second project was the cinnamon rolls, flavored with orange zest, sprinkled with cranberries and walnuts in addition to my regular cinnamon roll fare, frosted with a cream cheese orange glaze, and it's delicious.

Bread, the world over, takes many forms. And in the American Southwest this is one of my favorites, the sopapilla.

Now, technically, I understand that this is not a loaf of bread. But psychologically, this perfectly fits the crispy, flaky crust while still being "light". it's a giant air bubble covered with light, flaky crust. You can sprinkle it with sugar, or drizzle it with honey, you can open a corner and fill it with whatever your heart desires, you can sop up your favorite soup or stew, so for me anyway, it's close enough to bread to BE bread.

Three cups of flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons shortening, 1 cup warm milk. Mix the dry ingredients, cut in the shortening, add the milk all at once, work into a ball and then let it rest for about 15 minutes.

Divide into two equal parts. Roll out to about 1/8 inch thick, (if it keeps shrinking, roll it as thin as you can and let it rest for about 10 minutes, then come back and roll it again. Using a sharp knife, cut it into squares 3-4 inches. Fry in hot oil (375F-400F), 3-4 at a time, turning to cook on both sides. Drain on paper towels and then eat them while they're still warm.

I will post a more detailed recipe and instructions soon.

Yesterday my goal was to start the task of revitalizing my sourdough starter which had spent most of the summer in the fridge being ignored. I know it makes me a bad sourdough mom, but it's coming together now that there's snow on the ground and I hunt for reasons to keep my oven on!

I started yesterday morning and had almost immediate bubble action, and although I started with 4 cups of starter in the pot, it only grew 1 cup. I keep my starter in an old clear glass coffee carafe so that I can get a good look at it. This morning I dumped out about 2 cups, straight into the trash and added half a cup of fresh AP flour, it's only been a couple hours and it's bubbling good and has already grown to over the 5 cup mark, so maybe it wasn't as far gone as I thought, maybe it was only HUNGRY!!

I tend to use three methods for checking my starter. First is LOOK. What's it doing? Second is SMELL. I smell it just as I lift the lid off, give it a good swirl or a light stir and smell it again. And third is TASTE, Right now the taste in my starter is pretty bland, but I know it will be back as I continue to dump and feed. At any rate, I am on my way.

Planning on sourdough pancakes Sunday morning, Orange Cranberry Rolls about Tuesday, big batch of bread on Friday. That's the plan anyway, but keep in mind, this is sourdough!

Found this recipe lurking around on this site and just had to try it. IT'S PERFECT!!! Quick, easy and a delightful companion for my home made chicken soup.

My picture shows four subjects, the bread ready to go in the oven, the bread just out of the oven, the bread torn by hand into pieces and the soup it went so well with.

I will have to stock up on flour as I envision myself finding many more recipes to try!

I will admit right here and now that I have been a BAD sourdough caretaker! My sourdough starter spent most of the summer in the fridge being fed intermittently. But now there's snow on the ground and I wanted some sourdough pancakes so that I could sample some home made wild raspberry syrup. My starter was like "whatever...", so I figured that since I use sourdough starter for flavor rather than rising power for pancakes, I'd give it a shot. And they were delicious pancakes and the raspberry syrup was to die for, but I noticed that my starter had very little action to it.

Now I'm not one to shirk off making a new starter, specifically because I make a very wet starter with commercially available yeast (but I have plans to start a wild one!), but this starter had a really good flavor, that I'd like to keep. My solution was to save what I had, and then add half of what it would take to make a whole new starter.

My starter lives in an old coffee carafe. It's clear glass, I can see what it's doing all the way around, and has convenient marking lines so that I always know how much I have. And I will keep this fed regularly because I have two baking projects in mind: Cranberry Orange Cinnamon Rolls, and a big batch of bread for bread crumbs. I'll keep you posted!

I'm new to this site, just found it yesterday while I was surfing around looking for sourdough ideas while my yeast bread rolls were rising. Love the site and now on to my comparison.

I made a batch of my favorite white bread yeast rolls. I wanted to see how different scoring and glazing would affect the crust of the rolls. Specifically, I'm looking for a very tender crust that's easy to chew without messing with the texture of the actual bread.

I made for the test, 12 rolls. I placed them on my cooking stone in a 4 X 3 grid. Top row was a single score, right down the middle. Middle row was two scores in the shape of an X. Third row was three scores, and X with a line through the center making a star.

The first column I did not glaze, the second was glazed with vegetable oil, the third with butter and the fourth with olive oil. I glazed them once before baking, and twice after baking (first one was right after they came out of the oven, next one was about 10 minutes later).

I think both the oils gave me the texture I was looking for, the butter was very close to the texture I was looking for, but I really loved it's flavor.

I did learn that I need a lot more practice with my scoring, and a way sharper knife!