loydb's blog

I used to have a problem with my crackers, but then I took an arrow to the knee...

For the last month or so, I've been turning all my extra sourdough starter into crackers. With a couple of exceptions, they've been disappointing: not crisp enough, too crisp and burnt, no flavor, too much salt, etc. etc. That all changed a couple of days ago, mostly by accident. I've since successfuly reproduced the recipe three times, and may have it down now.

When I play Skyrim, I play it *loud*. What's the point of hurling your enemies off of a mountaintop with the power of your Shout if it doesn't make the pictures on the wall shake? As a result, I didn't hear the kitchen timer, and only remembered I had crackers in the oven when the smell of "Hey, that smells like something baking" penetrated my dragon-killing frenzy. Instead of the 15 minutes I'd intended to cook them, I ended up cooking them 40 minutes. Fortunately, I'd been experimenting with the pasta machine, and had both made them thicker than normal, and set the oven cooler than normal (350 degrees F instead of the 375 I'd been using). They were perfect.

So I set out to make them again, this time intentionally.

Start with a cup of leftover starter at 100% hydration. Add 1/4 cup oil (I use walnut oil), a tablespoon of softened butter, a teaspoon of salt, and roughly 5 oz of whole wheat flour. You're shooting for fairly stiff. Spray it with olive oil and let it set under plastic for anywhere from 3-6 hours.

Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick, then sprinkle with a pinch of kosher salt, and a pinch of whatever dried herb takes your fancy (I used dill in one batch, thyme in another). Then fold the dough over on itself and roll out again.

Add the seeds of your choice on half of the dough. I used black seasame seeds and brown mustard seed. Fold over again and roll out.

 Chop into smaller pieces, and run it through a pasta machine on the widest setting (#0 on my Atlas). Fold again.

Run these through on #0 again, then on #1, then finish on #2.

Put them on parchment paper, spray with olive oil, and sprinkle with kosher salt and more seeds. Gently roll them again with a pin to seat the seeds, then dock many, many times with a fork.

Cook for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees F. Then turn the oven off, crack the door, and let them sit for another 10-15 minutes, watching to make sure they don't overbrown. The picture shows them at the end of 30 minutes. The final color can be seen on the plate, above.

Move to a cooling rack and let sit (the ones on the rack below are the ones from the original Skyrim batch. The ones on the plate at top are from a subsequent test batch.) Break into smaller pieces as desired.

This went badly, badly wrong. Yes, that's how it came out of the oven.

They can't all be home runs...

I'm revisiting my Pulled Pork Sourdough Pizza. I toned down the heat a bit -- I still used habenero bbq sauce when I pre-heated the pork, but use a sweeter sauce on the actual dough. And instead of serranos, I used jalapenos for the pico. It still had a kick to it, but didn't leave my wife in tears...

It's kickoff week for the Inside the Jewish Bakery Challenge - Semester 1. We're starting off with Mohn bars.

The bars are made up of three sub-recipes: 1-2-3 dough, a poppyseed filling, and streusel on the top. I used KA bread flour instead of home milled this time.

Baking notes:

• The food processor did nothing for my poppy seeds -- I ended up using my blender, which did a great job.
• I ended up adding almost a half cup extra of water while boiling the poppyseed mix.
• Also, through bad reading, I boiled the honey rather than adding it at the end.
• I cooked the shortbread an extra 10 minutes to get some color into it (and it's still pretty pale)
• I cooked the final bars an extra 15 minutes, with the broiler on for the last 2 mins, to get the streusel browned

These bars are illustrative of why I'm in the challenge -- they have a (wonderful) flavor that I've never encountered, and would have never thought to try. I'm hoping there's still half a pan left for my wife to take to the office tomorrow, I really don't need to eat all of these :)

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan. Because my kitchen feels like a meat locker these days, I put the pullman pan in the microwave oven and put two cups boiling water in a sealed plastic container, then stuck it inside as well. It rose for 2 more hours, then I put the pullman pan into a cold oven, set it on 375 degrees F, and baked for 2 hours 15 minutes.

The sweetness is just about perfect for a breakfast/dessert bread. I think I'll add more cherries next time, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.

I don't know about you guys, but last week wore me out. I'm just now recovering and have the energy to recap :)

Here's the last week or so of production. The struan I kept, everything else went on Thursday.

• Sourdough rye rolls using the Old School Deli Rye recipe from ITJB. I milled 1.5 tablespoons of caraway seeds in while milling the flour. IMO, I made them too small and/or cooked too long, they got really hard. They were fine once cut in half, but biting into a whole one was painful.
• Plain sourdough loaves. This was my first time using the Russian whole wheat sourdough strain from sourdo.com. It's a little less sour than the KA New England strain I've been using, but is much more vigorous with 100% home-milled grain.
• Apple Pie. Pretty much straight from Alton's Good Eats recipe, except I use traditional spices.
• PR's multigrain struan via WGB. This has become one of my favorite recipes.

I had a *bunch* of extra rye starter after feeding this time, so I made a mostly-starter batch of sunflower and pumpkin seed rye inspired by PR's in BBA. I only added about 1.5 cups of hard red and white whole wheat total, the rest was 100% rye starter.

You know what's good? Chocolate chip blueberry pancakes with pecans. Don't want to make pancakes every morning? Try this.

I started with PR's BBA basic sourdough recipe, using a milled mixture of 50/50 hard red and hard white wheat with KA New England sourdough starter. I then added the following:

• 5 oz dried blueberries
• 4 oz pecans
• 4 oz milk chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup (for god's sake, real maple, not that goo in a plastic jug. If you don't have real, use maple extract or leave it out.)

The pictured loaf used 6 oz of chips, which was too much. I've adjusted to 4 oz. I did a stretch and fold every 45 minutes for 3 hours, then left it alone to rise another two hours, then put in the fridge overnight to retard.

The next problem I faced was that I really didn't want chocolate melting into my baking stone. Solution? Pullman pan! After retarding the final dough overnight, I let it warm up for a couple of hours, then shaped it and put it in a 13" x 4.5" x 4.5" pullman pan and let it rise for three hours. It was about 3/4 up the pan, and unlikely to go much higher on its own. I put the lid on the pan and put it into a cold oven, set it to 375 degreesF, and went away for two hours. I pulled the lid back far enough to check the browning, and let it have another 20 minutes. YMMV.

It needs no butter or anything else, and has been our breakfast all week.

• Step 1: Smoke a pork shoulder to 188 degrees internal
• Step 2: Make pizza

This has pulled pork, habenero bbq sauce, hot pico, and a mix of cheddar and monterray jack cheese. It was crispy, delicious, and brutally hot. I think I'm going to make it again this weekend!

A few weeks ago I made a Sourdough with Candied Orange that was a huge hit around here. The arrival of a pullman pan coincided with my wife's demands to make something like that again. This is based on PR's BBA Panettone with the following changes:

• 33% of the flour was home-milled hard red and white wheat in a 50/50 mix
• I used more dried fruit -- 2 oz each of dried golden raisins, cranberries and cherries soaked overnight in Kraken rum with Mandarin Orange and Vanilla extracts.
• I used more nuts -- 2 oz each of pecans, walnuts and almond slivers that I toasted beforehand.
• Even after extended rising time, the loaf wasn't filling the large (13" x 4.5" x 4.5") pullman pan, so I put it into an unheated oven, turned to 325, and left for 1 hour 45 mins. I will go longer next time, but I was worried about burning it. As you can see, it rose perfectly.
• For the candied fruit, I used 1.5 cups of candied tangerine peel. I was happier with the orange peel, I'll use it next time. The tangerine peel was thinner and a little more bitter.

We'll be eating breakfast (and probably dessert) off of this for awhile. I may try making french toast with the last bits.