egg free

I am not a baker. I am a chef, and therefore I got my own ideas how food can work.

I wanted a cinnamon bagel fine crumb with a nice tough crust. No egg, butter, milk or oil.

Right I did do a little research about lye, baking soda, potato water, blanching, rolling and oven temperature

Make potato water:

• 180 gr nice golden potato can be any like annabel or agria
• 1 ltr water

cook the potato, no salt. cool down and blend

make a starter by mixing:

• 3 C bakers flour
• 1 C rye flour
• 1 t active dried yeast
• 3  1/2 C room temprature potato water (will be creamy)

place everything in a kitchen mixer use a hook, I use a kitchen aid, wait until everything is mixed and put on full until the dough starts to crawl up the hook. This can take 10 minutes.

Covered the bowl with plastic and left it to double in volume on the bench

Back under the machine with the hook and add:

• 3 C bakers flour
• 2 t malt flour
• 1/2 t dried active yeast

• 1  1/2 t iodised fine salt
• 1 C currants (dry)
• 2 t mixed spice (cinnamon, cardamom, anise, clove)

I placed the dough in a large plastic container with lid and wrapped it up in a blanket. until again double in volume.

divide into portions of 100gr and round up

 Bring a pan of water to the boil (apprx 5ltr) add 2 T malt flour mixed with a little cold water, and 1 T baking Soda

push your index finger through the middle and make an even hole in the middle (even better: roll into a ribbon and connect the ends with a little water, press to hold)

leave on baking paper covered tray for another 20 minutes under a cloth

blanch the bagels in the boiling water for 1 minute (1/2 minute each side, flip them over in the water) 

pre heat the oven top and bottom heat 260°C no fan (500°F) 

place back on the baking tray and let them cool, meanwhile they will rise a little

place the tray in the middle of the oven, lower the oven to 230-225°C (450°F) bake for 22 minutes 

let them cool!  let them cool! let them cool!  time will give the crust it's toughness and the bread can settle.

very nice with some aged cheddar, or dried salami it's worth the wait

Have fun making them and bon appetite

Growing starter in the refrigerator is said to minimize the sour taste of sourdough. It also enables us to reduce the feedings from 3 times a day to twice. I find my starters ferment very quickly these days making me wonder if I have enormous invisible colonies of yeast and bacteria in my kitchen. I also ferment water kefir, milk kefir, and kombucha so I assume there is quite a bit of activity going on.

A friend of mine, Peggy, likes to tinker in the kitchen. She experiments with many recipes and techniques and documents them in great detail. She tried growing a starter in the refrigerator, something I haven’t had time to see all the way through.

Here are her notes:

“I decided to go with a simple loaf of bread using quinoa and sorghum flours.

I had a small amount of rice-sorghum-teff starter left over from making multigrain bread and fed it for four days with alternating and equal amounts of quinoa flour and sorghum flour. I chose to use these because they were what I had on hand. I also was going for a lighter colored bread.

I gave it a little boost with 1 tablespoon of water kefir to perk it up on the second day.

After 24 hours of feedings I put it in the fridge because it was very bubbly and soupy! I didn’t want a strong sourdough flavor this time as I just baked two batches that were strongly fermented.

I continued to feed it 3 times a day continuing to keep it in the fridge.

36 hours later, I removed it from the fridge because it looked flat and dead But four hours later, when I next looked at it, it was furiously bubbling away!!! I had been deceived by the chilled mixture. I fed it and returned it to the fridge.

8 hours later when I took it out to feed it, it was actively bubbling even though it was so cold. I think it liked the fact that I had taken it out that first time for a few hours.”

She said that the finished bread had just enough sour taste to let you know you were eating sourdough. Not overpowering at all!

Most people associate pancakes with maple syrup, butter and fruit. Since I have had to stay away from sweets I have begun to use pancakes in a different way. I use them as a savory grain side dish to accompany soup, beans, and stew, sometimes even tearing them up, putting them right in the soup or stew. I use them as part of a snack with unusual toppings and spreads like peanut butter, tahini, chopped liver, salsa or gravlax (home cured salmon).
The high proportion of nutritious ingredients makes these pancakes a substantial part of a snack or meal.

We normally flip a wheat pancake when bubbles form around the edges. With gluten free pancakes we need to wait another few minutes after bubbles form because the extra moisture and density of the batter takes more time to cook properly.

Allow at least 7 hours of fermentation time after feeding the starter before using the starter in cooking. This will ensure your flours are properly soaked before cooking and eating.
So that means if you feed the starter in the morning the batter will be ready for pancakes for dinner. If you want pancakes in the morning feed the starter the night before.

 
Sourdough Pancakes – Basic recipe

For pancakes: prior to cooking, have the last feeding of the starter be ½ cup of buckwheat or gluten free oat flour and slightly less than ½ cup of water. Let ferment 7 hours. A pure rice flour starter tends to be on the thin, soupy side and buckwheat or oat flour will give the pancakes some needed density.

For 4 pancakes:
1 cup mature brown rice flour sourdough starter (including the last feeding of buckwheat and water)
1 tablespoon oil, melted butter or fat
A large pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons freshly ground flax seed (grind in a dedicated coffee grinder)

Mix oil, salt and ground flax seed into starter
Let sit for at least 15 minutes to allow the flax to thicken the batter. The batter should be like a thick cake batter.
If the batter is too thick whisk in a little water, a tablespoon at a time, until you get the desired consistency
 (The batter can also sit for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator. The finished pancakes will be thinner and lighter)
Oil pan or griddle and heat to fairly hot
Spoon or ladle out the batter onto the pan
These take longer to cook than wheat pancakes so flip a few minutes after bubbles show up or the edges start to dry out.
Cook another 1-2 minutes and serve.

You can also cool them on a rack and refrigerate in a container for a 3-5 days. Just reheat them in the toaster.