muffins

I've been baking a lot of sourdough as of late, and since I'm stubborn I don't ever refrigerate any of the starter and maintain it exclusively on the counter. While this lends to a vigorous starter it also encourages (ok, demands!) frequent baking, or you're going to either end up with the starter that ate your kitchen, or be exceptionally wasteful by refreshing the starter so frequently.

I have a little bit of a sweet tooth, and love blueberries so this was a natural next step.

I have adapted this recipe from this recipe at Sourdough Home:
http://www.sourdoughhome.com/index.php?content=blueberrymuffins

I made some adjustments as to my taste and added a crunchy Streusel topping!

Ingredients
-----------

1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil (EVOO works great here)
1 cup 100% rye sourdough starter at 100% hydration!
2tbsp of Greek Yogurt (adds a little more acidity, good fat)

1/2 cup whole rye or wheat flour if you must
1/2 cup of organic buckwheat flour
1/3 cup of ground flax seeds
1 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup sugar or fructose
3/4 cup frozen blueberries

Streusel Topping

2 cups pecans or walnuts (8 oz.)
½ cup packed light brown sugar (I combined molasses and caster sugar)
⅓ cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
2 Tbs. vegetable oil (I used more EVOO, though next time I may be decadent and use coconut oil)

Method

Preheat oven to 425F. (I use a convection oven, so actual temp was 400F)

Prepare streusel by combining nuts, sugar, oats, cinnamon and salt in food processor and pulsing a few times until a coarse mixture is achieved. Slowly drizzle in oil taking care to stop before creating a paste. The ideal consistency will be damp, but very crumbly. Set aside.

Combine dry ingredients in small bowl and then stir in blueberries. Combine wet ingredients in medium bowl.
Add dry ingredients to wet ones.

Place muffin cups inside tin and oil and dust them.
Oil a large dough or ice cream scoop and spoon batter into cups.
Sprinkle a liberal amount of Streusel topping over each cup such that you can no longer see the batter.

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes or 16 min for convection

Allow to cool for 5 minutes in tin and then transfer to rack to cool to room temperature!
This should yield about a dozen full sized muffins. Enjoy!

Okay this is now the best thing that I have ever baked:

I have been baking a recipe for lemon, poppy seed muffins for some time now.  I improved on this one by using lemon flavoured yogurt along with the lemon extract and zest.  It was this recipe that inspired me to try my 2 favourite field berries, field berry yogurt, along with fresh berries in the muffin mix.  For a half of the above recipe I mashed 1/4 C rasps into the dough and added 1/4 C blueberries gently later in the mix.  I filled the muffin cups not quite 3/4 full and then pressed a full, firm, fresh raspberry into the dough, covering it with a Tbs or so of dough.  Oh my!

I know I always say this is the best thing ever baked, but I really, really like these!!!!

Regards, Brian

1 C flour

1/4 C + 1 Tbs sugar

2 Tbs poppy seeds

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Sift together the obove ingredients.

1 large egg

1/2 C fieldberry yogurt -- highest fat % I can find!

2 Tbs oil

1/4 cup raspberries

1/4 tsp lemon extract

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix wet and dry and make sure the raspberries are mashed into the dough.  When well mixed, add:

1/4 C fresh blueberries, stirring in gently

This recipe makes 6 muffins and can easily be doubled.  As above, one whole, fresh raspberry was added to each muffin, whcn in the muffin cup.  Bake for 20 minutes at 400F turning at the half.

Enjoy!!!  Did I say I realllly liked these???

This weekend has been a smorgasbord of baked goods.  Friday afternoon i mixed together a poolish with the intentions of making poolish baguettes the following day.  I let the poolish sit out until it was nice and bubbling then retired it to the refrigerator for the next day.  I removed the poolish from the refrigerator and brought it to room temp while I prepared the main dough. 

I was working off of Peter Reinhart's poolish baguette recipe from BBA.  I sifted the wheat flour to remove the bran, i'm not sure if my sieve was fine enough to remove all the bran but it removed a large proportion of it.  I'm going to be a bit lazy in my blogging tonight and just post a few pictures, which will not include crumb shots because the crumb turned out piss poor.

I had to find something to do with the left over bran i sifted from the wheat flour.  I decided to make bran muffins, which I have never made before but thought i would try.  The recipe was a crap shoot a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  I used a small portion of wheat flour to AP added some sugar some molasses, yeast, and buttermilk and an egg.  I topped the muffins with oats and baked them in a 350 degree oven until a toothpick came out clean.  I can't say I've ever had a bran muffin so I have nothing to compare them to, they seem to taste fine.  

I caught an episode of Diners Drive in's and Dives earlier this week, Guy Fieri happened upon a restaurant that featured cranberry and wild rice french toast.  The two ingredients seem like such an odd combination to me and I had to try it.  I pieced together a recipe and made a large sandwich loaf with a smaller free form loaf to go with it.  Needless to say, I can't wait for breakfast in the morning, I just wish I had some fresh maple syrup to go with it.  

As if this wasn't enough for one day, I decided to make sandwich loaves for the upcoming week.  The loaves are basic white loaves from The Bread Bible.  I don't eat a lot of white bread but this will have to do this week until I can make some whole grain loaves.  

Nope, not done yet.  The poolish baguette recipe calls for 7 ounces of poolish, which leaves a substantial amount for another application.  I am tossing around the idea of making a poolish pizza crust tomorrow, although I am still uncertain about a recipe at this point.  I have also decided to start the bread baker's apprentice challenge tomorrow.  I have already made quite a few of the recipes in the book but I will chalk that up to practice.  At any rate, I have the soaker for Anadama bread sitting on the counter top now, another post to follow.

Happy Baking,

-Matthew 

White Sandwich loaf before pre-shape

White sandwich loaves final proof

Finished sandwich loaves

Crumb Shot

C

Mixture of the day's bake

Crumb shot of cranberry wild rice bread

I baked some sourdough chocolate donuts and heart shaped muffins this weekend.  At last the fresh cherries are flowing so I chopped up a pound of fresh Bing Cherries to fold into the batter (and some chocolate chips too).  

The wild culture (sourdough starter) that I used in these donuts and "love loaves" was captured in Mexico City last year and is one of my favorite cultures for baking (especially for pairing with chocolate).  The sourdough keeps them moist and tender.  They are disappearing fast!

Getting home an hour earlier than expected + The best blueberries I've had in years in the fridge = 

The recipe is from "The Best Recipe" by the "Cooks Illustrated" folks. These are "Lemon-Blueberry Muffins." I made 3/4 of a recipe. (That's the real "math.")

And for the rest of the "crumb shot" obsessed:

It was hard to decide what to have for dessert - fresh out of the oven muffin or a slice of ....

My wife's Plum Cake (inspired by the recent postings about this).

I went with the muffin. There's always bedtime snack.

David