What to do with ww sourdough bread with burnt crust
My last batch of wholewheat sourdough was a disaster from start to finish. I was distracted and didn't mix the starter thoroughly enough. Nonetheless, I mixed up the dough and waited for it to rise in the refrigerator. Rise was slow and I was worried that it would be dry and hard, so I mixed up the dough with some extra white bread flour, commercial yeast, water, and honey. I retarded it for a day and baked it this morning. I was online and not paying attention ... the bread got too brown. Not quite burnt, but the crust is unpleasantly hard and strong-tasting. Inside is fine, but very sour.
Ordinarily I would just cut up the bread and use it in bread pudding. There's a plastic tub in the freezer where I store the bread bits until I have enough for a batch of pudding. However, this bread is so intense that I think it wouldn't work well in bread pudding.
I'm thinking that I could slice it thin, cut off the crusts, and make garlic bread. Once baked, I could freeze it. Or perhaps some sort of onion soup with bread? Any other suggestions?
BTW, the sourdough made with white bread flour turned out superb, so the day wasn't a total waste :)
I find really sour bread to be a great flavor base for savory bread pudding. I've made a tomato bread pudding and a gruyere and leek one that were pretty good. Some other ideas:
- cube and toss in plenty of olive oil and herbs to make croutons. They go great with a cool gazpacho. Perfect for summer weather!
-croque monsieur/ croque madame. The sauce mornay complements the sourness well.
-sourdough bread crumbs. I haven't tried this, but I imagine they would make delicious meatballs as well as a nice crunchy casserole topping.
Good suggestions. Thanks! I may try a savory bread pudding. Never made one. I wonder what I can get cheaply in Honolulu that would bake up well with bread and eggs.
Having grown up with a toaster that either had no intensity adjustment or it just worked often enough for you to trust it, we three sisters scraped a lot of burnt toast. Yesterday I baked my treasured Raisin Brioche, carefully following directions which included placing the loaves on the lowest shelf. To make matters worse I forgot to turn the oven temperature down until they had spent about ten minutes at 500 degrees. In less than fifteen minutes I was tenting them with foil and sadly of course they had burned on the bottoms and in places on the sides. After they were pretty cool, I tried to take slivers off with a serrated bread knive. That worked but looked really bad. Luckily the knife slipped and scraped instead of slivering and there was a lovely brown crust. I remembered the scraping of the toast and tried it on the rest of the loaves and they are now a lovely color with no burnt taste.
I'd also suggest making a simple breakfast casserole with cubes of bread, sausage and eggs. Some form of the Italian strata would be tasty and pretty reasonable in cost. Lots of recipes in the search section. Good luck
I cut off the crusts, put them out for the birds, cut up the bread, and made a Swiss cheese and leek savory bread pudding. Delish!
Many such recipes online; the one I used came from Thomas Keller's home cookbook, Ad Hoc. Thanks for the mention of breakfast casserole and strata. I looked those up and see that I have lots of options for savory bread and egg dishes. My culinary horizons have expanded. Thanks to you both!
Once you burn bread you can never go back to a less tasty variety :-)
Sometimes, in order to find the right path to success or solve a problem, you have to fail miserably first so you can clearly see that it would have been so much better if you would have only done that instead! Then go do it.
Thankfully failure lead you to a fine Thomas Keller recipe that saved the day and opened horizons. What a nice story!