Raccoon and Lobster

By any reasonable metric, this bread should have failed. From the very beginning, signs pointed to a miserable culinary defeat. For starters, it’s adapted from a recipe by Nancy Silverton called Pumpkin Bread. It has no pumpkin in it. Ostensibly, this is because she thought pumpkin bread sounded more appealing than yam bread. I disagree, having flipped over the recipe hundreds of times. And anyways, the vegetable commonly sold under the name yam in the US is not a true yam but a sweet potato, and sweet potato bread sounds pretty darn good to me.

The recipe also calls for you to cook 2 lbs of yams but you only require 10 oz for the bread for 2 loaves. I was able to get 14 oz of pulp out of 1 lb of cooked yam. What about the rest of the yams? Nancy gives no answer. I hope you have a sack. For yams. A yam sack.

Also! She called for whole wheat flour (do not have) and cumin (do not want). And there are two 6-10 hour retarding periods in the fridge instead of the usual one. Plus the dough is really wet and sticky and annoying to work with. And I forgot it on the counter until 4am. With all the tweaks, adjustments and mistakes I made, this should have been a terrible loaf of bread.

It was not a terrible loaf of bread. The crust is soft and the crumb was much lighter than I expected. Even using more sweet potato than the recipe called for, it didn’t taste as strongly as I had expected, but it added a nice complexity and made the house smell amazing.

Sweet Potato Bread inspired by Nancy Silverton’s Pumpkin Bread.
makes one 1.5lb loaf

8 oz of cooked yams (bake at 400 degrees for about an hour until soft)
6 oz of water
4 oz of starter
2 tablespoons raw wheat germ
12 oz white bread flour
1.5 teaspoons salt

Peel the yams and mash them with a fork. Let cool. Combine water, starter, wheat germ, yam, and flour and mix or knead for 4 minutes. The dough will be wet and quite sticky, if you’re doing this by hand, use a spatula. Add salt and knead for another 10 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and stretchy and can pass the windowpane test. I would post my own helpful picture here but this was a pretty messy dough and I didn’t want sweet potato chunks clogging up my camera forever. You understand, don’t you?

Put the dough into a well oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Here is where I veer off course. Instead of refrigerating for the first ferment (6-10 hours), I forgot it on the counter. For about 8 hours. Fortunately for me, my sourdough starter is slow to rise to begin with and this dough with all the added sweet potato makes that process even slower. In the 8 hours, it just managed to double.

Too tired to fiddle with it, I simply moved it from the counter to the fridge. When I got up, I preheated the oven and took the dough out of the fridge to warm up again. Of course, it turns out that I had a dentist appointment that limited how much time I could let it rest, so I simply shaped it into a boule which deflated it quite a bit and threw it into the oven after about an hour. Fortunately, it was behaving appropriately, not quite bouncing back from my inquisitive jabs. After 30 minutes at 450°F, I had my bread.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

If you want to be less addle brained about this process, the recipe calls for 6-10 hours of fermentation in the fridge after kneading. Then you remove the dough, which should have increased in size by half, and let it rest at room temperature for an hour. Then you gently deflate and roughly shape and let rest for 15 minutes, after which you make your boule. Place into a proofing basket cover with plastic again and ferment for another 6-10 hours. Take the dough out and let it continue proofing some more until it increases in size by half again, then pop into the oven.

Or you could just wing it like I did.

Nancy Silverton’s Rosemary Olive Oil loaf. Recipe here.

Probably my best attempt so far. Nicely swollen, open crumb, no failures to speak of.

Albuquerque Hilton restaurant, take note. This is what real bread looks like.

Anybody want to come over for some cake?
Recipe below the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

You can, of course, just make the Sourdough Chocolate Cake without going to the extra step of making bite-sized chocolate covered cake-and-frosting balls. This recipe makes a light, moist cake that tastes nothing like sourdough, but does conveniently lessen the amount of starter in your fridge. Good for when you just don’t feel up to making Sourdough Hippo Biscuit Surprise.

Sourdough Chocolate Cake adapted from King Arthur Flour

1 cup (8 ½ ounces) sourdough starter, fed and “rested”
1 cup (8 ounces) milk or evaporated milk
2 cups (8 ½ ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 ½ cups (10 ½ ounces) sugar
½ cup (3½ ounces) vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
2 large eggs

Combine starter, milk and flour and let rest 2-3 hours until just bubbling. In second bowl, combine remaining ingredients, beating well after each egg. Gently add starter mixture, taking care not to fold too much to deter gluten production.

Pour into greased 9×13 cake pan or two 9″ rounds and bake at 350ºF for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick/butterknife/cake tester comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 packages cream cheese (16oz), softened
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
Confectioner’s sugar to taste, I use about 1 1/2 cups instead of the recommended 3

Mix well.

Now it’s time to make cake balls.

After cake is cooled, crumble into a large bowl. Mix thoroughly with frosting and roll into large gumball sized balls.

Now here’s where I get into trouble because my chocolate tempering skills are terrible. The chocolate on these cake balls never set properly and so I have no good advice to give you. They’re still delicious, but they are damn messy.

What I did: melt semi-sweet chocolate chips in double boiler, remove from heat, add more chocolate chips, stir, dip cake balls in chocolate, rolling with a spoon and scooping out. Let cool on parchment paper and refrigerate until chocolate is hardened. What I need to do: learn how to temper chocolate properly.

You may want to follow bakerella’s advice and use chocolate bark. Me? I’m going to keep trying to temper chocolate and eating the rejects, Lucy style.

Even though the proofing process did not go as planned and the resulting loaf was a lot denser than it should have been, the flavor of this bread was great. La Brea Bakery’s rosemary olive oil loaf was always a favorite of ours so making it at home was a no-brainer.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread
makes two 1.5lb boules

Day 1

18 oz water 70ºF
12½ oz sourdough starter
½ cup wheat germ
34oz white bread flour
3½ teaspoons sea salt
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
4 tablespoons olive oil

Combine water, starter, wheat germ and flour and let rest for 20 minutes. Add salt and and knead for 5 minutes, then add rosemary and olive oil and knead an additional 5 more minutes. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rest until double, 3-4 hours.

Turn out onto a floured surface, cut into 2 pieces, gently deflate, tuck under edges, cover and let rest for 15 minutes. Shape into boules and place into cloth lined bowls or proofing baskets if you have them (Clearly I need some!). Cover and let proof at room temperature until it rises about an inch, 1.5 to 2 hours.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap again and refrigerate for 8-12 hours, or a max of 24 hours.

Day 2

Remove dough and let it warm up to 58ºF, about 2-2.5 hours. This is the point where the boyfriend turned on the broiler and accidentally baked half of the loaf onto the proofing cloth.

I was able to pry most of the cold dough off and reform the boule and put it in to bake as soon as the oven had heated up to the requisite 500ºF. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty good for so much mishandling. The final proof not going as planned meant that the crumb was a lot denser than it should have been and it was a heavy loaf, but the flavor was good and the crust came out very well.

Bake for 40-45 minutes at 450º.

Submitted to Yeaspotting

The second loaf, which should have been the flagship of this batch did not have the excuse of an accidental half-baking, but I absentmindedly popped it into the oven without scoring it at all, and so two enormous air bubbles formed almost immediately and the rest of the loaf laid there like a flat, sad, sack.

Belated scoring was not enough to revive it and to add insult to injury, the largest air bubble began to brown and then blackened as it got so close to the oven walls. Not a banner day for bread baking.

The true failure crumb in a sadness loaf:

Update:

Pictures of a much improved loaf from a later batch

It’s been 11 days and there are three containers of sourdough in my fridge, two in the oven and one given away. I have dreamt about sourdough several times this week. My kitchen smells of sourdough. I smell of sourdough. There is a layer of flour covering everything I own. It is definitely time to make some damn bread.

This is using Minnie as a starter.

Basic Country White Loaf from Breads from the La Brea Bakery
Makes two 1.5lb boules

12 ounces starter
2 lb 2 oz white bread flour
1 lb 2 oz water 70° F
1/2 cup raw wheat germ
4 1/2 tsp salt
Vegetable oil

Adjust the water temperature up by 1° for every degree the room temperature is below 73° F. Combine water, starter and flour and knead 5-7 minutes until dough is elastic and takes on the shape of a boule. Cover for 20 minutes for autolyse, which is a fancy word for “upload pictures and post to your blog.”

Autolyse complete, you want to sprinkle the salt over the dough and knead again for 5-7 minutes until the dough resembles a baby’s buttocks. Additional description leads me to conclude that baby’s buttocks can be stretched, like tanuki testicles, until they are paper thin and see through. Creepy. Place into a large oiled glass or ceramic bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rest in 70-75° room until double, about 3.5-4 hours. Realize belatedly that you have a very long night ahead of you.

After dough has risen, turn out and cut in half. Slap each piece around a little to deflate and make a rough loaf shape. Cover for 15 minutes. Rock loaves and wrap the dough into boule shapes with a smooth skin that stretches over the entire surface. Place into proofing baskets or onto a couche. Proof again for 1 hour. Too tired to make a couche/couch joke, go back to sleeping on the sofa until your hour is up.

When dough has increased in volume by 1/4, place in fridge for 8-12 hours for retarding. Finally stagger off to bed.

After you wake up, take out the boules and let them warm up and double in size for the final proof, approx 3 hours.  Preheat the oven to 500° approx 1 hour before baking. When the dough is ready, slash the boules and bake for approx 45 minutes at 450°.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

Sourdough hippo biscuit surprise

3 cups of the sourdough starter you’re supposed to discard
1 cup rolled oats
3 cups of flour
1 can of sardines in spring water (surprise!)
1 beaten egg

Combine starter, flour and sardines in mixer and mix well to combine. Adjust proportions as necessary to make a stiff dough. Wrap securely in plastic wrap and let rest for 2 hours. Roll out onto a floured surface and cut. Brush on egg wash and bake at 400° for 30 minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes to dry out. Let the taunting begin.