Monthly Archives: February 2013

I go nuts with sweet and sour.

church, food and cooking, Lent, , , , ,

 

The sourdough experiment continued, through Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. It felt a little hectic and chaotic (and nostalgic) to make cookies, pancakes, and bread, and eat candy, all in one week’s time. The chaotic part came from me being the only cleaner-upper of the kitchen. I always cook as though I have at least two of those following behind.

On Monday I put another sourdough sponge to ferment. This time I used the one made with pineapple juice, that took so long to get going. I had added a little buttermilk after a week or so and that seemed to give it a boost. At this point I added some flour and water and instant mashed potato flakes.

The next day was Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday, and for the first time ever I intentionally made pancakes for the day. I have never been in a church other than the Orthodox Church that had a liturgical calendar, and we don’t have Ash Wednesday. But Mr. Glad is Anglican now and I did it for the sake of that church’s tradition, even though there isn’t any need to use up all the eggs and butter in this era when Anglicans normally go on eating as they did before. All the while, the sponge sat nearby and got more sour and yeasty with those wild and local yeasts.

Wednesday morning I went to my first Ash Wednesday service with my husband. I didn’t take the ashes on my forehead, because I am not starting Lent yet, and when that time comes it will last just long enough.

In the evening I put together shortbread dough so that on Valentine’s Day I could cut out heart sweets for my honey. I used the Hearst Castle Shortbread recipe from 101 Cookbooks. Have you seen Hearst Castle? I went there and other places with my 8th Grade class on our Spring outing and don’t remember a thing.

All day I had thought about whether any minute I should finish up the bread dough and put it into pans to rise…I planned to make this batch without adding any commercial yeast, the way I used to do at the beginning of my sourdough career. In those days it was the usual thing for the dough to proof in the pans for several hours before it had risen enough to put into the oven. A couple of times I’d let it go all night.

As it happened, it just didn’t happen until the evening, that I could manage to get to it, and add the rest of the ingredients, i.e. some olive oil and mostly white flour. I forgot to add any sweetening, and I wrote down to put in 1 tablespoon of salt. But did I do it?

I shaped loaves and put them into three medium loaf pans on the counter. It was late by then, so I didn’t linger in the kitchen, but even in those few minutes before heading upstairs I saw that the dough was rising. Uh-oh. I was so tired, the clever idea of letting them rise in the refrigerator or in the cold garage never occurred to me. I went upstairs to crash.

Next morning….as soon as I woke up I ran down in my nightgown to find this:

So there was nothing for it but to do this:
And get those loaves into the oven as fast as possible. The little loaf was made of the trimmed-off pieces of dough.

We were expecting our out-of-town friend Myriah for lunch, but I had plenty of time to make the cookies I’d planned, or so I thought. But the slabs of buttery dough were too firm to roll out right away, so while they softened up on the counter I searched upstairs and down and all over for the pink and red baking decorations I had recently bought. Nope. Not to be found.

Finally I cut out hearts, and sprinkled on the remainder of a bottle of pink crystals left from some long-ago Valentine project. The cookies took much longer to bake than the recipe said, perhaps because my cookies were larger and my cookie sheet was insulated. All through lunch with our good friend I jumped up and down from the table to check the cookies and slide a few more on to the racks.

Meanwhile, the bread baked 50 minutes, cooled a little, and was soon tasted. The tops were rough and ugly where I had peeled off the plastic wrap, but the crust was just the right crunchiness and the crumb was lovely — chewy and moist. My first thought, though, was that I hadn’t added enough salt to the dough. After eating several slices I’ve concluded that I completely forgot to put in any salt at all. No wonder the dough rose so fast!

Myriah and Mr. Glad said they didn’t notice anything wrong with the sandwiches I made with the bread — they thought it was good. I’m eager to try doing pretty much the same method on a day when I have my wits about me. What to do with the Super Bland Sourdough? It’s perfect with Super Tangy and Salty Marmite spread on it.

Myriah brought some Crockpot Peanut Clusters that she and her daughters had made. They call for dry-roasted peanuts and the saltiness with the chocolate was addictive. The shortbread was heavenly. We ate plenty of both, no doubt out of salt-deprivation. The fact is, the flavor of sourdough does not come through without a little salt and maybe even a little sugar in the mix.

I didn’t think of taking the cookies’ photograph until I had put most of them into the freezer to have handy when Mr. Glad wants just one cookie, so I took out the container again so you can see them all piled up in it.

 

Am I not the maddest sourdough scientist you ever heard of? I should be embarrassed to tell this story, but instead it makes me laugh. I am strangely unflappable — I even considered starting another sponge today, but I got a grip on myself and even cleaned the kitchen before writing my tale.

Accustomed to Tepidity

church, Lent, quotes,

In the West, Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. In the Orthodox Church, we don’t begin until March 17 this year! Pascha is May 5th, more than a month after Western Easter. It seems to me this would make it convenient for you who celebrate The Resurrection of Christ the last day of March to visit an Orthodox church near you on May 5th to experience the Feast of Feasts in its glory, in a way you won’t find elsewhere. But I’ll remind you when we get closer to that date.

For now, I want to re-post from almost three years ago a long quote that seems appropriate for Lent, or for any day or hour when needed.

From Father Moses of the Holy Mount of Athos:

An offspring of [the sin of] pride is censure, which is unfortunately also a habit of many Christians, who tend to concern themselves more with others than themselves. This is a phenomenon of our time and of a society that pushes people into a continuous observation of others, and not of the self.

Modern man’s myriad occupations and activities do not want him to ever remain alone to study, to contemplate, to pray, to attain self-awareness, self critique, self-control and to be reminded of death. The so-called Mass Media are incessantly preoccupied with scandal-seeking, persistently and at length, with human passions, with sins, with others’ misdemeanors. These kinds of things provoke, impress, and, even if they do not scandalize, they nevertheless burden the soul and the mind with filth and ugliness and they actually reassure us, by making us believe that “we are better” than those advertised.

Thus, a person becomes accustomed to the mediocrity, the tepidity and the transience of superficial day-to-day life, never comparing himself to saints and heroes. This is how censure prevails in our time – by giving man the impression that he is justly imposing a kind of cleansing, by mud-slinging at others, albeit contaminating himself by generating malice, hatred, hostility, resentfulness, envy and frigidity. Saint Maximos the Confessor in fact states that the one who constantly scrutinizes others’ sins, or judges his brothers based on suspicion only, has not even begun to repent, nor has he begun any research into discovering his own sins.

Thanks to the rector of our parish for posting this passage in the church bulletin.

Homebodiness was the reason…

family, food and cooking, history,
 
Pineapple Juice Starter Start

…Homebodiness was the reason I spent so much time stirring and sniffing my sourdough over the last weeks, instead of making dolls. I keep telling everyone that I want to make dolls, but I end up doing a little of this and a little of that.

In this case I was researching sourdough and baking. I could have made several dolls during the time it took me to do all this baking-related stuff, including a huge Pizza Project as it became known in my mind. We had invited friend Tim the Sailor for lunch, and I said brightly and optimistically to my husband, “I could make pizza!”

But that’s a side story. It’s the fact of me being a Homebody that got me into the baking, because I lack a dollmaker’s needle at the least, to begin on my dolls, which I have been reading up about, by the way. Reading about projects is also easy to do at home. But I can’t seem to kick myself out the door to drive five minutes to the craft store for the needle.

Two Starters in Three Containers

And for old time’s sake I did want to make some sourdough bread. For a few years at least — maybe even a dozen? — my kitchen would churn out several loaves a month of the most sour bread you can imagine. The children liked it that way, as dense as pumpernickel but light colored and tasting almost vinegary if you were not in the right mood. I was always trying to get the crumb of a sourdough French such as our San Francisco Bay Area is famous for, but then I would lose the intense flavor.

Later we lost all the biggest bread-eaters, and then I let the starter die. It had never been my own baby — the starter always had its beginning in someone else’s kitchen. In about 1975 I had been given my first batch by a church friend, and I used it for a few years until it was neglected (notice the passive and guilt-free voice) into oblivion. My neighbor Linda gave me my next sourdough, and I began using that in earnest.

We’d eat sourdough pancakes for breakfast, sourdough biscuits for dinner, and slices of the tangy bread in the car on extended trips into town. One time a couple of slices were forgotten in the glove compartment for several weeks and when discovered they were not even dried out or moldy.

Sourdough Sponge

I gave a jar of my starter to my neighbor Sarah, and when mine was forgotten for a time and died she gave me some back. But when I moved over the mountains to my present town my starter changed its personality and never was much fun again. I hadn’t really missed it until last month, when Jody’s fiddling with sourdough inspired me. I put together the recipes for two different versions on the same day, just to have a better chance of ending up with at least one active starter after a few days.

The Ancient and Convoluted Instructions

The one I was most confident in is called Manuel’s Rye Sour, a recipe I had seen decades ago in my Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book. I happened to have more of that pumpernickel rye flour around so it was a natural to use it. The second recipe I found online uses some pineapple juice along with the flour and water. That one is only now after about 10 days starting to have a good sour smell, so I’m glad I didn’t have to twiddle my thumbs waiting for it.

Sourdough Sponge after several hours

Manuel’s starter was usable after about five days. I used it as I had my old starters: to get the strong flavor I’d add six or eight cups of flour and some water to a cup or two of the starter and let that sponge sit on the kitchen counter for 24 -72 hours until the whole big bowl was busy growing the desired yeasts.

It didn’t take long for Manuel’s Sour to get to working. The sponge rose with the activity of the sour bugs, and then fell again, but it kept developing flavor for another day until I could get to it. This whole description is beyond anyone’s ability and probably desire to duplicate, so I won’t give you a recipe, but I will say that to this sponge I added a small amount of yeast, sugar, salt and oil, and enough flour to make a smooth dough.

Many years ago after a couple of friends asked me about my method of making sourdough bread, I wrote a long description of the process that is so complicated and variable, “sometimes this” and “sometimes that,” I can hardly plough through it today. But I referred to it when baking this time.

After kneading my dough I didn’t let it rise in the bowl again. I just formed the loaves, which weighed just over a pound each, and set them to rise. In the distant past the proofing would often take all day, whether or not I added commercial yeast to assist the wild. This time, Mr. Glad and I took a 40-minute walk around the neighborhood, and when we got back they were ready to put in the oven.

My pizza stone was still around from the pizza lunch, so I baked some rounds on it, and the remainder of dough in a loaf pan. I used parchment paper to slide them on to the stone. They took an hour at 375°F to bake. I was pleased enough with the bread….It wasn’t as sour as I might have liked, and the addition of rye flour made it less chewy than my ideal — I had intended to add some gluten flour for chewiness but forgot.

So now I’ve begun my series of experiments, as I’ll think of these cooking adventures. I managed to give away the prettiest round loaf today, and if I can find enough gluten-tolerant people around to give bread to I’ll be happy. Tomorrow, tomorrow — “I love you, Tomorrow!” — it’s off to the craft store for a needle. Then next time my Homebody Self can sit stitching at my doll while the bread bakes and the house fills with its good and toasty smells.