Can I have another….Sourdough Doughnut?

 

Today I am working with Sourdough Doughnuts! I love sourdough baking! There is so much creativity involved.

I started last night with a preferment so that my dough today would have a high ratio of active cultures.

  

 

 This morning I took the preferment which was bubbling along nicely and poured it into my Blendtec Mixer . I then added milk, mashed potatoes, vanilla, pastry and AP flours and other ingredients to make up a dough at 62 % hydration. The amounts were just at the limit of what my mixer could handle. The dough was shaggy looking when I was done with initial mixing.

  

 However, after an autolyse period, the dough was looking stretchy and smoother.

 I took the dough out of the mixer and put it into an 8 quart container, as my mixer had little room for the dough to expand. I used the Alaska starter so I didn’t have to wait all day long for the bulk ferment, plus the preferment also helps the dough to proceed at a faster pace.

  

 

I let the dough raise for about 4 hours. Then I poured it out on the table and divided the dough into two pieces. Each piece weighed just a little over 4 lbs, I had made 8 lbs 1.4oz of dough!

   

 

 I let the dough pieces rest a bit and then rolled them out to about 1/2 ” thick circles. I had a donut cutter that I had bought at an antique store. It didn’t work too well. The inner piece for cutting the doughnut holes didn’t cut all the way through so I had to pull, rip out each center which was partially cut. I made about 50 doughnuts and 50 doughtnut holes. I let the dough proof on the couche for about 1.5 hours and then started to fry.

     

 

It took me almost exactly an hour to fry up all of the doughnuts. I had a deep, thick bottomed pan and I filled it with about 3/4 gallon of cooking oil. It kept the heat evenly so that I didn’t have to worry about the heat spiking or falling. I fried four doughnuts at a time for 2.5 minutes at just a little hotter than doughnut temperature around 192 degrees F.

  

 

I took the doughnuts out and drained them on a rack and then cooled them a little and put them in  a pan of glaze:

Here are some pictures of the finished sourdough doughnuts:

  

I also shook some doughnuts in powdered sugar:

  

  

  

 

Here are the doughnuts up close and in half:

I don’t think I have ever baked anything sourdough that got so many raves… “These are the best doughnuts I have ever tasted, MOM!”; “These are circles of joy!”; ” Honey, these are the absolute best ever!!!” ; “Can I have another… another…another……..”  

You get the idea. Sourdough doughnuts go stale faster than yeasted doughnuts, but they have a deeper flavor, more satisfying, they are denser, but tastier, and feel like you are eating something really good, not just sugarcarbs. They still warm up nicely in the microwave and taste stunning with a hot cup of coffee in the morning.  

Slow Dough, Stretch Bread and Morphing Sourdough!

I started out baking last weekend with Northwest Sourdough Starter. It didn’t behave as usual, it was extremely slow, although I had it out at room temperature and had been feeding it daily for some time. The difference was in how cold it has been. I know I am sluggish when I am colder. The house has been harder to keep warm. We have iced over ponds and puddles outside and have had all week. There is talk of snow here on the coast! Anyway, I made up a batch of Basic White Sourdough with milk partially substituted. It took a full nine hours to bulk ferment. I let it take it’s time as I was interested in what was happening. I finally shaped the dough into loaves and put them to bed in the refrigerator overnight. Next morning, the dough took a full three hours to proof. I baked up two two pound loaves and two one pound loaves. They came out great. Here are some pics:

Made some sandwiches too:

So on Tuesday, I made up a morph batch of Northwest and Desem starters. I have used the morphing technique before and have had some interesting bread result. This time was no different. The morphed batch also took a long time to proof, but not to bulk ferment. Bulk ferment was about five hours but then next day it took another five hours for the dough to be ready to bake! I think that was the longest warm up proof I have yet had (not counting retarded proofs). It didn’t seem to matter to the dough, as it just wouln’t seem to overproof. Earlier in the morning though , I had taken out a bowl of the dough from the same batch which I had reserved to griddle up some Sourdough Stretch Bread. Betcha have’t heard about that yet! (Well some of you have because I have made it before but I think I called in fry bread or something like that). I decided to call it stretch bread because it really isn’t fried but stretched out and griddled. I took about 3 oz of dough and gently streched it apart, so that some of it was thinner in spots and some thicker. Overall about 1/2 inches thick. I then threw the dough onto a 350 degree greased griddle and turned it a couple of times, trying not to burn it. I think I turned it at three minute intervals twice on each side for a total of 10 - 12 minutes. Then you take off the stretchers, split them in half, partly with a knife partly pulling it apart, butter it good and eat. The outside is crispy and the inside is soft and sour! Yumm! It is also good with jams, jellies, honey, or powdered sugar.

Stretch Bread:

You can take any bread dough and do this, it is a terrific treat with hot coffee in the morning.

Later I baked up my morph bread, it was about 1/3 whole wheat flour, including the Desem and extra whole wheat added during the mixing.

Here it is:

This bread was very delicious with a very nice sour tang. You can see the crumb was light and open and no signs of overproofing even after five hours! This was a fun and interesting week for my baking with my sourdough starters.

Old Time Sourdough Flapjacks

Here are some Old Fashioned Flapjacks like you might have found in the “Olden Days”.

These Flapjacks are tender, moist, slightly dense and very buttery, they were gobbled up fast by my family.

• In a large bowl beat up four large eggs
• Add 1/2 cup melted, cooled butter,
• 1 cup canned cow (evaporated milk)
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 cups vigorous sourdough starter (kept at 166% hydration which just means 1:1 ratio of water to flour by volume)
• 1 Tablespoon of Malt syrup (or Honey)

In a smaller bowl mix together:

• 3 cups of All Purpose Flour (or substitute 1 cup of  Whole Wheat flour for one of the AP flour if using Honey instead of Malt syrup)
• 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt

Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and whip together gently. Let sit for about 10 - 15 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the liquids and get your griddle good and hot, about 400 degrees. Lightly grease griddle. Griddle your flapjacks until one side is bubbly and the edges are slightly dry, then flip once and griddle on the other side. Serve with lots of fresh butter and Maple syrup (we add Malt syrup to our Maple syrup for extra flavor). Get ready to asked for more!

Sourdough Pizza!!!

A customer of mine has asked me to make up a sourdough pizza dough recipe. He gave me his to convert, but I felt like being creative so I …

Made a preferment at noon with (this was fermented at room temperature):

• 2 cups of ripened motherdough starter - 1 lb - 2 oz (motherdough is any starter kept at 80% hydration in the refrigerator to ripen for several days)
• 2 cups of water - 16 oz
• 4 cups of bread flour - 1 lb - 2 oz
• 1 tsp salt - .21 oz - to control fermentation

Next day at noon I poured this preferment into my mixer and added:

• 1/3 cup of oil - 2.60 oz
• 1 cup water - 8 oz
• 4 tsp Sea salt - .85 oz
• 6 cups of bread flour- 1 lb -11 oz

I mixed the dough until the ingredients were well incorporated and then let the dough autolyse for 15 minutes. Once done autolysing, I mixed the dough for another minute on low speed. The dough really looked great. I let the dough bulk ferment for another four hours and then made up the pizzas. The dough weighed 5 lb 10.6 oz  and is a stiff dough at 58 % hydration although the extra oil makes it easier to work. It could have made up three large pizzas, but I let the little ones make up their own pizzas and I had some dough left over so I put it into the refrigerator to try out something tomorrow with “old dough”. I made up two large pizzas with the diameter of 16″. I was preheating the oven at 550 degrees with the baking stone two racks from the bottom. The pizza dough felt really smooth and silky, yet stretchy:

I had made up the sauce and simmered it for two hours to thicken and distribute the flavors.As for the sauce, I just winged it and added two cans of tomato sauce,some oil, a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic, some garlic salt, some onion salt and some Italian seasonings. It tasted great! My daughter prepared the toppings, which were, onions, olives, mushrooms, sausages and of course cheese. I didn’t have any Mozarella cheese, just Cheddar cheese. After I rolled out the dough some, I let it rest for a while so it could be handled easier and I could roll it the rest of the way. I made up two little pizza doughs for my little kids who don’t like anything on their pizzas and let them put on the cheese. I baked their pizzas first :

I baked them by making sure there was plenty of Semolina under the dough and then I whisked them onto the hot pizza stone. For the larger pizzas I did something similar. I allowed the dough to raise for a while, about twenty minutes, spread oil over the top of the dough, and then I pulled, whisked, the dough onto the stone and baked it for three minutes to allow it to bubble up and set the top, after which I took it out using my nifty pizza peel ( I got one for Christmas!) and added the sauce and the toppings and then popped it back onto the stone for another 7 minutes.

Baking:

(That’s burnt Semolina on the stone)

 I placed the dough right onto the stone which was easy with the crust already somewhat set. Getting the raw dough onto the stone the first time was a feat though, just make sure you use plenty of semolina under the dough and it will be easy enough. By the way if the pizza bubbles up with bubbles that are too large, simply take a fork and poke the bubbles down. The pizzas were the best I had ever made and I got a lot of raves for them. They did suggest however that I didn’t exactly have it down EXACTLY right and maybe should experiment a LOT more to get it just right…

Here they are:

I really will have to experiment more with the pizza dough as it is really great to have it turn out so nice. Crisp, yet chewy, large bumpy holes, yumm! I have to thank Donald Hrascs for sharing his experiments with pizza dough with me and inspiring me to bake up pizzas tonight for dinner, my family thanks him too!

Sourdough Pretzel Bread !!!

I am so jazzed! This pretzel bread has been on my mind for some time. I didn’t know how it would turn out, but it sure turned out a super winner! It was so much fun to make! It tastes so terrific! I baked this bread up on the very last day of 2007 and it was a perfect ending to a great sourdough year! Here is how it started:

I made up a thick preferment using the Austrian Sourdough Starter in a motherdough form. The dough fermented overnight and the next day I added the rest of the ingredients and let it ferment four more hours. Then it looked like this:

I divided into four pieces weighing 1.5 lbs each. I experimented with how to shape the bread to give some idea of it being pretzel bread but nothing worked out to my satisfaction.

 So I just shaped it like a regular french bread shape. I put all four loaves into the couche as I was planning on baking them all at the same time.

I let the dough proof about two hours and it looked ready to go:

I was now ready to do the pretzel thing! I had hubby make me two metal handles that I attached to a grate from my toaster oven:

This little gizmo was going to be used for dipping the dough in a hot bath of soda/salt water. I had about 2 gallons of simmering water in a large roasting pan on top of the oven, I added baking soda and salt to the water which will give the classic pretzel taste and is safer/cheaper to use than the baking lye. There is quite a lot of soda in there at 1 Tablespoon per cup. The water foamed up as soon as the soda hit the water:

I then placed the dough on the grate and lowered it into the hot soda bath. The dough floated and I had it in there about 15 seconds per side. The grate was under the dough and I pulled it up to take out the dough as gently as possible. You can’t see me do that as I needed both hands and couldn’t take a picture of it. Here is the dough floating in the hot water:

After I removed the dough from the soda bath, I placed it on a greased baking sheet, spread egg mixture and sprinkled flaked salt over the top and sliced in some x’s  :

I repeated the bath for the other dough and had two baking sheets with two loaves on each sheet. I popped the first sheet into the oven as soon as it was filled and then worked on the second sheet. Soon they were both in the oven at 400 degrees:

The first sheet came out five minutes earlier than the second sheet and here were the first two loaves:

Here are some pictures of this terrific, unique sourdough bread:

Here is a view inside:

This bread went way past expectation. The crust was thin, crisp and dark brownish red (looked just like a soft pretzel) The top was crusted with flaked salt. The inside was soft yet chewy. It got shocked raves immediately. You could tell that the bread would be great with swiss cheese, strong mustard and some pastrami. I only had one loaf left this morning and had stored it in a brown bag overnight as the salt on the crust will leach out moisture from the crust if kept in a plastic bag. It was SUPER as toast this morning with butter and cream cheese. I consider this one of the most wonderfully unique breads I have ever tasted. You can look forward to seeing the recipe in my upcoming book. See Northwest Sourdough  forum http://teresal.proboards84.com/index.cgi  for a  soon to be announced contest for naming my new sourdough book.

 Have a great year everyone!

Sourdough Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

 

This recipe is a variation of the Cranberry Applesauce muffins and can help you use up that extra sourdough starter.

In a large mixing bowl combine:
• 2 cups active sourdough starter
• 3/4 cup  pumpkin puree 
• 1/3 cup Oil
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs

Beat all together with a wire whisk, or in your mixer. Then…

In a medium sized bowl stir together:
• 2.5 cups all purpose flour
• 1.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon Allspice
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder

Add the dry ingredients of the second bowl to the wet ingredients of the first bowl and gently stir until just combined(stir on low speed in your mixer). Add 3 cups chopped frozen cranberries and stir in gently. Oil or grease bread pans and fill the batter not quite to the top.

 

Bake on the center rack in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 1 - 1.5  hours or done (when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean). Cover the top with foil for the last 20 minutes or so if the bread is getting  too brown (as you can see mine did). This recipe will make a batch of muffins (12 muffins baked at 375 degrees for 25 +/- minutes)and one regular tea loaf. I baked up three large sized loaves by doubling the recipe. Besides the cranberries, I also like to add walnuts and raisins to the batter just before spooning out, however, the majority in my family don’t  like raisins and walnuts in their tea breads!

As you can see, there was plenty of room for walnuts and raisins!!

Austrian Motherdough !!

 

This Austrian Starter has really proven itself. It has a naturally tangy flavor and I have been getting rave reviews about it. I have liked it so much myself, that I went ahead and made up a batch of motherdough at 80%. Motherdough is just any starter you take and turn into an 80% hydration dough and keep in the refrigerator for 2- 3 days until it is fully ripe and bubbly. After use, feed the motherdough with an 80 % hydration mixture of flour/water  example: flour 10 oz/water 8 oz .  If you want to figure the hydration, divide the weight of the water by the weight of the flour…  8/10 = 80 %. Here is how the fully ripened motherdough looked:

 

Here is how it looked after stirring down:

I mixed up the batch of Austrian Sourdough Bread at 60 % hydration for the dough and did the normal bulk fermentation, shaping, proofing and baking. Here is the outcome:

As you can see the color is vibrant and the crust is terrific looking . The taste is so incredibly good, as it is with all motherdough breads. Using the slow, cold ferment brings out the full flavor of the bread. Such bread is usually not very sour but instead is somewhat sweet and has such full flavor that it is hard to describe. Actually to anyone who has not had their own homebaked sourdough, no amount of describing could ever work. This bread actually was still tangy, it is that Austrian starter at work. It has a longer eight hour ferment than the average six hours of most starters (except the San Francisco which is even longer). Because of the longer fermentation time, it lends itself very well to a motherdough recipe. The long ferment also brings out the crust blisters to their fullest. Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot get these great bubbly, blistery kinds of crusts in a home oven, you can, I do, and my oven is a cheapy, old electric oven.

Here are some more pictures to make your mouth water:

Here is the crumb:

Super delicious Austrian Motherdough !

Rolled Crusty Finishes for Sourdough Breads

 

Today I mixed up a batch of sourdough using the Austrian Sourdough starter and using a preferment made up last night and fermented overnight. The preferment had 2 cups of starter at 166% hydration, 2 cups of water, 1/3 cup of Rye flour, 2/3 cup White Wheat flour, four cups of white flour. This was not a scientific batch and I did not weigh anything this time, being in a hurry with many things to get done (including baking Molasses Crinkles for Christmas). Next morning (today) I poured the preferment into my mixer and added some oil (about 3 Tablespoons), 5 teaspoons of Sea salt, 1 cup of evaporated milk and another cup of water. Then I added a Tablespoon of non-diastatic Malt syrup and bread flour until the dough felt right and was just starting to pull away from the bowl, but still sticky. I put in around 8.5 more cups of bread flour. The dough was springy and bubbly and very alive. It was about 64 - 66 % hydration by the feel of it. The dough proofed in four hours due to the prefermentation.

 Next, I divided the dough and got three large loaves at around 2lbs 4 oz each. I decided to roll the dough in different things to create a different finish on the crust. When the dough is poured out, use a minimum of flour to keep it from sticking and use a dough scraper to handle it (yes, there is some flour under that dough!)

 The first loaf I shaped in a minimum of flour, to keep it sticky and rolled it in cornmeal. When I put the dough into the banneton, I spread the proofing cloth (if I decide to use one) flat over the top instead of shaping it down in the banneton. What that does is hold the flour, semolina or seeds, instead of falling down the sides and all ending up at the bottom.

 

Then when you place the dough onto the cloth it gently folds around the dough as it sets down into the banneton, covering the sides as well as the bottom.

 For the next loaf, I decided to roll the dough in poppy seeds. I beat an egg with a Tablespoon of water in a bowl, then after I shaped the loaf, I spread some eggy mixture over the dough with my hands after I picked it up and before I rolled it in poppy seeds, which I had spread on the table. I also sprinkled the proofing cloth liberally with the poppy seeds. Then after it was nestled in it’s cloth, I sprinkled more seeds over the top. After that I rolled the next loaf in Sesame seeds.

 

Here are the three loaves all rolled and ready to proof:

I put one loaf on my cold porch which was about 55 F degrees, I put another loaf in the fridge and left the Cornmeal loaf out at room temperature. That way all three loaves wouldn’t be ready to go into the oven at the same time. I took the loaves out of cold storage after about 45 minutes and let them continue proofing at room temperature. The loaves were baked in a hot 450F degree oven on top of a baking stone and with a roasting lid covering the dough for the first 15 minutes. This is how the bread looked when finished:

Here is the loaf rolled in Cornmeal:

Here is the loaf rolled in Poppy seeds:

Here is the Sesame seeded loaf:

 

Here are all three, they are the same size, the camera angle makes them look different sizes.

Here is a picture of the crumb:

The bread is some of the best I have ever tasted. It is great Austrian Sourdough. The crumb is soft, springy, chewy, tangy, sour. The crust is covered in flavor via the seeds/cornmeal and was thin and crisp. The bread has the most delicious aroma and flavor. It was so nice that I have made up some motherdough again using the Austrian starter. I will be experimenting with that soon.

Hurricane Sourdough, Cinnamon Rolls …

Hello Everyone, My site was down for a whole week last week becauses of the hurricane winds here in Western Washington. We had winds clocked all the way up to 129 mph ! There were two storms that came in, one right after the other. The first one knocked out power for a little while ( I don’t even remember how long) the second one which came in right after the first one, knocked out power for a week for us. Just before the first storm I had baked up some sourdough cinnamon rolls which turned out so good! There is something really tasty about sourdough rolls, and they don’t stick in your stomach like a ball of lead. I guess you could say they are digestible because of the gluten being fermented. Of course you don’t try to make them sour, and they are not sour, just really delicious. I made up a preferment the night before, and then finished up the dough the next morning, adding some sugar and vanilla to the dough, it also had some milk, mashed potatoes and melted butter, so you can see it was really good. Then I let the dough raise four hours and made up the rolls. I let them proof about 1.5 - 2 hours and then baked them at 400 degrees until they were done. I am working on the recipe  and hope to tweak it so I can also offer a Cinnamon Roll Premix along with the White Sourdough Premix which I am almost finished with.

Now for the Hurricane Sourdough. I had made up a batch of sourdough basic white when the first set of high winds hit us. We were out of power for several hours and when it came time to bake, there was no power and the dough was very ready. I have a small woodstove in the house that we had going and decided to try to bake the bread in it! Not a masonry oven by any stretch, but what else do you do when you have the perfect opportunity to experiment? I will have to tell you that I really was wishing I had that masonry oven outside, or at least the clay oven built, but no such luck so far!

I had the dough raising in bannetons and I took one loaf and kind of shoved it gently into a small chicken roaster pan that I have, to let it finish proofing.

 I had built up the fire and had some good coals going. I put a ceramic floor tile over the coals to lift the pan off of the hot coals some, but to no avail, as you will see. I baked the loaf with the lid on for around 20 minutes and then took it out to take off the lid. It already was smelling burnt! I put it back in anyway, determined to finish the experiment and this is the result:

Did you ever see anything so black????

So for the next loaf, I put the dough into the cast iron pan that I have, which I have baked other sourdough breads in. It is deep like a dutch oven but it has no legs or lip on the lid.

It baked better than the first and only burned a little on the bottom. It actually was eatable.

Here are some other views:

While I was baking the above loaf in the woodstove, the power came back on so I hurried to heat up the oven so I could bake the third loaf the regular way! Here is the regular loaf:

Well, those loaves didn’t last long and the next storm hit that same night, leaving us without power for seven days. I almost ate store bought bread, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Once the power outage was over, I quickly made up another batch and by Tuesday I had a nice batch of sourdough for Turkey sandwiches because a Turkey we had in one of our freezers thawed out.

Yes! Finally, after a whole week of devastation, and I don’t mean the trees….

Today I am baking up some Premix Sourdough, as I really don’t want to do without again! I need to ask Santa for a masonry oven!

Free Recipe Rye Sourdough

 

I keep calling this Sourdough Rye, “Free Rye” because it is the Rye recipe on my recipe page of my site http://www.northwestsourdough.com/recipes2.html. There it is called Sour Rye. It is a light Rye recipe with a high ratio of bread flour to Rye. It is an easy Rye to start with when new to sourdough baking. This wonderful baker named Britta inspired me to revisit this recipe because she is having a sourdough baking class and the two recipes on the page listed above are to be featured. Britta has sent me pictures of her bread baked with the San Francisco Starter using the Two Day Super Sour recipe that comes with the starter. Her sourdough looks terrific:

When she starts a bread blog I will link to it so you can see what she is up to with her classes etc.

Here is Sour Rye revisited. I increased some of the ingredients to make a larger batch, these two loaves weighed in at 3 lbs 8 oz each! and are hefty loaves.

Free Sour Rye:

Have your starter vigorous and feed it the day before mixing. Next day mix together in dough mixer:

• 3 cups vigorous starter at 166% hydration(Danish Rye starter is best for this recipe but any starter will do)
• 2 cups of warm water
• 1 cup strong black coffee - cooled
• 3 Tablespoons Oil
• 1/4 cup Blackstrap molasses
• 3 Tablespoons Caraway seeds
• 2 Tablespoons dehydrated Onion Flakes
• 1 Tablespoon Onion powder
• 5 teaspoons non - iodized salt
• 2 cups Rye flour - 7 oz
• 11 cups of bread flour (at 4.5 oz per cup) -49.5 oz

This recipe including the molasses as liquid is 64 % hydration.

Follow the directions for mixing, proofing and baking, same as the Basic White Sourdough at:

http://www.northwestsourdough.com/recipes.html

Here is a picture journal of the Free Sour Rye:

This is how the dough looked after autolyse, you can see it is still sticky:

Pour out the dough when it is done proofing which takes around 6 hours.

Shape the loaves into boules if you want round loaves. I like to use baskets with around an 8″ diameter rim. I had one with an interesting design. I floured it very heavily, and with a little encouragement, the dough came out when it was time.

Both loaves are in there proofing baskets and ready to be put to sleep in the refrigerator overnight. I covered them with plastic bags before putting them in the fridge.

Next morning they had risen pretty well:

The first loaf was three hours proofing before going into the oven, here is what the basket looked like when the dough came out:

Here is the first loaf:

Here is the second loaf with the first loaf already sliced by it:

I put the wine glass by the loaves to give you some idea of how large the loaves are:

Here is a closeup of the crumb of the first loaf:

The loaf on the right was tucked under the other loaf because it already had it’s end cut off:

I baked these loaves ten minutes longer than the directions for a 2 lb loaf. Altogether they were baked for 40 minutes each and I turned the oven down to 400 degrees after the first fifteen minutes (450 degrees to start) under the steaming lid. Free Sour Rye, try some! It’s terrific! Moist, chewy and with a wonderful crust, thick, crusty….