Experiments with Sourdough

One of the things I've started during this last lockdown since Christmas is the nurturing of a sourdough culture. I wasn't actually expecting great things of it, but it turned out to be easier than I expected to transform flour-and-water paste into something tasty. 

At first I was playing around with the daily discard - making pancakes with the batter, thickening it with flour to make cinnamon rolls, and tarts topped with sticky rhubarb or Mediterranean veg (an experiment to use up a frozen pack I received as a substitute for peppers, which turned out very tasty)

After a week or so the sourdough was bubbling, and ready to make my first loaf of bread. It didn't look brilliant, but tasted good - which is the most important bit.

I'd heard that it was possible to keep the mother culture almost indefinitely in the fridge, so I tried by putting half in a jar and leaving it there, but after a couple of weeks I seemed to be just left with sludge. 

The other half, in the warmth of the airing cupboard, has gone from strength to strength.

 I've managed to bake a couple of respectable-looking loaves with it, cobs and mini-baguettes, and some strange half bread/half cake concoctions like this apple sandwich, but my favourite uses are for pittas and pizza, made with discard and strong flour.

I now make these regularly, and I'm constantly amazed at how flour-and-water paste turns into anything so tasty.

 

Use it or lose it!

  Two attempts, this week, at trying to make something out of 'useless' food;


First a couple of whopper cucumbers found lurking at the back of the greenhouse under all the foliage. Both green cucumbers had hard knobbly skins and didn't look at all pleasant to add to salad or sandwiches. I've already made a stash of marmalade this year with surplus cucumbers, and experimented with piccalilli, so wanted to try something else and settled on 'bread and butter pickle'.

Basically, cucumber and onion are salted for a couple of hours,then drained and added to hot vinegar spiced with mustard seeds, fennel seeds and turmeric - the latter gives it a rather odd yellow colour that I'm not sure if I'm fond of.




Now it has to sit in the fridge for a while to let the vegetables 'pickle', so I can't test it for a week or so.

Meanwhile.... something sweeter. A couple of days ago I made curry which required coconut milk, and not having the tinned version to hand I made some by steeping dessicated coconut in boiling water. Having used the water as 'milk' I was then left with the remains of the coconut. it isn't really all that flavoursome by this point by I've tried using it in cakes before and it's ok. This time I made muffins  - with an extra little bit of 'use it or lose it' involved. In the baking cupboard, I found glace cherries (probably from last year's Christmas cake) with a 'best before' date of end of September. Phew! Just in time!

Sunday Baking

It's been acold miserable day,so what better way to warm things up than by baking, especially as I have spare rhubarb from the allotment to use up?

I had to make two cakes as not everyone here loves rhubarb - both start, in the same mixing bowl, as a basic muffin mixture, using light olive oil though instead of sunflower, flavoured with vanilla and lemon essences. Then I pour a third of the batter into a small cake tin and add rhubarb and oats to the remaining mixture fora slightly larger cake.

Christmas Cakes

I've made two cakes for Christmas. Firstly a bara brith variant for the lovers of traditional fruit cakes - soaking the fruit in brandy rather than tea and adding extra spices for a festive taste -









and a 'log' for those who prefer chocolate and cream.

More rhubarb...

 We've more rhubarb plants this year, so more rhubarb to eat. I haven't made this recipe in quite a while but it's a lovely shortbread variation. I'm not sure where the recipe came from as it's one of many that I've cut out of magazines - possibly from Sainsbury's magazine or Country Living.



Basically it's a shortbread base with gooey caramel topping. The base is cooked briefly, then the rhubarb and sugar mix poured over, and it all cooked some more.

It doesn't look spectacular - and it does have a tendency to fall apart - but tastes wonderful!

Back to baking...

Earlier this week we went to a book store event for the Clandestine Cake Club The club members meet regularly to share home-made cake and now their recipes have been collected into a book. Unfortunately, tempting as the book looked, it isn't really suitable for us as not many cake recipes are low-fat. It made me realise though that it's a while since I've made any cake so on a wet and windy day, with leftover rhubarb in the fridge, I got out the mixing bowls and cake tins and got baking. Rhubarb loaf cake for the adults, choc chip cookies for the not-grown-up-yet.

Wet day in the kitchen

A day of absolutely horrendous rain, and getting drenched while walking the dog, encouraged me to stay in warm and dry and potter in the kitchen.
I bottled up the elderflower fizz started yesterday.
I at last got round to making spiced vinegar for pickling some small onions I bought 2 or 3 weeks ago.
I found the last of last year's gooseberries lurking in the bottom of the freezer and made chutney.
I made two batches of muffins - choc chip and rhubarb.
And now the sun is streaming through the windows and I'm testing a recipe for Persian Stuffed Vine Leaves for dinner.

Clearing out the fridge

 Look what I found in the fridge!

Just what I (don't) need for a cup of tea or on my cornflakes.

Actually, I knew all about it - if you take a bottle of milk away for a holiday and leave it in the car boot for a few days what can you expect?

I don't like to throw food away but could never find a lot of uses for gone-off milk till I started using it in cake and muffins.

Time for baking! 

 Rhubarb Cake.

I use a  recipe I made by adapting one for Bara Brith, the main appeal being that there is no butter, margarine or oil in it. There is a certain amount of fat from the milk, but not too much with semi or skimmed.

Instead of dried fruit I use whichever fresh fruit I happen to have around - in this case rhubarb, with oats and oatmeal added to make it extra healthy!

Any funny smell from the milk disappears in baking - well, I assume it does, I barely got to test the finished results!

RIP Herman

Herman in his prime, taking over the kitchen

Herman cake

the sad and sorry state last weekend, from which he never recovered

Sad to say, all attempts to bring live back to Herman after last weekend's disaster failed. I'm going to start again soon - not with a cake mix but a simpler sourdough bread type. Hopefully that will be easier to keep going.

Herman the German #4

Herman hasn't been looking well.

 In the middle of jam-making and cake-baking a few days ago, I asked my husband to attend to Herman and add flour and water. Unfortunately I wasn't too specific about amounts. Not enough flour and/or too much water left a bit of a mess.

In an attempt to salvage Herman, I drained off the beer-like fluid and added some flour and sugar. It now seems to be bubbling nicely again - fingers crossed!

Herman the German #3 World takeover

I fed Herman with his flour/sugar/milk feed early on Thursday and popped him in the cupboard.

It was a rather warm day and as Herman is basically a sweetened sourdough mix, he got a little excitable and wouldn't be contained by his bowl.

I should have kept a closer eye on him and remembered to stir the mixture - this lets the gas bubbles pop and the volume decreases.

 After a quick clean up of the cupboard, I moved a small amount of mixture into a clean bowl, added an egg and a handful of sultanas to the bulk and baked it. It wasn't as sweet or light as the first cake (HTG#2) made from the Herman mixture but still a nice fruit loaf.

The small amount I kept has already doubled in size but is now smelling more 'yeasty'. I think next time I feed him, I'll add more sugar in an attempt to lose the alcoholic tang.

Read Herman's previous adventures  - Herman the German and Herman the German #2

Herman the German #2

 Herman the German has now been with us just over a week. He's been 'fed' twice - with half pint of milk, 8oz flour and 4oz sugar - and at weekend we decided to eat him!

 The feeding had led the batter to double in size - maybe even treble.

I scooped a rough third out, added flour, an egg, mixed spice and sultanas

.........

 and baked it.

 .........

 I think it went down well!

The remainder is still bubbling in the kitchen with extra flour, sugar and milk added again today.

Herman the German

Herman is a little present I was brought by my elder daughter at weekend. I'm not sure why he (it?) is called Herman the German but that's what his accompanying 'care notes' say. He has to be stirred daily  - and talked to. On Days 4 and 9, I'm to feed him with milk, sugar and flour and on Day 10 I cook and eat him!

I'll keep you posted on how he progresses.....

Half and half muffins

 I pulled the first of our rhubarb today - about 8oz - and decided to make muffins. Unfortunately, not everyone in the house likes rhubarb, so I had to make choc-chip ones as well.

I made up a standard muffin base - an egg, 4 tblspn oil, 4oz sugar, splash of vanilla essance, teaspoon bakingpowder, 10oz SRflour - then halved it into two bowls.

 Into one half, I put oats and chopped up rhubarb with a sprinkling of ginger

In the other, 1teaspoon cocoa and chopped up chocolate (no choc chips in the house!)

Ta da!

Muffins for all!!

(though one has mysteriously disappeared already.....)

Quinces

I've just put the last of the quinces in the oven to bake and I'm wishing I'd had more! They weren't home-grown but I was lucky enough to pick some up through Freegle (freecycling) earlier in Autumn. This was my first experience of them but I'd heard people say how wonderful they are.

They're certainly odd to look at - something like a deformed apple - and at first were very hard. I wasn't sure what to do with them - there was a carrier bag full so I wanted to try them in various ways.

Someone pointed me to an article with various quince recipes in the Telegraph and the first thing I tried was Slow roast pork belly - nice but a little strange with unexpected taste combinations.

I then tried an adaptation of an old recipe from Country Living - originally for honeyed quince pandowdy, stewed fruit with a sort of scone/dumpling topping, I altered it to have a low-fat scone type topping. This was certainly a better way to let the unusually exotic taste of the quinces shine out - so we've had this several times! My daughter had complained about the smell from 'that strange fruit', as it sat ripening in a bowl but I thought it was delicious - strangely mango-like rather than the apple/pear taste I'd expected.

I have, of course, made some quince tablet or paste - basically a super-stiff jam set in a small cake tin - to either try with cheese or add to pork dishes long after the fresh quinces have gone.
I'm certainly going to be looking out for more on offer next year, but meanwhile I've sown some pips in the hope of having my very own quince tree.

Green Tomato Cake

Having heard weathermen talking about the possibility of snow next month, I thought I'd start clearing some of the unripe tomatoes - and brought home 11lbs!
I started to use them by making chutney - there's a particular green tomato one that I like to have with cheese in a hot baguette - but wondered if there was any other way to eat them. I put out query on Twitter and a very helpful person sent me 3 suggestions - one of which was green tomato cake.
I'm never one to refuse a culinary challenge so decided to have a go - unfortunately the recipe had too much butter and far too much sugar, so I decided to combine it with Delia's bara brith recipe as follows :

In a bowl beat 1 egg with 4oz sugar, then mix in 8 fluid oz milk. Sieve 10oz SR flour and a teaspoon each of baking powder, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon, into the mixture and mix well. Finely chop 12oz green tomato and add to mix.
Pour into a greased, lined 2lb loaf tin and bake at Gas No 4 for 50 - 60 mins

Then the important bit - tasting!
Surprisingly nice. It was lovely and moist from the tomatoes and tasted mainly of the spices.
I don't think anyone would identify the mystery ingredient as tomato - apart from one drawback. When cut into slices, you can see green chunks! Not the normal appearance of cake! Maybe we're too set in our ways about how cake should look but if I made up this recipe again, I'd bake it in small muffin or fairy cake cases.