Thursday, August 29, 2013

Sourdough Pancakes

SOURDOUGH PANCAKES (from Bread Earth and Fire)
If you’ve been feeding your starter like you should be, then you can expect it to continue to grow in your refrigerator. Remember, even if you’re not baking, it’s important not to neglect your starter. She has to be fed. Assuming you’re doing everything right by feeding your starter at least once a week, it may grow beyond your needs unless you’re doing something with your growing culture. If you’ve run out of friends you can share your starter with, you’re a little tired of baking (what!) and you can’t bear to toss what you’re not using, there’s still hope. A great way to use up excess starter is by making sourdough pancakes, or if you prefer, these recipes can be used for making waffles instead. This is mostly from a King Arthur Flour recipe.
Yield: Approximately 9-3.5” pancakes
Day One
Ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup of sourdough starter (straight from the fridge is fine)
1 cup white flour (substitute some whole wheat if you prefer)
1 tablespoon sugar 
Procedure:
In a large bowl, mix everything up and cover overnight
Day Two
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Procedure:                                                                                                     
In a small bowl mix up the egg with the canola oil and the salt. In a tablespoon of water, dissolve the baking soda and stir it into the small bowl. Pour the ingredients from the small bowl into the large bowl that has the sourdough starter.
Stir it all up. If your batter is too thin, add a little flour. If it’s too thick, add a little liquid. Grease your skillet with butter or oil over your three stone fire. Pour on the batter. A quarter cup measuring cup makes a handy scoop. If you’re not exactly into a three stone fire, you can make these pancakes on your conventional stove indoors. A cast iron frying pan works well.
Cook until you see a multitude of bubbles forming on the top. Flip one time only and cook the other side. Butter and real maple syrup or agave nectar are definitely choice toppings.

You could skip the overnight procedure and do everything in the morning, but the pancakes will be missing a certain amount of tang.
Bread and Cattails

Sunday, August 25, 2013

The White Baguette

Excellent story in The Wall Street Journal about the decline of the baguette. Thanks to Michael Jubinsky from the Stone Turtle Baking and Cooking School for alerting me to this sad story.

These look quite good