Sourdough 2

from American Home Cooking
by Miranda Whyte
Published by Macdonald Orbis, 1987

Another attempt at making a sourdough starter. This one was very different, starting with a boiled potato and adding sugar as well as flour and water. I did feel a bit dubious about it, but thought I might as well have a go since the other version had been so long-winded and such a failure.

A boiled potato to start off with?

Soupy-looking starter

I was even more sceptical when I began making the bread. It has yeast in it! How is that sourdough! Oh well, nothing ventured...

In Dan Lepard's book, he gives a kneading method I've never come across and which I thought I'd give a try. Rather than knead for hours (15 minutes for the recipe here), he says to bring the dough together into a 'shaggy lump' then leave it to rest for 10 minutes, when you knead it by folding it in half, pressing the edge together, giving it a quarter turn just about eight time, then leave it to rest again and repeat twice more. This sounded very effortless, so I gave it a go. It's extraordinary - incredibly straightforward and the dough seems to do all the work by itself.

The result? Well, it's not really sourdough yet, it doesn't taste nearly sour enough and doesn't have that open texture you expect, and of course, there's the added yeast... However this bread is absolutely delicious, chewy and full of flavour. I've kept the starter going, but I don't know that it's ready to raise a loaf by itself yet, so I'll do a couple more this way, with added yeast, but I'm determined that I'll eventually get to the stage of a successful pure sourdough loaf.

Sourdough 1

from Short & Sweet
by Dan Lepard
Published by Fourth Estate 2011

I thought it would be fun to attempt a proper sourdough from scratch. The instructions from Dan Lepard's Short & Sweet were a little on the sketchy side, mostly because, as he says, this is NOT a 'short' cooking experience so is more of a parenthesis in this book. Here are the results of my attempt: 

First make a big ball of rye flour and water and leave it to grow some natural yeast. Kitchen chemistry at its most obvious.

Leave the ball until it cracks and begins to smell 'pleasantly sour'.

'Starter soup', i.e. the ball mushed up with more water and flour and left again. I can't believe this will turn into anything, but it does smell pleasantly musty.

The soup begins to bubble. Recipe now says discard most of it and add equal quantities of flour and water, cover lightly again and leave for another day before discarding and adding again.

But the next day, ph-ew, this smells like a teenage boy's bedroom. I think it died... The recipe did say chuck it out and start again if necessary. This this may be the moment.

Spinach and Thyme Pasties

from River Cottage Veg Everyday
by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall
 Published by Bloomsbury, 2011

I'm rubbish at pastry. I used to be better, but somewhere along the line I became rubbish. Is it the hot hands thing? Maybe so, though I'm a little sceptical about it. But temperature does seem to matter, and resting the pastry makes a difference too.



 I'd planned to make these on a Friday night, and I'd done the pastry and the filling, but when it came to the moment of putting it all together, I just couldn't be bothered.  I dumped all the stuff in the fridge and left it until Saturday. Then of course, when Saturday came, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get the pastry at the right temperature to roll easily, you know, warm enough to be pliable, but not so warm as to be breakable (I was going to say 'friable' there, does that mean breakable? quick trot over to dictionary... yes it does; but it would be a rather odd sentence, 'pliable but not friable'). Anyway, as it turned out the pastry was the most wonderful forgiving stuff, allowing me to stretch it and shape it with no trouble at all. Hooray! I chicken out slightly after I had it just about right, and I should have made my rectangle slightly larger to accommodate all the filling, but even with some rather bursting at the seams they cooked beautifully.

Look at them, all egg-washed and ready to bake.

And then emerging from the oven, golden and cracked, just spilling their green contents.

We ate them with the baba ganoush I'd made, and tomato salad. They were perfect, though at their best hot, I think.

Baba Ganoush

from River Cottage Veg Everyday
by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Published by Bloomsbury, 2011

I asked R what I should cook and he said to cook something that was extra, not part of a normal meal. A little pondering to figure out what he meant was needed, but of course it's perfectly obvious really. It's those things that you generally only make when you're pulling out all the stops, when you have visitors, or you're in a cooking-mad frenzy, or maybe when an actual meal is not required, just a little something.

I'm sure I must have had baba ganoush before at some point, because the idea of it is not wildly appealing - cold roast aubergine puree - and yet it did appeal. I'd planned to make this on a Friday night along with some the spinach and thyme pasties, but by the time I got in from taking Livia to her swimming lesson, the whole thing seemed like far too much effort. I roasted the aubergines and made the pastry and the filling and then left them to the next day. That was probably all for the best, as otherwise perhaps the baba ganoush would have been perhaps too warm. Actually though, the effort was minimal so probably even in my Friday night state of mind I could have pulled it together quite easily!

Oh, and baba ganoush is worth the effort! It's so delicious, silky smooth and garlicky. We had it with the pasties, but I also had some seedy rye crackers that we scooped it up with. Absolutely a winner.