Recipe Review from 2/21/11

Whoo.  We were quite the chemists this past week.  On one day, we had no less that four different cultures fermenting in our kitchen.  On purpose I should add. 

Sourdough culture (Harold)
Sourdough bread dough  (Son of Harold)
Creme fraiche
Honey mead (part one)

Sorry, got so caught up in the chemistry stuff that I forgot to be artistic and snap some photo's! 


Sourdough Starter and Multigrain Soughdough Bread Dough (Vegetarian Times, March 2011)
To make this, we needed to start Harold (aka 'the starter') three to four days in advance.  Harold needed to be fed two times a day.  By day four, we decided this was a PITA (pain in the ass).  Now, the advantages to doing the starter in advance like this was we made sourdough pancakes twice!  Love pancakes.  Especially with blueberries. 

The ultimate goal is nicely fermenting starter by day three/four.  We did four days because our house is on the chilly side for fermentation - about 64*; Harold would have been happier at about 74*.  But he wasn't going to get that.  We also planned this so the final assembly and rise would happen in the evening.  This turned out to be a very wet dough, and the Husband had to add nearly 3x the amount of flour called for to make the bread kneadable. 

I'm not going to type the recipe out - it's two recipes actually, and in my opinion, too putzy  for one loaf of bread.  I think the next time I want sourdough, I'm going to order some from San Francisco where they know how to make it. 

We did save a bit of the starter for:


Sourdough Blueberry Pancakes (modified; Vegetarian Times, Mar 2011)
Okay, we made these three times, only ONCE following the recipe.  Odd?  Yes.  Because! You have to start this recipe the NIGHT BEFORE and well, we managed to miss that tidbit of info twice and just went with what we had.  Still, this makes a fluffy, somewhat dense, pancake.  It has some stick-to-your-ribs attitude, with a nice tang offset by the blueberries.  Leftovers were frozen for later.