Day Four Sourdough Starter

This is not sequentially day four anymore (more like six), but the blogger thingy wasn't working so I could'nt post it on the actual fourth day.

Lets go back in time....

Day 4

When I looked at my starter the magical active fermentation had started. There were signs of slight rising of the dough on the sides of the bowl, as well as lots of little bubbles on the surface. It smelled pretty weird, not so much sour as slightly weird sour.....not a smell I am familiar with. So at this point your job is to remove half the starter and add a refreshment batch of flour and water. The half that you remove can be saved and given to a friend to start their own sourdough. If you leave the yeast sitting inside the same starter for too long they will run out of food and get tired and stop producing nice flavors for you. Feeding or refreshing consists of adding to the starter to make double it own volume in fresh flour and water. The flour and water refresher is made up of ratio of 4 parts flour to 3 parts water. This might seem like a pretty wasteful process and one that requires alot of flour, but from this point on you can store the starter in the fridge and not feed it until you remove part of it to make bread.

Sourdough Tunes: Saint Vitus, Born Too Late (1987)

Day Four

-2 cups of Unbleached Bread Flour

-1 1/2 cup of Cold Water

Remove half the starter and discard (or share with a friend). Add flour and water to remaining starter and combine thoroughly. Cover bowl with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours. 

Day Three Sourdough Starter

When I checked my starter tonight, there was a large slick of dark brownish liquid on the top of the dough. I have no idea if this good or bad. It smelled fine, slightly sourish and wheaty. Im thinking so long as it doesn't turn orange i'll be ok. I was expecting the beginnings of active fermentation but there wasn't much to be seen. Still ill hold out until tomorrow, when I expect the yeasties will start to show themselves through serious gas emission. Im going to do another addition of flour and malt today, my fledgling microbes need food after all. Tomorrow i will start to remove part of the starter and top up with more flour, this process of removal and feeding is what will keep this starter alive for years (if I am diligent). There exist starters that have been kept alive for as long as 50 years (even longer in some cases), essentially a starter will keep on living so long as it has food and doesn't get killed by excessive heat. If you place a starter in the fridge the yeast particles go dormant and will stay like that until you warm them up again.

Sourdough Tunes: Kittens, Bazooka and the Hustler (1997)

Day Three
-2 cups of Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour
-1 tsp. Powdered or Liquid Barley Malt Extact
-1 1/2 cup Cold Water

Add these ingredients in to you previous mix and combine thoroughly. Cover bowl with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours.

Day 3

Day Two Sourdough Starter

Day 2 of the birth of the sourdough beast. So the watery dough mix that I prepared sat nicely for 24 hours and fermented ( I hope). There were no real signs yet of active fermentation, but there was the beginnings of a little puddle of ethanol goodness on the top of the dough. When yeast eats sugar it produces two things, carbon dioxide and alcohol, so it is normal if you get a wiff of a beery/alcoholish smell when you lift the plastic wrap.....that smell tells you science is at work. Apparently when the European colonists (Germans/Austrians included) came over to the new world, they would skim this alcohol residue of the tops of their fermenting sourdoughs and trade it with the native indians. Sounds believable, but ill file that under "internet science". So anyways your dough should be basically looking like it did the day before, but believe in your little yeasty friends that they are hard at work converting sugars, multiplying and venting gases.

Sourdough Tunes: Sleep, Holy Mountain (1992)

Day Two 

-1 cup of Unbleached Bread Flour

-3/4 cup of Cold Water

-1 tsp. Honey

-1 tsp. Molasses

Add the new ingredients to your previous mix, stir well with a whisk until you form a nice, slightly liquid dough. Cover with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours. 

Day 2

Tomorrow the action really heats up......fermentation.

Im Back!!!!! Day One Sourdough Starter

Alright, the move is finally complete and my kitchen stuff is out of the box. My new kitchen digs are pretty sweet and far larger and sunnier than my old place. Back to bread making. I squeezed in a quick sausage making session mid-move to provide some sweet meats for a birthday party, but i haven't really had a chance to do any bread. Im feeling like sourdough right now, I had a really good spelt/rye sourdough loaf from an organic farm near Morin-Heights, so im going to make a natural starter or barm starter. In this starter im going to let naturally occurring yeasts all around us find a nice home in my dough sponge and produce a lovely fermenty sourdough flavor.....in 5 days from now. So its going to be a daily caring session for my starter until she's ready to make beautiful bread. Sourdough is used very frequently in German breads as it goes very well with rye and makes for a far more complex flavored crumb......im a big fan. 

Sourdough Tunes: Death, Human (1991)

Day One

-1 cup Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour

-1 cup Raisin Water (1 cup of  raisins soaked in 2 cups water for 15 minutes, from that strained water take 1 cup)  

-1 tsp. Honey

-1 tbsp. Barley Malt Powder or Liquid (found in beer and wine making stores and some health food or bulk food stores)

Mix ingredients thoroughly in a clean glass bowl (or any other type of bowl except aluminium), cover with cling film and let sit in a cool place for 24 hours.

Day 1

Moving

I am in the middle of moving to new apartment, so I have my baking/sausage making kit spread between 2 places.....Ill be back in May.

Kürbiskernbrot (Pumpkin Seed Bread)

So not to entirely ignore the German speaking, Schnitzel making, former Hapsburg ruled country of both my parents birth, I am going to make an Austrian style pumpkin seed bread. Austrian food has a lot in common with German food, but is also influenced by Hungarian and Slavic cooking, remnants of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This being said I think Austrian bread can claim a unique place in gastronomy because of its use (in its slightly stale form) in the creation of every Austrians favorite comfort food.....the dumpling or Knödel. Dumplings however are not what inspired this particular bread, rather it was my father's search for/stubborn insistence that pumpkin seed oil should be cheap, easily found and plentiful here in Montreal, just as it is in his native Austria. Its not. I've looked. You can find it, but it is pretty pricey and can usually be found in a health food store or your local Hungarian/German butcher (??!!!!). So as ode to the elusive (affordable) pumpkin seed oil in Montreal, I propose this Kürbiskernbrot.


Pumpkin Bread Tunes: ACDC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)


Kürbiskernbrot Recipe:


-2 1/2 tsp. Dry Active Yeast
-1 cup Lukewarm Water
-3 tbs. Honey
-1/2 tbs. Pumpkin Seed Oil or Olive Oil
-1 1/3 cup Unbleached Bread Flour
-2/3 cup Rye Flour
-1/3 cup Cracked Rye Seeds (soaked 24 hours in advance) (optional)
-2 tbs. Gluten
-1 tsp. Salt
-1/4 tsp. Ground Allspice
-1/4 tsp. Ground Coriander
-1/4 cup Toasted Pumpkin Seeds


I decided that since this was going to be a pretty flavorful bread, I didn't need to make a starter (read LAZY). Combine the yeast, water, oil and honey in a bowl and mix well. Let the yeast mix sit for 10-20 minutes until it starts to froth. Then add the rest of the dry ingredients and form a moist dough. Knead the dough until it becomes relatively smooth and stretchy, but don't over work it (5-10 minutes). Place the dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth or cling film. Let rise in a warm spot until double in size. Remove dough from bowl, knead briefly and form it into a loaf. Place it back into a bowl or a banneton (if you have one) and rise again till double. A banneton or brotform is a wicker basket, sometimes lined with linen, used to give the bread shape and some texture while proofing. Flip the dough onto a lightly floured baker's peel and cut slashes into the dough's surface. I use masa flour for the dusting on the baker's peel, it seems to slide off better with it. Put the bread into a 450 F. oven for 30-40 minutes. During baking i have been throwing a little bit of water on the bottom of my oven every 2 minutes or so. The water and steam it creates has been helping the bread to form a nice yielding crispy crust. Take the bread out when is sounds hollow to the tap.

The Great Black Forest Banger

Im calling today's sausage a Black Forest Banger inspired by the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany. Its a tasty pepper and coriander sausage with a good hit of garlic. I hope these are good, apparently Baden-Württemberg has the most Michelin starred restaurants (52 of the total 190) in all of Germany, so I have alot to live up to. Baden-Württemberg is famous for black forest ham (not to mention snail soup and Spätzle), which is a cured and cold smoked ham seasoned with pepper, coriander and garlic.

Baden-Württemberg Block Rockin' Beats: Toner Low, Toner Low (2006)


Black Forest Banger:


-1 kg Coarsely Ground Pork Shoulder
- Natural Pork Sausage Casings
-4 tbs. Chicken Stock, White Wine or German Lager
-1 Egg
-3 Cloves Garlic (crushed into a paste)
-2 tsp. Salt
-1/2 Tbs. Sugar
-2-3 tsp. Ground Coriander Seeds (toasted in a dry frying pan till fragrant)
-2 tsp. Ground Black Pepper
-1 tsp. Caraway Seeds

After stuffing the sausages I like to place them in a bowl and let them sit overnight uncovered in the fridge, it helps the casings dry out and shrink slightly. If you have room its even more ideal if you can hang the sausages in the fridge overnight.....smart even.

Black Forest Banger