I thought I’d give a try to making bagels since it is something we tend to get fairly regularly and you-know-who seems to forgo the wonder-bread like qualities that tends to be lacking in the other loaves I’ve made.
The bagels you see below are made following the sourdough bagel recipe found on the recipe page here; the original recipe was from Mike Avery’s SourdoughHome.com.
This time I used the Carl starter which has a little more tang. The loaves were in the oven for 30 minutes but at 420ºF – at least that’s what I set the oven at – as opposed to the 40 minutes at 460ºF the recipe calls for.
Yeah, it’s been a few months. Not that I haven’t made bread, I have, numerous batches in fact. But they were really mostly “sandwich” bread and all basic yeast things. Not as tasteless as store bought “Wonder” type stuff (which they were meant to replace) but not terribly exciting, either. On the up side, these numerous plain breads allowed me to play with the oven’s temp a bit and I think I have it tweaked to be pretty accurate now so things don’t burn too much. So let’s get on with today’s bake.
It’s been a short while since I’ve updated the blog so here’s the latest which was actually made last weekend, June 14th.
This time around, I went with a round bread to see how that would work. Since I still don’t have a banneton, I made do with a rice-flour coated, couche-lined sieve. By using a sieve, as opposed to just a bowl, I figured it would allow for some air transfer and keep the couche/canvas from getting damp and tacky. It pretty much worked, although it was still a bit tacky and pulled the dough ball a little when I transfered it to the baking sheet. I did not use the tiles this time, just to see how it would turn out and also to help conserve a certain amount of energy heating them for 45 minutes ahead of time (besides, it was already a pretty hot day, no sense heating up the kitchen even more).
The worry here was that the ball of dough would collapse and turn into a giant disk and not a proper “boule” or ball. Well, it did a bit of both. The soft dough rather spread out once it was on the baking sheet but perked up a bit and rose up during the initial time in the oven. Yes, I’m still guessing what the oven temp actually is, have not yet found a reasonably priced decent oven thermometer.
So again spending the entire time watching the progress and giving the bread a spin halfway through the cooking time, here’s the result. (Click pics to enlarge.)
A secret to a great pancake recipe: For the home baker who keeps a sourdough starter, every time you feed that starter you have to reduce the quantity or face possibly ending up with an Olympic sized pool’s worth of starter.
When you are baking maybe three loaves a week, and even if you refrigerate the starter for a week or two, the excess starter is a reality. So what do you do with this excess? You would rather not just toss it in the garbage and definitely not down the drain (unless you enjoy keeping your plumber’s wallet well-padded) so what’s to be done?
Well, PANCAKES are one delicious and easy way to use this extra starter up.
Continue reading “World’s Best Pancake Recipe: starter discard rescue recipe”
