The Yeast Common Denominator

Applesauce Apple Tart

Made this whole thing from scratch. The crust is easy, just whip up some sugar and butter and add in some flour. Then you press it into the mold and bake it.

The applesauce filling is awesome and easy. Add chopped apples to a pan with a little water and some brown sugar and nutmeg and cook until they’re soft. Run them through a food press or a ricer (you could blend or food process them and then strain). This is insanely good and I will never buy applesauce again.

Then slice the apples, mix with some melted butter and brown sugar, arrange on top and bake again.

Killer!

The only thing I would change is I would use a different apple for the top. These are granny smiths and they turned out a little rubbery. Something softer would end up more tender and easier to cut through.

Blueberry Scones

No sourdough in these babies. I have kind of given up on that. This recipe is straight out of Nancy Silverton’s Pastries From La Brea Bakery. I just omitted nuts and used all dried blueberries instead of a mixture of raisins, cherries and currants.

They smell great!

Sourdough Cranberry Pecan Bread

My contribution to the Thanksgiving meal.

Sourdough Cinnamon Chip Scones
16 Scones 

This is an adaptation of the other Sourdough Blueberry Scone recipe I posted earlier. For this one, I added a cup of cinnamon flavor-bites after soaking them in heavy cream for a few minutes. The cream that ended up in the mix along with the chips provided just enough moisture to make the dough come together. I added a little bit more brown sugar too because I felt the larger 16-scone recipe wasn’t quite sweet enough.

Ingredients

• 1.0 cups Sourdough Starter
• 3.0 cups All Purpose Flour
• 0.8 cups Brown Sugar
• 4.0 tsp.  Ground Cinnamon
• 1.5 sticks Unsalted Butter, cold and cut into pieces
• 1.0 tbs. Baking Powder
• 1.0 cup KAF Cinnamon Flavor Bites
• 3.0 tbs. Buttermilk
• 4.0 tbs. Heavy Cream
• 2.5 tsp. Sugar Crystals (large granules)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400. If you have a convection oven, use the convection bake setting.

Pour the cream into a bowl and add the cinnamon flavor bites to the cream. Let them soak until you need them. This will soften them up a bit and make them only semi-crunchy after they’re baked. Also flavors the cream.

Mix the starter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, buttermilk, and starter in a bowl until the starter begins to separate and the whole thing looks crumbly. 

Cut in the butter and mix with your fingertips until it’s almost all incorporated. Don’t overmix. Leave the dough lumpy with large (pea size or larger) chunks of butter. 

Spoon the cinnamon flavor bites out of the cream and into the bowl. This should leave just enough cream left in the bowl to brush the tops of the scones before putting them in the oven. Mix until the flavor bites are distributed but don’t over mix. The dough should now be moist and hold together well, but you should still see lumps of butter.

Turn the dough out on to a board and knead once or twice into a ball. Cut in half and pat each half into a 1/2” thick disc. Cut each disk into 8 pie-slice shaped and arrange the pieces about 1” apart on a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Brush the scones with the remaining cream and sprinkle with sugar crystals.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until they just begin to turn golden brown. Cool the scones on a cooling rack.

Comments

I have found that the trick is to not overmix, and when you use sourdough starter not to overdo it. A cup is enough, much more than that and you end up with a weird consistency. Manage the moisture. It’s better to have a drier mixture that just holds together than a really wet dough. Too much moisture will make them dense and cookie-like.

Sourdough Focaccia
Two Half-Baking Sheet Sized Flat Breads 

I was looking for a recipe for sourdough pizza dough, and this was the closest thing I could find. It ended up not really being a pizza dough, but probably the best focaccia I have ever tasted. Tender, soft, chewy, full of holes, kind of squishy on the inside and crispy on the very outside. This bread really benefits from seasoning and toppings. The more you load it up with tasty, savory ingredients, the better it is.

This recipe is adapted from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from La Brea Bakery Focaccia and Rustic Bread recipes.

Ingredients

• 2.00 cups Sourdough Starter
• 8.75 cups Bread Flour
• 2.75 cups Water
• 0.50 tsp. Instant Yeast
• 1.00 tbs. Salt
• 3.00 tbs. Milk
• 3.00 tbs. Olive Oil

Directions

This bread is best made in a mixer with a dough hook attachment. The dough is very soft and is just too difficult to manipulate with your hands or even by hand with a spoon. It is an amorphous blob that sticks to everything.

Mix the starter, flour, yeast, and water into the mixing bowl and mix on medium speed for 6-8 minutes. Turn of the mixer and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

Add the salt and mix on medium for about 2 minutes until the salt is fully incorporated. While you’re waiting, mix the milk and olive oil together in a bowl and then add that gradually to the mixing bowl. Once the liquids have been absorbed and won’t fly out of the bowl, turn the mixer to high speed and mix until smooth and airy, about 5 more minutes.

Remove the bowl and disconnect the dough hook. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature until it doubles, about 2-3 hours.

Preheat the oven about an hour before baking. Use the initial temperature that you know works for for other breads that you have baked. I set mine halfway between 475 and 500.

Dump the dough out on a floured board and cut it based upon the shapes you want to bake. I was able to fill two half-sized baking sheets completely with this recipe, but you can also make round pizza-shaped breads or smaller individual shapes. At any rate, decide what you’re going to do and prepare baking sheets with parchment paper.

Move the pieces of dough to the baking sheets and shape by squishing, pulling and smashing the dough where you want it to go. Don’t worry about squeezing the air out. It will have plenty of rise left in it. When your shapes are complete and fairly uniform in thickness, cover with a towel and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Uncover the bread and brush with olive oil. Season and add toppings as you like. Nancy Silverton recommends weighing the bread down with a lot of heavy toppings so it reduces the rise in the oven, but I like the taller, puffier texture. So I recommend erring on the side of strong flavors rather than piling up heavy layers.

Bake according to the standard white bread recipe. Spray the oven with water before adding the bread. Reduce the oven 50 degrees after adding the bread and spray with water twice more during the first 5 minutes of baking. Bake 15 minutes and check to see if it needs rotating to cook evenly. Bake another 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Comments

The amount of water you will need is dependent upon the hydration of your starter and the temperature of the kitchen and your ingredients. Warmer temperature means less water. If your starter is a thick, rubbery paste like mine, you may need as much as a cup of additional water. The dough should be watery and airy. It should flow around the bowl and your hands and stick to everything, almost like liquid marshmallow. It should defy kneading.

Other than getting the amount of water correct, it is hard to screw up.

Sourdough Blueberry Scones

Color pictures of my favorite non-bread sourdough recipe yet. You will find all of the details here.

Sourdough Raisin Pecan Bread

I used the standard White Bread recipe and added:

• 1.0 cups Golden Raisins
• 1.0 cups Chopped Pecans
• 1.0 cup Harvest Multigrain Mix
• 1.5 tsp. Ground Cinnamon

Color photograph!!! I haven’t tasted it yet, but it looks pretty good. I think the multigrain mix reduces the rise a bit so the loaves are slightly smaller than usual. Hopefully they won’t be too dense. It definitely IS a problem if you use more than 1 cup…

Multigrain Cranberry Walnut Bread

This uses the regular sourdough white bread recipe, but I added:

• 1.75 cups Harvest Multigrain Mix (never again: 1.0 cups MAX)
• 1.25 cups Sweetened Dried Cranberries
• 1.00 cups Crushed Walnut Pieces
• 1.50 tsp. Cinnamon

I’m trying to make a multigrain bread without having to create and maintain a whole-wheat or rye starter. Maintaining one starter is bad enough. KAF recommends half a cup of the multigrain mix per loaf, so this bread has almost twice the recommended amount…

Anyway, these loaves weigh a ton. The walnuts cause a chemical reaction with the dough and turn it a purple-gray color. Between that and the rye flakes in the multigrain mix, the finished product has a deep brown color, almost like cocoa, which is unusual for a white bread.

Update: This recipe sucked. Yes, it happens… I would *not* recommend putting in more than 1/2 cup of the multigrain/seed mix per loaf. Also, life just conspired against me on this one. I could tell from the start the dough was too tough and heavy, but I couldn’t seem to add enough water to soften it up. Oh well. There’s nothing wrong with the other ingredients though, so if  you don’t use too much multigrain cereal and make sure the dough is otherwise nice and soft like it should be, it should be delicious.

Sourdough Cranberry Scones
Makes 8 large scones 

Ingredients

• 1.0 cups Sourdough Starter
• 3.0 cups All Purpose Flour
• 0.5 cups Brown Sugar
• 1.5 cups Unsalted Butter, cold and cut into 1 tbs. pieces
• 1.0 tsp. Salt (scant - a little less is okay)
• 3.0 tbs. Buttermilk
• 1.0 tbs. Lemon or Orange zest
• 1.0 tbs. Baking Powder
• 1.0 cup Dried Sweetened Cranberries
• 1.0 tbs. Heavy Cream
• 2.5 tsp. Sugar Crystals (large granules)

Directions

I prefer to mix this by hand either in a bowl or on a board, but you can use a food processor or a mixer with a paddle attachment if you prefer.

Preheat oven to 400. If you have a convection oven, use convection bake.

Mix the starter, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt with your hands until the ingredients are incorporated. You may wish to reserve a bit of the flour and use it to adjust the consistency of the dough. At this point, you should have what looks like a bowl of bread crumbs, not a dough.

Cut in the butter and mix with your fingers until it’s almost all incorporated. You want a lot of pea-sized pieces still visible. If the dough is too wet add a little more flour but try not to over mix. It should be a sticky, lumpy dough.

Add in the cranberries and the citrus zest and toss/mix until evenly distributed. Don’t over mix. Keep it loosely bound.

Now add the buttermilk and mix until it binds the mixture into a stiff dough. How much buttermilk you need is dependent upon how wet your starter is. Don’t make the dough too wet and don’t over handle, a few floury parts is fine.

Turn the dough out on to a well-floured surface and pat into a large disc that’s 3/4” to 1/2” thick. Cut the dough into 8 pie slice pieces.

Arrange the pieces about 1” apart on a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Brush the scones with the heavy cream and sprinkle with sugar crystals.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until they just begin to turn golden brown. Cool the scones on a cooling rack.

Comments

The taste is phenomenal. Compared to scones made without sourdough starter, they have a much richer more complex flavor. The consistency is not crumbly but more of a loosely-organized bread or cake… difficult to describe but it was exactly what I was aiming for.

Note: This recipe has been updated to include a teaspoon of salt, which helps the flavor a lot. I also reduce the amount of starter, increased the amount of flour, and added a few spoonfuls of buttermilk. Much better!