Fruit and Nut Sourdough Toast for Breakfast : makes 1 Loaf

This week I bring to you a fruity, hearty, and nourishing sourdough fruit loaf perfect for Sunday morning breakfast. Sourdough is a slow-fermented bread that is beneficial to our gut biome, and doesn't need commercial yeast to rise. It's made with a live fermented culture, a sourdough starter, which acts as a natural rising agent. Once you have a sourdough starter in your refrigerator, "the mother"  you can start baking sourdough bread. 

In My Kitchen - April 2021

 Welcome to In My Kitchen for April, 2021. It's still school holidays here, not that this affects me much, as we're not travelling and don't have children or grandchildren in town, however shopping centres and roads are a lot busier at this time of year, and thankfully the weather is cooling down. 

Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Pull apart Sourdough Bread

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food"

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The aroma from a sourdough cob loaf, fresh from the oven can only be improved upon by adding long sprigs of rosemary,  and roasted garlic and butter and reheating it a day later. I had all of the essential ingredients to make this after I had made three loaves of sourdough bread the day before, and the cob loaf had turned out beautifully. I had locally grown Eungella garlic, a large rosemary bush growing in our garden,  a couple of bush lemons in the crisper from a friend's lemon trees, and all of the other ingredients which are staples in my pantry so it was meant to be when I saw this recipe in the monthly edition of the Mindfood magazine. My goodness it is so good to be alive and to be able to enjoy this Mediterranean taste sensation, made from sustainable local produce and simple homemade bread, however a bought artisan cob loaf would still taste great and do the trick.

My bread making day seems to have evolved into Thursday, sometimes fortnightly, which means we have nice fresh bread for the weekend. I hate wasting any of the sourdough, despite what my recipe says,  so often I end up making more bread than we need.This means a loaf goes into the freezer sliced, and I can also play around with making a cob for fun and experimenting. This cob and the subsequent rosemary garlic bread has been a  fun thing to do, with a very tasty result. Beware my friends, breadmaking can become quite a passion.

I adjusted the ingredients in this recipe to suit a single cob,  when catering for my family, however just double the ingredients for two cobs or more if you are entertaining friends. One cob easily feeds 10 people for a dinner party as a side to the main meal.  In my books you can't have too much garlic or rosemary flavour so add a bit more to this if you like it as well. Next time I will add two sprigs of rosemary to each incision, as I have so much of it growing here. However just three sprigs per loaf still infuses the loaf with an amazing flavour.

My sourdough is turning out really well at the moment, thanks to the warmer weather I think, so this version of garlic bread was delicious. I am using my homemade creation of a banneton, the basket used by artisan bakers for making cob loaves. I will invest in a real banneton at some point. However at the moment so that the bread will keep it's shape whilst it is rising, I use a round cane basket, originally a Christmas basket, line it with a thick tea towel dusted with flour, cover it with a clean shower cap to keep in the heat and moisture, and then cover it with another tea towel and rise it in the morning sun. If you haven't seen my rye sourdough recipe, you can find it here.  For a cob loaf, I often replace half of the rye flour with white breadmaking flour so that it is lighter.

Here is my garlic rosemary cob loaf straight out of the oven and heading for the dinner table. Remove the rosemary, place it on a nice serving board, slice it up and enjoy.



 Ingredients:

1 garlic bulb
1/2 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1/2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 large cob sourdough loaf
75g  butter, softened
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3-4 long rosemary sprigs
salt for seasoning

Let's cook:

Preheat your oven to 200 deg C (180 deg fan forced). Place the garlic bulb on a thick sheet of foil, you might need two sheets to prevent leakage.

Drizzle the garlic with the sherry vinegar and oil and then season with salt.

Wrap the foil securely around the garlic, then place on a baking tray and place in the oven. Roast for 20 minutes, or until garlic is tender. You could bake two garlic cloves to use in something else or just add more to your bread if you love it.

Meanwhile, make three incisions along the top of your cob loaf, being careful not to slice all the way through.  Place your loaf on a lined baking tray.

Wait for your garlic to cool off slightly so as not to burn your fingers, and then squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins, into a small bowl.They will just pop out.

Add the butter and lemon zest and mix to combine.

Spread the garlic butter into the incisions in the bread, and press in the rosemary sprigs.

Season pepper and sprinkle some salt flakes or Himalayan salt across the top of the cob.

Increase the oven to 220 deg. C (200 deg C fan forced). Bake your beautiful loaf for 10 minutes, until crisp and golden on the outside and delicious on the inside whilst the aroma permeates your whole house.

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you have a great weekend doing whatever you have planned.

Best wishes

Pauline

Sourdough Vegetable Pancakes for a light nutritious lunch

When I make Sourdough bread which I absolutely love doing, there is always some activated sourdough left over and as I can't bear to just toss it out, I decided to make some very tasty vegetable pancakes out of it. Sandor Katz who wrote The Art of Fermentation and is somewhat of a fermentation guru gave me the idea. As a result I came up with this versatile recipe. You can make it your own by adding whatever vegetables and herbs you have on hand. If you really like the sourdough taste,  you can leave the sourdough batter, after only the flour and water has been added to it, to ferment overnight out of the frig. Add the vegetables, herbs and egg the next day. The sourdough mixture will also probably ferment and grow overnight, so put it in a large bowl. However if you like a more neutral tasting sourdough, I wouldn't leave it to develop overnight and just add a teaspoon of baking powder to the mixture at about 5 ml/1 teaspoon  of baking powder per 500 ml/2 cups of batter. This neutralises the lactic acid of the sourdough and makes them slightly sweeter and fluffier. This is a great idea if you choose to make your Sourdough pancakes sweet. Now there is an idea for next time.

If you use sourdough to bake bread, do you have any other ideas for using your leftover sourdough? I would love to hear your ideas in the Comments section at the bottom of this blog.

Recipe for Sourdough Vegetable Pancakes

Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 cup of sourdough which has been activated and is vigorous and bubbling
1 cup of plain flour (or substitute some leftover grains in place of some of the flour)
1 cup of lukewarm water
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 chopped capsicum
1 finely diced large flat mushroom
1 small grated sweet potato
Mature grated cheese, about a handful
Chopped parsley
Pinch of dried mixed herbs
Flavoured sea salt flakes
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 beaten egg

Method:

Add the water and flour to the sourdough in a medium sized bowl and beat it well. Leave it to rest while you prepare the vegetables. You will soon see the sourdough start to activate again and start bubbling.

Fry an onion, a clove of garlic, and some other vegetables such as a small red capsicum together together in a pan. Use the same pan you intend to fry the pancakes in. I  added a chopped mushroom after the onions started to soften. You could also add a diced zucchini or okra.

While the vegetables are frying, add an egg to the batter then some flavoured sea salt, ground black pepper, and a handful of tasty grated cheese.

I then added a small grated sweet potato and the fresh parsley and mixed herbs. (you could also add grated radishes, turnips, or potatoes if you have access to nice ones.)

Add the fried vegetables to the batter and mix them in.

If the batter seems too thick add a little water, if it is too thin, keep adding flour gradually until it seems the right pancake consistency and can be dropped from a spoon into a hot pan.

Fry the batter in an oiled, well-seasoned pan, flipping it over when bubbles appear on the surface of the pancake.

These pancakes are delicious for lunch eaten with condiments such as sauerkraut, tomato relish, yoghurt or sour cream, and some sliced cucumber.

Bon appetit!

Thanks for dropping by.

Best wishes

Pauline