#SourdoughSeptember

Chocolate and banana muffins are another (delicious) way to use up sourdough starter, along with ripe banana's that no-one wants to eat. The sourdough starter needs to be fed regularly otherwise it will get too sour and probably a bit mouldy (or even die), so I try and use some every week and refresh the remains with some flour and water to keep it a happy. You may have noticed that I have a very relaxed *read 'lazy'* attitude to maintaining my sourdough starter!  

family tea

I combined my two starters together (Derbyshire starter and a San Francisco starter from Christmas) because I hadn't labelled them and was getting them mixed up. Interestingly, they definitely had a different smell, although I couldn't tell any difference on baking. Now I have a single starter that could be described as multi cultural. Anyway, back to the story. I wanted to make some different bread for family tea instead of a sourdough, so looked for inspiration at the recipes on the BakeryBits blog. These are generally devised by Vanessa Kimbell and I love that she comes up with new recipes for sourdough bread, and also some interesting cakes and muffins using sourdough starter. She also uses a 'la cloche' baking dome so it fits my style of baking perfectly.

I digress......back to family tea..... I found two recipes that fit the bill for today's family tea; Chocolate and Banana Sourdough Muffins, and Cumin and Sultana rolls.

The muffins are incredibly easy to make. It really is a case of mix the crumble topping ingredients and set aside , mix the dry ingredients together, mix the wet ingredients together and then combine the wet and dry together. Plop the mixture into the muffin cases and then pile topping  on the er.... top. Bung in the oven for about 20-25 minutes and there you have it, delicious chocolatey muffins

Muffins ready to mix

chocolate and banana sourdough muffins

The bread rolls are an unusual combination of cumin and sultana, but it really works as a taste combination. The fragrance of the lightly toasted cumin seeds and the baking bread  permeates the whole house making you instantly hungry. The rolls are shaped and then proved in the baking dome base and then popped in the oven with a pre-heated lid. It's so easy. In fact I made another batch this morning, since the last lot didn't make it past teatime.

cumin and sultana bread rolls

I have to mention the amazing purple smoothie I made last week. It started with a spot of blackberry picking from the back of the car park at the flat. They are the most succulent, huge blackberries ever. I just couldn't resist and it only took about 20 minutes to pick nearly a kilo! I didn't fancy making jam using the pretty useless cooker that's in the flat, so decided to freeze the blackberries for smoothie-ing and juicing. What a purple delight a blackberry, yoghurt and banana smoothie is! And so very delicious with sourdough cheese scones for lunch.

Sourdough success....

Hoorah, success with the sourdough. We couldn't wait until teatime to try the bread so it made an appearance at lunch. The crumb was perfect; a little chewy, but light and tasty. Phee-ew!

 I'm just making a teatime cakey treat and just to prove that not all my culinary attempts are successful, I had a bit of a disaster.  I opted for 'Coconut, berry and walnut breakfast bars' a recipe found on 'don't feed after midnight' blog. I think the recipe is based on a Nigella recipe. Anyway, it has lots of oats, coconut, nuts, berry's and seeds and sounds so very healthy. It also has a less wholesome inclusion of a tin of condensed milk which has to be warmed gently in a saucepan until it is runny. The recipe says to be careful that the condensed milk doesn't burn. Well, guess what, I burned it. Bah. A multi-tasking failure for womankind. Fortunately, we have a Co-op shop in the parade of shops where we live and they came up trumps with emergency condensed milk. It's a bit like having a giant store cupboard next door. I'll report on the success (or otherwise) of the breakfast bars soon.

Meanwhile, I'll share a few of our holiday photo's. As reported on the  barn conversion blog we had a research holiday in a holiday cottage that was a converted Victorian stable near Beverley in Yorkshire. We had one damp day in Beverley with no photogenic opportunities in the rain and a day with beautiful sunshine which we spent at the seaside. More specifically, we visited Spurn Point, which is an unusually long spit of sand just above the Humber estuary. It is formed naturally by the sea pushing sand and debris down the coast and is a national nature reserve run by the Yorkshire wildlife trust. There are cottages and a lighthouse at the end which are serviced by a road, or at the moment only part of a road as bad storms and a high tidal surge in December 2013 washed part of the road away and is now only accessible by foot or land rover.

Our last morning was spent in Beverley, thankfully in sunshine this time. Unlike our first visit where we couldn't view the minster due to a wedding, this time it was open for business and very interesting too. 

And finally,  the coconut, berry and walnut breakfast bars were a complete success, despite their inauspicious start. Hoorah.

Winter Wonderland, sourdough and welsh baking stone

January is whooshing past and I have so many things to write about. I think I will start with today and work backwards. Today was another winter wonderland day in Derbyshire. I opened the blind  to a beautiful sunrise and everything white over. I'ts not a photo failure, it really was that pink and purple!  

Yesterday there was a sprinkling of  snow at home with much more forecast so I elected to work from home. Information Technology has it's benefits and being at home meant that I had no travel worries. The main advantage was that I could start at 07:30 (after a lie-in), and then when the working day was done it was only 4:00pm and the rest of the day was my own. I quickly russled up a big pan of chicken risotto and a butternut squash and lentil dahl (all from the fridge, freezer and cupboard - I love impromptu cooking) and then did an hour's yoga before tea. And there was still loads of time left to crochet in front of the telly!

The picture above is my leather footstool aka wool store which also doubles as my work table. Gone are they days where I had a whole bedroom as a playroom, at least for a short while. I'm currently working on using up the rug wool, which has proved to be so successful that I have actually run out before finishing the article in hand.  As you can see my basket is not very deep and is currently being used as a remote control store. Why are there so many remote controls and where are you supposed to keep them? Anyway, I've ordered more wool to make the basket more basket-y. It will probably end up being too big in the end, but hey ho, it keeps me occupied. As a stop gap, I've been planning my entry for this year's Bakewell Show 'Show us yer sheep' competition.  Obviously, it is going to involve some crochet :) and you can see my sample is underway. A lot more work is needed on this one though, so I will have to get on with it so that it doesn't turn into a mad panic at the end. 

One of the unexpected pleasures of our little rented abode is that we have the most marvelous view. I've just been watching the sunset as I type away and noticed a bright light in the sky which I initially thought was an aircraft. But, it didn't move at all. Aha, I thought, as my mind drifted on,  I bet it's a UFO. However, back to reality, it's not a spaceship, idiot.  I must watch (and read) too much sci-fi.  A quick google and it was revealed to be planet Venus. I watched it a bit more and then thought that it would be nice to take a photo, but by the time that I'd assembled the tripod and set up the camera a great black cloud was looming and it was just too dark to get it. I've left the tripod up in the hope that I can capture it tomorrow. That's guaranteed to make it rain!

Santa was good to me this year. In my secret santa letter, I suggested that it would be really nice to have a Welsh Baking Stone from the Bakery Bits website. The stone is actually a cast iron griddle and not a stone at all, and can be used on the cooker top as well as in the oven. Santa did me proud, and I duly received the baking stone with a few other goodies which included a packet of San Francisco sourdough starter. I already have a sourdough starter which has been up and running for over a year now. I now call it the 'Derbyshire' sourdough starter, although it was called Suzie in it's early days. The extract below is the description from the Bakery Bits website. I didn't really believe that it could be that much different to my Derbyshire starter, but after getting it going and comparing with mine it really is different. It has a sharper, more tangy smell and seems to be much more vigorous than mine, although I have only used it on white bread flour whereas I usually feed it with wholemeal.

BakeryBits is the exclusive stockist outside the US of this world-famous starter. This sachet allows you to quickly create your own sourdough starter, based on the same wild yeast that the early California goldrush settlers of 1849 discovered. We send our own instructions for getting the starter going with each sachet which can also be downloaded here.

Sourdough "starter", "leaven", "levain" or "mother" is a flour-based mix containing wild yeasts that give sourdough bread its distinctive, sophisticated flavour. Sourdough was as much part of the Californian goldrush of 1849 as gold itself. Travelling throughout the West in the back-packs of miners and settlers, it eventually found its home in San Francisco. The air in the Golden Gate region enhanced the bread made there with a wonderfully distinctive taste, thanks to Lactobacillus Sanfrancisco, a unique wild yeast which imparts the much sought-after flavour desired by bread bakers the world over. Once you have your starter, it will, if correctly fed and watered, last indefinitely.

I wasted no time getting the new starter....started, and took it on holiday at New Year.  Not as crazy as it sounds, as at the previous New Year holiday I was just at the beginning of my sourdough journey/obsession and took full advantage of the opportunity to bake a loaf of bread every day and have it taste tested by a load of foodies. So, again, the New Year crowd were subjected to a daily sourdough loaf to supplement the every day supermarket bread. Happily, it worked really well despite the unfamiliar kitchen and equipment which made it a real test of improvisation, and the daily bread was greatly appreciated. Several members of the group were inspired to bake at home and took home a sample of the starter to have a go themselves.  

Now a little about the Welsh Baking Stone. I didn't manage to try this out before the holidays, but had a go as soon as we got home. First of all it needed the protective paint to be scrubbed off and then it was seasoned by rubbing with oil and then baking in the oven for a bit. I was impatient to use it so as soon it was seasoned I made some dough, separated it into several balls, rolled them out into flat discs,  and heated up the griddle. This time I used the griddle on the hot plate so that I could handle the flat breads. It was so exciting seeing the flat discs of dough puff up and move around on the hot plate. Shrieks of excitement ensued -  I'm so easily pleased.  Unfortunately, I was so caught up with the excitement of it all I didn't take any photo's........For my second go with the baking stone, I followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's flat bread recipe from the River Cottage Everyday book. This dough didn't have any yeast - it was just flour and water. I really thought that nothing was going to happen and that my flat discs of flour and water dough would just bake into strange biscuits. Again, whoops of delight emanated from the kitchen. It's like a magic trick, it's sooo exciting. And flat breads to accompany our lentil and butternut squash dahl and rice for tea. Mmmm....