Wednesday, November 21, 2007

English Muffins with Sourdough


Since we will have a bunch of people for breakfast on Thanksgiving (2007) I decided to make some English muffins. I followed the recipe on the box for the rings with enough to make 8 muffins. I added 200 grams of my starter which is equivalent to 100 grams of water and 100 grams of flour. The resulting dough was smooth and easy to handle. I allow them to rise in the rings in a floured baking sheet with a greased plastic sheet over them and another baking sheet on top. This forces the dough to rise sideways in the ring to fill the ring. These were baked for about 15 minutes without the top sheet in place.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Sourdough Potato Bread

Recently my wife and I and my sister ate dinner at a nice restaurant in Chattanooga, St. Johns, I think. They served a very nice sourdough potato bread. I decided to try to make some. My sourdough starter is sitting on the counter ready to use.

I used Google to find recipes on the internet and found several that were all the same. The one I choose was www.basic-recipes.com/bds/potato.htm. It calls for instant mashed potato, so I used my favorite instant potato, Hungry Jack. These are flakes of russet potato. I followed the recipe and at the end, no bake temperature or time was given. So...I turned on the convection oven to 450, put a cup of water into the cast iron frying pan on the bottom, and put the bread in to bake, essentially a cold oven start. I set the timer for 30 minutes. Then turned on the oven light. The bulb was burned out! I used a flashlight to monitor the bake process. After 15 minutes, the bread was browning a little quickly, so I turned the oven down to 350 and continued. At the end of the 30 minutes this is what we got. The bread internal temp was 200 degrees F.






Here is the crumb. The bread has a barely sweet flavor and a soft crumb but still sturdy enough to not break when spreading the butter. I served it warm. We will have more tomorrow on Thanksgiving when everybody is here.