Christmas Crackers

Not just any old crackers.  Yellow star-shaped crackers.  

The bright yellow of these sourdough crackers add a festive splash to your holiday spread.

Festive Sourdough Star Crackers

adapted from Bint Rhoda's Kitchen

(these can also be starfish crackers in the off-season)

300 g white sourdough starter

200 g unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 c. good quality olive oil
1-1/2 tsp tumeric
1/4 tsp salt 
more salt for dusting


In a non-reactive bowl, mix all the ingredients together using your hands. When it becomes difficult to mix, knead in the bowl until everything is incorporated.  One benefit of the tumeric is that it's very easy to tell when it's well mixed.  

Form into a ball, cover and let rest for 8-10 hours.

Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Divide dough in two.  Using one section at a time, turn out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out nice and thin, as evenly as possible.  I try to keep the flour on the bottom only, and flour the rolling pin very lightly when needed.  This keeps the top of the cracker from looking dusty but allows you to transfer the crackers to a baking sheet with minimal distortion.

Cut into star shapes.  You will find a star-shaped cookie cutter is very helpful here.  Hand cut stars are fabulously whimiscal, but are a pain in the bum to make.  But if you have more patience than I do, or you just want to win, knock yourself out.  Just be aware that the dough is stretchy, so you need to make quick, short cuts to avoid distortion.

Transfer the crackers to a baking tray.  Crowd them on there or you'll be baking all day.  They don't expand during baking, so won't get stuck together unless they are already touching when they go into the oven.  Dust them with salt, to taste.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the cracker.  You want them to be well cooked, and lightly browned (undercooked crackers don't get crunchy).  These will puff up a bit in the middle.  That's fantastic, because now you have a star that looks filled with joy.  It's just an air bubble, but it gives them character. 

(Goes well with baby cheeses.... heh...)

For a more traditional snack cracker, whole wheat sourdough and poppy seeds are an excellent combination.

Variation:  Whole Wheat Poppy Seed Crackers

Use whole wheat sourdough starter instead of white and omit the tumeric.  When the dough is rolled out, sprinkle liberally with poppy seeds then lightly roll once more to press the poppy seeds into the surface.  If you don't roll them in, they will just fall off.  Cut into squares, or any other shape of your liking.  If you don't want them to puff up in the center, poke a few holes in them with a fork.

~~~

I came across Bint Rhoda's recipe when I was looking for ways to use up sourdough starter.   To some extent, I am still making peace with sourdough.  I love it, I just wish I was a more predictably talented sourdough bread maker.  In the meantime, these crackers have never failed, even when I've drifted away from the recipe (but this might be my bread problem).

I know I can throw out sourdough starter.  Lots of people do.  Every day.  But it seems not just wasteful, but somehow pointless to have fed and fed and fed, only to throw it out by the cupful.  Now, not only do I use more of the starter, but I'll never have to buy crackers again.  Win!

Happy holidays from The Moose Curry Experience!

submitted to YeastSpotting

Sourdough Toutons

One of the best things about living in Newfoundland is that you can fry bread in pork fat and not feel ashamed of yourself.



Breakfast good and proper:  toutons, scrunchions, and molasses.  Yeah, okay, it's not a well balanced meal, but you have all day to correct that..

Sourdough Toutons

Since this is traditionally a breakfast food, make the dough at least a day ahead of when you plan to cook the toutons; once it's made up, it can be stored in the fridge for a few days.  That means very little thinking is required before you finish that first cup of coffee on touton morning. If you're a breakfast-for-dinner kind of person, you can get the first step done before you go to work and finish it up when you get home.

Step 1 - Thicken up your sourdough starter (8-12 hours)

400 g mature sourdough starter*
100 g cool water
300 g unbleached all-purpose flour

*I have a white and a red fife sourdough one on the go (both started with the feral apple method found in this post) and used 250 g of white starter and 150 g of whole wheat starter... as long as you weigh it, it doesn't matter what proportions you use or if you only use one type.

Stir together all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.  Cover with beeswaxed cloth wrap or plastic wrap and set aside at room temperature for 8-12 hours.  Enough time for a full day's work or a full night's sleep.


Step 2 - Make the dough (~2.5 hrs)

There are a few 45-minute breaks in this process, so don't let the 2.5 hours frighten you... take advantage of the breaks to get other stuff done: darn your socks, write a letter, bathe the dogs.  No, on second thought, don't bathe the dogs, it would be too difficult to keep hair out of the dough.  Turn your compost instead, you're always forgetting to do that...

starter from step 1
40 g butter
60 g milk
350 g warm water
2 tsp salt
150 g whole wheat flour
750 g unbleached all-purpose flour

Heat butter and milk in a saucepan until butter is just melted; remove from heat and add warm water and salt to butter mixture.  Stir together and let cool until comfortable to hold your finger in the liquid (this shouldn't take long).  Add liquid and dry ingredients to sourdough mixture from step 1. 

I'm about to share a sourdough miracle with you.  In my continued self-education about baking with sourdough, I finally gave in to the stretch and fold technique .  Years of using baker's yeast made it really difficult for me to let go of kneading, but I'm a convert now.  And here's the first part of the miracle: stir all the bread ingredients together until the dry ones are just moistened.  That's it.  It doesn't need to be smooth or taut, just combined.  Cover and let it rest for 45 minutes, when it will be time for 
the first stretch and fold (here's a good video demonstration from Mike Avery of Sourdough Home).

Turn onto a clean surface.  Using a flat palm under the dough, stretch it out into a big rectangle.  Fold in thirds lengthwise, then in thirds crosswise.  If the dough feels really soft and unstructured, stretch and fold again.  Put it back in your bowl, cover, and let rest for 45 minutes.

Above: Ingredients for breakfast.  Who wouldn't want to start
their day with bread, sugar and pork fat?  Below:  Lest you
should imagine that we cut corners, please note that we used
the Atantics BEST pork back fat... packaged locally which
saved my mainlander self from having to reach into the big
tub of brined back fat at the store. 

Repeat the stretch and fold, return to bowl for 45 minutes.  Stretch and fold a final time, then pack the dough up in an airtight container and put it in the refrigerator until you are ready to use.  Ready to use it already?  Move on to step 3.



Step 3: Make the toutons (~1 hr, depending how many you make at a time)

dough from step 2
a piece of salted pork back fat, cut into small cubes
fancy molasses

Cut dough into pieces.  Half of the dough will make about 18 toutons. (If you are feeding a crowd, use the whole batch. If not, use as much as you need and either refrigerate or freeze the rest, or make a loaf of bread with it.)  Gently form each piece into a ball-like shape, then roll into a circular-ish disk.  Set aside to let rise while preparing the cooking fat.

I used a piece of back fat about 8 cm x 6 cm to cook half the dough.  Place the cubes of salted back fat into a cast iron skillet and heat over medium, stirring occasionally, to render the fat.  This will take a while.  When the fat stops bubbling but before it starts smoking (ask me how I know it will start smoking if you aren't quick enough), use a slotted spoon to remove all the crispy cubes of salty deliciousness from the fat and cool on brown paper.  These crispy bits are called scrunchions, you need them later, so just set aside.

If the fat is not hot enough, your dough will soak up way too much of it, so, keep the fat hot, but try not to let it smoke; adjust the temperature as needed as you go.  If you used flour when rolling out your toutons, tap off as much as you can before cooking but without deflating your touton (the flour will eventually burn in the fat and fill your kitchen with intolerable smoke, trust me). Working in batches, fry the toutons until puffy and golden brown (~2 minutes on each side, more or less).  Drain on brown paper.

Serve hot, with scrunchions and molasses.  The sourdough results in lots of big bubbles in the touton and that delicate soft bread is a perfect contrast to the crunchy, salty scrunchions and the sticky sweet molasses. 

Lots of big air pockets in the sourdough resulted in a very pillowy touton.  Mmmm...

~~~

Toutons (tout pronounced like shout or lout) are touted (heh. get it?) as one of the backbones of traditional Newfoundland cuisine, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that although it uses a different leavening agent, toutons are not really different than fry bread (the post-contact bread of indigenous North Americans).  And never mind North America, similar fried breads are found everywhere: Maori paraoa parai, South African vetkoek, Indian poori, Yemeni m'lawwah, Moroccan harsha, Uruguayan tortas fritas... the list goes on far and wide. So although scrunchions and molasses make Newfoundland toutons specific to Newfoundland, don't feel restricted by them.  Go ahead and serve toutons with curries and tagines.

Regardless, toutons are real folk food in Newfoundland: the sort of thing no one needs a recipe for because you just make them with your regular home made yeasted bread dough, fried in a pan.  (Of course, just like anywhere else, a lot of people don't make bread.  However, the same modern conveniences that caused that problem have also solved it: in any grocery store in Newfoundland, you can buy raw bread dough labeled "touton dough".)  Nearly every restaurant serving breakfast here will offer toutons as a side or as a main served with a side of baked beans.  Toutons are part of the fabric of life.

Admittedly, we never ate sourdough toutons before creating this recipe.  But keep your traditionalist socks on, there's no need to imagine William Coaker rolling in his grave: the sourdough makes for a pillowy fried bread, and these are certified heavenly*.  Well worth the effort of sourdough.  Also, I'm willing to bet money that toutons were made with sourdoughs in the days before commercial yeast was readily available.

Regarding the brined pork back fat: You might be shaking your head and feeling grossed out by it.  Indulge me for a moment though to consider it may not be so icky as all that when you consider that it provides an opportunity to get a bit more personal with your food than buying a pound of lard packaged into a nice reliable block.  I know the homesteaders and food revivalists among you are cheering because this is exactly what your grandmother would have done, rendering salt-cured fat from the hand-raised pigs; the hipsters and foodies among you are clapping your hands in delight because fat is in right now.  At any rate, for how often you're really going to spend two days making fried bread, go ahead and enjoy the pork fat and the excessive molasses.   And molasses is a good source of iron, so it's practically a health food anyway, right?  

By the way, this is perfect food for eating with your fingers from a shared plate.  Especially out on your back step, in the crisp morning air, with a steaming cup of coffee, watching some boats being put into dry dock for the winter.  It doesn't get much better.  (And it gets you out of that smokey kitchen...)

*I made that certification up, but if it existed, well, hoo boy.

~~~

The entire time I was rendering pork fat and frying the toutons, I felt as though someone was looking over my shoulder.

~~~

submitted to YeastSpotting!

Feral Apple Sourdough

When I first read about wild-caught yeast sourdoughs, I was immediately attracted to the idea. But, I lack the discipline to remember to bring a bowl of flour with me to leave open somewhere nearby when foraging for apples or other fruit. Then one day, an imaginary friend on the internet casually mentioned remembering her grandmother starting sourdough by burying grapes in flour and leaving them overnight.  I sat bolt upright, recognizing a do-able plan.

 

By do-able, I mean the the theory was good.  I'm a practiced bread-baker, but I've never done a sourdough.  There are piles of dusty apples on the counter and the fridge is full of lethargic sourdough starters with their complicated histories written on the container in sharpie.  Fefe Noir is thinking about taking up curling since that seems to be all the rejected loaves are good for.   The good news:  I figured it out.

Difficult?  Oh, yes.  But don't worry, I made all the mistakes already and it will be a breeze when you do it... 

Feral Apple Sourdough Bread

adapted from Wild Yeast's 47% Rye Bread

Feral apples can be found on abandoned properties, near
trails, and pretty much anywhere Johnny Appleseed went.

600 g feral apple sourdough starter (see below)
1 tbsp birch syrup or fancy molasses
340 g unbleached all purpose flour
350 g Red Fife flour
3/4 tbsp salt
400 g water (~ 2-1/2 cups), tap-hot

In a large mixing bowl, combine sourdough starter with birch syrup.  Let rest for a few minutes while you weigh your flours.  Stir flours, salt and about 2/3rds of the water into the sourdough mixture.  Add water as needed to make the dough workable, but not overly wet.

Stir in one direction to build up gluten.  When the dough becomes elastic and difficult to stir, change your technique a bit to a stir and lift motion.  Long strands of gluten will become visible, pulling from the sides of the bowl as you stir.  Your arm will be getting sore but you're almost done.  When the dough pulls away from the bowl in one lump as you lift and long sheets of dough form from the spoon, stop stirring. 

Turn dough out into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and let rest for 1 hour.

If, like I was, you are not accustomed to making sourdough bread, you will find the dough seems rather sticky. It is rather sticky. If you try to make it not sticky, you may end up with a loaf that doesn't rise during baking, and will do a lovely job as a doorstop but be impossible to saw through much less delicately slice for tea sandwiches (ask me how I know).

Flour your hands.  Keep a bowl with some flour handy for dusting your hands as needed.  Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide in two.  Stretch each half into a long rectangle, fold the end thirds over the middle, turn over, cover and let rest 30 minutes.

If you will be using a loaf pan, lightly oil the pan and dust with flour.  If you will be making a free-form loaf, I highly recommend baking it on parchment paper on a pizza stone.  If you don't have a pizza stone, you can preheat a heavy baking sheet.  Or buy a pizza stone, it's well worth it.

Lightly deflate each rectangle.  Turn over and roll into a loaf from the short side.  Place in baking pan and slash the top of the loaf to allow expansion during baking.  If you are making a free form loaf, make sure the edges are well tucked, the seam is well sealed and on the bottom of the loaf.  You will also want to proof the loaf on parchment paper, and raise the sides of the parchment (literally, raise them up, pin them together above the loaf with clothespins or paper clips).  Let rest 1 hour.  Do not be alarmed if the dough does not change in size perceptibly, but the surface should look taut.

Oh, yes.  I made sourdough bread from feral apples.

While the loaves are proofing, pre-heat the oven (with the pizza stone if using) to 475F.  Arrange the oven shelves for the bread to bake in the center with a rack below for a steaming pan.  A few minutes before the bread is done proofing, put a shallow pan with a couple cups of water in it on the lower shelf.  Turn the oven down to 450F and bake the loaves for 12 minutes.  Carefully remove the steaming pan from the oven and continue to cook the loaves for an additional 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

   

Feral Apple Sourdough Starter

What you will need:

• 6 feral apples (or crabapples or other small apples which have not been subject to pesticides, have not been washed and have not  been waxed - whichever you choose, use locally picked apples, the whole point is to make a bread unique to the place you live)
• Red Fife wheat flour (or other whole grain wheat flour)
• unbleached all-purpose flour
• tap water, declorinated
• patience

The amount of flour needed in total depends on how long your starter takes to mature, and how long you keep it. 

It's important to use unbleached flour and declorinated water to minimize possibility of yeast death, particularly in the early stages of making the starter.  True, I haven't verified the scientific evidence regarding yeast survival in bleached white flour, but why would you use bleached flour anyway?  And why take the risk?  If your tap water is chlorinated, it's easy to declorinate by leaving some in an open container for a few hours allowing the chlorine to evaporate.

Colony Building

basic technique for harvesting yeast followed King Arthur Flour's Grape Sourdough Starter

 

Day 1

Place the 6 feral apples in a large-ish non-reactive bowl that you won't need to use for other purposes for a while.  Bury them in 150 g of Red Fife and 150 g unbleached white flour.  Cover with a linen tea towel and place the bowl out of reach of children and pets.  Fill a glass jar or other suitable container with water; leave uncovered to dechlorinate.

Day 2

Under the surface liquid, the starter is foamy and bubbling.
Time to start feeding.

Remove apples from flour and tap as much flour as you can from the apples back into the bowl.  Stir 500 ml of dechlorinated water into the flour.  Cover with the tea towel.

Day 3-5

At least once a day, have a peek at your starter, pour off any brownish liquid from the surface, then give it a stir.  Once the starter is foamy and full of bubbles, and begins to form bubbles again immediately after stirring, you can start feeding it (this might happen right away, you don't need to wait for day 5 to move on to feeding)

Feeding

Stir to combine well; you want an nice smooth batter.  

Day 1-3

If there is liquid on the surface of the starter, pour it off.  On days 1 and 2, add 50 g of each flour and 100 g of dechlorinated water and stir in.  Increase to 75 g of each flour and 150 g water on day 3.  Cover.

Day 4

Figuring out maturity can be difficult; it might look mature
but not smell quite right.  What the hell, make some bread.
The worst possible outcome is having to pitch it out.

Stir the starter and split in half; this should give you two lots of about 600 g starter.  If your starter is not yet mature, feed each starter beginning at Feeding Day 1 again.  You will know when your starter is mature; if you don't know, it isn't mature.  When it is mature, it looks full and foamy and just smells right.  Worst case scenario, you make a batch of bread resembling a cow patty but with the consistency of a hockey puck (ask me how I know).  Don't sweat it.  Keep feeding your starter and wait for it to be ready.

If your starter is mature, use one half of the split to make a batch of bread (see above) and feed only the other half starting at Day 1 again.  As you can see, this schedule will result in making bread every 4 days.  If this is too much for you, store your starter in the refrigerator and feed it every few days instead of every day.

~~~

The lore around wild-caught yeast is that there is a lot of regional variation in airborne yeast, thus each region can produce a sourdough bread with a flavour that is really specific to the area.  I love the idea of that.  That the nuances in my feral apple sourdough could only occur here; yours could only occur where you are.  Some magic that is, capturing the essence of a place and baking it in a loaf of bread.

Curator of YeastSpotting and Wild Yeast blogger says this lore is poppycock.  Which might well be true, which is probably true.  But I want my magic Newfoundland feral apple sourdough with it's lovely sourdough tang and undertones of something like apple cider vinegar and empty grain silos (is that my imagination? does it matter?)... I want that magic to be real.  And maybe the bacteria or the yeast on those apples add characteristics to the grain-yeast sourdough that is common across space.  In any case I'll avoid the peer-reviewed research because I don't want to know.  Plus, hey, I made sourdough bread for the first time*.


*By which I mean hours of website and discussion board research, at least three starters and several unsuccessful attempts before finding the combination of starter and baking method that worked in a repeatable way.  Hopefully this will save you some time, effort and frustration.