I enjoyed my first slices with a raw kale salad and marinated grilled tempeh. A pretty healthy lunch.

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Post tags: artisan, bread, jeffrey hamelman, sourdough, vegan, vegetarian

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How did I do it? I pulled the starter out, stirred the hooch in (the liquid on top) and put it on the counter in a new bowl. Leaving it on the counter, I fed it with half a cup of flour and half a cup of water twice a day. At each feeding , I poured off about half the starter into a container of excess. But I’ll get to that later.

Friday night I began the Vermont Sourdough from Hamelman’s Bread. Saturday morning I worked through the shaping and then retarded the two loaves in the fridge overnight. Then Sunday morning I baked them off one at a time on my pizza stone. The first loaf I steamed once with ice cubes. The 2nd loaf I added a second steaming. The second steaming seemed to give the 2nd loaf a little more spring. The taste was mild but clearly the starter did its job. Nice rise, good crumb. Chewy crust. Sourdough bread is such a process that it’s even more satisfying when it all goes well.

So there have been sammichs, bread slice snacks, bread with salad, etc. And I haven’t cut into the second loaf yet! So what to do with the cast-off starter created when feeding? There are a bunch of things you can do with it, but this time I chose scones. (Obviously, I veganized that recipe.) It really doesn’t act to rise the scones, but flavors them a little and keeps you from having to throw the excess in the garbage.

tempeh salad sammich

apple pie sourdough scones

It’s been a while, so I’m going to submit this post to WildYeast’s Yeastspotting. Head over there every Friday for a collection of baking porn from around the internets.

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They had a hot bar that didn’t look that appetizing. There was also a salad bar that looked okay. So we settled on sandwiches. They had a bunch of options for vegans. You fill out a little laminated card with all the options you want on your sandwich and they make it for you.

Mine was a vegan chicken salad on sourdough. The texture reminded me of Soul Vegetarian’s eggless salad. Kevin said it tasted better than Whole Foods’ fake chicken salad. It was tasty. And the sandwich was huge! Half would have been plenty. But I ate 3/4 of it any way. 

Kevin got the vegan BBQ. It was supposed to be heated but wasn’t really all that warm. The texture was satisfying but I’d probably punch up the flavor of the sauce a bit. I like a bit more oomph to my BBQ sauce.

They also have baked goods. I picked up this orange cookie with chocolate glaze that I ended up eating on the road Tuesday. It was a fat cookie and the texture was somewhere between shortbread and a scone. I’d be tempted to eat this for breakfast. I think I’m more of a chewy cookie sort of person. The orange flavor was lovely and the simple chocolate glaze was a nice contrast.

Ellwood Thompson’s also carries some of Twin Oaks‘ products. They use only organic, Virginia-grown soybeans in the products. So I picked up their chorizo, breakfast sausage, regular tofu and Italian tofu. Once we try these out, I’ll give a report on how they were.

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Post tags: bbq, cookie, ellwood thompson's, richmond, sammiches, sandwiches, sourdough, vegan, vegetarian, virginia

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First thing I did was feed all my cultures. And I saved some cast-off to make sourdough waffles. 

sourdough waffles

First bread up is the Golden Raisin Bread. This one calls for a culture plus a little bit of commercial yeast. I still have two cultures I haven’t used yet, so this made use of one, the Alaska. With a good % of whole wheat flour and some rolled oats thrown in for good measure, this turned out to be a pretty hearty and healthy bread. My slashing is definitely a problem. Nothing I’ve tried is sharp or thin enough to do the job properly. I have some proper lames on the way though.

golden raisin bread

golden raisin bread crumb

Those went off without any problems. But I do dumb stuff from time to time. Like, I’ve had a dough rising in then oven, forgot and turned on the oven to preheat. Der. This weekend my dumb thing was to have the olive levain dough on top of my stove while the oven was preheating for the raisin bread. Oh yeah, on the burner above the oven vent. So I ended up cutting a chunk of that dough off. See, here is the olive dough cooking away on the burner with the raisin dough next to it and my waffle batter.

doughs

So, I kind of thought I might have killed the olive levain, but I continued as planned anyway. After a couple of folds, I shaped it and put it in the fridge to retard for what ended up being about 24 hours. It came out of the fridge a little sloppy and flat, so I kind of pulled it back into an oblong loaf shape, slashed it, spritzed it with water and threw it in the oven to bake, a couple of ice cubes chucked in the bottom for steam. Sure enough, it started rising. I hadn’t killed all the yeast! Sure, I lost some oven spring, but it still turned out wonderful. It has received nothing but compliments so far. I can only imagine how good it’ll be if I don’t try to ruin it!

olive levain

olive levain up close

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So, this time, I decided to make the same recipe, the Vermont Sourdough from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread using two different starters, Australian and Danish Rye. Just to see the difference and as an excuse to make even more bread. I mean, if you’re gonna heat up the oven for 4 loaves, might as well make it 6!

The difference between the two was subtle. In the end, I think the Australian wasn’t quite as sour. The rise and crumb seemed to be about the same. These are the loaves with the Rye starter, but the other looked about the same:

Here is the crumb from the Rye starter:

The crumb of the Australian starter. As you can see, I fear my oven going crazy and shooting up in temperature and burning my breads, so I have a habit of taking them out as soon as the internal temperature reaches 205-210 degrees F.

And here is a slice of each side by side. The Australian wasn’t actually flatter than the Rye, I was just further into the Rye loaf when these were cut.

All in all I was really happy with both. Obviously there’s lots of room for improvement, but I think I’m doing pretty well for someone that has no idea what she’s doing.  

How did I use all this bread? Gave a bunch away, of course. Ate it sliced with Earth Balance. Sliced with peanut butter. Toasted with EB alongside Lentil and Pastina Soup. Made French Toast with it and had with tofu scramble and obligatory green vegetable, broccoli. And had this morning toasted with EB and pomegranate jelly and with leftover scramble.

Coming soon, experiments in laminated dough, or, OMG I’m covered in Earth Balance. Ewww!

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And here’s the barm. The white tape marks the beginning level. I’d say that’s some active yeast, eh?

The finished loaves were far from perfect. The bottom is a bit too brown and the top not quite brown enough. I need a proper tool for the cuts in the top. (I used a box knife. No really.) I need to work on setting up my boule a bit better. Needs more surface tension. But after doing two I now have more of a feel for it. The taste seems just about right. Good sour taste. Probably could be a little more sour. But that will probably develop as the starter matures. I wish they had risen more. And I wish my oven wasn’t so sketchy. There’s no keeping an even temperature. At least I have an oven thermometer so I can keep adjusting, but I know it’s all over the place. Also, I think I had them too far down in the oven, but I needed to leave space at the top for the steaming water. Anyway, here’s a loaf and a slice:

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Post tags: baking, bread, sourdough, vegan, vegetarian

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