Tag: baking

Sourdough Cast-off Biscuits

If you have any experience at all with sourdough starter, you will know that you need to remove some starter each time you feed it, unless you have the ability to store gallons and gallons of the stuff. You can give it to a friend to develop their own starter, toss it, or make something with it. There are a few recipes floating around for pancakes, waffles, etc. But I choose this Fluffy Sourdough Biscuit recipe because it was the most versatile for me and, bonus, it was already vegan.

I’ve made these twice now, both times with a rye starter. Since I mixed it with all purpose flour, the rye didn’t really come through in the biscuits. But the flavor of these things is amazing. You can see in the recipe, there isn’t much by way of flavoring except for the starter, but they taste like they’re full of butter. Also, true to sourdough form, they hung out in a bag on my counter for a few days without a hint of getting stale. They didn’t rise as much as I’d like, but they were in no way dense.

fluffy sourdough biscuits

My First Sourdough

Rather than doing what most people do when they want to try baking sourdough bread, I just jumped right in and developed my own starter. And, despite the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing, it worked! I mean, I can read a book as well as anyone else. But my practical bread building experience is almost nil. The starter took an extra day or two beyond what The Bread Baker’s Apprentice had set as the standard schedule. But then, there’s really nothing standard about developing a wild yeast starter. So I didn’t worry too much, just followed the suggestions and kept plugging away. Here are a few starter shots as I went along:

sourdough starter

sourdough starter

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

sourdough barm

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:

sourdough loaf

sourdough slice

Seitan Sausage & Hot Dog Bun Payoff

So it seems like a month ago or something that I put out tweets that I was making seitan sausages and buns from scratch. It seems kind of weird to say “from scratch” considering that’s about how I cook everything. Anyway, I usually don’t go so far as to make my own hot dog buns. But then, here they are:

hot dog buns

I used Bryanna’s Fluffy But High Fiber Hamburger and Hotdog Bun recipe. For the first ingredient, I used EnergE Egg Replacer because I didn’t have the other things and it’s mostly potato starch anyway. Seemed to work fine. These are all full of whole grains and yet not heavy. I’m not sure I’d call them fluffy exactly, but they are really nice. One thing they don’t do is keep a little “hinge” when you slice them like store bought hotdog buns. I didn’t really think of that. In the future, I’ll experiment with shaping these so the sausage can be wrapped in bread. Even so, the sausages weren’t too messy to eat.

The sausages? Right, I made the steamed seitan sausages that every other vegan food blogger did months ago and probably already has a freezer full of them. I just used Julie Hasson’s original recipe. Next time I’d probably punch up the seasoning a little. I like a really spicy sausage. These had great flavor though. Steaming them was no problem. I just used one of those metal steamer baskets that you fit into the bottom of a pot to steam vegetables. Even though the bottom is rounded and not flat, I was able to stack all the sausages from this recipe into my pasta pot without a problem. 

Don’t be freaked out when you first unwrap these from the foil. They’re still moist on the outside but dry out pretty quickly. I’ve had them both right out of the fridge and into the George Foreman grill and frozen, defrosted partially, then into the grill. It’s crazy convenient to have these just hanging out in your freezer. Sometime soon I’ll incorporate them into some other recipe rather than simply eating on a bun.

seitan sausage cabbage kale salad

Oh, and that’s the Cabbage Kale Slaw from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen next to it. And here’s a slaw extreme close up:

cabbage kale slaw

I had the slaw a couple of days later for lunch at work with sunflower seeds sprinkled on it. It held up just fine and possibly got a little better.

Yes, there’s more food. Asian Baked Tofu from The Candle Cafe Cookbook, Teriyaki Quinoa from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, and some stir fried baby bok choy.

asian baked tofu teriyaki quinoa baby bok choy

Jimmy Crack Corn Crack from Alternative Vegan and Chipotle Kissed Red Bean Sweet Potato Chili from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.

sweet potato chili

Raw, Half Raw, Not Raw

What’s there to do in Knoxville? Sit in the hotel and blog apparently. I kid. I’m heading out in a bit to walk a nature trail by the river, stomp around a victorian cemetery and eat lunch. But first, the blogging.

fettucini alfreda

First, the raw. This is Fettuccine Alfreda from Vegan World Fusion Cuisine. I could drink gallons of this sauce. I want to pour it on everything.

cheezy broccoli rice noodles

So I did. This is just rice noodles & broccoli with the cheezy sauce from above. Half raw.

currant scones

And, while I was at the gym Thursday, I watched Ina Garten mix up a batch of scones full of butter and cream. I needed to make something to bring with me to Knoxville, so when I got home I made…scones! These are the Classic Currant Scones from the Joy of Vegan Baking. Decidedly NOT RAW. And NOT HEALTHY. But, REALLY FREAKIN GOOD. I think watching Ina’s technique helped me make these perfect. Mostly I paid attention to how the Earth Balance was cut in making sure it was still in little bitty chunks rather than creamed thoroughly. It can be a little tricky since it softens faster than butter. Especially now that it’s all warm out, and in if you’re me and haven’t turned on the air conditioning yet.

Teese Bread

Hey, three pounds is a lot of Teese…so expect to see a few more Teese goodies here. I’ve been wanting to bake more breads, because I really don’t have a lot of experience with it. Then I ran across this recipe. It reminded me of the cheese breads I ate in Italy many years ago and seemed like a good way to use up some Teese. All I did is swap out Teese for regular cheese in the recipe. Since the recipe’s already posted online, I’ll just give you a few pics of the process.teese bread starter teese bread starter bread mixer action shotteese bread teese bread before bakingteese bread doneteese bread innardsOh yeah, and dinner one night was teese bread dipped in pizza sauce with spinach so we could pretend we were eating healthy.teese bread and pizza sauce