Sourdough Ciabatta

Aside from regular sourdough bread, I had been kind of wondering what else to do with my starter. Luckily one of my FB groups are full of cooks and someone shared a sourdough ciabatta recipe they liked. I figured I’d give it go. The original recipe is here: https://breadtopia.com/sourdough-ciabatta/

I didn’t have the requisite 550g of starter ready but had 300g of starter so adjusted the recipe accordingly. When I was transcribing from the internet to a piece of paper (yes I’m still old school and typically don’t just look at a screen for my recipes but actually write them down on paper), I accidentally wrote my 2 so it kinda looked like a 7. So when I was weighing out the water, I accidentally did about 50% more than I had anticipated using. I then had to do a bunch of math to try to even things out. I’m not even going to try putting the actual recipe values on here (just go look at the original recipe). I’ll just go through my process and how it came out.

IMG_20200523_143645 — Sourdough on top of rest of mixture

IMG_20200523_150153 — After initial mix before adding in the extra water (after about 20 minutes of kneading)

IMG_20200523_151059 — Added the extra water and tried to incorporate

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Banana Bread

This is something I started making (really this is only the 2nd time I’ve made it) out of necessity. Typically we buy bananas every week so I can take to work. Occasionally I’m just too busy at work and don’t end up eating all the bananas. When they start to get very ripe or over ripe, they’re not great to eat (the dog would beg to differ). The first time I did it I didn’t even think about documenting it. And then today when I wanted to make it again I had to google recipes. I had started documenting my baking/cooking here so I had one place to go back to for recipes so I figured I should document today’s endeavor. Banana bread is a lot easier to put together than making regular bread.

Ingredients

2 cups All Purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
4 ripened bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs

Combine dry ingrediets (flour, baking soda, salt) in one bowl.
Cream butter and brown sugar together. Then add in mashed bananas, vanilla, and eggs. Combine
Most recipes say to add the wet ingredients slowly to the dry. (I used a larger bowl for the wet ingredients so I did the opposite and slowly added the dry to the wet).
Pre-heat oven to 350 F, butter a loaf pan (or can use parchment paper as well – we ran out so I didn’t use it and it has been hard to come by due to COVID-19).
Pour mixture into loaf pan and put in oven for 60-75 minutes (until toothpick inserted comes out clean).
(Optional) Add in 1/4-1/2 chocolate chips +/- walnuts (we didn’t have any and I don’t really care for it). Add to mixture after combining above.

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Sourdough bread (fresh starter!)

D found this recipe from the King Arthur flour web site about a no-knead sourdough. Since I just made a starter again (see this post), I figured this would be a good first try. I followed this site’s directions relatively closely and will put my slight alteration.

Ingredients

225 g fresh sourdough starter (it wasn’t exactly fresh as I had fed it around 7 am and didn’t make the dough until about 7 pm…most things I read said you should start your recipe about 4 hours after feeding your starter)
395 g luke warm water
598 g bread flour
15 g salt

I took all the ingredients and mixed them in a large metal bowl (I typically use a metal bowl for my baking…I know a lot of places say you should use wooden or plastic but I haven’t had any issues with rising). I made it into a cohesive moist dough, covered it with my plate (that fits almost perfectly as a lid) and let it sit for 1 hour.
Next I lifted the dough and then folded it over on itself (I just grab a piece from the edge and fold it to the center and then go around the edge of it to fold on itself). I covered it again and let it rest another 1 hour.
I repeated step 2 another 2 times (total of 3 hours) and folded it one more time after the last hour wait. I then covered it and put it in the fridge.
The King Arthur site says you can let it sit in the fridge for as little as 8 hours and up to 48 hours. Since I started it on one of my work days, I was going to wait until my day off to bake. I ended up letting it sit in the fridge for about 36 hours.
On a well floured counter, I poured out the dough, formed a rough ball and let it sit for 15-20 minutes.
I then shaped it into a boule and with seam side up put it in a well greased bowl. The dough ball didn’t really rise much (which is what it said from the original recipe) but did spread out and relax. I let it come up to temperature for about 3 hours (again it depends on warmth of your house…2.5 to 3 hours)
About 1 hour before baking I preheated the oven to 500 F. I put in my dutch over with the lid partially ajar to preheat as well (as this is my baking container).
After 3 hours, I dumped the dough into the dutch oven, floured the top and made 4 cuts on top with a sharp knife.
I replaced the dutch oven cover, put it in the oven and reduced the temperature to 450 F. I baked it for 45 minutes covered.
After 45 minutes, I removed the cover and allowed it to bake another 10 min (~10-15 min until internal temp is at least 205 F).

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Italian Bread

I realize that I haven’t posted in quite a while. Life has just been going on. I haven’t been all that inspired to create a post. This weekend I decided to get back into the baking game. Perusing through The Fresh Loaf, I came upon this recipe. Rather than create 2 large loaves, I cut the recipe in half. I also recently purchased some non-fat dry milk to test out since it is easier to keep than fresh milk. Since there are only 2 of us eating the bread, I also elected to divide what I did make into 2 smaller boules.

Ingredients:

Preferment

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup bread flour (or AP flour) – I used bread flour
1/4 tsp active dry yeast

Dough

Preferment
2.5 cups bread flour (or AP flour) – I used 1 cup bread and 1.5 cup AP flour
1/4 cup dry (non-fat) milk
1/2 Tbsp (1.5 tsp) sugar
1/2 Tbsp (1.5 tsp) salt
1 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 Tbsp (1.5 tsp) olive oil
1 cup water

I made the preferment the night before my combining all the ingredients listed into a bowl and covering it and leaving it at room temperature.

The next day I mixed all the ingredients of the above Dough together into a large mixing bowl. I dumped this onto my counter and proceeded to knead it. I don’t know if it was due to the recent rains we’ve had making the house more humid but this dough was way too sticky.

I ended up adding in about an additional 1/4 cup of flour to make the dough more easily handle-able and knead-able. After kneading for around 12-14 minutes I placed the formed dough into an oiled bowl.

I let this sit covered at room temperature for about 2 hours to allow it to double in size.

After doubling I did a stretch and fold (within the bowl) to get some air out and then let it rest an additional 30 minutes.

I then dumped the dough out onto a lightly floured countertop surface and divided it in half. These were each formed into a ball shape and covered and let to rest an additional 20 minutes.

Following the rest, I formed each one into a boule, creating a tight seal on the bottom of the dough. One of these boules I placed into a bowl with a lightly floured cloth and put in the fridge since I was only going to bake one at a time (couldn’t fit them both in my oven). The other one I also formed into a boule and put in a floured cloth bowl at room temperature for 1 hour.

I pre-heated the oven to 425 with a dutch oven (with the lid slightly ajar…I had read about dutch ovens cracking in the oven if they were empty and covered).

Once the dough had doubled (or close to it), I placed it on parchment paper and created an “X” over the surface and placed this in the dutch oven covered. I did spray the bread with water just before covering it. I baked this at 10 minutes and then removed the lid.

I then baked it an additional 20 minutes. It had a nice crust.

Midway through baking the above boule I removed the other one from the fridge to let it come to temperature. I waited until I had a partial spring back of the dough when you pressed it with your finger. I put this boule on parchment paper and created some cuts on top and then placed this directly on a baking steel (instead of a baking stone). I also sprayed this with water and baked for ~28 minutes. This one was a little over-baked.

The taste and crumb came out great for both of the boules. I was happy with this first-time Italian bread experiment. Will definitely make again in the future.

-StewsCat

Chocolate chip cookies!!

Ever since I started baking, I focused moreso on bread and didn’t really do much dessert type baking. I wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies for work so looked up some recipes online. I found a few and then picked one. I am not exactly sure where I got it from now (oops!). I also wanted to try making puffier cookies vs the really thin flat ones. In the end I think they turned out pretty good. It’s a really easy recipe too.

Ingredients:

1 cup room temperature butter (preferably pull it out in the morning and make cookies later that evening)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 cups chocolate chips (or whatever chips you like…peanut butter, butterscotch, etc)

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt
Cream the butter with the two types of sugar
Beat eggs and vanilla into the butter/sugar mixture
Mix dry ingredients with butter/sugar mix.
Add chocolate chips and incorporate

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StewsCat

Running, baking, cooking, drinking

Category: StewsCatBakes