bearing blog

Well, the waffles I planned with my new sourdough starter turned out to be pancakes, because Milo wailed when he heard I was making waffles AGAIN and Mark suggested I should make pancakes this time, since Milo prefers them and it's been waffles the last few times.  Which is fine, because there isn't a whole lot of difference between waffle batter and pancake batter, just a bit more milk in the pancakes and the eggs not separated.

I over-thinned them with milk and so they didn't stand up tall and fluffy but turned out more like crepes.  Still, they were very flavorful, and the batter rose beautifully.  I like my pancakes with none or very little syrup, but slathered in good-quality local butter;  I think maybe I overdid it a bit this morning!

Sourdough Pancakes

• 1/2 cup fresh starter*
• 2 cups warm water
• 2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Combine these and set in a warm place until bubbly (several hours).  To the batter I added

• 1 Tbsp honey (estimated as I just squirted the honey right into the batter)
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 beaten eggs (because they were kind of small; my recipe said 2)
• Milk to thin to desired consistency

Cook, um, like pancakes. 

When you mix the batter in the morning, it has a bit of a weird, elastic consistency that makes it (I think) hard to judge when it's thin enough.  I usually like my pancake batter thin enough to pour, but next time I think I'll make a more spoonable batter so the pancakes are fluffier.  It's especially important when you make blueberry pancakes, as you need the characteristic thickness of the pancakes to be roughly equal to the diameter of your largest blueberries.

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* "Fresh starter" means starter that has just been "refreshed" with the weekly feeding — in other words, not the little jar you saved in your fridge from last time, but what you've got a few hours after you mix the contents of the little jar with some new flour and water and set it aside.  Some of that batch, in turn, has to be set aside in the fridge to keep your culture going till next "feeding."

A few weeks ago, I sent away to a little company in Washington state — GEM Cultures.

Yesterday the postman rang and there was the little box on my porch, containing (hooray!) a couple of ice packs an instruction booklet, and a little vial of live, active rye-flour sourdough starter.  

I fed it carefully that evening, and again this morning, and then, after some fretting about how to proceed, I decided to bake the first loaf of bread by simply substituting some of the sourdough batter for some of the water and flour in my "normal" loaf.  In other words, I still put the same amount of jarred yeast and sugar into it.

Gorgeous!  

It didn't taste particularly sour, or particularly sweet.  It was just a wonderfully-textured sandwich bread, with none of the crumbliness that often characterizes my bread machine breads.   Here is my recipe.

• 1 cup fresh whole-wheat starter batter
• 1/2 cup water (boiled to remove chlorine)
• 2 and 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp molasses
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 2 Tbsp dry milk
• 2 scant tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp gluten
• 1 and 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

… baked using the 20-minute extended rise option.

The loaf seemed to rise pretty high; I think next time I might remove the jarred yeast and sugar, which I'm told will produce a denser, sourer loaf.  I'm curious about the difference.  I also need to experiment to determine whether it's necessary to boil Minneapolis tapwater first, as the instructions told me was necessary to keep some municipal tapwater from killing the culture.

After setting aside two portions to use next time, I had enough starter left to make a batch of waffle batter.  Will report on that tomorrow morning.

So we buy our beef by the quarter, once every year or two, and right now we're down to the last few pounds of our most recent purchase.  Occasionally I find a steak in a stray corner of the freezer, but most of what's left is hamburger.  Still, there's no putting it off much longer:   Eventually I have to cook … 

THE TONGUE!

(cue Wilhelm scream)

(or maybe that sound from Psycho)

My approach so far is to put it in the crockpot overnight, covered with water and with an onion and a bay leaf, and then after it's been slow-cooked for that night and part of the next day, to peel it and chop it up and put it in a covered bowl in the fridge, long enough, I hope, for me to forget about the horrifying visuals.

And then after it's been there long enough, I talk myself down and put it in some kind of recipe.  Hopefully one that will help me forget, because getting drunk first isn't an option.

This evening's attempt will be tacos de lengua.  I roasted some poblano and sweet bell peppers, and I have some tomatillos and onions and some other stuff, plus the necessary tortillas and cheese and such-like.  Will let you know how it goes.

UPDATE.  The tacos turned out really good; I think this will be my permanent beef tongue recipe (although fried rice also occurred to me, and maybe that's what I'll turn the leftover taco filling into).  I loosely applied the directions in this recipe for "taco truck style" tacos de lengua.  I saved back some of the meat, plain, to make meat-n-cheese tacos for a picky kid; another picky kid ate bean-and-cheese tacos with leftover frijoles negros I had in my fridge.  

File this under "odd and possibly disgusting but fascinating anyway:"  Chocolate Avocado Cake  at Not Quite Nigella.  Check out that photo, it is something special.

(It *is* egg-free, dairy-free, and nut free, and probably quite rich.  I'm tempted, although I think I might rather have it in the form of a cupcake.  How do people think avocados would do as an egg replacer in general?)