#breadventure

[kedreeva]

made some naan and one of them came out with a heart on it!

but now i have to go to bed and I won't have time to eat them. how does one store freshly made flatbreads.....

[honestlyamy]

Garlic knots. #breadventure

[kedreeva]

You can hear this bread. One second I'll show you. Please listen to my bread

This is a loaf of asiago chunk sourdough. Inside there are chunks of asiago. The dough was mixed with mashed garlic as well. The sound in the video is the cheese bubbling in the interior, echoing in the air pockets of the loaf. I'm going to eat the shit out of this for breakfast tomorrow.

This is the world's easiest sourdough loaf too, with only 6 hours total rising/proofing time!

Ingredients:

455g white bread flour

1 tsp sea salt

285g warm water

100g active, bubbly starter

120g Asiago cheese

(optional) crushed garlic to taste (I use about 2 cloves worth and it's a lot)

Asiago chunk sourdough bread

Cut asiago into smallish chunks

Combine flour and salt in one bowl

Combine starter and water in another bowl, stir until starter is dissolved.

Mix flour into the wet mixture until a dough begins to form. Knead on a well-floured surface until dough is smooth.

Mix in cheese (and garlic) until well incorporated

Dust rising bowl (solid! Not a basket!) with flour. Let dough rise 1 hour in warm spot, covered with plastic wrap

Fold over around the edges, place back in bowl seal-side down for 1 more hour

Repeat folding over around the edges, place back in bowl seal-side down for 1 more hour (3 total rising hours to here)

Shape dough into round if not, and place into proofing basket for 3 hours. Toward the end of this, preheat oven to 450F, with the cast iron pot so it's HOT when you add the dough.

Dump your dough onto your kneading board, fold over around the edges one more time, slice the top DEEPLY.

Bake 30 minutes seam-side down in covered cast iron pot at 450F. Remove lid, bake for another 30-40 minutes with lid off. (Cook time may vary on location and oven... MY OVEN takes this long. I just baked a loaf at a friend's that baked WAY differently, it was done in about 40 minutes total)

Remove and let cool completely before slicing. You can freeze it but slice it first.

[kedreeva]

I tried to make sourdough biscuits to freeze as a test to see if they would bake afterwards, and how, and so I mixed them up and cut them out and carefully preserved them on parchment paper in my freezer and then hours later I bagged them once they were frozen so I could take them to my mom's and then I went to sit down and realized oh FUCK. I fucking forgot the butter. I FORGOT the BUTTER. I skipped a whole ass step.

And I told my mother, shit I forgot the butter, and she goes what do you mean like inside or on top?

Inside!!! Inside!!!!!!!!! I didn't mix the butter in during prep!!! These are unbuttery biscuits!!!

And she goes

I didn't add butter to mine (I had brought her some discard to bake these biscuits with a few days ago)

I said what do you mean?

She goes, the recipe you told me didn't have butter (I told her the recipe from memory)

I FORGOT THE BUTTER TWICE

but wait there's more!!!

She goes, your dad liked them

At which point I'm forced to ask: did he tho. Did he like them, or did he tell you he liked them, the way he LIED to us for 35 years about liking pizza?

Well, she says, I don't know. he did admit tonight to not liking brussel sprouts

Which they've been eating together for years now, literally this man is incapable of telling someone he doesn't like a food which explains a lot of my childhood meals

So I'm like okay okay okay okay. Okay. I know I forgot the butter and I know these biscuits are frozen hockey pucks right now but hear me out... What if I turn the oven on to preheat it, and then put the biscuits under the oven vent to thaw, and then just mix the butter in after? Surely nothing will go wrong with this plan.

So I break out the biscuits, and I turn on the oven, and I start thawing them, and I put the butter into a bowl, and start frantically trying to mash it with a pastry masher. This goes about as well as you might expect, which is to say terribly, because the butter just sort of turns into a pile of butter instead of a stick, and I need it to be pebbles of butter.

So I start sprinkling in flour, just until the butter stops re-amalgamating. The biscuits are basically thawed by this point so I try to mash those in and that goes very very very badly, so I clean the tool and just start folding the butter in with my hands like kneading bread, desperately just trying to mash it into one coherent form. It makes a ball of dough, or good enough to pass for one, and I cut out six biscuit sized chunks.

Put them in. Bake them. My oven light doesn't work so I can't even check on them while they're baking to see if I fucked it up worse.

Finally I pull them out, and I realize I fucked up but at least it was in the right direction. The biscuits don't look like they're supposed to, but they do look like layered biscuits, and they taste fine. I put a bunch of honey on one of them and it was pretty good.

I tell all of this to my partner when he gets home and he listens to all of it in silence. When I'm done his only comment is:

"Well, I guess we know how puff pastry was invented, now."

Yeah, it was some asshole hundreds of years ago trying to cover up biscuit sins!!

[kedreeva]

Well. They certainly look edible. They are both very plump loaves. I kneaded a little more than previously, and I added some butter to the recipe.

The recipe also called for 50g of active, bubbly starter per loaf but I only had 67 grams total so. I added flour/water, mixed it together in the mixing bowl, and then thoroughly dissolved it in the warm water the recipe used... It seems to have worked?? I guess we'll see what the inside looks like in the morning.

[kedreeva]

Writing is going great. I have made creamy ranch chicken, bread bowls, and blueberry/strawberry pie. My house smells amazing. I've done two loads of dishes and started cleaning the mouse room. There are no words on the page.

[kedreeva]

After Sark requested "biscuits I can make a breakfast sandwich with," I fiddled with the sourdough biscuit recipe until I began consistently getting biscuits that held their cut shape, came apart into halves (or close to halves) easily, and were sturdy enough for a sandwich. These are the small version; I just made a first batch of bigger ones and froze them, but I'm hoping they hold form as well. I had to lower the butter amount because the original recipe called for a stick of butter in 6 biscuits and was causing them to just fry on the bottom, and butter to leak out into the pan.

I'm quite happy! They freeze well and can be baked straight from frozen. They're also delicious with a drizzle of honey, which is how I eat them!

Editing to add the recipe and instructions under a cut, per request!

Frozen Sourdough Biscuit Recipe:

140-150g all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder (actually a smidge more than 2tsp)

6-8g salt (to taste)

60-113g COLD unsalted butter (to taste)

230g sourdough starter discard

You will need: a mixing bowl, a spatula, a pastry cutter, a 2.25-2.5 inch round biscuit cutter (or bigger if you want bigger, I'm not your mom), a kitchen scale. Flat, clean, surface to freeze biscuits on (I use a piece of cardboard wrapped in tinfoil), and a freezer-safe bag to put them in after freezing. For baking: parchment paper and 2 baking trays, 1 of which can hold water.

If you don't have sourdough starter discard handy, it's basically just flour/water 1:1, so you could PROBABLY make these without it by adding another 115g of flour and 115g water. Don't quote me, I don't know what I'm doing either good luck.

TO MIX:

Add 140g flour, baking powder, and salt to mixing bowl. Stir lightly to combine.

Add butter, and use the pasty cutter to reduce the butter to small crumbles, stirring to powder them with flour.

I recommend starting with 60-65g and seeing how they taste and feel to you. More butter creates a crustier biscuit, and may result in frying along the bottom. Some people prefer this, I don’t. Using 60g will create a light, fluffy biscuit with a light crust and a soft butter flavor.

In a clean jar, pour the amount of starter you intend to feed (I pour 50g off), and then in your mixing bowl, pour in starter discard and combine with spatula until dough is combined but not kneaded. Dough will be sticky. Any leftover starter still in the original jar can be added to the clean jar for feeding or discarded.

Turn dough onto a floured surface. Using both hands, gently press and shape the dough into a ball WITHOUT folding/kneading (I mean you can, but you'll be making a different biscuit), add flour to board until the ball doesn't stick. Once the ball is fairly seamless and the outside is well-coated in flour, press into a 6-8 inch flat circle about 1 inch tall.

Use the biscuit cutter to cut 5 biscuits. After each cut, tip the biscuits on their side and lightly roll them in flour to smooth the edges. Form the last biscuit by putting the remaining dough into the biscuit cutter and shaping it. Roll in flour like the others. If you want, you can just bake them now. Or if you're making them to freeze, place them on your freezing sheet. Place in freezer for 2+ hours. Stack in baggie once frozen.

TO BAKE:

Preheat oven to 425F.

Place 1 tray (i use a brownie pan, deeper sides) w/ water on lower rack to steam. Biscuits may dry out or become crunchy instead of crusty without this!! BAD!! Do not for get the water!! You will be very sad!!

Put parchment paper on the other tray, and space biscuits evenly on it.

Bake for 20-25 minutes (ovens and taste vary). When done, biscuits will be golden brown on top and bottom.

Let cool and enjoy with topping of your choice!

[kedreeva]

these bread recipes keep asking for unsalted butter and then telling me to add salt and I'm aware of why but I am still laughing about it