#benchscraper | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

woxbirdie · 5 years ago

Text

Honey Oat Sourdough Recipe

well… cat’s out of the bag, I am indeed still alive and around on this goddamn site, so i might as well make some fucking Content in these weird, weird times, so here’s a recipe I sort of accidentally invented for honey oat sourdough

If you want like, regular sourdough, replace your oats with wholemeal or rye and ditch the honey and voila, you have the Food52 Table Loaf that’s my base recipe

Testimonials (there’s only one because due to physical distancing, I cannot feed other people my bread):

e x t r e m e l y d e l i c i o u s Not too sweet at all Very good with butter Would quite happily absorb an entire loaf The chewy crust is also great And it's not too dense Abd the sourdough flavour is very good

-- @itsmedontpanic

Fair warning, for those who have never made sourdough: you will not have bread until the next day. You won’t spend the whole time in the kitchen! Sourdough’s super chill to make, it’s just like, a waiting game.

Asterisks refer to footnotes, but otherwise I have tried to write this so you can follow it linearly without reading through everything in advance.

Ingredients:

- 60g sourdough starter* - 310g plain flour (or bread flour, if you can find some, which I absolutely cannot at the mo) - 80g oats, blended until fine-ish - 1tbsp-ish honey - 8g salt - a lot of time at home to monitor the damn thing

Equipment

since there’s nothing worse than getting halfway through a recipe and going “what the fuck is a banneton”

- big mixing bowl of some variety - waxcloth or plastic wrap and a tea towel you are able to make damp somehow - a cookie-sheet sized surface that can be floured properly (don’t laugh, my kitchen counter is garbage for this and I only recently finally got a big silpat which changed my goddamn life) - preferable, a benchscraper (I don’t own one) or a silicon spatula (I own two of these, this is what I use) although you can probably make do with like, a carefully wielded butter knife - a medium-sized, not-too-shallow bowl that you’re not going to need for 12+ hours, plus another clean linen or cotton tea towel OR a banneton (which is the thing these things are replacing) - enough room in your fridge to hold said bowl for 12+ hours - a sharp, non-serrated knife or clean razor blades - any one of: a Dutch oven, a medium+ sized Pyrex pie dish with a lid, or a second tier to your oven plus a roasting tray - a bread knife. No, i’m not kidding, you really do need a proper one unless you want to tear it apart with your hands which is I guess your choice

Method

1. Mix your starter with 250mL** water, then add your flour, oats, and honey, mix with your hands until it’s a shaggy dough. it’s gonna be sticky, which might suck a bit, but that’s sourdough for u. Cover with waxcloth or? I guess plastic wrap or a damp towel maybe? and let sit for about 20 mins or so

2. Add the salt and another tablespoon of water and squish through until it’s fairly evenly mixed. Your dough will still be sticky but hopefully a tad less. It should also not be too dense -- it should sort of ooze a little when you pick it up. More on this later. Cover and let sit for half an hour. Don’t stress if it’s still shaggy instead of beautiful and smooth (in fact, with the oats, it’s gonna be lumpy for a While, but don’t stress, it will not be by the end).

3. Time for bulk fermentation! Every half hour to 45mins, wet your hands, slide them under each side of your dough, and pick it up a little. It should stretch (although the parts you’re not holding will probably still stick to the bowl); let it fold around itself, put it down, turn the bowl, and repeat until you’ve picked up everything and it’s dough shaped (it takes me about 4). This step is uncreatively referred to as “stretch and fold”. By the second stretch and fold, the dough should spill slowly over the sides of your hand with gravity if you pick it up; if it doesn’t, add more water, a little at a time, until you get to this stage (and do it early, or you’ll basically have to start bulk fermentation again).

3b. Allegedly bulk fermentation takes 3 1/2-4 1/2 hours, although it has never in my life taken me less than about 5. Don’t bother timing it; it’s done when air bubbles start becoming obvious just under the surface. At this point, do one final, more gentle kind of stretch and fold (lift the edge and fold it into the middle, instead of stretching the whole dough) so you don’t deflate it. Leave for another half hour or so.

4. Gently turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface (use like, a wet spatula or something to release the sides from the bowl and stop it stretching too much as you do this). Flour your hands and fold the top edge to the middle, then each side, then the bottom, then each corner, then flip the dough over (make sure the surface is still floured) and tuck everything around so it’s a nice little dome. Stick whatever you’ve been using to cover it on top and let it rest until it’s relaxed (10+ minutes). (This is called preshaping.)

5. Flip it back over (learn from my mistakes! Don’t forget to do this!) and shape the dough; you don’t want it to deflate, but you want a bit of tension. You can do this however, but I fold the top down and then do the sides a little like a French braid, then roll the whole thing up from the bottom, fold the sides in, and flip it over. Flour the top thoroughly and then put it SEAM SIDE UP into whatever you’re using as a banneton (proofing basket); before my dad very kindly sent me a proper one for Easter, I was using a linen tea towel in a bowel, and that worked just fine. Cover with a tea towel and then gladwrap, or like, waxcloth seems to do the job alone just fine if you have it. Stick it in the fridge overnight or so (like, you can leave it there for up to 24 hours, it’s sourdough, it’s fine).

6. Preheat your oven to Real Hot (I use about 230-240C, my dad apparently uses “as hot as his oven will go”?) and remove your dough from the fridge. I let my dough warm up for about an hour (or so) (I have a terrible habit of letting it overproof and having to reshape the dough right before baking, but sourdough seems to be pretty forgiving so this has never been a problem); my dad just puts it straight in, but either way, the dough should pass the poke test, where you poke it gently and the dough springs back a little but retains a little of the indent. Alternatively, does poking it feel like poking a water balloon? If so, you’re fine.

7. Flour the bottom a little, then flip your dough out onto whatever you’re baking on (see step #8) and score it. Fancy bakers use razor blades; I just use a sort-of-sharp knife. Your scoring doesn’t matter; sometimes I do like, symbols, sometimes I just slash it in a couple of places. Don’t like, saw at it? But I absolutely go back and redo my cuts again; you should find that the cuts open up a little pretty much immediately (and if they don’t, they will not work great as scoring).

8. So it turns out bread needs like, mad humidity to bake properly and Real Bakers have proper ovens but I have a shitty tiny portable thing and I make it work just fine, so you’ve got some options:

a) Use a Dutch oven if you have it (I do not)

b) On a second rack of your oven, put a roasting pan half-full of water (I do not have a second tray of my oven)

c) Flip a Pyrex pie dish upside down (I do this) ie use the lid as a baking trap and the pie dish as a lid.

If you’re doing the pan full of water thing, I can’t help you too much with timing (just check it after like, 35 mins or so? And keep checking?) but for everything else, I keep it in the “““dutch oven””” for 35 mins or so before removing the lid and baking for another 10-15 ish. Note that your oven will be different and also like...I swear baking time changes every time. I’ve never managed to burn it within about 50 mins, though, it’s just sometimes a tad dark (see below. It’s not burned! Just...very well baked.)

9. This is important. This is IMPORTANT. I cannot stress this enough. You cannot cut into this loaf until it’s cooled. I know it’s tempting. I KNOW. Your kitchen smells like fresh bread! It’s warm! It looks so good! Do not do it. The bread may be out of the oven but it’s still cooking! There is steam inside that bread and it needs to STAY THERE to set the damn crumb or you end up with the horrible gummy bread that I made for years before I learned a tiny bit of Bread Science. You are risking like, 2 days’ work for a moment’s satisfaction. Wait until it’s completely cool and then, yes, you can get that bread.

Footnotes

is it really a sourdough recipe without a ton of fucking footnotes

* let’s talk starter. if you’re already up to speed on sourdough starter, all you need to know is that this 60g should be like, levain at this point i.e. ready to be fed again, not recently fed.

if you’re brand new to sourdough starter, your first batch will take you about a week to get going***, but it’s very easy and only takes flour and water and the ability to remember to check things every 12 hours; alternatively, my understanding is basically any bakery will just let you have a little of theirs if you ask.

You only need about 30g of it; feed it 30g of water, 30g of flour, stir it well and wipe the sides down and write the date somewhere on it in whiteboard marker, and you’ve successfully fed your starter. You’ll either want to leave it 12 hours before you use it (use the 60g for the recipe and feed it again with 30g of flour and water), or leave it like, 3 until it’s clearly active, and stick in the fridge until you need it (up to a week); feed it after you’ve pulled out the recipe quantity. You’ll have to feed it once a week regardless of whether you use it; my solution to this is to just make bread every Saturday. I do not trust any bread recipe that requires more than 60g of starter. Like, the reason I made this recipe was I was out of wholemeal and I couldn’t find a single goddamn honey oat sourdough recipe that didn’t require like 4 1/2 cups of starter which is ABSURD; the only time I use more than like, 1/4 cup of starter is if I’m planning to make something that doesn’t require bulk fermentation (like, idk, brownies or crackers or something). also, a lot of people swear by like, organic wholemeal or rye or spelt to feed their starters with but I haven’t seen any of those in shops for like, a month, and I only started my starter about 2 weeks before quarantine happened and didn’t want to commit to $10 for rye, so I can say from experience, you can just use regular old flour (although this might be why my dough takes so long to bulk ferment, probably).

** ok look, idk the exact quantity of water?? because I don’t use bread flour, which is thirstier than regular flour, so I just know it’s “somewhat less than 300mL” and just deal with it; that said, oats are thirstier than wholewheat. either way, it’s better to err on the side of too little and add more water with the salt, than add too much and agonizingly add a teaspoon of flour every stretch and fold and hope it’s not gonna end up too dry after said flour hydrates.

*** ok, when I made my own starter, I was following a recipe which I guess assumed I wanted to start a goddamn bakery or something so i burned a lot of flour. you don’t need to do this. add 30g of water to 30g of any kind of non-self-raising flour, cover, note the time, and leave in a warm place for 24 hours. If you’re using a clear jar or something, mark the level with a whiteboard marker; you’ll want to keep an eye on how much it rises. Discard half of it, and add 30g of water and 30g of flour, mix well. Leave for 24 hours. Discard 60g of it. Add 30g of water and 30g of flour, mix well. Leave for 12 hours. Repeat the last three steps until you’ve got something that bubbles appropriately and rises at least 30% within about 5 hours. Ta da! Starter. Many places claim it’s only ready if it doubles in 4 hours. Those places are lying, my bread comes out just fine and my dough’s never doubled; you just want something that’s clearly alive. If you get a thin grey liquid on top, your starter’s just hungry; stir the liquid back in and feed it. (It’ll just make the sourdough flavour stronger, it’s fine.)

Final notes

Sourdough’s like, super chill and honest to god, my first sourdough bread came out better than any of the yeast breads I’d made over the years. It’s a very forgiving bread! Like, the 30-45 mins for stretch and fold is a guideline I personally forget all the time (I’ll go like, an hour and then go “oh whoops I had to do that” which may ALSO be why bulk fermentation takes me so long). Also if you’re looking for more resources, these YouTube videos here and here taught me a lot about the Bread Science (shout out to my dad, who’s been on the sourdough bandwagon since like, mid last year and got very excited when I joined him and sent me these videos). I know it’s a long time to wait for bread but like, I just do it around whatever else I’m doing (my D&D sessions currently have breaks where I have to go bake the sourdough). Stretch and fold takes like, a minute and a half when you get the hang of it, it’s all very low-stress, there’s no kneading (although I like kneading) so like...have fun. Make brod. Bon appetit.

#recipe #sourdough #baking #experimental cooking #narellenatters #good lord it's been a while since i used THAT tag

3 notes · View notes

twistednuns · 5 years ago

Text

February 2020

I managed to use my iPad as a second monitor for my computer. So tech savvy. Yay me!

Joking about developing a sex-based cardio programme with Manu. Powerfucking! Might help against aggression as well.

A late night phone call with Tom. Not saying much.

Making a huge pot of my grandmother’s signature veggie stew.

More Bon Appétit test kitchen videos. Chris recreating tacos. Claire making Ben&Jerry’s. Priya making her mum’s Indian curries.

Writing a letter to Lena. Drawing upside down bats (which makes them look like they’re having a wicked dance-off). Just the act of writing. I thoroughly enjoy looking at my handwriting.

Using the Salted Coconut handscrub by Lush. Especially now that I wash my hands so often when we’re working with clay at school. I feel like the peeling triggers some pressure points on my palms.

That Saturday productivity high. Cooking and preparing heaps of stuff, cleaning the windows, doing laundry.

Painting my nails like an expressionist artist.

Some portrait studies. Accidentally drawing Sirius Black.

Being really motivated to improve my Spanish. Working with Lorena, the Duolingo app and even starting my own grammar/vocabulary book.

This ultra quirky ASMR video. Also: watching videos with Erin an her boyfriend Chris. It’s amazing how well they work together. How you can almost feel their connection, how similar they are.

Carrot cake oats.

Seeing the The Darkness live again, this time with Margit. Justin’s outfit and personality, singing along, especially to Time of my Life, the band’s traditional first song after the show.

Meeting Chris. Having a Bramblette cocktail at Pusser’s. I like that place. Feels very old-timey with a rowing boat right under the ceiling. We made out in front of a tiger slide in a toy store window on our way to the next bar.

Peeling fresh carrots.

Pickling onions and making kimchi. My fermentation game is strong these days!

Looking through Dominik’s sketchbook. I loved the tree whose bark resembled a mole burrow with its underground tunnel system.

The flu. Yes, really. Fewer pupils at school. Quiet times. I’m actually surprisingly healthy. I’d guess my probiotics must play a role here… Who knows.

More sourdough experiments. Writing about it (DELICACY - a haiku. Oven-warm sourdough / salted butter, alpine cheese / and a strawberry).

Finding a really interesting list of SanFran hippie era book recommendations at the end of Robin Sloan’s Ajax Penumbra: 1969. In the mood to read Maya Angelou, Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan.

Even more beautiful books: I really enjoyed Die weiße Stadt by Karolina Ramqvist, a feminist author from Sweden, and the graphic novel version of To Kill a Mockingbird. But two books that literally (well, figuratively obviously) blew my mind were Circe by Madeline Miller (mythology, loneliness, animals and plants, magic and monsters, some desperate kind of feminism, independence and strength) and Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (magical realms, university setting, psychological depth, unexpected twists and turns). I haven’t read anything comparable in a very long time and I desperately hope that there’s more to come from these authors.

A beach collecting all the world’s single socks in The Magicians. Oh and of course seeing them break the moon. What a sight. The show is super confusing, obnoxious and absolutely fabulous at the same time. Best example: the Freaky Friday szene in which Margo and Eliot switch bodies. I love how the actors took on each other’s speech patterns and behaviour.

A new addition to my colour vocabular: celadon (a greyish green; there is a type of ceramics you’ll only see in this colour which is not surprising since the shade provides such an interesting contrast to the the earthy, rusty orange of burnt clay.)

Manu telling me that he had rarely seen people with more joy in their eyes than me (“Ich habe schon Freude in deinen Augen gesehen! So ein Leuchten kann man nicht simulieren.”) after complaining about being bored and lifeless. / Making curry with or, well, for him the other night. Drinking Liqueur 43 with cinnamon and milk. Playing the Jackbox party games for which you can use your phone as a controller.

Finding myself in a well-known sitation from the past. Lying in Frank’s bed in the early morning hours, not that tired yet, when he starts talking about his life and his depression. In English, obviously, because that’s our emotional filter. Relating, since I feel quite similar. Coming up with a suggestion for a reciprocal support system. Let’s see what we can do for each other.

Looking at travel photographs. The sea, the cenotes. Longing to go back to Mexico or Australia. Diving. Taking it all in.

Dreaming of my grandmother talking about her biggest regrets in life. Weirdly she was in a little bundle under a coffee table, much like Voldemort in the last Harry Potter movie.

My weird, weird brain. How both pleasure and pain enhance my sense of smell and increase my brain activity, almost causing hallucinations and fixations on ideas. Like geometric shapes in gloomy off-colours and a beige silicon-like surface the other night. All I could think of was a benchscraper.

Blue eyeliner.

Brainstorming three-letter-words with Frank since I’m thinking of getting personalised Nike Blazers. Sad cat. Yes but. Dat ass. Why tho.

Flying squirrels. Watching them wobble through the air. How they look like cute exhibitionist when they’re extending their limbs and thus stretching their, well, let’s just call it wings.

The fact that red cabbage has an intricate pattern like brain convolutions when you cut it open.

Talking to Sonja for the first time in over two years. What a strange person. Interesting, too. At least in homeopathic doses.

Ripe strawberries and nectarines. Oh my god. I love fruit.

Meeting Eve at Pub Quiz. She identifies as female, loves swing dance, used to be an animator and I love her style. Also, I realised that really like Betty. And Dennis wasn’t mean to me for once. I love my nerd friends <3 And I learned that Starbucks was named after the first mate in Moby Dick! Also, coincidentally they asked a question about the city where To Kill a Mockingbird takes place (Maycombe, Alabama) after I had read it the week before.

Inviting Lorena to the Botanical Gardens. I always feel very happy and very much myself when I’m there. I sometimes wish I was a gardener. Lorena was late so I walked along the Spring Path outside and it might have been the first time I’ve seen a brussels sprouts plant. Inside I learned lots of Spanish words and marveled at the incredible butterflies. The huge yellow one right behind the entrance was my favourite. Its delicate feelers were fascinating.

Washing my hands at the Keg’s bathroom. Looking into the mirror. Suddenly thinking of the perfect karaoke song… Rescue Me by Bell Book and Candle! I kept singing it for days on repeat. My neighbour must hate me (nothing new here) especially since my voice is too low for the chorus.

It isn’t hard to see how such attachment patterns can undermine mental health. Both anxious and avoidant coping have been linked to a heightened risk of anxiety, depression, loneliness, eating and conduct disorders, alcohol dependence, substance abuse and hostility. The way to treat these problems, say attachment theorists, is in and through a new relationship. On this view, the good therapist becomes a temporary attachment figure, assuming the functions of a nurturing mother, repairing lost trust, restoring security, and instilling two of the key skills engendered by a normal childhood: the regulation of emotions and a healthy intimacy. // An interesting article on attachment styles and why theraphy works; it makes me want to learn more about attachment theory. This School of Life video is a nice addition as well.

That dream. About a book shop modeled after my picture of Penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore. There was an old man in a very narrow but high-ceilinged room full of books. There was no light source except for moonlight or some street lights. There were loads of stairs, very steep, leading to the back of the house. Upstairs the man would set out cat food and on the rooftop there was an old sailing boat. One day the man decided to open the door to the roof and let visitors see the ship, much like a museum; perhaps to attract customers. However, in the next night a cat-shaped ghost appeared who reminded me quite a lot of Kot Behemoth character in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The ghost was not amused about the old man’s decision and took away his key, a big golden one adorned with a red ribbon.

Toasted sesame makes pretty much every dish so much better.

Watching High Fidelity with gorgeous Zoe Kravitz (I adore her effortless style and her outfits), getting in the mood for making a playlist and listening to more music in general. There are all these great songs out there I forgot about.

Remembering the xkcd storm chaser comics.

Making a wicked good batch of Pho for Tom.

Spending a nice evening with Alex at Shamrock. Singing along to American Boy by Estelle. Confirming the hypothesis that the nerdy, quiet ones usually have a freak streak. That moment in the morning. Eye contact and kegel exercises.

Karaoke with Margit and Betty. Meeting Manu’s doppelganger. Same type, looks, voice. Eerie.

Making a BA Gourmet Makes meme for Steffen after he had passed his law examps. Strangely Gaby kinda looked like him after I was done with it.

Saturday morning in bed. Reading comics and graphic novels. Fresh bedclothes, surrounded by books. Since it was February 29 I thought about leap years and asked a few friends what their inner seven-year-old would have done that day (based on the thought experiment that your birthday was on February 29 and you’d age in 4-year-steps which would divide your age by 4 obviously).

I came up with: visiting grandma / eating Cini-Minis / falling asleep with my face buried in a cat / beating my neighbour Anna at Memory / drawing while listening to a Bibi Blocksberg cassette.

Alex said he’d have been outside all day, building a snow igloo. Not noticing his mum telling him to come to dinner. If the weather had been bad he would have played with his dinosaur collection. His inner 7-year-old was a hopeless dreamer who got agitated whenever his parents had a fight. Who came home late from school every day because he forgot about time when he was talking to his friend next to a hedge with thorns that looked like tiny airplanes.

Lena said she would have been outside all day long, playing in the mud with the neighbours’ kids. Of course.

#things i love #present perfect #personal #february 2020 #february #2020

1 note · View note