(Get it? Roll. Hur hur. I kill myself)
I somehow don’t think I’ll ever really understand baking.
You may have noticed that I’ve been trying to teach myself to bake recently. :) Although I haven’t been blogging everything yet (I’ve also been a bit too stressed to blog) I think I can say that I’ve made progress.
But then you might call it stubborn of me that, even though I’m an inexperienced baker, I keep trying to throw myself at two of the harder incarnations of bread – sourdough and ciabatta. And sometimes both. And it takes a lot of time, and it’s hard, and I’m reminded every time of how little I know.
But then today I gave up and just threw caution to the wind. “Can you make a bread after the flatbread recipe, but with a sourdough starter and in less than one day?”
Turns out that I could! And it was much easier and much quicker than the ciabattas.
I made my starter with one spoon of culture, one cup of flour and one cup of water at lunchtime (when I got up – it’s Sunday after all!) and left it to rise during the afternoon. Some time later, I mixed it with three more cups, half a cup of lukewarm water, olive oil and salt to form a springy, not too sticky dough.
I had learned from my flatbread experiments that it rises best in an oiled bowl that you set into another bowl of lukewarm water. So that’s where it went. It didn’t quite do much for a long while though – until I remembered that being sourdough, it probably wanted to be folded! And indeed – after a single folding it began to rise beautifully!
At that time I ran out of time and patience and time, so I didn’t let it rise as much as it probably could have. But when I poured it out of the bowl, it was indeed a bubbly and smooth dough. I gently cut it into six buns and let them rise a bit more before baking (with steam in the oven) at 230 deg C for five minutes.
When I looked into the oven again, I had – sourdough zeppelins! :D
Crusty outside, with a moist crumb and big bubbles inside – they were simply fantastic with fried Halloumi, lettuce, tomatoes and red onions and a little reduced balsam vinegar dressing.
So, today’s lesson – I seem to bake better when I don’t worry so much about what the grownups are doing :)
[…] have lunch at the company tomorrow, so this is a small bento before the evening painting class. Homebaked sourdough rolls with lettuce, fried Halloumi, cherry tomato slices and onion, Falafel, bear container with […]
Beautiful rolls, and that’s my kind of sandwich!