Nevertheless, She Persisted!
Coping with carbs + Super Bowl snacks.
What I’m Thinking About, Super Bowl Food Edition:
I am always pro-nachos for the Super Bowl. If you’re looking for a classic recipe, I’d recommend this one, but if you want something completely different, go with this. Trust me.
A nod to Nola?! Not sure this can be beat!
It’s unclear why this is the first time I’m seeing these chicago style piggies in a blanket. I must have them.
My friend, Josiah, shared his twice baked blue cheese potatoes recipe, which is pictured below. These are a winner any day of the week and perfectly snackable for gameday. Thanks, Josiah!!!
What I Made This Week:
A few weeks ago, Tom’s brother gave us some sourdough starter, something I’d been wanting to try and simultaneously feeling completely intimidated by for years. After reading a few recipes and watching several YouTube instructional videos, I felt ready to give it a go. What better to distract myself from the constant insane news cycle than spending my entire Saturday mixing the ingredients, folding the dough, shaping the dough, proofing the dough, and prepping for it to be baked on Sunday?!
I ended up relying on Claire Saffitz’s recipe and advice, because, well, she’s Claire Saffitz. She has a recipe printed through NYT Cooking as well as a video, which was incredibly helpful and I watched, paused, and rewatched more times than I care to admit. Being on the other side of this experience now, I do feel it necessary to warn you that given that it’s Claire Saffitz, this recipe doesn’t have beginner shortcuts and is not for the faint of heart. When I say I nearly gave up after 90% of the steps, I mean it. With that being said, I ended up with two loaves that far exceeded my expectations for my first time and tasted damn near perfect. I literally teared up when I pulled the first loaf out of the oven and saw how good it turned out. I’ve honestly never been more proud of anything I’ve made in the kitchen. The end result made me somewhat forget the trials and tribulations along the way and I’m thinking of making more again this weekend. This is what people say about childbirth, right?! I felt that with my sourdough loaf babies.
Here are some overall thoughts, tips, and hurdles from the process:
You do need to plan well in advance for sourdough as it’s generally a 3-day process. The vast majority of the work and biggest time investment takes place on day 2, so plan accordingly for day 2 to be a day you can be home. Here’s how it broke down for me:
Day 1 (Friday): In the morning, take the starter out of the fridge and feed it. Most recipes I saw followed a feeding recipe of 113g of starter, 113g of flour and 113g of water. Leave it out during the day with a breathable cover (I just put a paper towel over top of the container with a rubber band to hold it in place) and repeat the process of feeding again ~12 hours later.
Day 2 (Saturday): Start the bulk of the work in the morning, ideally ~12 hours after you fed your starter last. This day includes mixing the dough, adding in the starter, letting it rise, and repeating 4 folds every hour for 3-7 hours until it feels “pillowy and filled with air”. Given that it’s the middle of winter in Ohio, this took nearly the full 7 hours for me (the cold will slow the process!) The steps themselves are quick, but there are frequent bursts of downtime ranging from 20 minutes to an hour between each step, which is why you need to be home for the majority of the day.
Sunday morning: Bake! This requires ~an hour of preheating your dutch oven in the oven, then baking for ~50 minutes. This is for one loaf. You then repeat with the second loaf, so again, the steps themselves are straightforward and quick, but are spaced out with a lot of downtime.
Claire talks about the “float test” for testing your starter. The idea is that when the starter is at its peak, it will be so full of air that it will float in a bowl of water if you drop a little bit in. Here’s the thing: My starter didn’t pass the float test. It had actually been ~16 hours from my feeding Friday night to when I started the mixing process Saturday morning (I had plans with friends on Friday night and had to feed it early, okay?!), so I was worried that I had actually passed the peak time. Enter: Opportunity 1 for me to call it quits. I could have fed it again Saturday morning and evening, then tried the process on Sunday, but I wouldn’t have been home Monday to bake it off. Sigh. For whatever delusional reason, I decided to keep going.
Enter mistake #2. I had siphoned off some starter Saturday morning and fed it to give to a friend. I assumed I’d have plenty left over for the recipe itself, but hadn’t done the math (or the weighing). Turns out, I was 40g short of the amount needed for the recipe. I scrambled and took 40g of the freshly fed (aka not bubbly and ready) starter to mix in. At this point, I started really thinking there was no point in seeing this through. Nevertheless, I PERSISTED!!!
Somehow I made it through the rest of the steps, constantly second guessing myself and nearly throwing in my kitchen towel. I am so glad I didn’t. While the steps are pretty precise, my takeaway is that sourdough is a bit more forgiving than it may seem. With repetition and practice, I can totally see how this is a meditative, beyond rewarding process.
If you’ve made sourdough, please leave a comment below with your tips and tricks! See you again in a few weeks?!
Toast with butter >>>>
Looks so great!
I feel like I was right beside you on your sourdough bread journey! Final result looked great!