Tag Archives: sourdough

Blue Mountains

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The Blue Mountains are just west of Sydney, and an easy day trip or weekend away. The area is full of eucalyptus trees which produce droplets of oil, which then combined with water vapour and dust particles transmit a blue tinged light… hence the name Blue Mountains.

It is a World Heritage listed National Park, and full of great walks and look outs. I have lots of happy memories of being very weary after walking all day and tramping through the bush.

My Nana lives just 1 minutes walk from here.

Katoomba is a town within the Blue Mountains, and here are two wonderful reasons to visit it, (other than to visit my Nana and go bush walking of course).

Organic sourdough shop. Open 7 days a week from 6am, I got there about 6.30am, the sun still not yet up, and the cold winter streets deserted. I head towards the bakery, a 200 metre walk from where we are staying, and the smell hits me. There is nothing, absolutely nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread hitting your nostrils first thing on a cold mountain morning. The smell promises warmth, and happiness. How could you not but smile when smelling that?

Handmade chocolate shop. Now I am a big advocate of shopping locally, (also a big advocate of chocolate.) supporting my local businesses, like to consider food miles etc. It doesn’t get much better than this. Food miles= about two metres. Made on premises, and you can watch them through the glassed wall. Oh I had my eye on that tempering machine, yes I did…yes I did.

Sourdough Oat Cakes

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Are they a pancake or are they a pikelet? Or a they simply an oat cake? I started making pancakes with oats in them quite awhile ago.

1/ It was something to do with left over porridge. (as an alternative to my grandmothers staple ‘mock brains‘).

2/ I added a lower glycemic index to the old pancake.

3/ I thought it was a bit tastier and more substantial than a traditional pancake recipe.

Not that I don’t love the traditional kind, but I am always hungry not long after, and with the added oats it keeps The Monkeys going longer as well. One day while talking to a Scottish friend, these little pancakes came up. She said that she had always made them and back home she called them oat cakes. There you go… oat cakes sounds much more appealing than porridge pancakes.

Now seeing as though I was well and truly aboard the sourdough train, I thought lets see what happens if I add some starter. I had originally wanted to make sourdough crumpets, but didn’t have any rings to cook in them so this was somewhere between. I was mixing it all up and Mr Chocolate went past asking what I was making… just playing. Seeing what will happen if I add this and this and then do this…

Verdict?

Deeelicious! Well thats what Monkey Boy said anyway. I’m sure the Little Monkey meant it too with his cheeks stuffed full like a squirrel. My oat cakes will now always be sourdough oatcakes. Gobbled up with in minutes.

Sourdough oatcakes

1 cup sourdough starter

1 cup plain flour

1 cup milk

50 gms butter

2/3 cup whole oats

1/2 tps bicarb soda

Put butter and oats in microwave together, (butter on top) and heat till melted. Add starter, flour, milk, buttery oats to mixer (I used a dough hook) and mix until well combined. Fold in bicarb soda and let sit for 3 hours in warm spot. Spoon into frying pan and cook as you would pancakes.

sourdoughs

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Sourdough tastes good. It tastes reaallly good. Give me a fruity sourdough, with a little butter and I’m a happy woman.

I had toyed with the idea of making a sourdough starter for awhile, but it just seemed too hard. Too time consuming and too confusing as to what I was supposed to be doing. I read and I read, so many different ways to ‘start’ the starter, that my head hurt. All the pages were rolling into one, the words a blur, and nothing was sinking in. I closed my eyes at night thinking of starters and woke again, only to find my first thought of the day was sourdough starter…. Now what do I need to do again? Slash before prove or after? Steam? Oven at the hottest setting or turn it down a tad? Feeds beforehand? Ratio of starter to flour?…..?……?

Enough! Just do it girl. Get cracking.

Yes, there are a number of different ways to do it. Does that mean its complicated or versatile? Lets hope with versatile. I went with the “Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook” method, and for the next 3 weeks diligently fed dear “Suzie” (she had to have a name if she was going to be a permanent fixture in my kitchen) and hoped for the best.

* Now it must be said before I go any further. I’m a hack cook and a hack baker. I look for short cuts, I change recipes, and sometimes it could be said I completely bastardize recipes. Lets put it this way…. I’m not a sifter. Now this can be a downfall at times as the impatient me wants to take over and the delicate french chef in me gets thrown to the back of the kitchen. However, most of the time it works. The food is edible, and The Monkeys go to bed with a full and happy tummy. So for me, hack works… that being said, I wasn’t so sure hack was going to work in doing a sourdough starter.


I decided to do a rye starter. The rye apparently gets going easier and then you can switch over to normal flour, it just gives it a head start,(it’s then just a white starter.) So with rye flour and water in a bowl sitting on top of my fridge, the feeding began.

According to the method I was following, the starter wouldn’t be strong enough until after 3 weeks. But in the mean time I did play around with the portions I was supposed to be discarding.

Batch made with 'ferment'- oops

First up, a batch made at day 5. A Light Rye and Apple. Yeast used as a raising agent. Starter used more as ‘ferment’ taste. I have since read that you shouldn’t be using it at all at this stage as the bacteria levels are not right….. oops. I did wonder about this, as at this stage it smelt weird. Not like vomit, as I had read it could smell, just different… vomit didn’t sound so good.

Sunflower and Linseed with a small amount of dried yeast for backup. Fermenting overnight in fridge

Seeing if it would work in the bread maker. Yep it did. No yeast added and rose beautifully. It did go dry quite quickly though, when used in sandwiches, but fine for toast. I did try and start the bread maker in the morning and then left it sitting for a further few hours to prove before continuing on to cook. It rose beautifully again but then I worked out there wasn’t a just cook button and it had reset itself. So won’t be doing that one again…. dense, (the bread not me…or maybe a little of both.)

no commercial yeast, 10 hour prove

Light Rye with no yeast, two bulk proving times, and cooked 10 hours after starting.

Sunflower and Linseed, one feed 8 hours before mixing ingredients, 2 x 1 hour proving times with a knock back in between, then a slow ferment overnight in the fridge for 10 hours.

I still have to try the Bourke Street Bakery method of feeding the starter 3  times in 24 hours before adding other ingredients, then a long ferment over night. Some people do the extra feeds to build it up and some don’t. It seems there are so many methods in working with natural yeasts, and it’s just a matter of finding what works for me. That being said, if by chance anyone that knows what they are doing reads this and sees something that screams out- No you shouldn’t be doing that! Please let me know. Or just a sourdough tip, and the best methods that work for you.

Overall- I am really happy with the outcomes. I should have done a bread making course so all of this makes a bit more sense, and am hoping to down the track. But until then, I have a starter bubbling away happily, I’m producing edible bread, (actually it’s more than edible it’s really tasty!) I don’t have to rely on commercially made yeasts. I’m saving a bucket of money by not buying shop bread. (For the same price of 2 shop bought sourdoughs, I am getting 12 kilos of flour which in turn makes…. lots more loaves.) Then just playing around with different flavours, etc. like sunflowers, rye, bran, pepitas, apple.

I’m finding it so satisfying to make these breads, it really does feed my soul. I’m truly amazed that they rise and taste good, I just wish I knew more of the how, where, why part of bread making with natural yeasts.

In the mean time though, hack is working.