How to fit sourdough baking into your daily schedule?

8 / 11 / 168 / 11 / 16

"Oh, sourdough, I know it's so healthy, but it takes two days to make it, right?" and "Sourdough bread baking just takes so much time and I should be at home all the time, I couldn't do it!", are the sentences I here most often when I say I bake sourdough bread.

Well, the answer is yes, sourdough baking takes a reasonable amount of time. But this isn't really your time, i.e. the time you would spent on making bread. The most of this time is waiting for the bacteria and yeast to do their job. Feeling releaved? Read on.

Most importantly, baking sourdough bread doesn't require you staying at home. However, preparing and fermenting sourdough while being away in some parts of the day will require some understanding of fermentation principles and planning ahead (similar to life, right?). Let's look into steps on how to fit sourdough baking into your daily routine.

Steps towards fitting sourdough into your daily life

1. Understand how fermentation works

Temperature of the water, temperature of the environment, flours used, and amount of starter in the dough are the variables that affect the dynamics of sourdough bread fermentation the most. By changing those variables you can easily adjust the time of the dough fermentation to fit to your absence from home. Increase the temperature and amount of starter and your dough will ferment faster and vice versa. Getting to the right temperatures and right amounts of starter will take a little bit of experimenting in order to avoid overproofed dough when coming back home. This is especially important in summer when temperatures get high.

2. Get clear on what kind of bread you would like to bake and then plan (ahead) wisely

Different types of dough (or better to say types of bread) might require different approaches of handling the dough. In all cases, baking will require planning ahead and adjusting the recipes to fit the times when you are at home and when you can work with dough (i.e. before work, after work, etc.)

Two easiest sourdough breads that you can make while away are the sourdough sandwich loaf baked in a tin and sourdough focaccia baked in a tray. With both doughs you would simply mix the dough, knead it for couple of minutes to develop strength of the dough, transfer it to a greased pans, leave it to ferment until doubled in volume, and then bake it. Easy, right?

I usually mix the dough for sandwich bread or focaccia in the morning before going to work and, depending on the season, I leave it to ferment at the room temperature or in basement until I come home in the afternoon. In the best case scenario, the dough is ready to be put in oven in an hour after I come home (while the oven preheats). It is better to come home to slighlty underproofed dough than to overproofed one, where there is almost no way back.

You can make both types of bread in the afternoon in shorter amount of time, by simply mixing the dough with larger amounts of starter which will make the dough to ferment faster (also put the dough into warm place). In this way, you can have simple (yet very delicious) breads for dinner.

Using seasonal fruits in focaccias is one way of upgrading your sourdough bread and it's basically making two in one - bread and dessert.

3. Make fridge your best friend

When I discovered fridge, I became one happy baker, or at least to say, I got more sleep. Putting the dough into the fridge after the bulk fermentation at the room temperature allowed me to go sleeping and to avoid overproofed dough in the morning. Using the fridge, my dough was ready to be put in the oven when I woke up in the morning. (OK, I once forgot to put the dough into the fridge and the scene in the morning was not pleasant.)

Fridge can serve you for choosing a cold bulk fermentation or cold final rise of the dough (or both). In both cases, the signs of the proper development of the dough are the same as in fermenting your dough at the room temperatures.

In addition to solving the sleeping issues, cold fermentation also brings out the special character of the dough, bringing out the subtle edgy sourness of the bread and making it extremely delicious.

Before you put the dough into the fridge, just make sure you cover it with a plastic bag or someting similar as the fridge dries up things.

4. Experiment and repeat

Practice make perfect (bread). As you will observe how your dough acts under different circumstances, you will be able to judge the temperature and the amount of starter needed to get to the wanted step of bread baking.

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to baking sourdough during the busy days? How do you organize your baking? Let me know in a comment below.

Sourdough Krampus directly from heaven!

12 / 1 / 1512 / 1 / 15

It's the first day of December.

Looking back to the childhood, December always ment expectations. Expectations of warmth, kindness, visits, feeling good, having fun, but most of all, the arrival of St. Nicholas. He brought presents - oranges, dry fruits, walnuts and sometimes also some toys.

St. Nicholas day is celebrated in many European countries on December 6th and it's a special day of gift-giving for children.

In Slovenia, St. Nicholas is called Miklavž, and he is accompanied by angels and devils which are called parklji corresponding to the Austrian Krampus.

Boy, I was afraid of Krampuses! As I lived in a village, local boys dressed up into Krampuses, yell as loudly as they could and went knocking from doors to doors. Sometimes they would sneak into the house and search for the kids who "misbehaved". I was always hiding under the bed and closing my ears until the screaming passed.

Nowadays, I don't expect anything from December. But I just can't wait for the days to be longer again, starting on the winter solstice. It's when my New Year starts.

Let's sneak into what St. Nicholas brought this year for you - it's the recipe for corn Sourdough Krampus - so delicious, coming directly from heaven!

Sourdough corn Krampus
Yields: 4 big Krampus breads or 6-8 smaller ones

Baking schedule:
Sourdough starter for these sourdough Krampus breads was mixed in the evening, left to rise overnight and mixed into the dough in the morning. The dough was left to rise untile doubled in volume, then shaped, left to rise again until proofed and baked.

TIP: you can also prepare the dough in the evening, leave it to rise until doubled in volume overnight (make sure, you don't overproove it!) and bake the breads in the morning.

Ingredients:

Starter*
50 g water
50 g whole grain rye flour (or any other flour)
1 tablespoon of your active sourdough starter (I used rye starter)
* add more starter to the dough if you want it to ferment faster

Dough
100 g finely ground corn flour
100 g boiling water
220 g slightly warm milk
400 g white wheat flour (or bread flour)
9 g salt

Other
ground anise
pumpkin seeds
raisins
ice cubes for creating steam in the first minutes of baking

Instructions:

1. In the evening, prepare your starter. Mix 50 g of whole grain rye flour, 50 g water and 1 tablespoon of your active starter. Cover and leave to ferment overnight until nicely puffed bubbly, and active.

2. In the morning, first prepare the corn flour - pour the boiling water over it, mix well and leave to cool. Once cooled, prepare the dough. Dissolve all of your starter in milk, add wheat and steamed corn flour, and salt. Mix well and then knead the dough for 5 minutes so it becomes elastic, soft and workable (left photo below).

3. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl and cover the bowl with cloth or wrap to prevent the dough from drying out. Leave it to rise until doubled in volume. It took my dough 5 hours, yours might take more or less, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.

Left: Mixed and kneaded dough. Right: proofed dough ready to be shaped.

4. Once the dough is ready, transfer it to unfloured working surface, lightly dust some flour over the top of the dough and shape it into ball. Cover the dough with a cloth or wrap and leave to rest for 10 minutes, so the gluten relaxes. In this way, the shaping will be easier.

5. After 10 minutes, divide the dough into 4 parts. Take each part (one at a time) and first elongate it to a rectangular shape. Use your scissors or bench knife to cut into the bottom part of the dough to shape the legs. You can leave them as they are or you can roll each leg with your hands a little bit.

6. Cut into the upper part to make the horns. Finish the horns by rolling and thinning each part with your hand. Next, turn them on the inside on outside. If the dough feels sticky, wet your hands with little water and then try again. You can use your imagination to shape the Krampus bread in any shape you like.

7. Brush your Krampus breads with water and decorate them with raisins (make eyes), pumpkin seeds or ground anise to give them an extra sweet taste - it goes well with corn flour.

8. Transfer the breads to a lightly floured parchment paper and cover them with a plastic wrap to prevent them from drying out. Let them rise for about 90 minutes or until they pass the poking test. Make an indent with your finger and observe the reaction. If the indent comes back quickly, leave them to rise more. If the indent comes back slowly, your breads are ready to be put in the oven.

9. At least 30 minutes before the dough is ready to be put in the oven, preheat your baking stone (or a tray, if you don't have a baking stone) and a separate baking tray that you put on the lower rack to the highest temperature of your oven.

10. When ready, load the Krampus breads with a parchment paper on a pizza peel and slide it on a baking stone. Throw 10 ice cubes on a baking tray, close the oven door and lower the temperature to 230°C (446°F). Bake for 20 minutes or until nicely baked golden crust. If you can't put all the breads into the oven at once, transfer the rest of them into fridge to prevent overproofing.

11. When baked, let them cool on a cooling rack and then enjoy with a cup of warm milk and jam.

What are your childhood memories of December? Let me know in a comment below.

Happy December!

On a slice of sourdough bread: perfectly prepared soft boiled eggs

10 / 5 / 15

My relationship with eggs has always been strange. Sometimes I wouldn't have eaten eggs for months and next I'm eating them 14 days in a row. Well, I guess strange would just mean listening and adapting to my body's protein needs.

But one thing I know for sure. Eggs are one of my favorite autumn and winter breakfasts. Bright and vibrant yellow color of the egg yolk brings out all of the Sun energy often hiding in the morning fog and rain.

Hard boiled eggs on a slice of bread with soft butter and pinch of salt it's how I've eaten my egg for whole life. Many have argued that there is no point in eating hard boiled eggs as all the beneficial compounds our body needs (like lecithin, fat, calcium, iron, zinc and many vitamins) can be found in raw or soft boiled egg yolk. I had this in mind every time I ate eggs, but it wasn't until my first visit to New York this June when I also started considering other ways to prepare eggs. The reason? Well, in a bag of goods that we received at the Saveur Blog Awards, there was also one special item. It's known as egg cracker/topper.

Egg cracker has an amazing ability to send vibrations to egg's shell and cracking it in that way. When you remove the top, you are left with a beautifuly served soft-boiled egg - a bulletproof way to charm your guests or spouses. How cool is that?

So, how to prepare perfect soft boiled eggs every time? Here's the secret.

1. Pour water into a pot to be an inch of height.

2. Bring the water to a boil.

3. Place eggs into a pot. Cover a pot with a lid and leave it that way until eggs are done.

4. Cook for six and half minutes.

5. Pour of the water and cool the eggs under cold water. Use the egg cracker to remove the top of the egg.

6. Enjoy your breakfast with a slice of sourdough bread! My favorite is definitely rye sourdough bread with deep earthy flavor like this one or this one.

What's your favorite way of eating eggs?

Disclosure: Natasa Djuric received no compensation of any kind for representing this product. Her interest is to present useful kitchen utensils that make our lives easier and pleasant.

Roasted pumpkin seed pesto with pumpkin seed oil

5 / 5 / 155 / 5 / 15

What often happens to me is that when I have sourdough bread I don't have anything to put on a slice of it. And when the fridge is full of pestos, cheese, fresh vegetables, etc., I don't have my sourdough bread (I could call this bad planning). I didn't want to make an exception this time either (read: no bread in the view), so I decided to make something that I could still eat with my spoon with no guilt. This is how roasted pumpkin seeds pesto with pumpkin seeds oil was born.

Whenever I think of pumpkin seeds I think of my mother's words of how they were her childhood sweets. She lived in the countryside where "real" sweets were something quite unreachable. 30 years later, she passed her healthy snack habit onto me and my brother and we would often take pumpkin seeds with us to a school trip which kept us full for a long time.

Pumpkin seeds (kernels) and pumpkin seed oil

Pumpkin seeds are a real nutrient-dense food as they provide a number of benefits to our body. They:

contain a variety of antioxidants
are a rich source of vitamins (especially E) and minerals such as phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc. Zinc is important for sleep, mood, skin and prostate health and magnesium is beneficial for the blood pressure.
are excellent source of plant-based omega 3s fats
are rich in amino-acids and fibers. One of the important amino-acids is tryptophan which is converted into serotonin and afterwards into melatonin, a sleep hormone.
are rich in natural phytoestrogens being beneficial for women in menopause

In Slovenia, pumpkin seed oil is considered as a true delicacy and it is made from an autochthonous pumpkin variety called Slovenska golica (Cucurbita pepo L.). Yellow colored pumpkins with green stripes is primarly cultivated for its seeds which are shelled and need no shelling prior to making oil.

Left: raw pumpking seeds. Right: roasted pumpkin seeds.

Roasted pumpkin seeds pesto with pumpkin seed oil
Yields: 250 ml

Ingredients*:
150 g pumpkin seeds
80-90 g pumpkin seed oil
4 small pinches of finely ground sea salt or to taste
Optional: minced garlic

* to make larger quantities, scale accordingly

Instructions:

1. Roast the pumpkin seeds for 6-8 minutes at 180°C/350°F.

2. Let them cool.

3. Transfer the seeds to a blender or to a food processor and first ground them semi-finely (left photo below), take away 3-4 tablespoons of it to a jar, and then ground the rest again finely (right photo below).

4. Transfer the ground seeds into a jar, salt to taste and pour in pumpkin seed oil to get nicely spreadable consistency.

5. Enjoy freshly made or keep in the fridge.

You can use to pesto for pasta, soups, it's perfect on polenta, spread it over the slice of sourdough bread or mix it into salads.

Additional health tips:

To preserve the healthy unsaturated fats it's best to eat pumpkin seeds raw. If you would like to make pesto even healthier, skip the roasting step and proceed as written above or roast them at low temperatures, at 70°C/160°F for 15-20 minutes. In this way, you will still be able to enjoy the nutty aromas of roasted seeds.

As other nuts, pumpkin seeds also contain anti-nutricious phytic acid which can inhibit the availabilty of above mentioned minerals. If eaten in larger quantities, it is therefore advisable to soak or to sprout the seeds and deyhadrated them afterwards to make them more pleasant to taste.

Today on a slice of sourdough bread: homemade butter | video tutorial

3 / 29 / 154 / 9 / 15

Sometimes the simplest things are the best and most hearth-warming. You know, a cup of tea after a long day, an umbrella from a stranger on a stormy day, sunrise on a way to work, the sound of bees on a flowering apple tree. And a fresh butter on a freshly baked sourdough bread.

I eat a lot of butter and an idea to have it fresh whenever I need it is really inspiring to me. So I did it at home.

It's that simple: Shake it (whipping cream), 'till you make it (butter). The process of shaking up the cream is called churning.

How is the butter formed from the whipping cream?

Let's start with milk. Milk is a stable emulsion (a mixture of two liquids that are unmixable) of tiny butterfat globules (5-10 %) floating in a water-based fluid containing soluble minerals and vitamins. Whipping cream is similar to milk with the difference being that it has a higher percentage of butterfat globules (15-35 %).

Butterfat globules are like droplets of fat covered in membrane. When we start shaking the whipping cream, globules collide and the fat bursts out of the membrane - i.e. fat gets free. The freed fat finds other freed fats and this is how eventually butter and buttermilk are separately formed.

Homemade butter
Serves: 1 hungry and bread loving person

You will need:
180 ml whipping sweet cream at the room temperature*
1 jar with a lid
1 marble (optional)
* choose your own quantity and adjust the size of the jar accordingly. Always fill the jar to be 3/4 full so you will able to shake the cream.

Short instructions:
Shake it (whipping cream), 'till you make it (butter)!

Long instructions:

1. Couple of hours before you will make the butter, take your whipping cream out of the fridge. The warmer the cream, the softer the butter will be at the end.

2. Prepare a jar and pour the whipping cream in to be 3/4 full. Throw in the marble, tightly cover the jar with a lid and start shaking vigorously (great for your arms, however, make sure your forearms are relaxed, otherwise they will be sore for a day or two). If you find shaking difficult, you can use electric mixer or whisk.
It might be interesting for you to see the different stages of butter forming so just sneak peak in between couple of times.

3. Shake for a minute until you see whipped cream forming.

Left: whipping cream. Right: whipping cream after 1 minute of shaking.

4. Shake again for a minute or two until you first see the whipped cream to become rough in texture (cottage cheese like) and then break down to curds of butterfat and buttermilk.

Left: After 2 minutes of shaking. Right: After 3-4 minutes of shaking.

5. Shake again and you will soon see these butter clumps coming together into butter.

6. Pour off the buttermilk and shake the butter again to make sure there is as little as liquid left. If you won't use it straight away it is advisable to wash the finished butter with cold water and to knead it or squeeze it to really make sure there isn't any liquid left that would spoil the butter.
Take out the finished butter and store it in a container or wrap it into a parchment paper and store it in a fridge for couple of days or in a freezer for couple of month. Or use it straight away (the possibilities to resist are very small, trust me).

From 180 g of whipping cream I got 100 g of butter and 80 g of buttermilk.

The shaking time may take longer than 4-5 minutes, depending on the whipping cream.

So, now you have buttermilk and butter. You can drink buttermilk or add it into the bread or pancakes and you can make some delicious finishing touches to the butter, like adding salt, honey, fresh herbs, spices or anything else of your choice.

Have you ever prepared homemade butter?

Today with sourdough bread: creamy cauliflower soup

2 / 5 / 153 / 4 / 15

Stale bread is something quite rare in my kitchen. I usually bake one sourdough loaf once per week and eat it in the next three or four days (OK, sometimes in three hours). After four days your sourdough bread has probably lost most of its crunchiness but there is solution for that - make croutons and mix them in a soup afterwards. The aroma of toasted slices will give a nice nutty tinge to your soup and then you will start making croutons out of fresh bread. Like I did and do.

Today with sourdough bread: homemade yogurt + bounty yogurt | video tutorial

1 / 24 / 153 / 31 / 15

I like basics. Or better to say, I like going back to basics. It is like going back home, very grounding. For me, one of the most inspiring 'going back to basics' rituals is making basic , simple and nutritious foods, like sourdough bread and other fermented foods - especially vegetables and yogurt.

I've made homemade yogurt for many times and I can't believe how excited, happy, proud of myself and inspired I am every time I make it.

The benefits of homemade yogurt

The thing I absolutely love about the homemade food preparation is the possibility to choose the ingredients. With homemade yogurt, I always go for local milk from grass-fed cows raised on pastures (these cows usually get more sun than me ...). In this way, I support the local agriculture and I also get the best quality.

The second but not less important thing is how inexpensive the homemade yogurt is. I get 1 liter of yogurt for just 1 euro - is that great or what?

Homemade yogurt
Yields: 3.3 liters of homemade yogurt

Ingredients:
3 liters of fresh raw cow's milk
300 g of yogurt from the previous batch or store-brought yogurt with live cultures (I like to buy my yogurt at the farmer's marker where I get one that has been heated at no more than 60°C/140°F)

Instructions:

1. Pour the milk into pot and heat it up to 40°C/104°F. Stir it from time to time to heat it evenly. You can heat your milk up to 90°C, however, in this way the milk will be pasteurized and some useful bacteria and nutritious constituents won't be there for you to their full extent.

2. When heated, pour in your additional yogurt and mix well. With this you will bring the bacteria that feeds with lactose (a sugar naturally present in milk) into milk. The product of the bacteria digestion is called lactic acid which has beneficial effect on our gut. The process where the sugars are converted into lactid acid is called lactic acid fermentation.
If you have any probiotics in capsules (dietary supplements, you can add these too, it will enrich the flavor of the yogurt and lactic acid bacterial diversity (Lactobacillus bulgaricus, lactobacillus acidophilus, ...).

3. Pour the heated milk with bacteria into jars of your choice. I like to use glass jars which I wash well before using them.

4. Cover the jars with lids and place them to a warm place for 7-8 hours (temperature between 38-41°C/100-105°F), whether it is oven, dehydrator or heating chamber. I use dehydrator which I set to 40°C for 8 hours. It that time the lactic acid bacteria will multiply. The bacteria that thrive in the warm environment are called thermophilic.

5. When done, transfer the jars to a fridge and let it cool. In the fridge, the process of fermentation continues. This time, the pyschotrophic bacteria that thrive in cold environment do their job. Yogurt congeals and it also gets its distinctive sour flavor. Enjoy!

Tip: Yogurt gets better in the fridge day after day but keep in mind to use it within 14 days.

To ease the instructions of homemade yogurt, I prepared a short video (delicious bounty yogurt instructions also included!).

Varieties of recipes with yogurt are countless. My absolute favorite two are the yogurt with rye sourdough bread on my gluten days and bounty yogurt on my gluten-free days. In our kitchen, best recipes come from the leftover ingredients. And this is exactly how the bounty yogurt was born. A little bit of cacao powder and desiccated coconut and your healthy snack is ready in a minute.

Bounty yogurt
Serves: 1 person

Ingredientes:
1 cup homemade yogurt
2 teaspoons raw cacao powder
4-10 tablespoons desiccated coconut (the more the better :))
1 squirt of liquid vanilla stevia (appr. 15 drops or sweeten to your taste)

Instructions:
1. First pour half of your yogurt into cup and mix it with stevia.
2. Add cacao powder and 2 tablespoons of coconut.
3. Pour over the second half of yogurt.
4. Again add cacao and desiccated coconut.
...
Or simply - mix all the ingredients together and sprinkle the porridge with some cacao nibs. I like to make the porridge in the evening and then leave it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, it is ready for my breakfast.

Have you ever made yogurt at home? How was it? What is your favorite way of eating yogurt? Tell me about your experience in the comment below.

Today with sourdough bread: Butternut squash soup with fermented vegetables

1 / 11 / 152 / 11 / 15

Every year we prepare a barrel of fermented vegetables. This year we mixed red cabbage and carrots and spiced it with cumin seeds. Mostly, we prepare the fermented cabbage as a salad, but yesterday it was just the perfect time to use it in a soup. A soup that is extremely warming and fast to prepare, it takes only 10 minutes.

Fermented vegetables are rich in probiotics and very handy for cold winter days when supplies of other fresh vegetables and salads are limited.

It takes approximately three weeks for a barrel of cabbage to ferment. We use a handmade oak barrel for fermentation and when it's ready, we transfer it to big glass jars and put it in the fridge.

Butternut squash warming soup with fermented vegetables
Yields: 2 people

Ingredients:
800 g peeled and chopped butternut squash
1 medium-sized broccoli
1 zucchini
250 g fermented vegetables (red cabbage and carrots)
dry herbs and spices (parsley, oregano, hot peppers)
1 heaping tablespoon of coconut oil or ghee
1 tablespoon of butter

Instructions:
1. Chop the butternut squash, put it into pot (water should just cover the squash) and cook it for 10 minutes until slightly tender.

2. In the meantime, first slice the zucchini and chop the broccoli into tiny florets. Steam the broccoli for short time until intense green. Put aside.

3. Heat the coconut oil or ghee in another pot. When hot, put in sliced zucchini and let it there for couple of minutes until soft. Stir from time to time. Next, add your fermented cabbage, mix well and let it heat for a minute. Season with salt if not salty enough (our fermented vegetables were already salted when put in barrel to ferment) and with dry spices and herbs of your choice.

4. Pour cooked butternut squash together with water into blender, add 1 tablespoon of butter and blend well - until smooth.

5. Pour the butternut mix in two bowls, add fermented vegetables and zucchini and top it with steamed broccoli.

6. Sprinkle with dry herbs and spices of your choice.

Try it and leave me a comment below how the recipe works for you. Stay warm! :)