I almost negligently homicided my Montana Most Sour sourdough starter three days ago. For the first time in almost forever, I put the concoction in a glass bowl rather than the stainless steel and then put it in the oven with its film cover over night, as usual. I have a bright little piece of paper with the bolded words “SD in oven” specifically to remind me to be cautious. I put that in between two racks sitting atop the left burner because it’s convenient and I hardly ever use that burner.
Since I’ve been without a furnace since mid-winter last year, I use the gas oven not only to bake, but as additional heat some of the time. Well, we had snow. It was cold. I got up, didn’t put on my glasses, walked in the kitchen and turned on the oven to 350 before turning around to go in my room and get dressed.
Fortunately my room was cold and I was dressed quickly, put on the spectacles and turned off the phone alarm, then noticed the little blue sign on the stove just as I was getting ready to plug the phone into the charger. I grabbed potholders and got that hot glass bowlful of starter out of the oven and poured what didn’t stick to the edge into another bowl so fast. The glass bowl was cooking those edge bits. Nick of time.
I have babied that starter back to health over the course of two days with multiple feedings. I ended up with 2 cups of starter needing use today after I’d put some in the jar, and wanted to give it a good exercise, see if it would make a good eggy bread like challah. I usually buy that stuff at the Grocery Outlet but there wasn’t any lately and I like to make French toast casserole with it. I found a recipe in one of my cookbooks which used half all-purpose and half whole wheat. It worked just fine, so today I added egg and oil to the sourdough starter along with three types of flour in addition to the all-purpose unbleached used in the starter with milk.
The result was the perfect loaf of bread for French toast starting in a day or two, plus two mini Cinnamon Inside-Outers and then a full size Cranberry Inside-Outer with a minimal orange icing drizzle. I don’t know what other people call it when they spread the cinnamon goop on dough and roll it up but don’t cut it. I called the result Inside-Outers. They’re gooey-er.
Four flours? Another experiment. The A.P. as mentioned, plus a commercial bread flour, plus two of the Bluebird Grain Farms flours, the Pasayten hard white and the Methow hard red. The dough rose perfectly, the texture is lighter than I thought and look at this closeup:
Oh, one more.
Tomorrow, when the furnace arrives and the guys are ready for a break, I will serve them up a cup of coffee and a nice, reheated slice. One of them already knows it’s gonna happen because I baked the gratitude in advance.
Ms Chef in Seattle 