ThatDamnedPanda
Posts: 6060
Joined: 1/26/2009 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster I am impressed that Panda has TWO starters for sourdough. I'll bet it's delicious. I've never been that motivated. I just mix up 6 cups Organic Hard Winter Red Wheat (usually Bob's Mill) with yeast proofed w/ honey, 2 tbs finely ground pink Himalayan sea salt, more honey, and either distilled water or Gerolsteiner Mineralwasser. Sometimes I'll add ground up Reggiano Parmagiano, chopped fresh rosemary, and/or ground fennel seed or minced fresh fennel. I form it into small baguettes, slit the tops, mist with a little salt water, and bake in my convection oven with a pan of water in it for humidity. It's usually pretty good. Actually, Ozark, I have 5. I have 2 that I use solely for biscuits, 1 that I use for bread (my San Francisco strain), another that I use for pizza, and a 5th (the Oregon Trail culture) that I maintain just for posterity. I used to keep a 6th as well (a desem culture from Belgium) that made the most absolutely delicious whole wheat bread I've ever tasted in my life. I had to give up on the desem strain last year because it was just too delicate. It required a stable and consistent temperature and humidity regime, which can be very difficult to maintain in Minnesota, and the microorganisms from the other strains kept invading it and throwing it into turmoil whenever it was weakened by a change in the weather. I couldn't keep it stable, so I finally threw in the towel and called it quits. I'd sure like to be able to get it going again someday, but until then, 5 will have to be enough. quote:
ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster Ima gettin' hungry. BTW, this is the dough I use for pizzas. One of my favorites is with sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, Westphalian ham, and Gruyere cheese. Yeah, this made me hungry too, so I ambulated out to the kitchen and had a few spoonfuls of sourdough batter right out of the glass jar in which I percolate it. The Austrian strain. God, it's delicious - tart and tangy, with a smooth, nutty undertone. I actually use it as a salad dressing sometimes, that and the Italian strain, the Ischia. The Ischia is one of the best salad dressings I've ever had. I'm going to have to steal your concept for pizza dough, if you don't mind, and adapt it for the Ischia culture I use for pizza. I make a kind of bastardized adaptation of Tuscan pizza (no tomato sauce; just sliced fresh roma tomatoes, along with Italian sausage, chopped red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, and coarse-grated aged mozarella, sprinkled with fresh fine-grated parmesan and fresh black pepper), and your dough recipe sounds like it would fit well with my basic blueprint. I'm thinking of trying a new method for pizza dough - mixing a very wet batch of dough, and letting it ferment for 6 to 8 hours (instead of the usual 2 or 3), and just pouring the liquid batter out onto the pizza stone, instead of kneading and working a ball of the relatively stiff dough I usually use. I think that would give me a much stronger flavor, and I'm curious to see what kind of crumb I'd get from a dough that was almost liquid, and not kneaded at all. One thing I'm curious about, though - what exactly is Himalayan sea salt? There's no sea within 500 miles of the Himalayas.
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Panda, panda, burning bright In the forest of the night What immortal hand or eye Made you all black and white and roly-poly like that?
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