May the Fourth Be With You: Bantha Burgers on Sourdough Blue Milk Buns

It's not every year that May the Fourth falls on a weekend. So when it does, you should probably round up your fellow Star Wars nerds and have a Galactic BBQ, right?  YES.  Even if it falls on the busiest Saturday of the entire year...seriously--why is the first Saturday in May so chaotic?  It's National Homebrew Day, the Kentucky Derby, ArtsFest, Kids Fishing Day...And this year, STAR WARS DAY.

There is no shortage of creative Star Wars food ideas on the interwebs, but of course, I had sourdough to use and needed to make bread.  I saw this recipe for "blue milk hamburger buns" and thought--yup, that's the one. But I hope it doesn't take too much food dye.

Wherein my fellow Star Wars nerd-friend who was hosting the party said, "oh, don't worry. I have an industrial-size food grade bottle of blue food dye. Take as much as you need." And he sent me on my way with about 2 Tablespoons of BLUE in one of those little 2-ounce plastic containers, like what you use for jello shots.  (You may be asking: "why does someone own a giant @$$ bottle of food dye?" And the answer is: I don't know. I've stopped asking questions at this point.)

Once home and baking, I started adding blue...got about halfway through what he'd given me, and said, "OK...that's about the color of the original recipe...but what do I do with the rest of this?"  ....Soooo....I just threw the rest of it in there as well. And we have VERY blue buns.

Note: since the "official" Star Wars blue milk buns were yeast only, not sourdough, I used that for inspiration only, and actually made these buns using The Pantry Mama's recipe (I SHOULD have reduced the liquid slightly to account for all the food dye, so I ended up having to add extra flour.  Learn from my mistakes.)

I really love the way the color ended up coming up. Yes, it's darker that intended, but with the blistering on the surface, it has a very deep space, galactic hue to it.  

The party went very well.  Our host had some "screen accurate cups" similar to those used in The Mandalorian filled with blue milk (for the kids) and Fuzzy Tauntaun cocktails (for the adults)...we also used them to serve the homebrew beer we'd brought.  

Other friends brought nerf kabobs, lightsaber pretzels, and blue milk milkshakes for dessert.  

We watched A New Hope on an outdoor screen after it got dark, while IG-88 and his pit droid stand guard:

I made 12 total buns; the recipe called to divvy it into 8 balls, but I wanted to make sure we had enough, so they were a little on the small side but worked well with the size of patties we made.  But the kids were a little weirded out by just HOW BLUE they were and decided to eat hot dogs and brats instead.  So we had a few left over to bring home.  I decided to make steak sliders the next night with sauteed onions, horseradish mustard, and melted pepperjack.  *chefs kiss*

Roasted Garlic & Rosemary Sourdough Focaccia

Who else remembers the 80's and 90's when pasta was "health food"?  Carbs were our friend, they gave you energy, and places like Olive Garden & Carrabba's were "fancy international dining".  (At least, they were if you lived in rural Missouri, where the fanciest restaurant in town was a Dairy Queen, and you had to drive 40 minutes in any direction to find a sit-down dining chain). 

I will never not love and defend pasta, which is fine in moderation, like everything else.  In our house, we have some form of pasta at least once a week.  And this particular week, we wanted to channel our "fancy Italian" youth and make some sourdough focaccia and dipping oil to go with it.  We used this recipe from The Perfect Loaf as our base.

For toppings, I saw several recipes that recommended sticking unpeeled garlic cloves around the top, noting that leaving them in the peel would allow them to roast without burning. This worked VERY well--once the bread has cooled a bit, you can remove the cloves, which pop out of the peel easily, and then stick the now-unpeeled cloves back into the bread.  We also had red onion and fresh rosemary, and I included some coarse kosher salt over the top as well.

We served this the first night with a delicious, creamy entrée of Italian Sausage Orzo from Salt & Lavender (note: we used chopped kale rather than spinach because it's what we had on-hand).

The leftover bread was noshed on throughout the rest of the week, sometimes with just a little olive oil, salt & pepper, and sometimes with a fancier dip comprised of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, grated parmesan, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and Italian herb blend, similar to this recipe.

Cinnamon Peach Swirl Sourdough

 This recipe was born because we wanted strawberry jam.  ...I'll explain:  We only have so much fridge door real estate, which is where jams and other condiments live, of course. And we also have this sort of unwritten rule about not having more than two types of jam/jelly open in the fridge at once (probably because we need to make sure we have plenty of room for the 5-6 types of pickled things that also live in the door).  There was a new, unopened jar of strawberry jam in the pan but first we needed to use up a partial jar of peach jam that had already been in the fridge for a while.

I couldn't find a recipe for exactly what I wanted to do, so I modified a cinnamon raisin swirl bread I'd had some success with in the past.  The peach jam we had (used about half a jar, or 1 cup) was homemade, from my Aunt Betty, and was delicious, but I wanted some other flavor notes in there. So I mixed in some cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg (to taste). I tried to spread the filling as thin as I could, but with chunks of peach in there, it wasn't perfect.

This got rolled up from right to left, taking plenty of time to make sure I was sealing the edges well, so that there wouldn't be much leakage. Then it went into a well-greased metal loaf pan.

One busted seam...not too bad! Used an egg wash to get a nice glossy, golden top.

This was fabulous toasted with a bit of butter, but some of the slices where the filling was thicker were a tad undercooked, and wouldn't hold up well enough to go in a vertical toaster (would be fine in a toaster oven).  My favorite thing we made with it?  Griddled BLTs.  The peach went so well with the smoky bacon and some pepperjack cheese.