Sourdough Stories, Unlucky No. 13: Pigs in a Blanket

Pigs in a Blanket is a go-to in our household. Enlist a can of crescent dough and some Lil' Smokies, and we have a meal that our 7 year old actually enjoys helping make.  And we did just that last week...but so far, it appears that Big Bread and Big Sausage (heyoo) are in cahoots when it comes to how many of their product to put in a package (as previously hypothesized by George Banks in Father of the Bride).  AKA: we had a ton of sausages left afterward. 

So I decided to make some "blankets" using sourdough.  I used The Pantry Mama's recipe as a base, but left off the ketchup/cheese inclusions and didn't do a maple butter on top (just regular butter).  Also, I didn't use the instant yeast...because it seems like cheating. If I wanted to use instant yeast, I would just make REGULAR bread, not sourdough.  Isn't it kinda the point of sourdough that you DON'T need to add yeast?

But I think I'm realizing that when I see beautiful pictures on the interwebz and the recipe notes "optional" inclusion of instant yeast....they probably used yeast to make sure it was a nice, fluffy dough for the pictures. AND....it probably also indicates that the noted rise times are for a dough that had yeast added.

You see where I'm going here. This recipe attempt was a bit of bust--if you're a superstitious (or just a little stitious) person, maybe we can chalk this up to luck since it was the 13th thing I'd made.  But I'd also set myself up for it. I started making the dough around 9am, thinking that would be plenty of time to have them ready for lunch.  After all, I'd pulled my starter out of the fridge the night before so it could come to room temperature, and fed it with some rye and whole wheat flour to get some extra nutrients in there.  Mandough was VERY happy--who needs instant yeast when you have a nice, bubbly starter?  

The variations in color are from the rye flour.

After sitting on the counter overnight. I needed to split some off for a neighbor, so I fed it in a larger container.

Mandough's third split. 1st was Gro-goo, 2nd was Dough-bi Wan. Now: meet Dough Pameron.

Bulk rise started about 9:30am, and the original recipe calls for 2 hours.  I sat the bowl near a sunny window to help encourage the rise.  About 11:30a, I checked the dough--while it had grown, it wasn't *quite* doubled, but now I was feeling a bit of a time crunch to have these ready.  So I went ahead and started making my pigs in a blanket.  I used a kitchen scale to check each ball of dough I pulled off to make sure it was about 30g, rolled it in my palms to round it out, then flattened it into an oval, added the sausage, then pinched the ends together.  The dough was nice and supple--all good, right?

I set them aside for the second rise, on top of the pre-heating oven to encourage growth.  The recipe called for 30-60 minutes or until they got "puffy".  Somewhere around the 30 minute mark (so, 12:30p) The Hubs walked by and asked "are these ready to go in?"  I was working on another dough (stay tuned for next week), glanced over, and said "sure"--because if they didn't go in soon, we were going to be eating lunch at 2pm.  And in they went...not really looking any puffier than they'd been when I made them.  

End result was pale, fairly dense & doughy--tasty, but not as devourable as the ones we usually make with crescent dough.  And it made a LOT.  So we had to eat on them all week.  By the end of the week, the condensation & moisture from the sausages had basically reverted the "blankets" back to raw dough, if that's possible.   Probably won't be trying this one again--we'll just stick with pre-made crescent or biscuit dough.