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.

Sourdough Discard Pretzel Bites & Beer Cheese Dip

Long time readers may know that The Hubs and I played trivia weekly at a bar downtown for about 6 years before Lil' Man was born.  We seek out pub quiz and trivia nights at breweries when we travel.  A few months ago, we started up a new team with some of our HomeBrew Zoo friends for a bi-monthly trivia night at a local brewery that doesn't have onsite food.  One night, we saw another group bring in a cake and some snacks for a party, and it occurred to us...why don't we just bring food and eat here?  And thus, Trivia Potluck was born.  

Crockpot in a Brewery...not the weirdest thing you've ever seen.

Recently, The Hubs was craving cheese dip, so I decided to make some sourdough pretzel bites to go with it, using this discard recipe from Pantry Mama.  I stayed true to recipe so if you're interested in making the pretzel bites, just click on that link.  But if you're interested in our cheese dip recipe, it's below!

Note: I accidentally doubled the amount of salt in the pretzel bites recipe...flavor was fine, but I think it impeded fermentation a bit. I would also recommend using warm water to let the yeast bloom for a little while before adding everything else in.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb brick of lower sodium Velveeta-type melting cheese
• 1 lb spicy italian sausage, browned & drained
• 14 oz can of low sodium Rotel tomato-chiles blend (DO NOT DRAIN)
• 1 Tbsp taco seasoning
• 1/2 cup homebrew or other beer (we used a pilsner)

DIRECTIONS;

1. Brown sausage, drain, and set aside.
2. Cube up the melting cheese, place in a small crockpot, and add the Rotel & taco seasoning.  Let melt/blend for 2 hours on Low, or 1 hour on High, stirring frequently.
3. Once it starts to melt & come together, add the sausage and beer, and stir.  
4. Serve warm with chips, pretzel bites, whatever else you feel like dunking in delicious cheese...and of course, with lots of friends!

I only put Everything Bagel seasoning on part of them, since I wasn't sure if it would clash with the cheese dip.

Good times with great friends!

Sourdough Jalapeno Cheddar Loaf

With the madness of the holidays finally over, I had some time to bake full fermented loaves again.  The Hubs wanted something savory, so we settled on this recipe from SueBee Homemaker.  

I didn't stray from her recipe much, so click the link if you're interested in trying this one.  We used slightly less pickled sliced jalapenos than what the original recipe called for because it was all we had on-hand, so I chopped them up to make sure the jalapeno flavor was distributed throughout the loaf. We shredded up some extra sharp cheddar.  The jalapeno was mild enough that even our "Everything's Too Spicy" 8 year old enjoyed eating it.

I tend to prefer using a loaf pan to more free-form, oblong loaves...mainly because I don't have an oblong pan (like this Challenger bread pan) to cook them in, so they would have to be just baked on our pizza stone, which doesn't allow for trapping in steam during the initial part of the bake, which is where you get a lot of really nice rise from.  At least with the loaf pans, there's some structure to help them rise UP rather than just out in every direction.  They're also a lot easier to slice using my new slicing guide.

We made this when it was still pretty chilly outside, so we served this alongside some hearty beef stew and chili.

I rubbed butter on the top of the loaf before baking, which added some flavor but not a lot of shine like egg wash would have.

Lemon-Blueberry Sourdough Donuts (Belated Valentine's)

Putting Mardi Gras and Valentine's next to each other just about did me in this year.  First, I volunteered to make a sourdough King Cake and shrimp boil for the office Mardi Gras potluck.  And I had every intention of waking up early on Valentine's Day to make fresh donuts for my two favorite men.  BUT...then I got knocked out by a whopper of a cold. I spent half of Valentines snoozing and the other half sneezing.  

By Saturday I was on the mend, so I finally made discard donuts for breakfast.  Lil' Man wanted chocolate chips rather than blueberry, so I obliged with part of the batch. I also wanted to bring in some pink for Valentine's Day, so I made part of the batch with halved maraschino cherries, and a pink glaze. The below recipe is a variation off Farmhouse on Boone's base recipe. You'll need silicone donut molds to bake these in the oven.

INGREDIENTS: (makes twelve 3-inch donuts, or eight 4-inch donuts

• 1/2 cup sourdough discard
• 3/4 cup buttermilk (I keep buttermilk powder in the fridge for when I need it)
• 1/2 stick (4 Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice (about half a lemon's worth)
• zest of half a lemon
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder

Fillings:

• Frozen or fresh blueberries
• maraschino cherries
• chocolate chips

For the Glaze:

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1-2 tsp milk (depending on your preferred thickness)
• red food coloring (to make pink glaze)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350F, and grease your donut molds.
2. Whisk together the starter & buttermilk until smooth, then add the butter, vanilla, egg, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest, and stir until combined.
3. Add the salt, flour, and baking powder and mix until just combined.
4. Transfer the batter into a gallon-size zip lock or piping bag, and cut a hole in the corner/tip about 1/2 inch wide.
5. Use the bag to pipe the batter into the donut molds, dividing equally between the molds (I used one 4-inch pan and one 3-inch pan).  
6. Press the fillings into the donut batter (I put about 6-8 blueberries in each of the 4-inch molds, about 6 cherry halves in the 3-inch donuts). Press the fillings down into the batter to partially or fully submerge them.
7. Bake for 17-20 minutes, or until tops are brown.
8. Allow to cool in the pans for about 15 minutes, then transfer onto a cooling rack.
9. While the donuts cool, make your glaze. I used the plain glaze on my blueberry donuts, and then added a couple drops of food coloring to make pink for the cherry & chocolate chip versions.
10. You can optionally add some sprinkles--we had some heart shaped ones on-hand.

The lemon flavor in the batter & glaze worked well with all three variations.  It enhances the blueberry well, but is subtle enough to almost be unnoticed with the chocolate chip.  I had hoped it would create a sort of "cherry lemonade" flavor, but the cherries are too sweet and overpowered the other flavors. So if you wanted to do just a batch of the cherry donuts, I would recommend doubling the lemon juice and zest, and cut the sugar back to 1/2 cup.

Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread

 Redemption!!!

After my fail with the cranberry cinnamon bread (that wouldn't rise and is more aptly described as "bagel bread", I decided to try again, but using the swirl to get the cinnamon in there.  This recipe from Clever Carrot sounded pretty fab, and I was very happy with the results.

My kitchen was a bit cold and I was short on time, so I decided to add 8g of active dry yeast to this version to make sure it rose in time.  I also mixed for 10 minutes in the Kitchenaid, rather than doing stretch & folds.

I don't think I've done an egg wash on one of my loaves before, mostly because it feels like a waste of the rest of the egg, but I gotta say, the shine it adds is really gorgeous. 

It also gave me a chance to use the bread slicer that The Hubs gave me for Christmas.  It's a little flimsy but gets the job done. I hadn't previously been pre-slicing my loaves before storing, but cutting bread while it's still fresh & room temp is way easier (and probably safer) than hacking into it later when it's been in the fridge, and it's fantastic when toasted with butter.

Things I've Made Lately

Lest you think I've only been making things with sourdough, I wanted to share a few really good things I've made recently, and share links to the original posts!

1. Chili Crisp Salmon - I was listening to an episode of The Sporkful Podcast and heard a description of chili crisp, and decided it was worth a try. So we bought some, and I've been putting it on just about everything, from eggs, to ramen, leftover spaghetti marinara, and this glazed salmon from LittleSpiceJar.

2. Crispy Shawarma Wings from Peal with Zeal - I was cleaning out the spice rack and remembered I had gotten some shawarma seasoning from our local market (and promptly forgot about it).  The Hubs was craving wings, so we tried this recipe.  This was the first time I'd done a dry rub with baking powder and it made the skin extra crispy.

2. Beef Tallow Roasted Potatoes - The Hubs was smoking a brisket and we had several pounds of fat trimmings, so I decided to attempt to melt it down. I'm pretty sure I didn't do it quite right, but it still made these potatoes taste AMAZING.

4. Alton Brown's Coconut Balls - I have often joked that Alton Brown's recipes all have too many steps, which is a deterrent from trying them.  But then this one...had only 2 steps!  Must be super easy!  Not true.  It seems simple at the surface, but the coconut filling is SUPER sticky and makes these really messy to make, and then they kept trying to fall apart as I was coating them in chocolate.  It was an ordeal, but the final result was very tasty, and made for good gifts to my coworkers.

5. Oven Roasted Marinara - Our neighbors shared this recipe from The Wooden Skillet with us last fall, so I had to bust it out again this fall when we found ourselves with a surplus of end-of-season tomatoes and basil.  So easy, SO GOOD. We served it with Italian sausage & cascatelli.

Sourdough Discard Chocolate Chip, Coconut, Carrot & Zucchini Bread

After a couple busy weeks without much baking, I had a LOT of discard to use up.  I also had this random bag of frozen "zoodles" in the freezer that we bought quite a while ago. I've used them in recipes a few different times...but they don't thaw well and become mush.  So, I thought maybe a zucchini bread might be a better option to use them up. And in an effort to sneak some extra veggies into my kids diet, I decided to shred up some carrot as well (but include chocolate chips to guarantee that he ate it--he's been known to turn up his nose at several of my sourdough concoctions). And coconut...for me. Because I like it.

INGREDIENTS (Makes 1 Loaf):

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 125g sourdough discard
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup coconut  oil (melted)
• 175g shredded zucchini (or about 1/2 bag of thawed chopped zoodles) after removing excess moisture [Note: I made two loaves to use up all of the zoodles]
• 75g grated carrot (I used a pretty fine grate)
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Mix together the sugar, eggs, discard, vanilla, and coconut oil until smooth.
3. Add in the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinamon, and mix until just combined.  Then fold in the zucchini, carrot, chocolate chips, and coconut.
4. Grease a 9x5 loaf pan and pour in the batter.
5. Bake for ~60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
6. Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, and then transfer onto a cooling rack and allow to cool for 1 hour.

This was a really nice option to have for breakfast in the morning with a cup of coffee, or as an afternoon snack with some tea! If you wanted, you could definitely include some pecans or walnuts

Sourdough Discard Pie Crust and Vegetable Quiche

 If you've known me for a while, or read this blog for a while, you know we do a murder mystery party near Halloween each year in honor of our friend's birthday. This year's theme was A Knight of Murder, and my character was Poor Pearl, the peasant baker.  So I decided to bake up a "vegetable tarte" for our feast, using sourdough discard in the crust.

I used Little Spoon Farm's pie crust recipe; unfortunately I think I overworked the dough because the crust ended up slumping when I did the pre-bake.

Pre-slump.

For the filling, I used:

• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 white onion
• 4 oz mushrooms, sliced
• 1 Tbsp garlic
• 4-5 eggs
• 1/2 cup half & half
• 1/2 Tbsp of Adjika Georgian seasoning
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 cup cheese of your choice (I used shredded smoked gouda)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Par bake the crust for 15 minutes at 425F, then remove.
2. On the stovetop, sauté onions, garlic & mushrooms in the butter until soft, then place in the pie crust. Add cheese, then peas to the crust.
3. Mix the eggs, half & half, and Georgian seasoning in a medium bowl and whisk until beaten. Pour over the vegetables & cheese.
4. Bake at 350F for 40-50 minutes or until eggs are set.

Serve with many other amazing Medieval themed dishes whilst among friends dressed in period-appropriate garb.

Lord Taylor & Lady Gwendolyn, our fair hosts for the evening's festivities. (They literally have the BEST basement for hosting events like this.)

Many good times were had by all, and The Hubs & I were neither murdered nor the murderers.  And everything was DELICIOUS. Huzzah!

Poor Pearl the Peasant & Sir Cameron the Red Knight

Sourdough King Cake for Mardi Gras!

 Every year at my office, we have a Mardi Gras potluck.  One year I brought a boudin king cake; another year I made one from pre-made cinnamon roll dough. Another year I just made kingcupcakes. But I hadn't ever made one from scratch. But since I've managed to keep my sourdough starter alive for a year, I figured it was about time to try.

I found this recipe online and stayed pretty true to the recipe, but found the dough to be a bit too sticky.  I made a practice version the week before Mardi Gras--but didn't get the seams sealed well so it leaked out quite a bit, and was a bit dense.  

So for the actual Mardi Gras potluck, I decided to add about a teaspoon of active dry yeast and about 20 extra grams of bread flour. I also modified the filling: rather than mixing the butter in with the cinnamon & sugar, I spread the melted butter on the dough and then sprinkled the cinnamon sugar generously on top of that.  

I used this video to learn how to make the braid (about 15 minutes into video), since I didn't want to just do a simple roll.  

I've given up on trying to keep powdered sugar around the house. It always ends up going bad before I use the whole bag.  So I discovered I can make about 1/2 a cup in my coffee grinder, which is all I needed to make enough icing for this cake.  (You can vary the amounts of the liquids to get to your desired consistency. )

Icing:

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp vanilla 

1 tsp milk

I also made the purple, green and yellow sugar to go on top of the icing--pretty simple, just mixing a few drops of food coloring in a ziploc bag with 1/2 cup sugar per bag, then zip, and knead until color is mixed all the way through, then open the bag and spread out the sugar to let dry.

The cake turned out great, not too dense, good flavor, and no leaks!

This was probably one of our best potlucks so far!  We had red beans & rice with jalapeno cornbread, dirty rice made with collard greens & chicken andouille, shrimp boil, apples with praline dip...all the good things!