When you babysit a sourdough starter, there is inevitable discard to use up. I’ve used it for flatbreads, muffins, pancakes, griddle cakes, cake, coffee cake (I sense a theme). Today, I wanted to make something savory, so it was these easy-faux-cheezy crackers
Ingredients
1 cups Sourdough discard, fresh or from the fridge ¼ cup melted vegan butter Herbs/seasoning (today I used fresh rosemary and dried oregano) Nutritional yeast Sea salt
Process
Preheat oven to 350* Mix all ingredients except salt. Place a parchment paper on a baking sheet or pan and spread the mix over the parchment, getting it nice and thin! Then sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake for 10 minutes. Optionally, at that point you can take it out and score the crackers if you want them to be pretty and square. Or you can just break them up later. Bake for another 30-40 minutes until your desired level of crispiness.
Allow to *fully* cool before you put them away so they don’t get soggy.
We like bread. We like bread in all forms. We also love pizza. So, focaccia is just a given. Making a focaccia that has a tender airy inside but crisp crust isn’t always possible, but this recipe does so pretty easily once you get the hang of it! It is a combination of recipes from other sites, but the biggest influence was The Perfect Loaf and his was the recipe I started from. I made some adjustments from trial and error for my kitchen and my flour. You may find that you need to do the same.
Ingredients Makes two 13×9 focaccias
Dough 690 g all purpose flour 296 g bread flour 688 g water 188 g sourdough starter 18 g salt 20 g olive oil plus
Toppings (really this is yours to decide!) 6-8 T olive oil Grape tomatoes, halved Kalmata olives, halved Fresh rosemary Chopped scallion Sea salt
Process
Mid morning – When your sourdough starter is at its peak, mix starter, water, flour, and salt and knead until it becomes an elastic-y mass. You can do this by hand, but it’s much easier with a stand mixer and dough hook! With the dough hook, I kneaded it for about 5 minutes. By hand will take longer. If the dough is overly solid, add a little more water, but do it slowly. You don’t want a totally cohesive blob of dough, but you also don’t want runny soup. Add the olive oil and mix an additional 3-5 minutes until dough is again coming together. It should be a little chunky at this point but should not be completely settling down into the bowl immediately if you push it toward the inside. Cover the dough and place it in a warm location. I used my oven with the oven off but the light on.
From mid-morning to early afternoon – Allow the dough to rest for 2 hours, doing a stretch and fold every 30 minutes (4 times). While this is happening, select your pans for baking. I used large stoneware bar pans the first time I made this (about 14×10) and they were a little thinner than I liked. So, I switched to a deeper 13×9 pan the second time. This also allowed me to more effectively cover the pans so the dough didn’t dry out on top. When you are reaching the end of the two hours, coat the bottom of each pan liberally with olive oil and wipe up onto the sides. At the end of the 2 hours, divide the dough into two masses and transfer to your olive-oiled baking pans and cover. For the next two hours, gently press the dough toward the pan sides every 30 minutes. Hopefully, there is some tension present that causes it to want to spring back toward the center. By the end of the two hours, it will relax enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
From early to mid-afternoon – Once the dough is spread out in the pans at the end of the period prior, allow the dough to sit covered and untouched for 2 hours or until it has become very bubbly, risen some, and feels like some sort of weird puffy marshmallow fluff or something.
Mid-afternoon – Preheat oven to 450* at the end of the final rise while you prep the toppings for the dough. Ideally, it will be heated for close to 30 minutes total.
Late afternoon – When dough is ready, poke holes down to the bottom of the pan all over the dough and drizzle 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil over the dough and into the little holes. Add your toppings and push gently into the dough. How you top it is really up to you! I made the vegan version with the grape tomatoes, rosemary, scallions, and kalamata olives. The omnivores got one that was not vegan friendly, so I won’t describe it here. After toppings are on, finish with a sprinkling of sea salt.
Late afternoon to early evening – Place pans on a rack in the bottom third of the pre-heated oven. Try to fit both pans on one rack or put one in the fridge while you bake the other. Bake 20 minutes and then turn and bake for 15 more. At that point, begin to check for the tops to become a nice golden brown. How long you let that go is kind of a matter of preference. If you have two pans in on the same rack, you may need to increase the time significantly due to blocked airflow. I actually could have let this one go another 3-5 minutes for my preference.
Allow to cool a few minutes then remove and slice!
When you have some veggies and a trying to get creative, who knows what will happen?
Ingredients
2 Small Eggplants, peeled and cubed
4 TBSP olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large red pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 tbsp minced garlic
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cinnamon
Salt and pepper
2 Zucchini, peeled and sliced
1 large (or 2 small) and diced tomatoes
2 cans of chickpeas or 3-4 cups prepared chickpeas
1.5 cups of water from chickpea cans or chickpea prep
1 bunch of kale, trimmed and chopped
Pearl/Israeli couscous
Vegetable broth
Process
Salt eggplant and allow to sweat in a colander for 1 hour. Rinse and pat dry.
Sauté onion, peppers, carrots in olive oil for 3-5 minutes. Add garlic and spices. Cook an additional 3 minutes. If you do this in a cast iron pan, you’ll have one less pan to clean later!
Add tomatoes, chickpeas and chickpea liquid, eggplant, and zucchini. Bring to a boil, add kale, and allow to cook at a low boil for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400*
Transfer the whole shebang to the oven and bake for 40 minutes. Check at 20 minutes and add additional water if necessary.
Meanwhile, prepare your couscous in broth according to directions.
Serve stew with a heap of couscous and a drizzle of olive oil, a spoon of yogurt or sour cream, and some olives.
