I love berries of all sorts, but I especially love blueberries. I have a stash of them in my freezer and several boxes of fresh blueberries in my refrigerator. So I thought I would make up a quick snacking kind of dessert for dinner.

Easy Sourdough Blueberry Wedges

• 4 oz/113 g- evaporated milk (half cup)
• 2 oz/56 g -melted butter (half stick of butter)
• 2.5 oz/73 g – sugar (about 1/3 cup)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon/6g vanilla extract
• 7 oz/198 g – sourdough starter @ 100% hydration
• 1/4 teaspoon/ 2 g –  salt

Place all of the above ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat with a whip until incorporated.

Then pour the mixture into an oiled 9″ baking dish and add over the top:

• 10 oz/ 284g – blueberries or any other fruit you wish to use (raspberries, sliced peaches, chopped apples and raisins etc) (about 1.5 cups)

Sprinkle the top with sugar and cinnamon:

Bake at 400F in a preheated oven for 30 – 40 minutes. Cool a bit. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream while still warm or sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top.

This recipe makes nice thin wedges, if you wish them to be thicker, use a smaller baking dish and bake a little longer.

This dish would also be good with crumbs on top, sprinkled on halfway through the baking time so they don’t drown in the thin batter.

Don’t forget a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Happy snacking!

The Bread of Love and Friendship

This is an easy sourdough with a little bit of milk and potatoes. I used whole wheat sourdough starter but you can use a white starter and substitute about 6 oz of whole grain flour for bread flour to have it come out similar.

Pane di Amore

This dough makes 1950 g of dough and I made two loaves at 700g and a smaller loaf at 500 g — and don’t write and tell me that it doesn’t compute because if you are a baker you already know that dealing with sticky dough, you will waste some dough on the container and on your hands every time you fold.  The dough is approximately 67% hydration. I had this dough mixed and ready to bulk ferment at 3:00 pm. Add together:

• 200 g of whole wheat starter fed in the morning
• 550 g water
• 80 g milk ( I use canned milk, it is sterile and you don’t have to heat it and it is creamier because it is concentrated)
• 20 g sugar (raw, brown, it doesn’t matter)
• 60 g  rye flour
• 100 g  mashed potatoes (have it prepared early in the day)
• 600 g of  flour (bread and all purpose flour,about a 60/40 mix)

Mix the above ingredients together and then allow the mix to autolyse (rest) at room temperature for  two hours (keep the dough covered). After autolyse is done, add:

• 320 g bread flour mixed with 20 g of salt (mixing the flour and salt before adding helps to distribute the salt more evenly).

Mix well.

Fold this dough three times over the course of four hours (it should be around 9:00 pm if you started at 3:00 pm).

Shape the dough. I shaped two larger loaves and one small loaf. You could also shape two large loaves etc.

Place the shaped dough into bannetons, cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning take your loaves out staggered by 30 minutes, take off the plastic wrap and allow the dough to proof until ready. My dough about three hours.

I preheated the oven(to 500F) after the dough was proofing about two hours and I used the microwave over my oven, once it got warmed up from the oven being on, to keep the dough toasty warm. If you don’t have a warm place to keep your dough, it could take longer for the dough to proof. Knowing when the dough is done proofing and when to turn the oven on are skills that even advanced bakers mess up on sometimes.

Slash your first loaf  with a heart on the top, when it is done proofing and slide it onto the stone.

Give it a spray of water and then cover it with a roasting pan lid, upside down stainless steel bowl, or whatever you have for holding in the steam (you should preheat it just before using it ).

Turn the oven down to 450F.

Bake for 20 minutes and then carefully remove the lid (place it on top of the oven to have handy for the next loaf and out of reach of little fingers).

Finish baking the loaf for around 10 – 15 more minutes, turning it once after around 5 minutes. Your dough may take longer to bake. Just make sure it is nice and brown and the internal temperature is around 200 – 210F and the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it on the bottom.

Place your hot bread on a cooling grate. Turn your oven back up to 500F , place the roasting lid back in the oven and wait another 5 – 10 minutes for it to heat. Then repeat the process for the other loaves. Pane di Amore should really be shared with your loved ones and/or a friend. So make enough to share, you will be loved in return!

The crumb from the smaller loaf was more open:

The crumb from the larger loaves was a bit more closed:

To bread, love and friendship!

It was a wonderfully sunny day on this island so I named this bread Sunny Sourdough. Sunny sourdough is made with motherdough that has been aged at least 3 – 5 days. I had some 60% motherdough that was two weeks old and I wanted to use it so I made this bread.

You need to start ahead by making some 60% motherdough. Sunny Sourdough formula takes 245g (about 8 oz), but it is always good to have extra motherdough on hand. Click here to make the 60% motherdough.

After your motherdough has fermented in the refrigerator for at least three days you can make Sunny Sourdough:

Sunny Sourdough  

Makes 1366 g at 67% hydration  (two loaves)

•  245 g motherdough 60% hydration -aged (pull apart into chunks)
• 450 g water
• 15 g salt
• 30 g whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon diastatic malt (optional)
• 626 g bread flour

Mix together the motherdough, water, salt, whole wheat flour and diastatic malt.

Incorporate the bread flour.

Allow the dough to proof at 75F for 5 hours folding three times (or at room temperature for 6 hours).

Shape loaves.

Refrigerate your loaves overnight, covered in plastic.

Next day, stagger loaves, proof at 78F until done proofing (it took 5.5 hours for mine and they needed longer). I used my Brod and Taylor proofer (if you can afford one, just get one!).

Bake in a preheated oven at 480F for 15 minutes with steam then 10 – 15 more minutes without steam.

Long fermented motherdough will produce a loaf with a smell and taste so good you won’t believe you made it. It also has a great oven spring, even when the dough looks somewhat slack.

That is because the C02 is being absorbed into the dough during the long cold ferment and when it is hit by hight heat, the gas bubbles quickly expand creating large holes. You have to make sure your oven is VERY hot. I preheat my oven for at least an hour at 500+ degrees and turn it down to 480 once the loaf is in the oven.

The slackness of the dough makes it hard to estimate when the proofing is done. Just imagine that it will take a very long time and you will probably be right (5 – 8 hours is not uncommon).

There has been an ongoing controversy over whether a starter culture that you obtain elsewhere, is taken over by, or reverts to, the local microorganisms after you have had it for a while.

I asked Debra Wink that question and she said a stable starter would keep the original organisms intact if it was healthy.  I have heard many different opinions on the subject. However, there is one thing that keeps me from making up my mind about the subject and that is the tests I have done. Many years ago, I did time tests for different starters to see how long they took to proof.  See Starter Experiments.

I was recently challenged to test the San Francisco starter and the Northwest starter again. The theory was that they would have the same proof by now because I obtained my San Francisco starter back in 2006 and my Northwest starter back in 2004.

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I have had them either bubbling away on my counter or dried these many years. I use the Northwest starter the most. A couple of months ago, I got the San Francisco bubbling away on my counter too. So I have been feeding and caring for the two starters side by side for a while. So when I was challenged to do an experiment on them this is what happened:

The night before the experiment, I fed both starters the same amount by ratio, 1:1:1.

Next morning at 8:00 am I took 2 ounces of each starter and fed it with 2 ounces of water and flour. After four hours they looked like this:

I did not mark the SF at 11:00 o’clock because it hadn’t moved.

Next:

By 3:00 o’clock pm the Northwest had more than doubled but the SF was still lagging behind. These are proofing times that I would expect from the two starters. The Northwest starter is around a six hour proof (the house was at 67F) I expect it to double in at least six hours. The San Francisco is around a ten hour proof and I don’t expect it to double after six hours.

By 4:30 the Northwest starter had peaked but the San Francisco starter wasn’t yet doubled. At 4:30 the Northwest Starter began to fall back. So it made it eight and a half hours before falling in.

By 6:00 o’clock the San Francisco starter finally doubled. That was ten hours after it started this test.

At 8:30 pm, the San Francisco starter was still going strong, that is over 12 hours after it was fed!!

This is a top view of the San Francisco still rising and the Northwest falling in at 8:30 pm (NW had started falling in around 4:30 pm.

This last picture was taken the following morning. You can see that the San Francisco did not rise anymore, but it hadn’t fallen yet either and that is 24 hours after it was fed! I noticed shortly after taking this picture that it began to fall in.

My point is that the two starters did exactly what they were supposed to do. The Northwest starter is a six hour proof starter and is used for most types of bread baking, it is the favorite of many bakers.

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The San Francisco starter is a VERY long proofing starter and you can use it for the very long fermented breads, you know, the kind you are trying to get a real sour tang. If you don’t know how to use a San Francisco starter, it can be disappointing. You can see that at the seven hour proofing time, it was still sluggish, if you were trying to use it with an average formula for sourdough bread, you would have thought it was a bum starter.

So…. what do you think? Did they revert to being the same starter? Let the controversy rage on…….please give your opinon!

If you are interested in purchasing either starter, they are available from Primal Kitchen here: http://www.northwestsourdough.com/store/

When I was young, there was a bakery in town that specialized in a Cheese Onion loaf. It was a soft, white crumb studded with melted cheese pockets and caramelized onions chunks. The bread was a sought after item and you could smell it baking from far off.  So keeping that in mind, I made up a 64% hydration dough with some milk in it. I decided to do a one day ferment. I started in the morning and made the dough. During the day while the dough was fermenting, I caramelized up two onions. It takes a while to caramelize them to the point where the chunks turn really dark.

Here is the formula for the dough:

Caramelized Onion Cheese Loaf:

• 283 g of 100% hydration vigorous starter
• 256 g water
• 56 g evaporated milk
• 14 g oil
• 14 g sea salt
• 567 g bread flour

• 2 sweet onions chopped into chunks – 567 g
• enough oil to lightly cover the bottom of the pan

Brown on medium low heat, stirring once in a while, for about 45 minutes or until the onions are a nice dark color. When you are done the onions will weigh around 208 g. Cool the caramelized onions.

When your dough is almost done fermenting, chunk up 226 g of cheese (the type is your choice). I cut the chunks in .5 to .75 inches. The size doesn’t really matter, just make sure the chunks of cheese are not too small, or they melt into the dough.

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Divide the dough into two pieces, round up and allow to set for 20 minutes.

Divide each piece of dough in half again and round up each piece and flatten it.

Then take your knife or dough blade and chop two of the pieces of dough into one inch size chunks.

Begin pulling the other two pieces of dough into a flat circle which will end up being 12 inches in diameter. I pulled the dough, waited ten minutes and then finished pulling it out the rest of the way. You don’t want it too thin as it will become the outer layer of the loaf.

Now take half of the caramelized onions, 113 g of cheese chunks and one pile of the dough chunks and place them in the middle of the dough circle.

Fold the dough edges to the middle to make a boule:

Place the boule in an oiled 8″ baking dish or pan. Oil the surface of the dough and repeat the shaping and filling for the second loaf. Allow your boules to ferment for about 2.5 to 3 hours in a warm place. Keep the surface covered, oiled or both.

When the proofing is done, slash the top of the dough and bake the loaves together in a preheated oven at 425F  for 30 – 40 minutes or until a baking thermometer reaches 205- 210F. I used a baking stone to give the bread extra bottom heat.

Allow the bread to cool before slicing.

I will post a crumb shot later when the bread is sliced.

The aroma of this bread is awesome, as you could imagine!

Crumb shot:

I had a Hubbard squash sitting on my kitchen table begging to be baked.  So, I baked the squash and made up some squash rolls. I made enough dough to bake up a loaf of squash bread as well.

Sourdough Squash Rolls  (makes about 4 lb 8 oz of dough/2061g – half the amounts for one loaf or one pan of rolls)

• 9 oz/255g  -starter @ 100% hydration
• 12 oz/340g – water
• 3 oz/85g  -sour cream
• 2 oz/56g – melted cooled butter
• 2 oz/56g – brown sugar
• .7 oz/19g – salt
• 12 oz/340g – baked, sieved squash – I didn’t sieve my squash I let the flecks show
• 16 oz/453g – bread flour
• 16 oz/453g  - ap flour

Hand Crafted Wooden Lame - Store

I am Wyllis Greenway, Teresa’s son. I originally designed these lames because I love to work with wood. Most bread slashers you could get were either made of plastic or metal. I thought that a lame should invite the same sense of warmth and character into a kitchen that a loaf of freshly baked bread does, which is why I decided to use richly colored woods and compliment them with shimmery brass hardware.The curvy design shown below was actually interpreted from classical French cabriole table legs which were high class fashion back in the rococo and baroque periods. I also thought this aspect would tie it back with its artistic french baking roots. Here is a little insight into my shop world and how I makes Lames.

Every Lame starts from a rough cut stock of wood. Every piece is carefully chosen and cut to express the unique beauty of each wood type. Black Walnut, for example, needs to be cut “quarter sawn” in order to reveal the natural shimmering effect it’s grain radiates. Profiles are then carefully drawn into place and cut out.

After the bread slasher is cut, it is carefully shaped with rounded corners and sanded smooth.

Once the it has been shaped to satisfaction, it is brushed with a natural oil finish and allowed to dry for 48 hours.

Then, the tip of each lame is carefully cut in half to create an extremely thin slice to receive a razor blade later.  Brass thumbnuts are then inserted to make blade replacement quick and easy!

Lame - shop

It took two days to coax this beautiful lame out of a piece wood but now it is done and ready to slash bread!

I still occasionally makes a batch and lists them. If you would like to pick one up you can check here….

Hand-Crafted Wooden Lames -

Bamboo Lame

Black Walnut Lame

Maple Lame

…and in my mom’s store here: Northwest Sourdough Store (plus baguette flipping boards, bamboo pastry blades and handcrafted rolling pins.

I hope you enjoy this post and the many to come! Please comment below with and questions or feel free to share your baking experiences.

Wyllis

Update: These are my most recent addition to the family. Bamboo lames. I finished them just this morning. You can check them out here… Bamboo Lame Amazon Shop or through the image link below.

I have a dear friend who is fighting cancer. The chemo treatments leave her unable to eat much but she loves eating my sourdough bread. So I have formulated this bread just for her. It is the white counterpart to Pink Wig bread which was also formulated for a woman fighting cancer (it is a whole wheat version). It is gratifying for me to know that people with compromised systems can still eat and digest sourdough. I think that shows how healthy a fermented food like sourdough is.

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Blonde Wig Sourdough – a fine grained soft crumb sourdough 

Makes 3 lb 4 oz dough @ 68% hydration

Mix together in a large mixing bowl:

•  11 oz/312g ripe motherdough @ 60% hydration
• 8 oz/226g  well fed ripe sourdough starter @ 100% hydration
• 11 oz/312g lukewarm water
• 2 oz/56g canned milk or heavy cream milk, in the U.S. this is called half and half (if you use real milk, scald and cool before using)
• .6 oz/17g sea salt
• 2 oz/56g whole wheat flour -freshly ground is best
• 18 oz/510g bread flour

1. Add the two starters, the water, milk and salt to a large mixing bowl.
2. Pull apart the motherdough into pieces and stir all of the ingredients together.
3. Add the whole wheat flour and the bread flour and mix with your hands until you have a dough ball. Let the dough rest, covered.
4. 
5. Fold the dough three times over the next six hours of fermentation time. I started at 3:00 pm and fermented until 9:00 pm.
6. Then I divided the dough into two pieces around 1 lb 11 oz each and shaped into boules.
7. I did the preshape and then final shaping twenty minutes later.
8. I placed the boules into the 8 ” round bannetons which were dusted with white flour.
9. I then covered the dough, banneton and all with a plastic bag and refrigerated overnight.
10. Next morning I took out the loaves staggered 30 minutes apart and put them into my Brod and Taylor proofer at 85F degrees. They took approximately three hours to finish proofing.
11. 
12. I preheated my oven with baking stone for one hour at 450F degrees. Five minutes before baking, I placed a large stainless bowl inside to preheat and use as a cover.
13. Using a peel, place the slashed dough into the oven on the hot stone, place a stainless large bowl upside down over the bread and bake for 20 minutes (Don’t spray with water if you want nice flour lines on your crust).
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15. I slashed using the letter “S” which is the first initial of my friend’s name.
16. After the 20 minutes is up, remove bowl carefully and allow the dough to brown and bake 15 minutes more.
17. Cool, slice, eat with lots of fresh butter and…
18. Share a loaf with someone who is ill. 

This is a variation for an old recipe called Latvian Apple Cake. What is so cool about this recipe is that you can substitute just about any fruit and make a terrific dessert. Think pear cranberry, blueberry, peaches, mixed berries, plum pear, apple cranberry, etc. It is an easy elegant dessert and it tastes delicious!For this cake, you slice up the fruit and then pour a batter over it. Somewhat like a cobbler or pandowdy. Also Bisquick used to have those “Impossible Pies” that were similar.

This sourdough variation can help you use up that leftover sourdough starter that you don’t want to throw out.

Sourdough Latvian Apple Cake:

Use a large round casserole dish 10″ diameter. Spray the dish and then set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl put 5 oz/141g of 100% sourdough starter and set the bowl aside.

In a medium saucepan lightly brown:

• 6 oz/170g of butter. Be careful to watch it and stir constantly so you don’t burn it. Take the pan off of the stove as soon as you notice the butter browning.  
• Quickly add 4 oz/113g of milk and
• 4 oz/113g of sour cream. Stir well.
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• Add two large eggs and beat the mixture with a whip.
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• Add this mixture to the bowl of sourdough starter.

Next add to the mixture of sourdough batter:

• 4 oz/113g of white sugar to the mixture and beat again until smooth.
• Add 3 oz/85g of All Purpose flour and stir in.
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Set this bowl of batter aside.

Peel, core and slice three large apples, weighing about 26 – 3o oz/737g-850g  of apples (before peeling/coring). Place the sliced apples into the casserole dish and then sprinkle the apples with:

• 2 Tablespoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

I baked up a Sourdough Ginger cake in a bundt pan to take to a get together. This recipe is a variation on my Sourdough Gingerbread cake. Baking it in a bundt pan had the effect of making the cake more dense. .

That is somewhat to be expected with a cake baked in a bundt pan. The thickness of the batter would make it harder to raise up than a flat cake. However, my kids always fight over the dense parts of my standard Sourdough Gingerbread cake. The standard cake always sinks a little in the middle, creating a dense part in the middle, much sought after and fought over.

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Another variation that you can use to change the intensity of the flavor is to use Blackstrap Molasses instead of the regular molasses. I used the Blackstrap Molasses and it made for a very rich dark intensely flavored Ginger cake.  I topped off the cake with whipped cream to balance out the intensity and topped with blueberries for aesthetic appeal and flavor interest.

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So here you go, have fun!

Sourdough Ginger Cake with Blueberries ‘n Cream

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In mixing bowl number 1 add:

1. Brown Sugar (use dark brown for more flavor intensity) -7.7 oz
2. Molasses (Blackstrap or regular)- 11.4 oz
3. Soft real butter -8 oz (two cubes of butter)

1. 2 large eggs
2. Sourdough starter @ 100% hydration – 9 oz

1. All Purpose flour – 8 oz
2. Ground ginger – 1 Tablespoon
3. Cinnamon -2 teaspoons
4. Baking Powder – 3 teaspoons