Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Here’s a simple idea to use up leftover bits and pieces in the fridge.

The next time you have excess sourdough rolls…

Cut them diagonally most of the way through, then butter each slice lightly. Stuff them with bits of ham and cheese from the fridge (I used ham offcuts, English cheddar and a bit of d’Affinois that was approaching its expiry date). Obviously you could fill them with anything you like, but the cheese does add a nice gooeyness…

Wrap individually in foil and stash them in the freezer…

The next time life gets hectic, pull a roll or two out and allow them to defrost on the bench (don’t unwrap). Preheat the oven to 180C with fan, then pop them in.

Once the rolls have heated through and the cheese is melted (from memory, ours took about 20 minutes), unwrap and eat with your fingers…

These were surprisingly delicious and consumed with gusto by my perpetually starving sons. It’s nice to have premade holiday lunches for them in the freezer!

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Small Man is in the middle of his HSC exams. Three down, three to go.

Unlike his brother, he’s a bit anxious, so we’ve been working hard to keep things calm. And as we’re hunkered down and staying at home, I’ve been baking like a crazy woman. It’s very therapeutic!

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I made a large batch of Small Man’s favourite sourdough olive and cheese rolls. These sit happily in the freezer until he’s ready to defrost and eat them…

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Tiger cakes, which start out as self-marbling tie-dye batter (the recipe is here)…

Tiger tiger, burning bright…

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Exams necessitate chocolate chip cookies, and big exams necessitate lots of them. These are both Pete’s and Small Man’s favourite, and I’ve had to set a “two cookies per day” consumption limit for anyone not in study mode…

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I’m always messing about with my sourdough. I made a particularly wet batch recently which produced huge bubbles. Pete called it a “lava dough”…

Wet doughs are always much harder to manage. It’s worth persevering though, as the end result is a crispy crust, open tender crumb and improved keeping times…

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Finally, a large batch of our sweet dough became a loaf of brioche for Baby M…

…and a mountain of hamburger buns for our dinner that evening…

Homemade pork and beef burgers, topped with garden lettuce, mustard, pickles and chipotle salsa. The boys ate two each…

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Two more weeks of exams to go, so I’ll just keep baking. Wishing you all a glorious weekend! ♥

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In my quest to make sourdough bread baking as simple and accessible as possible, I’m always looking for new ways to make things just a little bit easier. Here are some recent discoveries…

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Dried Sourdough Starter

As most of you know, I’ve been sending out dried Priscilla starter for years now – at least count, I’d distributed over 150 packets.

Most of the bakers who’ve received a starter have thoroughly enjoyed the sourdough process, but not everyone has been able to fit it into their daily routines. Keeping the starter alive takes a bit of work and folks who travel a lot, or bake infrequently, often struggle to keep their precious Priscilla offspring bubbly and healthy.

In dried form, the starter can last for a very long time. A couple of days ago, I found this packet from October 2013 tucked away in the fridge…

I thought I’d see if she was still alive, so I started feeding her on Thursday morning…

I gave her three small feeds (¼ cup each of bakers flour and filtered water), and then one large feed (1 cup of flour and water) before going to bed that night. On Friday morning, this is what I woke up to…

Priscilla 2013 lives! I knew she was resilient, but even I was surprised at how quickly she bounced back! I used the bowl of bubbly starter to make a large batch of sourdough, which subsequently became three loaves…

The crumb was delicious, holey and tender…

So…if you’d like to bake sourdough but you don’t really have the time or energy to keep a starter alive in the fridge, here’s my suggestion:

When you next bake, feed your bowl of starter until it’s bubbly and active. Then before you make your dough, spread a little bit of the starter out onto a plastic chopping board or silicone mat (the board seems to work particularly well and is easier to move around). Let it dry out completely…

Crumble up the dried flakes and store them in an airtight container in the fridge. The amount above gave me three 14g packets of starter – one for the next batch of dough, one as a backup, and one to share…

When you’re planning to bake sourdough again, revive your starter a day or two ahead. Remember to dry a little bit off for the next time!

(PS. some folks have great success freezing their starter, but I’ve never been able to make it work.)

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Leftovers Sourdough Loaves

Most artisan bakers will insist on precision and measure their ingredients down to the last gram. I don’t think that’s really necessary for home bakers, and adopting a less rigid approach can take a lot of the stress out of sourdough baking.

Last week, I had a bit of starter left in my bowl and decided to use up a leftover bag of flour and some duck fat in the fridge. Here’s what I ended up with…

• 285g bubbly starter
• 380g of Italian 00 flour
• 620g bakers flour
• 35g duck fat (saved from our last roast)
• 600g water
• 18g salt

I threw everything into my large Kenwood mixer and let it knead with the dough hook. It was looking a bit dry, so I added in another slash of water. The end result was great…

The crumb was quite white from the 00 flour, and slightly savoury from the duck fat…

Bits and pieces loaves like these are great fun to make! I work to a basic formula of 300g starter, 600g water, 1kg flour and 18g salt, but as you can see, it’s easily adaptable depending on what we have on hand. I’ll often add a little more water because I like a slightly higher hydration loaf.

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If you’re interested in baking sourdough, here are some links which you might find useful:

An Overnight Sourdough Tutorial – one of the most popular posts on our blog. It involves very little kneading and the dough proves overnight.

A Basic Sourdough Tutorial – a very simple first sourdough loaf.

Priscilla Sourdough Tips and Suggestions – a detailed FAQ about baking with our Priscilla starter.

Bread Page – a link to all our bread related posts.

Sourdough Pancakes – an easy recipe to use up excess starter.

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Have a wonderful weekend! ♥

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A couple of months ago, Monkey Girl’s very generous father gave us a shoulder of frozen venison.

It was humungous. I popped it into the freezer and would open the door occasionally, stare at it, and then close the door again. It took me several weeks of deep breathing to build up my chi enough to tackle it.

I was keen to roast it, but was concerned that it would dry out too much. Most instructions say to roast it quickly and serve it rare, but my Pete is suspicious of game meats at the best of times, and he was never going to eat a barely cooked one.

So…I took a deep breath and adapted the Jamie Oliver lamb shoulder recipe that we’d made several times before. It worked a treat! I wrapped the venison in strips of streaky bacon and laid it in an oiled pan over two onions that had been cut into eighths. 100mls of water was added to the pan and then it was covered in a double layer of thick, oiled foil and baked at 175C (no fan) for four hours…

After four hours, I uncovered the pan and let it roast for a further 45 minutes until the bacon had crisped up. There were oodles of pan juices which Pete turned into a thin gravy…

The meat was incredibly dark and very tender. And despite how the photo below looks, it wasn’t dry at all. Between five of us (Monkey Girl stayed for dinner), we managed to eat half the shoulder. It was absolutely delicious – even Pete had seconds…

The following day, I turned most of the remaining meat into a pie filling, cooking it with peas, a little water and the remaining gravy. It was topped with our lard pastry, but the boys smashed it and I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. It looked like this, only without the stars…

As I was making the pie filling, I kept back 200g of the meat to make a barley soup on day three…

This came together very simply, using the few vegetables I had in the fridge and freezer…

• 200g roasted venison, chopped
• ½ cup pearl barley, washed
• 1 onion, peeled and diced
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 potato, peeled and chopped
• a handful of frozen peas
• 1 litre water
• 2 teaspoons Massel beef stock powder
• splash of Worcestershire sauce
• light olive oil
• salt and pepper

I fried the chopped onion, carrot and potato in a little light olive oil in our Emile Henry clay pot, then added the water and stock powder. The barley and venison was added, along with the Worcestershire sauce, and the pot was brought to a gentle boil for an hour or so. The frozen peas went in after the first half an hour or so of cooking. Once the barley had swollen, I seasoned with a little salt and pepper. I think this would work with other leftover roast meats as well. It was simple and very delicious!

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Our venison shoulder fed us for three meals and not a scrap was wasted. It was a great treat to have such wonderful, healthy meat to cook with!

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