'Way back in the first weeks of this blog I posted on the sourdough bread that's been part of my monastic practice since before I became a monk. But seeing as the recipe has continued to develop over the intervening years, and is arguably improved, I reckon I should revisit the subject now.
The big news is that some years ago I stopped using baking soda to raise the sourdough, though that's the traditional Old Settler drill. Soda is good for baking on the fly, because it reacts to the heat of the oven instead of requiring a lengthy stretch of steady, controlled warmth beforehand to raise the dough.
But eventually I succumbed to the richer scent and flavour, and the light, airy crumb, you get from wild yeast.
And it's still a simple and straightforward process, calling for just 20 minutes of hands-on labour, followed by a single rise. So now I do it like this:
YEAST-RAISED SOURDOUGH HERMIT BREAD
1 1/2 cups sourdough starter
About 2 cups all-purpose flour (added by handfuls to optimum texture)
1 tablespoon oil for brushing
shortening or butter for lubrication
Liberally grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet. You can also use a cake pan or cookie sheet, but cast iron gives the best results.
In a large bowl, blend the flour into the starter with a butter knife. When too stiff to stir, continue cutting in flour with the blade until the dough balls easily and is dry enough to work with the hands.
Knead the dough while continuing to add flour as necessary to prevent it sticking to your fingers. (See notes below.) When the dough is smooth, elastic, and dry enough to work lightly without gumming up your hands, roll it into a ball and position it in the centre of the greased skillet.
Pat the ball down to six to eight inches in diameter. Brush the top with oil and perforate the pat in rows with a wooden spoon handle or similar until it's holed all over.
Mark the dimpled pat into 8 wedges with a cleaver, chef's knife, or pastry scraper. Clean up and reseal the edges, cover the skillet, and place the dough in a warm location to work for about 4 hours. (See notes below.)
When the dough has risen sufficiently, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Uncover the pan and bake the bread on the middle rack for 20 minutes.
When lightly browned, unpan the loaf and place it on a rack to cool for a few minutes. Eat as-is or with any of the usual amendments. (Butter, jam, cheese, herbed oil, sugared berries, etc.)
Keep the fully-cooled pat fresh in an airtight plastic bag. Cold pieces can be microwaved for 30 seconds for a credible impression of just-baked bread.
Notes:
• For a richer bread, make your starter out of bread flour, then knead all-purpose into it as usual.
• I never knead this on a board, as is normal with bread. Instead I tip the bowl up on its bottom edge and knead the dough against the side while turning the bowl with the other hand, like a steering wheel. When the dough is sufficiently dry I hold it up and knead it between my hands. I suspect this technique is rooted in the recipe's origins as sojourner food; there's no other place to knead bread on the trail.
• If you lack grease for lubrication, oil and flour will work as well, but don't skip the flour dusting; the oil alone won't cut it.
• The dough must be tightly covered during the rise, or its surface will dry out and prevent the pat from expanding. I put a tight-fitting lid on the skillet. When baking on a sheet, I invert the now-empty mixing bowl over the pat. Make sure to grease an inch or so of the bowl's upper edge, or any dough that touches will stick tight.
• For the rise, place the dough somewhere that delivers gentle heat at 80 to 95 degrees. Good prospects include a water heater closet, a purpose-built proofing box, strategic positioning beside a woodstove, or, on a summer day, in reliable shade outdoors. I've also had success in an oven with the light on – usually with the door cracked a certain distance; the light alone can heat the interior to surprising levels – and a sun-heated car, but monitor the temperature carefully and consistently with both. I've also preheated an oven at its lowest setting, turned it off, and placed the pan on the middle rack, returning once or twice to take the dough out and heat the oven again. And I've put a size-appropriate incandescent light in a closet, tote, disused refrigerator, or large ice chest. Again, be very wary – those bulbs throw a lot more heat than you think – and mind the serious fire danger when placing a heat source in a tight space.
• Finally, remember that sourdough will also rise at room temperature if necessary, though it takes longer and results in a sourer, less consistent product.
The history of this bread, as well as traditional ovenless baking methods, is found at the bottom of my original post.
And a last important point: the original soda-raised recipe is still perfectly enjoyable if you've got no way to incubate the yeast; would rather not wait that long; or aren't over-fond of the taste of sourdough, which soda mitigates. It's also good for an upset stomach, among other things.
And I still mix it up for pizza dough.
At some point I'll post a few whole-grain elaborations I've developed over the years. In the meantime, enjoy this simple, thrifty down-home staple, that never fails to bolster my sense of comfort and well-being.
Elderberries (Sambucus ssp.) have the fruity flavour one would expect, but also an astringent edge that makes them better suited to tea than juice. I tend to avoid adding honey to the finished product, but do like to include a pinch a-piece (not more) of ground cloves and cinnamon in the steep, and freshen it up with a drop of lemon juice (again, not more) before drinking.
The result, drunk hot, is the perfect companion for cool days of crisp sun or driving rain, having the exact taste of the first and the antidote to the second. Because they grow in dense clusters, elderberries are quickly gathered and once separated from their stems they freeze very well, simply twisted up in a plastic bag. That way you can continue to enjoy this tea all winter long.
And that's a good thing, because among other notable benefits, elderberries have proven anti-viral properties, having particularly distinguished themselves in scientific trials against the flu. They're also high in Vitamin C, another winter concern, though how much of this survives infusion is a good question.
Finally, varieties with a healthy yeast bloom, such as the one in the photo above, make a good sourdough starter, suitable especially for sweet applications such as coffee cake or pancakes.
So sock a sack of Sambucus into your freezer for the cold months. It brings a bit of August sun to your New Year's Day. (Or a bit of February sun to the Queen's Birthday, for my New Zealand readers.)
During the holidays we frequently entertain, including in the morning. The season is also particularly associated with the scent and flavour of cinnamon and cloves, and here in the Northern Hemisphere, with hot beverages.
That's why I'm sharing this favourite treat, which I developed several years ago, though like chai and sourdough devil's food cake I enjoy it year-round. In the interest of full disclosure I also dislike coffee, but as tea cake is a whole 'nother thing, Sourdough Coffee Cake it is.
For best results, follow the instructions in order.
Sourdough Coffee Cake
Ingredients:
Cake:
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup cooking oil
1 teaspoon CORRECTION: 1/2 teaspoon soda mixed into 1/4 cup flour
Topping:
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon minced orange peel
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1.) In a medium mixing bowl, beat together all the cake ingredients except the soda and flour mixture.
Set the batter aside to work while completing the next steps.
2.) Grease an 8-inch cake pan.
3.) In a small mixing bowl, stir together the topping ingredients.
4.) Stir the soda and flour mixture thoroughly into the batter.
5.) Heat the oven to 400°.
6.) When the oven is ready, turn the batter into the greased cake pan and sprinkle the topping mixture evenly across the top.
7.) Bake for 20 minutes, or until brown and a pick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
8.) Serve hot with your favourite hot beverage.
Notes:
o Since I don't care for things that are over-sweet I tend to short or omit spurious white sugar, but in the topping mixture it matters. I haven't tried to bake the cake itself with brown instead of white, but it might work.
o Thick-cut rolled oats work best if you can get them. In any case, the "instant" type are least desirable. (For anything. Pardon my Scottish expertise.)
o This is one of those recipes in which finely-minced orange peel works better than orange zest. Especially if you've got those thin-peeled clementines (Christmas oranges).
o Like other soda-raised sourdough goods, Sourdough Coffee Cake is best eaten hot. It's still enjoyable after it cools, but the difference is telling. However, a cold day-old piece plus 30 seconds in the microwave equals a warm fresh piece.
Best of holidays regardless of where you live, which one you celebrate, or how.
Here's a quick hint from Rob's Hermit Kitchen:
The plums have ripened here in the Northern Hemisphere, and those with trees are being inundated by their annual surfeit of sweet, juicy fruit. Plums (also called prunes or damsons) are relatively labour-intensive to preserve, and other treatments are either specialty projects (wine) or not especially compelling compared to other options (jam).
But here's something you can do with them that's delicious and easy:
- Place a number of fresh, unwashed plums (any kind) in a non-reactive bowl.
- Mix up a slip of flour and water, about as thick as pancake batter, and pour it over them.
- Cover the bowl and leave it to work for a day or two.
- When the batter is bubbling merrily, remove the plums with a slotted spoon and rinse them clean.
- Eat.
Why are they now so succulent, and slightly tingly(!)? And what's up with that batter?
Well, to begin with, the powdery white "bloom" you see on dark plums is yeast. (Yellow varieties have it too, it's just not as visible.) So when you immerse the fresh fruit in flour-based batter – a nutritional 
medium – the yeast goes nuts and multiplies like crazy.
Meanwhile, water from the batter soaks into the plums, causing them to swell and opening tiny fissures in their skin. Dark streaks of plum juice in the cream-coloured batter attest to this process. (Some plums may actually split wide open, leaving little doubt about what's going on.)
Yeast from the working batter penetrates the broken plum skin, hits the sugary juice inside, and begins to ferment.
Then you eat it. I don't know how much alcohol this process creates, but it isn't much; I've eaten many of these in a sitting without feeling any effect at all.
When the plums are gone, you're left with a unique and tasty sourdough starter that makes great pancakes and coffee cake. In fact, with a little advanced planning you can pit the fermented plums, poach them in a light syrup, and use them as filling for some epic crêpes made from the batter they just came out of.
So have at it. Rarely do you get so much good for so little effort.
(Plum photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons users Sakurai Midori and Zebulon.)
Last Christmas I shared my Perfect Chai, for the greater enlightenment of all sentient beings. But I left them hungry. So this year, I offer my Sourdough Devil's Food Cake. It's sourdough. It's cake. And it's devilishly unique. (Which is à propos, since as Spinal Tap have pointed out, Christmas is all about the Devil. What was it Christopher Guest said? "Merry Christmas – poke, poke!" Full video embedded after recipe.)
Anyway, without further, here 'tis:
Sourdough Devil's Food Cake
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup flour
2 individual packages instant cocoa mix (preferably "dark"; quantity equals 1/3 cup. Or substitute 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon dehydrated milk, and 1 tablespoon sugar)
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup prepared mayonnaise (or separate one egg yolk into a 1/4 cup measure and fill the rest with oil.)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon grated orange zest
flour to stiffen
1 teaspoon CORRECTION: 1/2 teaspoon soda mixed into 1/4 cup flour
Liberally grease an 8-inch pan. (Cast iron serves sourdough best.)
Stir together all ingredients except soda mixture, and beat till smooth. Add flour (ending with the soda mixture) as necessary to make a stiff cake batter. Beat hard to release gluten. (Batter will take a dull sheen and become ropey.)
Scrape batter into the greased pan, cover, and allow to work at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes.
Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a pick comes out clean. Serve hot.
Sourdough devil's food cake can be served as is, or with whipped cream, ice cream, or hard sauce. Cold pieces taste better if microwaved for 30 seconds; reheated in the oven in a damp paper sack; or on a rack in a covered skillet, over a tablespoon of water, at medium heat.
And it goes great with chai.
(The video here-below was taken from the 1992 reunion disc Return of Spinal Tap. Prepare to bang your head on some metal, or whatever people do to this music.)
(Because the rich are idiots. [Full disclosure: I made it with cream of chicken soup and spam this time. But they're still idiots.]
Nettle information here.)
(I just uploaded a hermitcraft article last week, but a reader recently asked about sourdough starter, so I'll go ahead and answer this week.)
"Sourdough starter" was synonymous with yeast here in western North America before the concentrated item appeared in stores. Elsewhere it was called leavings, scrapings, or spook yeast, or just "yeast", for it was all we had for that in those days. Witness Henry David Thoreau, hermit and Walden author, who had to hike to the village bakery to procure "yeast". There he was sold a living batter, susceptible to being scalded to death in overhot water, that raised bread primarily by chemical reaction with sal (baking) soda.
You tell me what that was.
The paste those Concord bakers doled out is properly called sourdough starter, as "sourdough" by itself usually describes the kneeded dough and its products. But in practice, the starter is also often called "sourdough", and this can confuse beginners. For that reason, I will henceforward identify the yeast culture by the word "starter".
SOURDOUGH STARTER
You will need:
Potatoes
Water
White flour (not whole wheat; see below)
A serviceable pot
Such a pot must be nonreactive (that is, not metal) and watertight. Beyond that, anything will do. The best ones are lidded, wide-mouthed for easy scooping in and out, and clear, so you can monitor the health of the occupants. Mine is a one-quart plastic jar that once held mixed nuts.
Pot secured, proceed as follows:
1. Peel, quarter, and boil the potatoes.
2. Strain, reserving the
water.
3. Eat the potatoes.
4. Stir up a batter with the flour and potato water. It should resemble slightly-too-thick pancake batter.
5. Dump this medium into your pot. Leave the lid off to welcome passing yeast.
Within 24 to 48 hours the starter will begin, slowly at first and then with gusto, to bubble and work. At full élan it will have a healthy, yeasty, fermented smell.
Sourdough starter is a living thing, with wants and needs and specific rights under federal and provincial law. To be precise, it's a community of microbes – hence the term "culture" – that eat various sugars and fart out carbonic gas. (Sorry; you asked.) The sugars come from the ground grains you put back in the pot each time you use some. Keep this up indefinitely and your little sea monkey civilisation will thrive indefinitely, humming happily along on the kitchen counter, where you will bond with it as with houseplants, pets, and children. The longer it survives, the better it will get; new yeasts will happen by and set up shop, resulting in more active, versatile starter.
In any case, the starter must be fed at least once a week, even if that means throwing some starter out to make room. (This fact helps get me up and baking when I otherwise might slough off, because I hate wasting food.) The more you use it, the more you feed it, and the healthier it becomes.
If however your starter goes too long without recycling, the yeast will suffer moral decay and the pot will be invaded by either a red bacterium or a grey mildew. They're both harmless, but they taste bad. To get rid of them, collect a teaspoon of the cleanest starter you can rescue, use it to start a small temporary pot on the side, and throw the rest out. Then sterilise the pot (a thorough washing, followed by an overnight soak in a bleach solution), mix up a fresh batter, and inoculate it with the reserved starter. The yeast will then handily out-compete any intruders that come back aboard with it.
It's also good to feed other grains from time to time, to encourage a diversity of yeasts. You can stir in whole wheat flour now and then, but not too often, because it's full of oils that go rancid over time. Other effective treatments include corn flour (fine-ground cornmeal), masa or powdered oatmeal (not too much of either), and mashed rice or rice flour.
So this oughta get you started. (Get it?) If you're looking for a good first project, you might try hermit bread. It's an easy enough recipe to build confidence, and a hard enough one to teach you a few things. And it's where I started, too.
(A soda-free, wild yeast-raised, classic sourdough version of this bread can be found here.
If you landed here looking for the recipe for Scottish Oat Bannocks, it's here.)
This is hermit bread. It's a sourdough recipe with ancient antecedents, among them the skillet bread dear to my Old Settler ancestors; Canadian bannock; Scottish scones; Australian damper; focaccia; and even pizza. (Pizza was originally soldier bread, baked by the campfire by Roman legionnaires. They took to topping it with whatever they could find, so as to add a bit of variety to their dinners. Eventually the toppings got more limelight than the bread, and the rest is pizza.)
All you need to bake hermit bread is a sufficient heat source. It's easiest in a proper oven, but can be made on a range, near a fire, or in a fire. It's the oldest part of my monastic routine, actually predating my vows by several years. This is the food I take on the road, and what I grab when I'm hungry and need something now. It has become as sustaining to my morale as to my body, a physical manifestation of my vows.
As ever with monastic practices, each stage and feature of the production of this stuff has taken on Deep Meaning over the years. The pre-cut pieces emphasise the fact that it's sojourner bread ("Incola ego sum apud te in terra / Et peregrinus sicut omnes patres mei" Psalm 38, verse 15). They also honour my Scottish forebears. I could also find great Buddhist significance in the number 8, but one has to keep a close eye on one's compulsive Zen tendencies. So for the time being, it just reminds me of the Union Jack. Rule Britannia.
Hermit bread is also hands-down the most popular part of my practice with my friends. I once baked it for an old high school classmate who was visiting with her children. When she asked what it was, I said, "It's just monk bread." Today, fresh-baked "monkey bread" has become one of her kids' favourite treats.
Nothing boosts a sagging spirit like hot hermit bread and tea. For all that, it's ridiculously basic, and easy to make. And it still rolls out a great pizza dough.
HERMIT BREAD
2 cups sourdough starter.
About 2 cups flour
1 tablespoon oil
Flour for kneading
1 teaspoon CORRECTION: 1/2 teaspoon soda mixed with 1/4 cup flour
Liberally grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet. (Number 8, in traditional sizes. You can use a cake pan or cookie sheet, but cast iron gives the best results.)
In a large bowl, beat the flour into the starter with a wooden spoon. Switch to a butter knife when it gets too stiff to stir and continue cutting in flour until the dough balls easily and is almost dry enough to knead.
Cut the flour and soda mixture into the dough, then knead it thoroughly in the bowl, adding any flour necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to the bowl or your hands.
Pat the ball flat, place it in the skillet, and pat it down some more until the edges touch the sides. Turn the skillet upside down, catch the dough as it falls out, and put it back in upside down, greased side up.
Poke the handle of the wooden spoon into the dough systematically, all the way to the pan, until the loaf is well-dimpled. Then cut it into eight pieces.
Cover the skillet and leave the dough to work, up to 3 hours; 30 minutes minimum.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the dough has worked, uncover and bake it in the middle of the oven for 15 - 20 minutes, or until lightly browned on top and dry in the middle.
When done, unpan the loaf or flip it upside down in the skillet to let it cool and harden up for a few minutes. Eat as-is or with any topping. (Butter, jam, herbed oil, sugared berries, etc.)
Traditional baking methods:
Place the skillet over slow coals until the bottom of the loaf is browned. Prop the pan up near a hotter part of the fire to brown the top, or flip the loaf, return the skillet to the coals, and brown the top that way. (Same procedure for range-top baking.)
Or flour the ball and smack it onto a clean rock at the fire's edge, turning to bake evenly.
Or place the ball in a Dutch oven and bury it in the coals.
Or drop the dough ball directly in the coals and bury it. (Works in wood stoves and fireplaces, too.)
Or roll the dough into a rope, wind it around a stick, and toast it over the coals.
You can 'wave a chunk of cold hermit bread for 30 seconds and it'll taste like it just came out of the oven. (Split the piece first and reassemble it before warming; it will be too soft to work afterward.) You can also reheat it on a plate in a covered skillet, with a little water added to make steam.
'Way back in the first weeks of this blog I posted on the sourdough bread that's been part of my monastic practice since before I became a monk. But seeing as the recipe has continued to develop over the intervening years, and is arguably improved, I reckon I should revisit the subject now.
