Food and Fiber Friday - 'Rolling' in Dough!

Well, not exactly rolling in dough. 

But there was plenty of dough around Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

When I was in Cary a couple of weeks ago, I bought sourdough starter from my favorite bakery, La Farm. If I am driving almost 3 hours to get to that area, you bet your boots I'm stopping there! So along with my goodies I picked up, I purchased a container of sourdough starter.

I suck at making my own starter. It either doesn't 'work' for me or I forget to eat it during the set-up phase, or something happens. Now I have two containers of La Farm starter actually in the fridge. One is the original and the second jar is the discard.

You see I hate the part where you feed the starter by 'discarding' a portion of it before adding more water and flour. I consider it such a waste. So why not save that too? Anyway...

Tuesday afternoon was my day off and it was also a cool, drizzly day. I had fed my starter in the morning and was ready to mix up the dough for a loaf of bread. While there may be quicker methods, I was using a recipe where you mix up the dough the night before and leave it out for a long first 'fermentation' before baking. 

Of course, I had been feeding 'La Farm' over the past couple of weeks and had some discard piling up. I decided to give Sourdough Waffles a try. 

Mixing everything up, I had two bowls of 'stuff' ready to sit in the oven overnight (I have one cat which likes to check things out during the night). 

The waffle 'sponge' is on the left and my bread dough on the right. 

The next morning I was greeted with a bit of overnight magic...

The 'Sourdough Boys' had done their thing!

I prepared the bread dough for his final rise before starting on the waffles. 

Ok, so I don't have the 'proper' bread thingies YET, but this worked rather well to hold my boule for its final rise before tipping him out on parchment paper and lowering him into a Dutch Oven.

Oh, and while I was waiting for the bread to rise, I needed to make Foxy a batch of blueberry muffins (from the Betty Crocker box). Luckily, it was the same temperature I needed to bake the bread, so the oven had a nice long heating up period. Once the muffins were out, I slid in my dutch oven to heat up to prepare for baking my bread.

While the muffins were cooking and waiting to cook the bread, I started on my waffles.

A nice fluffy waffle with just a bit of tang, covered with fresh North Carolina strawberries and some syrup and butter. We WILL NOT discuss the calories involved here!

I was able to make 6 waffles out of the batter. Five of the waffles, once cooled, went into the freezer to be reheated for breakfast on another day. 

The bread went into the oven while I did a couple of chores. And out came this beauty...

Somewhere in South Carolina, Lady K was getting a twinge something had to be going on. This loaf came out so crunchy and wonderful. She is my sourdough consumer since the other one is in Arizona. I had a piece for lunch once it cooled off. Then there was a slice turned into garlic bread to go with my potato soup for dinner. 

All in all, it was a very successful foray into sourdough this week. What I am interested in are the 'discard' recipes I have found. And one is from Miss Oklahoma up in Montana. She makes sourdough crackers! There is also a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies which may go on my list to make next week. Especially since Lady K should be with us at that time.