Sourdough starter - end wk 2 feeding and a mouth-watering tart


The sourdough starter is progressing well! See all those lovely bubbles? That is a good sign. One more week of feeding and discarding and feeding with new flour and water. This time next week will be Dough Making Day.


at end of 2nd week of feeding

So to relieve the tedium of repetitive sourdough-feeding postings, I thought of a lovely tart I had eaten just over a year ago in Sydney.

two divine tarts enjoyed at the Bourke Street Bakery in 2011

Sitting prettily in the row of enticing tarts it looked like a mini lemon meringue pie. When I read 'passion fruit' on its little label under the glass counter, that was it. The difficult decision to choose which tart was made simple. I adore passion fruit and eyeing the meringue-topped tart seemed like my pilgrimage to Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney was rewarded. Alleluia! It was mouth-wateringly delicious.

Today I wanted to recreate the flavour of that sunny Saturday morning in December 2011 with my sister-in-law. What good fortune, then, that the recipe for the tart is in the same book from which I am learning to bake sourdough. Perfect.

I am making passion fruit tarts with soft meringue.

I had to use bottled passion fruit (quelle horreur) but have no choice. I need to know the passion fruit is going to be sweet and juicy and I cannot be sure of that if I buy 'fresh' ones here in England they are going to be (a) sweet and (b) juicy. Thank goodness for bottling.

This recipe has three stages: pastry, filling, meringue. I opted to make the pastry one day and then the filling and meringue the next. The book gives good advice about making the pastry. It is a largish quantity and if one is going to go to the trouble, then one may as well make more than is necessary in order to completely by-pass a whole stage the next time one has the urge to make tarts.

Pastry: I made a sweet pastry. Combining butter, flour, icing sugar, egg and water a dough was formed and refrigerated for a couple of hours or overnight. Having no individual fluted tart tins I used patty pans. After the pastry had rested it was rolled out and put into the tins and then blind baked. Here's where I made a mistake: they should have been cooked thoroughly because the filling was not to be cooked in the shell, so they needed another 5-8 minutes' cooking. That's why they look a bit pale (except for that one up the back which must have been sitting in the oven hot spot).

cooling tart shells

Filling: a bavarois mix which is a mousse without the egg whites. The passionfruit pulp was sieved into a bowl, squashing the pulp down as much as possible.
Milk was warmed to high heat. Gelatin leaves were put into cold water to soften.
6 egg yolks, sugar and pulp were whisked in a bowl over steaming water, and the hot milk was was added, still whisking for a further 5 minutes.

Excess water was squeezed from gelatin leaves and whisked into passionfruit mixture, which was then poured through a sieve and refrigerated 30 minutes.

whipped cream and pasionfrut mixture

Lastly, cream was whisked to soft peak stage and then added to the passion fruit mixture.



folding whipped cream in, carefully

Tart shells were filled with the passionfruit cream.

Meringue: this was in the Italian style (Italian meringue!). I love making this type of meringue which incorporates cooled sugar syrup into the soft-peak egg whites.
Sugar and water are brought slowly to a temperature of  118 deg C and then taken immediately off the heat.
The syrup cools down as a soft-peak stage with 4 eggs whites is reached. It is slowly poured into the whites and whisked further for 10-15 minutes until volumous, white and glossy.

cooling sugar syrup waiting to be incorporated into frothing egg whites

Lastly, meringue was piped onto the cream and then put under a hot grill for about 4 minutes.

from the grill - a tad burnt, though!

mouth-wateringly delicious



I couldn't wait. See how the filling dripped onto the paper above? The passionfruit cream is meant to be like set like a mousse. Unfortunately the filling had softened after being under the hot grill. I refrigerated them until set again, exept for one. I couldn't wait to try it and hence, the drip. I guess if I had had a blow torch, the cream would not have softened.

Anyway, it was a mouthful of sunshine.

Note for next time: READ THE RECIPE PROPERLY

passionfruit tart with soft meringue
Bourke Street Bakery, the ultimate baking companion, Paul Allam, David McGuinness authors, Michael Joseph, Sydney, 2009

Sourdough starter - end of 1st week

The feeding schedule of my white starter this week is as follows. Each day more flour and water are added, roughly double each day.

Day three - second feed - Sunday 13 Jan.
The starter weighs 200g or 7oz.

day three - 100ml water + 100g flour

day three second feed mixed in looks like this

 

Day Four - third feed - Monday 14 Jan.

The starter weighs 400g (14oz)

 

day four - 200g flour and 200ml of water

 

above added to starter to rest overnight

This was covered with the lid and left to sit overnight.

 

Day Five - fourth feed - Tuesday 15 Jan.

The total weight of the starter is now 800g (1lb 2oz)

Too much starter will not be active enough to use, so it has to be reduced to a weight of 100g. Goodbye to 700g, then. 

 

Now I have to follow the same weekly feeding schedule for three weeks, so today is back to first feed measurements ... and after today I've stopped taking photos as they are the same as before.

 

Day Six - Wednesday 16 Jan.

The starter weighs 200g (7oz)

Second feed is same as day three above.

 

Day Seven - Thursday 17 Jan.

Starter today is 400g (14 oz)

Third feed is same as day four above.

 

Day Eight - Friday 18 Jan.

Total weight of starter is now 800g (1lb 2oz)

For the second time, 700g of starter is discarded and we are back to same as first feed of day 1.

 

800g sourdough starter

This schedule will be repeated again next week.

 

For exact details on the recipe go to Bourke Street Bakery. This book is really worth buying if you are interested in learning to bake properly.

sourdough starter
Bourke Street Bakery, Paul Allam & David McGuinness

 

Sourdough starter - day two

sourdough starter
Bourke Street Bakery, Paul Allam & David McGuinness

This is the first feed and we're on the second day. (see yesterday's post for day one)
The total weight of the starter is now 100g or 3.5oz.

For the first feed 50ml of water and 50g of flour are stirred together with a spoon:

first feed mixed together in dish is added to yesterday's starter in the box

then folded into the starter to combine the two:



yesterday's starter combined with first feed today

I covered it with (a new box) plastic lid and it will be left overnight.

Exciting.

Sourdough starter - day one

sourdough starter
Bourke Street Bakery, Paul Allam & David McGuiness

I once worked as a shop girl in a bakery. It was an artisanal bakery, using old methods and pure, best ingredients. On taking the job I thought I was going to get my hands into learning all about baking. The only thing I learned was how to roll pastry for pies and tarts, as fast as humanly possible in the shortest time possible. It was murder. I did this for a year and then realised one day that I would go no further in my education in this particular bakery as I had been employed as a mere lackey (from the 1529 OED meaning 'uninformed manservant' or the 2006 OED meaning 'servant'), so I quit. But I did keep my ears and eyes open for the entire year and whatever little crumb of information I could gather, I did.

Anyway, an interesting bread which the bakery produced that I had never tasted before was called sourdough. I grew to love the chewy, tangy flavour of that round, flat loaf, especially when it was toasted or cooked over a grill on the bbq. The other interesting thing, which I never knew back then, was that it was made from something called a 'starter'. At the bakery I  would often see Peter, the Polish baker, crouched down on the floor stirring the contents of a white bucket in which a very yeasty slop used to live. Apparently it was years old. On leaving the bakery I wanted to make my own sourdough one day. (See my post here to view what I thought was a starter last year, but it turned out not to be because I didn't know what I was talking about).

Just before last Christmas I visited the famous Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills in Sydney, with my sister-in-law. It was a pilgrimage and we enjoyed good coffee and two delicious tarts after purchasing some wonderful bread.

The famous Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney

The Bourke Street Bakery had had a book published in 2009 and we were able to thumb through it (see it in the photo) as we savoured our tarts.


two delicious tarts next to two good cappuccinos next to Bourke Street Bakery cookbook

Fast forward twelve months and I finally purchased the book. Why did I wait so long to buy it? Price, actually. I waited until it came down and Sydney-siders will be very miffed to know I purchased it for only £9.45 online. This book is absolutely full of detailed information and is truly a complete baking reference. I will be cooking many recipes from this fabulous book but today, it is sourdough I want to master. Actually, it is the starter which must be mastered first.

This will be an exercise in patience. I need a starter which I will nurture from now on and which will grow. It will be a bit like feeding an animal. If you don't feed it, it will die! But it is going to take three weeks of feeding before I can even begin to use it, so you will have to be as patient as me to see the end result but if we can last, and it 'works', then there are some wonderful breads to bake from this basic starter.

According to the boys in Bourke Street Bakery, I need two buckets. Not finding ones suitable today, I'll just use what I have until I do. I also need organic flour and some spring water.

Equal parts of flour and water are put into a bucket (50g and 50ml) and left for a day.

I mixed the flour and water together.

Tomorrow the feeding schedule begins.

Bourke Street Bakery, the ultimate baking companion, Paul Allam, David McGuiness, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2009.

Saturday lunch menu

 Saturday Lunch menu

soupe a la Victorine

fougasse

Somerset Brie

watercress
 

 

I made the fougasse (bread) first. Ingredients are as simple: strong white bread flour, salt, dried yeast, thyme, vegetable oil for oiling and milk for brushing. Lorraine's instructions are simple to follow and always work. Brilliant!

The dough was kneaded for 5 mins using a dough hook on a machine, then flattened out onto an oiled baking sheet and then slashed in the traditional leaf pattern. The fougasse had to prove until it doubled in size, but I knew from the outset that the yeast was not as active as it should have been and it only rose very silghtly. But it went into the oven anyway, and came out looking pretty good.

Soup of the day was a puree of white beans with an eggplant and tomato garnish. Ingredients were white beans, leeks, onions, butter, bay leaves, thyme, sage, pork butt or Italian or Polish sausage, salt, peppercorns, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic, chicken stock, fresh herbs.

I started off with a homemade stock (I find it cheaper than store bought and I find those little stock cubes have some sort of fatty residue which is disgusting) which I made yesterday.

I used haricot beans for this recipe because I like them and I don't know what Great Northern or Small White beans were in Julia's recipe. I must admit, I used canned beans. I added them after the leeks and onions were rendered down to a soft consistency and added water. To this I added bay leaves, fresh thyme and sage. (Julia says add fresh unsmoked bacon at this point, but since I like belly pork I decided to gently fry some lardons separately and add them at the end). Simmer for 15 mins.

(Here I am trying to learn something new and I start fiddling with the recipe. I have always thought that one should make the exact recipe the first time, and then alter it next time. But today I have this thing in my head about chewing on little pieces of belly pork in amongst the soft soup. Well, we'll see ...)

So second stage is the eggplant and tomato garnish. I took two firm eggplants and cut them into half-inch dice. They were tossed in the bowl with salt and let to stand for 20 mins. In the meantime, the tomatoes were prepared (peeled, seeded and juiced? which I took to mean pulped) and cut into half-inch squares. They were strained and juice was reserved, albeit not very much.

Then oil was heated in a pan and the eggplant (which had been drained & dried on kitchen paper) was sauteed, tossed and browned lightly. The tomato pulp and 2 cloves (Julia said 4 but I thought it was too much - maybe the garlic in 1970 was less pungent) of crushed garlic were tossed into the eggplant, the tomato juice was added and pan covered. It was simmered slowly for 15 minutes until the eggplant was tender. This was set aside.

Back to the soup base, it was brought to simmer and thinned out to a consistency which I like (not too thin) with my chicken stock. This was about 1 litre. My pork belly lardons were added, along with the eggplant and tomato. This was all simmered for 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavours. I checked for seasoning and added 3 tabs of herbs - I had parsley.

It was very good and very hearty.

The salad was just lovely peppery watercress. Since seeing the BBC's Great British Food Revival on watercress, I have been trying to seek out the stuff whenever I see it. Historically, there used to be an enormous need for it but since the marketing of seemingly more exotic rocket (arugula) elbowed watercress aside in the 80s, watercress is now almost entirely bought from outside the UK, which is nothing short of ridiculous. So that's why I chose watercress.

To finish, Somerst brie.

Next time, I'll omit the pork belly lardons(!) and have croutons instead because the pork flavour did not enhance the soup flavour. It should have been a ham flavour.


soupe a la Victorine
Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Julia Child and Simone Beck, Vol. 2, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1970
fougasse
Baking Made Easy, Lorraine Pascale, HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2011