Love sourdough but looking for a little more flexibility and ease when baking with a starter? In The Casual Sourdough Baker, PJ shows you how amazing stress-free sourdough baking can be, from simple but richly flavored loaves to countless easy ways to use up your toss. If you are just starting your journey, our Sourdough Baking Guide lays out the basics you need for success – whether you decide to get serious or go casual!
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Do you ever find yourself in a mental mess? After the pandemic year we've all been through, the answer is probably an emphatic YES. Cooking dinner for what seems like 989 days in a row; doing the monotonous chores from home to work and back, often within the same four walls…gets old, doesn't it?
That's where I found myself recently with breakfast. Oatmeal, bran flakes, oatmeal – yes, I know whole grains are good for you, but after a while they (sadly) fail to pique my interest.
Surprisingly, given the sheer range of possibilities out there, my sourdough baking of late had also tended toward the humdrum. While I bake Light daily sourdough bread twice a week and I usually add a starter scoop to mine bagels, I hadn't tried anything new. Until last weekend, when I rediscovered a recipe I had helped develop years ago: Bacon Cheddar Chive Scones.
“You had me for ham”, didn't you? But bacon and cheese (plus tasty little bits of green onion) in a soft, fall-apart bowl? heaven. And let's not stop there: a mop the beginning of sourdough to enhance flavor (and extend shelf life) is a great touch—and so easy to do when you've got the starter in the fridge calling your name.
Bored with breakfast? Kill the thought! Take your sourdough starter and make Chive Cheddar Bacon Scones.
I'm assuming you'll want to use your toss starter in these bars, so I've changed the recipe to reflect that. To do them without beginners, just go to original recipe.
- 1 generous cup (127 g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 tablespoon (14 g) baking powder
- 2 teaspoons of sugar
- 4 tablespoons (57 g) cold butter
- 1 cup (113 g) very coarsely grated or diced cheddar cheese
- 1/3 cup (about 14 g) chopped fresh chives or 1/3 cup (21 g) thinly sliced scallion tops (green part)
- 1/2 pound (227 g) bacon, cooked, cooled, and crumbled (about 1 cup, 93 g)
- 1 cup (227 g) the beginning of sourdoughbake or throw away
- a generous 1/3 cup (85 g) heavy or whipping cream, or enough to make the dough stable
Let's talk about the ingredients
The recipe calls for grated or diced Ceder cheese. I use as sharp a cheddar as I can find and dice it. Shredded cheese can give the grains a weird speckled look, while diced provides wonderful pockets of melted cheddar in every delicious bite.
How much for chick peas, they are much harder to find, especially out of season, than simple onions; are also more expensive. Use a pair of scissors to cut the green tops of the onions into small pieces and you will never be short of chives.
now, ham: To cook it, I lay it on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake it in a preheated 350°F oven until crisp and brown; for details, see this blog post: A better way to make bacon.
To answer your question: No, it does not splatter or smoke in the oven. It glides silently, lays completely flat, is completely quiet and, in my book, is the best way to cook larger quantities of bacon.
When the bacon is cooked, drain the fat into a jar or other heatproof container and store in the refrigerator. You might want to use it in your pistachios, and if not, it's always good for stir-frying or making aromatics (sautéed vegetables and herbs to become part of a broth or sauce).
Lay the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate to drain and cool. If you are not making the scones right away, freeze it; you'll need to crumble it for the grains, and crumbled frozen bacon is a breeze.
Then, the beginning of sourdough, which can vary greatly in texture. Some starters are thin and runny, some so thick they need to be removed from their container. In general, the longer it's been since you fueled your starter, the liquidier it's likely to be: the starter produces alcohol as it ferments, becoming thinner in the process. If your starter seems thin, you'll need to use less cream (or milk; see below); if it's on the thick side, you'll use more.
Finally, Heavy cream – while it adds richness to the grains, you can get by with plain milk, either dairy or plant-based. Since your substitute will be lower in fat (and higher in water) than cream, compensate by using an extra tablespoon of butter or bacon fat in the batter and using slightly less milk of your choice.
Now, for the scones
When you're ready to make the grits (either as soon as you've cooked the bacon, or after it's cooled and frozen), preheat the oven to 425°F with a rack in the middle to the top third. Line a Cooking sheet with parchment, and generously flour the parchment. If you don't have parchment, just flour the baking sheet.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.
Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture is unevenly crumbly, with some of the butter remaining in larger pieces.
Want to add even more bacon flavor to your pistachios? Replace some of the reserved bacon fat with a little butter. I tried substituting 100% bacon fat, but found the shanks greasy; so I ended up subbing in 2 tablespoons (28g) of bacon fat for 2 tablespoons (28g) of butter.
Mix in the cheese, chickpeas or onion tops and bacon until evenly distributed.
Add starter, stirring to combine; depending on the liquidity of your starter, the mixture will be crumbly or begin to coalesce into large clumps.
Pour the cream (or milk of your choice) into a slotted measuring cup. With your mixer running (or mixing by hand while running) pour in the cream, adding just enough to make the dough cohesive. The amount of cream will vary depending on the amount of liquid or the thickness of the starter. Squeeze the dough; when it sticks well, with no pieces or crumbs left at the bottom of the bowl, you have added enough cream.
Transfer the rough dough to the prepared baking sheet.
Divide the dough in half and place each half into a disk about 5″ wide and 3/4″ to 1″ high, spacing them out on the baking sheet.
Use a knife or paring knife to cut the discs into six wedges each, spacing the wedges apart in the pan. Adding this breathing room allows the mushrooms to expand as they cook without fusing into one another into an amorphous mass.
Brush mushrooms with a little cream or milk; this will help their crust to brown.
Bake the mushrooms for 22 to 24 minutes, until they are a light to medium golden brown. You don't want to overcook them; they should be pale brown and moist inside rather than golden brown and dry.
Remove the patties from the oven and cool them briefly right in the pan. Serve warm, or at room temperature. Since they include bacon, it's best to refrigerate leftovers. And, since a warm cork is twice as attractive as a cold one, please reheat it before serving: either in the oven or very briefly in the microwave.
Can I add sourdough starter to other pool recipes?
Yes, although some recipes are more suitable than others. Recipes that include some type of liquid (water, milk, cream) are better candidates for an initial infusion than recipes wet only with fat or eggs. Here's how to do it:
- Decide how many starters you want to use. For a cake recipe using 2 cups (240 g) of all-purpose flour, 1 cup (227 g) starter is the most you want to add; that amount will improve flavor and extend shelf life without messing up the liquid/flour balance too much.
- Your starter is basically half flour and half water by weight, so adding the 227g starter means you need to cut the flour in the recipe by 113g and the liquid in the recipe by 113g. (Yeah, I know, 113g + 113g = 226g, not 227g; we're rounding up here.)
- Your recipe calls for 240g of flour; 240g minus 113g = 127g. This is your new amount of flour.
- Your recipe calls for 198 g of liquid (milk, cream, etc.); 198g minus 113g = 85g. This is your new amount of juice.
- Prepare the cake batter as directed in the recipe, stirring it into the starter just before adding the required liquid.
Some final thoughts
Can you make these cookies gluten free? Of course, if you use one gluten free starter and replace ours Gluten-free dough for flour dough (1:1, by weight or volume) to the all-purpose flour called for in the recipe.
Can you make them vegan? Yes, substitute plant-based milk for cream and your favorite vegan substitutes for cheese, butter, and bacon. Interested in other dairy-free breakfast offerings? See our post, Breakfast without milk.
How does adding sourdough starter extend shelf life? When you bake with sourdough, you're naturally increasing the amount of time bread, cereal, muffins—you name it—will stay fresh. Without getting too sciencey, an acidic environment (read: sourdough starter) keeps the starches in the grains from releasing their juice as quickly as they can. The more juice is retained, the softer/fresher the baked goods will be.
Hey, I may seem like a random sourdough baker, but I take advantage of the wonderful qualities of sourdough whenever possible! Want to try throwing some starter into your next quick bread, cookie batch, or (fill in the blank)? See this blog post: Adding sourdough to a recipe.
