Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sourdough elephants

I am trying really hard to minimise the amount of rubbish I produce. I recycle as much as I can and re-use where possible. Throwing away sourdough starter every week when I feed it bugs me, so I've been looking for ways to use it. I recently discovered sourdough pancakes, which are delicious; the old sourdough gives them a sort of banana-ish flavour.

This week I thought I'd see what happened if I baked  some sourdough pancake batter, with additions (spices and fruit), in muffin cups.

What happened was a lesson in muffin basics. If you develop the gluten in muffins (usually by over-mixing, but in this case by leaving wet for a week), you get little volcanoes. My volcanoes were extreme, with the "lava" overflowing and pouring onto the baking tray. One strategically placed sultana turned its muffin into an elephant:


They tasted fine though, and I quite like tough muffins.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Bronwyn,

    I caught an episod of Great British Food on cable last night. Sheep milk ice cream was one of the highlights. Is sheep milk explored in NZ? Malaysia only have cow and goat milk!

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  2. We can only buy cow and goat milk in the supermarkets, but there are a couple of places that milk sheep for cheese. Sheep don't produce very much milk, so it's pretty uneconomic unless you are adding a lot of value to the product.

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