Category: Sourdough

Breakfast Favorites, Planning, Sourdough

Meal planning: breakfast

Lauren

I’m a planner. As a mother of seven children, I have to be. And with Mike frequently traveling cross-country for work, the kids and I are typically responsible for all the farm chores before we start school each day during the week. Milking cows and goats, feeding 500+ lbs of hay to everyone, and refilling water troughs is just part of what we do, all before 8 am.

I know without a good plan we could easily drag the morning out and have very little accomplished before having to start evening chores. My goal is to have chores done by 8:00/8:30 and then have a nice hot breakfast together before starting our school lessons. Eating from the bounty of our farm means we eat pretty seasonally, but even with that in mind I can stick us to a pretty simple method: protein, fat, fruit or veggie, carb. With the days getting shorter and shorter, our hens are laying less and less. This means we can’t have eggs on the menu every morning.

Luckily we also plan our butchering for the fall- so our freezers are full of breakfast sausage and beef bacon. Our protein options rotate between beef or deer sausage or beef bacon, eggs, and greek yogurt. Then I typically build out the rest of our breakfast with a combination of sourdough or oatmeal with cultured butter and a fruit we’ve preserved- spiced peaches or apples, applesauce, or frozen berries.

Some of us like a more savory breakfast, so I’ll change things up and make a quiche loaded with veggies and herbs and cheese, or serve breakfast tacos with salsa and avocados in the summer, and breakfast potatoes with sausage and peppers in the winter.

Once I have solid ideas and options, I create a fill-in-the-blank style plan that looks like this:

Sunday: quiche with cut fruit;

Monday: yogurt with granola and chicken sausage;

Tuesday: buttered sourdough toast and jam with scrambled eggs;

Wednesday: beef bacon with roasted potatoes and sliced pears;

Thursday: sourdough waffles with applesauce and greek yogurt;

Friday: sausage bagels with frozen berries;

Saturday: pumpkin donuts with greek yogurt or breakfast burritos

I try to rotate through whatever seasonal items we have here on the farm and a combination of whatever is in our grocery store. The cost of groceries is so expensive now that I’ve been particularly choosy about only buying items I KNOW my crew will eat. Last year Mike bought me a set of donut pans from King Arthur Baking and they have made it so fun and simple for us to make sourdough discard donuts- I rotate on Saturdays between muffins and donuts and the kids love those. With eggs being in lower supply, baking something for everyone with a recipe that uses just one or two eggs is incredibly economical.

I also make our yogurt using my instant pot- which is an enormous savings for us and lets us eat yogurt several times a week for breakfasts. Cora (my 14 year old) makes our granola each week on Sundays, and my boys take turns helping me with the sourdough. If the plan is written out a week in advance, it’s easy to identify what we need to buy, what we need to thaw, and what we need to prep ahead– and that means smooth sailing for breakfasts in the mornings.

What about you? Do you plan breakfasts? I’ll be sharing our lunch and dinner meal plans as well- because I can do a lot of things, but winging it isn’t one of them.

xoxo~

Lauren

Bread, Sourdough

Master Sourdough Recipe

Lauren
Lauren's Master Sourdough
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Lauren’s Master Sourdough

Recipe by LaurenCuisine: American
Prep time

2

hours 
Cooking time

40

minutes

This master sourdough recipe starts with a healthy and active starter and leads to a beautiful airy loaf with a crisp crust on the outside and a soft, open crumb on the inside. Not sure where to begin? Check out my Sourdough for Everyone course to find videos and step by step tutorials of my method and recipes for all things sourdough.

Ingredients

  • 100g bubbly active sourdough starter

  • 375g water, room temperature

  • 20g sugar or honey (optional)

  • 500g bread flour (or all-purpose)

  • 10g salt

Directions

  • Combine starter, water, sugar, and flour in a large mixing bowl and work into a shaggy dough. Cover and allow to rest for 15-30 minutes.
  • Add salt and work into a smooth but sticky dough, stretching dough with your hands (or a bowl scraper) as you go. Cover and allow to rest for 15-20 minutes.
  • Begin the stretch and fold process: using hands wet with cool water, stretch your dough from each side up and over the middle of your dough, going north, east, south, and west until you’ve stretched and folded all sides of your dough in the bowl. Repeat this process every 15-20 minutes for one hour.
  • Bulk rise: after sufficient stretching and folding your dough should feel smooth and bouncy under your touch. Cover and allow to rise overnight or for 8-10 hours.
  • Shape and rise: In the morning, turn your dough out onto the counter, and using wet hands, stretch your dough thinly across your clean, unfloured countertop. Fold one side of your stretched dough from the edge to the center, repeating with the other side. You should now have an envelope-style rectangle of sourdough.
  • Beginning with one end, roll your dough into a thick log and tuck ends under one another, giving a round bowl shape. Build tension and strength in your dough by dragging this round shape along your countertop. Place top side down into a floured proofing basket or bowl. Cover and allow to rise another 1-2 hours.
  • Bake in a dutch oven with the lid on at 450*F for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and bake an additional 15-20 minutes or until the top is as golden brown as you prefer. Allow to cool for an hour before slicing, and enjoy!

Notes

  • I prefer to use organic bread flour purchased at a local mill- I use Central Milling Company in Logan, Utah. But I’ve also made this recipe using all purpose flour with excellent results- it just may require a bit more stretching and folding.
  • This bread can be made ahead and frozen in an airtight bag, or stored in a bread bag for up to five days.
  • If you prefer to add fillings to this recipe (I love soaked raisins, herbs and cheese, pickled jalapeños, onions and seeds, etc) just add them when you add the salt, before stretching and folding.
  • If you’d like to work a swirl of cinnamon sugar or seasoning into your loaf, spread your seasoning during the shaping stage, when your dough has been stretched and folded into the envelope shape, prior to rolling into a log.
Sourdough, Uncategorized

Sourdough Basics

Lauren

Sourdough is such an art. But it can seem overwhelming and complicated with so many resources out there. As a busy mom and farmer with lots of children and animals to care for, I need a bread making process that works for me- not one that requires more work from me.

So here’s my easy bread making routine that works with my life, and lets us have bread at the ready whenever we need it. This particular routine or schedule has me feeding my starter at the same time that I make bread, so long as I make bread three days a week. My basic routine is to prepare my dough at night before I put kids to bed, allow it to ferment overnight, then shape the loaves and bake them in the morning,

In the evening after dinner:

  • Feed starter
  • Make one 100g starter recipe (typically sandwich bread, cinnamon rolls, or babka)
  • Make one 80g starter recipe (typically a boule or rustic bread with or without add-ins)
  • *OR* make one 200g starter option like bagels or English muffins
  • Gently knead/stretch and fold after tucking kids into bed/doing nighttime routines
  • Leave on the counter overnight for bulk rise

In the morning:

  • Allow dough to rest on the counter 10-15 minutes before shaping (I always make my coffee and read the news while I wait)
  • Shape into boule or loaf and place in basket or loaf pan (or other pan for cinnamon rolls or bagels)
  • Allow to rise and bake according to recipe

Starter feeding schedule:

  • Keep 70g starter, add 115g flour and 115g filtered water, feed every few days and store on counter or in fridge

I store my sourdough in a Weck Tulip Jar with the glass lid in place, and no rubber gasket attached. You can also store in a Quart Mason Jar with the metal lid resting on top. I find no matter where I live, after a week or two of consistent feeding, my starter happily adapts to my environment, and I can keep the feeding schedule the same. As long as I feed my starter every few days, I find it’s happy and active enough to make my loaves rise without any more babysitting than this.

You can find all the essential equipment I use on my amazon storefront. In addition to everything listed there, I also love my vintage Pyrex mixing bowls. I have the primary mixing bowl set and use the 404 size for artisan loaves, 403 for sandwich or pan loaves, the 402 for feeding my starter, and the 401 for preparing fillings or seasonings. You can make anything work for you! Just be sure to avoid using metal as it will affect the ability for the wild yeast in your starter to thrive.