Toasted almond ice cream and a lost sourdough starter

A week ago, in a minor frenzy of sourdough baking, I forgot to save some of the starter I'd been using for all my sourdough. It was a whole wheat starter using a Josey Baker recipe, which I'd converted from a Peter Reinhart starter I'd gotten from my bus buddy Andrew.

Ugh.

Fortunately, I also had a white sourdough starter from Lee. I hadn't been using it much, but I'd been waking it up and feeding it regularly, thank goodness. I used it to inoculate a new batch of whole wheat starter. Interestingly, the new starter was (at least initially) much more active than the starter I'd been using. Within a few hours of feeding, the starter would rise tremendously. It didn't hurt that the weather was quite warm (for here) the two days I was feeding it; the kitchen was 75-79 degrees much of the time.

I made a double batch of sourdough Saturday. It almost raised out of the bowl that I'd used before for a double batch.

Saturday night I shaped one loaf (rather badly). Sunday morning I baked it. By Sunday night that loaf was gone.

The crust sang again!

Other baking I did in the past few days:

• Coconut flour brownies (again)
• Almond cake with apricot jam and browned butter frosting
• I used the magically moist almond cake recipe on the back of Bob's Red Mill almond flour, which also calls for coconut flour
• The coconut flavor overwhelmed the almond flavor, but fortunately we all love coconut
• To make the almond flavor more pronounced, I made browned butter frosting (from Better Homes & Gardens New Baking Book) but used almond extract (a little over half a teaspoon, I think) instead of vanilla. The color was a bit gray; I would've added a little coloring—a drop of yellow food dye? coffee powder?—if I'd had more time.
• I used two 9-inch round pans to bake the cakes. They came out well, but it would've been better if the cake had been thicker—the frosting dominated the cake. (Even my frosting loving husband said so.) I don't usually like frosting, but this was pretty good.
• C.R.O.W.W. bread
• It came out very dark, probably because I (taking a shortcut) soaked some raisins in hot water before putting them in.
• It tasted good but seemed dry.

I also made two ice creams (from one batch of the base) from David Lebovitz's toasted almond with sour cherry recipe. They were very good but not great.

Toasted almond stracciatella

Here's what they both have in common:

• A delicious toasted almond base. No complaints there.
• Too much chopped almond mixed in. A few minutes before I finished churning, I add 1 cup of coarsely chopped almonds, as directed. Even for me, this was too much. Half a cup would probably be better.
• Stracciatella. Just before the end of churning, I added a stream of melted chocolate to make little chocolate chips. I thought this was kind of lost, but others disagreed and said they could taste it. I'd rather have larger chunks of chocolate or a river of soft fudge.

The first ice cream was just the above. It was good, but had too many almonds. The creaminess of the ice cream was overwhelmed by the crunch of the almonds (and chocolate).

While dishing out the second ice cream, I added candied cherries (as directed by the recipe). I made these from the Lebovitz's Sour Cherries in Syrup recipe, using Trader Joe's dark morello cherries.

Making sour cherries in syrup

People liked the cherries but felt that they overwhelmed the almond ice cream—that the ice cream might as well have been vanilla. (Not that there's anything wrong with vanilla; it's just easier to make than toasted almond.)

With candied cherries

I'll certainly make toasted almond ice cream again, using this recipe, but I'll skip the cherries and mix in half the amount of chopped almonds. I probably won't add the chocolate, either.

The next time I make cherry-chocolate whiskey ice cream, I might well use the sour cherries in syrup instead of booze-soaked cherries.

Ice cream cake, two sourdoughs, cornbread, and C.R.O.W.W.

This week I made ice cream for the first time in months. I also made a sourdough whole wheat bread, helped make some sourdough waffles, took another stab at C.R.O.W.W (cinnamon raisin oatmeal walnut whole wheat) bread, and made some cornbread.

Ice cream cake

I made this cake for my friend Mia's birthday. I was happy to make it because (1) Mia is great and (2) it was good practice for my nephew's birthday cake next weekend. His ice cream must be chocolate, but we could do something more interesting with this one.

Malted milk ice cream cake

I used The Perfect Scoop's recipe for malted milk ice cream (p. 51), omitting the salt and reducing the malted milk balls from 350 g (2 cups) to 210 g. (The first time I made this ice cream everyone loved it, but it had so many mix-ins that it was hard to taste the ice cream.)

Two options for malted milk: Carnation and Horlicks

I used Carnation malted milk powder, since I could tell how much sodium it had (a fair amount, but not so much that I couldn't eat it).

Carnation has 100 mg sodium per 3 T serving.

I'd found some Horlicks in an Indian market in Berkeley, but its sodium contents were so shabbily labeled that I was afraid to use it. Seriously, why would you measure salt instead of sodium? And why would you measure it in grams instead of milligrams?

Horlicks has 0.5 g salt (200 mg sodium?) per 25 g (2 T?).

The night before churning the ice cream, I made a chocolate cookie crust in a springform pan, following a recipe for mock chocolate cookie crust. I let it cool overnight on the stove. The next morning, I put it in the freezer for about 20 minutes as I churned the ice cream.

Chocolate cookie crust in a springform pan

It'd been so long since I'd made ice cream, I'd forgotten little things like how to transfer the ice cream into the container, or setting something to catch drips. It didn't help that I was transferring to a much wider container than usual. I sprinkled on the chopped malted milk balls as I transferred the ice cream.

It worked out pretty well, although the crust was difficult to cut through. I'll do some things differently next time:

• Try not to pack the crust as much. (I considered not using as much crust, but everyone objected to that.)
• Smooth the ice cream with the underside of a metal measuring cup, as described in America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, p. 629. (I didn't find that recipe until after I'd made the cake.)
• Remove the bottom of the springform pan, as well as the sides, before cutting.
• Put the pie onto a flat plate before cutting. (To do: Find/buy a large, flat plate.)
• Press handfuls of rainbow sprinkles onto the sides, as ATKFC suggests. (My nephew specifically wanted rainbow sprinkles on his cake. For anyone else, I might use nuts or chocolate.)
• Put a plate under the springform pan in the freezer, to avoid drips of ice cream.

Sourdoughs

In sourdough land, I made a whole wheat sourdough bread and the sponge for sourdough waffles. Both were OK but could use improvement.

Whole wheat sourdough bread.

The sourdough bread (Hensperger p. 280) was marred by a too strong taste of molasses. I've used molasses before in bread and liked it, but (1) this was the bottom of the bottle and (2) the other molasses breads had strong-flavored ingredients like cocoa and coffee that probably masked the molasses. If I make this bread again, I'll use honey or sugar instead of molasses. The texture was fine, but the bread wasn't even tasty when toasted; it just smelled a little like burnt molasses.

Two sourdough starters in the bread machine.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of sourdough starter, preferably next-day white starter made with whole wheat flour. Instead I used about 2 T of a rather solid (Josey Baker) whole wheat starter. Then I added enough of a rather liquid white starter to make 1 cup. Other changes I made to the recipe:

• Reduce salt to under 1 t.
• Reduce yeast to 1 t.

The sourdough waffles, from this King Arthur Flour recipe, were going to be pancakes, but we couldn't find all the parts to our griddle. The mix was a bit thin for waffles, and they didn't cook up as nicely as usual. (No pictures: we ate all the evidence.) Next time I'll use less liquid or more flour. Or I'll make pancakes.

Cornbread

I made the same cornbread I made last week, but I used an 8-inch pan instead of a 10-inch pan. The cooking time was longer, but it was just as good. I like crust, so I slightly prefer the 10-inch pan, even though it's harder to handle.

Cornbread in an 8-inch cast-iron pan

This time I used a flavorless oil (canola or peanut) instead of hazelnut oil, and the cornbread still came out tasty. This bread was just for me, so there were leftovers, which were good for at least a day or two.

C.R.O.W.W.

I made this bread like last time, except for the following changes:

• Doubled the raisins (to 1 cup)
• Doubled the nuts (to 1/2 cup)
• Used toasted pecans instead of walnuts

1 cup of Berkeley Bowl's jumbo raisins mixed medley

1/2 cup of pecan pieces

The upshot? This is a tasty loaf of bread. Doubling the pecans and raisins was a good thing to do and didn't cause problems with mixing. (OK, they weren't perfectly mixed, but they weren't all on the bottom either. I call that a win.)

Slightly misshapen, as usual

Hunting for a good raisin bread

Although I'm not fond of raisins on their own, I love a good raisin bread. I've tried three recipes lately, with varying degrees of success. (Please tell me if you know a great bread machine raisin bread recipe! I still haven't found the perfect one.)

Here are the results of my raisin bread hunt, in order of how likely I am to make them again (which is the reverse of the order I made them in):

1. C.R.O.W.W. (Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Walnut Whole wheat), from Beth Hensperger's ever-reliable The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: Delicious, although I could've used more raisins and nuts (1/2 cup + 1/4 cup, to 3 cups flour). Besides the usual ingredients and those listed in the title, this recipe also uses egg whites, buttermilk, oil, and a vanilla powder that I couldn't find in local stores, so I bought it online. For the raisins I used "jumbo mixed medley" raisins from Berkeley Bowl's bulk section.
2. 100% whole wheat fruit bread, from the Zojirushi cookbook: Also delicious, and kept fresh for days. Instead of raisins, I used dried sour cherries from Berkeley Bowl. Yum. I might've liked to have more fruit (it had 2/3 cup, to 5 cups flour) and maybe nuts. I might try changing the butter to hazelnut or walnut oil. Instead of cinnamon, this recipe used allspice, which tasted great with the cherries. Every recipe I've tried from the whole grain section of this cookbook has been really good. (The party bread is another story, but that came from another section.)
3. Raisin, cinnamon, and nut wheat bread (aka fail bread) from Beatrice Ojakangas' Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand: Such a tasty failure, I had to make it twice to believe it. Both times, almost all the fruit and nuts (3/4 cup of each, to 4 cups flour) ended up at the bottom of the pan. I don't know if this was because there was too much fruit/nuts, or because the consistency of the dough was too thick or thin. Whatever the cause, this recipe must not have been tested with a Zojirushi—or maybe with any bread machine. Also, this bread went stale quickly. I'll think twice before making another recipe from this book.

The C.R.O.W.W. bread was my dinner the day I made it, and breakfast the next day. I should perhaps lay off, but at least it was a reasonably nutritious substitute for a real meal. I made the 1.5-pound loaf, changing the salt to a scant teaspoon, and yeast to 2 teaspoons.

C.R.O.W.W.: Dinner and breakfast in a loaf

The Zo bread was their typical, gargantuan size. It was supposed to use 100% whole wheat flour, but I ran out and used about 1/3 bread flour. (I reduced the gluten from 4T to 3T to compensate.) I reduced the salt to 1 teaspoon, and the yeast to a heaping teaspoon.

Zojirushi ~67% whole wheat fruit bread

Finally, we come to the fail bread. Take a look at it.

The bottom of the fail bread

Spectacular, isn't it? I think that's my second version, which had cranberries and walnuts. My first try had jumbo raisins and pecans, I think. Both tasted good, if you ignored the fact that the only fruit was on the bottom. (Some of the smaller nut pieces made it into the dough.) I didn't record my alterations the first time, but the second time I made the large-loaf size, reducing the salt to 3/4 t and the yeast to 1 t.

Because you just can't eat enough gluten, I've also started working my way through Josey Baker's bread book, which I've borrowed from the library. I'll blog about that next.