Bread Starter Waffles

Like a microbial cultural anthropologist, I've continued to try to study the habits of my bread starter. And like my co-instructors, I've been wondering what to do with all the leftover starter generated by a regular regimen of diluting my culture into fresh flour paste. Great minds think alike and so, like them, I resorted to breakfast fare; in their cases pancakes of one kind and another, in my case waffles. I started with a sourdough waffles recipe from King Arthur Flour, which I melded with these yeasted buckwheat waffles from Deborah Madison. The dough made with the starter had significantly more integrity than those I had made with an overnight sponge from commercial yeast, and the waffles had a more complex, tangy taste that paired nicely with tart, stewed rhubarb and fresh strawberries. I'm thinking that it might work well to keep my culture growing slowly in the refrigerator during the week and revive it on the weekends for bouts of bread baking and breakfasts. The microbes in my culture are likely studying me as well and learning to understand the habits of their human cohabitants who dash out of the house five mornings a week and lounge around the other two.

Bread Starter Buckwheat Waffles

(makes about 6 waffles in a Belgian waffle iron)

overnight sponge
1 cup sourdough starter, unfed
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 tablespoon honey
2 cups buttermilk

waffle or pancake batter
all of the overnight sponge
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. To make the overnight sponge, stir down your refrigerated starter, and remove 1 cup. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the 1 cup starter, flour, honey, and buttermilk. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight.

2. The next morning, finish the bater. In a small bowl or mixing cup, beat together the eggs, and oil or butter. Add to the overnight sponge. Add the salt and baking soda, stirring to combine. The batter will bubble.

3. Pour batter onto your preheated, greased waffle iron, and bake according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Serving suggestion: a dollop of plain yogurt, a drizzle of stewed rhubarb, fresh strawberries, and maple syrup.

Rhubarb Cornmeal Scones

The lovely rhubarb in the markets these days had got me thinking about rhubarb scones, and Mother's Day seemed like a good occasion to make some. We still have plenty of corn flour from our Lonesome Whistle Farm CSA, so I decided to experiment with a rhubarb cornmeal scone, inspired from here and here.

The rhubarb got a dousing of sugar while I made a buttery dough in the food processor, and then mixed in the fruit at the end.

The dough was soft and a bit sticky on our unusually warm May day, but it didn't need much handling: just a gentle pat into two disks that I sliced into sixths and popped into the oven. The resulting corn-flavored scones, studded with tart rhubarb, were such a hit that I was barely able to save some for Sunday morning.  

Rhubarb Cornmeal Scones

makes 12

4 small rhubarb stalks, trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch slices (1 cup)
1/2 cup sugar (divided)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup corn flour or fine corn meal (I used Lonesome Whistle Farm corn flour)
1 cup whole wheat white flour (I used Lonesome Whistle Farm Stephen's White)
1 tsp baking powder 
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (unless you plan to freeze the scones and bake later). 

2. Rinse, trim, and cut the rhubarb into 1/4 inch slices (yielding 1 cup). Sprinkle over 1/4 cup sugar and the vanilla extract and stir.

3. In a food processor, combine the corn flour, wheat flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the cubed butter and pulse into pea-sized pieces. Transfer to a mixing bowl (you can also incorporate the butter into the flour by hand or using a pastry knife). Pour in the buttermilk and incorporate it into the dough. Add the sugared rhubarb and stir gently to incorporate.

4. Cover a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Transfer the dough onto a floured surface, such as a silicone mat, and divide into two. Gently form into two disks, about 1 1/2 inches tall, dusting with flour as necessary. If the dough seems too sticky to handle, chill it at this point for 15 minutes in the freezer or longer in the refrigerator. Cut each disk into 6 pie slice wedges. Transfer the wedges to the baking sheet. 
Note: You can freeze the scone wedges at this point and bake them later (add an extra 5 minutes to the baking time).

5. Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes, rotating the pans 180 degrees half way through the baking. The scones are done when they are a golden all over the top. Cool before eating.

Birthday Rhubarb Buckle

We spent the weekend on the Oregon coast, soaking up the natural beauty, exploring the marine creatures of the intertidal zone,

and consuming them for dinner (recipe: purchase a pound of mussels and clams and a decent bottle of white wine. Make a simple tomato sauce, add as much of the wine as you're willing to spare, steam the shellfish in the sauce until they open up, and eat them over linguini, accompanied by the remaining wine).

Food always taste better after a long stroll on the beach. And there's a certain pleasure to cooking with minimal equipment and supplies, a reminder that some of the tastiest food is the simplest, like fresh baked bread.

We did have an important cooking task at hand, since it was my husband's birthday. Rather than a cake, my daughter and I had decided to make him a rhubard ginger buckle, from the cookbook Rustic Fruit Dessert by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson. Everything I've made from this cookbook has been delicious, including another buckle, a cobbler, and a birthday pandowdy, but this is our favorite. My daughter had laboriously copied out the recipe, and we'd packed rhubarb and candied ginger. With no electric beater, we had to recruit the birthday boy into helping cream the butter, sugar, and eggs. 

The rest came together easily. The sliced rhubarb is simply folded into the cake batter, which is topped with a candied ginger crumble.

The final buckle is a delicious combination of tart fruit and sweet, spicy ginger topping. Perfect for a beachside birthday celebration.

Rhubarb Buckle with Ginger Crumb

from “Rustic Fruit Desserts” 
by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson

Ginger Crumb Topping

1/3 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Cake

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon powdered ginger
½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup buttermilk, at room temperature

1 pound rhubarb, trimmed and thinly sliced (about 2 ½ cups, or 5 stalks)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round baking pan with butter.

2. To make the topping, mix sugar, flour and candied ginger together in a bowl, then stir in melted butter, until well combined. Place crumb in freezer while you mix cake batter – this chills the crumb so it will not immediately melt into the cake when baked.

3. To make the cake, whisk flour, baking powder, ginger, baking soda and salt together in a bowl. Using a hand-held mixer with beaters or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Stir in flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the buttermilk in two additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and scraping down sides of the bowl as you progress. Gently fold in rhubarb.

4. Spread batter into the prepared pan, then sprinkle ginger crumb over the cake. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until lightly golden and firm on top.

Wrapped in plastic wrap, the cake will keep at room temperature for 2-3 days.

Makes 8-12 servings.