This Thursday rounds out the sourdough waste theme for the month.
Did you know you can make pie crust out of sourdough?
The things I learn researching cookies!
The recipe I have is butter-based, not crisco-based. Which, as I learned watching Good Eats, is not necessarily the most stable crust there is.
The original recipe had me grating very cold butter into the flour, adding sugar and salt, and then mixing it all together until it was pea-sized. This is the same way I am used to making pie crust.
I know a better way of mixing the butter and the flour together that takes much less time. I pulled out my food processor and cut the butter into small pats and used the processor to mix it until it was pea-sized. After that, I added the 1/2 c of sourdough starter (cold) and 1 tsp of vinegar. And processed some more. After a minute I removed the bowl from the processor and dumped the contents into a bowl. As instructed by the recipe, I gathered all the dough fragments into a ball and then a disc, covered in cling wrap, and refrigerated for 2 hours.
Whole thing took me 4 minutes and most of that was cutting up the butter and forming it into a disc.
After the dough had rested in the fridge for 2 hours, I let it come to slightly below room temperature and rolled it out and transferred to a baking sheet. Using a pizza cutter, I lightly cut the dough into squares. I topped the squares with melted butter and cinnamon sugar. Into the 375 degrees Fahrenheit oven it went until browned, and the sugar had caramelized.
After pulling it out I thought that some of the squares were too big so I used a metal spatula to cut them into smaller pieces.
Next was the best part- the taste test.
To my surprise, of all the sourdough weeks of September, these had the strongest sourdough taste.
10/10, will absolutely do again.
Maybe next time I will experiment with crisco instead of butter. Or do like Alton Brown said on Good Eats, use both!
I am stupidly excited for the Spooky month of October. I can’t wait to write about what I have planned. (insert evil laugh here!)
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 