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King Arthur has some recipes that use a small amount of starter in the levain. I do think that their starter tends to be thicker--perhaps much more so--than my milk-based starter. I usually use a bit more when I bake those recipes, and I try to make sure that the starter has recently been fed.
I think that King Arthur had a blog post on keeping only a small amount of starter.
Aaron--maybe you need to send Sam a care package of crackers!
Aaron--Today's email from King Arthur has a granola recipe that uses discard starter.
I'm wondering if the baked rolls would freeze well and then could be re-heated. That would let me stash away some special lunches for me.
I also like the suggestion at the end of the recipe that one could do a spinach and ricotta filling. I wish that specifics about that had been included, as my husband could eat that version.
On Sunday, I baked a new recipe, Butternut Squash Bundt Cake with Maple Glaze, from the blog Port and Fin. Here is a link to the recipe:
I was forced to find a new butternut cake recipe because the one I baked a few years ag and loved had a copious amount of butter and cream cheese. This recipe, which uses oil and sour cream--which I replaced with nonfat Greek yogurt--seems like a good possible replacement. I followed a commentator's suggestion for more robust spices. Whereas the original called for 1 tsp. cinnamon and ¼ tsp. nutmeg, the suggestion added ½ tsp. ginger, ¼ tsp. cloves and ¼ tsp. allspice. In my experience, butternut squash in baked goods usually benefits from more spices. I also used half white whole wheat flour and half King Arthur AP. I added 2 Tbs. Bob's Red Mill milk powder and 2 Tbs. flax meal. As noted, I replaced the sour cream with nonfat Greek yogurt. I might have used a low-fat one, but it is not easy to find where I live. I cut the salt by 50%. The recipe did not specify what size Bundt pan, but my selection of a 10-cup pan was perfect. I checked it at 50 minutes and let it bake another five. I removed it from the pan after 10 minutes.
I will let the cake rest overnight, then add the maple glaze tomorrow. I may look at some of my maple glaze recipes. The recipe's maple glaze uses only powdered sugar and maple syrup, and I think that it will need a bit of milk in order to set properly.
I made a large stir-fry for dinner on Saturday, using farro cooked in turkey/chicken broth, leftover turkey, mushrooms and red bell pepper from the grocery, baby carrots and napa cabbage from our farmers' market, and the leftover gravy. We have enough for two nights of leftovers for dinner, which I consider a win!
Mike is correct about finding unsweetened yogurt with live cultures in small containers. Even with the large containers, a lot of yogurt these days is thickened with food starch, which is cheaper for the manufacturer but reduces the nutritional value of yogurt made completely with milk. I can only find the quarts of Stonyfield yogurt that I use as starter for my own yogurt, and I had to settle for full fat, as no store close to us sells the low-fat that I could easily find at stores where we lived in Texas. Indeed, my frustration led to my dusting off a yogurt maker I had never used and getting into making my own, six small jars at a time. It also turned out to be more economical, as well as more nutritious.
Yogurt has a different kind of "tang" from sourdough or from buttermilk. I usually replace yogurt in bread recipes with buttermilk. I doubt that the active cultures in the yogurt (does buttermilk have active cultures?) can replace a levain, but it does make breads more tender and helps the rise a bit. S. Wirth (I think of her often) told us that buttermilk increases the "keeping quality" of breads.
I seem to recall that Paddy had a recipe for a buttermilk-based starter, but I never explored it, as I have a milk-based one that I have kept going for about thirty years.
I improvised a soup for lunch on Friday by first sauteing onion, celery, carrots, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil. I added some leftover turkey/chicken broth and the broth I made on Sunday from the turkey giblets. I added a can of tomatoes with Hatch chilis, 2/3 cup brown lentils and 1/3 cup red lentils. For spices, I added ½ tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp. Salsa & Pico, ¼ tsp. cumin. I remembered that I had about 10 oz. of broth from black-eyed peas in the freezer, so I tossed it in along with some of the leftover water from cooking muddled mashed potatoes last night. The soup is mildly spicy, which is how I prefer it, and tastes great. I will have lunches from it into next week.
Thanks for posting the link, Mike. I know that we have at least two kinds of bees here. I've seen the big bumble bees, and there are little bees that are adept at pollinating our squash.
My husband started the tomato plants today, so now we wait to see if they come up. There will not be any transplanting until later in May. We are in a warm spell right now, with temperatures yesterday and today hitting the low 80s in the afternoon. However, next week is forecast to be much cooler. I'm ok with cooler, as long as there is no freeze. After all, it is supposed to be spring.
I roasted one of my two remaining butternut squashes on Thursday and made it into puree. I have a cake recipe in which I plan to use it.
For dinner tonight, I made muddled mashed potatoes to go with the leftover turkey and gravy. We had microwaved frozen peas and leftover applesauce too.
Those impromptu stir-fry dishes are a favorite at my house, too, Len!
I made yogurt on Wednesday. For dinner, I roasted sweet potato chunks tossed in olive oil, which we had with leftover turkey and microwaved fresh broccoli.
Thanks for the reports, Aaron and Mike. I think that Einkorn would be an interesting flour to try, but I will have to wait until it is more readily available and, if possible, less expensive.
Another news item on Tupperware:
I can recall my mother going to and hosting Tupperware parties back in the 1960s, Tupperware did get on board with what I would call the virtual Tupperware party, as more women shifted into the workforce. My sister participated or hosted some of these where people at her workplace or relatives like me could order, and there was a shipping option as well. Both methods did seem like a lot of pressure for the dealers to sell more and more.
However, most of us have limits to how much Tupperware we need. There are also lots of plastic options out there available more conveniently. Some people are concerned about plastics for environmental and/or health reasons. Some of my older pieces have developed plastic smells.
One thing that Tupperware had going for it was that it was possible to replace lost or damaged lids, sometimes for free, and sometimes buying them. I have had several Rubbermaid tops break, and there is no replacement available. While I gave one to my husband for bailing out the rowboat after it rains, I do not like getting stuck with a perfectly good container with no top.
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