Sourdough Pancakes

This is a gorgeous, little recipe 'copied and pasted' from a fun, foodie FB group to which I belong.  I've made these pancakes about four or five times now, and each time they turn out fabulously fluffy and light. 

Makes 4 generous servings (about 8 pancakes)
Preheat oven to 300F to keep pancakes warm if needed
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1/2 cup milk (Can use milk substitutes or water if lactose intolerant)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup almond meal (can be omitted- if you do omit it- reduce water to 2 tablespoons!)

Mix all ingredients together. Heat pan on high and add butter or vegetable oil to grease the pan. REDUCE THE HEAT TO MEDIUM, and while the pan is still hot, Pour a ladle-full of batter into the pan and cook until bubbles begin to pop in the center of the pancake (a nice golden brown- lower heat if it cooks too fast.), then flip your pancake. Cook until 2nd side is golden brown. Place on a warm plate in a pre-warmed oven. Serve with your favorite topping.
Also, this recipe can be used for crepes- just thin down the batter with milk or water, and tilt the pan immediately after you pour the batter into it, coating the pan, then flip. If the batter is too thin, add flour or almond meal.
 
**I haven't used almond meal when making the pancakes, so I don't know how much better they could be with that additional ingredient.  I'm all right with that.

A few additions to 'spice' up the already lovely sourdough pancakes would be chopped nuts, berries, a bit of (canned) pumpkin.

Walnut-sourdough pancakes

Pumpkin-sourdough pancakes

Swiss sourdough

The starter we maintained for six happy, bread-filled months in London was a beaut.  We kept it covered and left it on top of the fridge, removing a portion of it, then feeding it everyday.  A few hours after a feed, it would smell intensely of banana and air bubbles would break the surface like methane escaping a tar pit.  Glorious!
 

London Rosemary Sourdough

Not knowing if I could successfully schlep my starter internationally, I eventually composted the lot of it just days before our impending move.  Letting go of the starter was harder than giving away my house plants.  It was my lil' buddy, my sourdough bread-giving source.

Not to be daunted, I set up a new starter right after arriving in Zuerich in July.  After realising that the starter was the aphrodisiac of the fruit fly I mended my cavalier leaving-the-starter-on-the-counter ways, and opted to only take it out of the fridge and feed it when I wanted to bake a loaf of bread.

The new Swiss starter seemed a happy gurgling concoction, and it made a pretty fine loaf, but it is now beginning to smell of something akin to nail polish remover.  It's really just an acetone-like, unappetizing blob.  Strangely, it does still seem to yield pretty fab bread results.

Bread brain

Schweizer Sauerteigbrot

If you should never read another post here at F and F, then know that the hubs and I have probably been felled by an infected sourdough loaf.  So long!  Farewell!  Adieu!

t

Ich sehe was du nicht siehst!

Our loose sourdough bread recipe:

150gr starter (a little more than that won't hurt)
450-500gr flour (I like to mix it up and use various different kinds, but, of course, white bread flour works just fine.)
2tsp salt
approx. 200ml warm water

Prep:
Measure starter, flour, salt in bowl.  Add water sparingly while stirring contents until it resembles a sticky ball and comes away from the sides of the bowl.   Remove dough from bowl and place on a floured surface.  (Have extra flour at the ready should you need more during the kneading process.)
Kneed dough for approx. 10 minutes until spongy.  (Test sponginess by pressing finger into dough and watch for it to spring back into shape.)  Place in covered, oiled bowl (so dough won't stick to surface) and let rise until dough has doubled.  Stretch dough as if you were forming a pizza crust, then re-form into a ball, place back into covered bowl and wait for second rise.  The dough should, again, approx. double in size.  Both rises could take many hours, and the warmer the kitchen the better for dough rising.  After the second rise place the dough on baking tray (we usually shape it into a ball again before doing this) and let rest for approx. 60 min. as it seems to prevent the base of the bread from splitting during the baking process.  Slice the top of the loaf with a knife and bake at 230C (210C fan-assisted)/450F for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 200C (180C fan-assisted)/390F and bake for 20 minutes more. Add a small tray of boiling water to the oven as you put the bread in for a shiny, brown crust.

Fruit flies

I like to think that I keep my kitchen tidy.  I don't leave left-overs out uncovered on the table.  I don't place ripened berries in the sun by the window.  I put perishables in the fridge and dry goods in the pantry, away from the insects that love them.  However, I do and have always done everywhere I've lived is have a bowl of fruit for easy 'picking' somewhere either on the kitchen counter, or, if I've had room for one, on the kitchen table.  This, until now, has never been a problem.

The Swiss fruit fly, a virulent pest, wants my thick-skinned fruit!  The bananas are not bruised and mushy, the grapefruit isn't moldy and cracked, and the apple would seem to be impenetrable.  What gives?  Does the fruit fly have a keen sense of smell?  Does the Golden Delicious put off a scent like a siren's call?

Fruit fly delight

It would seem that I'm losing a battle I didn't even know I had to fight.  There are at least 3 or 4 well-fed looking fruit flies hovering around the counter top all day, every day.  Fortunately, they move fairly slowly, so I'm good at smacking 'em into oblivion with my hands.  -icky, but necessary to keep the head count of flies down to a minimum.

I'm longing for the cool weather of London where the fruit flies were a meager bunch.  Maybe the climate wasn't warm enough for them to procreate like mad like they seem to do here.  In London, I could leave my sourdough starter on top of the fridge, letting it bubble and froth, loosely covered with no thought of ever having to fish a caught fly out of it.  If I were to leave the starter out on the counter even for an hour here in ZH, then I'd have a fruit fly fiesta happening just over the top of the jar!  And, yes, I did have to learn that lesson the hard way.  The starter now lives in the fridge until bread-baking time.

Nectar of the fruit fly

I wonder what the cooler months will bring?  I can only hope that the fruit flies will be too cold then to make much of a nuisance of themselves.