Hurricane Sourdough, Cinnamon Rolls …

Hello Everyone, My site was down for a whole week last week becauses of the hurricane winds here in Western Washington. We had winds clocked all the way up to 129 mph ! There were two storms that came in, one right after the other. The first one knocked out power for a little while ( I don’t even remember how long) the second one which came in right after the first one, knocked out power for a week for us. Just before the first storm I had baked up some sourdough cinnamon rolls which turned out so good! There is something really tasty about sourdough rolls, and they don’t stick in your stomach like a ball of lead. I guess you could say they are digestible because of the gluten being fermented. Of course you don’t try to make them sour, and they are not sour, just really delicious. I made up a preferment the night before, and then finished up the dough the next morning, adding some sugar and vanilla to the dough, it also had some milk, mashed potatoes and melted butter, so you can see it was really good. Then I let the dough raise four hours and made up the rolls. I let them proof about 1.5 – 2 hours and then baked them at 400 degrees until they were done. I am working on the recipe  and hope to tweak it so I can also offer a Cinnamon Roll Premix along with the White Sourdough Premix which I am almost finished with.

Now for the Hurricane Sourdough. I had made up a batch of sourdough basic white when the first set of high winds hit us. We were out of power for several hours and when it came time to bake, there was no power and the dough was very ready. I have a small woodstove in the house that we had going and decided to try to bake the bread in it! Not a masonry oven by any stretch, but what else do you do when you have the perfect opportunity to experiment? I will have to tell you that I really was wishing I had that masonry oven outside, or at least the clay oven built, but no such luck so far!

I had the dough raising in bannetons and I took one loaf and kind of shoved it gently into a small chicken roaster pan that I have, to let it finish proofing.

I had built up the fire and had some good coals going. I put a ceramic floor tile over the coals to lift the pan off of the hot coals some, but to no avail, as you will see. I baked the loaf with the lid on for around 20 minutes and then took it out to take off the lid. It already was smelling burnt! I put it back in anyway, determined to finish the experiment and this is the result:

Did you ever see anything so black????

So for the next loaf, I put the dough into the cast iron pan that I have, which I have baked other sourdough breads in. It is deep like a dutch oven but it has no legs or lip on the lid.

It baked better than the first and only burned a little on the bottom. It actually was edible.

Here are some other views:

While I was baking the above loaf in the woodstove, the power came back on so I hurried to heat up the oven so I could bake the third loaf the regular way! Here is the regular loaf:

Well, those loaves didn’t last long and the next storm hit that same night, leaving us without power for seven days. I almost ate store bought bread, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Once the power outage was over, I quickly made up another batch and by Tuesday I had a nice batch of sourdough for Turkey sandwiches because a Turkey we had in one of our freezers thawed out.

Yes! Finally, after a whole week of devastation, and I don’t mean the trees….

Today I am baking up some Premix Sourdough, as I really don’t want to do without again! I need to ask Santa for a masonry oven!

This post was written 9 years ago.