Spätzle - made with sour dough discard (updated)

Anyone who maintains a sour dough starter knows that, with sour dough starter comes sour dough discard... What to do with the discard? 

Initially I would bake discard bread.  Those recipes simply use a little bit of starter in a more or less regular bread recipe made with instant yeast.  But there is only so much bread any one person wants to eat - even a German person; and my freezer also has limited capacity.  What to do with the discard?

The Internet is a beautiful place.  King Arthur has a whole collection of discard recipes.  Unfortunately, I am a recovering diabetic, so the cakes, cinnamon toast and even pancakes are not part of my diet. 

Bread is part of my diet despite the carbohybrates, because bread is heavenly.  Bread is what I choose to eat as my carbs for the day.

Recently, I found another beautiful place on the Internet - a Facebook group "Perfect Sour dough" where people talk about - what else - sour dough.  Someone there mentioned that you could make noodles with sour dough.  This is how I had the idea to make German noodles - spätzle - with sour dough discard.

Here is the recipe I'm going to use:

Spätzle (German noodles)

350 g flour 

50 g sour dough discard

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

12 TBsp water (200 ml) - adjust to desired consistency

50 g butter

The flour/sour dough ratio can probably be adjusted to your taste, but this is what I used.  With the eggs in the mix, I imagine that not much of the final hold comes from the gluten.

Mix flour, sour dough, eggs, salt and water into a dough. 

Push the resulting mixture through a ricer into boiling salt water.  

Fish the dumplings out of the water using a colander. 

Heat butter in a separate pot.  Add the dumplings into the pot.

If you have never made spätzle, I wrote a blog post "Taste of Home: Spätzle!!!" a few years ago.  It contains pictures and detailed instructions.  

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread for the rest of us - or - Relax! It's gonna be OK.

Sour dough bread has always intimidated me.  The initial set-up, the feeding, the measuring, the timing, the commitment ... Maintaining a sour dough is like having a pet - and I'm not good with pets that don't remind me that they would like to be fed.  A sour dough was not likely to survive in my life.

But then, a few years ago, I set up a sour dough starter with the help of my adopted son. Truth be told, I did it primarily to entertain said son, but it has become a part of my life since then. In the beginning, for a few days - maybe even weeks, I obsessed over it, measured, fed, kept notes... but then, when I realized that this thing was doing just fine, I relaxed a bit.

Sour dough bread, it turns out, only sounds intimidating.  Once you get over the fear, it's really simple - and both the maintenance of the sour dough and the bread baking can be adjusted to work for the schedule of regular working folks.

Potato challenge - Kroketten (croquettes)

On November 16th 2015 I made Croquettes.

I don't think I have ever had croquettes in the US.

In the area of Germany where I come from, croquettes are a (sit-down) restaurant side dish that has equal status to french fries.  As the images below show, Germans eat croquettes with a gravy sauce.  (Note that we do the same thing with french fries.  Also note that the German gravy is not as thick as the gravy I am used to in the American south.)

Picture from http://www.bavariankitchen.com/sides/kroketten.aspx

Taste of Home: Käsekuchen (German cheesecake)

I'm actually not a fan of sweets in general, but growing up in Germany, I made an exception for cheesecake.  After I moved to the States, I discovered that American cheesecake is quite different from the stuff I grew up with.

American cheesecake is dense - brick-like.  You could probably hurt someone by hitting them with a New York style cheesecake.  It's also rich; I don't even want to know how many calories are in a slice of American cheesecake. 

German cheesecake is light and fluffy.  It's got a crust that's to die for and a creamy melt-on your tongue filling.  It's great stuff - and almost low cal.  (OK, that last one may be an exaggeration, but it's good stuff, if I may say so myself.)

Unfortunately, as many German cheesecake lovers discover when they get to the States, one of the necessary ingredients is not available for purchase in many parts of the United States.  Making cheesecake requires "quark" - a white cheese that has the consistency of sour cream, but the flavor of a cottage cheese or ricotta.  Here in Kentucky, I can purchase quark in Cincinnati at Jungle Jim's for about $7 per 1/2 lb or so. If I ignore the cost of the road trip to Cincinnati, that amounts to a $30 cheesecake, and that's just a bit much for an everyday cheesecake. 

Taste of Home: Kartoffelsalat (German potato salad) UPDATED!

At my house making potato salad used to require planning, because the recipe I blogged about before  called for an overnight stay in the fridge.  In addition, I would always cook potatoes specifically for the salad, because I was convinced that refrigerated potatoes would not work.

But then, during a trip to Germany, my son asked my mother to make potato salad for dinner - about 30 minutes before dinner was to take place.  I figured that it could not be done.

Apparently, my mother disagreed.  She pulled out some boiled potatoes from the day before from the fridge and fixed German potato salad in about 10 minutes flat. At dinner, my son remarked: "Mom, Oma's potato salad is still better than yours!" Back in the US I worked on improving my recipe - and I do think it's much better now, if I do say so myself.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe I use now:

Taste of Home: Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars)

It's that time of the year again - I am baking.

Cinnamon stars (Zimtsterne) may just be my favorite cookies - ever! They also don't last long when I share an assortment of Christmas cookies with my colleagues at work.  Turns out, they're not hard to make - and they're even gluten free!

Taste of Home: German Christmas Cookies!!!

I like cooking, but baking - other than bread - has never been of much interest to me. For some reason, that changed this year.  I spent the last 2 weeks before Christmas baking cookies, lots and lots of cookies.

My kids were convinced that I had lost my mind.

I don't even eat cookies, why would I bake them?   I think the answer was: "Because I can".


I am actually planning on sending a tin of cookies to my Mom in Germany.  She has sent me cookies in the past, but she didn't bake this year.  When I told her that I would send her some this year, she cracked up laughing.

Never in a million years did she expect that I would send her cookies because (1) I don't bake and (2) I don't ever make it to the post office.

By now the baking has in fact happened and here's a picture of the tin that will be sent to my Mom (if I actually make it to the post office sometime soon.)

Unfortunately, I suspect that they won't look like that when they get there....

Taste of Home: Kartoffelsalat (German Potato Salad)

There is nothing quite like discovering - at 12:45 am - that you forgot to make the potato salad you need for a pot-luck right after work the next day today. Did I mention that said my potato salad needs an overnight stay in the fridge for optimal flavor development? Oh well, sleep is overrated anyway.

While I am making potato salad, I might as well be blogging about it....

Baguette

This post was inspired by the post "Why Making Your Own French Baguette Is Empowering" on the Cook's Corner blog.

I have been wanting to make a decent baguette for years.  I can make a mean loaf of bread in the breadmaker, and I made a reasonably good roll following my Mom's recipe, but baking a baguette is one of those skills that still eludes me.

The above blog post got me closer than I have ever been by linking me to the King Arthur Flour baguette making blog entry as well as the recipe entry.

So I tried my hands at baguette, yet again.

Taste of Home: Semmelknödel (Bread dumplings)

This one's for Sergeant T. ....

Internet Recipe Misadventures

When I am looking for  German recipe, my first stop usually is my trusted Dr. Oetker Kochbuch, a cookbook I brought with me from Germany in the 80s.  If I can't find it there, I search for it on the Internet. Usually, I compare and contrast several versions of the recipe before I attempt to cook the dish myself.

One of the German recipes I had been meaning to make was Schupfnudeln, a rolled noodle made from a potato-based dough.  Where I come from, they're actually called Buwespitzle - and I am not going to translate that word since my blog may be flagged as "adult", if I do....

At any rate, since Dr. Oetker failed me for this dish, I searched for - and found - a recipe on the Internet. It sounded simple enough, so I skipped the comparison step.

Taste of Home: Koeniginpastetchen

Another one of my favorite foods growing up was Königin-Pastetchen with chicken fricasee.

Since I didn't know if I could find the pastries in the US, I imported them from Germany.

Taste of Home: Dampfnudel - third attempt

No, you didn't miss anything. I am reporting the third attempt rather than the second... For some reason, they didn't turn out the second time.

The dough was too sticky, the Dampfnudel didn't rise in the pan and I ended up with this flat sorry excuse for a Dampfnudel that - to top it off - had an oversalted crust. And no, I did not take a picture...

So the curse had struck again! I have this talent for getting things right the first time around - and then never again. We joke about it at work, because it happens there, too. And if I were a singer, I'd definitely be a one hit wonder.....

But - just like at work - I don't give up easily. I am bound an determined to make a reasonably decent Dampfnudel! So - let's try this again - and good luck to me!

Taste of Home: Rotkraut (German red cabbage)

It's time for another adventure in cooking.  German red cabbage as described in my trusty Dr Oetker cookbook.

Taste of Home: Dampfnudel - first attempt

I attempted Dampfnudeln for the first time in my life...

I am told that the difficulty in making Dampfnudeln is to make sure that they don't fall down when you raise the lid of the pan.  Clearly, that is not an issue here. 

The taste was pretty decent, too.  The only problem was that the crust was not as dark as I'd like it to be.  Oh well, try - try again.... 

I'll let you know when I figure it out. 

Update: Check out my third attempt for a successful attempt at Dampfnudel. 

Taste of Home: Saure Scheiben (German Sour Potato Slices)

A little while back, this guy ate potatoes for 60 days straight to promote the health benefits of potatoes.  His name is Chris Voigt, I looked it up.  He blogged about it here.  He talked about eating potatoes "every possible way -- boiled, baked, mashed, grilled, roasted, juiced, blended, fried, etc." but, while he finished the stunt, it was reported that he apparently did get tired of eating potatoes in the end.

Growing up in Germany, we ate potatoes a lot.  When I read Chris definition of "every possible way" I was sort of amused.  There are so many more ways to fix potatoes than most people probably realize.  I bet that my mother could cook at least 30 days worth of different potato dishes - without repeating herself even once.

Taste of Home: Spätzle!!!

The other day, the contestants in "Worst Cooks in America" made spätzle from scratch.  The show made me realize that my kids only knew spätzle from the packages that I would buy since I had cooked them from scratch in their lifetime - maybe once....

Turns our, spätzle are easy and quick to make. Unlike spaghetti or egg noodles, they're the noodles you'd want to actually make yourself.  The homemade version is much better than what you get in the dry package.

So, I decided to make spätzle  - to go along with the pork roast I made yesterday - for dinner tonight.