Overnight Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

From Foodsies!

Fair warning: while these cinnamon rolls are easy and take little actual work, they do take forever to make because of the long resting times needed to rise properly. It's basically like Do Step 1. Wait 3 hours. Do step 2. Go to sleep. Wake up, bake, devour. So: easy, but requires a bit of planning.

Fortunately, you can freeze them once baked, and have them ready at a moment's (or thawing's) notice.

The reward for all this waiting around: Soft, sweet, flavorful cinnamon rolls that will rock your world (and they're vegan too, of course!)

Oh yeah, the "downside" is that they require a sourdough starter. Whatever. Just accept the fact that almost all bread/roll/biscuit/pancake recipes from me are going to involve sourdough starter. That stuff multiplies fast, and I hate to throw it out and waste it, so I gotta use it! Plus, i'm completely addicted to the depth of flavor that it gives all baked goods, as well as the communion it provides with a slower kind of life.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the recipe for these delicious cinnamon rolls (which I made in part as a test to make sure they are good enough to bake for my parents Easter morning... and in part because who doesn't love cinnamon rolls?)



Overnight Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients

Dough

1 1/2 Cup Sourdough Starter
2/3 Cup Soymilk
2 TBSP Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla
1 TBSP Melted Earth Balance/"butter"
1 tsp Salt
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda

"Filling"

3 TBSP Melted or Softened Earth Balance/"butter"
2 or 3 TBSP Cinnamon
1/2 Cup Sugar

Glaze*

1/3 Cup Powdered Sugar
2 TSBP Soymilk
1/2 tsp Vanilla

* If you want something more like "icing" than "glaze," double the powdered sugar and add in 1 TBSP of melted butter. Stir. Adjust the sugar vs. milk ratio until you have the desired consistency. You can also add in a splash of maple syrup or even coffee (yummmm!!!!) for some extra flavor.

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the Sourdough Starter, Milk, Sugar, Vanilla, Melted Earth Balance, Salt, and Baking Soda.

Slowly add the flour a little at a time until you have a dough that is soft but not sticky, and which is cohesive enough to be handled.

Rub some Earth Balance in a bowl and roll the dough around in it so it is coated in a thin sheen of butter. Cover and let rise until doubled...

It will take about 3 hours to double. You can leave it for longer and I suppose if you were in a pinch you could do it for a little shorter. If you have a gas oven, you can set it in there and the pilot light of the oven should provide a good temperature for it to rise (keep the oven off).

Once it's doubled in size, punch the dough down**. Punching the dough down just involves pressing it down with your hand. No need to go crazy on it, as the following step of rolling it out will also help the process.

Sprinkle a cutting board or table with a good amount of flour. You can add some sprinkles of cinnamon also (the dough will happily pick it up when you lay it down, yum). Roll out the dough into a rectangle***. You want it to be maybe 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick and it will probably wind up around 9x18 in size****.

Now brush/spread the melted or softened butter all over it. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle as evening as possible all over, even out to the edges. If you don't feel like mixing, you can sprinkle with sugar and THEN with cinnamon, instead of mixing them. Either way works with only slightly different results.

Roll it up! You can roll it up one of two ways, the long way or the wide way. I think the wide way is the more common method, but I did the the long way and obviously they turned out fine. The long way results in fewer but larger rolls, with more spirals of cinnamon sugar yumminess. The wide way results in more rolls, and like I said, it's the generally recommended method (although mine turned out fine, clearly). In any case, rolling towards you is easier than rolling away or to the side of you.

Pinch the "seam" down so that the roll doesn't unroll itself too easily. Also, if your ends are messy, ignore it. It all comes out fine once it's baked (and those "ruined" ends can be claimed by you, a cook making a noble sacrifice).

Now take a sharp knife and cut the roll into rounds about 1.5 or 2 inches thick. Arrange them touching on a well-greased baking sheet (or in a casserole dish if they will fit, which is what I did) and refrigerate overnight.

Wake up the next morning remove from the fridge. Let them sit out somewhere warm while your oven preheats to 400. When my oven preheats the stovetop gets pretty warm, so that is where I like to set them (or over top of our strongest radiator if the heat is on.. which in Boston is um, most of the year). Bake for 20-30 minutes at 400. You want them to get a little golden brown and to be firm when you tap them.

If you're eating them now, make the glaze/icing while they cool a bit and then spoon the glaze on them. Proceed to devour.

If you plan to freeze them to have around for cinnamon roll emergencies, do NOT glaze them. Just freeze them. When you want to eat them, thaw them carefully in the microwave or open air (or in the fridge overnight) and then heat and then glaze. Got it?

** Feels like you're defeating all the rising doesn't it? Well, you're not. The rising allows the dough to get gassy, and punching it down basically breaks up the gas bubbles into more gas bubbles, which is critical for the texture of the final product. It also helps distribute the sugar that the sourdough yeast eats, as well as evening out temperature and moisture

*** Good luck with that. Mine was a sort of vaguely rectangular oval.

**** If it were a real rectangle, of course. Which it totally won't be.

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM oh yeah and I took a nice long bike ride the day before to compensate for all the cinnamon rolls ;)

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Homemade Sourdough Bread

OMG I did it! I made my own sourdough!

From Foodsies!

Payton provided me with some of his sourdough starter (aka Barm aka Wild Poolish - what a great name) a week or so ago and yesterday I finally got around to baking my first loaf of Sourdough bread. Very exciting!

Actually, the work began on Sunday, because there is a lot of doing one step and then waiting several hours, then doing another step. I will outline what I did and what worked for me after the jump.

I can't wait to make my next batch!


Begin with wet starter (barm). To get barm.. well.. i'll have to expand on that some other time, since I got this barm from Payton. But I do want to try my own.

Note that the instructions below assume making two loaves. For one loaf, halve the recipe, obvs (including halving this firm starter).

Next make firm starter by stirring 2 cups of flour and 2 cups barm together in a mixing bowl. This should make a dough. If it is too stiff or dry, add a few drops of water (literally, only a few drops at a time until you get the proper consistency. You don't want it to be too wet and sticky either).

Knead the dough for several minutes until smooth.

Coat lightly with oil and return to bowl and cover with plastic wrap or damp towel.

Let it rise (at room temp) for a few hours until the dough is 1 and a half to double in size.

Refrigerate overnight.

Now remove the firm starter from the fridge and set aside.

Mix 6 cups of flour with 1 TBSP Salt and 1 1/4 tsp Sugar in a large mixing bowl.

Cut (do not tear) the firm starter into 5 or 6 pieces and mix it into the dough. Slowly add 2 cups of water and mix. Stop adding water when the dough is soft and before it gets too wet (if it gets too wet, add a touch more flour).

Knead for 10 to 15 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.

Coat the dough lightly with oil and return to the bowl and cover with a damp towel.

Allow the dough to rise in a warm place for an hour.

Then shape the dough and/or place in loaf pan. OR, refrigerate overnight and then shape and/or place in loaf pan the next day.

Allow to rise a little bit more for another 1 - 4 hours.

Now it's ready to bake!

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. When it's at about 350, fill a cast iron skillet with about 2 cups of water and place at the bottom of the oven.

Using a sharp knife, slice a few slits in the bread loaves. This will allow the bread to rise and expand better as it cooks. The slices you see below were originally thin cuts made with a sharp knife in the uncooked dough, about half an inch deep. Now look at 'em! Pretty.

From Foodsies!

When the oven's preheated, put the bread in (leaving the skillet in also).

If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, just spritz the bread and the sides of the oven with water.

Watch out for hot steam.

Bake for 15 minutes and then rotate the loaves. Bake for another 10-15 minutes. When done, place on a cooling rack until cooled. Then enjoy!

From Foodsies!

Hopefully you can slice bread better than I can. I can only bake it, it seems.


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Cooking Backlog - Greek Eggplant Casserole

Before I went vegan, one of my favorite Greek dishes was Moussaka. If you aren't familiar, it's basically a Greek lasagna. It has eggplant, beef, tomato sauce, pasta, and cheese. Sometimes the pasta and cheese layer is mixed with egg and some other ingredients to form a sort of custard. Most importantly, the dish is flavored with cinnamon in addition to the spices you might normally expect. What a difference that makes! For years I couldn't put my finger on what that spice was, I just knew it tasted different and wonderful and I wanted more.

There is another similar Greek dish called Pastitsio. It also involves pasta, cheese/egg/custard, tomato sauce, and beef. It also uses cinnamon as a spice. I tell you, Greece knows what the eff they're doing when they spice their dishes.

So the other day I was really craving something similar. I didn't want to just use veggie beef or something, however, because I am trying to eat healthier and increase my veggie intake. I've also been interested in trying eggplant, which i've always avoided (with the occasional exception in Moussaka, although i'd normally pick around it).

After poking through a few recipes and brainstorming, I came up with my own Greek Eggplant Casserole. It uses a wonderful creamy sauce, so while it doesn't have the thick custard/pasta top layer that Moussaka and Pastitsio traditionally do, I think it mimics the flavor and spirit of those dishes pretty well.

Then again, i'm not Greek.

This is a pretty long recipe, because it involves cooking the pasta, making the eggplant, making the cheese sauce, prepping the pasta sauce, and then combining everything into a casserole dish and baking. But trust me, it's easy and doesn't take terribly long. Otherwise I would never make it myself.

From Foodsies!

Greek Eggplant Casserole

Master List of Ingredients (it will be broken down and re-iterated later, but this is so you can scan and make sure you have everything you need):

1 Eggplant
1 Bag Pasta
2-4 Cups Tomato Sauce (Pasta Sauce, whatever you want to call it)
2 Cups Flour
5 tsp Salt
2 tsp Oregeno
1 tsp Garlic Powder
2.5 Cups Soymilk
3 Cups Water
1 Package Silken Tofu
1 Cup Vegetable Broth
4 TBSP Tahini
1 TBSP Onion Powder
1/4 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1/2 tsp White Pepper
1/2 tsp Paprika
2 TBSP Corn Starch
1/4 tsp Mustard Powder

OK got it all? Now preheat the oven to 350 so you don't forget to do it later.

To prepare the Pasta:

Grab a bag of pasta. I used shells, but any non-spaghetti style pasta will do. Heck, you could probably even use spaghetti.

Get a pot of water going on the stove. You're going to need to cook your pasta, so get that water boiling now. Then get started on your Eggplant.

To prepare the Eggplant:

1 Eggplant
2 Cups Flour
1/2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Oregeno
1 tsp Garlic Powder
2 Cups Soymilk
3 Cups Water
2 tsp Salt (to go into the water)
1 tsp Salt (to be sprinkled on the eggplant)

Slice the eggplant into round sections. You can peel it if you're into that. Some people like their slices to be about 1/2 inch thick, but I prefer really thin slices so I get them as thin as I can.
Pour your 3 cups of water into a bowl.
Now drop about 2 tsp's of salt into the water and place the eggplant slices into the salt water. They'll float. Liberally sprinkle salt all over the exposed part of the eggplant slices. WTF?! you may be thinking. Well, eggplant is bitter and gross by nature, but if you salt it then the poor salt sucks up all the nastiness, leaving you with tasty eggplant.
So let the eggplant hang out in the salt water for about 20 minutes. During this time, you can make the cheeze sauce (skip down to the cheeze sauce section).

Also, your water should be boiling by now, so throw your pasta in.

Once the eggplant has finished soaking for its 20 minutes, mix up the flour, salt, oregeno, and garlic powder in a shallow bowl or pan.
Pour the soymilk into another shallow bowl.

Oil up a skillet and heat over medium to medium-high heat.

Dip each slice of eggplant into the soymilk and then dredge through the flour mix til its coated. If you want to be a good southern cook, dredge first into the flour mix, then into the soymilk, then back into the flour mix.
Throw the coated slices into the skillet and pan-fry til the outside is crispy and golden-brown.
If you run out of the flour mix, just make some more. You may have to do this in a couple of batches. Just set aside the finished slices on a cloth while you cook the others.

Is your pasta done yet? If so, strain it up and set aside.

To Prepare the Cheeze Sauce (you may have some of this leftover depending on how much you use on the casserole. If you don't want leftovers for dipping veggies etc. in, then please halve the ingredients below):

1 Package Silken Tofu
1/2 Cup Soy Milk
1 Cup Vegetable Broth (read: veggie bouillon in a cup of water)
4 TBSP Tahini
1 TBSP Onion Powder
1/4 Cup Nutritional Yeast
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp White Pepper
1/2 tsp Paprika
2 TBSP Corn Starch
1/4 tsp Mustard Powder (optional - just makes it a wee bit tangier)

If you're weird like me, put all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix with an immersion blender until it is all mixed and thickens to a sauce-like consistency. If it's too thick, add in more soymilk.
If you're a normal cook, then just throw it all in a blender and blend to a sauce-like consistency, adding more soymilk if it's thicker than you imagine you'd want.

To Prepare the Tomato Sauce:

Pour about 2 cups into a bowl. Now add in about 1/2 tsp of Cinnamon. Taste.
Can you distinctly taste the cinnamon? If not, add in some more.
You want it to taste like tomato sauce with a distinct undercurrent of cinnamon. Or, just add in cinnamon until it tastes yummy to you.
You can also throw in a few shakes of nutmeg. Sorry, I put nutmeg in everything. And it's like the siamese twin of cinnamon. How dare you try and separate them.

To Assemble the Casserole:

You should now have the following:

Some pan-fried slices of eggplant
Some cooked pasta
Some Cheeze Sauce
Some tomato sauce with cinnamon (and nutmeg)

Spray an 11x7 casserole dish with oil or cooking spray.
Layer the bottom with the eggplant slices. You will probably want to overlap them some so that a) you don't have big gaps and b) so you use all or most of your eggplant.
If you sampled the cheeze sauce and really liked it, go ahead and pour a bit of it over the eggplant.
Pour the pasta over the eggplant.
Pour the tomato sauce mixture over the pasta. If you want more tomato sauce, just mix some more up and add. You will probably want to stir it around with the pasta so it all gets coated nicely.
Top with a liberal amount of the cheeze sauce. Feel free to mix it all in with the pasta. Whatever looks tasty to you.

Now bake in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes, or until the cheese sauce looks like it's thickened up or is bubbling. Everything was already cooked beforehand, so you're mostly just heating it anyway.

Now eat!

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