May 15, 2020 - 12:58pm
Quick sandwich or dinner rolls with discard?
I am hoping someone can suggest a recipe (or just some guidelines even) for using some of my discard to make some quick sandwich or dinner rolls.
I know there are recipes out there without yeast or sourdough that just rely on baking powder and/or soda for the rise. There must be a way to do something similar while using discard to give it some flavor.
By quick I mean a couple hours or less. Not necessarily super fast like stir it together & immediately throw in oven to bake.
Any insight or advice will be appreciated!
Share
No one?
I could not find a single recipe on google that does what I want. Probably a bad sign for being able to do this successfully. But I'm going to try anyway. I figure it'll be educational at least.
Here's my thoughts. I'm going to mix starter, water, and some amount of flour. I have some ideas of some of the benefits of adding more or less at this point but no real idea how to figure out where the balance point is, so unless I get more of a clue somehow before I do it, I'll probably just add half of the flour.
Let sit for a couple hours. I don't expect to get much rise in that time, especially since I'm using discard instead of starter at peak. But I figure it'll do some flavor development at the very least. Should I attempt some stretch and folds or other techniques to develop gluten during this phase? Probably?
Then add remaining wet ingredients and then add remaining dry ingredients (including baking powder and/or soda).
I know a clock starts ticking as soon as I add the chemical leaveners. But I don't have much of a feel for how much time I have and how much it is ok to work/shape the dough. Obviously at least some mixing has to occur. It's not like as soon as the bubbles are formed, they'll instantly poof out of the dough. They'll be trapped, just like if using yeast or SD, right? So I'm thinking I might do just a bit of gentle stretch & folds or similar to try to get a nice texture, then divide and shape, and put into oven immediately as soon as I've shaped it into balls.
Does this seem reasonable? I'll report back on my results.
Have you tried finding an overnight recipe? You could put the dough together in the evening, shape and bake the next morning. I don't have a discard recipe, but I did make some nice rolls last weekend from the following (adapted from Artisan Sourdough Made Simple):
100 g active starter
240 g bottled water (still) mixed with 80 g milk (not skim) and warmed up in the microwave...not too hot
2 tbs sugar
10 g salt
500 g total flour (I used 100 sifted whole wheat/100 g bread flour/300 g T65
Mix the starter, water, milk, sugar and salt together in a large bowl. Add the flour and mix until all the flour is absorbed. I usually finish by hand. Let this autolyse for about an hour, covered. Then do a series of 3-4 stretch and folds every 45 minutes or so, keeping covered. Bulk ferment overnight at room temp, about 8 hours. In the morning, divide the dough into 12 equal pieces, shape into small boules and place on a cookie sheet that has been dusted with cornmeal and/or use parchment paper. Cover and let rise for about 1 hour, then place in the fridge for about 2-3 hours. Preheat the oven to 400 degree F for about the last hour of proofing so the oven is nice and hot. Take the pan out of the fridge, sprinkle the rolls with flour, score and bake for about 20-25 minutes. I used a double cookie sheet so the bottoms don't burn. The rolls have a nice, airy interior, chewy crust and nutty but light flavor.
Thank you for the recipe! It looks great, your description of the rolls sounds heavenly, and I'm sure I'll try it someday, probably soon!
I can find plenty of recipes for SD rolls that take longer, and also plenty that only take a few hours using commercial yeast. But I have no yeast available and last night one of my housemates was going to make some pulled pork for dinner. I thought wow it would be nice to have fresh rolls to make pulled pork sandwiches. But I had only a few hours until dinner would be ready (ah... the magic of pressure cooking... amazing pulled pork comes together so quickly instead of taking all day). So that's what gave me the idea. And I know myself: I often don't plan in advance or something comes up and I have to change plans. So I thought it would be a good idea to have a recipe like that which I could put together pretty quickly for those times when I don't have time to do an all day or overnight recipe.
Well. I tried it. My results were definitely more like a "roll" than they were like a biscuit, hockey puck, or rock. So considering I had no idea if this would work at all, I'm thrilled.
It did not occur to me that I might need to score them, and they burst open on the sides. Oven spring! Didn't expect that. It made the shape a bit unsightly, but the flavor was good. Texture was certainly denser than the soft roll I would have ideally wanted, but not unpleasant.
I will have to figure out how to post pics to this forum, but right now I'm too tired.
I'm going to continue to play with this recipe a bit, and I'll keep updating. I'll post the full recipe after I've tried it another time or two. I bet I'm not the only one who thinks the ability to make fresh baked rolls with only a few hours notice is a good trick to have up one's sleeve.
Congrats! It sounds like a success and you are on the road to tweaking to your likes! The ones I make freeze beautifully, and just a shot zap in the microwave rejuvenates them nicely. Looking forward to some pictures (with scoring or without ;-)
Making extras ahead from a really good (and slow) recipe and having them in freezer is perhaps the best option. Unfortunately I'm very limited on freezer space, so I already can't do as much make-ahead-to-use-later cooking as I'd like. I'll have to put some thought into how much freezer space I can use up with SD products and which items will be most useful to have some frozen ones hanging around. I've been freezing SD pancakes and find that throwing them in the toaster oven works quite well. They end up slightly crisp on the outside, so not the same as fresh made, but still super tasty.