Snow, Sourdough Stromboli and Skiing

While shopping locally in January 2009, I stood in the local shopping centre but found no inspiration in terms of bread. On the spur of the moment I formulated my New Year’s Resolution: I will not buy any bread or pastries this year, I will bake every week.

Now, a month later, I am enjoying the plan so much that I thought I would keep a record in my blog. So this is my diary of a year in bread and baking as well as having some fun, starting with the spring season in the northern hemisphere. The official start of spring also seemed to start the snow falling. We have had more snow in Helsinki during this week than all winter.

My first week's baking was determined by an event we were attending on Saturday. We were heading north to watch a round of the Word Cup Skiing at Lahti. So I decided to bake a Stromboli where a selection of tasty fillings is baked into the bread instead of making sandwiches.

I had a mature sourdough starter living in the fridge and decided on a sourdough stromboli filled with boiled eggs, salami, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

I made a basic sourdough bread as follows:

Simple Sourdough Bread

1 Cup sourdough starter

4 Cups unbleached bread flour

1 Cup water

2 Teaspoons Salt

Mix and knead for approximately 10 minutes till smooth and satiny, adding tablespoons full of flour at a time until the dough stops sticking. Leave it to rise for 4-6 hours.

Once I finished kneading the bread dough, I prepared the fillings. After rising I rolled the dough into a rectangle and placed a mix of chopped mozzarella, cubes of salami, cubes of boiled potato and parmesan cheese on half of the rectangle. I lined up the eggs in a row and folded the dough right over to make a roll.

It made too big a roll to fit into my bundt pan so I put it in a cake tin and placed a mug in the centre and let it rise for another hour. The oven was heated to 220 and the bread baked at the temperature for 10 minutes. After that I turned down the heat to 180 and it baked for 20 minutes more. If it gets too brown, lightly cover with a sheet of foil to stop it getting too dark.

It was an enjoyable weekend and we could not decide which event was more thrilling, the x-country sprints or the ski jumping. We also enjoyed our picnic lunch.