Experimental and Traditional Sourdoughs For Annual Marty Week

10-grain breads.

Every year, Sue's brother Marty flies in from California for a holiday season of serious cooking. We collaborate on some baked things, but mostly I try to keep loaves of bread around to handle leftovers. This year Marty made prime rib, sous vide salmon, elk roast, Danish smorrebrod, and affiliated dishes too numerous to list. 

I've begun experimenting with recycled breads and have had great success using old ryes. I break a stale bread into chunks and add water to soften. In the two loaves (above) I reused a Danish rye that was insufficiently cooked the first time round so it wasn't a great eat. The original loaf contained flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, wheat and rye berries. To the mash I also added chopped walnuts, oats, and corn meal. If you count the spelt flour in the dough, the final loaf had 10 grains, a moist interior, crisp crust, and enough deliciousness that the first loaf was gone by afternoon and the second disappeared the following morning.

I also found a recipe for sourdough crackers with sea salt and oregano. Marty said they were as tasty as Trader Joe's specialty crackers.

Rye sourdough seeded cracker.

This year Marty and I got our blini recipe right. We used rye sourdough and freshly milled buckwheat flour. Marty fried up around six dozen blini and made homemade creme fraiche. Final preparation: One blini, one (un)healthy large dollop of creme fraiche, a sinfully large mound of lox, sweet onions, tomato slices, and capers. Very Russian. Eat as many as you can and then have two more.

Blini about to be smothered in lox.

To cope with the leftover lox, I made fourteen sourdough bagels (no yeast) with lots of interior character, no noticeable sourness, but a lot more flavor than their yeasted, over-proofed store-bought cousins.

Shaping.

Sesame and poppy, of course.

Fourteen sourdough bagels.

Bagels as they should be posed.

 To make sandwiches with some of Marty's leftover Berkshire Ham, prime rib, and half dozen fancy cheeses, I made Danish rye bread and a Shissel rye with nigella and caraway seeds.

Two loaves of dense, 100% Danish rye breads.

Lest you think even for a minute that breads were the stars of the week, here is just one Marty meal. JAPANESE NEW YEAR DINNER.

Marty prepared 10 traditional Japanese dishes for Japanese New Year.