Sourdough Bialys and Sourdough Scallion Pancakes - BREADTOPIA

 

Eric Rusch, patriarch of Breadtopia.com, as best I can tell was into baking for a long time, but until relatively recently mostly they guy to turn to if you wanted to purchase gear and supplies for making bread. The on-line store is stocked with nearly everything a bread baker could wish for.

Over the years, Breadtopia has added on-line tutorials, videos, blogs, discussion forums, and an occasional newsletter with new bread recipes. Many of the recipes extend to the global repertoire of breads, and in contrast to Maurizio Leo's precise formulae (see The Perfect Loaf), Rusch's recipes leave more space for interpretation, trial, and error. But his recipes are nonetheless fantastic.

These sourdough bialys were light without being starchy, soft without being doughy, and firm without becoming too crisp. Most of all, the caramelized onion topping, doused with olive oil and sprinkled with poppy seeds were so beguilingly sweet I had to double check that no sugar was included at any point in the making.

Just as excellent - in a very different way - are these sourdough scallion pancakes. I've made scallion pancakes before and prepared these as a side dish, but their taste was so authentically Asian that we scarfed them as quickly as we could.

The preparation depends on making a dough to roll flat, coil, schmear with sesame oil, flatten a second time, coil a second time, schmear a second time, all before sprinkling with chopped scallions.

Then the pancakes are fried and plunked still warm into a dipping sauce included in Breadtopia's recipe that is savory and intoxicating.

The pancakes contain no salt whatsover and yet they are still totally addictive.