Historical Sourdough Part 2 -- Sourdough Tomato and Basil Bread

Last March I was given a batch of 200+ year old sourdough starter named "Melissa."

The story behind it was that an ancestor of the woman who gave it had created the starter and one of her descendants, Melissa, inherited it.  Melissa brought it with her as she walked from the East Coast of America to the West Coast with a covered wagon.  Her descendants have been using it since.

My daughter was home and we decided to play with the starter in different ways.  Not all of the recipes themselves were historical but they were very tasty.  See Historical Sourdough Part 1 for our first play time.

This time we got into my favorite bread machine cookbook, Great Bread Machine Baking by Marlene Brown.  I have had this book for years and have loved the various breads the recipes have yielded.  It has an entire chapter on sourdough.

ISBN 0-7607-1353-7

On page 131 is "Sourdough Tomato and Basil Bread:"

For a two-pound loaf.

3/4 cup warm water (80 degrees F)
1 cup sourdough starter, room temperature
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 ground black pepper
3 2/3 cups bread flour, unsifted
2 teaspoons active dry yeast or bread machine yeast
1/2 cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, well drained and chopped *

* You can use dried tomatoes.  Simmer them in water for a few minutes to plump them up.  Drain well and chop.

1.  Measure all ingredients into the bread pan (except sun-dried tomatoes) according to the manufacturer's directions for your machine.  Measure sun-dried tomatoes to add at the beep or when manufacturer directs.  Set the CYCLE to sweet, LOAF SIZE to 2-pound, and CRUST SETTING to whatever you desire.

2.  After about 5 minutes of kneading, check the consistency of your dough.  If dough is not in a smooth round ball, open lid and with machine ON, add liquid a tablespoon at a time if too dry, or add flour a tablespoon at a time if too wet.

3.  Remove the bread promptly from the pan when the machine beeps or on completing the cycle.  Cool on rack before slicing.

My Notes

I use my bread machine to mix the dough and then I shape it by hand and bake it in my oven.  It is also fine to mix it by hand or use a mixer with a dough hook.  Do whatever you are comfortable with!

I used the non-oily tomatoes and I added a little bit of olive oil to the dough to make up for it.  I know, the recipe didn't call for it but I have made this once before a few years ago and noted that 1/2 teaspoon might be good.

The dough was beautiful when it came out of the machine.  I shaped it into two loaves at approximately one pound each.  Yes, I used my kitchen scale.  This doesn't happen too often with me.

After letting them rise about 45 minutes in a warm, draft-free place (the inside of my oven), I put the loaves on the counter and let them rise another 15 minutes while the oven heated to 350 degrees F.  I used that temperature because the pans were glass and they required a 25 degree F lower temperature than a metal pan.

The dough shall rise again

They baked for about 30 minutes, until thumping their tops made a hollow sound.  Also, the crust was nicely browned.  I immediately took the loaves out of the pans to cool on a rack.

The Verdict

The finished loaves were not particularly beautiful but their scent was rich with basil.  We ate one loaf completely before I remembered to take a picture.  The flavor was excellent -- the tomatoes had colored the dough and made the loaf brown inside, which was nice.  The basil was a highlight flavor and the tomatoes added a chewy element along with a light meaty taste.

Beautiful taste

A light toasting brought out the basil flavor even more.

It was good by itself, warm with a little butter, and a good sandwich base.  Success!

Historical Raviolis! The third filling (Italy)

See the previous post from September 1 for the dough recipe and first filling recipe and also the September 15 one for the second filling.

My daughter and I decided to experiment with 14th and 15th century recipes for raviolis.  We had to redact the recipes ourselves, working from the lists given but having to figure out quantities by taste and goal.

We were working from a website that looked like a good class handout for a Society for Creative Anachronism workshop, called "Pasta Class" and found at this link:  http://www.katjaorlova.com/PastaClass.html

This third filling was chosen partially because of the fun name and the rest because it was set up to accept most any kind of herb.  We chose basil.

Ravioli ready to serve of herbs fantastic, Libro di cucina, 15^th Century

If you want to make ravioli of herbs or of other things, take herbs and peel (take leaves only) and wash well; then boil it a little and pull them out and squeeze away all the water.  Chop with a knife and put in a mortar and take cheese fresh and strained, egg and spices sweet and strong and mix well together and make a paste.  Then take  thin pasta in the way of lasagne and take a large amount and make the ravioli.  When they are made put to cook and when they are well cooked powder above enough spices with good cheese and they are good.

Our Redaction

2 cups of basil leaves, lightly packed

1 ounce Provel cheese, softened*

1 ounce Pecorino Romano cheese, shredded

1/8 tsp Poudre Fines**

*Provel is a St. Louis, Missouri specialty cheese that can be read about here.  You can use mozzarella or provolone in its place.  My daughter finds these wonders and brings them for me to try.   : )

** Poudre Fines is a medieval spice mix that came home with me from the Culinary Symposium I attended in March.  It is a blend of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron, all ground.  

We used more basil than what is shown here.

To cook the basil, we treated it like spinach and cooked it with just the water that stuck from washing it.  The 2 cups reduced quickly to a little lump in the pan.  

After squeezing out the water, we chopped the basil to bits.  Then we mixed in the cheeses and spices.  We decided that our quantity was so small that an egg was unnecessary -- the Provel bound everything together well.  We chilled the filling and that made it easier to handle.

Well mixed after well chopped

We used one quarter of the pasta dough, rolled thinly and then scored as we did for the previous two recipes.  

Then they were covered and cut.  Using the same hot broth water from the other raviolis, we boiled them for just a few minutes.  

The Verdict

Success!  This was excellent, too.  Three great flavors in a row!  I love the taste of basil (it is one of my favorite herbs/spices and makes me happy just to sniff it) so this was fun to eat.  Of the three tasters, one said it was her favorite flavor, one said it was her second favorite, and the third thought the basil was too strong.  

I thought the cheese moderated the basil flavor well and gave a creamy texture to the otherwise herbaceous mouth feel.  I liked it plain but also with a light dusting of grated Parmesan cheese.

We did these three fillings as boiled raviolis.  The fourth, in the next post, was fried.

Maccharruni con Pesto Trapanese (Sicily)

The wonderful thing about having my daughter visit is that we break out the cookbooks and start planning what we want to cook together within just a few hours of her arrival.  We have been talking about pasta and want to try making ravioli but our first foray together into my new kitchen was to make this Sicilian pesto sauce.  It is an interesting variation on what we know as a standard pesto.

It comes from what is becoming a favorite book, A Mediterranean Feast by Clifford A. Wright.  I find myself drawn to the simplicity of the recipes and how they are presented with the history of each area.  The types of ingredients appeal to me, too, as I love tomatoes, basil, lamb, mint, chicken, and fish.

ISBN 0-688-15305-4

On pages 468 - 469 he describes life in Sicily in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.  Their cuisine focused on fresh vegetables and seafood, fava beans and chickpeas, eggs and cheese.  Almonds, olives, and bread were available.  Meat, though not common, increased in quantity over those centuries and included beef, castrato (castrated lamb), salt pork, and veal.  Mr. Wright speculates that tomatoes "probably came to Sicily between 1510 and 1540, when Sicily was under Spanish rule."

I have an abundance of basil both inside my kitchen and out on my patio and need to use it up.  The sauce in this recipe caught my attention because it is not your standard basil pesto recipe:  instead of Parmesan or Romano cheese and pine nuts, it uses almonds and fresh tomato puree.

Macaroni with Pesto in the Style of Trapani

Salt
1 pound macaroni
4 ounces blanched whole almonds
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 small bunch fresh basil (40 to 50 large leaves), stems discarded
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup fresh tomato puree (not canned), without skins or seeds

And salt

1. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, salt abundantly, and add the pasta.  Drain the pasta when al dente.

2. Meanwhile, grind the almonds, garlic, basil leaves, salt, and pepper together in a food processor.  Slowly add the olive oil in a thin stream through the feed tube while the machine is still running and process until smooth.  Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the tomato puree.  Toss the macaroni with the sauce and serve.

My Notes

I felt lazy and did not blanch the almonds.

My four garlic cloves consisted of two big ones and two medium-sized ones while the basil had a lot of small leaves so we used closer to 60 leaves.  I used about 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and less of salt.

The fresh tomatoes were peeled, cut in half length-wise, cored and seeded, then chopped into chunks to make them easier to process.

The puree was a pretty pink and the pesto mixture never got smooth really but the almonds were fine-textured.  Mixing the puree into the pesto lightened the entire mix.

Puree

Basil, garlic, almonds, salt, and pepper

With the olive oil added

The final sauce

The Verdict

We were both disappointed in the flavor of the pesto sauce.  It had mostly a garlic bite and we couldn't really get much basil or tomato flavor out of it.  The almonds added body to the whole thing and I liked that very much.

It is a good sauce for macaroni as it sticks to the pasta and coats it well.

I cannot call this a success but I strongly suspect the problem was with my ingredients.  I want to try this again with tomatoes that are mushy ripe, basil that is younger, and less garlic.  I also would add more salt and pepper.  I'm not sure if I would try blanching the almonds or not as I like how robust the unblanched ones made the sauce.

Mr. Wright's notes say, "Traditionally, cheese is not served with this dish."  We found that adding grated Parmesan cheese to our pasta at the table improved the flavor, which we probably would not want to do if the pesto was more flavorful.

One aspect my daughter pointed out was that the dish was visually very dull.  She wanted more color in it.  I wanted to add chunks of fresh, ripe tomatoes, too.

LATER:  While I was eating the leftovers I realized that the flavor was better (the garlic was not as pronounced and the almonds came through more) but what I really wanted with it was olive oil soaked, sun-dried tomatoes.  That would have made it more visually interesting and bumped up the excitement of the flavor.