No surprise, I have been tasked with making focaccia again today. I'll whip up the recipe, let it rest overnight in the refrigerator and cook it up tomorrow. My older boy's getting pretty good at it, too, so I always have a helper.
However, my wife, whom I love dearly, is in charge of feeding the sourdough starter, and I'm starting to think these little "mistakes" where she feeds it too much and we have more sourdough to use than I was planning on are all about getting me to make more baked goods. As my kids would say, it's pretty sus that this keeps happening.
So, last week for the kid's cooking club they did paninis and in doing so it inspired me to look for a way to make softer bread that would hold up through baking, cutting, sandwich making and grilling all without crumbling at all. To do this, I made my first tangzhong bread, with the kids, and it came out really well for a first attempt. I converted a honey whole wheat bread machine recipe that I've been using for years into a tangzhong recipe.
If you're unfamiliar with tangzhong, it's essentially starting with a roux, which gelatinizes some of the flour, and then you put that into the bread. It helps keep moisture in and also allows it to rise more. Here's an explainer:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2018/03/26/tangzhong
Today's task? I'm going to take this "totally a mistake too much sourdough starter that needs to be used today" and try turning the bread machine sourdough that I make into a tangzhong. Honestly, it's no artisan sourdough to begin with, but, when you just want to throw some sourdough starter into a bread machine and get some bread out of it, it totally works and it's plenty tasty.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/bread-machine-sourdough-bread-recipe
Supposedly you want about 75% hydration for a tangzhong, but the honey whole wheat, while plenty flexible and tasty, was a little wet for my liking. I'm going to try this one at 70% hydration and see how it turns out.
Wish me luck and I'll update this afternoon after it comes out of the bread machine!
@BE Good luck!