Bread Alternatives

This weekend was pretty crazy. Although I did a little better this week, I put off most of the reading for my graduate seminar until the weekend, which was totally stupid. And then I rushed a lot of it because I had to study for my Vergil exam which turned out to be on something entirely different. But that is another story. My point is that I did not have enough time to make bread.

So instead, I decided to try two recipes from Wild Yeast that took only a fraction ofthe time it might take to make a fresh loaf of bread. So I made a half-batch of Oat Bran Muffins and a whole batch of Sourdough Brownies.

Oat Bran Muffins:

Oat Bran Muffins

I made a half batch and I substituted non-fat milk for the powdered milk and water combination called for in the recipe and I used vegetable oil instead of olive oil. It also turned out that a half-batch of supposedly a 15 muffin batch made 11 muffins. Go figure. The thing is, I didn't really like these muffins. They were too sweet and just not quite right. Servius and a friend of his who was over for dinner on Saturday really like them. But I'm just not a fan. I think I could taste the apple sauce in them and I didn't like that flavor and I also would have preferred honey as the sweetener instead of sugar. Anyone have any ideas what I might replace the apple sauce with?


Sourdough Brownies:

Brownie -- Yum!

 The other thing I made was sourdough brownies. These were delicious. I didn't have any bittersweet chocolate and so I mixed unsweetened and semi-sweet with a little extra sugar. The result was a very dark chocolate fudgey brownie. Absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend these, but seriously, save yourself by freezing half the batch after baking. While the brownies were hot, I sprinkled a combination of milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips over the top and spread them into a thin layer so there is essentially a layer of frosting of the brownies. They are amazing heated slightly in the toaster oven.

Very Fudgey Interior

I would like to note that, against my expectations, neither of these taste sour at all. In fact, the taste just like I made them with regular flower. And the brownies are really delicious.