I have become recently obsessed with The Great British Bake Off. As in, I spent most of Sunday watching episodes on the internet and searching through my cookbooks for the recipes that I would make if I was on the show. I know, get a hobby, right? (Wait, this is my hobby…) In the words of one Season 3 contestant whenever things got heated, oh my giddy aunt! I just love it – great baking combined with the typical British stiff upper lip and self-deprecating attitude, which is such a refreshing difference from the ridiculously ego-driven and sob-story-laden world of North American “reality” TV.
Anyway, one of the things they do a lot of on The Bake Off is come up with interesting flavour combinations for their Signature and Show Stopper Challenges. This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was to make a sourdough quickbread of our choosing, which meant that I also got to come up with an interesting flavour combination. Since Thanksgiving last weekend, I’ve been trying to get through the giant vat of leftover cranberry sauce in the fridge, plus the few extra fresh cranberries that didn’t make it into the sauce (these particular cranberries came from a local cranberry farm – how cool is that?!), and I figured a quickbread loaf would put them both to good use. Cranberry and orange is a classic combination, and I also added some white chocolate to contrast all the tangy-ness. All good choices! The resulting loaf is perfumed with orange, studded with punchy cranberries, and has delicious little pockets of white chocolate, some of which turned kind of caramelized around the edges. Delicious.
Now, you might be thinking that quickbread, so called because it is super fast to make, and sourdough, which can often take days to turn into bread, don’t belong in the same blog post, let alone in the same loaf. In this application, the sourdough starter isn’t actually contributing to leavening the loaf (well, it sort of is, but not in the way you’d expect). Many quickbread recipes rely on the reaction that occurs between baking soda and acidic buttermilk for leavening – but sourdough starter is also acidic, and can be used in place of buttermilk. This is good news if, like me, you never have a carton of buttermilk in the fridge but always have sourdough starter on hand. If your starter is kept at 100% hydration – that is, equal parts water and flour by weight – then the substitution is fairly straightforward: decide how much starter you want to use (ie, 1 cup), reduce the amounts of flour and liquid in the recipe by half that amount each (ie, 1/2 cup less of each), and use regular milk instead of buttermilk to make up any remaining liquid. I did something like this when I made that unfortunate banana upside down cake, but in addition to making a cake that was “all wangs and no chocolate,” I also made the substitution waaaaaaaaaay more complicated than it needed to be. Thank you Cultures for Health for straightening me out!
Click below to see the gallery of sourdough quickbreads made by the talented Sourdough Surprisers this month!
Cranberry Orange White Chocolate {Sourdough} Loaf
Base recipe adapted from The Kitchn. Makes one 9″ x 5″ loaf. I bet this would also be delicious with dark chocolate in place of the white. If you don’t have both cranberry sauce and fresh cranberries, you could use a full 1 cup of either instead.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Thoroughly butter a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
zest of 1/2 a large orange (about 1 heaped tsp)
In a smaller bowl, mix together until smooth:
1 cup mature sourdough starter (can be discard starter)
1/2 cup milk
Add:
1 egg
1/4 cup melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
Whisk until smooth, then pour into the dry ingredients and give it about 5 or 6 folds with a spatula until just combined – it should still be very shaggy and lumpy.
Add:
1/2 cup cranberry sauce
1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh cranberries
1/2 cup coarsely chopped white chocolate
Fold again 5 or 6 times, just to combine – the mixture should be streaky with cranberry sauce.
Scrape it into the buttered loaf pan and spread it out evenly. Bake in the preheated 350˚F oven for 45 – 55 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean with a few moist crumbs.
Let it cool in the pan for a few minutes, then run a knife around the edges and turn the loaf out onto a rack. Can be served warm or cool. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Korena in the Kitchen 
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