I pulled out my Bourke Street Bakery book last week thinking I was going to make sourdough bread and eat it hot with butter, tomatoes and salt. I leafed through it first, looking at the pictures and pretending I was the kind of person who baked like this all the time and could measure out tablespoons of olive oil without a tablespoon. I found the sourdough recipe on page 50 and skimmed through the ingredients; I had flour, I had water, I had salt, I turned to pages 42-45 to find out how to make 405 grams of white starter.
White starter for those who, like me a few days ago, don’t know what it is only has two ingredients; flour and water. But, it takes four weeks to make and by make I mean feed and discard until it’s fermented and active enough to use. That’s a big committment for someone who doesn’t really bake like the Bourke Street Bakers, at any time.
So, I made chocolate prune brownies instead. I didn’t begrudge the three days it took to soak 300g of prunes in 200ml of hot black tea; combined with lots of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, butter, sugar, sour cream, flour and baking powder, they made delicious moist brownies that were a little bit sweet despite all the dark chocolate. Because of the prunes Eddie only ate two, so I took them to work, so I didn’t have to eat them all by myself.
Mixing it all together with some help from Madonna
The photo test: do my brownies look like their brownies?
