sourdough introduction - pizza dough & garlic knots

My sourdough experience began about 6 weeks ago with some failed starter. Now that I have a good starter, Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail starter (click to find out how to get some of your own free starter), and have aged it a bit I decided to try a couple recipes. Started out with some flapjacks and biscuits. The biscuits were terrible little bricks but the flapjacks were great and we could taste the sourness and it was amazingly delicious!!! I had never eaten flapjacks before so it really confused me when they came out so thin! I thought I did something wrong but my hubby said they were perfect. So yah!

Next I made pizza dough and garlic knots. The pizza dough came out too crispy, I think I won't par bake it next time. The garlic knots were amazing, soft and light yet crispy and buttery. I must say that there is A LOT of butter in the recipe and I really can't make these too often. Here is the recipe as they looked looked about the same: Sourdough Pizza Dough

Park Baked Sourdough Pizza

 

I think my pizza might have been a little less crispy buttery fried if I had not par baked it, although it was great the night of I prefer a soft crust. Not doughy but not crispy either. I will try this recipe again with out the pre-baking and I'm sure it will be perfect.  We always eat the end result so fast I forget to take pictures. I tend to make the same style each time - Mediteranean. You can put all or some of the following toppings: pesto sauce, cheese, sun dried tomato, mushroom, olives, feta, and artichoke. I also added fake pepperoni last time just for fun. 

Great to Par Bake if you plan on freezing though!

Now the Garlic Knots (modeled after The Great American Pizza company's "doughnots") were AMAZING! At least for my first try I was pretty happy. I basically just used the pizza dough recipe but kept adding flour until I had a dough ball I could work with and knead because the pizza dough was really wet, and I added Vital Wheat Gluten to the pizza dough which I didn't add to this batch. Here is recipe I kinda looked at over my should while trying to "wing" my knots. http://www.foodmayhem.com/2009/08/garlic-knots.html These are also WAY more delicious than these rolls that I made here, they ended up way too dry and I haven't gone back to make them again but not so dry. Soon but I'm enjoying playing around with my sourdough starter.

Also just a quick note that when I made these, I then melted the butter and poured it all over the top while it sat in a foil bowl that I then closed up tight and put in the oven again on a low setting just to sizzle in the butter. Yum yum butter.