Rhubarbarama 2

Well, the Rhubarb Tartlettes only used up about half of the rhubarb jam. So, in keeping with the theme (of feeding my department), I decided to be a little unorthodox and mix up a sweet yeast bread … using our Sourdough starter. The starter needs to get a bit of a workout, as we’re traveling most of June, and it will be languishing in the fridge. Legend has it that it should be OK in the fridge for a month … but we may find that we have to start over, and that would be OK as well, considering that the process we used to get this one started only took about 3 days (pineapple juice: it’s the key to sourdough).

To my standard bread recipe I added 1/2 cup brown sugar and a couple tablespoons of olive oil (for moistness). Instead of letting it get a good, long fermentation going, I sped up the process by skipping a rise and prepping it with only a single yeast-backed rise (I usually supplement the sourdough with commercial yeast, because I’m lazy and live in a cold country where letting sourdough rise on its own can take days). I also left the dough quite moist. I flattened it out, filled it with rhubarb jam and orange marmalade (could have used a whole cup of rhubarb jam), rolled it up, tucked it into a springform pan, coated it with soy-milk, sprinkled it with sugar, and let it rise. After ‘slashing’ (I used scissors) I baked it on a lower than normal temperature, so that it’d have a chance to cook through while not developing too thick of a crust. After depanning, I sliced it into 16 wedges, and that was that! Quite a tender, moist, and flavorful loaf! It was really a bit more like a cake in texture, but it was thoroughly baked. It’s something I would repeat – perhaps with a sweeter jam than marmalade, and one with more character than rhubarb.

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