As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve been doing a lot with our sourdough lately. As a result, I’ve been spending more time with our three primary sourdough cookbooks. In this case, familiarity breeds criticism.
In my mind, a proper sourdough recipe should incorporate sourdough as an essential ingredient—it should provide a necessary characteristic of the dish, rather than simply getting tacked on as one more ingredient in a list. In other words, a sourdough biscuit recipe must not be a standard biscuit recipe with a 1/2 cup of sourdough thrown in. Sourdough is not raisins or chocolate chips—adding a bit of it to a recipe should not justify identifying the recipe by it.
My best example of this is provided by a comparison of waffle recipes. Continue reading