Milk Bread Nutella Rolls

and sourdough brownies (!)

Sep 21, 2024

∙ Paid

a bread & chocolate non-sourdough recipe for members (because I know not all of you maintain starters) and for all; I know it sounds odd but you have to trust me on this one: sourdough is great in brownies!

new on bbs

sourdough brownies

Deeply chocolaty, soft and chewy brownies made with sourdough discard. While it’s one way to use up that discard in the fridge, it also provides a really unique and lovely soft texture to the brownies.

updated

Milk Bread Babka

Made with the tangzhong method to yield the softest, most tender bread swirled with a deep dark chocolate filling.

from the september recipe archive

2020: Apple Pie Scones
2021: Apple Cider Muffins & Oat Flour Blondies
2022: Chocolate Chip Cookie Brioche & Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies
2023: Chocolate Monster Cookies & Brown Butter S’mores Cookies

52 weeks ago (member recipe)

Monster Brownies

Thick, fudgy brownies stuffed with all the monster things: hearty rolled oats, dollops of salty peanut butter, crunchy m&ms and chunks of peanut butter cups.

reader review

“The best cookies I have ever made: I stuffed each one with a Bequet caramel and we lost our minds over these. I used boiled cider for the sugar glaze. I am famous for my cookies, but these are a whole other level.” - Shannon on Soft & Chewy Apple Cookies

weekly reads & notes

“The way we eat, and the way we dispose of food, play a huge role in humanity’s growing methane problem. [A new] report zooms in on roughly two decades of data: one from 2000 to 2009, and another from 2010 to 2019. (It also includes analysis of emissions in 2020 and beyond where data was available.) The authors found that agriculture and waste — including landfills and wastewater management — were responsible for releasing almost double the methane emissions into the atmosphere as fossil fuel production and use from 2010 to 2019.” Food is a huge source of methane emissions. Fixing that is no easy feat. Grist.
“It's rare that a jar of anything can embody two centuries of social, political, and historical change. But mixed with a touch of food lore under that white lid are Napoleon's bravado (possibly, at least); the ingenuity of the old Turinese chocolatiers; and the creativity of their descendant Ferrero. Creamy, nutty, and sweet, Nutella and its chocolate-hazelnut brethren are war, progress, and industrialization.” From Napoleon to Nutella: The Birth of the Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread, Serious Eats (I’ve been holding onto this one for months, waiting to share it with this member recipe! ;p)
“One such idea is ‘barkat’, which, in the Urdu we speak, most often refers to blessings of abundance, or material and immaterial abundance itself. A large brood of children is barkat. A flush harvest is barkat, as is an abundance of faith, spirituality, or generosity. On the dastarkhwan, barkat is perceived in the sharing of food, but is perhaps also evoked in its material – cloth or plastic – that can be spread as broadly or as closely as necessary to accommodate the people present. Laid on the floor, the dastarkhwan becomes a site of humility and vulnerability, essential preconditions to community. Pleasure is solicited through a communal satiation of appetite, and the connected soul of everyone eating.” Folds of Abundance, Vittles.
This week’s baking projects focused on what I call ‘prep baking’: reducing a gallon of cider (you can add a handful of mulling spices to flavor it, have the cider in a large pot over medium high heat and cook until its thick and syrupy), making apple cider caramel (with that cider reduction), salted vanilla caramel, pie crust (after a night in the fridge I stick it in the freezer and it’ll keep for a month), and a full batch of lemon curd (I over bought lemons a few weeks back and they were getting a bit past due. I tend freeze curd and keep it in for up to 2 months). These will keep long in the fridge/freezer and will be available when inspiration (I’m thinking of a caramel cake or caramel topped cookies, and and there’s an apple pie from last year that I need to remake for you!).
So, sourdough brownies: no joke, this recipe brought back my love of brownies. A few years ago I had a project which had me making six different batches of brownies in a day. I was testing different types of cocoa (the brand sent me six) and had to eat each one to be able to describe the flavor and texture, etc. I ate a lot of brownies, aggravated my digestive system, and…it just killed my appetite for them. For the past 3ish years I’ve been mostly avoiding brownies (it didn’t stop me from making you a couple of recipes, I would just eat a bite to make sure they were good and then leave the rest to others ;p). But I made these sourdough ones the first time last year and noticed they were quite gentle. Then I made them again this spring, and again in the summer and found myself starting to enjoy them all over. I don’t know what it is, my guess is that it has something to do with sourdough’s digestibility (some say it acts as a prebiotic) but I can eat 2-3 of these in one go and still feel great. I hope you try them (and I promise they don’t taste like sourdough bread hehe).
On the topic, I recommend reading this article from KAB about sourdough myths. Had I read it before I began my sourdough journey I think I would’ve been a lot less intimidated by the process. Much of it checks out with what I’ve learned over the past 3 years: maintaining a starter and baking sourdough bread does not need to follow a set of specific rules. And, just because you aren’t producing an instagram worthy ear & a crumb with tons of irregular holes doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Tbh, I don’t even try making round, artistically scored loaves anymore because they aren’t as useful to me as dropping a lump of dough into a 10 inch loaf which I can slice later for sandwiches that will fit into my daughter’s lunchboxes (my girls also hate crust!). I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you’re intrigued but what’s holding you back is not being able to do it perfectly, or thinking it’s high maintenance (you can feed it once a week, fyi) don’t let those be the reasons that hold you back.

and for members