These Sourdough Brownies Are the Best Thing I Made This Year
For me, brownies have always been fine. Generally, I think they're either a little too cakey and dry, or else they're too rich and too sweet, without a lot of nuance.
Still, I've always loved the idea of a brownie: a fudgy square of rich chocolate with a chewy middle and crackly top. And so I've continued to try them: Whipped, with tahini, with and "without" chocolate, thin and chewy, the whole assortment. At least the ones with walnuts had some textural contrast, some flavor beyond the middling cocoa in the batter.
But then, this year, Michelle Eshkeri granted me a revelation. In her book Modern Sourdough, Eshkeri includes her take on the oh-my-god-aren't-there-enough-recipes-for-brownies-on-the-internet-already classic. (Spoiler: the world needed one more.) The trick, as you probably guessed from the book's title, is that there is sourdough starter in there with the chocolate.
Before you say that sounds too complicated, let me promise you: it's really not. Making sourdough starter is really just a process of mixing a little flour with a little water every day until it starts to cultivate natural yeast. And once your starter is active, you can use it for bread baking (or brownies) whenever you want. That said, if you want brownies in less than 30 minutes, then this is not the recipe for you. But if you want better brownies, read on.
Eshkeri calls her brownies a "good use for any spare starter" you may have sitting around, but when I made them, I didn't have any starter sitting around at all. Here's where this story gets sad for a minute: I used to bake bread frequently, using starter I'd cultivated with Tennessee blackberry juice. During my last apartment move, I lost that starter and haven't baked sourdough since. Bright side: my colleague David Tamarkin has more recently gotten into sourdough and had starter to share (if you know anyone that bakes bread, ask them to bring you a little—I'd bet they'll be more than willing).
Anyway, the sourdough doesn't really give these brownies any lift—there's baking soda in the mix for that. Instead, the starter lends a whisper of tangy flavor that offsets the sweetness and complements the chocolate. The other smart trick here is that Eshkeri uses rye flour, which gives the brownies some nuttiness, even without walnuts involved. (If rye flour is one step too far for you, whole wheat flour works too, but note this: rye flour is lower in gluten than common wheat flour, rendering the brownies as written practically impervious to overbaking.)
Like I mentioned above, these are not a quick, casual baking project. But most of the time they take is inactive on the baker's part while the the sourdough does its thing. The result is a brownie fudgier than I could have imagined, with shards of the crackliest, crunchiest brownie top, the likes of which I've never known. A final sprinkle of sea salt deepens the chocolate flavor.
When brought a batch into the office, the reverberant echoes of "Oh my god, who made the brownies!?"—not these brownies as if there were just some random brownies; but the brownies, indicating their celebrity status—could be heard through the stark grey-and-white corridors all day. The fudgy, crackly chew was a singular comfort in those editors' open-office-planned lives.
I'm grateful to these brownies for bringing me back to sourdough—and now that I have some starter, I'm looking forward to digging into more of Eshkeri's book. But for now, and as long as my new sourdough starter is active, I'm just glad to have found the brownie recipe that finally gets me excited about brownies, walnuts or no.
Sourdough Rye Brownies
Originally Appeared on Epicurious
