Canederli – A Bread Dumpling

It was my early days of venturing with sourdough. When we start a sourdough with an established starter or with a little help from commercial yeast, we can really rely on the raising power of the sourdough. But, when we start from scratch with only flour and water, the biggest challenge before us is to figure out if the sourdough has reached the stage to raise bread dough for a loaf, successfully.

I searched a lot for a promising answer. But there was none as no one can predict the nature of the sourdough. It all depends on the weather and other circumstances. So, to understand the power of my sourdough, I had to jump in to action and bake a loaf of bread. To be frank, my friends, it took at least 3 trials to get a decent loaf and at least 2 months of baking and feeding the sourdough to get it to the point that it can be relied on raising a dough within 3 hours.

But, my early baking trials did show me a new path. As a frugal by nature, I can’t think of wasting the brick textured or awfully sour bread loaves. This made me to look for recipes that use bread, but not sandwiches. These were the recipes that I collected even before knowing what a stale bread is and were the ones that helped me not to give up my Sourdough Adventures. Today, I am writing about one of those and stay tuned for more to come.

Canederli is a recipe from Italy that uses Stale bread. I got the idea and recipe from this website. I changed few ingredients and the method of cooking. A stale bread is not a moldy bread. It is a bread that turned dry and/or chewy.

Ingredients:

2 cups bread cut into cubes
1 cup chopped spinach
3/4 cup hot milk (if using store bought white bread, use 1/2 cup first and add the rest if needed)
3 Tbsp oil
3 Tbsp gram flour or Besan (use 3 eggs instead)
3 Tbsp wheat flour or Atta
1 tsp salt
1 onion chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1/2 tsp italian herbs (optional)
1 pinch nutmeg

Method:

1. Soak the bread cubes in hot milk for 1/2 hour.
2. When the bread turns soft, mash with a fork.
3. Add other ingredients and mix well without lumps.
4. Shape into lime sized balls.
5. The recipe asked to cook the bread balls in boiling water. But in my previous attempts, the bread balls didn’t hold the shape. So, thereafter I used to steam them in pressure cooker (without adding the weight). Place the bread balls in idly mold and steam for 10 minutes.

steamed Canederli

6. Allow to cool for 5 minutes. Serve with your favorite sauce. I served it for brunch with spicy avocado sauce. But it makes a simple dinner too.

Canederli in avocado sauce

This is my entry to the “A.W.E.D – Italian” event hosted by DK.