Day 141 - Olive Marinara Sauce and Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

One of my side adventures has been in the realm of sourdough. After failing at creating my own, I went and bought a starter online, which came in dry form, and I "grew" it, which involves a lot of discarding of perfectly good dough. So I found a pizza dough recipe that uses the discarded starter! And I needed a sauce to top my sourdough pizza!

Olive Marinara Sauce

Like the default marinara recipe, this is quick and easy and tastes pretty good. I don't think there's anything else to say, although I do note that there is no sugar in this recipe, and particularly in this olive variation, I thought that a little sugar might have improved the flavor here...

SFO: 10

Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

Who doesn't love an oatmeal raisin cookie?

I'd heard reports from friends who'd tried this recipe, unsuccessfully, and I was anxious to see what the issue was. While I didn't have the same terrible results my friends had, I think I understand their frustration.

This recipe creates and incredible dry and crumbly dough. It's quite challenging to form these cookies. It almost feels like you're just piling the ingredients on top of each other, more than forming dough balls. In the end, the cookies that come out of the oven are cohesive if slightly crumbly, but they're definitely less cookie-like than your average oatmeal raisin cookie.

The flavor, however, is great.

As I usually do, I combined all purpose flour and whole wheat pastry flour for this recipe. It occurs to me that maybe there should be liquid adjustments built in when incorporating WW flour. I can't help thinking that a little extra liquid would go a long way in improving the bind-ability and texture of these cookies. Maybe a touch more oil and soy milk to compensate for WW flour?

Also, I think that these cookies want to be cooked longer than the 10-12 minutes in the recipe. But that's always my instinct with these vegan cookies. I tried regular and extended cooking times, and while the regular were chewier, the extended were more satisfying overall.

This is not a definitive oatmeal-raisin cookie recipe, but it's a respectable one.
SFO: 8