Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Sour Dough Tutorial I Mean Explosion!

Every now and then I get it into my head that I should be like an 1890 prairie woman and should do more things from scratch. Recently, I had one of those moments and decided I need to have my own sourdough starter. So, like any good prairie woman, I went onto Pinterest to find out how to do that. Actually, back in my farm wife days I had sourdough starter by that was so long ago, I'd forgotten.

Well, as it turns out, I am very good at it. VERY, VERY GOOD.

I went with the first recipe I found. I told me to mix together 2 cups of warm water, 1 package of yeast, 2 cups of flour and a bit of sugar if I wished. The sugar speeds up the process. That seemed like a good idea as it takes several days of sitting out on the counter before it is ready. It did warn to go easy on the sugar. I thought I did.

So, naturally, being the farm wife 1890's prairie woman that I am, I first went to Walmart to get a cool jar for my starter. You don't seal a lid on starter, but I thought I could just fold that little hinge dealy inward so the lid would remain loose. When you are not wanting to use sourdough on a daily basis, you can keep it in the fridge and I thought the lidded jar would be great for those days. I mixed it all up. The recipe says you don't need to worry about the lumps as they will disappear. My jar seemed about right, with room for the dough to bubble up nearly double its original size.




 So far, so good.
I had purchased two of those sweet jars
so I could start some for Maria as well.
Did she WANT to also be an 1890's homesteader person?
I don't know but it seemed she might.

 I covered the starter with a cloth just as directed.
I'd let it set 2-5 days, just as the recipe said.
All I had to do was stir it once a day during that time.
I set a pie tin under it, just in case it dribbled a bit.

 One hour later,
yes,
ONE HOUR LATER,
I came back to this!


Anyone need some sourdough starter?

A few other things you may want to know...

You can maintain sourdough on your counter at room temperature as long as you "feed it" equal amounts of water and flour, stirring it in daily. You also should be taking some out every day if you do that. Use what you take out for a recipe or give it to a friend (but be careful, they may unfriend you), or throw it out. I don't like the idea of waste. Also, if we go on vacation someday I don't want to have to find a sourdough sitter, so I'm going with plan "B". I will keep it in the fridge (you can do that for several months) between uses.

If you are interested in making some sourdough starter, you should probably just click here for a REAL tutorial. There you will find out about Hooch, why you may not want to use tap water, and how to freeze your starter. 

You may want to opt out of using sugar... I'm just sayin'.

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