It's started: 2 cups of wholegrain Spelt flour and 2 of water with a handful of organic blueberries to kick start the invading yeasts.
I am taking advice from herbal wild woman Shawna and fermentation fetishist Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation on just how to make sourdough bread. My second reading of Katz's book is even more exciting than the first and I am planning a Kimchi making session later in the week (gawd that stuff is Good - my last Kimchi session was so long ago and seriously long gone). My kombucha 'mother' should be in the post winging it's way here and I am hot on the trail of some more kefir grains (the last few blobs were sorrowfully neglected and ended up as dried flakes of nothingness).
So the sourdough seems sooo easy.... mix the flour and water, stir each day and wait until it begins to bubble. Oh, with the bowl in a nice warm spot. What could go wrong? The last time I made it I ended up with this putrid sticking mess that smelled like a brewery, only not yeasty in the slightest, only nose-holding. It separated into layers of stinky liquid and solid no matter how often I stirred. Maybe not warm enough? Was my house simply too clean? Ha ha ha.
Time will tell if I am destined to be a sourdough looser, so while I am waiting for potential bubbles I will make the NT Herb Bread which insofar as I can find is the next best nutritionally sound type of bread (ie neutralise's phytates). Around here we eat far too much of the quick rise stuff, organic or not what does it matter if your body can't digest it?
Onward with the sourdough! I'll post the NT Herb Bread recipe (tastes like cake actually, even has maple syrup in I think) after I make it.
Watch this spot for the Fermenting Kitchen's outpourings and experiments! I am seriously excited, can you tell? :)
4 comments:
thats so funny cause i have a sourdough starter on the go too (posted on me blog about it & Kefir too)then i read shawnas post i was like whoa paralell world hehe!
Good luck with the sourdough, never attempted it myself! Looking forward to you posting NT herb bread recipe, anything that tastes like cake sounds good to me.
After reading your previous post I have to say, your life seems anything but mundane. It looks like a life of calm, peace and beauty, you are very lucky and we are very lucky to be able to read about it. I am still holding on to the hope that one day we too will be living in a similiar paradise. I can't wait to move out of suburbia and to a place with space, clean air, somewhere my children can run free...... It is in our 10 year plan!!!!!!! But I don't want to wait 10 years.... I think that I read a post of yours from way back where you too were having similar feelings..... I mean 10 years is a LONG time!! X
Julie :lol It made me laugh to read that - but in a nice way and that is only because yesterday found me at 3opm still wearing my pj top which was stained with yellow breastmilk poo in the veg garden sobbing to dh that my life was one whole circle round of messy house, making food and crying children and I need a break!!! I was in a serious funk. THEN I look down to find some solace in the growing garden only to see that some birds had eaten nearly ALL of the emerging seedlings - swiss chard, turnip, parsnip...the lot! Just little bristle-stalks left behind. Argh, I tell you it was just another reminder that day that everything I do as soon as I do it is messed up and futile and wiped out - you know, same as the clean kitchen which is so temporary I might as well photograph it, or the clean pile of washing that will be back in the machine in a blink of an eye. And the baby was STILL crying!
Big sigh :)
But it only lasted about ten minutes. Like it does yk. Where we are living right now is lovely, but we are only renting and I do have that anxiety sometimes that we may be given notice to leave at any time.... then what will become of the vulnerable-just-started -veg plot, our chickens and the just started treehouse? Life is very much a Today one here because Tomorrow is unknown. But that is true for everyone and the best bits of my day are when I remember that and I do get happy again :) One thing that is a reminder of my productivity (why do I need to measure it? Is it not enough to be caring for three children and us all staying sane?) yesterday are the down stairs windows. For the first time ever (since we moved here a year ago) I washed them :lol It is amazing how much I can actually tell the difference. there is a world out there and I can see it. My Grandma would be shocked. She from the generation who prolly scrubbed her front door step daily and always had her kids dressed in clean things....hmmmmm. Don't know if I could ever summon the inclination for any of that, keeping the chickens from pooping on the doorstep is about as much as I can cope with in the door step department.
Was planning on showing some more realistic everyday pictures of my kids and the house when I don't angle the camera to filter out the mess...
Thanks for replying in such an honest way!!! It is good to know that we are all the same really, we all have our little breakdown moments. Sometimes it is just plain hard work being a mum, the constant circle of cleaning drives me crazy at times as well. I also had a Grandma who could be found each morning on hands and knees scrubbing her steps....I mean what was that all about, how dirty can they get. I don't think that I have ever cleaned my steps, I let the rain do that for me.....
Really sorry to hear about the birds eating your seedlings, after all your hard work, must have been devastating..
Hope that you get to stay in your home for a long time, especially as you are building a treehouse, how cool, am trying to get dh to build one here too, would love to see pics when it's finished.
Hope you have a great day, watch out for that yellow breastmilk poo.....x
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