Monday - In the Kitchen with Sourdough

It's 9:32 a.m. as I sit down here at my computer.   I have several sourdough "projects" in the works.  After getting hubby and son off to work and school, and doing my outside morning chores, I spent some time in the kitchen with my sourdough.  First of all, last night I mixed up some sourdough, water, and flour for bread and let set overnight.  Then this morning I added more flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda; kneaded it, and now it is sitting another 2 - 4 hours.  Later I will punch it down, form 2 long French bread-style loaves, and let it rise again before baking it.  This bread is soft and tastes heavenly!!!!  It's delicious fresh or toasted with butter and home-made jam or turned into French toast in a few more days....if it lasts that long.  Makes great sandwich bread, too.

Hubby helped me butcher a rooster over the weekend.  I put him in the slow cooker with water to cook this morning.  After lunch I'll take the meat off of the bones and will make chicken enchiladas for supper tonight.  Will probably let the bones and water continuing cooking for another few days to chicken broth.  I also have brown rice soaking that I will cook for supper, too.

That brings me to the next sourdough item in the kitchen today.....sourdough tortillas. I used to buy tortillas in the store; but they have a bitter after-taste.  I prefer to make as many foods as I can myself and thus avoid the pre-packaged, preservative-laden foods; and I know that anything I make myself will taste as good or better and will be healthier for me and my family.  My sister gave me a Mexican cookbook one year and I always used the flour tortilla recipe in there.  Tortillas are so easy to make.  However, I recently found a sourdough tortilla recipe, so I'm making it for the first time today.  These will be used in the chicken enchiladas for supper tonight.

And lastly, I "fed" my sourdough starter and it's bubbling away.  There are three ways to start a sourdough starter:  mix up flour, commercial yeast, and warm water;  or mix up flour and water and "catch" your own yeast; or find someone to share some of their starter with you and all you have to do is feed and start using it.  When you feed your starter, you can add as little flour and water or as much as you choose.  All depends on how much baking you will be doing with the sourdough.  Feel free to use white flour, whole wheat flour, or rye flour to feed your starter.  The whole wheat and rye flour will produce a more "vigorous" and bubbly starter.

If you do an internet search on sourdough, you'll find lots of information on the health benefits of sourdough.  It's how our ancestors made their breads before there was commercial yeast.  Sourdough breads also have a longer shelf life than breads made with commercial yeast.  There are lots of sourdough recipes.  Besides breads, sourdough can be used to make dinner rolls, sticky buns, cakes, muffins, biscuits, cookie bars, pretzels, pizza crusts.  I like making sourdough foods for all of these reasons.

A few folks have asked for my sourdough bread recipe and here it is.  It doesn't use commercial yeast to help with the rising, just the sourdough.

SOURDOUGH BREAD

1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups warm water
5 1/2 to 6 1/2 cups flour (I'm using bread flour this time.  Will have to try whole wheat next time.)
1 T salt
1 T sugar (optional - I used it)
1 tsp baking soda
cornmeal to sprinkle on baking sheet
boiling water for oven

Put starter in a bowl; add warm water and 3 cups flour.   Mix together well.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap.  Let it set for at least 2 hours, or can sit for as long as 24 hours.

When you're ready to continue, add salt, sugar, and 2 more cups of flour to the sourdough "sponge" and mix it until it's holding together.  Use more flour as needed, and knead the dough for 3 or 4 minutes.  Grease your bowl, knead dough another 3 or 4 minutes; then put dough into greased bowl.  Cover and let it expand 2 - 4 hours.

After that time punch the dough down.  Shape it into 2 French-style loaves and put the loaves on cornmeal-sprinked baking sheets.  Let bread rise another 2 hours or so.

When it's time, pre-heat oven to 450 degrees F.  Place a baking pan on the lowest rack in the oven.  Place the other oven rack above it.  Just before placing bread in oven, make diagonals slashes across the tops, about 1/4 inch deep.  Brush bread with cold water.  Put 2 - 3 cups hot water in bottom pan in the oven.  Place bread on rack above water and bake about 25 minutes.

The bread crust will be hard when you take the bread out of the oven, but after cooling about 5 minutes, it will be soft and chewy.  If you prefer a crispy crust, turn oven off, but leave bread in oven for 5 minutes.

If you want a darker crust, you can brush an egg wash on the bread and you can sprinkle seeds of your choice on your bread.

What's Happening at Patchwork Acres Today?

Wow!  It's been over a year since I last blogged and I've had to start over setting up my blog!  So much has been going on.

The weather has been very mild this winter.  My son has only missed two days of school due to weather conditions, much less than last several years.  So, school will get out on time this year, which makes my son very happy!

Currently, we have one baby goat, over a month old, that I have been bottle feeding.  We've named her Cinnamon and she will be a replacement for one of our two goats that will be going to the sale barn later this year.

I've been busy making lots of goat milk soap.  Before long the farmers markets will be opening for the season and my Spring Craft Shows and various festivals will be starting as well.  Also, it will be time to start my garden soon, so I need to get as much soap made before then so I can spend time in the garden. Have big plans to put out a bigger and better garden this year.  My garden has been rather dismal the last two years and I really want a better one this year.

This morning my husband, son, and I moved our young chickens to a different chicken house.  Hubby caught one of my roosters that I will butcher after lunch.  Will put him in the slow cooker tomorrow and make chicken "something" for supper tomorrow.  Hubby suggested chicken enchiladas.

I've also got sourdough bread rising.  It's actually time now to divide the dough and shape.   Then it rise for a third time and be ready to go into the oven and bake.  I love the smell of bread baking!   And I really like using sourdough to bake a lot of different things:  breads of course, muffins, cakes, sticky buns, rolls.

The other kitchen "chore" I did this morning was to prepare a head of cabbage for lacto-fermentation.  I've been doing that since last summer.  Except for my son, the rest of my family loves it and I especially love how nutritious it is for us.   My father-in-law likes the fermented cabbage, aka sauerkraut; and I took a jar with us and left it the last time we visited them.  Since then I've made cortido, which is a  Latin American sauerkraut.  My husband likes it better than the plain sauerkraut.  Will have to take some to my father-in-law and see if he likes it, too.

My latest fiber projects are that I'm hand knitting fingerless mitts for a fiber friend of mine.  She raises alpacas then prepares the fiber:  spins, dyes, & crochets the yarn.  She has a knitting machine that she makes many items with, but she doesn't hand knit.  She mailed me a package of several colors of alpaca/merino blend yarns and I've knit one pair of mitts so far and am working on the second pair.  Alpaca yarn feels so wonderful soft and is very warm.  Here's her Etsy shop URL:  www.etsy.com/shop/BreezyRidge   Check it out and support a local artisan.

For the last year and a half, I've been a part of an art co-op and that has been a lot of fun.  All of the artists take turns working in the studio and we get to meet a lot of interesting people and other artists.

Maybe I won't be so lax at my blogging.   We still have dial-up in our rural area and it takes a while to do some things online.  So if I don't post in a while, it's because I'm busy doing something or just not taking time to get online!