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.
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