Experiments with sourdough starter

I've been wanting to bake with sourdough starter for a long time. About twenty years ago - when I was 5 - (ha!), someone gifted me with an Amish friendship bread starter and recipe, but, while it was very good, I didn't experiment beyond that one recipe.

Over the last few years, my husband has expressed a desire for sourdough pancakes. He had them once, oh, maybe ten years ago, in a restaurant and has never forgotten how good they tasted. Well, fine, this was just additional incentive for me to get some starter. I like surprising Jim with special things to eat. You know, the way to a man's heart....

Anyway, when Angie of Children in the Corn told me she was working with sourdough starter, I playfully suggested she send me some. Guess what? She totally did! All the way from Michigan! Did you know you can dry sourdough starter and reactivate it later? You can read Angie's side of the sourdough story: here.

Of course, right about the time Angie's envelope of white powder arrived, we had a huge snowstorm raging and then the holidays hit, so my experimentation with reconstituting dried sourdough starter didn't begin until the new year. But then I was ready!

According to an online sourdough reactivation site, all I had to do was add a couple teaspoons of starter, some water and some flour and the process would begin:

2 teaspoons starter:

1/3 cup water:

1/4 cup flour:

Stir well to incorporate air, cover (with a paper towel to allow continued air flow), and let sit for 12 hours:

At the 12 hour mark, though, very little had changed. The instructions said I should see some bubbling and the mix should smell "sour", but neither of these things were evident in my jar:

Maybe it wasn't going to work after all. Did I do something wrong? I decided to give it another day:

24 hours later...Bingo! Bubbles and the sour smell of success!:

Now, every day since, I have to feed my new baby by adding more flour, more water, and stirring:

...Every 24 hours....flour, water, stir:

Now I'm ready to cook! This last weekend I decided my husband would finally get his sourdough pancakes (it *was* his birthday, after all) and I had also been dying to make CaliforniaGrammy's (from her blog: Life is Good!) sourdough cinnamon rolls!

The thing I've learned about sourdough recipes, though, is that you can't just make them in one shot. Once you have an active starter, it takes time to build it up to the quantity called for in a specific recipe. Sourdough pancakes, for example, call for an entire cup of starter. Sourdough cinnamon rolls, call for 1/2 cup. So, one needs to plan their time accordingly. Both recipes, then, also require "prep work" the night before you're going to make them.

Here's the "night before" sourdough pancake batter (a combination of starter, flour and water). It needed to "set" overnight:

The next morning, I added some milk, eggs, brown sugar, oil, salt and baking soda and - voila! Sourdough pancakes hot on the griddle:

Don't they look wonderful?:

I'm pretty certain that Jim loves me just a little bit more now:

Here is what the sourdough cinnamon roll batter looked like the night before I made them - this, too, needed to "set" until the next morning:

In the morning, I added the remaining ingredients, rolled out the dough, brushed with butter:

...Sprinkled on some brown sugar, rolled up the dough, sliced it up, dipped the pieces in butter and put into a baking dish to rise for an hour:

Here they are baking in the oven:

A powdered sugar glaze makes these rolls complete:

Yummy sourdough cinnamon rolls - a definite success!:

This week I think I'll try baking some sourdough bread and rolls. If anyone out there has any sourdough recipes you think I just HAVE to try, please, by all means, send them my way! After that, I may put my baby (starter) into the fridge, so it slows down a bit and I don't have to keep feeding it quite so frequently!

THANK YOU:

Thank you, Angie, for sharing your starter - this has been an incredible amount of fun and a very interesting process, too.

And thank you, California Grammy, for sending me your yummy sourdough cinnamon roll recipe!!

Happiness is...

...feeding my chickens in the morning...





(Fortunately, my husband thinks Elmo is HOT.)
:-)

My husband the hero and my friend, Jen

Due to the freakish two-week snowstorm that northwestern Oregon recently experienced (you know...the one I keep going on and on about), FedEx, DHL and UPS delivery services all but ceased to function here between the dates of December 14th and January 1st. This created the ultimate nightmare for people (me, my friends, my entire family) who happen to do much (ok, almost ALL) of their Christmas shopping by mail and, well, yes, wait until mid December to do that shopping.

Anyway...by December 31st, we were more than itching to get our holiday packages.

Interestingly, one new fact we've learned about living out in the country where we do is that when things start to melt "in town", they aren't necessarily melting out here. Kudos to the FedEx delivery driver who came down our road at noon on December 31st. I felt really bad when he couldn't get back up the hill.

Here is my sweet husband trying to assist the delivery driver in getting some traction to get back out. FedEx man tried chains, but the road was too steep to even put them on:

Unfortunately, all our packages were coming via UPS.

Later, I was out with the chickens when I heard the UPS truck at the top of the hill, clearly heading right back out and not about to come down our way. Heavy sigh. Then, miraculously, I heard the sound of my Jim's voice..."Well, hello there!"

It dawned on me that my husband must have heard that truck a few minutes earlier, hiked up our road and -literally- positioned himself in the road so the UPS truck would have to stop and talk to him.

Roxy couldn't figure out why her master was yelling from the top of the hill:

About 10 minutes later, this was the sight at the front door:

Jim's PDS (personal delivery service), yay!

This one was addressed to me:

Awwww, this is fun:

Months and months ago, I complimented Farmer Jen at Mountain Harvest Basket on the beautiful chickens sculptures in her yard...and I am now the proud owner of my own metal chicken family:

Now, Jen has clearly instructed me that these beauties are supposed to go outside in my yard with my holiday light-covered rooster (Rusty), but (shhhh!) don't you think they look really nice here on my dining table?:

Why, they're beautiful enough to be a table centerpiece (thank you SO much, Jen):

In fact...this was New Year's Eve and we were having a party. Look at this beautiful table. Between Jen's beautiful hen and chick family and Sugar Creek Stuff's delightful place mats from my pal, Marcee, it was an incredibly festive and happy table, indeed:

Cheers!:

Beyond having a hero farm husband, I have very wonderful, thoughtful, and fun friends. I am a lucky girl.

Snippets and scenes from a wintry few weeks

Happy New Year!!

I haven't been good about posting much lately, but it's certainly not due to a lack of things going on. The crazy, snowy weather of late really threw us all into a bit of a dither - so much so, in fact, that between being snowbound, being electricty-less, and having various holiday and family events cancelled or postponed, it's hard to believe that the holiday season is actually over and the new year has begun. Time to move on, right?

Well, as I try now to get caught up to it truly being January 4th, 2009, here are a few highlight/lowlight shots from the last couple of weeks.

December 21st, the first day of winter. Normally, there are bushes and gravel paths and benches and things. Oh yeah:

The coop. I love this shot. It might look cool framed and in black and white:

My husband, digging his way out to the car. You can just barely see our holiday lights on some of the bushes under the snow:

One thing is for certain: we've learned how to quickly transition from having power to being in the dark:

This is what I would do every morning for almost two weeks: Carry a really heavy water bucket filled with hot water down the steep hill to unfreeze the water in the chicken coop:

Wait! Not just water. Hot water *and* hot oatmeal:

The hens were always grateful:

Even when I sometimes substituted rice for oatmeal:

I put holiday lights on my metal rooster. Nobody noticed 'cept for my son's girlfriend, Alana. I really like her:

Here he is in the daylight:

Right about the time we made the call to cancel the big family Christmas Eve at my house and I was feeling really low, I got this in the mail. It was a wonderful surprise reminder that I've got friends out there, even if I can't get to them. This cute, handmade postcard came from my blog friend, Robbyn, of the Back Forty (sorry, robbyn, the snow kind of smeared some of the pretty ink):

Can you see my chickens all toasty under their chicken coop heatlamp? Spoiled birds:

This is my husband decorating our the tree. It's an artsy shot that was a complete accident:

Then the electricity went out again.
Here are me and Jim making the best of it:

And here are my new best friends. Yes, indeed, the technicians from Portland General Electric are *the* folks to know when your house goes dark. Our power came back on about an hour after this picture. Yay:

So, we were warm and well-lit on Christmas Eve. Plenty of lights to light up Roxy while she opened her present from Marcee (Fancyin' the farm life) and family:

Then it was my turn. You see, Marcee likes me, too, and not just my dog:

Oh, oh! I got new placemats for my table. Special, made-to-order, one-of-a-kind placements. Anyone care to venture a guess as to who the incredible artist/craftswoman on these was? (I *love* them):

Of course, Jim got something from Marcee, too. She knows how much he hates onions, so she got him his very own plastic one:

As if that wasn't funny enough, this onion came filled with his favorite dark chocolate!:

Of course, my husband knows the way to my heart is with all things "donkey". He gave me the newly published and ultimate resource on donkey care:

My son, Aidan, knows how to tickle his mama, too:

Uh oh. And then with the slightest of flickers to warn us, everything went dark again. Here's me after the seventh time in five days that the power has gone out. Check out that expression on my face. Priceless:

So, I suppose it's worthwhile for me to introduce you, then, to my second new best friend. This one has proven himself more trustworthy than the electricity *or* the PGE people. I think I'll call him "Truman" (Coleman is just his last name):

So. There's my recap. Almost up to the New Year. I'm signing off now, but before I go, here's Roxy in a basket: