Savor the Flavor
This mouthwatering baked Brie with balsamic blackberry glaze is a guaranteed hit at any party. The best part? You can whip it up in just 20 minutes. Try it out and prepare to be amazed. INGREDIENTS One Brie cheese round2 Tbs balsamic vinegar1 Tsp honey4-5 […]
Ok, friends. For this week’s recipe, we’ll make a humble Burrata cheese and tomato appetizer served with crusty sourdough bread.Wait – what on Earth is Burrata??Consider it a specialty Italian cheese made from cow’s milk (or buffalo), cream, and fresh mozzarella. The stiffer outer casing […]
As every caring husband would do, I wanted to get the perfect Birthday gift to my dear wife, cooking the perfect meal, make her day, etc., and as every procrastinator husband does, I realized half day into it that I did NOT have a plan!
Luckily I went grocery shopping a day before so I had the ingredients but I had to improvise and this is the menu I came up with, preparing the whole dinner in little less than 3 hours.
So I was thinking slightly Italian given the fact that she likes Mediterranean simplicity, taste and colors.
This was the Happy Day! The day when everything came together. The fun. The Grand Finale. The day you can hug everyone on the street, then get arrested for being weird.
Le Dough – (Bread Day 2) A somewhat more complicated day. I started off by taking the sponge out of the fridge and cutting it into rough pieces to help it warm up faster (about an hour). I covered it so it would not crust […]
I know. My mysterious disappearance left some of you wondering if the sourdough process got out of control or I got into depression following the ‘depression’ of the previous sourdough starter. I could say both. As Christmas approached, things seemed to be getting more busier and seemed like there was barely any online time.
To be honest, in a way I enjoyed it! Ha! Go figure.
A new batch and a rebirth
Truth is that I didn’t completely discard the previous starter after deflation. After reading Joy of Cooking‘s recipe for sourdough starter, that suggests actually using some commercial yeast to get things started in a kitchen that’s wild yeast depraved, I took 1 cup of the old one, fed it, and sprinkled a half of Tsp of dry yeast.
The next morning, the thing was erupting. Literally. It came to life all of a sudden during the night. It was so promising, that I decided to let it multiply, and in the mean time start a new batch of sourdough starter out of whole wheat flour, that took the same procedure as the previous 3 day process, but this time I left it to hang out there longer between each feeds, considering that yeast activity was seriously slowed down by the somewhat colder temperature on our home. This batch flourished! To the point that I had to twice clean the top of the fridge because of over spilling. Considering this aggressive yeast activity in both jars, I decided it was time to think of the actual bread.
Things looked promising! The 3rd day looked like thing were moving in the right direction. The sourdough starter grew about 1 inch over the indicator line (rubber band). Not as aggressive as during the day before, but given the fact that our night temperature is […]
The one great thing about the blogosphere is that one can actually get in touch with the blog author for advice, tips on a certain subject and get precious direction.
One of these examples is a fellow foodie – Nicole – the author of the fantastic Pinch My Salt blog full of superb recipes, tips ideas and marvelous pics, who had a great photo chronicle on making her own sourdough starter from scratch. Her detailed pics and description inspired me to make my first sourdough starter. If it is a success it will be passed down to my next generation, and probably mention in my will how to share it among my children so they wont fight over it.
Mother Sponge
Creating a starter, also known as Mother Sponge, is a very simple process. You are basically creating a habitat where the already existent yeast (in our case in the flour and maybe in the air), will reproduce happily ever after, by feeding it with a mix of water and flour (un-bleached, all purpose).
Apparently the Mother of all Sponges, lives in San Francisco, CA, where a bacteria named Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis was discovered in the sourdough starters made there, the main culprit for the bacterial multiplication.
And you wonder why real-estate prices are so high over there…
Ingredients
It cannot be more simple. I followed Nicole’s recipe that calls for:
The reason for the whole wheat flour is because it has much more wild yeast than all purpose flour.
I mixed all these and poured the result into a glass jar, where I will be monitoring its progress (or regress), by adding a rubber band that indicates its initial level.
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