The Kitchen: Sourdough Week

Right before I found I was pregnant with Bria I had a brilliant batch of sourdough on my counter.  I was feeding it and baking bread all the time.  Our family had just purchased a grain mill and bread had never tasted better.  Then I started to feel queasy when I walked into the kitchen, so I used up the rest of the starter and gave up.  It has taken me until last week to start another batch of sourdough.  Bria is almost 6 and half months old.  Wow, I lost over a year of sourdough bread making, but now I am making up for it.

I just have a basic rye  starter: 1 cup of water and 1 cup of rye.  It was only supposed to take seven days to work, but I am convinced it is just starting to seem ready to work today (10 days later). I made some bread over last weekend, but it did not really rise the way I thought it would.  Today I am making that same bread, so we will see what happens.  It looks better after just a few hours.

Sourdough bread is a lesson in patience.  One has to wait 12-15 hours in most climates to see if the bread is rising.  Then one bakes it.  On the plus side, one can go out all day and come home and bake fresh bread, or let the bread rise overnight and have fresh bread in the morning.

Other than bread, I am beginning to explore new recipes.  We had some sourdough English muffins over the weekend. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3241/sourdough-english-muffins   These muffins were fantastic and really easy to make.  We had them with scrambled eggs and fruit.  It took about the same amount of time as pancakes.

Today, in an attempt to use more starter, I am making sourdough cinnamon rolls.  http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/SourCinnRolls.htm  Right now they are rising, so I will be baking them in about and hour.  I have been craving cinnamon rolls for week, so I hope they taste as good as they look on the website.  My kids loved tasting the filling.  I added walnuts to ours instead of raisins. 

Now there should be some room for me to feed my starter again.  My husband has begun calling the starter a beast.  It is very much like having a pet that needs to eat once a day.  I must have about three quarts of the stuff now, so there is a lot of bread and other goodies to make.  Maybe we will try bagels and add sourdough to our pizza crust one Friday.  Anyone know any good recipes?