Wednesday, March 10, 2010

H is for Homemade

My new real food blog, The Converted Kitchen is now up and running so this will be my last post dealing with real food on this blog. Please head over there and follow me if you are interested in the real food life style or would just like to watch how I do learning to cook from scratch.

This week I started with my first homemade sourdough thanks to some help with Kitchen Stewardship.

We purchased some organic whole wheat flour from from my local whole food country market. It was quite expensive ($7 for lbs), but luckily I found I cheaper one at my health food store for next time. The health food store's flour is also freshly milled and kept refrigerated until it is purchased.

I already had two Ball Mason jar's that I used for collecting water samples at work last summer. I love Ball mason jars, because they have the rings around them so you can use them with the ring and leave out the lid for fermenting and then just insert the rest of the lid for storage.

I filled one of the jars with tap water and let it sit overnight because I have city water so I needed to let the chlorine evaporate.



The next morning I added a half a cup of water and a half a cup of flour, stirred and covered it with a coffee filter and ring. It was so easy. Then I put it in the oven with the light turned on. I just hope I remember to take it out every time before I cook anything!

That night I took it out and emptied the icky dark water off the top and fed it. Well actually the kids did. I love to get the kids involved in preparing healthy food. It makes them more excited about eating it.



I continued feeding a few more times and was so existed when I started seeing bubbles. Yes, I know, bubbles are not to be that existing when you are an adult, but I just could not hold the pride in. I was practically giddy!

At this point I am feeding it a couple of tablespoons a day. Part of me just wants to jump right in a start baking bread, but all of the advice says to give it time to mature before making anything that needs to rise, so instead I will make something simple first. Maybe pancakes. I am not sure yet, but what ever it is, I will eat it proudly knowing that I am taking a step towards becoming more self sufficient and improving the health of my family.

I am writing this post as part of ABC Wednesday.

5 comments:

  1. You did well!

    I liked the sourdough bread I had in the US, but when I bought a wonderful looking loaf here, it was as hard as a brick and nearly broke a tooth! LOL!

    On behalf of the team, thanks for taking part in ABC Wednesday this week! :)

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  2. I'll bet you love it! There's nothing like sourdough bread.

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  3. Good morning! I have given you an award...come see!

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  4. Patience is a virtue. Not mine, to be sure.

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  5. Kudos for you! It's great to get the kids involved in the process, it always work with me! :o)

    Cool H post!

    Kisses from Nydia.

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