#How to maintain sourdough starter in the fridge

[simmeringstarfruit]

How to Make and Maintain a Sourdough Starter

[briarpatch-kids]

can you give me a brief overview of brewing ginger ale? im interested!

Yeah! Non-alcoholic right? (If you want the alcoholic one, I'll reblog the ask I got about that a while ago)

Okay so Ginger Ale is mainly made from something called a ginger bug, which is a little colony of yeasts and bacteria simular to a sourdough starter. I made mine by mixing about a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger (skin on, not peeled) with a slightly smaller spoonful of sugar in a little water. You keep adding ginger and sugar every day until it starts to bubble a lot of little bubbles an hour or so after you feed it. Mine took like a week to bubble good.

If it starts getting full of ginger, take out a spoonful of the old ginger and either eat it (tasty and kinda pickled) or discard it. If the water in the jar smells a little too sour or starts to smell boozy, take half of it out and put fresh water in. (I do it about once a week when I feed my starter more ginger) after that, give it a spoonful of sugar every day or two when the bubbling slows down and a spoonful of ginger about once a week or so to maintain it. You can maintain it forever as long as you feed it pretty regularly. Some people keep them in the fridge so it needs less care.

When you go to make ginger ale, you make a really strong sweet tea out of fresh ginger (to taste) and at least a cup of sugar per 2 liters of water. Cool the hot tea down to about room temperature, mix in a half cup or so of the bubbling water from the ginger bug, and put it in a tightly closed bottle in a warm spot for a couple days while it bubbles and builds up pressure.

Some people put it in glass bottles, but you run a huge risk of the bottle exploding if you let it ferment too long and that will send ginger ale and shards of glass all over the kitchen into the ceiling and everything you love. I use a plastic 2l bottle because you can squeeze it and feel how firm the bottle is to see how fizzy it will be. Also if it explodes it's just plastic and not broken glass everywhere.

Once it's got a lot of pressure built up, put it in the fridge and let it get really cold so the liquid can hold more carbon dioxide and stay bubbly like a soda. Be careful opening it, if there's too much pressure, it'll spew ginger ale everywhere and be sticky and you'll lose some of your delicious soda.

You can also do this with juice, tea, and whatever other drinks have enough sugar in them and you want to carbonate. I made a cherry lemonade out of a can of cherries and a lemon that turned out tasty.

Here's a tutorial if I did a bad job of explaining lol. Ignore all the BS about organic ginger and filtered water. Unless your water is like... Oakland pool water levels of chlorine it should work. I didn't bother with the fancy organic stuff and my ginger bug is happy as can be with white sugar and tap water.

[avastrasposts]

Sourdough - A Baker's Dozen TedTalk

I’ve mentioned sourdough a few times in A Baker’s Dozen but I never dedicated a chapter to it even though it’s probably my personal favourite to bake. So to make up for that, I’m indulging in making a whole post about my other obsession, sourdough bread!

I love baking with sourdough because the process behind it is like magic to me. Flour, water and salt, three ingredients, and you can get the most delicious bread. The magic, unseen, ingredient is of course those wild yeast bacteria that live around us.��

My mum was always the one who baked sweet things around the house when I was a kid, my dad made the bread. When he first got into it he produced bricks. You legit could’ve used some of his loaves as a foundation for a house. And I’ve produced my fair share of bricks in my baking career too… But he got better and for most of my life I had the luxury of having fresh, homemade bread for breakfast. That’s where my need to make my own bread came from and once I got past the novelty of being “allowed” to buy bread from the store after moving out of my parent’s house, I got into making my own bread pretty fast.  

I started baking with sourdough about ten years ago when I stumbled on a blog about it. My first loaves were flat as pancakes and it took A WHILE before I graduated from baking in bread tins to managing to make loaves that actually held their shape. Sourdough dough does not behave like regular yeasted dough… But when I did manage to make my first proper levain, you know one of those beautiful golden loaves with nice holes and crunchy crust? I ate the whole loaf in one day. I couldn’t stop. Just butter, some sea salt and that was my food for the whole day. I’d never tasted bread so good. It’s tangy and flavourful in a way that yeasted bread just can’t imitate. 

I’m no expert but here is how I make and manage my starter and my bread. Important to remember is that flour, water and climate, especially the humidity, has a HUGE effect on the dough and the bread. No recipe will have the same results and to a certain extent, it’s a process of trial and error and learning how to bake in YOUR kitchen. 

In order to make sourdough, you need a starter and it’s surprisingly easy to make and maintain. I have a tiny starter, only about half a cup in size. The starter is your “yeast”, a small colony of yeast bacteria that you feed and culture so that you have enough for whatever you want to bake. 

The starter takes about 5-7 days to make and once you have it, you can keep it in the fridge and just feed it before you want to bake. 

So to make it you need: 

Organic whole wheat flour, stone milled if you can find it. 

Organic will contain more yeast spores and make the process easier. Don’t use old flour, check the expiration date of the flour you have at home. Flour can actually go rancid and wreck your bread. 

Water

I use tap water but if you live somewhere with chlorinated water, use bottled water. The chlorination will kill all bacteria, the good and the bad. 

A clean jar with a lid. 

It doesn’t have to be a clear glass jar but it’s pretty handy because it makes it easy to see what’s going on. 

Ok, now that we’ve got everything, let’s start. 

Day 1 - Evening

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoons tepid water (roughly body temp, maybe a bit cooler)

The amount of water you need to add can vary depending on how your flour has been milled. The mixture should be like gruel, not porridge. If two tablespoons isn’t enough, add a little bit more water until you have a fairly loose and liquid slurry. 

Mix together in the jar, put the lid on top but don’t screw the lid on. Leave for 48 hours in a warm place. Inside the oven (turned off) is a pretty good place. 

You can check on your jar after 24 hours. It’s pretty liquid and should smell warm and a bit sweet, almost like honey. If you see any brighter colours in it, red, yellow, orange, I’m sorry, but you have to toss it. That’s mold and that’s not what we want. So throw it out, start again (this is one benefit of this method, all you lost was a tablespoon of flour). 

Day 3 - Evening 

Ok, so if your flour/water mix is looking good, a bit liquidy, maybe it’s separated a bit, maybe a bit bubbly and frothy, we’re all good for the next step. 

Add 1 tablespoon of flour and mix in. Leave it overnight. 

Day 4 - Morning 

If the starter is on the right track now, you should begin to see small bubbles on the side of it, inside the glass jar. It should smell sour and yeasty, “bready”. 

Add 2 tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of water and mix it in. Leave until evening. 

And that’s it! By evening you might/should see that there’s activity in the jar, bigger bubbles forming, the starter will rise up in the jar and expand, just like a dough. If it doesn’t, feed it 1 tablespoon of water and flour again and leave it overnight. Like I said at the beginning, lots of different factors are at play here so despite the fact that it’s all chemistry, it’s not an exact science (well it is, but since we can’t measure all the factors in each individual kitchen, we need to depend on a bit of trial and error). 

So now you have a starter and can start playing around with making bread. I won’t go into that because there are so many good instructional videos online. I can really recommend Claire Saffitz’s video, I’ll link it below. 

Obviously this starter is very small. Many recipes I’ve seen online call for much bigger starters and then discard half of it when they feed it but that always seems very wasteful to me. So what I do with my tiny little starter is just keep it in the fridge in its jar. When I plan on baking I take about 30 grams of starter and put it in a bowl and mix with 100g water and 100g strong bread flour. That is then the base for my bread the next day. To that mix I add whatever flour I’m baking with. The starter gets fed another tablespoon of flour and water and stays on my countertop overnight. That replenishes the starter and gives me enough for the next time I want to bake. In all, I usually have about 150-200 ml of starter in the fridge at any time. 

If I’m not baking, the starter stays in the fridge. I’ve had it there for a month without feeding (I was away travelling) and when I got home, I just fed it like above and left it out overnight. I had to feed it a couple of times before it got back to full strength. But the yeast bacteria don’t seem to die very easily, they just go dormant and are easily revived with flour and water. 

Fun fact, the actual science behind the yeast bacteria is that they eat the carbs in the flour and then convert that into energy and emit the gas carbon dioxide. The gluten strands in the dough traps that gas and makes the dough rise. So essentially, farts make the dough rise, tiny bacteria farts. I love science :D 

What else did I want to say about sourdough? Oh yeah, TIME! Time will make your bread taste better! And this goes for regular yeasted bread too.  By letting the dough cold proof in the fridge the yeast activity is slowed down but at the same time, flavour develops. With sourdough, you get a tangier, more sour bread. I usually keep my loaves in the fridge for 24 hours before baking them, same for my pizza dough. 

So thanks for coming to my TedTalk about sourdough! It’s amazing and frustrating and a real pain sometimes but when you get it right and you get to cut into that perfect loaf that YOU MADE and it tastes better than anything you’ve had, that’s real magic. 

[coldretard]

My babies are growing!!!!!

Yes, sourdough starter is my baby. I burst it from my Coochie. You can suck a dick. I don’t care.

I’m also just going to ramble at my phone because I don’t feel like typing and on the off chance it misses some words makes sense of it or don’t fucking read it. I don’t care if this is for me not you and I will say that every time just on the off chance somebody gets caught reading this and they’re like well.

Well, nothing no one forced you to read this so if it upsets you, please get the fuck out

I have kept my Discord from like 2 AM and it rose and fell so I made a new starter with half of that and then I’m not sure what to do with my two that have doubled since in the middle of the night when I fed themMmmmm

It’s just so difficult but so easy at the same time it’s just a lot of dirty jars and like using a kitchen scale so that my flower and water measurements are equal because I was not doing the consistency correctly the first time although I was using spell flower the first time so I’m not entirely sure if I mean, obviously spelt flower is different And better but I couldn’t make it growwwwww

Maybe after I confidently get this bread flower to do what it’s supposed to do. I will try again with the spell because I would prefer to eat spelt bread. Supposedly it has a more gentle no simple is the word more simple gluten structure

I’m getting frustrated that my phone is not typing fast enough for me so I will look down and it is like hey we skipped like 80 of your words and I don’t even know I guess I want to be frustrated

lol at me

I guess I should put the Discord in the fridge. I should definitely be cleaning my room like faster and better but I’m just gonna take my fucking time cause I’m pretty sure I don’t know.

I don’t know how easily I scare people away lol

I’m just little you can’t be scared of me 😇

Just kidding, you can and you should

When you matter to someone they tell people in their life about you

And that becomes a responsibility to maintain an image for people you don’t even know who only hear about you thirdhand

Secondhand?

Apparently, if you try to walk out of the disco without paying Jake at my work told me his wife did it by accident and they sounded an alarm so I am very glad that I did not just try to skip out with that big bag of weed yesterday like you’re welcome overly done eye makeup ladyman

It’s just neat because I’ve never really seen one in public and then the fact that it couldn’t make eye contact with me was very telling

OK, so the one starter that doubled looks a little dry on top so I’m gonna definitely discard the top half of that 

Annnnnnd now tis 430 lol how did I waste 2 hours doing starter shit and not cleaning lmao halp

It’s just CLOTHES

IM GOING TO CUMTOWN

hahahahah no

I’m going to listen to cumtown podcast because I didn’t know Nick Mullen did anything beyond that Adam jew show so …. Hopefully it’s not that lmao

[mareebrittenford]

How I sorta accidentally made a sourdough starter

I’ve had sourdough starters for years, given to me by others, or bought commercially, but in every case I’ve had a terrible time maintaining it, eventually killing it within a few years.

But this time it’s different! I’ve kept this thing alive for about a year now, and it’s thriving, everyone is enjoying the breads, and I’m basically living my sourdough dream.

All with a starter I made accidentally.

You see I saw this at the supermarket.

Now it’s not meant to be a starter, it’s supposed to be a single use product where you can have fast rise bread with the taste of sourdough.

The problem was that it was such an active riser and made such a large batch of dough that I had too much, so I saved some of it in a tupperware in my fridge for later. Which I forgot about for about a week.

When I finally remembered it had shrunken down and wasn’t really enough dough for a loaf. I figured why not just add some more flour and water and let it rise again? The internet told me that wouldn’t work, but that made no sense to me based on the science of how yeast works. In fact the internet told me I had to add more yeast to get it to rise.

Stupid, I thought. I know better than the internet, I thought. And did not add any additional yeast.

It took far longer than a rise with active dry yeast, but it rose just fine.

At this point I remembered how, during my previous sourdough adventures, several people had told me about the old dough method that their grandmas etc used to use. (which is basically, break off a piece of dough, save it in the fridge, and use it as the starter for the next batch) I had not paid attention at the time, because that was not how all my books and such told me to do it. They were full of information about feedings and discards and hydration levels and not ever using a starter straight from the refrigerator.

But hadn’t I just used an old dough starter, more or less? And hadn’t it worked perfectly well?

Why not see if I could do it again?

So I saved a piece from my new batch, and a few days later mixed it up with some flour, water and salt and once again was rewarded with bread. This time the rise took about 12 hours, and the bread was tasting increasingly like sourdough.

Like a lightbulb over my head I knew. I had stumbled upon the most lazy ass method of sourdough baking around. There was a reason why everyones grandma did it this way! Because it’s so low stress! No worrying about daily feedings and rising at the correct temperatures and pouring endless amounts of water and flour slop down the drain. You just save a piece of dough, stick it in the fridge and forget about it until you want to bake another loaf.

And I have continued on this stress free path to sourdough baking ever since with my piece of old dough happily enduring all sorts of accidents, from accidental additions of enrichment's like barley malt and butter, to almost being baked.  It comes through all of it like a champ.

And all of this with an oven that barely worked.

Bonus? My stomach which gives me all sorts of issues when I eat wheat doesn’t seem to mind this bread.

Also it’s delicious.

anyway, if sourdough baking has seemed too challenging in the past, you might want to give this method a go.

[thingsareswinging]

As part of my journey towards becoming an insufferable hipster, I keep trying to get into sourdough baking, but sourdough is exactly like yoga in that I am extremely interested in the practical results (interesting bread flavours and maintaining the integrity of my human body respectively) but everyone who is vocally into either of these things is completely intolerable and I don’t want to be associated with them.

Long wanky essays about how people get emotionally invested in their sourdough starter like I’m not supposed to be instantly irritated, meanwhile they won’t even say if you’re supposed to keep it in the fridge or in a sealed container or any of the actual practicalities that are the thing I would quite like to know.

[tightwadspoonies]

The Joy of Raising (and eating) Your Very Own Yeast Child(ren)

I know I am, statistically, late to this bandwagon.

Once a mysterious realm that only seasoned bakers would dare enter, the world of baking with a home yeast starter has become much less foreign to the scores of reluctant public health enthusiasts trying to find a way to use their sudden increase in free time.

It’s also because yeast is both reasonably expensive (like $5 for a jar that lasts a while, granted, but if you make all of your own bread, it quickly becomes the expensive ingredient) and frankly when everyone is making yeasty baked goods and supply chains are disrupted due to a pesky global pandemic, you want to have a backup. Discard also makes the food you eat just a little better for you (see below), and if you’re relying on more starchy things like flour in your diet for budget reasons, why not get everything you can out of all the other ingredients?

I, like everyone else, made like three sourdough starters in the last 12 months. I then let them die because holy crap those things 1, ate way more than I expected them to, and 2, I kept ending up with this stinktastic, slowly-fermenting glob of goo (the discard) in a takeout container on my porch because otherwise my entire apartment would have smelled like it.

I know I’m not doing a great job of selling it, but I wanted to make a post that showed it really was possible to not only sustainably and economically grow and maintain your own edible bacteria-and-yeast colony in an old jam jar, but really make it a part of your family.

1- How to Make a Starter:

Before we can really get into the joys of raising a pet sourdough starter, you have to actually get your hands on one. It’s actually way, way easier than I thought:

First, you get the following:

A jar with a lid (preferably glass- my first one was a pasta sauce jar from Aldi, but anything that’s clear-ish and around a pint/500ish ml will work great)

A half cup or so of whole wheat flour (if you don’t use whole wheat flour often, it will only be a few cents if you buy it in the bulk section)

6-7 tablespoons of tap water

A clean spoon

A rubber band or dry erase marker (optional but recommended)

All-purpose white flour to feed

Second, you put the flour and water in the jar and mix until it forms a thin, sticky paste

Third, cover loosely with the lid, and mark the level of water-flour paste either by putting the rubber band around the jar or marking it with a dry-erase marker.

Fourth, wait like 24 hours for bubbles to appear. These are CO2 bubbles released as the wild yeast and bacteria that is naturally present in whole wheat flour eats the wheat starch.

Fifth, once your flour-water-yeast goo doubles in size, scoop out half of it and discard (it should be stretchy, sticky, and bubbly in texture and smell pleasantly yeasty and ferment-y), place a quarter cup of all-purpose flour and 3 tbsp of water in the jar and mix with the remaining starter. Repeat every time the mixture doubles in size.

Note: if you go too long without feeding your yeast baby, it will form a watery layer and start to stink. All you have to do to save it is get as much of the watery stuff out as possible, discard half, and feed it until the smell and texture return to normal.

Once you start having to do this multiple times per day, congrats! You have a live and active sourdough starter!

2- What to Do With All That Goo (or ”discard”):

So basically now you have a boring, hungry toddler that really likes flour and outputs a lot of gooey discard.

First, don’t think of discard as a waste! You should think of your starter as a yeast farm and the throw-away portion (the “discard”) as the product.

Using discard in recipes not only lends a deeper flavor and chewier texture to baked goods, but helps partially digest the wheat starches (making discard slightly lower in quick carbohydrates than traditional flour), acts as a prebiotic (the fiber in discard-laden baked goods is better for feeding your gut bacteria, which helps you digest things more thoroughly), decreases the amount of gluten, and the lactic acid bacteria in discard increases the amount of nutrients like folate, potassium, and magnesium that the body can absorb during digestion. Basically, it lets you get more out of the food you eat and makes baked goods (slightly) better for you!

Here’s how you can use it (remember that measurements shown below are “stirred down” discard, meaning you have to stir the bubbles out of your discard before measuring):

Bread/bagels/english muffins- replace the active dry yeast portion of the recipe with a quarter cup of discard, and let the dough rise 12 or more hours after kneading. This longer rise time is required because the wild yeasts are not quite as active (or voracious) as their cultivated cousins, and you want time for the whole thing to get nice and sour from the lactic acid bacteria.

Crackers/thin-crust pizza dough- replace half the flour in a cracker/pizza dough recipe with discard and omit yeast.

Crepes/pancakes/waffles- replace up to 3/4 of the flour in a crepe, waffle or pancake recipe with discard, and omit yeast.

Quickbreads- replace up to 3/4 of the flour in a quickbread (pumpkin, apple, zucchini, banana bread, etc...) with discard and adjust liquid to desired consistency.

Brownies- replace as much as all of the flour in your brownie recipe with discard and adjust the liquid to the desired consistency.

Granola- replace the binder (usually honey or sugar) in granola and granola bar recipes with discard, and sweeten to taste.

Pie crust- replace half the flour in your pie crust with discard, add the discard when you would normally add the water, and omit the water.

Batter for fried fish/chicken/potato wedges/veg, etc...- water down the discard with some beer or water, dip your fried things, and fry.

3- Preserving Your Starter Colony When You Have More Bread and Crackers Than You Can Comfortably Eat:

As much as you’d like to think you’ll use discard for every recipe, you might find that your creativity (or just your tolerance for discard-flavored things) gets stretched a little thin over time.

That’s okay!

Here are a few great ways to save your starter without needing to feed it every 12 hours:

Fridge it- If you just want less discard, put your whole starter colony in your fridge- the cold slows down the yeast’s digestion so you only have to feed it once per week.

Freeze it- if you have a few days that you don’t have anything to do with your discard or want to save up for a bigger recipe, portion it into greased ice cube trays, freeze it, and then pop the discard chunks out and store in a ziploc or jar. Thaw it to use in larger recipes down the line.

Dry it- spread your discard on parchment paper-lined baking trays and let it air out at room temperature for a few days, then chop it up and store in an airtight container (with some burnt flour in a little cloth envelop if you live in a humid climate).

Gift it/sell it: You’d be surprised at how many people feel the need to buy an existing starter. Feed your starter and then portion it into small jars (baby food, etc... with labels removed), then freeze the jars. Gift or sell these frozen portions by tying a little ribbon around them (feel free to name them and write the parent starter’s date of birth on the ribbon) and sending them off with a little printout of how to care for them.

[zoeology31]

I have a partially conceptualized RWBY future universe, set some time after the show ends but before all the next-gen kids are running around, where Cinder just lives in Patch and re-integrates into society.

She lives in a little house in the woods, a reasonable walking distance from the Xiao Long farmhouse. She has some chickens. She bakes.

Baking kinda becomes Cinder’s thing, actually. It’s therapeutic for her, something positive she can create to enjoy and share with others. It’s a disaster at first, of course; her first attempt starts with her losing patience and trying to speed up the baking process with her powers, and ends with Ruby kicking down her door after seeing the billowing smoke column from her melted stove. But eventually she gets good. Like, really good. She has a fridge shelf full of sourdough starters. Her cookies are the talk of the monthly island bake sale.

Her relationships with the heroes vary greatly.

Despite everything, Ruby gets along well with her. For the two of them to get to Ruby destroying Cinder’s Grimm arm with silver eyes, they’ve already worked through most of their personal issues with one another.

Weiss also gets along well with her. Since Cinder did help them save the world, Weiss ultimately isn’t too upset by the multiple murder attempts, and they share solidarity over “Atlas sucks”.

Blake sympathizes with Cinder, but can’t forgive her for how she treated Emerald. She mostly just avoids her.

Yang would be pretty cool with Cinder, but since Blake doesn’t like her, Yang also doesn't like her in solidarity. She does share tips on mechanical arm maintenance, though.

JNR can’t forgive her for Pyrrha. Maybe they will eventually, and they respect that she’s an ally now, but keep their distance.

Oscar has no personal grief with Cinder, so they get along great. He teaches her how to raise chickens, and she gives him the friends and family discount on her baked goods.

Emerald and Mercury tag along with Oscar on visits occasionally, and take their prerogative as Cinder’s former evil interns to lightly roast her. It’s awkward, but they’re working it out.

Penny is still upset about all the people Cinder hurt, but she’s happy Cinder’s figuring out her life, so she reaches out to her when she can.

Qrow’s pretty protective of his kids, but his parent mode kicked in for Cinder anyway. He shows up out of nowhere to help her out, and she does the same for him.

Regardless of their personal feelings, everyone loves her cookies. Sun and Oscar convince her to start a baking vlog, which has a similar but opposite energy to Dylan’s Kitchen. Same single-camera setup, with each video covering one dish, but she refuses to edit the video, so most of them are multi-hour uninterrupted recordings where she leaves the room after putting it in the oven. Her pizza series causes significant online discourse, but Cinder maintains that pineapple on pizza is essential because it adds a kick to the jalapeños.

[breadbythehour]

Do You Have to Discard Your Starter Daily?

Many bakers know that the secret to naturally leavened bread is a strong, active sourdough starter.

But sourdough starters can seem fickle at times.

Experts recommend feeding a starter twice daily. And at each feeding, you hold onto 1/2 cup of your original starter, discard the rest, and then add its same weight in water and flour.

With this schedule, you’d be discarding almost a cup of sourdough starter daily. While a cup might not seem like a lot on the surface, it can quickly add up. And if you don’t bake often, that discard will end up in the trash.

Do you really need to waste so much starter every day?

Well, that depends on a few factors.

How Often Do You Bake?

I don’t run a bakery at my house, and my family is fairly small. Even though I bake regularly, I couldn’t possibly use a cup of sourdough discard on a daily basis.

However, to minimize waste, I keep much smaller amounts of my sourdough discard. Instead of 1/2 a cup twice daily, I only feed my starter 1/4 cup daily. This ensures I have a constant supply of sourdough starter when I need it, but it is also means my sourdough starter is slower and less active as a result.

If you reduce your feedings to daily 1/4 cup amounts and it still feels like you’re baking too much, you can further reduce your feedings to weekly if you keep your starter in the fridge rather than on the countertop.

What Do You Want to Make?

Sourdough starters require constant feedings to stay active. If you don’t discard the excess, eventually you’ll have more starter than your feedings can sustain. After a few days, your daily 1/4 cup flour and water won’t be enough to feed your entire jar of starter, and your starter will be slow and sluggish, not much better than discard itself.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to bake with it.

Although you will definitely need an active, well-maintained starter for certain artisan-style sourdough recipes, you can still make perfectly tasty bread with a sluggish, slow starter.

In fact, many of my favorite sourdough bread recipes use discard for flavoring to give bread that classic tang. To get a better rise in the oven, these recipes combine sourdough discard with commercial yeast. No need to worry about timing your baking with your starter feedings.

My Secret for Baking With a Slow Starter

Sourdough discard recipes are a great way to bake with a slow and sluggish starter. You don’t have to worry about timing, and you can still enjoy that sourdough tang.

But what if you want to make naturally leavened artisan bread? Should you still discard your starter daily?

Let me tell you my little secret: No. You don’t have to discard your starter daily.

In case you didn’t see my White, Wheat, and Rye Artisan Sourdough Bread Recipe, you may want to check it out. In that particular recipe, I make a levain with my starter the night before I mix my bread.

To make the levain in that recipe, I take 3/4 of a teaspoon of my starter and combine it with 50 grams flour and 60 grams water and set it aside. This essentially mimics feeding an active starter, as you’re giving a small amount of starter a large amount of food.

By the time morning rolls around and I’m ready to mix my dough, I have an active, bubbly starter that’s ready to go. I’ve successfully used this technique with multiple artisan bread recipes and my bread has still risen beautifully.

Need Some Sourdough Discard Recipes?

For a list of sourdough discard bread recipes (and non-bread recipes), check out the full, original post at Breadbythehour.com

[aforrestofstuff]

I'd like to know if you have any cooking skills headcanons!! Like, from who's able to make a absolute meal to who burns microwaved instant noodles.

I’ve done a few individual headcanons about cooking before, but I think it’s time for a refresher. You could call this... the main course.

Okay, enough of that bullshit. Here’s the hcs. Thanks for your ask, anon! ❤️❤️💞

Disclaimer: this shit is crack as fuck because I have very strong feelings about cooking lmfao. FOH don’t interact.

Tornado of Terror: She’d find a way to burn ice cream, honestly. She tries so hard (by god she tries) but her meals always come out as a convoluted mess with ingredients that have no reason being together. She eats her steaks well done and boils hamburgers. It’s a nightmare. She doesn’t really spend too much time in the kitchen, however, because she knows she sucks at cooking and because of this, makes 90% of her diet consist of takeout. But if she did spend more of her day cooking, she’d probably discover the recipe to meth accidentally. It’s that bad.

Silverfang: Stubborn old grandpa way of cooking. He’s got a handful of recipes that have been passed down for generations and he’s gonna carry those fuckers to his grave. When Garou was living at the dojo, the little bastard would try to make some changes to these recipes and Bang had to will every molecule in his arthritis-riddled body to not RKO this kid (not really, Bang wouldn’t hurt a fly). But I digress. He’s a decent cook, knows all the fundamentals and all of that shit.

Atomic Samurai: Can’t cook or bake for shit although he, of course, talks himself up like he can. The extent of his cooking knowledge is only within the realm of “shit you can roast over a campfire when your cheap ass can’t scrape together enough coin to pay the electricity bill”. But now that he’s got that S-Class paycheck and three other disciples to freeload off of, they pretty much cater to his every food-related need. He’s useless in the kitchen. Utterly fucking useless.

Child Emperor: Doesn’t know how to cook (little bastard ain’t even tall enough to reach the stove imo) but luckily he’s got that PHAT BRAIN so he can easily just build a Gordon Ramsey bot 3000 to replace his incompetence in the kitchen. His diet consists of Dino nuggets and microwaveable noodles so it’s not like he’s doing the world a great disservice by not learning how to cook properly.

Metal Knight: Same as Child Emperor except he’s a rich bastard and programs his bots to make that fancy shit with only the finest ingredients. He’s got enough cash from doing black market tech trades and building up his robo-army that this motherfucker could snort caviar for fun. He’s a real pompous asshole about it.

King: His mom taught him to cook a few things, nothing serious. He’s one of those dudes that doesn’t really know how to make much, but the few dishes that he does know how to cook are fucking BOMB. He’s got a cast iron skillet for making pancakes and everything, bitch is already halfway to being a chef himself. Other than that, however, he’s a ramen monster. His blood is practically pre-packaged bone broth.

Zombieman: I’ve said this in a previous hc but he’s a damn good cook. One problem though: he only knows how to make single servings of everything because he eats alone almost all the time. He specializes in meats. Bitch is a carnivore. He bought himself a set of those 500-dollar butcher knives so he can carve up cuts like a monster. He hemorrhages cash into fancy wood chips so he can get that smoky flavor juuuuust right. He’s got an Outdoor Chef setup on his patio. My mans is living the DREAM.

Drive Knight: He can eat but does he really need to? His cooking expertise is popping a new battery in. There you go.

Pig God: Oh my god if this man’s kitchen isn’t Michelin-Star quality. He eats a lot and he cooks a lot, it’s only natural. He’s got an indoor grill and pot chandelier and buys industrial-sized buckets of pickles and roast beef by the cow and— okay he just has a lot of food, alright? And he’s got that PHAT S-Class paycheck so my boy probably has a whole walk-in fridge just to put all the fucking food he eats. Bonus points if he hires a dishboy to work and a contractor to implement a three-sink dish station with “Clean-Rinse-Sanitize” stickers slapped on the steel, lol. But yeah, he cooks for 500 people at a time because he eats enough for 500 people at a time. Gotta maintain that figure, you know what I’m saying?

Superalloy Darkshine: He has. Oh my god— he has a full shelf dedicated to just. DOZENS OF JARS of whey protein. He has two blenders: one for fruit smoothies and one for protein shakes. His kitchen? Spotless. He knows how to cook and he eats like a bodybuilder (because he is one, duh) so he’s got that fridge STOCKED at all times. He cleans like he’s getting paid for it because nothing feels better than wiping down a gas stove until that bitch is spotless. However, his taste is garbage. He can throw down in the kitchen but does it taste good? No. Sometimes the ultra-healthy alternative to something isn’t always the greatest. He’s grown accustomed to putting zucchini in his cakes and almost damn well likes the texture of it, but don’t invite this guy to the potluck because he WILL show up with a vegetable nightmare that’s sure to make even vegans gag. Sorry bud, but nobody likes soy bacon.

Watchdog Man: furry ass.

Flashy Flash: I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but he’s pescatarian. He grew up on a coastal town before being sold of to the ninja village like a goddamned carpet and now fish is the only meat he eats. His cooking ability is about as good as one would expect from a homesless ninja. Like Atomic Samurai, he can throw it down over the campfire and still find a way to make a decent dish (in both presentation and taste) despite having limited knowledge and resources to work with. Bitch can whip up a five-star meal with some branches, a fish, and half a carrot like it was second nature. That’s about it though. He’s useless in an actual kitchen.

Genos: It’s canon. He’s a housewife. He only knows how to make the select few dishes that play an integral part in Saitama’s diet, though (because Genos can eat but he doesn’t really need to, so he only does it when he and Saitama are sharing a meal). Those dishes include things like: actual garbage. He cooks shit food. It’s not his fault. Saitama just eats like a fucking twat. There’s rats that live in the dumpster outside the restaurant I work in that have a better diet than him. Genos just works with what the poor bastard’s got and has gained a pretty mediocre grasp on cooking because of it. If he wanted to, though, he could easily be the best chef in all the land. Too bad he’s more focused on being an ultra-powerful speed demon.

Metal Bat: Tries his absolute best to cook healthy meals for him and Zenko when he almost always resorts to just popping a frozen pizza in the oven and calling it a day. I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but he eats his shit BURNT. Bitch like his steak well done, his yolks grey, and his chicken vaporized. The only exception to this is sushi because there really is no other way to enjoy it other than having it raw. Trust me, though. If there was a way to burn the fuck out of sashimi while still having it be sashimi, he’d find a way to do it and like it. But yeah, as I said: he sucks ass at cooking. He’s tried the tutorials, he’s bought the skillets, he’s sharpened the knives, but he just can’t fucking do it.

Tanktop Master: Same as Superalloy. They bond over gross-ass ultra-healthy recipes that only they enjoy. The Tanktop Gang loves him but they always kindly refuse to eat over at his house because they know he’s gonna try to make them ingest a broccoli loaf or some shit. He’s not too strict about his diet, though. He’ll chill out and have a pizza every once and a while, but only when he’s hanging out with the homies.

Puri-Puri Prisoner: He has a job in prison where he helps out in the kitchen for seventy-five cents an hour, but that’s about the extent of it. He’s got the bare basics down and could put together a decent meal for date night if he really tried (and had a damn kitchen to work with). On top of that, he can throw down some tasty prison food recipes, hand-crafted from the brick box itself. Ramen pad Thai, anyone?

Amai Mask: he’s rich as fuck, why does he need to cook? Bitch hired a chef and now all he does it drink skim milk and eat food from the top shelf. He couldn’t fry an egg if his life depended on it. Poor bastard doesn’t even know what a whisk is. And don’t even get me started on how much of a slob he is. The ten-minute process of making a single plate of spaghetti will have his kitchen in such a disgusting state that it’ll take him and a trusty Mister Clean Magic Eraser five hours just to clean it up. That is, if he even has the basic human decency to pick up after himself. He’ll probably just hire someone to do for him and then tip them a crisp 100-dollar bill for their troubles, only to make an even worse mess tomorrow.

Iaian: I’ve said this before in a previous hc, but yes: he can cook. It’s nothing special. He’s got a suburban dad sense of cooking where he, like King, can only make a select few dishes but makes those dishes taste magical. He’s got 0 utensils and shit kitchen to work with (because Kami’s place is probably like, centuries old on account of him still being a Samurai), but boy can Iaian whip up a feast like no other despite all that. It’s all protein-packed flavor bombs that look simple in comparison to, say, Zombieman or Metal Knight’s food, but it still tastes good all the same. Kama eats off of his plate all the time and it used to annoy him but they’ve grown so close that they might as well share forks at this point.

Okamaitachi: Can’t really cook, but they are a baking god. I don’t know much about baking but I know they’ve got a cupboard dedicated to their plethora of sourdough starters. They buy yeast by the pound and make enough bread to feed entire armies some days. Whatever the gang doesn’t eat, they donate it to the local homeless shelter and make it a habit to go out of their way performing good deeds that don’t always involve sword fighting (something Kami insists he instilled into them via his teachings— which is bullshit. Kama is just naturally good-hearted and sweet).

Bushidrill: Can’t cook or bake for shit but like Atomic Samurai and Flash, can throw it down on the campfire. Don’t let this man near any turkeys or pigs because he will spitroast the fuck out of them.

Fubuki: Okay, not only is she a great cook but she’s as dogmatic as a coked-out head chef. She and the Blizzard Group sometimes cook together in her massive kitchen (she poured all of her measly paycheck into it because by god, if her apartment doesn’t have a kitchen fit for a chef then it’s not worth living in), and she’ll be barking orders like a damn crow. She’s got the two-grand knife set, cast-iron everything, bronze accents on the sink, and the ability to deglaze a pan without starting a fire. She’s a natural. If she cooks for you, then that’s how you know she likes you. All in all, her food tastes and looks great. She’s a bit low on funds on account of being only Class-B, so she sometimes takes little shortcuts when plating her dishes, like using celery leaves in place of parsley and all that jazz.

Saitama: I’ve already said that his diet is absolute shit and part of that is due to being poor, but I will show mercy and say that he’s a decent cook. He only makes what he knows he’s gonna like and doesn’t leave any room for experimentation unless his budget allows it (which isn’t often). His kitchen only has the bare essentials. Genos has offered to buy him more equipment and even renovate the damn thing for him but Saitama refuses each time because then he’d have a bigass kitchen just for making a poor man’s omurice, and that would be a waste. His talent, though? Making a perfect omelet. He can fold the egg like a sheet with no tears and no brown spots. It tastes heavenly.

Mumen Rider: Ultra-safe in the kitchen. He doesn’t even own a knife sharpener because he’s clumsy enough to know he’ll cut himself the moment he even tries to use it. His pot handles all have coverings and he’s watched all of the food safety and fire safety videos out there. He could give a goddamned seminar on it. Food-wise, he’s a decent home cook. Nothing special. He does, however, share Superalloy and Tanktop’s nasty habit of over healthy-ing everything to oblivion and making it a tasteless, vegetative mess. It doesn’t matter if you invite him to the potluck or not because he’ll bring a cauliflower pizza anyway and y’all better fucking enjoy it or he’ll start crying.

Sonic: The same as Flashy Flash, minus the pescatarianism. He’d butcher a pig without blinking an eye, and often uses his katana in cooking (even though it poses like, 87 different safety hazards and is most definitely health violation). He can forage quite well and has taken a liking to wild mushrooms and berries over the years. It’s gotten so natural to him that he now knows by heart the specific time of year in which the wild berries are ripest, and which species of salmon inhabit certain streams on any given day.

Garou: Would burn water. End of story. His cooking is so bad and dangerous that everyone thinks he’s an arsonist when he really just starts fires on accident. Don’t let this fucker near a stove, for the love of god.

[secondhand-trash]

Ashido Mina(BNHA)- Spring Flowers

A/N: I know that this is way earlier than the time I’m supposed to post this but I will be in an examination hall at that time so I decided to post it now uwu this is the fic I wrote for @bakuismybitch for the @/bnhaclaimedmysoul spring time event^^ sorry that I haven’t been messaging you as much as I should and that this falls short comparing to my other stuff, I kinda overestimated my ability to balance life qwq

Description: you might not be able to go out to enjoy spring as you want to but Mina is determined to bring spring to you.

Word count: 1735

When quarantine was first announced, Mina had expected that she would be the one badly hit by all this. She was the energetic one in this duo, the one that couldn’t go a day without being around other people and the one who wants to go out. If one of you would go insane because of being trapped inside he confines of your house, she could almost bet on her last existing brain cells that it would be her.

And oh boy was she wrong.

At first, you seemed to be rather indifferent by all this. “It would be fine,” you had said when her hands flailed around while she whined about how long it would be until you could do all the things you liked to do again, “there are plenty of things we can do while being inside!” You were the one who would make her get up early in the morning despite no longer having a schedule because you read that maintaining your regular habits was good for the mind. There were pages of home workout videos and craft tutorials on the search history of you browser, she was still astonished that you managed to find so many different way to sew puppets out of old socks. You had took upon yourself to make something different for lunch every single day and she had to practically beg you to stop baking after having sourdough for a week consecutively because you wanted to test out all sorts of recipes and fresh bread doesn’t last long. So, which she would now scold herself for being so stupidly optimistic but didn’t know any better at that point, she was truly convinced that the only issue you would have is the eventually shortage of space to accommodate all your creations that spawned from your boredom.

She knew that something was wrong the moment she woke up one morning and saw that it was way past the time you would usually wake her up at. It was a gradual change, but the more she picked up on your wilting spirit the more concerned she was. Lunch started repeating, you nearly forgot to feed your starter one week until she asked about the little jar of dough in your fridge, you started breaking ramen into pieces and call it a snack. She could see you physically spiraling down and it was very worrying to witness. 

The breaking point when she realised that she had to step in and pull you back was when she walked out of the room one night and saw you wrapping yourself under a cocoon made out of blankets with a nutella jar in your hand, your eyes an empty void as you stared at the glowing television. No lights on, no anything, just the pale light from the screen shining on your face and making you look so souless. Mina’s eyes travelled back and forth between your still frame and the television. Why were you watching the weather channel at 1?

“...Are you ok?”

No response, you didn’t even move. Gingerly, she climbed onto the couch next to you and gave your shoulder a light poke. “(y/n)?"

Nothing, not even a budge. You jumped when she called for your name again, this time louder and with a bit of a squeak to her voice. Clumsily, clutching the jar that nearly dropped, you coughed in embarrassment. “Oh, mina,” you chuckled almost too stiffly that it sounded more like a huff, “you’re still awake?”

“Yeah...” she narrowed her eyes, “what are you doing?”

“Ah, you see,” you put down the jar of chocolate spread, pilling the blanket away from your body as you gave your nose a light scratch before continue, sounding almost way too matter-of-factly considering how eerie this all was, “I was thinking that since we can’t go out, maybe I’ll imagine what it is like everywhere else to make it remind myself of what spring looks like.”

All the little cogwheels that had been spinning and spinning in her mind finally clicked into place when she realised what all of this was about. Spring, yes, it was spring already. She didn’t even remember that it was already a good quarter into the year with how long she had been staying in but you sure did. You had always thrived during spring, something about the smell of grass in the humid air and the warmth that was seeping back from the winter cold always put you in a constant good mood. So the fact that this bit of joy was no longer available had put you in a slump that you were sinking deeper and deeper into made total sense.

“Guess I should go to bed now,” you said nonchalantly, as if you weren’t staring at a slow motion shot of a random place in the world like a zombie just mere seconds ago. You collected the half-finished jar of nutella and hoisted the blanket in your arms, looking at your very dazed girlfriend like she was the one who was doing something weird, “You coming?”

“Yeah,” Mina said as she scurried up, thinking of what she could possibly do to stop you from finding comfort in the weather channel, “yeah.”

You woke up to the sound of pots banging and cabinet doors slamming shut, a squeal mixing in between at times. Your foggy morning mind was telling you to go back to bed, that you did not have the energy to handle whatever it was that your girlfriend was up to. But just as you were about to flip onto your other side and take up the now spared up vacancy on your luring mattress, a sharp screech followed by a series of profanities made every hair at the back of your neck stood up. You sighed, no longer feeling even an ounce of sleepiness and rolled so you were facing the ceiling.

You needed to go check if she is alive, didn’t you?

Poking your head from the door, you could see Mina carefully pinching a piece of bread with the very tip of her thumb and index finger. She was almost flinging it into the pan before quickly retreating her hand as fast as she could. The sizzling echoed through the kitchen and you watched as she poked the bread with the spatula with caution.

“Mina?” You tilted your head when she snapped her head up, yellow eyes widening when she saw your confused face, “What are you doing?”

She didn’t say anything so you looked past her shoulders to look at what’s in the frying pan. If anything, your confusion had only grown. The bread was soggy, the edges browning and sticking to the bottom of the pan. There were clear stains of what was put in there before left around the bottom, some already starting to burn into black char.

“Mina what are you making?” You asked and your girlfriend scratched the back of her neck rather sheepishly.

“This was supposed to be a surprise,” she said, “I was gonna make you breakfast.”

“Aw that’s so sweet!” You cooed and then you finally connected the dots of what she was trying to do deconstructing the kitchen so early in the morning, “Is this... French toast?”

“Yeah!” She chirped, literally scratching at the pan to flip the frying toast and it made your heart ache at how it was likely that you were to say goodbye to that pan after this, “Is it not obvious?”

You blinked, not having the heart to tell her that you would have no clue if you simply stare at the pile of burned bread that was placed on a plate. “Did you add any butter to the pan?” You asked, referring to the burn that stuck to the pan.

“...you need to do that?”

You chuckled, “Do you need help?”

“What? No!” She flailed her hands in the air as she tried to push you out of the kitchen, “Just chill around and wait for the food! This is about you, I don’t want you to even lift a finger!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” She exclaimed, shooing you out of the kitchen, “It’ll be done in a few.”

“Ok,” you said rather skeptically, “just... call for me if you need anything.”

It didn’t take long for you to hear another groan from the kitchen and for Mina to weakly beckon you for help. You laughed, knowing exactly that this was bound to happen.

With a good square of butter in the pan and some relentless scraping later, you had the plates of toast on the table with a generous amount of syrup on top. You eyed Mina curiously when she didn’t sit down, running around the house and grabbing the computer in her hand.

“Mina what are you doing now?” You said, almost not sure if you find this amusing or confusing.

“You see,” she said as she turned on the computer, “I know that you like spring and you’re sad that we don’t get to experience the season, so I decided to do something fun and have a picnic indoors!”

You snorted when she pulled up a picture of the lily fields at a nearby park and placed it right by the table. A gif of butterflies on her phone which she carefully steadied with a mug. “You know how those youtubers like to use have a fake fireplace in their backdrop?” She said, seemingly pleased with her little set up, “I figured we can do the exact same thing but with flowers.”

This whole thing was a bit funny, if you were being honest but warmth bubbled up inside of you at the thought of Mina going out of her way just to make things a little bit more enjoyable for you. You laughed when she lined up your sock muppets and arranged them in a circle, going as far as to putting an empty cup in front of them.

“What is a picnic without friends?” She winked as she poured out a glass of orange juice for you. Raising her glass, you grinned at how hard she was trying to put on her serious face. 

“Cheers to spring?”

You smiled. The glowing screen might not even come close to the real thing, but you still felt the fresh giddiness that the spring flowers would always bring you.

“Cheers to spring.”

[corneliusthesourdough]

Master Recipe

This recipe is very similar to the master recipe on foodbodsourdough.com, but with some added helpful tips from my gracious Mother, who has been my sourdough guide through this entire journey. I have had nothing but success with this process, but I am in no way an expert. I recommend checking out other recipes and resources for more inspiration and guidance!

Total time is about 24 hours (or longer depending on how long you cold-ferment) from start to finish but requires very little time hands-on. Makes one big loaf.

When starter is at its most active, weigh 50g starter into a bowl and add 350g water. Mix them with hands until starter is mostly dissolved.

In another larger bowl, weigh 500g unbleached flour and 11g salt. Combine well.

Pour the liquid starter into the flour and fold/smush together in the bowl until all the flour is mostly combined. The dough will be ragged (shaggy) and a bit wet. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, a plastic bag, or shower cap. Let sit for about an hour.

After an hour, and while still working in the bowl, go ahead and do a fair amount of stretch-and-folds (I haven’t counted, but something like 20-30). You don’t need to get it super tight, just until you’ve got a smooth-ish ball of dough. For the next 2-4 hours, come back to your dough every 30-60 minutes and do a few stretch-and-folds. After the first round, you will only need to do a few stretch-and-folds each time (I do about 4-6 per round). There’s no golden rule for time in between or amount of folds, but the more the merrier! Cover and leave on counter between rounds.

Now your dough is ready to be covered again and bulk-ferment. At room temperature, this takes about 8-12 hours. Warmer goes faster, colder goes slower. I usually put it somewhere colder overnight and then bring it to room-temp or warmer at the end. You’re looking for your dough to at least double in size and be nice and jiggly. Its fun to ferment in a glass bowl to see the bubbles!

I test it by poking a hole with a wet finger and looking for it to spring back at least halfway, leaving just a little divot. If you made a double recipe, you should divide your dough into loaves after this fermentation.

Now you do a final round of stretch and folds, either in the bowl or on the counter is fine. You don’t want to overwork the dough at this point in order to preserve the air pockets and bounciness. After that round, I plop it on the counter to develop the skin. You can either dust the counter with flour or wet it. Both prevent sticking, but I find that a little bit of stickiness helps push the dough together, so don’t keep adding flour. I find my scraper works great for this process by pushing under the edge of the dough towards the center while turning it gently against my hand. You can also just use your hands, which may work better in a bowl. You’re trying to stretch the top of the dough outwards and down to get a tight skin and a more spherical shape. Basically, the goal is to create tension in the dough for it to rise into. If bubbles form near the surface, just gently pinch them. I do this skin-tightening until it’s a great little bouncy ball, then let it sit for 20-60 minutes, then repeat once more. I’m sure you could get away with just one round though.  Now your dough is ready to go in its proofing basket (banneton)! Lift it gently and place it in the rice-floured banneton/basket with the nice skin facing down, lumpy bottom facing up. You can dust with some more rice flour to make sure nothing sticks. Cover and pop it in the fridge.

If you want to roll your dough in seeds, do this before it goes in the banneton. (Wet the top of the dough and roll in seeds before placing seed-side down.)

This part is the final proof or cold-ferment, where the dough develops its signature flavour and stability. I’ve heard minimum is 3 hours, but I usually aim for 10 hours. If I’m not super confident in my dough, I let it sit for closer to 24 hours in order to develop more stability. You’re ready to bake! A good trick to keep the bottom of the dough from burning is to preheat the oven to 500˚F and reduce it to 450˚F when the dough goes in. This is so the bottom element of the oven won’t come on for a long time. I also pop a baking pan on the rack below to protect it from direct heat.

I preheat the roasting pan as well, but many bakers don’t. Enamel pans heat up and cool down very quickly, so it doesn’t make as much of a difference as with cast-iron.

From your banneton, place a sheet of parchment paper overtop and then a cutting board or plate. Flip the whole thing over so your dough is right-side-up, on the parchment paper. Another dusting of flour (can be wheat flour) will make your score-patterns stand out more for purely aesthetic reasons.

Now you need to score your dough to allow it to open up and expand! Don’t be shy and cut deep, at least ¼ inch. You’ll want to do at least one big score that is surprisingly deep so it has lots of space to grow. My personal favourite is three big scores towards the middle, but I’m getting bolder with more intricate patterns now. After the big scores, feel free to get creative with designs such as leaves (which are just tiny little scores). Look up examples of patterns!

Now, without burning your knuckles, lift the parchment paper and drop it in the roaster. I like to pop a couple ice cubes between the parchment and the roaster to keep it moist. Lid (or tinfoil tent) on, and in the oven she goes!

Now for the hardest part… No peaking!!! You want to maintain moisture and even temperature. You do get to open the oven once, after 30-35 minutes, to take the lid off and let it brown. Once the lid is off, it should take about 25-30 minutes to finish baking. If you have a proper thermometer, the internal temperature should be 205-210˚F, but I have never had to bake it longer.

Carefully lift the parchment paper and place on a cooling rack, then slide the paper out from underneath.

Okay I lied. This my be the hardest part! Do not slice too early! Seriously, it will likely be gluey and sad. I would say wait for absolutely a minimum of 2 hours, but I usually leave it overnight. Once it has cooled a bit, wrap in a clean tea-towel and let it finish cooling all the way. To store bread, I keep mine on a cutting board under a glass bowl for the sole purpose of displaying it to myself. After a few days of this I put it in a bread-bag before it gets too dry.

Congratulations! You did it! A long, but incredibly rewarding process of love, patience, creativity, and confidence. Keep sharing Cornelius with the world! Find recipes for things other than loaves of bread like pizza crust, cinnamon buns, pancakes, focaccia, etc.! Go explore the internet, ask friends and family, find inspiration everywhere! Sourdough Facebook groups have tons of inspiration, tips, and can answer any other questions. Tag your creations with Cornelius’ hasthag #corneliusthesourdough and check out his other babies around the world! Cheers to you both!

[sourmargdough]

first loaf !

friday aug 09. 2019

starter from dylan! been feeding him everyday since monday. dylan has been working on him for about a year ? 

starter feed: 100g starter. 150g AP flour. 150g lukewarm water. 

baking!!! - following this recipe (subbing ap flour)  (https://vanillaandbean.com/emilies-everyday-sourdough/)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

morning 

make dough ! 50g starter + 350g Warm Water + 500g AP flour let him rest 30 min

work dough into ball - fold corners in ? definitely did this for about a full minute rather than the recommended 15 seconds. this is when i added the salt (potential mistake for sure) i didn’t measure and sort of folded it in ? and i used pink salt. 

bulk rise - spent 1 hour in my room (approx 72-75 degrees) 

evening

then 11 hours in kitchen (approx 70-72 degrees) with damp towel

then we take it out and roll it into a ball and let it rest for 10 min. then fold it into a circle again(?) put it in the floured towel bowl and let it rise for 30min. i was racing the clock so i did the minimum amount of time but it mightve benefited from some extra rise. 

okay time for bake !!

final result

crunch crust ! definitely needed more salt. had a good flavor but adding sea salt definitely helped. seemed a little dense and squishy. maybe over proofed or over worked the dough? also peek that little weird raw-ish hole bottom left of the loaf. what happened there? 

ultimately very happy with the loaf! as my first sourdough and only 2nd ever bread dough i could not be more pleased, i’ll definitely be eating it with breakfast tomorrow. hoping to do a once a week bake. starter is now living in the fridge and will be refreshed every thursday for a friday bake (maybe refreshed wednesday so i can let the rise happen over night on thursday into friday?)

differences from recipe -

ap flour instead of bread added salt after initial 30 min rest didn't do the 10 min in the oven no pan bc it was already crisp. did 30 min lid on 20 min lid off waited less than 10 min to slice bread after pulling from oven

final thoughts - 

how fun! very excited to maintain this. want a better bread nice our little serrated guy rips more than anything.  i want to knead/touch/pull at dough less i want to add the correct amount a salt at a different stage in the process i want a fluffier loaf!

[rococodeco]

I've been baking sourdough for 4 years and I've finally landed on a method for consistent loaves.

For 1 loaf:

100 g starter

313 g filtered or spring water

9-10 g salt

360 g bread flour

120 g whole wheat or rye or spelt or einkorn (whatever I have in the pantry, my favorite is rye)

Dissolve starter in the water. Add salt and flour. Mix until combined, dough will be shaggy. Let sit for an hour then fold the dough. Let it ferment for 8 - 12 hours, folding intermittently. This step can be done overnight, one fold at the beginning and one at the end are sufficient. but I think it's better to fold a couple more times. After fermenting, shape the dough. At this point, it can be put in a floured banneton or a bowl lined with a floured kitchen towel in the fridge for another 12 hours or left covered on parchment on the counter for an hour while the oven preheats. Preheat a dutch oven in the oven at 475° for an hour. Bake the bread in the dutch oven for 20 minutes with the lid on then 15-20 with the lid off until internal temp reaches 190° or it sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom.

Baking bread relieves stress. Eating bread relieves stress. The flour all over the kitchen causes some stress, but it's all worth the clean up.

Resources

Making a starter

Bread Alone: the book where I started and learned how to maintain the starter and techniques on making sourdough

Mastering Bread: another go to book for technique

Wild Fermentation: how I learned it doesn't have to be so precious and perfect, that you'll still get a beautiful loaf if you don't follow the rules and it also has an amazing recipe for sourdough pancakes

The base of the recipe I use now

How to stretch and fold

I get my flour from Bob's Red Mill, Janie's Mill and Jovial Foods

[xtruss]

Care and Maintenance of a (Mature) Sourdough Starter

Looking for how to care for your sourdough starter? Look no further.

— By Andrew Jangigian, Senior Editor | May 29, 2020 | Cook’s Illustrated

Maybe you made a sourdough starter from scratch (hopefully using our Quarantiny Starter Master Plan), or maybe you were gifted one from a friend. Either way, you’ll want to know the easiest and best way to maintain it, and I’ve got you covered.

How to Determine if Your Starter is "Mature"

If your starter is indeed mature, it should meet the following criteria:

1. It should be happy being fed with nothing more than high-protein white all-purpose flour (such as King Arthur) or any bread flour.

2. It should double to triple in volume in less than 12 hours time (a really healthy one like mine in the photo above might triple in as few as 5 hours, especially when ambient temps are above 75 degrees F).

3. It should pass the “float” test, meaning a blob of refreshed and fully-proofed starter will float on a container of water for at least 10 seconds.

4. Most importantly: It should bake a nice loaf of bread (that is the point of all this, after all).

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you are now free to store your starter in the fridge between uses, following the process below. (If not, please don’t jump the gun and start cold-storing your culture before it is fully mature. If you do, it probably won't bake well, and it won't ever get to that point if kept in cold storage. Feed it at room temperature until you are getting reliable results with it; it's a hassle, but worth it compared to the frustration you'll experience working with a sluggish starter. That said, if you need a break from the once- or twice-daily feedings, you can always put it in the fridge for a few days just to give yourself a vacation.)

Sourdough Starter Cold Storage Method

If your starter passed the maturation test, here's how to store it between uses.

1. Refresh your starter using a 2:2:1 ratio, meaning 2 parts water, 2 parts flour, and 1 part starter. (Note: this is a reduced starter amount compared to what I recommend for creating one from scratch; once a starter is mature it will do better with less starter in the mix). Feel free to scale up at this point, as long as you keep the ratio constant. I typically refresh mine using 75 grams starter, 150 grams water, and 150 grams flour; this gives me plenty for baking with over the course of a week, plus extra for use as discard. (Save any leftover starter from this feeding in the fridge as a backup culture.)

2. Place the mixture in a jar, seal it well but loosely, and let it sit at room temperature until it has about doubled in volume, which should take from 3 to 6 hours. Use a rubber band around the container to mark its starting volume.

3. Once the mixture has doubled, transfer the jar to the fridge. (But: Be sure your levain has increased in volume to at least double before you put it into the fridge. The idea here is to catch it at about the halfway point of its growth cycle and then slow it way down in the fridge, which will let it remain viable for a long time. Do it too early or too late and it won't have enough stored up activity to bounce back quickly once it warms.)

4. Cold-stored starter will keep for up to two weeks without much loss in vigor, though it is best used or re-refreshed within 7 days. And it will remain alive for at least a month—probably longer—but will likely need several room temperature feedings to return to full strength if you stash it away super long.

5. From here on in, refresh it as often as needed, repeating steps 1 through 3.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Why Even Meals?

Shutterstock

You could take this time to make yourself elaborate dinners from scratch. Or you could treat every meal like after-school snack.

In 2010, The Awl asked a question that has haunted me for a decade: Are You Lunch? In it, Choire Sicha ruminated on a fundamental experience of anyone who has worked from home, rummaging through one’s fridge and cabinets to cobble together a plate that’ll tide you over without too much effort. A few things presented themselves to him as lunch: leftover Raisin Bran, a handful of Maltesers, some cornichon. It was all lunch. Because what even is lunch?

The blog was supposed to point out the often depressing reality of working from home, of the way we’ll let our lives deteriorate when there’s no one else to each lunch in front of. But there’s part of me that finds the Lunch Game incredibly freeing. You may think you need to keep up appearances, whether for your Instagram or for your own sanity. But meals are a social construct. It’s time to embrace chaos.

We already knew that, as adults, we could eat whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Having to commute into an office never necessitated cereal and fruit as solely a breakfast food, and ice cream for dinner without anyone yelling at you certainly makes up for having to pay rent. But something about orders to avoid human contact, to spend maybe more time than you ever have in your own home, has further broken down these mental barriers about what a meal should be. For many, meal times have shifted from whenever they are “officially” designated to whenever you start feeling hungry.

Meals are defined by the needs of the societies they exist in. Right now, you have some permission to chill.

Personally, I have also begun to reject the notion of “meals” altogether. Right now, I could make myself a hearty lunch out of the eggs or frozen dumplings in my fridge. I could easily throw together Marcella Hazan’s tomato butter sauce, or another batch of dal and roti. I could consult my Instagram, or this very website, for tips on making a sourdough starter, or shaping cinnamon rolls, or making a dutch baby (why is everyone making dutch babies??). But as much as rolling out dough and watching it rise can be a balm, it is also a chore. And you know what’s not a chore? String cheese.

Let me make the case, instead, for snacks. Snacking has been co-opted by the wellness crowd, twisted into “intuitive eating” and “grazing” and bled of all joy. But getting through orders to avoid human contact means embracing all the things that working from home allows, which includes snacking with abandon. Lunch can now be a rice cake with peanut butter, a piece of chocolate, and a clementine. Breakfast is four bites of leftover fried rice eaten at 11 a.m., and dinner is the rest eaten at 4. Every meal in one day can be pasta and butter if you want. Everything is after-school snack, a pure treat instead of a meal haunted by the specter of “should.”

It’s not like mealtimes, or meals themselves, were ever uniformly rigid. In plenty of ancient cultures people ate one huge meal in the middle of the day, and in many countries, lunch is still the biggest, longest meal, and breakfast essentially a snack of a cookie and coffee. The Industrial Revolution standardized breakfast, with workers needing a meal to sustain them at work. And growing up, my Southern grandma would make Sunday supper at 4 p.m. Meals are defined by the needs of the societies they exist in. And right now, the most prevalent society you’re engaging with is in your living room, so you have some permission to chill.

Still, I understand the urge to turn to the structure of full meals at “traditional” mealtimes during a time when we can’t even know what life will look like a week from now. And I could never judge soothing one’s anxiety with elaborate recipes and baking projects, taking two days to properly laminate croissant dough or spending an entire afternoon rolling out pasta, or setting the table for dinner at 7 p.m. and having your partner pretend to be a server by pouring you a little taste of wine and repeatedly asking “and how is everything?” (yes, I’ve done this).

But there’s something to be said for not acting like these are normal times, and for allowing one’s comfort food to not look like something out of Food & Wine magazine. Perhaps maintaining a sourdough starter is what truly relaxes you. But perhaps it’s actually being released from the obligation to do anything. Doing the bare minimum of feeding yourself with baby carrots and packaged hummus is enough.

Your croissants will likely never taste like the ones at your favorite pastry shop, but a Babybel cheese and an apple will always be there for you, at any time of day. Your leftover cacio e pepe will taste as good at 9 a.m. as it does at dinner. Now, more than ever, there is nobody to impress. Free yourself and eat some crackers.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/340xfdc https://ift.tt/33Y0VI1

Shutterstock

You could take this time to make yourself elaborate dinners from scratch. Or you could treat every meal like after-school snack.

In 2010, The Awl asked a question that has haunted me for a decade: Are You Lunch? In it, Choire Sicha ruminated on a fundamental experience of anyone who has worked from home, rummaging through one’s fridge and cabinets to cobble together a plate that’ll tide you over without too much effort. A few things presented themselves to him as lunch: leftover Raisin Bran, a handful of Maltesers, some cornichon. It was all lunch. Because what even is lunch?

The blog was supposed to point out the often depressing reality of working from home, of the way we’ll let our lives deteriorate when there’s no one else to each lunch in front of. But there’s part of me that finds the Lunch Game incredibly freeing. You may think you need to keep up appearances, whether for your Instagram or for your own sanity. But meals are a social construct. It’s time to embrace chaos.

We already knew that, as adults, we could eat whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Having to commute into an office never necessitated cereal and fruit as solely a breakfast food, and ice cream for dinner without anyone yelling at you certainly makes up for having to pay rent. But something about orders to avoid human contact, to spend maybe more time than you ever have in your own home, has further broken down these mental barriers about what a meal should be. For many, meal times have shifted from whenever they are “officially” designated to whenever you start feeling hungry.

Meals are defined by the needs of the societies they exist in. Right now, you have some permission to chill.

Personally, I have also begun to reject the notion of “meals” altogether. Right now, I could make myself a hearty lunch out of the eggs or frozen dumplings in my fridge. I could easily throw together Marcella Hazan’s tomato butter sauce, or another batch of dal and roti. I could consult my Instagram, or this very website, for tips on making a sourdough starter, or shaping cinnamon rolls, or making a dutch baby (why is everyone making dutch babies??). But as much as rolling out dough and watching it rise can be a balm, it is also a chore. And you know what’s not a chore? String cheese.

Let me make the case, instead, for snacks. Snacking has been co-opted by the wellness crowd, twisted into “intuitive eating” and “grazing” and bled of all joy. But getting through orders to avoid human contact means embracing all the things that working from home allows, which includes snacking with abandon. Lunch can now be a rice cake with peanut butter, a piece of chocolate, and a clementine. Breakfast is four bites of leftover fried rice eaten at 11 a.m., and dinner is the rest eaten at 4. Every meal in one day can be pasta and butter if you want. Everything is after-school snack, a pure treat instead of a meal haunted by the specter of “should.”

It’s not like mealtimes, or meals themselves, were ever uniformly rigid. In plenty of ancient cultures people ate one huge meal in the middle of the day, and in many countries, lunch is still the biggest, longest meal, and breakfast essentially a snack of a cookie and coffee. The Industrial Revolution standardized breakfast, with workers needing a meal to sustain them at work. And growing up, my Southern grandma would make Sunday supper at 4 p.m. Meals are defined by the needs of the societies they exist in. And right now, the most prevalent society you’re engaging with is in your living room, so you have some permission to chill.

Still, I understand the urge to turn to the structure of full meals at “traditional” mealtimes during a time when we can’t even know what life will look like a week from now. And I could never judge soothing one’s anxiety with elaborate recipes and baking projects, taking two days to properly laminate croissant dough or spending an entire afternoon rolling out pasta, or setting the table for dinner at 7 p.m. and having your partner pretend to be a server by pouring you a little taste of wine and repeatedly asking “and how is everything?” (yes, I’ve done this).

But there’s something to be said for not acting like these are normal times, and for allowing one’s comfort food to not look like something out of Food & Wine magazine. Perhaps maintaining a sourdough starter is what truly relaxes you. But perhaps it’s actually being released from the obligation to do anything. Doing the bare minimum of feeding yourself with baby carrots and packaged hummus is enough.

Your croissants will likely never taste like the ones at your favorite pastry shop, but a Babybel cheese and an apple will always be there for you, at any time of day. Your leftover cacio e pepe will taste as good at 9 a.m. as it does at dinner. Now, more than ever, there is nobody to impress. Free yourself and eat some crackers.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/340xfdc via Blogger https://ift.tt/3bzFvDs