sour dough continued

it's a success! (so far... kind of)

two days ago i made pancakes with sour dough. they turned out perfectly.
theni tried bread. "huh, i think i'll cook this bread before it'd done rising. it can rise in the oven while it bakes" bad idea. i just got a brick of cooked dough.
so i made another. i waited patiently, allll night for the sour dough to be ready, then alllll day for the bread to rise. i didn't let it rise twice, like i'm supposed to... not enough time in a week for that! so i had sarah cook it. she didn't taste it, but i think it's delicious. she yells at me "clean up after your experiments"
experiments! sour dough was used by people who thought the world was flat! the recipe i used for bread is the same age probably
(2 cups sour dough,
3 cups flour,
2 tbls oil or butter,
2tsp salt
4 tsp sugar,
bake at 350 for 30 minutes, don't preheat the oven)

it was a delicious success. and a loaf of bread for less than 75cents

today i made cookies. the same cookies my dad has made since i was a kid. i don't know how he made all of his cookies the exact same looking. none of them deviated from the mold. but he used a spoon to put them on the cookie sheet... so i dont' get it.

success again. delicious, when dad made them, you couldn't taste them the next day, because there were never any left!

i gave a taste to sarah "is there supposed to be that much baking soda?" what a taster. I can taste what she's talking about if i really strain. but two bites from a gallon of cookie dough! ridiculous!
last night i cooked for grandma... stuffed green pepper casserole. this dish has become my favorite dish ever. it's tied with shepards pie actually.

sarah has never tasted it. i cook it once a month about. she never tastes it at all. doesn't like how it looks.
doesn't think burger should ever be mixed with rice.
her biggest reason in the past, is that she doesn't like green peppers. well, sarah, explain then why the next day (last time) you prepared sausage and peppers for three meals in a row!

well, i've had the suspicion for a while now that it's simply because i cooked it, and not how it tastes, or looks. sarah's blog confirmed this. now she openly accuses me of "experimenting" even when my measurements are precise, and the recipe is old, tried, and true.
(oh, hi honey. i see you're reading this, and yelling at me. well, go eat some cookies)

Sour Dough

I've been making sour dough. i'm excited to make bread out of it.
here's how you make sour dough.

1 cup flour
1 cup water
mix it, and let it sit for a while. at least once per day, feed it. discard half of it, and add one cup water, and one half cup flour.

when it froths all the way through, cover it (but not too well, let it breathe) and put it in the fridge. feed it once per week.

when it's time to cook with it, take it out, add one cup flour, one cup water, and let it foam up real well,
this is called proofing, the result is called sponge.

take two cups of sponge
three cups flour
three teaspoons sugar
one teaspoon salt
one tablespoon softened butter, or olive oil, and mix it.
let it rise, pound it down, form it into a bread pan, let it rise, then bake it.

i will do this with pancakes, waffles, etc. the best part is, it's cheap.


this has resulted in me doing a little more research for a drink my dad called 'hooch'
i'm not sure what kind of yeast he made it with, or anything. i doubt he did either. he usually just got a start for it.
well, so i think what he was making was kvass. it's a russian drink made with yeast and juice. it's commonly consumed like soda, even with the small amounts of alcohol in it. (it's not enough to be considered alcoholic)

poor water through wheat, or rye bread.
the water will be brown. mix it with some dissolved sugar, and 100% juice. let it ferment a couple days (let it breath sometimes, so it doesn't explode)
i haven't done this one yet.
i'm trying the bread right now.
if the bread isn't that great, because of how i did it, maybe i'll use it for kvass... who knows.