Thursday, January 21, 2010

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.

2 comments:

Polly @ Pieces by Polly said...

Wow! A new post! I have a whole ton of sour dough recipe's of my great-grandfatherrs. Maybe I should try.

Joe said...

of course you should! try not to use the start until it's matured at least a week. it should have a beery pleasant smell!