Tag: sourdough

Is this the year I finally figure out sourdough?

~ Crystal Sands ~ 6 Comments

I have tried and failed with sourdough twice in recent years. I am hoping the third time will be a charm in 2025.

I have always admired the beauty of sourdough bread, and in recent years, I have come to greatly admire the self sufficiency of it. I bake with yeast a lot, and while I try to stay stocked up, the yeast shortage of 2020 lingers in my mind. The idea of having a source of infinite bread is appealing to me–and seems like magic for sure!

But, oh, how I struggle!

The first time, we named our sourdough, but it didn’t live very long at all. The second time, I told my son we had better not name it. It did live longer–several weeks, in fact–but I couldn’t even get it to the right state to cook with, and it eventually died.

As you may know, I try to make New Year’s resolutions related to my homesteading goals for the year because I am always trying to learn just a little bit more, and I made sourdough bread one of my goals for 2025. During the holidays, I bought myself two starters from King Arthur Baking, determined that I could surely make one of them live. The little jars of starter came with instructions, and after reading through the instructions, I am worried the issue I have might be temperature.

The instructions say to keep the starter at a certain temperature all the time, but the temperature in our house fluctuates a lot. It can get pretty chilly in here in the winter and pretty hot in here in the summer. Dear readers, if you know sourdough, do you think that might be why my sourdough starter can’t get going?

And, if you know sourdough, do you have any advice related to temperature? And, well, do you have any advice in general? I remember reading in Michael Pollan’s A Botany of Desire that he struggled at first with sourdough, and I feel I might be overthinking it in the same way. Please tell me it’s simple and that I can do this. I need some of that magic in my kitchen.

My other homesteading resolutions are to build a clothes line and plant apple trees in the places where we had to take down our giant pines. Our property is so changed without those big pine trees. I miss them so much, but that’s another story. We are planning to take advantage of the newly-found openness on our homestead to plant more fruit trees. Oh, and I think this is the year we may try to build a covered run for the chickens and ducks. The bird flu has us more than a little worried. But that’s another story too.

What are your homesteading resolutions for the year? Do you have any goals toward self-sufficiency for the upcoming year? I would love to hear about them.

photo credit: Jennifer Burk, Unsplash

It’s alive!

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 16 of 21

A couple of weeks ago, my son and I embarked on lessons in baking, and I am loving it. He seems to love it too. He has been asking about cooking more things (he can cook some basic things), and I told him I wish someone had taught me bread when I was younger and that I would teach him bread next. He loved this idea, and we have been having fun ever since.

We have made some batches of french bread, some sandwich rolls, and we started a sough dough starter–only we had troubles with. I had been gifted a sough dough culture from San Francisco and tried to get a starter going with it. I loved this gift so much because the first time I ever had chowder in a sourdough bowl was in San Francisco for an academic conference. We were out for lunch, and I had originally bought a hot dog from a street vendor, but a seagull stole it right out of my hand. I was both grumpy and in awe of the creature. It just ate the hot dog whole! I didn’t go back for another hot dog and bought soup in a sourdough bowl from a different street vendor, and it was the best ever to me.

You can see why I really needed that sourdough culture to work. First, it was a gift from a dear friend, and second, it was like the universe was giving me my first sourdough experience again. I followed the directions on the packet exactly, but it was too dry. I posted to Facebook for help and got some suggestions. Mostly, people offered recipes to start again, but others pointed out that it was too dry but that the cultures can be pretty resilient and to keep trying with it.

So I did, but I was reminded of reading Michael Pollan years ago when he wrote about his trouble overthinking his sourdough starter. Of course, I would be the same way. I overthink everything.

But it lived! I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was! I hollered from the basement: “It’s alive!” in my best Dr. Frankenstein voice

This morning, we made our first breakfast rolls from the sourdough starter, and I am over the moon that my son and I are learning how to do this together.

Making Bread

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 288 of 365

I have spent the day making bread and have much work to do tonight. I have many ideas floating in my head today, but I will just share this quick thought for the day: Of all of the skills I have learned to become more self sufficient, I think bread making is my favorite. Well, second favorite. Caring for chickens and ducks is my most favorite.

I was getting ready to roll out two loaves of French bread when I stopped to take this picture because the dough and the bowl and the flour and my rolling pin are all so beautiful to me.

Bread making is so important. Fresh homemade bread makes every meal seem better, and it’s so much cheaper to make than to buy. And I don’t even do sourdough, though I really want to. I really, really want to. I should try to get started with that. It seems like such a frugal way to make bread.

Today, my son, Ronan, asked me how much he would spend on groceries when he’s grown. He’s trying to figure out how much money he needs to make to support himself because, with any extra money, he’s going to buy musical instruments. He asked if he would maybe spend $150 a month on groceries. I chuckled and said, “way more, sir!”

He commented that our whole family only spends about $700 a month and that includes other stuff like cat food. I reminded him that we grow a ton of our own food, so unless he’s a farmer on the side too, he’s definitely going to spend more than $150 a month on groceries. I should add that he’s a foodie and loves really good, organic food. He gets sick if he eats very much non-organic food. One time, someone brought Oreos to orchestra rehearsal for the kids to eat at break. Our son ate an Oreo, got sick, and then was mad at Oreos.

I told Ron about Ronan’s questions about groceries and said we need to be sure to teach him how to make bread, that it will help him save money and give him access to quick, good food. Ron agreed. Ron’s going to teach him how to make wheat loaves and Challah, and I am going to teach him how to make French bread, but I realized as I was writing this that I should get him to learn sourdough with me. It would be a great thing to do together, right?

I would love to know what breads you make from scratch or which ones you long to make. Oh, and I would really appreciate any sourdough tips. My worry is that I will get it started and then life will get crazy and I won’t be able to keep it up. Is it hard to keep up?