Who would have thought the tree nerd would become a cook? I had a lot of frustration that helped me grow and test myself and I am so happy with my menu, how everything looked, and especially how it all tasted. Now I just wait until next week when I get the judges comments back.
So I have started a food blog to keep those of you who are interested specifically in my food world separate from my personal life…or you can have the double dose and RSS them both and feel like you are in my head all day long.
Enjoy it, I’ll be posting a lot of my final culinary school days as well as my adventures with cultural manipulation…you read it right. the most current project is kombucha, but i’m going to start some tempeh manana.
I’ve always loved sourdough but my appreciation for it has grown so much since I have captured the yeast that lives in the air and my new pets make me very happy. I had a hard time at first, then once I relaxed about the sourdough I’ve realized it’s not very hard to mess up. As long as they get fed, they are happy. I’ve been experimenting with different recipes and haven’t found a bread recipe I am very excited about yet, but my blueberry pancakes this morning were divine. Not too thick, not too thin and just a hint of sour. I’m going to try a new recipe for pancakes tomorrow and I’ll post the winning recipe here.
There’s a lot of online info about making and maintaining sourdough, so I won’t try to be wordy and redundant. Basically, I throw away (or make something like pancakes) with about half of my starter, then replace the missing volume with equal amounts of flour and warm water, stir, and let it sit at room temp for 5 hours or overnight. It can be kept in the fridge indefinitely but it will go dormant if not fed (dump half, add flour/h20 mix, sit at room temp, refridge) once a week. It’s a nice excuse to make pancakes on the weekend because I hate to throw out the yeast babies that work so hard for me.
To make the starter, I recommend looking at a few online resources and then just getting a feel for it. I basically just made a 1 cup batch of flour and water and left it at room temp with a linen or cotton cloth over the top and fed and stirred it every day for a few days. The more this is done the sourer it will become. I want mine really sour; I think I am used to the store bought “sourdough” where they add the vinegar and it has a kick to it. Hopefully I can get my sourdough to that point naturally.
Here’s to using the environment around us to support and nourish our bodies!
I think the most beautiful thing about sourdough is that it is muy “terroir”; yeast is slightly different in every location, so homemade sourdough tastes unique to it’s location.
Yum!
Blueberries from last seasons picking adventure…we have just enough to last until until the blueberries are in bloom again!
I am not in love with either recipe–I will develop one and post it soon. I’m lucky to have a taste tester living with me.
I have a friend going to Costa Rica for 3 months to study the environment and this weekend I got to see her and put my baking skills to use. I made a vegan cake with graham craker crumbs and it was moist and delicious. I modified the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World by my new mentor in all things delicious and animal-product free, Ms. Isa. I adore her. I feel as if I already know her. She writes cookbooks that work and are practical. I have too many vegan cookbooks that have a million ingredients that I don’t seem to have and it takes a minimum of 3 hours to make the dish. Long processes are fine, but not every day, especially when I cook at school and work. But you don’t want to hear about that, you want to hear about the cake.
There were molasses in it and soymilk, so it was deep, rich and tender crumbed. The graham cracker taste was in it, but the molasses definitely took over and I don’t think I would call it a S’more. Perhaps if I made it like Isa intended, cupcake form where there would be a mountain of buttercream frosting and chocolate, it would resemble it a little more in the mouth. My version was mostly cake, a layer of frosting and a drizzle of ganache (composed of soymilk and dark chocolate, melted). My buddy adores the sugar and all things dessert and she liked the cake, so I am proud. It was quite pretty too, I will post a picture when I buy a card to pull the data off my cellphone.
No major issues making the cake, either, so sorry nothing to complain about it.
Hooray for Isa.
Hooray for the internet.
Hooray for cakes that taste delicious and don’t depend on any animals for it’s creation.