I will give starting a starter from scratch one more shot before breaking down and ordering a sourdough starter off the internet. If I get that good yeasty smell again on the first day, I may just use that and see what happens. We bake so much bread in our kitchen that I'm sure we have spores floating around. If I could get my husband to brew a batch of homebrewed beer, that may add to our airborn yeast count. I'm sure women 75 years ago didn't get the best starters the first time around, either.
Monday, February 2, 2009
First major failure of the homesteading adventure...
The first major failure is...starting a sourdough yeast culture in my kitchen. I used the recipe in the Joy of Cooking book for starting a culture from the yeast in the air in your kitchen. The first day, it started bubbling and had that scrumptious yeasty bread smell. The directions, though, said let it go for 4-7 days before using it. I did and yesterday was day 5 and it was super sour...not in a good way. I decided to give it a shot and see what it tasted like anyways and used it to make a half loaf of the sourdough bread. It was disgusting. It had this sickingly sweet sour taste and it didn't rise at all. I have to admit, I was afraid to eat it and am still worried that I'm going to fall over dead in the next few hours from eating something that...well...let's just say that you shouldn't make bread from anything that would get first prize in a middle school science fair!
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There are no failures - just learning experiences. That may sound cliche, but in this endeavor it holds even more truth. You can read article upon article about how you can mow your hay pasture with a scythe - but until you try it, and fail - you will never know just how difficult and back wrenching it is. There are magazines full of articles written by what I would call 'Thoreau' homesteaders. You know Thoreau - wrote "Walden Pond", lived off the land using only his wits to survive. Well - not really. He camped in his buddy Emerson's backyard - having Sunday brunches with the Misses and often chatting it up over tea with his old pal. There were no hardships that he couldn't escape. But he sure hammed it up in his musings and gave a lot of poor instruction on how to live off the land.
ReplyDeleteThe 'homestead' literary world is full of this type of knowledge. Browsing 'Mother Earth News' it's hard to imagine it's difficult at all, living off the land, raising your own food, living off he energy being captured by your tin foil hand crafted solar panels. But it just ain't that easy - and these contraptions rarely work out in the end.
I'm not saying creating your own breadstarter is impossible. I'm just thinking that it may be just a tad bit more hit or miss than all of the tombs of knowledge and lore proclaim.
Hi Jenny,
ReplyDeleteI love reading about your homesteading experiences. See you Tuesday. Rudi