Jul 18, 2010

Passing It On

Well my Dh's leave is over but what a busy 3 days I have had since he has been back on board. It's not been any one thing I have been doing just a hodge podge of everything.. It is also the kids last few days of their school holidays, they are back to school next week... oh now please don't think badly of me that I am excited for the new school term to begin... the kids are great but I do enjoy getting my routine back to normal, it tends to fly out the window with the kids home, with sleep overs and days out and about...

A few days ago I thought I needed to find some time to make bread, so I pulled the sour dough starter out of the fridge and got it going with a flour feed. One of the down sides to sour dough making for me, is the spare starter you end up with when you take half out to add more flour ( sour dough starter link here) Then I had a wee thought, why not pass some of it on. Over the years people have shared bits and pieces with me as well as their knowledge on various home making ideas, I though maybe it would be a way of saying thank you to all those people past and present who had freely given. So I posted on a forum I had some to give away and then I went more local and posted on my local Freeycle site- well blow me down I was swamped by people who had always wanted to make bread, or people who had already made bread, the thing all these people had in common was their desire to learn and the fact they thought making a starter was scary. Well so did I when I first started a year or so ago, I was terrified I was going to poison someone but I persevered and I found it to be so easy and it is part of my life now.

After sorting through the emails and sending links to sour dough sites, I had a list of people who now had decided to try making it on there own and another list who wanted some help. There were more replies than I had left over starter so Thursday night I went into the kitchen and divided up my starter into jars, feed them and covered them all with muslin.
I am really lucky that my starter is very active so on Friday morning I woke to several jars of beautifully bubbly brew lined up in my bench. Now I am by no means a teachie type person, but I manages as the queue of people moved through my kitchen during the course of yesterday, they had a basic understanding of the process, a photocopy of the instructions and there own jar of starter and an invitation to email me if they got stuck. I really wish them lots of success.

It was kind of nice to have a few emails waiting for me this morning from people who were as excited as I was that first time - when the fermentation starts to happen in their own kitchens. One couple said they couldn't wait to pass it on as well.. and what a blessing that was to read.
I even found some time to make a few loaves of sour dough bread, and made sour dough pancakes for the kids for lunch... they were such a hit there was a kitchen encore for breakfast...Here are a few photos, because if your like me, I love to see photos of whats going on....
Sour Dough Pancakes
A bowl of batter.. 2 cups of sour dough starter, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 4 tablespoons of cooking oil, 1/2 teaspoon of salt beaten well, then add 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon of warm water. fold in and sit for a minute or two to bubble. Cook on hot pan.

Bubbles forming on the top is a sure sign these ones are almost ready to turn, and cook on the other side.
They are smelling kind of nice right now.

Looking good here, the kids are chaffing at the bit in the behind camera scene. These pancakes are more the size of a pikelet, because I didn't want to cook them one at a time. For those of you who don't know what a pikelet is. it is like a small pancake but a little thicker.

14 year old quality control, lots of butter and some home made strawberry jam... yummo

5 OF YOU SAID:

The Traveler said...

That is a really cool thing. You may have just started a bread exchange!

Sarah L said...

Those look delicious...... Miss C asked when I was coming "home" well as soon as possible and those sourdough pancakes are on top of my list of things to try :)

Sarah Head said...

What a wonderful thing to do, Wendy! I hope your generosity reaps many rewards.

HollyG said...

Your starter looks fantastic. I started one yesterday from a dehydrated starter. It began with 3 cups flour and 3 cups water with the dehydrated mix. At 4 hours and 8 hours I fed another 1/2c flour and 1/2c water. This morning I took out 1 cup and added another 1/2c flour and 1/2 c water. I see nothing but goop. DO you know when I might expect to see some life from my starter. I've already thrown out two others....... Thanks so much for any help you can give me.

Wendy.B said...

Holly I have never used a dehydrated starter.. so not sure what they do. I wouldn't feed it every 4 hours - 12 hours would be best.. It will take 4 or 5 days before you see any activity.

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