Yeasty little Buggers, Day II

It's another day in the life of a graduate student: staring until my eyes bug out at a computer screen, writing endlessly, goofing off on the internets, neglecting the kids.


Yeah, it's been a pretty dull and not so interesting day in my life.


But the wild yeast in my kitchen are so happy! That's right, the wild yeast in my kitchen loves the sourdough starter I left out for them yesterday. I am learning yeast husbandry. I want to totally claim that as my own, but Alanna came up with that one -- it's one of the many reasons we are together.


Here, take a look:

The lighting is different, it's even taken in a different room, but the important thing is you can see BUBBLES! I was preparing myself for not seeing any action or change in the starter for several days. Granted, this is after I removed half of the starter from yesterday (something about keeping acid levels correct) and mixing in another 1/4 cup of filtered water and whole spelt flour.

But the super cool thing is it smells yeasty. You know that smell of fresh baked breadstuffs, that tangy sweet smell that tells you something good is going on.

My life might be a little stressful and boring right now, but my kitchen is so full of yeast, I started tending some right away. Which is kind of cool and creepy at the same time.

Well, I'm off. I have to do something besides look at a computer. I think I have logged something like twelve hours straight today. I will need glasses when I'm done with this degree, I swear.

Tomorrow, hopefully another installment in As the Yeast Grows, or All My Microbials, or The Small and the Fermenting.

Bread and Yeast and Starters Hooray!

So I love to bake. This is not news to most people. I make a mean cinnamon roll. I love the chemistry of it all.


But I am not known to make my own bread, really. This doesn't make sense, because I feel I have mastered the sweet yeast dough (see above mention of cinnamon rolls). I have made my own bread, and it's pretty good. But I think the problem is that it is soooo good it's gone in like a day. And I wonder if all the effort was really worth it. Because, I mean, come on. the mixing and the kneading isn't the hard part; it's the waiting for 3-4 hours for the bread to rise. You can't leave the house, you are stuck babysitting this beast.


Well Saturday Alanna asked me to make biscuits for breakfast. Biscuits are yummy and I can whip them out in 20 minutes. But I decided to be adventurous in the kitchen (something for which I am also known -- homemade Limoncello anyone?). I decided to make English muffins. 


Those things that you get at the store that have the horse and buggy and whatnot? Those are nothing compared to real English muffins homemade. English muffins are a yeast dough breadstuff that you cut into circles between the first and second risings. Then you cook them on a hot griddle in butter. So delicious!


I have the bread maker yeast that only takes ten minutes for the first rise, so I was able to make English muffins in like an hour. And they were so tasty!!! I have no pictures because everyone ate them all up.


At breakfast Alanna requested that we always have English muffins, to which Marek replied that he wants me to make bread so we wouldn't have to buy any bread from the store that he hates. 


And the wheels began to turn.


Again, Alanna and I have discussed this, and we agree that it would be better and tastier, and probably save muchos dineros. So I started researching today. I know a little about breadmaking, and I know that sourdoughs can be fun and easy and fascinating science. I just wasn't sure about all the details, or if Alanna likes sourdough.


Sidenote: we cook and bake excusively with whole grain flours. Spelt, kamut, and whole wheat: various mixes depending on what exactly we feel like at the moment. I also don't use white sugar. I was using fructose for a while, but all the research about how it affects your health and tells your body to store belly fat, and we cut it out. And we both lost 5 pounds.


So yeah, awesome. I did some research. And I found Barbara over at http://www.mysisterskitchenonline.com. You should go. It's awesome. Well, she has been experimenting with sourdough for something like 5 or 6 years. What a better way to start than on the shoulders of others greater than you (or something like that!)


Anyway, she has 8 or 9 blog posts about sourdough. And I read them all.


And I'm doing it. I am making my own sourdough starter. The really super rad cool thing about this is you can start a sourdough starter WITH NO YEAST!!! Yeast is so cool because it is everywhere. Yes everywhere. I guess that's kind of creepy, too.


So all you have to do is leave a little food out for the wild yeast (that's what it's called) floating around in your kitchen -- 1/4 c. each of water and flour. Cover it loosely and wait. Every day for four days you throw out half and add flour and water. Eventually it will start bubbling and smell .... sour.

So I am on day one. It doesn't look very interesting today. We shall see what it looks like later.

So I have a new pet. After a couple of days, it will live in the refrigerator. I will feed it every week and in return, I will use it to make my own sourdough bread.


What is so cool about wild yeast is that the particular make-up of any location makes that yeast unique. When I make my first loaf, there won't have been any other loaf of sourdough like it in the world! (I think that's the subjunctive case, by the way).


I'm stoked. And all that know me should also be stoked because my new pet will create so much bread and so much mass I can easily (and maybe desperately) give some away. Just think, you could have your own fridge pet, too!