Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Try, Try Again

I'm not the most technologically savvy person on the planet, by a long shot, and I've been having difficulty logging on to this blog. Sigh. Hence some of the delay in posts. I say some because well, work sucks :/ but we all gotta make money right?


I have been making homemade breads lately, and we've been liking them so much we have actually stopped buying store bread :D  We usually do one of three different kinds; white (wonderful, fluffy buttery taste with a nice crunch from the crust), whole wheat, or a half and half wheat and white mixture.  Can you tell which is my favorite? :)  Anyway I will post the recipe for those and some pictures on the next post, I still need to take some pictures when I make it! 


So I wanted to branch out and make my very own sourdough starter so as to make wonderful homemade from scratch sourdough bread as well as some wonderful sourdough pancakes I found a recipe for.


To begin I would like to preface with the knowledge that I have only been working with yeast doughs for the last year or so and all of my stuff has been based off of recipes I either already have or find online through many of the wonderful bloggers out there who are much better at this than I am as well as any advice I gather from friends and family.  Some examples of the internet bloggers who are an unmeasurable help are bakerella, not martha, The Hungry Mouse, Joy the Baker, Unsopisticook, and Closet Cooking just to name a few of the many people out there who constantly inspire me and offer fantastic words of wisdom.   With that out of the way I will continue.


The recipe I used is from Unsopisticook, the link the her page is above and here is the link to this specific recipe, Sourdough Starter.  I did not taking any pictures of my attempt unfortunately but we'll just leave it at saying that if at first you don't succeed try, try again.  I will take pictures on my next attempt because we are having a severe drought/heat wave from Hell here in Oklahoma and the grasshoppers have been invading the town I live in.  It's bad and with three dogs and therefore a door that opens a lot during the day and night and the fact that my kitchen/dining room area is where my backdoor is, sigh, need I go on?  To make a long story short, where I would probably whine and bemoan my horrible luck far too much than is decent, I did cover my starter and even place it high on a shelf but alas a grasshopper and a his grasshopper buddy took a dive in the mixture on only the third day of the fermentation process.  To save myself more heartache, I will wait probably till that first beautiful cold snap of winter to come and kill all of the little pests before I try again.


On a brighter note the two months whose name begins with "A"'s are birthday filled times in my little world.  And this month since it begins with an A is no exception; Jason, 3 of my uncles, my aunt, my niece, my cousin, and 3 friends all will be celebrating birthdays this month!  We are throwing a little shindig for 6 of them this coming weekend and I (in a fit of insanity) volunteered to make the birthday cakes for all of them(the six that we are celebrating this weekend)!!!  I will be making a Carrot Cake, a Red Velvet Cake, a Chocolate Cake, a batch of Vanilla Cupcakes, and a Pillow Cookie translated into a cake!  So wish me luck and I will try and remember to keep the camera with me!!  Look for more posts and I will try and not let you down!


Remember to fall in love with each day and all the little things!