A sourdough kind of week...

I learned how to feed my sourdough starter and ended up with way  more than I needed, so I searched the internet for recipes and discovered there's a whole sourdough world out there outside of sourdough bread!

It all started with a simple batch of sourdough crackers using this recipe.

Sour dough crackers - so good!

Honestly, I expected them to be pretty ordinary. But they were truly AMAZING !  Very easy to make using the instructions given.  I sprinkled some salt and garlic powder on them before I cooked them, and they were seriously good crackers - especially with some fresh guacamole the next morning for breakfast with the kiddies.


Now I was getting a little bit 'hooked' on sourdough and wondering what else I could make.  I had more starter bubbling away by the next afternoon, so I got busy and found this chocolate chip biscuit recipe.

The recipe made a really big batch, I think I made somewhere around 40 biscuits and I was just hoping my family would like them so I wouldn't have to eat them all by myself !!  Well ummm...entire batch gone in less than 24 hours ! My husband loved them, well we all did, but he let me know I can make those again!  Now there's a compliment ha!


Next day, my starter was just begging to be made into something else.  How about crepes?  Everyone loves crepes.  Try this recipe  for the most delicious crepes and soooo easy to prepare.  I thought they were way better than plain old flour crepes.  I'm really loving that funky 'sour' taste in all of this baking !!

These were so yummy !  I filled the crepes with a mixture of mince, blackbeans, parsley and sourcream.  Best crepe dinner ever.

And finally, the last recipe I'm going to share with you is this one for sourdough english muffins.

This is what my dough looked like as it was still fermenting - I added chia seeds to the mix.

And the finished muffins!  They sort of look like the real thing hey!  And they tasted pretty good with pumpkin soup for dinner.

So that was the end of that sourdough kind of week...I really enjoyed playing with these new recipes.  I wonder what else is out there to try....I saw some homemade sourdough nacho chips...that sounds interesting !!

Sourdough starter recipe...

A couple of weeks ago,  I made a loaf of sourdough bread from my new starter, and it was delicious!  It's been way too long.  I haven't made a sourdough bread since last year.  Consequently,  my old starter went to pot in the back of the fridge somewhere.

Starting again though, has been a positive thing, I've gone a bit sourdough crazy I think!

I got this sourdough starter recipe from my mum, so not sure where it came from originally, but it works!  It really works, and it is so easy to maintain - I've tried a couple of other recipes and failed miserably, so I'm really happy with this one.


                                      Sour Dough Starter Recipe

Days 1,2 &3:

50 grams water

35 grams white flour

15 grams rye flour

Mix & set aside for 24 hrs (covered)

DAYS 4&5&6

Discard most of starter & leave 1 Tblsp in the bowl

Add 100grams water

70 grams white flour

3O grams rye flour
Mix & leave 24 hrs (covered)

The first 3 days for me, were  a bit discouraging.  My starter didn't look like it was doing anything.  Infact, it looked kind of flat and lifeless.  I didn't even take any photos because I thought it was going to be a flop.  But then day 4 happened!  This photo was taken a few hours after the morning "feed".

Look at those lovely air bubbles !
On days 5 & 6 my starter looked like it was starving in the mornings...

Looking a bit shrivelled and hungry.

I obviously have a lot more to learn about sourdough starters, but after a morning feed, my starter was happy again.

Nice and light and fluffy.
At this point, your starter is ready for action.
I have been using this recipe, and I love the bread it makes.  The loaf is made over 24 hours, but really requires little time or effort on your part, just a few minutes, a few times over during the whole process.  Try it and see what you think!

Now while we all love sourdough at our house, we don't really eat a whole lot of

bread, which means I'm baking only one loaf a week at the moment.  (I freeze

half for the last part of the week.)  So I had to find out how to look after my

new 'friend'.  I learned how to maintain my starter while I'm not using it, with

this video from Cultures for Health. 

and after watching it, I got a bit curious as to what else I could do with that

sourdough starter that just keeps growing and growing...and it just feels wrong

to be throwing most of it away each time...look for the next post coming soon

to see what I did with the rest of that starter!!

kookaburras and fresh bread

Look what we woke up to....4 handsome kookaburras on the back fence...

And some fresh homemade "St Gallen" Bread.  This was my all time favourite bread when I lived in Switzerland.