Getting through both conventions has taken a toll on me and I bet on a lot of you folks. What to do to get through the long days. Well, last week I started to bake bread. Not that I need bread, not that bread is on my diet, but rather that I needed something constructive and fullfilling, (No pun intended), and baking fills that bill.
First I started with regular white bread dough with some calamata olives and garlic cloves. Oh that was good and I made several more loaves. I then started to run out of yeast and not living within walking distance of a purveyor of yeast, I decided I needed something I could count on to be there when the need arose, thus I settled on making my own sour dough.
For sour dough you make a starter, which is yeast, flour and water, which you let foment for days before combining with more flour and water, then more fomenting to make a sponge.
The sponge is then the basis for your bread and the unused sponge is then combined with more flour and water to make more starter. Yeast can be added to the origional starter, but not required as there is natural yeast in air and flour. For mine, I did add yeast as I wanted to rush the project a little.
If you are interested in making sour dough bread here is the excellent site I used.
So I’ve had a great time baking, baking and more baking. Giving away and freezing, and then more baking. I’ve make fry bread, bread sticks, flat bread and rosemary and olive oil (my favorite). I am just now awaiting the fomenting of the sponge so I can make more bread today.
One note of caution, be careful of the amount of bread you eat as I found out the hard way. One day this week I ate quite a bit of my bread combined with quite a bit of homemade humus and I had a very bad case of indigestion and heartburn. So I am now more careful in limiting the amount consumed and planning on giving away more.
So what kinds of food have you been making and please include any recipes. I got my humus recipe from google searches as I do most of my recipes. I would also like to hear of any cost saving recipes you may have. Making your own bread for example can cost less than a dollar a loaf, depending on the cost of your flour.
