I bought a book, Sourdough Cookbook for Beginners by Eric Rusch & Melissa Johnson. My first recipe from the book came out well! I have been reading many sourdough recipes, and trying a new loaf about once a week, and this round had the first decent result. I’m using my grand mother’s dutch oven with parchment, which seems to help the loaf bake well. I started the sourdough journey at the end of March; a month and a half seems a long learning curve, but I’m glad I’m showing improvement.

I still haven’t managed a decent sourdough loaf, but I had good success with this bagel recipe! I used my sourdough starter and Heritage Wheat bread flour blend and they came out of the oven looking and feeling like bagels.

Bagels seemed like a intimidating item to make from scratch, but the boiling in water really isn’t hard. I do think it is interesting that you add sugar to bagel water, but baking soda to pretzel water.

My sourdough bread needs work, but one of my readers suggested a sourdough cracker recipe for the discards. It works wonderfully! Much easier than unleavened crackers, as well as lighter and crispier. Because of our relative humidity, I do leave my crackers to cool in the oven and this time forgot to crack the oven door, so the crackers are dark, but still taste good.

I left out the herbs this time around since my kids aren’t always keen on added flavor, but there are so many possibilities to explore with additions! Yum!

Meet “Legion” our new sourdough starter. (My husband suggested the name.) I’ve been resisting getting into sourdough since it really is like getting a new pet. You have to have an appropriate habitat (yes, just a crock or jar, but still), and you have to feed and water it (I really should say “them”). And you have to deal with the “leftovers”, the waste starter each time you feed. All this considered, I finally caved because I read that sourdough has a lower glycemic index. Ok, we’ll give it a go.

This particular strain of sourdough starter is over 100 years old and is originally from Italy. I came by it as a freebie from Sunrise Mills for buying Heritage Wheat flour. They also sent a very nicely formatted instruction sheet with a sourdough bread recipe. I’ll be following their instructions before branching out with other recipes.

Fun fact, sourdough starter has many organisms in the colony, and each colony has a different mix, which gives rise to the different tastes of sourdough. This colony is supposed to be less sour. It will be interesting to bake with it!

In my perusal of bread recipes and tips I saw one person mention that a heating pad set on low is a baker’s best friend in the winter months (can I find that article again to link here? Of course not, dang it.) So I have been setting up my dough to rise in a bowl wrapped snuggly in a heating pad. It doesn’t take much heat to make it happy! I had been starting the oven, letting it cool to under 80 degrees, then keeping the light on, but that seems to be too much heat. A heating pad on gentle low (which frankly registers zero heat when I use it on my back as it was designed to do) makes the yeast happy and productive. Yay!