Part of the reason to make your own is so that you don't buy the cup of refrigerated starter from some (un)known company at the grocery store for what amounts to a lot of time and an inexpensive amount of flour. I probably should have started this in say.. summer, when the ambient temperature of my kitchen was in the 70s. Alas, I suppose it'll take longer than the week proposed by King Arthur Flour. They have a non-refrigerator/non-freezer method of preserving your starter too. Which, by the looks of it, reads like it is better than the valuable storage space in the refrigerator/freezer...basically you take the finished sourdough starter as if you were going to use it and dry it out at room temp across several days on parchment paper, then store the dried starter in an airtight container.
Anyhow. Back to the starter. I am not reposting KAF's instructions, but I am going to detail what I am doing with this attempt. Previous tries at sourdough breads have resulted in my killing the starter after I used a portion of it to bake a sourdough bread. It feels bad to waste food ingredients; but alas, you can use discarded starter in a number of recipes that call for bread dough: pizza crust, pretzels, etc.
Day 1, Jar 1:
1/2 c dark rye flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2, Jar 1:
Half removed, added 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 2. Jar 2 (essentially, now I have two Jar 1s):
Jar1 Discard + 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water
Day 3, Jar 1 & Jar 2:
Half removed from each jar and placed in Jar 3 (which will be refrigerated for later use)
and so on, so far, I am only on Day 2.
Kitchen Notes: Canning Unsweetened Fruit Juice
I thought about making a mixed berry jam using the berries that have been in the freezer; but my pantry currently suffers from a glut of uneaten jams. To convert this into the base of a drink spritzer, take an equal amount of a basic sugar syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water, boiled together and volume reduced by half) and add it to the juice. Then add up to a 1/4 c of the juice mixture to a glass with ice and sparkling water (or sparkling wine).
I just needed to free up some freezer space for my dumplings. Anyhow. Onto the process.
This batch had a lot of seeds! OMG. So many tiny seeds to filter out. I batch strained the solids 2-3 times (the -3rd time was the thick goo leftover in the strainer and I let it drip out overnight in the fridge in a bowl).
1/2 lb boysenberries, from the farmers market - big, ripe and not really sweet
1 lb strawberries - uhh, I froze them whole so the stems were still there
1 qt blueberries - these have been in the freezer for a while, a couple years; picked at Majestic Farm Blueberries a few miles away
I am not sure why I tossed in the remainder of an opened jar of Fonseco port, but a bit more than a cup of port is also in this "juice".
Crock it all together in a slow cooker for a few hours on LOW.
Made: 5 half pints
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| TheFoodening Blog - Unsweetened Mixed Berry Juice |
I just needed to free up some freezer space for my dumplings. Anyhow. Onto the process.
This batch had a lot of seeds! OMG. So many tiny seeds to filter out. I batch strained the solids 2-3 times (the -3rd time was the thick goo leftover in the strainer and I let it drip out overnight in the fridge in a bowl).
1/2 lb boysenberries, from the farmers market - big, ripe and not really sweet
1 lb strawberries - uhh, I froze them whole so the stems were still there
1 qt blueberries - these have been in the freezer for a while, a couple years; picked at Majestic Farm Blueberries a few miles away
I am not sure why I tossed in the remainder of an opened jar of Fonseco port, but a bit more than a cup of port is also in this "juice".
Crock it all together in a slow cooker for a few hours on LOW.
Made: 5 half pints
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