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[Johnsfolly]

My Betterhalf on her second attempt at sourdough bread. The last batch was good bread, but not that distinctive sour taste. She let the starter go a bit longer this time. Still it's good bread still just isn't "sour". May have to get pointers from Ness on this one.

[Johnsfolly]

The sourdough was not the only loaf that my Betterhalf made today. Paying homage to a recipe posted some time ago by BH, she made our first Jamaican coffee meatloaf. Livie was not keen about the banana in the pepper/olive topping. She doesn't like bananas. Personally I think that the banana worked in this recipe. I really liked it with a slice of warm "sourdough" bread.

[ness]

22 hours ago, Johnsfolly said:

My Betterhalf on her second attempt at sourdough bread. The last batch was good bread, but not that distinctive sour taste. She let the starter go a bit longer this time. Still it's good bread still just isn't "sour". May have to get pointers from Ness on this one.

About all I can say is sourdough is....tricky. Really, to me, all baking is tricky, especially yeast based baking. 

I started with a culture that was supposedly from Italy. It's been grown, neglected, revived, neglected, revived.... and is currently being neglected after being revived a couple weeks ago. It's certainly not a laboratory environment, so I don't have any illusions that it's the same Italian sourdough culture at this point. But... the last time I did it I did get decent sour flavor. 

I do think there are things passed off as sourdough that may not really have the yeast and lactobacillus living together in a symbiotic relationship--which is what a true sourdough starter is. The acid prevents contamination of the yeast from other bacteria. Where did your starter come from?

The loaves look great though!

 

[MOPanfisher]

My wife used to make an amish friendship bread.  You get a "start" from a friend and you kept it in the freezer until ready to start growing it.  If memory serves it was basically feed it some sugar and flour and keep it in a warm place, at some point you divided it, put some back for later and gave some to a friend.  The remainder you turned into a bread that basically you could have made anything out of, usually raisins, cinnamon, orange peel that sort of stuff was my favorite.  Took something like 10 days or so before you got to make bread, was dang good bread but never had the "whang" of sourdough, I was never quite clear if it was a type if sourdough or not.  I do like a good funky, chewy warm sourdough.

[Johnsfolly]

Ness I'll have to find out what starter she has been using.

[MOPanfisher]

Woring on supper for the kids as part of my grampa duty day.  As usual not. Pretty and definitely not photo worthy but will be tasty.  Small pork loin, seared in the skillet the slow roasted till done.  Other skillet caught a pound of cheap bacon, cut up in one inch pieces, a nice big red onion, chunked up, a bag of small taters chunked up, a bag of petite baby carrots because my grandson loves cooked carrots.  As it is getting close to done a handfull of asparagus Spears on top to steam slowly while waiting for my daughter to come home.  Anybody on a creek bank would recognize it as a variation of what we used to call "grub", however I didn't dump a can of pork and beans on top and call every one with a hog call.

[Gavin]

Contemplating Soup for the family soup competition . Thinking beer bacon cheddar this year. Have to cater to middle of the road flavors. The won't eat excellent gumbo, loved the bland taco soup, would not eat the turtle soup cuz it had real turtle meat in it. What do you think they will like? 

[MOPanfisher]

Sounds like a good chicken noodle soup crowd.  Smoke a chicken or turkey, pick the meat off the bones and boil the bones down in some bullion for the goodness in them and stock for the soup.  Then wild rice or good egg noodles and as much of he meat as you like in the soup.  Option I have used is potatoes and carrots so that it is like a pot pie soup.

[Gavin]

Chix Noodle & Dumps are good but won with those before. Will be bringing both but won't be on the competitors table. Will be 30-35 pots total, maybe 12 competing.

[MOPanfisher]

I have done well at such things with zuppa toscona, just like the Olive Garden serves (only better).,  fish chowder sounds good right now as well.