Solar ovens and sour dough bread....:-)

Many years ago I got fascinated by sour dough. It has all the elements that interests me: food, natural and a kind of sustainability or perpetuation. Ok, nearly all the elements that interest me, it is missing the sewing part.:-)

True to my nature, I refused to use the "fake" method of using a commercial starter or "cheating" with yeast. No, I had to use only "pure" ingredients and even ended up mushing up grapes because it supposedly added natural yeast (unlike.??) and a wonderful flavor to the dough. Yeah....that was not the best idea.

A little discouraged I caved in and bought a commercial starter. It produced a wonderful bread and I have had great luck keeping the starter going for years now. But it was still nagging me that I could not start the starter without. After all, what did they do 100 years ago? Often, cooks would accompany the larger wagon or cowboy "companies" that traveled across the plains and they used sour dough starters to make bread.

Well, it just so happens that the Solar Oven Partners are still needing a reliable recipe for sour dough in the solar ovens AND they need a reliable way to start and keep the starters in Haiti, without yeast! So, I am back on a mission and this time it is not just for my personal curiosity.

After some intense research (again) where I sifted out anything that distracted me from the basic ingredients and methods I am trying the following three starters: rye, whole wheat, and white. I mixed up 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water in a plastic container with a lid. The starter is fairly dense. I am now leaving them on the counter and checking them every 12 hours. The hope is that within the next two days I will see bubbles or smell something. Unlike to previous readings, I read that an unpleasant smell is not necessarily bad. It indicates that something is alive and now I "just" need to cultivate the good bacteria. The organisms I want to encourage are yeast and lactobacillus.

This is the whole wheat starter. As you can see, fairly dense.









The rye looks like thick ground mustard.









The white resembles something I used as bate when I went fishing as a kid.







My "old"starter. Don't worry about the separation, that is normal. It has been in the fridge all winter and I had no time to feed it or anything, but it smelled great. A perfect balance between sour and sweet. I am letting it sit on the counter to get to room temperature and will then stir it up. Later I will gently feed it with flour/water.