Got yeast?

OK, we have all been prepping and we have lots of flour. But if you run out of yeast then you are stuck with eating only quickbreads and pancakes.

A while ago I came across a site that gave instructions for making your own sour dough starter. I tried it and sure enough I had nice bubbly stuff that would rise just as described. I never made bread with it. I just wanted to know that it would work.

During the recent "practice run" that we call swine flu I thought it might be a good idea to review the instructions. Well, of course I did not have them anymore (my old computer broke and I lost all my bookmarks) and I learned that it is probably best to print stuff that one might want during a sip (the power might be out).

Anyway, here is a link to a site that tells you everything you will want to know about making a sour dough starter and baking sour dough breads:

http://www.sourdoughhome.com/

Please post a comment if you found this helpful.


P.S. I had also found a link to instructions for how to make a "make shift" brick oven just by stacking up bricks (no mortar). Does anyone have a link to this?

But here is a site for "emergency bread making" which tells how to make it in a dutch oven or while camping.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9663798/Emergency-And-Outdoor-Bread-Manual-How-To-Make-Bread-Without-An-Oven

I also once found a recipe once for making bread like some settlers did, on a stick like one would roast marshallows. Does anyone have a link for this?

I have a bread machine, too, and I try to limit my "gluten" as well, but I do eat some, and love to make it.

Beautiful, yes, that was exactly what I was looking for.

Here's some more links, too

   That brings back memories. I remember baking dough like that at boy scout camp many years ago. We cooked them over a campfire, spread jam on them and ate them off the stick. It was pretty good as I remember

Missippi Mama -- I once read here that someone put them in one of those big decorated popcorn tins that are sooo plentiful around Christmas time.  Probably take them out of their original box to get more sleeves of crackers/bags in the tin. Watch for garage sales and Goodwill type places bet you could find them there, maybe even duct tape the edges around the lid may make it more airtight.  Hoosiermom

The first time I made sour dough starter it worked well.

This last time it got bubbly but failed to rise, which was a shame since I planned to actually use it this time. As of today I am back to the drawing board and starting over. My directions did say that sometimes one needed to start over.

It might be that I started to feed my starter too soon, or that the top of the fridge was not warm enough, or that I did not have the best flour to start with.

If the problem is the last of those then the solution is to have flour made by different brands in the house so that if one brand does not work another might. I will probably know in a few more days what went wrong if it works this time.

Awesome. Are you doing that deal, where you store it in the fridge? Are you going to be baking these to eat when they're ready, or just storing them for a rainy day (SIP etc.)?

Ah, back to the drawing board.

My starter was doubling in size for two days.

I was doing something right and I might not have even known what it was.

When I began this starter my water filter was broken so rather than use chlorinated water I used some that had previously been filtered and was in the fridge. Because it was cold I warmed it slightly.

Then without thinking about it when I got a new filter I just started using the filtered water from the tap. Coincidentally at the same time I switched from whole wheat flour to white flour.

Well, my starter did not like at least one of the changes because it just stopped doing anything. The wonderful yeasty smell went away and the only smell that was left was the smell of hooch.

By the time I am done my first loaf of sourdough bread will have used 5 pounds of flour, ha.

Hello, Dr.Who,

Good one!!!  That's about what it smells like, LOL.