Kvass, Take 2, and Sourdough Oatmeal Bread

I didn’t have any great desire to make bread first thing Monday morning. However, I’d started a sponge Saturday afternoon, and I was a day overdue making it into dough. (I’m not sure what I was thinking—between church and a six-hour round trip to the airport on Sunday, when exactly was I going to make bread?)

Even at the resting stage, this sourdough oatmeal dough looked promising.

So, first on my list today was the dough for Sourdough Oatmeal Bread. It’s another Bernard Clayton recipe, which I’ve made successfully before using the Amish Friendship Bread Starter. Since I had my doubts about this starter, I also had my doubts about how the bread would turn out this time. It’s rising as I type this, though, and I can hardly wait to try it warm from the oven after it’s baked.

A finished loaf of Sourdough Oatmeal Bread.
The smell in my house right now is heavenly.

I also promised myself I would start the week with another batch of kvass. Last week’s batch has settled into a nice pickle-juice flavor. Maybe my pickle-loving son will like it.

This time I’m using bread. It’s an entirely different approach from the carrot kvass I tried last week. This recipe from PracticalSelf Reliance calls for toasted bread, sourdough starter, water, and sweetener.

Toasting the bread is the first step in making the bread kvass.

I didn’t go completely authentic. I didn’t have any rye bread or rye sourdough starter on hand, but I did have a loaf of buttermilk bread that had received a less-than-enthusiastic response from my family. I diced that and toasted it, which gave me a little more than four cups of bread. I combined that with my honey sourdough starter and sugar water. Maple syrup or honey would have been better for this recipe—a.k.a., more authentic—but I had white sugar on hand, so I used that.

Into the jar the toasted bread goes.

A kitchen helper couldn't help photo-bombing the kvass, unbrushed hair and all.

Again, this recipe was amazingly simple to put together once I had the ingredients together, so I had it in the half-gallon jar in a jiffy. Now all that remains is to let it be so it can ferment for the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Within minutes, the toasted bread had expanded in the liquid.
Let's hope we have the same success with the fermentation.

Finally, my eldest has been 14 for a week, heaven help us all. Those birthday kittens are also a week old. Eyes not yet open, they seem to have doubled in size. The negotiations have started over which one, if any, our children will be allowed to keep. Good thing their father is in on the bargaining, or we’d have a lot of cats when we left the table.

Exactly who is supposed to resist these cuties?