Sourdough Explosion

 Holy smokes, how is it Monday already? The weekend went way too quickly, am I right?

It's cloudy and breezy and threatening rain. I want nothing more than to curl up with one of my cats – either the cranky old cat or the hugely pregnant cat. They both like to snuggle.

It feels like a good day to snuggle with our very pregnant calico cat.

Despite my feelings, though, I stuck to business and spent much of my Monday morning doing PR and housekeeping for our local farmers market, which starts next month. I was more than a little irritated that our small town now requires park permits, but what can you do?

Otherwise, I feel like I’ve been in the kitchen all day. First, it’s my eldest’s 14^th birthday, so there was a special breakfast to be made. She’s been asking for Nutella-stuffed pancakes for a while now (that is, since I made them for her a couple of birthdays ago). Today seemed like a good day to do it. I’m not a morning person, though, and I’m especially tired today, so there are no pictures of those stunning creations.

Of course, there was a cake to be baked. Three layers made from cake mix, canned filling, and store-bought icing. Sometimes I go all-out. Often, I don’t.

I have yet to start the marinara sauce for her birthday dinner. Not how I planned it, but I’ll get there yet.

As for the sourdough…

It didn’t actually explode. Not quite. Let’s simply call it – energetic. I wanted to use a sourdough starter recipe I’ve never used before, so I went to my favorite bread source, Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads. His honey starter looked simple and amazing, so I decided on that. It’s supposed to make three cups and fit in a quart jar to ferment.

I’m not sure what I did wrong, but it quickly overflowed my quart jar.

Quart jar? No.

I transferred it to an old, quart-and-a-half pickle jar. Surely that would be large enough.

Larger pickle jar? Nope.

Nope.

My final effort was a half-gallon canning jar. As of now it’s contained at a mere double the bulk I expected, so I’m hoping for the best. However, I can hear the fermentation gases leaking around the seal, so who knows?

This half-gallon canning jar rests on my kitchen windowsill.
The sourdough starter has already taken over three quarters of the jar.

Since I was in the fermentation mindset already, I checked on my two other fermentation projects. That’s right; I have three fermentations going in my kitchen right now. Don’t judge.

The apple-scrap vinegar from two weeks ago is almost there, but I will wait to bottle it until the flavor is sharper and less sweet. Right now it has a slightly fermented but mildly sweet flavor, with a hint of carbonation.

My kvass is a different story. I’d never seen a recipe for a fermented beverage that didn’t contain at least a little sugar or honey. Since this was my first time, though, I stuck with the recipe, which called only for salt. Since I didn’t have whey, I increased the salt content according to the recipe. Today is the three-day mark. It smells sweet and carroty, but it’s still, well, salty as heck. Between the vinegar and the kvass, I’d say the vinegar is the tastier at this point. I’ll follow through with the fermentation process, though, and see how it turns out. Either way, I plan to try it again, but next time with the traditional rye bread. If you beat me to that experiment, let me know how it goes.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I'm going to leave you with a quote from this morning's Bible study. In The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 John, John MacArthur, Jr. writes:

"Our heavenly Father does not simply give us subsistent forgiveness that will barely cover our sins if we are careful not to overdo. We cannot sin beyond God's grace, because as wicked and extensive as our sins might be or become, they will never approach the greatness of His grace. His forgiveness is infinite, and He lavishes it without measure upon those who trust in His Son" (pg. 24).

His grace overflows. Kind of like sourdough starter in a quart jar. Happy Monday.