My sibling got the recipe from the La Brea bakery bread book and it's kind of a weird one - it has you leave a pound of grapes in a cheesecloth bag in the starter for the first three days. I assume that's for yeasty purposes since the container is specifically supposed to be airtight. Possibly my sibling got the wrong kind of grapes (apparently there were no organic ones available). The water and flour were measured by weight initially, so unless the scale is messed up I don't think that could be the problem. They are gonna try doing a separate, more normal starter in parallel to see how it develops differently!
Yeah, that sounds like it's trying to collect wild yeast from the grapes! That is weird but super cool. I 100% support and would subscribe to starter science :D if you haven't looked, the King Arthur Flour website has a lot of really good free teaching content about sourdough.
getting grape or vinyard yeast like that is afaik kind of tricky unless you go picking for grapes yourself, bc how much washing has occured and how much of the yeast has been destroyed in the process is rly hard to make certain off. obvs with current situation it's very unlikely to be a good idea to get grapes in the wild/off of a friendly orchard rn but if you have the recipe i'm not uninterested, our grapes might have cool yeast on them lmao
starter update!! grape starter now looks like this: Spoiler it spontaneously re-mixed itself in the night and then separated back out but in the middle this time. that gap is about where the bag of grapes is. about two inches of liquid in there? both layers are bubbling, though the top more than the bottom, and it's got a nice yeasty, ever-so-slightly-fruity smell. success? potentially?? that red napkin on the side is covering the other starter, this one made with whole wheat flour. it is also bubbling a little bit! my sibling originally went with a recipe from King Arthur's website but it called for a cup of flour and half a cup of water, which just made a kind of dense lump, so they ended up just weighing out equal amounts of water and flour which seems to have done the trick. here's the recipe! in the form of an imgur gallery because apparently it's 9 pages long lol. it's from Breads from the La Brea Bakery by Nancy Silverton. lmk how it goes if you try it, I'm curious how it works with Better grapes!
That does sound like successful grape yeast acquisition! Fruity smells and bubbling are positive signs for yeast activity. Textures of this starter are definitely gonna be outside "normal" standards though, apparently, lol. I wish you good luck with your typical starter as well! We've had a TON more success weighing with our typical starter than with volume measurements, both with feeding and with baking using the starter.
So I´ve been making a cold rice noodle dish with ginger, paprika, soy sauce, and a tiny dash of honey. It´s pretty good but do people have ideas for what might make it better in future? (No fish,or aliums allowed)
I had a good cooking experiment today! I'd wanted to make this recipe for a while, and I finally took the time to do it. It turned out pretty well, and I'm excited to tweak it more this week.
if anyone else is starting a sourdough starter and needs something to do with the discard, these are probably the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten. SO FLUFFY. recommend adding blueberries to the batter! my sibling made a batch last weekend and now we have a whole bag of em in the freezer ready for toasting :)
update on the weird grape starter: he has become a REAL BUBBLY BOI Spoiler that just about doubled in size in the last 3 hours, and you can see bubbles bursting at the surface from time to time. hear them, too, if you put your ear over the opening! it spent quite a while with limited activity and standing liquid on the top, but once the bag of grapes got removed and regular feedings started it really took off. sibling is going to start the first loaf tonight :) the other starter is also doing well - developed normally and moved into the fridge a couple days ago. now I guess we just have two sourdough starters living here
I didn't get to do my usual easter baking (Bunny shaped carrot cake) this year because the store was out of flour so I bought a brownie baking mix, used lemon flavoured oil instead of butter, added dried sour cherries, and put everything into my flower silicon mold. Behold, Quarantine Easter Baking:
Tsubu-an! Spoiler Dorayaki! Spoiler doing it again I would make both the red bean paste and the pancakes a little less sweet, but these came out delicious! I love red bean flavored stuff :D
psa: hot cocoa made with condensed milk is delicious next I will make the remainder of the condensed milk into dulce de leche and make hot cocoa out of that
Made savoury baked apples today! three granny smith of decent size, and then stuffed with a good squishy mix of goat milk camenbert, chopped walnuts, and fresh ramps from outside (last leg of ramps season!) plus some spices, then poured some semi-dry white wine into the casserole to bake the apples with. And it's so good, i'm def going to make this again. Spoiler: big image
I made Creamy Tomato Risotto with Chicken Parmesan Meatballs tonight <3 And I have enough for 2 more meals :D (There's some raw chicory in the top bowl as an addition of veggies) Spoiler: Deliciousness this way lies
Of course! I got it from here: https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/creamy-tomato-risotto-crispy-garlic-crumbs/ I didn't make the crispy garlic crumbs, obviously. Meatballs from here: https://www.budgetbytes.com/chicken-parmesan-meatballs/ Enjoy!
