One of the things I have been doing a lot lately is experimenting with my sourdough starter and sourdough recipes. It has been challenging, exciting and tasty! Let’s look at a little back story on Sourdough Starter.
Do you know what a sourdough starter is? Sourdough goes way back, at least as far as the Ancient Egyptian times. It can mean slightly different things, but most commonly it is water and wheat flour that have fermented and grown wild yeast. Sourdough starter was here long before commercial yeast (the yeast you can buy in the store). Sourdough starter is used as a leavening agent and it enhances flavor. Also, sourdough foods that have fermented are known to have health benefits such as easier digestibility.
My starter is 3 years old now and yes, it has a name. Meet Agnes! I started with making loaf bread and slowly transitioned to artisan loaves, bagels, tortillas, and English Muffins. Though I didn’t know I was really headed in this direction I have reached a point where I no longer need to buy bread products from the store. I was thinking about all this and really when did it become the “norm” for us to buy all our bread from the store? Maybe we should try to bring back the homemade baked goods so that it is more common to make them ourselves. I know that a big contributor to this change was probably busier schedules but even if we can’t change everything to homemade it would be fun just to change even one baked good to homemade.
I recently made a second starter, Agnes II and this was in preparation of making a blog post and printable about making your own sourdough starter. One of the interesting things about being able to compare Agnes with Agnes II was the smell. New starters seem much more acidic and as the starter ages and matures it becomes so good!
If you are interested in starting your very own starter to make all sorts of delightful baked goods, scan the QR code and it will bring you to Learning Sourdough with Agnes on thefarmchicken.com. Here you can learn all about the process and what you need to have your very own starter (You can name it too if you want!). Pictured is a loaf of Sourdough Potato Bread, one of our very favorite breads! The recipe is on the blog! Thanks for reading, have a great week!
Mariah Nienhuis /TheFarmChicken
