Sourdough Doughnnuts

My grandmother taught me to make doughnuts when I was a little girl. Not sourdough doughnuts, nor did they contain any whole grain, but they were one of my best favorites nonetheless! Now, doughnuts are pretty much a seasonal food for us. Frying them keeps the kitchen warm and nothing is tastier for a winter's brunch than fresh, hot doughnuts. Our recent batch was made with sourdough starter.

Sourdough starter

My grandmother's recipe came from her mother, so it's an old one. As you will see, it's not a yeast recipe but rather one for cake doughnuts. So I'm not using the sourdough in place of yeast, I'm using it in place of the milk. I'm not using the sourdough to help the doughnuts rise, I'm using it to have healthy fermented whole wheat flour in them and as the acid with baking soda for a chemical quick bread rise. Here's the recipe.

Sourdough Doughnuts

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup sugar (I use unbleached cane sugar)
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
unbleached white flour, enough to make a soft dough (3 - 4 cups)

Mix by hand to make a soft dough. My grandmother told me the softer the dough, the better the doughnuts. Roll out on a floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness and cut into shapes.

I inherited the doughnut cutter from my grandmother.

Preheat oil to 375°F (190°C) and fry first one side until golden brown, then turn and fry the other.

I finally bought a candy thermometer to monitor the oil temperature. If
it's too hot the food burns, if not hot enough the food absorbs excess oil.

The kind of oil or fat makes a huge difference in flavor. My grandmother used lard, but I'm guessing that was before they hydrogenated it and filled it with all sorts of preservatives. That's what keeps me from buying lard today (although I did find some "natural" lard at the store for about $6 for a one pound container.) Instead, I'm using a combination of coconut oil and palm shortening.

To eat them fresh and hot makes them worth waiting on! Once they cool, I coat them with powdered sugar and store in a metal tin. Just like my grandmother did.

Sourdough Doughnnuts © Jan 2018 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Living with Living Foods

There are quite a few ways to classify foods. There are breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods, finger foods, picnic foods, and snacks. There are fruits, vegetables, starches, dairy, beverages, etc., even protein, fats, and carbohydrates. But also, I tend to think of them in a broader and more philosophical sense, in reference to their state of being. My bottom line categories for foods are: real, artificial, live, dead, and living.

Real foods, to me, are pure and unadulterated. They are foods in their natural state, or with all natural ingredients. They are foods made with ingredients that an average person could grow or make for themselves, if they chose. Real foods do not contain ingredients that require a complicated chemical process or patent to make.

Artificial foods are the opposite. The ingredients are things one can't grow for themselves, and probably can't even be pronounced if read off the label. These are things that have been developed by science, through chemistry or other processes, like powdered coffee creamer or high fructose corn syrup. The lines between real and artificial can get a little fuzzy because some things can be found naturally that are altered considerably when they become food or food ingredients. Carrageenan comes to mind. It is often listed as natural and does in fact, come from a natural substance, seaweed. It requires a process to extract, however, that is not do-it-yourself.

Live foods might also be called raw foods. They have not been cooked or processed in any way, such as raw fruits and vegetables. Milk too, if we're fortunate. These still have the vitamins and enzymes which are otherwise destroyed by heat, light, or irradiation.

Dead foods. Artificial foods can come under this category, but I think more of real, raw foods than have been sterilized, irradiated, bombarded with microwaves, or chemically treated to kill every living thing in them including the vitamins and enzymes our bodies need to function properly. This is done for the sake of so called food safety, and it does increase shelf life in the grocery store.

Living foods are not only real and live, they are alive. And growing. If not properly cared for they will die. They must be given an environment conducive for growth and they must be fed if they are to be kept alive.

Milk kefir grains

I have three such foods living in my kitchen: milk kefir grains, water kefir grains, and sourdough starter.  Keeping them alive seems simple enough, just feed them, or maybe it's just remembering to feed them. Even so, each has its own challenges.

As do all living things, living foods respond to their environment, particularly temperature. They do their job and grow faster in warmer temperatures than cool ones. Refrigeration, for example, will slow them down. It's also why time frames for making these products are given in ranges. If one's kitchen remains at a steady temperature, one can fairly well anticipate when one batch is ready and it's time to start another.

The biggest challenge for me is that my kitchen is never a consistent temperature. During winter, it is often in the 50s F (teens C), especially at night or when I'm not at home to keep the wood cookstove going. In summer, my kitchen is usually in the low 80s F (27° C). My living foods are continually responding to these. As the temperatures rise, I find the various batches mature more quickly. I have to keep an eye on them, looking for clues to tell me they've reached that point. With milk kefir, the milk eventually separates. With water kefir, I'm less sure. The water tastes less sweet and bubbles arise when I wiggle the jar, but I'm still trying to find the balance between done and overdone.

Sourdough starter

I've written about my sourdough starter a couple of times ("Accidental Sourdough" and "Problems With My Sourdough"). Also milk kefir awhile back, "Sustainable Cultured Milk", but I haven't mentioned my water kefir so far. Kris, at Melissa Majora and I traded kefir grains several months ago. I sent her milk kefir grains in exchange for water kefir grains. She dove right in and got a handle on milk kefir, while I'm still puzzling over my water kefir.

The real attraction to me with the water kefir, is being able to make "soda": a deliciously fizzy and not too sweet substitute for commercial soda pop. Because of the chilly spring temperatures (including my kitchen), it's been pretty hit-and-miss in the fizzy department.

Water kefir grains

All of this points back to living with them and gaining knowledge through experience. It's like having a relationship; I need to respond to what they tell me if I want them to thrive and grow. It's a learning process, one that I'm still deeply involved int. I figure that as long as I don't kill them off, I'm making progress.

Living with Living Foods © May 2013 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Sourdough Parsnip Cake

Well, I'd hoped to have some Ziggy kids to show you by now, but there is no progress to report on that front. Today is her technical due date, but what baby every pays attention to that! In the meantime, here's a filler post. :)

If parsnips are similar to carrots, and I can make a carrot cake, then why not a parsnip cake? This is the kind of thing you think about when you have a bumper crop of parsnips. This recipe combines my basic sourdough cake recipe with a carrot cake recipe, substituting grated parsnips for the carrots.

A plain but tasty cake. I don't usually frost my cakes. We like our
desserts,  but I like to keep them as simple and low sugar as possible.

2 1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening (I use non-hydrogenated organic)
1 cup whole wheat sourdough starter
2 eggs
2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated parsnips

Combine and beat well. Pour into greased bundt pan. Bake at 350° F for about 40 minutes or until done.

This recipe is linked to Food on Friday: Parsnips and Pumpkin recipes, over at Carole's Chatter.

Sourdough Parsnip Cake © April 2013 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Around The Homestead

Random updates, thoughts, ideas, and project happenings since my last Around The Homestead.

~ I finished transplanting the mystery bulbs, daylilies, and azaleas in mid-January. Fortunately we had a few mild days and the soil dried out enough to make this a pleasant job. The mystery bulbs turned out to be daffodils, the first of which was featured in my Colors of February.

~ Did I ever mention that I have a Meyer dwarf lemon tree? I bought it a year ago, before we knew we were going to buy this place. It resides in my studio and must be happy because it is growing some new leaves, photo on right.

~ In garden news, I've planted my boughten cabbage plants and have new leaves on the recently planted strawberry plants. No sign of the peas yet.

~ We have mice in the attic. Rascal heard them first. He was dying to get up there, but there's no way, with all the blown in insulation. Dan has been using mouse traps and cheese and we've caught four, but none since.

~ I'm still getting turnips and an occasional carrot and broccoli from my fall garden. The onions and garlic are still doing well. Amazingly the cabbages and lettuces I planted last fall have somewhat survived our winter. They look mighty stunted but I'll wait and watch to see what they do. Beets didn't do well. The spinach is starting to show from under the mulch, so we may get spring spinach after all.

~ I'm finally getting the hang of sourdough bread baking. My loaves rise well, have good texture, and good taste. I'm using my "sourless" sourdough recipe from this post.

~ In addition to sourdough, I'm still making sauerkraut. In fact I started my third batch about a week ago. I went back to the first recipe I used because we liked that one best. I'm experimenting though, one quart includes carrots, one onions, and one plain. I also made a quart of lacto-fermented turnips from my garden. Looking forward to trying that.

~ Let's see. Dining room. Most of the finishing details are done and we're getting furniture moved in. I'd like to find a darkish blue area rug to put under the dining table and chairs. Other than that, all I have to do now is get a drill bit so I can put hangers in those cement board walls and hang a few things up on my walls!

~ I'm going to wait to finish painting the living room until after the new front door is in. I figure it'll be easier just to paint all the doors and trim at the same time.

~ This gives me time to think about living room colors. Basically it is the same color scheme as the dining room. But.... while the gold looks good as a trim / accent color in the dining room, it would overpower the living room. Why? Because, including the double French doors, we have a total of seven doors in the living room, all with wide trim. Traditionally doors are painted the same as the trim color, and that would promote the accent color to a more dominant part of the color scheme. I like the gold, but not that much. So. I'm thinking through my possibilities here.

~ Like everybody else, we're trying to decide what to do with our tax refund. Because of the first time home buyers credit, this will probably be the largest refund we will ever get. We need to spend it wisely. One of our New Year's goals, is to make a decision about heating and cooling. The woodstove has limits, and cooling is another concern. Not only in terms of cooling the house, but in terms of controlling the humidity with it's accompanying mold and mildew. Have been researching systems in hopes of finding something both energy efficient as well as affordable.

~ Insulation goes hand and hand with this. Besides our breezy front door, we've experienced a few other problems. For example, on really cold days and nights I can hold my hand about eight inches from the outside bedroom wall and feel the cold pushing in. The walls themselves are almost icy to touch. In investigating this, Dan went down into the crawl space and discovered gaps between the walls and the floor. This enables cold air to flow up between the walls. We plan to plug these as a first step. Second step is to determine what, if any, insulation is in our outer walls.

~ Along these lines, we have put up blankets in a couple of doorways to help contain the heat in the parts of the house we use the most. We have one blocking the back room of the addition, and the other in the spare room doorway (which has no door). Dan noticed though, that the blankets do not hang still, but pulse with the air currents behind them. They almost look like they're breathing, another indication that the house is too drafty.

~ Priming the siding of the house came to a halt because of all the rain and cold. Although I'm looking forward to getting the house painted, perhaps the delay will end up being a good thing. If the outer walls have no insulation, we might want to consider adding some. And if the original wood boards under the vinyl siding are in really bad shape, we may need to replace them. These two projects could be done together. More investigation is necessary before making a decision however.

~ Goat fencing too, is on hold. We've had so much rain that quite a few folks in the area are having problems with fencing. Their fence posts either starting to lean or downright falling over. We've been working on the bracing and are hoping for some drying out time so we can get back to that project soon. It would be nice to get a few goats before that field is completely overtaken by brush.

~ I just gave you an update on our chicks, so no need to mention that.

~ It's snowing again today. I know won't feel this way in a couple of months, but right now I have to say that I'm tired of all the cold, wet weather and am looking forward to warmer days ahead!

Text & photos of Around the Homestead are copyright 

March 2010 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Problems With My Sourdough

I have been having a couple of problems with my accidental sourdough starter. Oh, it remains alive and well....

This in itself is something of a minor miracle because it requires daily feeding, and I can be decidedly absent minded about things like that. However, daily feeding also means daily growing. This is my first problem. It keeps growing and I continually need to do something with it so that it doesn't outgrow it's crock.

One possible solution would be putting it in the fridge to slow it down. But I don't have room in my small refrigerator for it! So it resides in our unheated back room "cold storage," quite happily, but still growing. Under the circumstances there is nothing for it but to use it.

My first couple of experiments using my starter weren't that great, as I tried to use the starter itself as a batter base. Then Sharon gave me a sourdough applesauce cake recipe and I began to understand how to use my starter. The basic process is to mix the starter, flour, and liquid, and let stand for several hours at least, if not overnight.

I have to confess that even though I've used her recipe quite a bit, I still haven't made it with applesauce! What I have done, is to modify it and substitute things like some of my rehydrated figs, canned pumpkin, or unsweetened carob chips....

Sourdough Carob Chip Cake

1 C sourdough starter
1 C unbleached white flour
1/2 C milk

Mix and let stand about an hour and a half. Then cream

1/2 C organic palm shortening
3/4 C raw sugar

Mix with starter mixture and add

1 egg
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Mix well. Lastly, fold in

1 pkg unsweetened carob chips

Pour into greased and floured Bundt pan and bake at 350° F about 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Unsweetened carob chips are naturally sweet, so I was able to cut the sugar by 1/4 cup. We loved it! I do plan to try the original recipe with applesauce soon. If you'd like a copy of that, you need to ask Sharon.

While experimenting with this, I began to wonder why the starter couldn't substitute for buttermilk in pancake, muffin, and biscuit recipes. Like buttermilk, it contains lactic acid, which reacts with alkaline baking soda to create carbon dioxide bubbles, causing the batter to rise. I reasoned that it should be able to replace buttermilk in any baked goods recipe.

With that in mind, I started using starter in my muffin and pancake recipes, without allowing the batter sit and rise. I found that I sometimes have to add a little more liquid, but it works well, uses up some of the starter, adds fermented whole grain flour to our diet, and makes things mighty tasty.

Between these two things, the problem of ever increasing starter was solved.

The most challenging thing has been bread. Do you remember my first loaf? I was delighted that it rose, but the texture was more like muffins than bread and the taste was distinctly sour. I needed to work on the recipe.

I found that by using less starter, say 1/2 cup for 3 cups of flour, I could get a dough that rose well and produced a better textured bread. I felt this may be the answer until DH told me he really didn't care for the sour in the sourdough bread. This was my second problem and it was devastating because I thought I'd found the answer to natural bread baking!

I was still puzzling over this when I read this post, at Chiot's Run blog. In it, Suzy mentioned reading that baking soda is supposed to help reduce the sourness of sourdough pancakes. I had definitely noticed that all the recipes in which I'd been using both starter and baking soda (muffins, pancakes, cake, etc.), really didn't taste like sourdough. I hadn't realized it was the baking soda however.

I decided to experiment with my bread recipe. The result?

Beautiful whole wheat bread with no sour taste to it! Second problem solved.

Here's what I did...

Sourless Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

The night before:

1/2 C sourdough starter
1/2 C warm water
3 C whole wheat flour

Mix to form a soft dough, adding more warm water if needed. Grease or butter the surface to keep it from drying out. Cover with a clean dishcloth, and let sit overnight.

Next day add:

Big glob of honey
Big blob of organic palm softened shortening
1/2 tbsp sea salt
1/2 tbsp baking soda
Enough unbleached white flour to make a stiff dough

Knead well (I cheat. I use my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook). Shape in bread pan and let rise until double in bulk. This takes quite a bit longer than yeast bread and I could have let mine go a bit more if I'd wished. Bake at 350° until done (I use the baking cycle on my bread machine.)

Problem solved! DH is happy with the taste of the bread, and I'm happy that I'm baking beautiful bread without yeast.


Related Posts:
Accidental Sourdough

Problems With My Sourdough text and photos copyright

5 February 2010 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Accidental Sourdough

I told Sharon (In Stitches), that two things I wanted to do this winter was soapmaking and sourdough bread. I used to make a lot of soap, but somehow stopped a number of years ago. I've tried my hand at sourdough bread too, but that was nowhere near as successful as my soap. The one or two loaves I made were heavy as a rock and as hard as one too. I figured it was about time to try it again soon.

I hadn't planned on trying a sourdough starter yet, but I did manage to make one accidentally. It happened because of what I've been reading about the benefits of soaking whole grains (a couple of good articles on that here and here.) For yeast bread making, one thing I've been trying has been to mix whole wheat flour with water and some whey, and letting it sit overnight. The next morning I prepare my yeast along with the other ingredients, mix, knead, and bake away.

Well, one morning I couldn't get to it. In fact the whole thing sat overnight a second time and by the time I got to it the following morning, it had risen just as though it contained yeast! I was amazed and figured that I had accidentally made a sourdough starter.

I started feeding it, and it kept on growing. After about a week I decided to try to bake a loaf of bread. I couldn't find a recipe I liked, so I made one up.

It worked! Not perfectly, but my bread rose and was not only edible but tasty. After my failure years ago, it was exciting to have my first success.

I by no means feel that I've got a handle on this sourdough thing. This first loaf had a muffin-like consistency rather than like yeast bread. Still, it's a start, and I hope to improve my loaves with some experimentation. I've also been experimenting with sourdough pancakes and muffins. I've even added it to cake in place of buttermilk. What I need is a sourdough cookbook or at least to start collecting recipes. Yesterday Sharon sent me her recipe for Sourdough Applesauce Cake. I can't wait to try it! Bread of course, is my main concern. Hopefully in the near future I can show you some real successes!

Accidental Sourdough photos & text copyright January 2010 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/