Feeding the Mother

“The life of the mind,” Miss Mason said, “is sustained upon ideas.” Ideas are more than just facts, in the same way that homemade lasagna is more than mac-n-cheese from a box. We work to find our children books that are so full of these ideas that they can be called living books -the best books. We feed our children’s minds on the best books that we can find.

But what about Mother?

Do we take as much care with the care and feeding of our own minds and hearts as we do with our children’s minds and hearts? What lessons does our treatment of our own learning send to our children, particularly our daughters? Are these lessons that we want to be teaching?

Mother must have time to herself. And we must not say ‘I cannot.’ Can any of us say till we have tried, not for one week, but for one whole year, day after day, that we ‘cannot’ get one half-hour out of the twenty-four for ‘Mother Culture?’–one half-hour in which we can read, think, or ‘remember.’
-Charlotte Mason, The Parents’ Review, vol. 2 “Mother Culture”

 

We must feed ourselves while we feed our children.

I find it interesting that Miss Mason used the term “mother culture” to describe mom’s education. In sourdough bread making and cheese making a mother culture is a “start” that you use to get the process going. You use some, but keep the rest and add to it so that you’ll have a start the next time that you want to make bread or cheese. I have a sourdough start that I got years ago from my aunt. She got it from one of her girlfriends who had had it for 40 years, and her friend said that the start was descended from start that had been carried across the plains with the pioneers on their way to Utah...

Continue reading at By Study and Faith.

Almost Sourdough Maple Banana Bread

I had bananas that needed to be bread and sourdough that I wasn't in the mood to make, so it needed to be cycled so it will stay fresh. This is what happened when they got together.

Almost Sourdough Maple Banana Bread

3 over-ripe bananas

1/2c soft butter

2 eggs

1/2c sugar

1/4c maple syrup

1 heaping cup whole wheat sourdough start

1t baking soda

1/2t salt

1 2/3c white flour

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, mix ingredients in order given, mixing between each addition. Pour into 2 loaf pans, sprayed with Pam. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

It's pretty yummy - enjoy!

Novice Bakers

Tis the season: we've been given a bunch of zucchini. Which means zucchini bread - the kids want more. So, this time, Hero wanted to do the baking, and he's been doing really well with that. We're at the stage where I need to be available, but I'm not to hover; it's his project. So I set him up with the recipe, and I went and checked on some things, and when I came back things were ... interesting.

There was about an inch of oil in the bowl, along with the eggs and sourdough. When we measured, the eggs and oil combined came to just over 3 cups. I couldn't bring myself to just throw it out and start over -- and it would take several hours to get the sourdough ready. So we quadrupled the recipe. Mostly. I didn't have enough sourdough to actually do it, and the measurements were just a little bit, ah, fuzzy. We put it in the stock pot, because that was the only thing big enough to hold it all.

When all the mixing and measuring was done, we had enough batter to make 8 loaves. But we don't have 8 loaf pans; we have 2. So I started digging around. 

Two loaf pans. Check.

Two mini loaf thingys that I always burn. Check.

This time, they didn't burn. Yay! but the dough is so soft - I think we should have had a little more flour - that when I tried to get it out, the tops came off. Very messy. We ended up eating them with spoons out of the dishes. But we ate them, and they were tasty. Win.

Casserole dish. Check. This is a lot of zucchini bread.

Still going. Let's try the square pan. Check.

Finally. We used up all the batter!

So. Maybe it was because his sister was "helping" which could have been a lot for a new baker to deal with, in addition to managing the recipe on his own. Or maybe it was just one of those things that happens; we think he added the 2/3c oil, then looked at the sugar measurement and added that, in oil, as well. Whatever happened, we now have a ton of bread. And he has experience which he just couldn't have had from things going the way they ought to go.

He shared some with his cub scout den and with our violin teacher, who just had a baby. And we froze some. And we ate a bunch.

And it's all very yummy.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 6

 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.


Before I tried again, I checked the with a sourdough bakers group online that I like, to see if I could find some ideas for how to proceed. And I learned some more things:

1. Sourness is adjustable. I'm actually not a huge fan, and so I'll be messing around. Apparently, baking soda can help, since it's alkaline. I'm not sure if I can add it directly to my start, and adjust it right at the outset, or if I'd have to continually adjust the dough. I may make a test batch of start and try it out to see what happens.

2. Another suggestion was to try a springform or other pan with tighter sides nested inside my dutch oven. The dutch oven keeps in the steam - and with a nested pan you can add a couple ice cubes right before you put it in - and the steam helps slow down crust formation. That would help two of my problems with the last loaf.

3. Somebody stopped by the last post and clarified about bakers' percents in the comments, which was very nice of them - it's by weight, not volume. Which is tricky; I don't have a good way to measure weight, and going out to get new equipment is not in the cards right now. But it's good to keep in the back of my head, and they had a suggestion of how they deal with the differences, which should be very helpful. I just have to figure out what this new information is going to mean when I am standing in my kitchen doing stuff.

4. I think the last batch may have been too wet, which lead to it not holding its shape. I need to read some more about hydration. Which will mean diving into more percent stuff.

So I cooked a batch of white bread with a little oats in it because I like it that way. And it turned out lovely.

So back to sourdough. I decided that the last dough was too wet, and that's why it hadn't held its shape well enough to rise up. And I took a suggestion from the sourdough people to try nesting a springform pan inside my dutch oven. That shrinks the space just a little, and gives a bit of support for the sides, and I still get the lid hold in the steam. So I made the dough and set everything all up. 

The dough felt good, and it rose nicely, I shaped it and put it in the pan, and let it rise again. I was making dinner, and looking at it, and it wasn't quite done. So I stared at it. It didn't make it go faster, but I did it anyway. My husband and sister laughed at me a little. But I kept peeking at the bread because it was acting right, and I was getting excited. Turns out there was good reason for that - it turned out great! So here's the final recipe:

Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread
1c sourdough start
1c warm water
1T honey
1t salt
2-3T oil
about 4c whole wheat flour

Put start and water in the stand mixer with honey, salt, and oil. Begin mixing and add flour a little bit at a time. Dough should ball up around the dough hook, but still feel spongy and moist when touched (do that with your mixer turned off so you don't break your finger). Let rise 2-3 hours in the bowl, until doubled. Spray a springform pan that fits in your dutch oven with Pam, oil the dough to keep it soft, and set it in a warm place to rise till double, about 1 1/2 hours. Squeeze an ice cube between the springform and the dutch oven to provide steam, and put the lid on the dutch oven to keep it in. This helps the crust stay softer and thinner. Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes covered, then uncover and bake 5-10 more. Remove from pans carefully, and let cool 5-10 minutes before cutting.

Isn't that pretty? It's tall enough to use for sandwiches. The crust is soft enough to please even Dragon - he devoured his piece and came back for more.

It was delicious.

Up next: sourdough muffins. 

Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 5

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

OK. So, you know how I said that I wasn't going to be learning about bakers' percents? I sort of did it by accident. And it might even be useful.

In using baker’s percentage, each ingredient in a recipe is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour weight is always expressed as 100%.

So if I have 4 cups of flour (100%) and 1 cup of water, then the water would be 25%. Huh. I learned about it by accident here, when I was reading about the role of oil in bread. They say that, on average, the oil in pizza dough will be between 2% and 5%. So in a 4c of flour recipe, 1/4 cup of oil would be 5%. I am making approximately a 4 cup recipe, but then there's more flour hiding in the start, and I'm not quite sure how to go about determining how much. But it would put the 1/4c oil that I'm thinking about putting in right about in the right range.

So I'm going with 1/4c oil for this variant. Here's today's recipe:

Today's Sourdough Bread
3/4c sourdough start
1c water
~1T honey
1/4c olive oil
3 1/2-4c whole wheat flour

So I baked it, and it turned out the best of any of the loaves so far. Really, the only complaint I have is that it's so flat. It spread out, rather than puffing up, and I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that. I'm thinking I'll have to take my questions to the sourdough group. Once it's cut, it's shaped a lot like biscotti.

The crust is reasonable. It's crunchy, rather than almost not there like the white bread, but it's a pleasant kind of crunch. The texture is nice. The flavor is good. The kids are eating it, and describing it as "awesome, except more hard crust". I think Dragon, my fussy crust guy, would adapt.

I just wish it was a touch taller, so we could make better sandwiches. 

"Mom, can I have another bread with jelly?"
"We can have bread, and jelly! Together!"

And they both at it all up. Yum.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, and Part 5.

I woke my start up making zucchini bread. It was yummy. 

Now for sandwich bread. 

I have a recipe all picked out. I made the dough right before bed, then baked it the following morning. 

The recipe doesn't call for any oil, which I wasn't so sure about, since oil has an important part to play in bread. So I set up a second loaf for the afternoon. 

It's not terrible bread. But it's dense, which my family doesn't prefer, and the crust is really tough. I have to figure out what makes crust that way, so I can quit it. I have no idea at this point what is my problem and what is the recipe.

The second loaf, with oil, was better. But it's still tougher and denser than I like. There will be more experiments. I think the next one will be to use the dutch oven, and see if the heavier, lidded pan does better for me.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 2

So there's baking going on. Because I want to learn a very specific type of bread:

Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread. 

I can make a lovely white bread loaf, and if I treat it like white bread with regular commercial yeast, I can add sourdough and make it up to half-wheat: transitional bread. But I want to have the option of doing the whole thing in whole wheat. I like whole wheat; I like what it does to my body.

So anyway, Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

This is Part 2. Where we eat tasty zucchini bread.
Yes, that's relevant.

I haven't done much with my sourdough start lately. It's been in the fridge a couple days now, because if I keep it on the counter when I'm not using it nearly every day, then it gets a bit gross. I think it's the heat. It's been warm, downright hot for the area - got up into the 90s, with something like 83727495% humidity. The start doesn't like that. So I keep it in the fridge. Where it's not gross, but it doesn't do much, either.

So the first thing was to wake up my start and get it happy. You do that by feeding it, and I needed to make room in my jar before I could feed it. So I made zucchini bread. And that part of the starter that the recipes are always saying you should discard, I "discarded" -- right into the bowl for the zucchini bread. Which turned out yummy. I sort of used this recipe, but had to adapt it to cycle my start. Most quick breads are easy to just add start to; a sourdough start that's fed pretty close to a 1:1 ratio of flour and water has about the same consistency as most batters. Or, you can do what I did with this recipe, and try to reduce the liquid, which means that you can count the flour in the start as part of the flour in the recipe. You're supposed to be able to leave out the baking soda and baking powder, and let the sourdough make it rise, but I didn't try that this time. This is what I ended up with:


Sourdough Zucchini Bread
aprox 1c sourdough start (be generous)
2/3 c oil
1 3/4c sugar
2 eggs
2t vanilla
2c shredded zucchini (I eyeballed it)
1c whole wheat flour
1c white flour plus some extra
1t salt
1t baking soda
1t baking powder

Preheat to 325, spray 2 loaf pans with Pam. Mix up the wet ingredients, except the zucchini. Add salt, soda, and powder, mix. Add flours, and adjust to get the right consistency (It should just look like batter. Kind of thick batter. Eyeball it.). Stir in the zucchini just until incorporated. Bake for about 40-45 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes, then remove from the pan.

Snarf. My kids more or less inhaled this. I'm getting complaints because I'm out of zucchini, so there is no more. Pretty sure that I can find another zucchini somewhere; tis the season.

And now my start is ready to make bread!

Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 1

I've been looking for a whole wheat sourdough bread recipe.

My, but that's a mouthful to say. Sorry.
It should be a tasty mouthful when I'm done figuring it out.

But that's what I'm after: whole wheat sourdough bread. The kind that isn't hard like the rocks I'm making now, and that's pretty easy to make, and I won't be learning bakers' percents for this project. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I've discovered some things recently:

1. Mostly wheat bread (which is what I'm making now, because the texture is appalling when I make 100%) makes my cravings stop. So much for bread being evil! A while back, I discovered that I'm chronically short on magnesium. Hence the chocolate cravings. (Ahem. Pardon me while I grab some dark chocolate chips.) And the muscle twitches. And a couple of other annoying things. I've been messing around with my sourdough partly because it's fun, and partly because it's cheap and that matters right now, and after a while I realized that my chocolate is lasting longer - I no longer felt like I had to go grab a handful after the kids go to bed. Which is cool. I'm pretty sure that it's the wheat flour: that stuff's got a fair amount of magnesium in it, and fermenting it a bit before I cook it does some cool chemical stuff that makes a whole bunch of nutrients much more bio-available.

2. Lots of people cook with all sorts of flours. Apparently sourdough is fancy food. Whatever. I want egg salad sandwiches and toast with butter. I need something basic. I want no strange einkorn flour, rice flour, rye flour, nor anything like it. At least, not today. Just plain wheat.

3. You can substitute sourdough for baking powder. Which is mostly unrelated to anything here, but it's seriously cool. Takes a touch of planning, though.

4. Sourdough bread is not like white bread. Seriously. The finished product is similar, but the dough? It's a whole 'nuther critter. Practically needs its own word, it's so different from white dough. It's crazy stuff. And finding someplace that will give me a recipe for the proper care and feeding of the start (seriously, here! that stuff is alive!) so that it will magically make awesome bread... it's been a task.

So I'm trying this one. Perfect Sourdough Bread. She's suggesting a couple of changes from what I'm doing now: first, she feeds her start twice daily. I'd begun to suspect that mine wants that kind of treatment. I'm going to try it out. AND, she says that it ought to be thick. So I'm going to go a bit thicker than I have been. We'll see. I'm excited. I'll post pictures. And thus begins a Search For The Perfect Sourdough Saga. At least it'll be a tasty trip.

Onward to Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 or Part 5.