After discussing my bread problems on a previous post, I received quite a few helpful tips from readers and friends. El at Fast Grow the Weeds sent me a link to a no-knead bread recipe from the New York Times. The beauty of this recipe is that you let water and time do the work that your hands and back would usually do. Instead of using physical energy to create and expand the strands of gluten in the dough, the water (given eighteen or so hours) does the job for you.

I was skeptical, and, since I do not have packaged yeast, not convinced that I could make a sourdough no-knead loaf. I figured I would need a pretty strong and pretty watery starter to make everything work. After searching for no-knead sourdough recipes, I decanted a couple to try. This recipe is what worked for me.

Wait. First, a short discussion on my collection of sourdough starters…

This stuff is great if you take care of it. I use it a lot, and try many different flours in their creation and maintenance. I had three starters going, each with its own type of flour, but now I am down to two. If you don’t have a jar of starter and you make bread or pie or pancakes on a weekly basis then you are really missing out.

So I am down to two starters now. I was using graham flour in the one that died. It was getting pretty funky towards the end, losing its sweet aroma and leaning towards some kind of rotten smell. I don’t have a theory as to why the graham flour starter didn’t last. Maybe someone else has the answer. Here is the graham flour starter before I composted it:

It was pretty lifeless even after I fed it.

I also have a questionable starter that I feed whatever free flour I bring home from the store. It has recently eaten garbanzo bean flour, soy flour and a variety of other strange varieties.

It is still alive and smells fine. It does not bubble as much as my most active starter, the one I feed Southern Biscuit Flour, the only local flour I have available at the moment.

This one loves being what it is and performs no matter how long I neglect it or knock it around. It is my wild yeast workhorse, and I can’t praise it enough. I used this starter in the following recipe.

1 - Mix a sticky dough with three cups of flour, one cup of sourdough starter, one cup of water and one teaspoon of salt. You can also add just a dribble to honey to get everything real activated.

2 - Mix everything well, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for twelve to eighteen hours on your counter or other warm place. Sixty-eight degrees works well for mine, but seventy would be better.

3 - When the dough is ready it will have doubled its size (at least). Scoop the dough out onto a floured board.

4 - Form the dough into a ball, adding about a quarter cup more flour in the process. Don’t do too much work with the dough, just get it into a ball shape.

5 - Put the ball into a baking dish that has a cover. I am using a casserole dish at the moment, but have a cast iron Dutch Oven waiting to be put into service.

6 - Let the dough rise in the baking container. The recipes I found say everything from one to six hours. Use your best judgment.

7 - Place the baking dish (with cover) in a cold oven, set the temperature to 450 degrees and bake for one hour and ten minutes.

8 - Scrape the bread out of the container and set on a plate to cool.

Kristin says this is the best bread ever. It is really damn good.

Next up is Duncan’s beer bread…

Sourdough starter is good for other things besides sourdough pancakes. Since I found a banged up pie pumpkin, I figured I would try to come up with a recipe using baked pumpkin along with the starter and some foraged hickory nuts. The result was a dozen muffins.

I started with a basic sourdough pumpkin bread recipe that I found and modified it beyond recognition.

1 - Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2 - Quarter a pie pumpkin, scooping out the seeds. You can save the seeds and roast them if you have the time.

3 - Place the quartered pumpkin skin side down in a baking pan with a quarter inch of water.

4 - Cook the pumpkin until it is soft. This usually takes about 30 minuted but will vary depending on the size of the pumpkin.

5 - When the pumpkin is finished baking, scoop the flesh from the outer skin and puree in a blender or food processor. If the pumpkin is too dry to puree, add a little bit of water to get it started. You will need only one cup of pureed pumpkin for twelve muffins. Turn the stove up to 400 degrees while you proceed with the next steps.

6 - Beat two eggs. Add one cup of sourdough starter.

7 - To this mixture add two and half cups of flour (your choice), half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of baking soda, one teaspoon of baking powder, three tablespoons of cinnamon, three quarter cup of honey and a handful of hickory nuts or whatever nuts you have available.

8 - Mix, being careful not to over blend.

9 - Pour the batter into muffin pans and let sit for twenty to thirty minutes.

10 - Bake the muffins at 400 degrees for twenty to twenty five minutes or until lightly browned. Check the muffins with a fork or toothpick. If the fork comes out clean then the muffins are done.

11 - Cool the muffins out of the pan.

Recipe wildly adapted from online resources and mostly made up as I went along…

One of the first things I did when I started this project was bike down to Stoneground Bakery to ask for a bit of sourdough starter. Their starter has been alive for at least a year and has acquired what I think is an awesome taste.

Once at the bakery, I asked Danielle about the possibilities of buying a cup or so. She came back with Andrew, one of the bakers, and a pint container of bubbling starter. After a few quick questions on its care, I brought the starter home and outlined the possibilities.

I could make bread…All I had for flour at the time was the graham flour from Anson Mills. I had read that this flour needed to be mixed with some more refined flour in order to get a good bread, but I ignored all that since I didn’t have a source for a basic regionally milled white flour. (Thanks to Jessica at Fresh Thinking - Living Local in Wilmington, NC, I now have a source with Southern Biscuit flour.) After a few miserable attempts at making bread with the graham flour I decided to move to other recipes.

I attempted sourdough biscuits using the same flour. They came out as hard as doorstops and about as easy to eat. It was obvious that baking this flour wasn’t going to net me anything resembling bread, so I fell back on the idea of pancakes.

I like the result I came up with.

I have been making sourdough pancakes for the past three or four Sundays. The pancakes are very tangy and are pretty fluffy. They are also easy to make and easy to freeze for later, which is especially good for me to use for weekday breakfasts. The pancakes go along great with my rice and honey in the morning.

I won’t get into how to make a sourdough starter from scratch since I cheated and bummed some from a bakery. Which is what you should do anyway. Step one on the road to sourdough pancakes is to find a bakery that makes sourdough bread and ask for a cup of starter. If they are decent folks - which they most likely are - you’ll walk away with a starter that will last your lifetime and more if you take care of it properly.

For the pancakes, you will need to know a day in advance that you want to eat them. Sounds easy enough, but you are out of luck if you forget. Without exception, the mixture in Step 1 needs to ferment overnight.

1 - Add 2 1/2 cups of flour (any flour) to 1 cup of sourdough starter and 2 tablespoons of some sort of sugar. I use honey, but you can use plain granulated sugar, brown sugar, agave syrup, maple syrup, whatever. Just don’t use fake sugars or Stevia. They don’t have what the yeasts and bacteria in the starter are looking to eat.

2 - Mix until smooth. Cover lightly and let sit overnight.

3 - In the morning, mix up an egg, two tablespoons of oil (if you have it) and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Salt inhibits the fermenting and adds to the taste.

4 - Stir this mixture into the batter and mix until smooth.

5 - In the same bowl you made the egg mixture (why dirty another bowl?), add a teaspoon of baking soda to a tablespoon of warm water. Mix well.

6 - Carefully add this mixture to the batter. Fold the batter instead of stirring. The batter should begin to rise and bubble. Let it bubble for a few minutes.

7 - While you are doing all this mixing, you should have turned the heat up on a large skillet. The pan should be pretty hot when making pancakes.

8 - Pour pancake sized drops of batter on the hot pan, flipping when large bubbles appear on the surface. Keep finished pancakes warm in the oven or try to keep up with eating them as they finish. This might work better if you have a bunch of people.

9 - Finish up the batter by making one giant pancake in the shape of an octopus.

10 - Top with honey and preserves.

Recipe adapted from various online recipe sources, Wild Fermentation and my observations of the process.

The most important part of this process is to replenish your starter. To the original starter, add one cup of flour and one cup of warm water. Stir and let sit lightly covered overnight. Put the starter in the fridge until you need it again being sure to warm it up and stir it before using it in a recipe. Your starter will last indefinitely as long as you feed it.

If you are not going to use the starter frequently, you should still feed it at least once every two weeks. Dump out and compost about a cup and a half of starter then add equal amounts warm water and flour. Stir, let it get bubbly at room temperature then put the starter - covered - back in the fridge.

Fermentation is something that I only recently began to appreciate and learn about. Since picking up the books Wild Fermentation and Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning, I have been taking on fermentation projects a few times a week. The kitchen is littered with quart mason jars full of various colors and smells, the fridge is home to some finished products and ongoing ferments (like sourdough starter) and our small basement holds a crock of developing sauerkraut.

If you have never had sauerkraut, I’ll ask you to consider giving it a try. The tangy, salty goodness is perfect on a tomato sandwich, on a salad instead of salad dressing or simply by itself. I have eaten the store bought variety from Bubbies right out of the jar, but it wasn’t until I pulled out a jar full of the stuff that I made that I truly appreciated the taste and amazed myself by how much of it I could eat. And eating it raw (unpasteurized) maintains the beneficial aspects of lacto-fermentation such as good bacteria, high quantities of vitamin C and keeping certain acids available to aid in digestion.

I started the process with a few heads of green cabbage from Black River Organic Farm (45 miles), a cabbage cutter, some salt and a Harsch fermenting crock.

1 - Weigh out the cabbage, either at the store when you buy it or at home if you have a scale. For every five pounds of cabbage you will need three tablespoons of salt.

2 - Measure out the salt you will need and place it in a bowl.

3 - Halve the cabbages and shred using a knife, a grater or whatever you have available.

I used a heavy duty cabbage grater and it made the process go very quickly.

4 - As you grate the cabbage, add it to the crock. As you add a layer, sprinkle the cabbage with salt. The salt will pull water out of the cabbage.

5 - Continue layering the cabbage and salt, pressing down occasionally with your fist or a utensil to press water out of the cabbage. Don’t fill the crock all the way to the top. I filled about 3/4 of the way up and compressed the cabbage further down.

6 - Once you have all the cabbage and salt in the crock, you will need to get enough brine generated to cover the cabbage and the weight (a plate or the stones that come with a Harsch crock) needed to hold the cabbage under the level of the brine. You can use whatever you have handy to do the pressing. I just beat the cabbage with my fist until I had plenty of brine and the cabbage was tight and compressed in the crock.

7 - Place a whole cabbage leaf over the contents to keep any bits of cabbage from floating in the brine.

8 - Add a weight to the top of the cabbage such as a plate or, if using a Harsch crock, add the two stones. Make sure that the brine covers the weight. If you need more brine, add salt water in a ratio of 1 tablespoon salt to 1 cup of water.

9 - If using an open crock, cover it with a towel secured by rubber bands. This is to keep dust and creatures out. If using a Harsch crock, put the cover down in the groove and fill the groove with water. Be sure to check on the crock periodically to refill the water.

10 - With a Harsch crock there is no daily maintenance required, only minimal inspection to check on the water in the groove. With an open crock you will need to scoop out any film or mold that forms on the surface. If mold forms be sure to wash the plate. Also be sure to check the brine level in an open crock and add salt water if needed.

11 - In an open crock in warm weather you can start removing sauerkraut after a week or so. With a Harsch crock leave it to ferment for about 4 weeks then take a sample. Mine was good and tangy after 4 weeks. You can scoop everything out at once or just take a bit at a time. The sauerkraut will get better as it continues to ferment. I put my crock away after filling a quart jar with the contents. I’ll take out some more next week and the week after.

This process is based on the recipe in Wild Fermentation with some tips from my experience and some additional instructions for using the Harsch crock.