Let me preface this with "I Don't Know What Sourdough Is."
Something to do with yeast and keeping it around and alive. To what purpose I'm not really sure. Yeah, settlers to the wild west might have had sourdough, cause the local supermarket maybe didn't carry yeast.
Is the bread at Outback Steakhouse sourdough? I can't remember. Tasted... different.
I recently came in contact with the Weston Price Foundation. As in I heard about them and read some of their stuff. Apparently this dude was the dentist who traveled the world looking at people's teeth and attempting to form dietary guidelines based on people's mouth development and tooth condition. I think I read about him in the Paleo diet book as well. One of his premises was on the preparation of grains and you know western people are doing it wrong. We're supposed to be soaking, fermenting, sprouting grains. One method of which is sourdough.
Now I've read several diet books and they seem to largely agree that grains = bad. So to have something say, "sure, grains and legumes are ok you just have to soak/ferment/sprout them" is a bit disorienting.
Coincidently, I also just read a book by Melissa K Norris of Pioneering Today podcast fame called "Home Made." It details making sourdough.
Should you eat bread? Wellness Mama is generally gluten free and argues that grains have little nutritional value and more gluten than in the past because of breeding. Paleo and Keto diets don't use them. I think generally for the calorie cost, you can get something a lot more nutritionally dense. But that makes having like an egg sandwich or taco or just taking a meal on the go a lot more difficult.
Don't get me started on pizza. I'm not eating that for the nutritional benefit.
So if there is a healthy way to eat bread, it might be sourdough. You can make most forms of bread, including pizza crust and sandwich bread out of sourdough. I'd say it probably still shouldn't make up a significant portion of your daily calories.
Says the person who's been eating everything bagels with sharp cheddar cheese on the top.
It's a community thing to share sourdough starters. That means they give you a bit of dough with a lot of the yeast living in it and you feed it flour and water and it grows and rises and you use some of it to make bread. Which I've also never done. Baking is not my thing.
But, as I'm looking at homestead-y advice online in Twitter and Instagram posts, I keep seeing sourdough. And my mom just got into sourdough. And I'm always looking to save a buck and hopefully get more healthy in the process. Could I maybe make my own bread? That wouldn't save a buck, honestly, only like 69 cents a loaf. Possibly healthier. How about my own pizza? If I bulk bought the mozzarella.
If I was a true homesteader, I'd milk the cow and make my own mozzarella. Ha.
Anyway, we're currently eating a Lotzza Motzza pizza and a Jack's (or other cheapo thin crust cheese pizza because that's the only thing the kids want but at least it's cheap) a week. Lotzza Motzza costs $4.99 a pizza if you find it on sale and possibly over $8 if you don't.
We find it on sale. We have a chest freezer. Look at us, stocking up like pioneers. On frozen pizza. Just like 'em.
Ahem.
Apparently wild yeast lives in the air. So if you just start setting out water and flour mixed in a jar, like a wild cat it will come and start feeding. And living in your jar. It takes a lot longer than store bought yeast and apparently you can't even make bread from it for weeks to months trying to start it this way (instead of getting a starter from a friend). It is the harder, less reasonable route.
Since I'm contrary and also don't want to feel like I received someone's kitten and maybe accidently let it die, that is the method I'm trying. I'm on day four?
No idea if its working. It bubbles. It stinks (apparently that lovely yeasty smell isn't this).
We'll see how it goes.
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