RecipeMuncher

I've made sourdough starters in the past, and have kept them alive for varying lengths (and shortnesses) of time. 

With the chill of autumn in the early morning air now, I thought it was a good time to start a new starter and try to keep it going for, well, forever, if I can.

I bought a book called Alaska Sourdough by a woman named Ruth Allman.  I've had this for years, but I haven't tried any of her recipes for some reason.  So, for that reason, and because the book is handwritten throughout, which gives it some personality, I figured I'd try one of her starters.

Ruth Allman was born in Boston but raised in Alaska, and, over the years until her death in 1989, one of the foremost Alaskan sourdough historians.  Her writing is conversational and rather exuberant, with the frequent exclamation points, and fascinating.  She had never used sourdough until she married her husband, so everything she learned, she learne…

We have a tendency to spend our Friday evenings making homemade pizza. Carry out pizza is awesome for when we’re super busy. But, there’s something about the taste of homemade that can’t be duplicated.

Which brings me to yet another handy use for my sourdough starter… pizza dough.

Unlike a sourdough loaf, which requires a longer, slower rise than ordinary bread dough, sourdough pizza dough actually requires far less rising time than average. What this means is that, if I’ve thought far enough ahead to feed my starter, I can have pizza dough in less than an hour.

This week, we made one of our absolute favorite pizzas, the artichoke à la mode. We first tasted this pizza at the Pizza Man in Milwaukee. And we decided that we had to figure out a way to make it at home. The biggest pitfall seemed to be the fresh artichokes, since we can only get those a few times a year when they’re in season. However, thanks to the discovery of fresh frozen artichokes …

Now that I’ve been blabbering on about the story of my sourdough, you’re probably wondering what he’s good for.

Well, I have used him to make the occasional loaf of bread. But, good loaves of sourdough bread require quite a bit of patience… and very long rising times (which requires dedication and planning — two things I tend to be short of lately). So, by and large, I have a tendency to use him for other things.

What other things?
Well, how about some waffles? Better yet, how about waffles chocked full of bacon and cheese?
I’m drooling just thinking about them.

These are really one of the simplest ways to use sourdough.
You just take about a cup of the starter, mix it with eggs, flour, oil, and your typical waffle ingredients.
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If you guessed that the bubbling batter in the last photo was sourdough, you were correct.

I’ve had a batch of starter taking up the back corner of my refrigerator for a number of years now. Initially, it came from my friend Rebecca, whose mother in law bequeathed her with a starter from King Arthur flour. When she passed it along to me, it had already lived through a couple of moves (through Iowa and Minnesota) and countless batches of sourdough bread. And I was a little bit nervous that I might kill it.

Turns out, he wasn’t really so difficult to take care of. I just keep him in a wide mouthed jar, like so.
This photo is of some starter that was fed fairly recently, but you’ll notice that it’s already developed some “sourdough liquor” (that’s the brownish-black liquid collecting along the edge there). As the sourdough ages, it accumulates more and more liquor. Some people drain this off when they feed their starter, but I keep most of mine and simply incorporate it back into…