In my Universal Pancake Recipe, I mentioned that a little milk kefir mixed with flour makes a good, low-commitment sourdough starter. Today, I'm going to go into a little bit more detail about how that works, and how to make and maintain your starter.
Let's start with the basics: What is sourdough?
For the purposes of this blog, sourdough is any dough which uses a starter culture containing a diverse mixture of wild yeasts and bacteria. Store-bought yeasts consist of a near-monoculture of the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae (the same species as the yeast used for brewing beer, but a different strain). A sourdough starter contains both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and lactobacillus bacteria (the same stuff that makes lacto-fermented pickles and turns milk into yogurt). Unless you are growing your culture in a tightly controlled laboratory environment, it will also become home to lots of other types of wild yeast and bacteria, creating its own little ecosystem.
Showing posts with label kefir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kefir. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Universal Pancake Recipe
A few weeks ago, I promised that I would post my Universal Pancake Recipe.
The first few years I went gluten-free, I hated it. Okay, I still hate it, but I've also learned to appreciate the staggering variety of flavors and textures that are available beyond the basic three grains.
As I was re-learning how to cook without wheat, barley, and rye, pancakes were one of the first things that really *worked* for me. I'm terrible about following recipes, preferring to eyeball rather than measure, and substitute whatever happens to be at hand. Pancakes were the first thing that I felt comfortable eyeballing, and having at least one dish that I understood well enough to improvise gave me back a lot of my confidence as a cook. They're a great, low-commitment way to try out a new flour or flour blend.
Hopefully, if anybody else out there is struggling with re-learning how to cook gluten-free, this will help give you the confidence to experiment, and the knowledge to rescue something that doesn't seem to be working at first.
The first few years I went gluten-free, I hated it. Okay, I still hate it, but I've also learned to appreciate the staggering variety of flavors and textures that are available beyond the basic three grains.
As I was re-learning how to cook without wheat, barley, and rye, pancakes were one of the first things that really *worked* for me. I'm terrible about following recipes, preferring to eyeball rather than measure, and substitute whatever happens to be at hand. Pancakes were the first thing that I felt comfortable eyeballing, and having at least one dish that I understood well enough to improvise gave me back a lot of my confidence as a cook. They're a great, low-commitment way to try out a new flour or flour blend.
Hopefully, if anybody else out there is struggling with re-learning how to cook gluten-free, this will help give you the confidence to experiment, and the knowledge to rescue something that doesn't seem to be working at first.
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