I have always wanted to start my own sourdough starter and thanks to Chef Cathy for this opportunity. I found that the first couple of days I wasn't successful, usually the top was dried out, or there was nothing!! Then I found out not only to have a warm ( not necessarily hot) place, but when I would add water, warm water works better than cold for me.
So here I am on Day 7 of the challenge. I woke up to my "pot over flowing with sour dough starter on the table and the floor!!" So I made the pancakes with the sourdough recipe and I even made a batch of sourdough English muffins!! ;)
Now, for some advice from you Cathy.... I still have plenty of starter in my pot, so I really don't want to add any more flour and water as I don't have enough room in my pot or the time to make anything more right now. Tomorrow I will be out of town, so will my starter be o.k.? My other question is, could one bake the sour dough English muffins in the oven? I only have cast iron skillets, but can only cook one at a time. I was wondering if you could bake them in an oven on a cookie sheet?
Thanks for any advice and look forward to getting different recipes for using sourdough!
Good for you! Thanks for sharing. Just put your starter in your fridge! Now it is a concentrated colony and , unless you want to keep using it, you can "suspend" it in the fridge til you need it. You can either take out a cup or two as you need it, just let it come back to temp and add more flour to "reactivate" it. For bread you may want to do it a couple of times, then - for the best rise - make bread when it is really active. Other things like crepes, pancakes and waffles can be used at most any point as you can add baking soda to assist the immediate rise. I have even frozen my starter - just in case - I "lose" the current one. Instead of going through the week of feeding and creating a starter - I just reacitivate the frozen one.
As for the English muffins - you can certainly use more flour to make a dough that you can roll out - then you can bake them on a cookie sheet.