Sourdough?

For those of you who don't know, I have had a very shaky relationship with sourdough bread. Now, I love sourdough. I worship it. I dream of going to San Francisco so I can taste their sourdough. I love it in sandwiches, I love it grilled, I love it as toast. Hell, I'll just eat a hunk by itself. So, of course, I have to learn how to make it!

So I went on Google and discovered that there are two ways to go about this. You can do it the "real" way, which is to combine flour and water and let it ferment and pray that it grows some yeast on its own, or you can "cheat", where you just throw some store-bought yeast in. Of course, when I first read this, I stuck my nose up in the air and declared I would never "cheat" on sourdough. So I made it the "real" way, and let it sit... and sit... and sit... Now, apparently it is supposed to get all foamy and expand dramatically during this time. I think mine shrank. So I dumped it out, boiled the jar I'd kept it in, and did it again. Same thing happened. Again.

So fine. I cheated. Yesterday, I tried a third time, and I dumped in a packet's worth of yeast. Two cups of flour and two cups of water makes about 2-1/2 cups (I know, I thought it would be more, too), and within fifteen minutes, my quart-size canning jar was overflowing! So I poured half into another canning jar, and twenty minutes later, I had six cups of starter. Naturally, I totally freaked. Either I had stoner-slacker-starter, or I had crazy-psycho-starter trying to take over my house. "Today, Sarah's kitchen, tomorrow.... THE WORLD!!! BWAHAHAAAA!!!" These worries were completely unfounded however, since it suddenly fell and I was able to dump it all back into one jar, where I have just over 2-1/2 cups again. It's started foaming on top and there's hooch, but nothing's really going on down at the bottom again, so I'll wait a couple of days, see if something happens, and then, I guess I'll try again.

I also started a Herman starter, thinking that if I made two starters, I'd double my chances of having SOMETHING work. Herman is similar to sourdough, but it is sweetened and uses milk rather than water. Man, that stuff stinks when you leave it out overnight. It doesn't smell like spoiled milk, though, it smells like really pungent wine. Which I think smells pretty bad. I'm not a fan of the smell of wine. Anyway, it did something similar to what the sourdough did. (You are supposed to add yeast to Herman.) It went from a couple of inches in the bottom of a mixing bowl to standing over the rim of the bowl, even after I'd stirred and beaten it down a couple of times, and by this morning, it was down to half-full.

I'll let you know how the starters pan out, I just figured I'd give an update about what I've been up to the past couple of days.