Back in North Carolina (our second stay there) I was inspired (thanks to Mary!) to try sourdough again. I had tried it in Michigan with freshly ground rye flour! I failed miserably. At the time I had no idea why, now I have some ideas what went wrong, but anyway…while in NC I was able to get a sourdough culture up and running! This ended up being another way God prepared me for the Solomon Islands. (Am I really surprised anymore by this?)
Right before we left the US to come to the Solomons I began thinking about how we could eat healthy and stay on a budget in quarantine. I wasn’t sure how easy cooking would be in a 2 bedroom, 0 kitchen hotel room. Feeding just myself would have been challenging enough, but I would need to feed 7! Since I had been successful with sourdough in NC, the thought of simple, sourdough pancakes came to mind. This seemed doubly appropriate since we thought we might not have access to eggs and I’d found a no-egg recipe that the kids loved. Australian Customs is very strict and Josh did not want to try taking even a small amount of starter through. So I reached out to a friend in the Solomons and asked her if she had a sourdough starter available. She did and she was able to have some waiting for me in quarantine!
The pancakes worked great! So fluffy! Almost like biscuits sometimes, if we got the consistency right the night before. This ended up being great practice for our stay in the village, where we had no access to eggs and no refrigerator or consistent market for purchasing fruit.
Fast forward 6 months and a friend from the US heard how I was using my sourdough and how I laboriously and precariously took “care” of it every day. I would feed it every morning and night, and if I wanted to prepare extra I would need to separate it out into several containers and feed them separately. I knew there must be an easier way, but I didn’t want to risk killing my very precious sourdough starter, so I didn’t experiment. My friend suggested I check out Farmhouse on Boone for how to care for my sourdough starter in bulk. What a relief! And what an exciting discovery! Helpful information, and so many new recipes!
So far we have tried her chocolate cake, Dutch pancakes, flat bread, no-knead artisan bread, cobbler (I used papaya instead of peaches), one-pot dinner, and pancakes (different from the recipe we generally use, it uses eggs). Very often I have to substitute ingredients, but where the sourdough is concerned, I am able to follow that part pretty well. Well, except for baking powder…that’s a challenge…
Additionally, sourdough has some serious health benefits. After our extreme elimination diet 10 years ago, the process for how we prepare and eat grains is a big deal. Sourdough is perfect for our digestion, and keeps us healthy, and from damaging our guts again. It also releases so many more nutrients from the grains for our bodies use. In addition, it saves us money. We don’t always need yeast or eggs for bread. Eggs here are quite expensive, so being able to make pancakes without them is also good for the budget.
Another cool benefit from using sourdough was being able to teach a few woman in the village where we stayed how to use and care for it. I had to explain everything in Pijin and used a lot of hand motions at first, but it was super exciting when one of the women I taught asked me to send her more sourdough on a ship. She had run out of flour to feed it, and with no refrigerator, the sourdough had gone bad. Just getting the sourdough to her was a whole other adventure on its own, but we were successful, and now she is able to make and sell pancakes in the village market.
Do you use sourdough on a regular basis? Do you have any good recipes to share? Please send them my way! We are really enjoying using it!