Economics? This post is more or less unrelated...

Hey all!

So as I've alluded to and/or mentioned previously, I dig kitchen activities (such as cooking and baking... cleaning is fine, I guess). When I'm procrastinating it's usually while standing over a vat of black beans that I've been soaking since yesterday, or else trying to perfect my hummus (starting to sound like Rachel Ray I know). All I'm trying to say is it's a passion, and this week I've embarked on a new (mis?)adventure in the kitchen.

A friend of mine, Steph, who also is enthusiastic in the pursuit of food-creation made a sourdough bread a week or two back. See, over the summer she was given a copy of the book 'Wild Fermentation', which is a non-fiction novel/cookbook that offers tons of recipes for foods that require fermentation, such as kimchi, cheeses, wines, and sourdough bread. We have yet to prepare as many of them as we'd have liked, but for both of us the idea of fermented foods is exciting because it involves quite a bit of, well, nature. ALSO it's exciting because according to the book many fermented foods have added health benefits that their un-fermented counterparts don't... and while I'm not going to feign to know any specifics, that's pretty sweet (the author is a long-time survivor of HIV, and claims fermented foods have played a role in his good health).

Above: the sourdough starter. Currently
in our townhouse storage unit for warmth.

After Steph's overwhelming success with the sourdough bread, I had to give it a try. I'm actually not using the recipe in the book mentioned above (because I found an easier one, teehee), but as of today I've begun growing my own sourdough starter, which is the (hefty) step 1 in making the bread. After you ferment a flour-and-water mixture for about a week, you end up with a mixture that is the basis (starter, if you will) of the bread, and from there you add more flour, water, yeast, etc.

Obviously there's still a week or so to go, but I'm quite excited to see how this turns out. Either way, I'll do my best to post a picture of the end-product! At that point I'll probably need some time away from whatever paper I'll be writing, anyway.

Thanks for reading! And Happy Fermentation!