My friend, Sovina Gerber, spent her summer in MN. When she went home to begin her school year she gave me a sourdough starter. While she was here I definitely should have asked her to teach me her methods of making bread.
Apple pie and apple cake. The dough had risen a little bit. I ended up with two small loaves.
While it was baking it smelled Scrumptious! Maybe it is called flat bread.
It is delicious toasted and spread with butter and honey.
Mom and I have been alternating between freezing apples and canning tomato juice, salsa, soup, pizza sauce, etc.
No time for experimenting with sourdough starter - until one day when canning/freezing produce had dwindled to almost nothing. I thought, now would be a good time to use that sourdough starter.
I felt like a pioneer woman as I got the jar of starter out of the fridge.
(note to self: A pioneer woman didn't have a fridge)
Sovina had told me there were no worries about keeping it in the fridge for a couple months. She gave me a beautiful book with all kinds of recipes and instructions for this adventure. I skimmed and read only enough to be even more ignorant.
My mistakes would fill a small book.
I didn't let it warm up.
I didn't feed it and divide it.
I measured out 3/4 cup and put the jar back in the fridge. That was a good thing to do I found out. Later, I got it out and fed it flour and water and let it warm up in the warm kitchen.
I followed a recipe from Sovina that was supposed to make one loaf of bread.
In the morning I rushed downstairs expecting to see a bowl full of lovely bread dough.
Nothing had happened. The book said I could add some yeast. Then I started a baking spree to warm up the kitchen.
There is a small amount of sourdough starter in the fridge waiting for another experiment.
The main thing: it is edible, I didn't have to salvage it and make pizza dough as the book suggested or feed it to the dogs at Krysta's house. I think I will try again after I ask a lot more questions.