Feeling a little more optimistic

This week I’ve been feeling a little more optimistic that we’re going to come out of this thing OK. Different, but OK. I’ve actually seen a new, not exactly meme, but thought that more than one person is expressing, that we don’t want to get back to normal, we want to get back to better.

I work at the University, and I’ve been in a bunch of meetings talking about how we’re going to cope with summer and fall instruction, and there are just a ton of unknowns, but there’s still something encouraging about people making plans.

Like everyone else, I have a bowl of sourdough fermenting in my kitchen now. It’s got a few tiny bubbles like ginger ale – you can stare at it and it sort of sparkles. It’s not new, I’ve had it the back for the fridge for awhile. What I’ve learned in the current pandemic sourdough craze is that I have been baking with sourdough discard. My go-to sourdough recipes, the reason why I had sourdough starter in the back of the fridge, are these waffles, and this bread. For both recipes, you get out your starter, stir it up, take some out for the thing you’re making, then feed the starter and put it back. So that’s actually using the discard. Plus both of my recipes have some additional leavening added, baking soda or yeast.

On Wednesday I decided to get out my starter and start feeding it for 3-4 days, the way I’ve learned you’re really supposed to do, and bake some things with the discard.

I tried crackers, and they weren’t a great success. Remember I said I was learning how to cook half recipes for less leftovers – well, for the crackers I halfed everything except the butter. So the dough was too soft and I couldn’t roll it thin enough, so only the crackers on the edges were crispy – the rest were just sort of hard. I composted most of them. They tasted pretty good, though (I mean, before I composted them.)

Next I tried oatmeal-raison-sourdough scones. Those were much more successful.

Next, baguettes made with my long-rise, no-knead sourdough recipe, the one that I have recently learned is not true sourdough. I turned the spray bottle that I usually use to squirt the loaves to make the crust crispy into a bleach water spray bottle for our home made disinfecting wipes, so I put an old bread pan in the bottom of the oven and poured water in for steam. Seems to have worked OK.

Sunday morning, I’m going to make Violet Bakery cinnamon rolls, that are a biscuit cinnamon roll, not yeasted. By then I assume my starter will have been fed enough so that I can try a loaf of true sourdough, before I put it back in the back of the fridge.

And what else …

Monday night I made morning glory muffins, my old recipe written on the back of a spiral notebook that I used in library school, that John, age about 3, had scribbled on. I immersion blender-ed some cottage cheese to use in place of yogurt, and whole wheat flour instead of bran.

Tuesday I didn’t have any meetings until later in the day, so I went along on Mark’s long walk, and we saw baby goosers, currently featured as the blog banner.

It got warm when we were walking, so I had my second cup of coffee, iced, with vanilla syrup. I think I made my whole summer’s supply of vanilla syrup. I thought I could fit it into one washed out jam jar, but I had to use two.

Some night this week, we had broccoli quiche for dinner. We’ve got plenty of lettuce from the odd pre-order & drive-thru farmers market and I made croutons for salads and managed not to burn them this time like I did last time.

I heard that Parched Eagle, a local brew pub that has a beer named after our friends Jane & Jonathan, was having a 5th birthday zoom toast, so Friday afternoon I biked over to get some beer so I could join in.

Saturday I made peanut butter cookies. No sourdough.