Sourdough Starter

At Easter, my sister brought a catalog from the King Arthur Flour Company. All of us women-folk perused the magazine which boasted of wonderful baking mixes and helpful kitchen utensils. We all ordered a few things that we needed or wanted to try and bundled our orders to receive free shipping. I ordered more of those handy bag clips ... mine had all disappeared in the past few weeks (or maybe they were all being used) ... and a crock and starter for sourdough.

The starter arrived separately, because the plastic shipping jar was damaged in the first shipment. The company quickly replaced the starter and it arrived at my home last Friday. I was amazed at the small amount - not even a tablespoon! The first step was to add 2 tablespoons lukewarm water to loosen it from the plastic shipping jar. Then I was instructed to go through a series of steps where I mixed in water and flour. Twice I discarded half of the mixture and then added more water and flour. I felt like I was throwing out a lot of flour.

The starter is 'resting' right now. I'm at the point where I either need to use or refrigerate the starter. Since I kept both portions this time, I'm going to refrigerate half in the crock and use the other half for waffles tomorrow morning. The waffle recipe asks that you start a 'sponge' overnight, so I'll need to plan ahead to make waffles.

This is the crock, which will be used to store my starter in the refrigerator. Isn't it cute?

Sourdough is wonderful when used for grilled cheese sandwiches. I just hope my sourdough bread is tasty! I have a feeling sourdough has a learning curve, but it also seems forgiving (at least according to the directions that were included).

*The sourdough waffles turned out yummy this morning. Everyone who ate, really liked the flavor. A couple of my kids had already eaten -VERY early risers - so I had plenty of leftovers for tomorrow morning. I'm also going to freeze about a dozen of the 4"x4" squares. I haven't done that before, and am hoping the toaster can revive them to taste almost like freshly made waffles.