RouletteWeekend

I’ve been getting more and more interested in food, fermenting, gut health and the like. The more research I do, the more I am pointed to whole food plant based eating and making your own food when possible. And fermented foods.

Growing up we would always eat sauerkraut on New Year’s day with mashed potatoes and pork. Other than that, we were not fed fermented foods. I didn’t even know what fermented foods were until a couple of years ago. I didn’t know what prebiotics or probiotics were. I didn’t know anything about gut microbiomes. Like the old saying goes, though, once you know you can’t unknow.

So, now that I know these things are good for me and now that I have been watching the Blue Zones project and reading the Blue Zone Challenge and thinking a whole lot about longevity because I just turned 48 and I hope to get at least 48 more good years out of this body, I’ve turned to science and the experts who are not pharmaceutical reps.

And science and those experts say that along with a whole food plant based diet, and community, and moving your body, and drinking the water, and meditating, that you should also incorporate fermented foods into your diet like sourdough bread and kombucha.

And here I am.

I got a sourdough starter from my neighbor who bought a starter from 1849 and never used it. She dropped it off at my house a week or so ago and my excitement bubbled over more than my jar of flour.

I got the starter made. There is a whole scientific process to getting a starter going and keeping it alive and “feeding” it.

So, of course, on my first try of making sourdough bread, I completely screwed up that process.

My bread looked fine in the end…on the outside. The inside looked like it had already been chewed up and stuffed back in the loaf to trick some unsuspecting sucker into eating it. It was more like bread pudding inside. Not at all edible or even good looking.

I went back to the starter which is the life of the sourdough and added more flour and water to get it to rise again.

I think my original problem was letting it sit too long and possibly my house being too cold.

Hopefully the second time’s the charm and not the third, because I really want to be a baker.

The Kombucha brewing is still on hold. I’m meeting a gal next week to swap some sourdough starter for some starter tea and a scoby and then we’ll be brewing.

If you are reading this and are a baker or a brewer, I’d love any feedback on how to be successful at this. As of right now, it’s all books and YouTube videos fueling this fire.