Resuscitating my sourdough starter

Another frugal thrill for me this week . . .

Over last weekend, I discovered my sourdough starter shoved to the back of the fridge. It was early November the last time I baked with this starter. That's a long time to leave a sourdough starter uncared for.

Anyway, I lifted the lid and the grey hooch that sits on top of the doughy mass was a bit on the green side. And it smelled more like cheese and less like hooch. This definitely did not look good.

This starter had taken me about 10 days to make, and I wasn't ready to start over from the beginning, without at least trying to resuscitate it. So, I thought I'd risk a cup of flour on it, just to see if I could bring it back to life.

Sure enough, after a day of feedings, the starter was all bubbly. I continued to feed the starter for a few days, just to get it going strong. By Wednesday afternoon, it was ready for mixing a dough.

I make my sourdough bread the old-timer way, with just starter, flour and a small amount of sugar and salt. It takes a good 24 hours from mixing the dough to baking, but it is so worth it.  Traditional sourdough bread has to be the most frugal of all bread to bake at home, as there's not even any yeast added.

Taking a few days to fire up my starter left me with a LOT of starter. So, yesterday I baked 2 loaves, and tomorrow I'll bake another 2. That should just about catch me up. I wish I could have just given some of the starter to you, but that might get a little messy in the mail.  -- And also could have aroused some odd suspicions with our postal service! :-o


If you are interested in learning more about making your own sourdough starter, you can find more information in a series of posts beginning here.

Does this give you a frugal thrill?

I wasn't going to post today, as I'm fighting the same cold my two daughters have had. But I had one of those oddball moments of frugal fun. Not even a moment, really. I'd say I was tickled for all of the dinner hour.

Do you get a frugal thrill when you find a bunch of leftovers and combine them into a tasty stew, or rinse a bunch of near-empty jars to add to the pot?

Last night, I did a little clean-out of the fridge and found a whole bunch of condiment jars, that in an ordinary household would have been deemed empty and disposed of. Not so, in our house. I save those jars to rinse and add to cooking. I used both sweet and dill pickle juice in a batch of baked beans. I rinsed out the jar of blackberry pancake syrup to add to the stewed mixed rhubarb and blackberries. And I rinsed the salsa jar to add to mashed potatoes and greens. Total number of jars used and cleaned out -- 4.

My fridge door looks presentable again, and dinner was seasoned nicely, with what may have been considered garbage in any other household. Yep, that gave me a frugal thrill.

How about you? Do you find particular fun in using the odd bits that others would consider material to be washed down the drain?