SOURDOUGH STARTER
Ingredients
2 cups of flour
1 package of dry yeast
2 cups of warm water
1. Mix the flour, yeast and water in a glass bowl.
2. Place the mixture in a warm place overnight.
3. In the morning put the mixture in a scalded jar. Cover the jar and place it in the refrigerator for future use. Make sure the container has lots of room for expansion. If you use a lid just place in on the top of jar, don't tighten it.
4. This is your sourdough starter.
The starter will keep almost indefinitely in a clean, covered glass container in your refrigerator. If you do not use it for several weeks you may have to take it out of the refrigerator over night before adding equal amounts of flour and water.
When you are ready to make something using sourdough, simply take it out of the refrigerator and remove what the recipe calls for.
For example, if you want to make sourdough hot cakes you would remove 2 cups of sourdough starter from your glass container and place it in a mixing bowl. Before doing anything else you must replace the starter you removed by adding a cup of flour and a cup of water to your starter, mixing it up and placing it back in the refrigerator. Always remember to replace at least what you remove.
Once the starter gets going, you can add as much flour and water in equal amounts as you want, depending on how much starter you want to keep on hand. The longer you keep it the more sour it will turn. You can learn to control the sourness and keep it where you like it. When you add equal parts of flour and water it cuts the sourness down.
Getting back to the hot cakes, put two cups of starter in a bowl and add two cups of flour and two cups of warm water. The mixture should be thinner than pudding. Place a cover on the bowl and leave it over night on the counter.
In the morning measure out 3 cups of dough from the bowl left on the counter, add an egg, 1 teaspoon of molasses, 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in a small amount of water and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. You'll have some fine sourdough pancakes.