When we stayed with my youngest sister, she sent me home with about 1/4 cup of sourdough starter. It has taken me some time to watch videos and read about sourdough breads, it is a huge topic. I found I was most interested in the continuous sourdough starter, where about a tablespoon is kept in the refrigerator in a jar, taken out the night before, or the morning of baking day, when equal amounts of flour and water are added, stirred, and left for up to 12 hours to double in size. All but one tablespoon is used to make a loaf of bread, and the jar with starter is returned to the refrigerator, to be taken out the next night before/day of to add flour and water to and bake another loaf.
So far the technique seems to be working. I only used 1 tablespoon of the starter given to me, saving the rest to fall back on if my experiments fail and I lose the starter I am working with.
I found a bread machine recipe for sourdough bread, it cheats and adds regular yeast as well. It also calls for white flour rather than whole grain, and a whopping teaspoon of salt. So I switched to whole wheat flour, and reduced the salt to 1/8th teaspoon. The results were quite impressive! The bread was lighter in colour than it is when using only commercial yeast, and the crumb is perfect, which it is not with my regular commercial yeast loaves.
I had fed the sourdough starter last night before going to bed, and used it this morning to bake the loaf of bread. I fed the one tablespoon of starter left in the jar, and set it on the counter to ferment. That went really fast, within four hours it had doubled in size and was ready to use again. Attila asked that I bake some hamburger buns with it. They are in the oven baking as I write. That is two batches of sourdough bread in one day.
While I am in our comfortable house baking bread, Attila is out in the garden planting his starts. He has planted over 300 starts, and has only one little greenhouse to go. So planting is slowing down now.
Since planting is slowing down, I am asking him to make a shelf for our dehydrated foods. The kitchen is small, there is no wall space except above the dining area windows. So that is where the new shelf will be installed, almost at the ceiling above the high windows. I will need a stepladder to reach it.
This will free up the counter space now housing all our jars of dehydrated foods. I want to use this space to keep my Kombucha jar, as it will be a way from the busy countertop where it now resides, where it gets jostled as we work in the small kitchen.
I don’t usually binge watch programs. But, I just finished the 30th and last episode of Three-Body on you tube, a sci-fi series.
“Three-Body is a Chinese science fiction television series adapted from the novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, which was first published in serialized form in 2006. The series premiered on January 15, 2023.” Source: Wikipedia
This series had me by the throat! I thought about it constantly when I wasn’t watching it. It was in Chinese, with English subtitles. The dialogue moved so fast at times that the subtitles were not on the screen long enough for me to read them. I had to slow the videos down to 75% of the normal speed, and even then I had to “rewind” to review dialogue I had missed.
I found out that Netflix has produced a version of this as well, and look forward to seeing it.
Liu Cixin is an incredible story teller, and the creators, actors, etc. of the Chinese series are incredibly talented to bring it to the screen the way they have.
Just wow.
I find myself hilarious when watching programs in languages other than English, relying on subtitles. I get so used to using the subtitles that I will turn my head, or get up to walk away from the program, thinking I will just listen to the dialogue while I am busy with something else, then I fell shocked and surprised that I don’t understand a word that is spoken!
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Walt Whitman
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My husband sometimes watches programs which have both been dubbed in English and have English subtitles. Sometimes the difference between what is spoken and what appears in text is quite amusing.
We considered watching Three Body Problem when we heard of it on Netflix, but folks who have seen it say it can be quite bloody. I’m not a fan of bloody programs.
We watched a new version of Shogun. That had lots of subtitles, as have several South Korean shows we’ve watched. Yes, we had to run back or pause the show to read subtitles, too.
Oh! Forgot to comment on the sourdough bread. I love sourdough! You said Attola isn’t really a fan. I hope he likes the buns you made.
Wendy, the difference between the dubbed and subtitles can be really funny! The quality of translation can sometimes leave a lot to be desired, one has to use the context of the story to make sense of the translation.
Teri, I did not watch the Americanized version, and it is no surprise that they present a bloody interpretation. The Chinese production is not particularly bloody, and is so well done, you might like it, I found it on youtube. I might not watch the Netflix version, after seeing the excellent Chinese version I think it might be a big disappointment, particularly if it glorifies the gory bits.
I haven’t seen the modern Shogun yet, it is definitely on our list!
Teri, Attila did like the bread, and the buns. The sourdough seems to cook the bread much faster, so my normal cooking time was too long, the buns were a bit overdone. Even so, Attila felt they were better than our regular bread. An odd thing about the sourdough bread is that using the same flour, the bread is a lighter colour.
I always choose subtitles when I can. I’ve noticed the difference on the dubbed anime. It’s usually the same, but sometimes a different turn of phrase.
Joan, there are some very interesting turn-of-phrases!