Sour Dough Bread

In a clean plastic container make starter that will go back in the fridge.
1 cup sourdough starter
1 1/8 cups water
1 1/4 cups flour

Mix and let stand for 24 hours. Then put back in the fridge.

With the starter that is left make your sponge.
Add to your starter.
1 1/8 cups water
1 1/4 cups flour

After about 4-6 hours your sponge will be bubble and grow in size.

When your starter is ready, make the dough.
In a large bowl mix 5 3/4 cups of flour and a palm full (approx 2 tbl) of salt.
Add 1 1/8 cups of water
Add sponge
Mix with a wooden spoon. Let stand for about 30 minutes. Knead for about 3-5 minutes. Cover with a towel and let stand for 4-6 hours until it doubles in size. Cut in thirds and knead for a few minutes. Fold in sides to form a ball. Spread some corn meal on a cookie sheet and place your three balls on the cookie sheet. Let stand for another 4-6 hours until double. It may take more or less time depending on the room temperature.
Place baking stone in the oven and preheat to 475 degrees.
Bake for 17 minutes, lower heat to 350.
Bake for 10 minutes and remove, cool on racks and cover with a towel.
Store and enjoy!

Sour Dough Starter

2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups water

Let stand for about 3 days until it gets bubbly and starts to smell sour. Mix container as above for starter to put back in the fridge. Throw the rest away. Do this every day until it takes about 6-8 hours to get real bubbly. Put in the fridge, your starter is now ready to use. Note: if it takes a long time to get going you can add a little bit of cake yeast.

Some notes:

• The recipe above calls for 1 1/8 cups of water. In the summer I usually use closer to 1 cup of water. I think it’s because of the humidity in the air that I don’t need as much.
• You can use any all purpose flour. I prefer Ceresota unbleached flour, it really does taste better.
• When I first made my starter it just never took off. I was just about to give up and had a little chunk of moldy cake yeast in the fridge. I figured what the heck and threw it in there. That was just what it needed.

It was around this time of year in 2008 that we made one change that improved our quality of life.

I disconnected our TV antenna. We have no broadcast television or cable.

Some of things that TV is really good at:

They get you caught up the next show before it’s even started making it easy to spend several hours when you originally planned on one.

They give you little tidbits of news so you think you need to watch the news. Then when you do you get 30 seconds of a story, often with misleading conclusions. I think I am much better served by reading my news.

How many shows get you emotionally caught up in a STORY played by ACTORS. Its funny to think how often we talk about these shows and characters as if they are real.

Some of the ways it affects us:

About 20 years ago a story in Newsweek talking about how TV distorts our sense of living. People in TV shows live in nice apartments, have nice things and do lots of things. But how often do they work? At the time they concluded that for every hour per week you spend in front of the TV you spent about $1000 more per year.

It’s a distraction. I cannot be in a room with a TV on and have a conversation with someone. I end up half participating in the conversation and half catching what’s going on in the show and not doing either one very well.

I’m not saying TV is all bad. I just know that my life is better without it.