Kitchen Experiments
Guess what? I think I made a sourdough starter today! Here’s how I did it (with a little help from the family).
First, someone put half a bowl of Cheerios and milk that they were finished with on the counter, and left it there. Because it’s been a crazy week, it stayed there for two or three days. Then tonight, I decided to squeeze loading the dishwasher in between microwaving a couple of cans of chili for the family and heading off to the Portland WordPress User Group meeting.
When I picked up the cereal bowl, the Cheerios had liquified to mush. I started scraping the mush into the garbage, and noticed that it had developed a distinctly foamy texture, and that it smelled like yeast. It had turned into sourdough starter.
Don’t worry, I’m not using it for anything. It’s gone. Although I was tempted to make something out of it, just to see if it would work.
But that’s the kind of week it’s been. My husband is a school bus driver, and is normally home in the middle of the day to take care of some of the household chores, but this week he’s been doing some extra training and has been gone all day. I would normally do some chores too, but I’ve been spending my evenings working on paid writing projects, because we need the money. And so…we got sourdough starter!
This post has 4 comments
January 16th, 2009
I have a 1/2 gallon of sour milk left from when the kids were here at Christmas. I don’t drink milk. I am thinking of doing something with it…just need some yeast to make some friendship starter. Thought it would be great to take to the neighbors because I only know one of them.
Maybe I’ll go get some cheerios and give your method a try.
Corina’s last blog post..Memorex
January 16th, 2009
You could also make biscuits or pancakes with sour milk — just use like buttermilk.
I wonder what bread made from Cheerios starter would taste like?
January 17th, 2009
And all along I’ve been caring for and feeding the special crock full of starter I keep in the back of the fridge. What I need is a busy household with kids!
That’s all I need, a busy household with kids. Let me know how that old Cheerio recipe works out.
Quill Gordon’s last blog post..The Crunchy Time of Year
January 17th, 2009
HAH! I, too, have made sourdough starter from leftover cereal/milk in bowls (it’s particularly lovely when it comes from Fruit Loop-knockoff cereal.)
Use the sour milk for biscuits or pancakes, as Kathleen suggested.
Betsy’s last blog post..OurPDX Shared Links