Adventures with Sourdough

This is why it's important to keep your starter
in a jar with lots of headroom. When I
unscrewed the lid, the starter exploded out.

I grew a sourdough starter in my garden a couple of years ago, and have been experimenting with it ever since.

Recently my starter has been growing faster than we can eat the bread I make with it. When making bread, I refresh the starter with more flour and water, then return some to the jar in the fridge and use the rest. The amount in the jar never shrinks. In fact, it's currently growing at an extraordinary rate.

So this week I used some of my sourdough starter in muffins. When making muffins, I use the sourdough straight — no refreshing and returning to the jar. It's a great way to use excess sourdough starter.

Orange Sourdough Muffins

I was inspired by Ellen Buchman Ewald in her classic book Recipes for a Small Planet. She has a recipe for orange muffins made with whole wheat flour. They are raised with buttermilk, baking soda and sourdough starter. They are sweetened with a little honey, and make a dense healthy muffin.

Then I used her method to adapt my favorite lemon muffin recipe to sourdough. The muffins are made with white flour and sweetened with sugar. The sourdough, baking soda and kefir made them light. Yummy if not totally healthy .

Here's what I did.

Lemon Sourdough Muffins
2 cups white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
1/8 tsp cloves
3/4 cup sourdough starter
1 egg, beaten
1 cup kefir
1/2 cup oil
zest of 1 lemon.

Whisk together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. Gently combine the two mixtures.

Pour into a greased muffin tin and bake at 375°F for 20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

For decadence, combine 1/4 cup lemon juice and 2 tbsp sugar and dip the tops of the warm muffins in it.

Makes 12 muffins

Lemon Sourdough Muffin

Making kefir cheese

When I make kefir, I like to make it thick like sour cream. Then it's good eaten plain as yogurt, stirred into salad dressings, potato salads, or cooked vegetables, and used in baked goods (although its probiotics are destroyed by heating).

I make thick kefir by draining it through a coffee filter set in a strainer over a bowl until it's the consistency I want — from 30 to 90 minutes.

If I let it drain longer, it becomes even thicker like cream cheese. Then I stir herbs and vegetables into it and use it as a spread.

When the kefir is the consistency I want, I scrape it from the filter into a covered glass container and store it in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks. The whey can also be stored for a while, but it's probiotic benefits do wane with time. I drink it straight and Larry puts it in smoothies — usually within a couple of days of making it.

I really like these simple foods that are high in health benefits, low in cost, and add to our enjoyment of our daily meals.

Summer Eggs

When we got home from the Hollywood Farmers Market on Sunday, Larry started squeezing oranges for juice while I headed into the garden to pick basil and tomatoes for this brunch dish that is only as good as the tomatoes it's made with.

I poached eggs in a simple sauce of tomatoes and basil, then served it with fresh baguette and butter to sop up the sauce.

Summer on a plate.

Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 lb ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup thick kefir or Greek yogurt or crème fraîche
1/4 cup chopped basil
4 eggs

Warm the oil in a small skillet. (I use an 8-inch stainless steel skillet.) Sauté the garlic until fragrant, then add the tomatoes. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes have broken down and are juicy. Add the kefir and cook another 3 minutes or so until thickened. (Kefir and yogurt might crack but they still look and taste delicious.) Stir in the basil and season with salt and pepper.

Spread the sauce evenly in the pan, make 4 slight indentations, and crack the eggs into them. Cover and cook until the whites are set but the yolk is still runny, about 5 minutes.

Serve the eggs with lots of sauce and baguette and butter on the side.

Serves 2

(Make sure to eat all of it at one sitting — that won't be difficult. It does not keep well because the egg white moves through the sauce — fine for breakfast but weird to pour over spaghetti later.  You can reserve some of the sauce before putting the eggs in. It's great over pasta or rice. Or on bruschetta. Or eaten with a spoon. Simple is so often the best.)

Potato Salad with Pickles

Usually when we barbecue I make my standard potato salad — cooked potatoes with a buttermilk dressing and a roasted poblano for zing.

But this Fourth of July, I tried something a little different. I found a jar of bread and butter pickles in our fridge and decided to add them to the potato salad. These weren't just any old pickles — I made them last year when our zucchinis were out of control.

I had planted seeds of an heirloom zucchini called Trombetta di Albenga from Renee's Garden Seeds. It's a vining zucchini plant that likes to grow up into trees. The zucchini then grow stealthily down among the branches. Fortunately, they are still tender even when they're three feet long.

Needless to say, I gave away a lot of zucchini. People still talk about the zucchini I gifted. And yet, we still had way more than two people can eat. I diced, blanched and froze. And then I made bread and butter pickles.

I am once again growing Trombetta di Albenga. (Really, they are the most entertaining vegetable plants I have ever grown.) They are not flowering yet, but I know what is coming. Emptying a jar of pickles into the potato salad seemed like a prudent move.

And I have to say that the potato salad tasted really good. It was slightly grey from the pickle juice I added to the dressing, but it was yummy. (I would have added a lot of colorful parsley if the birds hadn't eaten it all.) The potatoes were German butterballs from Flora Bella — the first time I've used them in potato salad and they tasted nicely creamy and held their shape well.

It's a good thing I'm growing more zucchini so we'll be able to replenish our pickle supply. This potato salad is one we'll want to make again.

Potato Salad with Pickles

1 1/2 lbs German butterball potatoes (or other waxy potatoes)

2 eggs

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp juice from the pickle jar

2 tsp dijon

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup kefir or buttermilk or yogurt

6-8 radishes, diced

1/2 cup chopped bread and butter pickles

Peel the potatoes and cut in quarters (about 1 inch pieces). Put in a pot, cover with cold water and a pinch of salt, and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Bring a small pan of salted water to the boil. Pierce a small hole in each egg with a safety pin. Lower into the boiling water, stirring so the eggs rotate a few times after entry. Cover and let simmer 10 minutes. Drain and cover with cold water. When cool, peel the eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. Chop the whites and add them to the bowl with the potatoes.

Put the cooked egg yolks in a blender with the vinegar, pickle juice and dijon. Whir together. With the machine running, slowly drizzle in the oil, then the kefir. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Pour most of the dressing over the potatoes and egg whites. Toss to combine. Add the radishes and pickles. Toss again and season to taste.

Refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving.

Serves 4-6

Trombetta zucchini.

Kefir Whey (Making Kefir part 3 of 3)

Draining the kefir to make it thicker gives the added benefit of separating out the whey.

Do you buy whey powder to add to your smoothies and protein shakes? Well the whey from kefir is the same as that, only fresher and still alive, so therefore I would assume better.

Whey protein is one of the best protein sources there is, and some research suggests it can help reduce risk factors for neuro-degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. It contains amino acids that are easily absorbed by the digestive tract.

More importantly, it's rich in the precursors for N-acetylcholine (NAC). NAC is an immune-boosting amino acid complex that helps the body make glutathione, an antioxidant enzyme that is vital in protecting all the cell membranes in your body from free-radical damage. NAC also chelates mercury and other toxic heavy metals from the body.

Look at that whey, a by-product of making yummy kefir, and be thoroughly impressed by its health benefits.

Larry puts it into smoothies. I just drink it straight. It's tangy but not really flavored. And I imagine how happy it is making all the cells of my body.

It is so cool to be making power foods in my kitchen!

Making Kefir Taste Good (Making Kefir part 2 of 3)

Once the kefir has fermented, I pour it through a strainer to remove the kefir grains that will make the next batch of kefir.

And then I do another step. I line a strainer with an unbleached paper coffee filter (the basket kind) and pour the kefir liquid into it.

This separates out the curds from the whey. As the whey drains through into the bowl underneath, the kefir in the coffee strainer gets thicker and creamier. For yogurt to put in our lunches, I let it drain an hour or so. For a firm cheese I let it drain all day. (For anything longer than a couple of hours I put it in the fridge to drain.)

This simple draining technique lets me determine the thickness of the kefir I want to make. We never drink it. It's always at least a yogurt consistency.

Something Donna Schwenk recommends — and that I've found great — is to re-ferment the kefir with a strip of lemon peel in it. I add the lemon peel when I'm pouring the kefir in the coffee filter. This sweetens the kefir by giving the cultures something to munch on. It's worth trying with store-bought kefir too, to see if it makes it sweeter and more pleasant. (Also, try straining the store-bought one too — see if you can make it yummier.)

In the picture at left you can see I'm pushing the kefir through the top strainer to separate the grains. They will be little lumps in the top strainer. I take them out to start the new batch (see here.)

Under the strainer is another strainer lined with a paper coffee filter. It will separate the curds and whey.

In the bottom right picture, you can see the strained kefir in the top — ready to eat. In the bowl below is the whey (more on that tomorrow), and in the jar in the background is the next batch of kefir starting to ferment.

Making Kefir (part 1 of 3)

Kefir is easy to make at home. You don't need to keep it warm like you do yogurt so no special equipment is required, just a glass quart jar and some bowls and strainers.

The first step is to get some kefir "grains." These tiny white-ish transparent capsules are cultures of live bacteria and yeasts that ferment milk into the kefir we eat and drink.

I bought my grains from Donna Schwenk, and she and her team got me through the nervous first stages of being sure I was doing everything wrong. (I've since learned it's hard to screw this up.)

The grains reproduce as they enjoy the sugars in the milk. With each batch you get more grains.

If you decide you want to embark on the homemade kefir journey and are coming to my office, give me a couple of days notice and I will bring you kefir grains. Otherwise the extra ones end up on my compost (I'm sure the soil loves the infusion of beneficial yeasts and bacteria). Some people eat the extra grains, but I feel that would be too much for my system.

The picture above right shows the grains I've removed from a fermented batch of kefir and am preparing to put in a jar to start a new batch.

Some people's grains grow like little cauliflowers. Mine tend to be more like tapioca pudding. I do bash them a bit when I'm straining them out of the kefir. But they don't seem to mind. As I say, they reproduce rapidly.

I make kefir using whole organic milk from grass-fed cows. Kefir grains feed on the sugars in the milk. While you can make kefir from non-dairy milks, you need to add some sweetener to feed the grains. I've not done this, but you can get more info on Donna Schwenk's website or from her book, Cultured Food for Health, which I borrowed from our library and highly recommend.

To make kefir, put the grains in a clean quart jar. Pour in about 3 cups of milk — leaving room at the top for expansion while it ferments — cover and leave on the counter, out of direct sunlight — for 24-48 hours.

Kefir ready to be strained.

When it's separated into curds and whey, strain out the kefir grains. The liquid that is left is the kefir, ready to eat or drink. (More on that tomorrow.) Put the grains into a clean jar, pour in milk and repeat.

Kefir

Kefir fermenting next to sprouts and
sourdough - my kitchen is full of life!

At the end of last year, I read a book called Cultured Food for Health by Donna Schwenk. She described how kefir, kombucha and cultured vegetables had healed her family's allergies, digestive problems, immune problems etc. by creating a healthy bacterial environment in their bodies.

I'm a firm believer in food as medicine, and I like growing things, so I ordered some kefir grains from her and embarked on a journey of fermentation.

Kefir is similar to yogurt but has far more beneficial bacteria per tablespoon than yogurt does. It also has beneficial yeasts that scavenge bad yeasts. Both the good bacteria and good yeasts colonize your intestines, creating the optimal environment for absorption of nutrients from the food you eat.

The kefir you get at the store is probably runny and sour. The kefir I make at home is rich and creamy with a tang (sometimes more tang than others - making kefir is an art, not a science). I think because kefir is a living food, the long storage and transportation times required to get it to market make it deteriorate a little, leading to the sour taste. (Think of the difference between a supermarket tomato and a homegrown tomato.)

Some people say the good bacteria in store-bought kefir has all died because it's pasteurized. I don't know. I do know that the kefir I make is a living food, and takes care and tending. In return it gives us a lovely yogurt that has replaced the St. Benoit yogurt in Larry's lunch box. And kefir cheese is simple to make into a fabulous healthy appetizer that amazed Tracie when she visited last week.

Tomorrow, I'll take you step by step through how I make our kefir.

Kefir Cheese with Flowers

As an appetizer on Sunday, I served kefir cheese with herbs and flowers. It was great on rye crisps as well as on carrot and celery sticks.

To make it, I stirred nasturtium petals, Egyptian walking onion leaves, mint and dill (along with a little sea salt) into homemade kefir cheese.

The cheese was made by spooning kefir into a coffee filter-lined strainer and letting it drain for a couple of hours. A creamy cheese formed in the strainer, and nutritious watery whey drained into the bowl underneath.

A lot of people have told me that drinking probiotic-full kefir is tough because it is so sour. Somehow, making it into cheese takes away the sourness but none of the beneficial bacteria. (Putting a strip of lemon peel in the kefir while you strain it helps too.) And it makes a wonderful creamy dip when you add your favorite seasonings.