Using Staple Crops

Beginning a starter is a four-day process which I’ve only done once (because it’s still growing happily). I used about ¼ c. flour and ¼ c. water each day for the first three days, and ½ c. flour with ¼ c. water on the fourth. Flour has about half the density of water, so if you go by weight, that would be maybe 25 g flour and 50 g water?

To make starter, mix up the flour and water in a quart jar, then put the lid on (not too tightly, in case the jar pressurizes from all the carbon dioxide the yeasts make). If you keep the starter a little warmer at first (35º C) you increase the chances of the good microorganisms winning, apparently; use warm water and find a toasty place to keep it for the first few days. For my starter, I warmed up two more quart jars of water and put a jar on each side of my starter in a little cardboard box, then tucked it under the duvet on my bed to incubate. That seemed to work well, but probably wasn’t necessary (for the record, I removed the box from the bed at night and left it on a chair, then added to the starter first thing in the morning).

I also let the water dechlorinate when I made sourdough in the city, by leaving it sitting in an open jar on the counter overnight. The chlorine is meant to kill bacteria, but in sourdough we want certain bacteria to survive! So dechlorinating the water, at least for the start-up phase of making starter, makes life easier for the bacteria.

All of this is really just fine-tuning to increase your chances of success. Sourdough, in my experience, is easy; you know you are heading in the right direction if it is starting to bubble by the end of the four days and smell nice and vinegary/beery. Ideally the yeasts will eventually be able to inflate the dough to about twice its volume over the course of the day when they really get going (be careful that your jar doesn’t run over and make a mess at that point).

Once you have a happy starter, there are all sorts of possibilities. First you need to know how to care for your new little buddies, so that you will always have vigorous starter ready when you want to bake something. This is easy; we only feed our starter the day before we bake, and then put it in the fridge and ignore it (for up to three weeks) until we want to bake again. The only trick with sourdough is that you need to plan ahead a bit to refresh it in advance of baking.

For every 1 c. starter needed in a recipe, take your current starter and add:

1 c flour

½ c. water

Mix thoroughly with a clean hand. Don’t use soap to wash right before in case your soap has anti-microbial chemicals in it. Let the starter sit on the counter for 8-12 hours to let the yeasts colonize the new flour.

To measure starter for a recipe, it’s usually easiest to measure by displacement in the water used for that recipe.

Mix and let sit overnight:

5 c. flour

1½ c. water

1 c. starter

The next morning, mix in a separate bowl:

7 c. flour

4 c. water (we also substitute whey for some or all the water in sourdough baking)

1 Tbsp. salt

Let sit 30 minutes. Grease 3 loaf pans. Then mix the two together. Divide into the loaf pans and let rise 4-6 hours, until dough has reached ~¼” from the top of the pan. It’ll help with extracting them later if you put some corn meal in the bottom of the pans.

Bake at 440ºF for 10 minutes, then 400ºF for 30 minutes.

Pizza is even easier than bread. Mix:

2 c. water

½ c. starter

4-5 Tbsp. melted animal fat or oil

1⅓ tsp salt

4 – 4½ c. flour

You can also add fresh or dried herbs.

Spread onto two greased cookie sheets and let rise at least 4-6 hours. For spreading, it’s easiest to use a constantly wet utensil (spoon or spatula). If you’re making focaccia, top with some oil/fat and tasty things like herbs and minced garlic.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400ºF. If you’re making pizza, take it out half way through and put on the toppings.

My brother, Andre, made this up while cooking for himself at university (Ah, the perilous forms of entertainment a 21-year-old finds when off on his own for the first time with a sourdough starter and a sack of flour!). The only critical ratio is flour:water, and you have to establish that by feel. The key to success is in the rolling and cooking. Have fun watching them puff.

Mix:

3 c. flour

¼ c. starter
⅔ c. water
Add flour or water until it’s a nice firm dough that holds together well but isn’t too sticky. Let sit at least 4 hours.

Add and knead in:

¾ tsp. salt

Divide into 9 or 12 equal portions and roll into roughly 5” circles. If you made the dough the wrong consistency, you’ll find that out now and know better for next time. Flour the bottom side thoroughly and let sit about 30 minutes. Don’t wait too long or they’ll dry out.

Cook the pitas on a cast iron griddle (I think the thermal mass helps) on medium heat (you’ll have to play around until you find the right amount). When the larger bubbles start to form, flip the pita, and if you did it right it will not be burnt on that side and will finish puffing. If it only puffs part way, sometimes you can coax it the rest of the way by pressing on the bubble with a flipper/spatula. You can sneak another pita in beside that one once it’s puffed up. Stack on a plate to keep warm for eating soon, or spread out to dry a bit before storing.

(Based on Carol Deppe’s recipe in The Resilient Gardener, but adapted for a busy household of non-gourmets.)

Bring to a boil:

6 c. water

½ tsp. Salt

a couple Tbsp. Butter

Add:

2 c. cornmeal gradually, while stirring (or you will get little corn dumplings)

Let cook awhile on low heat, stirring every few minutes to prevent sticking. We use our wood stove, so I don’t know how hot it is, and I don’t time it anymore; maybe 30 minutes?

Eat right away, or store it in a cold place; we like reheating it with milk and adding a bit of honey or maple syrup for breakfasts. Our newest innovation is topping it with black walnuts.

You can use flint, flour, or dent corn to make nixtamal. Making nixtamal involves removing the corn kernels’ seedcoats by cooking them with a powerful base. This makes corn more digestible and nutritious, and is the only practical way to eat dry corn without grinding it. The process is easy, but requires a bit of planning ahead: you will need corn, a base, and a stainless steel pot. We heat with wood, so for our base we use hardwood ashes (softwood is said to taste bad). If you do not have ashes, I have also read about doing this with baking soda or washing soda, and I understand that in Central America culinary-quality lime (Ca(OH)₂, not the fruit) is used; however, I have never tried any of them.

Start in the evening the day before you want to eat it. If you have a source of fresh wood ashes, mix 1 part ashes with 2 parts whole corn kernels and add enough water to cover corn by about an inch or two. If your ashes are old, use 1:1 ashes and corn. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes or so. Remove from heat and let sit overnight.

In the morning, transfer corn to a colander and rinse thoroughly to remove all wood ashes. At this stage, the corn’s seed coat should be gone, dissolved by the lye; the kernels should have a firm texture and be a little larger than they were originally. This is now called nixtamal (if you are in Central America; my terminology for corn is a mixture from across the continent’s corn-growing peoples). At this stage you have three choices: you can make it into hominy, grind it for masa, or dry it for future use.

Hominy is a delightful food which we use wherever we could use rice or pasta (and it’s really good with sage or oregano). To make it, add fresh water to the nixtamal and continue cooking it until it’s a consistency you like; it will absorb a lot of water, approximately tripling in size as it does so.

If you want to make tortillas, you can grind the nixtamal (to make masa), mix in a bit of salt and water until it has a playdough-like consistency, roll it out into circles about 1/8” thick and cook on a skillet on medium heat.

Alternately, you may want to save your nixtamal for later. We have found that it is quite easy to dry: simply spread it on a screen and put in a warm, dry place for a few days, stirring it around twice a day so that it dries evenly. Once it is fully dry and hard it can be stored in glass jars. When you want to cook it, just add water and cook like pasta, but somewhat longer; we would guess it takes 40 minutes or so to fully rehydrate and expand the rest of the way to become hominy. We like to make a lot of dry nixtamal on the woodstove in winter to use as a convenient food later in the year.

Warning: The wood ashes are being used in this recipe because they contain lye, which is a corrosive alkali which dissolves the hard seed coats on the corn and can dissolve other things which come in contact with it. At this concentration lye is not very dangerous, but it should be treated with respect. If it comes in contact with your skin, you will notice it becomes slippery. This is the lye reacting with your hand oils to form genuine “hand soap.” Wash thoroughly and you should be fine, although maybe a bit chapped. Use only stainless steel, wood, or glass containers and utensils when working with lye; some other metals (notably aluminum) will react with it.