So I spent my entire day in the kitchen

This is a copy of a post that I put on my genealogy blog:

It all started with a tiny 250 year old sourdough starter that I ordered from King Arthur Flour. Of course baking bread every weekend, I was up for the challenge of sourdough. My starter came in a tiny jar and was a little more than 2 TB of starter that resembled silly putty. Of course, I followed the directions over the course of a couple days and had the most beautiful doughy starter.

So, today was sourdough bread day and pumpkin roll for a birthday wish cake by my daughter's boyfriend. First, sourdough takes many hours and the starter was being fed for days, but I finally had a beautiful oatmeal wheat sourdough bread rising (I completely changed the base recipe).

 

Of course we also needed dinner rolls for Sunday dinner, of course I had to try another recipe from King Arthur Flour for Buttery Sourdough Buns (below). I didn't alter the recipe at all on this one except to leave out the paprika and add sesame seeds to the top. By the way, delicious.

 

 

Of course there was still a pumpkin roll to be made....

 

 

... and I just couldn't throw out the remainder of the pumpkin, so I made pumpkin bread.

 

 

After I spent hours in the kitchen and my feet were hurting, I started thinking.... 100 years ago you couldn't just run off to the supermarket to buy bread. Every day, our ancestors worked even harder than I did today, making bread every or every other day. And they didn't waste a thing. Stale bread became bread pudding or stuffing, or some other treat that would use up every bit of precious bread that was slaved over daily. Also, they didn't have the convenience of dry yeast that we have today, so they very likely kept a bit of sourdough starter growing all the time. Hence, my 250 year old sourdough starter.

 

 ----------

 

I'll be posting these recipes here on the blog after everything has been taste tested.