Lisa, this is my favourite starter. It is a pure starter, made from just rye flour and water. Nothing else. Once you get it going and it is easy to keep. YOu just have to feed it occasionally. Once you get your starter active, you use it to make a biga or a levain and that is what you add to the French baguette recipe rather than yeast. For the Biga, I just add 2 ounces of starter to 1 1/2 cups of flour and a cup of water and let it develop overnight. Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table Sourdough starter - Amy's bread =============================== copied from: http://countrylife.net/pages/recipes/672.html Amy Scherber's Sourdough Starter RYE STARTER From AMY'S BREAD, copyrighted. Amy's bread This starter is begun with rye flour because rye just LOVES to ferment and is an easier starter to get going than a wheat starter. When I first made it, it had a bubble or two within a couple hours. The procedure is to start it with rye flour, then transform it by changing what you feed it. The original rye will dilute to nothing over time and you'll end up with a white flour (or whatever other grain you choose, it could be whole wheat or pumpermickel, or you could leave it as a rye starter) and water based starter, but it had the advantage of beginning it's life from highly fermentable rye flour. Start it with organic rye flour and spring water. Once you have it going well you can switch to all-purpose white (or other) flour as you choose. The use of spring water is recommended for maintenance, however, as tap water may contain elements (such as chlorine) which may be detrimental to the health of your starter. I also recommend that you use a container that you can mark the volume levels of starter each time, so that you will know when it has doubled. Use a marking pen or tape or any other means to indicate on the container the starter levels each time you feed. Phase 1 - Combine 2 oz organic rye flour (room temp) with 4 oz spring water in a clear container. The batter should be about the consistency of very thick pancake batter, add more water or flour if necessary. Cover & let it sit for 36 - 48 hours at 75 - 77 degrees (a little cooler is okay but over 80 you will incubate the wrong kind of bacteria and your culture will have an unpleasant bitter taste). You should start to see tiny bubbles forming after about 24 hours. By the time it has doubled, there will be a noticeable network of small bubbles throughout the batter & it will be foaming & bubbling on top. (If the batter has not doubled within 48 hours, feed with 2 oz water & 2 oz flour (add more of either if necessary for the consistency) and let it sit another 24 hours or until you see some definite activity.) Phase 2 - Stir the culture down, notice how soupy it's become. The batter should have a noticeable sour smell & a mildly tangy taste at this point. Add 2 oz water & 2 oz flour and stir vigorously until well-combined. Let it sit for 12 hours. It should be showing a fair amount of activity at this point. You should see lots of foaming & bubbling through the sides as well as on the top. Don't be concerned if the culture deflates & loses volume. This means the yeast has exhausted its food supply, but it will continue to increase in acidity. Don't worry if your culture isn't dramatically active yet. As long as there is some noticeable activity going on and the mixture smells & tastes sour, you're on the right track. Phase 3 - The culture should now have a pronounced, sour, fruity taste and smell, it should not taste musty or bitter (if it does, discard and start again, paying close attention to the temp of the culture at all times). Now you can start "transforming" it into a white (or other) flour based starter. Use 6 oz of the starter, add 3 oz water & 3 oz flour, stir vigorously. Let it sit for 12 hrs at 75 - 77 degrees F. Refresh it again, setting up a maintenance level of 12 oz of starter. This will be your "mother" starter that you use to build the sourdough starters/sponges needed in individual recipes. Each time you take part of the mother out to build a starter, you must refresh it with equal weights of flour and water to bring it back up to its maintenance level. To maintain - Use 6 oz of the mother culture (discard the rest), add 3 oz water & 3 oz flour, stir vigorously, let it sit at room temp until doubled in volume. A strong mother will double in 8-12 hours. If yours doesn't do that, let it continue to sit out until it has a nice tangy taste and smell; discard all but 6 oz and repeat this procedure. Repeat this procedure as many times as necessary until the mother doubles within 8-12 hrs. It may take several days. Don't get discouraged, it's worth the effort. To use for recipes - Combine 1/2 c (5 oz) Mother from the refrigerator, add 3 oz flour and 2.5 oz warm water (85 - 90 degrees). The mixture will be stiffer than the mother. Let it sit, covered, until doubled in volume (if it doesn't do so go back to maintenance procedure). When the starter has doubled, it is ready to use in a recipe. Measure the amount needed and discard any that remains.

Thank you! Thank you!! ssomerville...I roll one long rectangle, use my bench scraper to cut in half lengthwise, then bang out the triangles. Super fast and easy and consistent! teresa_mn and mustangs...I think the secret is to underbake, which is probably not very scone-like, but I only bake them about 10 minutes...12 max. They are waaaaay too dry if baked the length of time the recipe states. ann_t...they still don't rise like yours! But I'm getting there!! :) maxmom...yes, I use the RLB recipe. I don't use a food processor, just my hands! I use heavy whipping cream. The one thing I started doing after mixing in the cream and chips, dried fruit, whatever...is use my hands to form all the dough and dry bits into a ball (somewhat kneading it and continuing to push it all together) before I put it on the mat to roll. The 4 times roll, fold, repeat builds the layers in the dough. I'm not all that gentle with it, as opposed to biscuits...that I only roll once (no folding, etc) and use TLC! Lastly, I do not brush the tops of the scones (or biscuits). Thank you again all!! :)

Oh Renee, I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of being bullied because my view is stated in a different way than another poster's. There is a very small minority who think their recipes or techniques are the be-all/ end-all, "ubiquitous, know-it-all approach with narrow-minded views" of the culinary world. That is when unpleasantness rears its ugly head. When that happens, it is unfair to the whole forum. I for one would have left this thread a few posts ago, especially when I realized that one particular member refused to see the passive/ aggressive nature of their posts, then devolving into personal attacks to other posters. It's difficult to not defend one's integrity when it's called into question. Imagine how you would feel if someone referred to you as condescending, superior, a liar, a know-it-all. I believe that everyone but one person in this thread has agreed to disagree. I, for one, appreciate the beautiful photos many of our talented contributors generously post. It certainly takes additional time on their behalf to photograph the food, choose the appropriate photo for their post, then to share it with everyone. I learn how to plate food to make it look more appealing. I don't find it competitive, I find it encouraging. I think it has given a lot of us in this digital age the impetus to become more artistic, not only in our food preparation, but also in the art of presentation. How is that ever a bad thing? I think the main spirit of this forum is quite pleasant - these kinds of threads are very few and far between. I think that there will be a few of us that will be checking back to make sure no one else is being treated unfairly. Lori

No cooking this weekend, no interesting cooking anyway. Took daughter to school for her Speech & Debate tournament at 6:30 am. I was not happy about getting up at 5:30 am on Saturday. By the time I got home, it was still dark, but it seemed pointless to go back to bed, so I put on bike gear and went to ride laps up Mt Tabor, our local hilltop park. The "mountain" in Mt Tabor is a very miniature one, it is really just a big hill that used to be a volcano way back when. There are a couple different roads that lead to the top. They start in pretty neighborhoods then climb up through trees and past fields and reservoirs for about a mile, though some are shorter and steeper while others are longer and easier. On my first ride up the hill, I watched the sun rise through the tall trees, and that really made my morning. I kept climbing to the top, circling the peak of the hill which became more sunlit on each lap, descending through the fog and mist, turning around at the bottom and trying a different route up. On one lap I saw a familiar jacket ahead and caught up to it. When I first took my bike to Mt Tabor a few years ago, I met a guy who rides laps up the hill every day. On weekdays he does a few laps as part of his bike commute, on weekends he does laps in the mornings. He'd explained to me that severe arthritis runs in his family, and climbing hills on the bike was the only way he could stay pain free. His mother had both hips replaced, his sister has had one replacement and is needing another, but he is still fit and mobile on his original equipment. I was so impressed that I started riding Mt a Tabor semi-regularly, and have done ever since. But not like this guy. He's ridden up the hill over 40,000 times. When I first rode up the hill it seemed awfully hard, even on a mountain bike with very low gears. I struggled and my heart pounded as I gasped for breath. Now I'm better at climbing, so I ride a road bike with fairly high gears and can have a conversation while climbing, as I did today with this guy. There are much steeper climbs around Portland and I am still not a good enough climber for some of them. The idea I had a few months ago is to make my Mt Tabor laps more difficult by only using the big chainring (that is, forcing myself to use the harder gears) and pushing so that I am struggling on my last lap. I hope it works like weightlifting, where you get stronger by pushing your muscles to failure, and that I'll do better on the steeper climbs now. If I really wanted to be a better climber, I'd lose 20 or more lbs. The best climbers on a bike weigh 140 lbs. But they don't hang around the Cooking Forum either. When I was done, it was still early. I rode to a Saturday farmers' market where they were just setting up. One stall sold breakfast burritos, and I got a duck and lamb burrito (only in Portland). It came fat and hot and wrapped in foil. I slipped the burrito in one of my jersey pockets and it kept me warm on the ride home. Unfortunately, when I got home I was so hungry that I ate the whole burrito and raided the fridge and didn't stop until I'd eaten what I estimate was 1,600 calories. It wasn't even 10 am yet. Talk about undoing all the morning's good work on the bike. And that is why I am not cooking this weekend. I think I need to not think about food for a couple of days! This post was edited by johnliu on Sat, Nov 9, 13 at 23:45