hello all : Been looking at this page for a while - and was inspired to try something I read - a wild yeast captured from Caraway seeds. After 5 days and a few additions of my own - think I have a live sponge - Started with soaking FRONTIERS ORGANIC Caraway seeds ( I read this - dont remember what site - said organic would be sun dried as to heat dried) in some water in jar - dash of flour - not really sure why next morning drained seeds , added 1/2 of flour closed cap of jar and shook to mix - within 1 hr I had froth - next day still frothy - so put into bigger jar and added 1/2 flour and water - shook to mix - cracked lid for outgas - very frothy and smelled like fermentation next day less froth strong fermentation smell - so added some apple cider vinegar from a dropper I was cleaning out - secured cap and shook - cracked lid for outgas - next day, little movement but lots of hooch and strong fermentation smell - so I added more vinegar , did the mixing etc... this morning I was making bread with yeast - decided to play with the concoction - used up organic fruit juice sweetened apricot fruit jam jar took 1/2 of the mix I started - just shook that to mix and cracked the lid - could smell a touch of vinegar in the mix - the main jar I just added some home stone ground white winter wheat flour - maybe 2 tablespoons and mixed with wooded spatula I mixed the yeast dough I had started last nite -now thick like pancake batter - just checked it a moment ago and appears to be live and starting to bubble I shall report back tomorrow with more result - thought those might be interested in my experiment cheers:

I'm glad I posted this -- I'm learning all sorts of things! I didn't realize that sourdough isn't necessarily sour -- but it makes sense the commerical stuff is more so. (I had a friend's homemade sourdough recently, and while it was a very nice bread I remember thinking it wasn't nearly sour enough!) The sour taste is really what I'm going for -- if I can't get that going naturally, I'll looking into adding the taste in with other things. (I picked up a littl container of buttermilk powder for another recipe -- that might be a good taste to play around with!) Thanks for the explanation on acidity and the viscosity of the starter, Carol; that's helps a lot. The alchemy of baking has always intimidated me -- it's good to have a clearer idea of what's going on. I'll keep plugging away for a while longer with this starter, perhaps feed it whole wheat for a while and see if that builds up it's puny flour-lifting muscles. If not, the soured yeast dough may be the way to go, jessica; I didn't know you could do that. It might actually be better way to go, given the infrequency with which I bake. I'm still going to work with this starter -- Ill keep you posted!

I almost didn't read that Kitchen thread, but I decided to open it last night out of curiosity. I loved it!. Anyone who is following along and hasn't read about the new toaster instructions needs to go take a look at the link above. Glad you got to see the photo this time. I have to be honest and say I'd never heard of stroopwafels before I went to Holland or I would have searched them out. I'd never eaten one when I decided I had to try making them. I don't know how authentic the taste is, but I know they aren't the "authentic" look, but after seeing the ones with the grid and so thin (so commercial looking -- ya know? ), I, personally, like the ones made with the pizzelle iron. Somehow the stroopwafels came up in a conversation between this attorney and DH (her husband is a great cook, and they wind up talking food and kitchens sometimes). She had had stroowafels in Holland and loved them and DH told her I made them sometimes. It was a couple of months later that she arranged her schedule to be here for meetings on another case so she could see our son in his high school musical (she's a former actress). That was a pretty special effort, so I decided to match the kindness (and make DH proud) with a bag of stroopwafels for her. She was the first person I knew who'd had them in Holland ad had mine and she loved mine, so I was happy. LOL They do keep pretty well, so they would be great in a gift basket -- and most people have never had them. I've seen one commercial brand sandwiched with dark chocolate and want to try that for my oldest son. If you decide to try them, let me know. I use an adaptation of two recipes and will share that with you. If you want to find your own, the cookie has many variations out there and they have all worked for me. I use mostly vanilla and a little lemon or orange flavoring when I make stroopwafels. Martha Stewart's cookie recipe is good, but I had a total fail with the caramel in her recipe. The caramel I use is from Willy Dean's recipe found somewhere on the internet years ago. It is 1-1/2 c light brown sugar, 1 C butter, 1 tsp cinnamon and 6 T dark corn syrup boiled until it thickens. That's a lot of caramel. For this last batch, I doubled the cookie recipe from Martha's recipe and still had about a cup of caramel left over. Let me know if you try them. As for the sourdough, I think it may have baked too long. The dough soft and slightly on the wet side, so I don't think it was too much flour. I was thinking the crust should have been a bit darker, so I left it in a few minutes longer. It was okay fresh, but it dried quickly. I have some other bread in the freezer for bread pudding, so I don't need this too -- hope it makes good crumbs. I like your idea about retitling the next thread. Even baker's kaffeeklatsch -- we could soon be starting a new one every week. That's okay. I do have AC -- can't live in the Houston area without it -- no natural AC like in CA. We used to live in northern CA and DS1 is now in LA and loves the weather. This is year 4 and grad school options are mostly north of the snow belt -- could be a shock to his system. I get the feeling you are in southern CA. I am going to tackle organizing my cookbooks before I do any major baking. It's driving me crazy to not be able to put my finger on books like I'm used to. That's going to bleed over into cleaning other bookcases. Could be worse......

I'm sure your starter is fine, but I think you'll find that after a year it'll be that much finer, especially if you stress it occasionally (let it go a little too long between feedings) to thin the herd. :) My own journey is a big old muddle of learning wild yeast (sourdough starter) and whole wheat at the same time, combined with water restrictions that made me look for ever less cleanup. Whole wheat actually requires at least eight hours of soak (in the liquid of the recipe) or rise, to fully hydrate, along with some acid to reduce the anti-nutrients. Along the way, I experimented with a number of traditional recipes, some white or with a large enough percentage of white to handle the same as white, many of which I documented in this forum (search on 'sourdough"). What worked for me was making a preferment (i.e., biga or levain--The Kitchn says "leaven") in the evening, and baking in the morning. I can't remember the timing well, because I have a bad relationship with mornings. There are some hours involved for the dough to rise. It only rises as fast as commercial yeast when you're counting on it not to! My best advice is twofold: One, get in the habit of baking bread so that it becomes part of your rhythm, and you'll have it ready before your chicks turn up hungry. The other is just to try some recipes and learn what it is you all like best. There may be one that does it for your daily bread, or a base dough that you can make up differently as in the 5 minutes method, or it may be a rotation of different flavors and textures. While learning one at a time seems wise, there's also something to be said from learning a bit from each thing you try and bringing the total learning back around when you try them again. Nine people, minimum, if I got that right, is plenty to be experimenting on, and should give you plenty of scope for learning what you're doing. So, do you want sour or just good bread with wild yeast? Sour takes some time to work, remember the rule of less starter = more sour taste requires longer rise. If you have your starter on the counter and feed it every day (maybe twice a day while it's young), you'll be ready to bake a lot sooner. I don't quite agree with some of what is said at The Kitchn about starter. It is an acidic environment (not "likes" one). It's also not finicky once established. While it's young, you have a number of organisms fighting for supremacy. The yeast will win, and as it strengthens, it'll do away with new organisms introduced in feedings without any protest. Once it's established, it's very hard to completely kill. Just feed it up and it'll start burping again. I'll also mention, that no matter the original source, all wild yeast in starter is the same kind. The whole location thing is silly. "San Francisco" sourdough is the name used for really really sour. That's about how hungry the yeast is, not the location (French fries aren't from France, either, though, I believe they got their name because frying was in vogue in France at that time, just as really sour bread was commonly made in San Francisco, and they did up beans mighty fine in Boston). Rather than getting too wrapped up in how long the process is going to take, it's best to just go with what you know and work it into your life. Eventually, you'll be able to adjust the timing. Like maybe you know if you set your dough to rise at noon, it'll be ready to bake after the school run, and before dinner. Or that if you make your levain after breakfast, you can mix the dough up after dinner, and bake after breakfast the following day. Also, have some interim breads, either quick to produce commercial yeast breads, or bisquits, waffles, cornbread, or whatever it is you can fill in with if your bread just isn't ready yet, while you're learning. You'll get there.