Favorite Things You Love to Cook – What is your number one favorite?
Favorite things you love to cook – what is your number one favorite? For me, it has to be bread.
I guess your first question might be, “Wow! You like to cook? I didn’t know that!”
Well, yeah, I do love to cook. There are only two things that keep me from cooking more than I do – lack of time and hot weather!
I Love to Cook!
But I love to cook. You might not think so looking at me, because even now, since I had to close my business down for health reasons, I’ve been able to battle back with some great help from a great naturopathic doctor. With a carefully-watched combination of antibiotics (which I’ve now been off for about four years), pain medication, supplements, healthy food, and as much activity as possible, I’ve been able to stay strong and keep my weight down from where it definitely could be!
But just because you love cooking and bread products shouldn’t make you worry about weight gain or health problems, for that matter. Bread is good food. Gluten has gotten a bad name. In fact, most people I know who have had problems with gluten saw those problems disappear pretty quickly when they started adding high-quality probiotics to their diet.
I’m not talking about yogurt or off-the-shelf probiotics from the grocery store. I’m talking about the kind that are kept in the cooler at the health food store. A lot of people who seem to be sensitive to gluten have seen their problems disappear after a couple of weeks or less just by adding them in with each meal throughout their day (I’m not a doctor, nor am I talking about celiac disease, nor am I qualified to make any recommendations regarding anyone’s health!).
Tell me in the comments below: What are your favorite things you love to cook? We’d all enjoy reading about it, and maybe you have a recipe you’d like to share, too! (If you have a cooking or recipe blog, please be sure to include a link.)
I like to cook many things, many ways. I cook on an open fire, grill on coals or on a propane barbecue, cook on a stovetop, bake in an oven, and more. I cook meats and vegetables (many of which we grow in our own garden), make soups, make a lot of jams, jellies, and juices, but most of all, I like making bread and bread products.
My favorite leaven is sourdough. Every sourdough is a little different, and each gives the final product its own unique flavor.
Many people assume that sourdough is only really authentic if it comes one hundred percent from a wild source. But what they are forgetting is that the yeast you buy in the store was once wild, itself! But it is the wild yeast that gives sourdough bread a flavor that stands out from yeast breads made from “store-bought” yeast.
Super Easy Sourdough
The easiest way to develop a sourdough that will be reliable is to start by using a little of the yeast from your local supermarket. Make your sponge by putting a tiny bit of yeast in a large bowl with a couple of cups of flour and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Add twice as much water as you would normally use to make bread with this much flour. That should give you a nice thick mix that you can still stir fairly easily.
Then cover with a damp cloth, not a tight-fitting lid, and set aside over night. This will let any wild yeast that is present in your kitchen (likely lots, if your kitchen isn’t brand new) “invade” your sponge.
The next day, take a couple of tablespoons – at the most – of the sponge and put it in a 1 liter (or 1 quart) mason jar. Fill the jar about halfway with cool water, and stir in about a cup of flour. Then store it immediately in the fridge.
Then add oil, salt, and flour to the sponge in your big bowl and make your bread. You can add a little more sugar if you like, but it’s not necessary.
Some say to let the bread rise once, then punch it down to make loaves. But I find I get excellent results and a nice light loaf when I make loaves immediately after letting it rest a few minutes after kneading. That’s because it has already risen once over night with about half the flour. But if you want a slightly heavier loaf with a thicker crust, let it rise once more in the bowl before making it into loaves.
This process works especially well when making whole wheat sourdough, which is my favorite. Make your sponge with whole wheat, and then use white flour to finish the next day. That gives a nice 50% whole wheat loaf that will rise really well, because the whole wheat has had all night to soak and soften.
Using Sourdough
Sourdough is good for anything you use your regular yeast for. It takes a little getting used to (really, very little) and works best if you use it often. If you leave your sourdough in the fridge too long, it can become very strong and won’t be quite as active. That’s because it makes so much alcohol that a lot of the yeast dies off.
Our family’s favorite solution has always been to use it for sourdough pancakes for breakfast, which are really yummy. This could easily become one of the favorite things you love to cook for your own family!
Use most of it in the pancakes, but save a couple of tablespoons of the sponge after pouring the clear liquid and most of the sourdough into your pancake bowl. Then make a new sponge with the little bit you saved. It might take more than just sitting overnight if it’s been in the fridge a long time, but it will come back.
Beware leaving it too long in the fridge. It can mold and then you have to throw it out. My mother freezes her sourdough and it lasts indefinitely. Just take it out, thaw it out, and use it as you would fresh from the fridge.
Question – can you make pancakes without sugar?
Yes you can! Check out this delicious sugar-free pancake recipe. You can use those mouth-watering toppings on sourdough pancakes or biscuits, too!
What do you think? Could this become one of your favorite things you love to cook? I get hungry just seeing those nice fluffy pancakes! And yes, sourdough pancakes can be just as fluffy. But more on that in another post!
Sourdough makes wonderful bread, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and anything else you can make with yeast dough. Sourdough could become the basis for many new favorite things you love to cook!
One of treats I really love made with yeast bread, including sourdough, is Navajo fried bread. A Navajo friend showed us how to make it. It is made by taking little golf-ball sized chunks of the dough after the first rising, flattening them out so they are really thin, then floating them in a pan in hot oil. If you like, you can make them a little bigger, but they must be thin, and the oil must be hot, so they brown quickly. They should cook like fried donuts. Turn them fairly quickly, then take them out and set them on paper towel to drain.
These are really good, and you can do lots of things with them, including eating them plain, making tacos with them, or flipping them in sugar as soon as they come out of the pan (incredible!). For an extra special treat, use them for dipping this fantastic Baba ganoush salad. Wow and wow!
If you make these for your family, you’re sure to be a hero that day! What are the favorites thing you love to cook? What is your number one favorite? Please tell us in the comment section. Extra points if you share a recipe!