Do you love the sweet and nutty chewiness of a whole wheat loaf of bread, but want to leaven it with sourdough? Look no further. While I use a homemade seed mix, Bob’s Red Mill makes a nut & seed mix that can be added to any bread recipe for a hearty dose of heart-healthy grains and seeds
As you all know, my lovely readers, I have been on a sourdough binge. It’s been over a year since we’ve purchased ANY store-bought bread products and I’m very proud of this fact! I didn’t have any kind of agenda when it came to ditching commercial bread products but I am very happy to be able to provide my family with whole grain, home-cooked fresh bread every week. Cooking is something I’ve been passionate about since a young age, and as a natural progression of moving back to the country (and into my role as a full-time parent) nutrition has become a large focus in my daily life. As an added benefit, cooking from scratch is and always will be more affordable than purchasing pre-prepared food, and in this time of drastically increased cost of living it’s the least I can do as a stay-at-home mom to help lessen the burden on my hardworking husband’s income. I have the time, the energy and the sourdough starter, so why not?
I have been on such a mission to make EVERYTHING leavened with sourdough that the last time I went to bake a loaf deliciously seedy multigrain bread I discovered my commercial yeast had gone bad! After dozens of loaves of bread coming out of the oven perfectly baked, hugely risen and delightfully fluffy, I could hardly believe my eyes – a failure?? I had mixed up a generous 1.5lb loaf of bread, greatly looking forward to enjoying it, and after being left for hours to rise it showed absolutely no activity. So the last of my languishing granulated yeast went in the compost and I’m not even sad about it. With my sourdough starter hanging around day and night I thought there’s no reason I can’t use it to make a delicious, multigrain nut & seed bread. Right?
As is the trend of late, after searching online for a sourdough recipe that incorporated the traditional components of a whole wheat seed and nut bread but used a starter (and added no additional yeast) I came up empty-handed – or rather, perhaps a little dissatisfied with the few results I did find. So, as per usual, I took to the kitchen to concoct a recipe of my own.
I had already developed my own recipe for a yeast honey wheat bread and the included seed and grains mix, so I had a thought: why couldn’t I incorporate that into a sourdough-leavened loaf?
After just one prototype I have produced what my husband believes to be the perfect loaf of bread: it’s dense and chewy as a whole wheat multigrain bread should be, with the crispy, perfectly crunchy exterior characteristic of a classic loaf of sourdough. But don’t take his word for it – try for yourself and see what you think. I would love to hear your about your results in the comments.
This is a perfect way to maintain your sourdough starter without it taking over your life! It spends most of the time in the fridge in a small jar, but it always available if you need it. When baking with it always remember to reserve at least 50 grams of starter to keep it going.
I’ve referenced in some of my other sourdough posts that I think it’s a process that’s been way over-complicated! I get great results with my half-assed, hair-brained efforts as a toddler mom with little time (and short-term memory) to spare.
Here I will run through a very basic long-term care routine for your sourdough and how to use it to bake a perfect loaf of bread maybe once a week, and less often than that if needed.
First, you’ll need a good sourdough starter. You can get some from a family member, a friend, or even an online marketplace! Sourdough is having quite the renaissance in the home kitchen so now is a good time to source some starter. You can even freeze it and keep it on hand for emergencies (this is how I made it through the post-partum period without killing my two-year-old culture!)
Second, you’ll need to make sure your starter is nice and active before putting it into hibernation, as I like to call it. This can be a few days or up to a few weeks of time it’s spending on vacation in the fridge.
Third you need to find an appropriate container. A pint Mason jar may be appropriate, or you may need a larger amount of starter depending on the amount of baking you’ll be doing. I like to use this jar from WalMart, but unless you’re baking at least weekly, and making more than just one loaf of bread (perhaps cinnamon rolls, or English muffins?) it’s not worth the fridge space.
Then, all you’ll need to do is pull the jar out of the fridge before baking day, split it into two portions, and feed them both: one portion will go back into the fridge for later use and the other will be used in your baking for that day.
You always have to have a portion of starter to continue its legacy, so don’t ever use it all up! You’ll have to get or make more if you do.
Below you’ll find the feeding schedule as well as a simple recipe for a rustic loaf of sourdough bread, perfect for the first-time baker. Be sure to check out my other sourdough recipes as well.
I can say without an ounce of trepidation that this batch of minestrone soup is the BEST we have ever tasted! I have made gallons of it, and the pot is always scraped clean by the night’s end. It comes together quickly and easily, and pairs amazingly with a side salad or even just some fresh homemade bread.
I can say without an ounce of trepidation that this batch of minestrone soup is the BEST we have ever tasted! I have made gallons of it, and the pot is always scraped clean by the night’s end. It comes together quickly and easily, and pairs amazingly with a side salad or even just some fresh homemade bread.
I would really like to try pressure canning this base recipe for shelf-stable storage. For that you’d have to omit the pasta and add it back in when reheating the canned soup ingredients. Keep an eye out for that post because it’s on my to-do list!
So without further ado, go forth and make soup, my friends. ‘Tis the season!
But now that I’ve started making my own yogurt at home I have cut our overall dairy cost by over half, even though I’m paying twice as much for milk – and in my mind that’s an investment worth making. A two week supply of yogurt now costs us $7 instead of $50 and it requires minimal work on my part! And can you really put a price on the quality of homemade food? I sure can’t.
Delicious homemade raw milk yogurt
So far – at least for our family – the 2020’s have been a weird time. With the cost of living on a steady uptick and the stability of our economy at a tipping point it’s easy to live in fear of the future. Rather than panic and stockpile food and supplies I have really focused on honing my sufficiency skills: cooking, baking, canning, and just overall cutting costs and practicing frugality wherever I can. One of the things I’ve been able to cut out of our grocery bill completely is baked goods (I am ridiculously proud to say that we haven’t bought bread from the supermarket in almost a year!) but what we still spend a ridiculous amount of money on each month is dairy products.
I’ve recently transitioned our family to locally sourced raw milk, an investment in our health and our community that I’m very proud of. However, when you’re looking at the cost of this type of high quality produce, it can be quite a shock initially. We pay nearly twice as much for the milk and cream we get from a local farm. However, I am completely willing to pay the price for this product and its superior quality. Another way that I’m able to offset this cost is to make good use of this produce and that includes making more of my own dairy products at home. What’s most surprising is how easy it is to get started!
I store our yogurt in half pint mason jars with reusable lids
As a whole, we consume an almost unacceptable amount of yogurt. My husband will usually have one to two store bought cups of yogurt a day; my son has one to himself each morning; and I will also have a healthy amount with granola for my breakfast. Altogether that totals up to $100 a month JUST on yogurt. Now that I’ve just put that on the internet for everyone to see, it’s a tad embarrassing….
But now that I’ve started making my own yogurt at home I have cut our overall dairy cost by over half, even though I’m paying twice as much for milk – and in my mind that’s an investment worth making. A two week supply of yogurt now costs us $7 instead of $50 and it requires minimal work on my part! And can you really put a price on the quality of homemade food? I sure can’t.
All you need to effortlessly make your own yogurt at home is a cup of plain yogurt to start your culture, a gallon of milk, and an InstantPot.
Yogurt is made by culturing specific bacteria in the ideal environment to the desired taste and texture. It is very similar to other popular fermenting projects, such as kombucha or sourdough; the longer it cultures, the more sour it becomes. Based on my research the minimum cook time for most cultures is 8 hours, all the way up to 24. I prefer to ferment our yogurt for 16 hours, a perfect amount of time to prep the night before I want to prepare a batch for weekly use. This produces a texture much like Greek yogurt after it has been strained.
Now, a strainer is an optional investment but they are very affordable and well worth the effort in my opinion. The first batch I made I had attempted to strain through a muslin cheesecloth and it was very inconvenient as well as messy. I have had a Graham Kerr yogurt strainer for a couple of years even before I started making my own yogurt and it has been absolutely necessary to achieve a high quality finished product.
The addition of a strainer will bring your homemade yogurt to the next level
Flavorings are optional and up to personal discretion. So far I have put just a dab of homemade jam in the bottom of each jar and have had fabulous results. It’s very affordable to forage for berries and fruit and turn them into flavorings to try in your homemade yogurt. We have also tried honey vanilla and maple syrup, both of which have also been well-received.
When your yogurt has finished, whether you strain the whey out or not, you can store it in individual containers for portable snacking or in a large tub in the fridge for easy access. I use yogurt in some of my favorite recipes as well so it never goes to waste in our house. I have read over and over of the health benefits of whey, but I don’t make breakfast smoothies, which is its most popular use; mostly we just give it to the chickens who absolutely love it. You can leave it in a container for your livestock to drink or add it to something like grain or cereal for a quick, high-energy snack (especially good during the winter months!).
Amazing!
See my recipe below for specific instructions on how to start making your own yogurt. I promise it will be well worth the small effort it takes to make such a wonderful product!
In my quest to find a traditional sourdough recipe for this type of bread, I found two things to be true: it is typically made with olive oil, something that I’m not as experienced with in sourdough; and the rosemary is either added to the olive oil to impart flavor, or the dried herb is chopped and added to the dough – but NEVER both. So, in typical fashion, I decided to put my own twist on the traditional and do the rosemary flavoring a little differently.
Rosemary Olive Oil Sourdough
The most recent experimentation on my sourdough journey has been adding herbs and other inclusions to my bread. While I love a simple sourdough boule I wanted to spice up my loaves with interesting flavors and textures.
When I was a teenager we used to live near a local supermarket that was on the more “crunchy” side. Their bakery produced an artisan loaf of rosemary bread that was an absolute delicacy. Perfect with every meal, it was commonplace in our kitchen in its printed brown paper bag.
In my quest to find a traditional sourdough recipe for this type of bread, I found two things to be true: it is typically made with olive oil, something that I’m not as experienced with in sourdough; and the rosemary is either added to the olive oil to impart flavor, or the dried herb is chopped and added to the dough – but NEVER both. So, in typical fashion, I decided to put my own twist on the traditional and do the rosemary flavoring a little differently.
To begin, I harvested some rosemary fresh from the garden and added it to a pint jar of good quality olive oil to marinate for a few days. The smell, even after the first day, was absolutely heavenly! I kept checking the oil until it reached the desired saturation and then prepared my sourdough starter for baking the next day.
While researching the effect of adding oil to your sourdough bread I found a great video by FoodGeek:
And armed with hours of researched information I mixed up my very first loaf of rosemary olive oil sourdough.
As I said before I decided to flavor the bread with both infused oil and chopped herbs. However, instead of using dry rosemary, I pulled the sprigs I had marinated and removed the leaves from the stems to include in the dough. I chopped them pretty finely, but this would be up to personal preference. I was so happy with how this turned out for numerous reasons, the most important being the texture of the rosemary itself. Oftentimes when baking with rosemary it can be tough or sharp on the palette; but after soaking up all that olive oil it was the perfect consistency.
I make sourdough the no-fuss way: combine all ingredients, stretch and fold a few times, leave for bulk fermentation and then bake. The biggest issue I’m still having with my bakes is scoring high hydration dough. If I try to do any kind of scoring that isn’t extremely simple, I don’t get good results. However, just an expansion score does fine, and I like the texture of a very wet dough so much more that I’m willing to sacrifice aesthetics.
The best baking tip that I’ve learned on my sourdough journey thus far is to leave the lid on the dutch oven for the entirety of the bake. While most artisan bread has a thick, crusty exterior, we prefer a soft, crispy crust. It’s easier for my toddler to eat, and I like to preserve the roof of my own mouth as well.
So while my scoring isn’t the most attractive this is by far the best sourdough product I’ve made. The olive oil keeps the crumb a bit tighter, but it’s unbelievably moist and had the most perfect flaky crust. It slices like a dream and is fabulous with pasta, as toast, or for sandwiches.
If you have a good, strong sourdough starter and some fresh rosemary available I highly recommend trying this recipe. We served it with spaghetti and a side salad and it was pure heaven!
Over the past year that I’ve spent honing my home baking I’ve come to one important conclusion:
Bread is not as complicated as it’s made out to be. This is especially true when it comes to sourdough!
I don’t feed my starter on a regular schedule, rather by what its reaction is to feeding; I don’t measure out exact quantities when I do feed my starter, but go by sight and feel; and I don’t know the hydration of my starter – nor does it matter to me. I just do what works in my home.
Square sourdough muffins
Over the past year that I’ve spent honing my home baking I’ve come to one important conclusion:
Bread is not as complicated as it’s made out to be. This is especially true when it comes to sourdough!
I don’t feed my starter on a regular schedule, rather by what its reaction is to feeding; I don’t measure out exact quantities when I do feed my starter, but go by sight and feel; and I don’t know the hydration of my starter – nor does it matter to me. I just do what works in my home.
Ripe sourdough starter
So after I made my first few batches of English muffins, which included kneading, resting, and punching down (if it included the addition of commercial yeast, the cardinal sin of sourdough baking if you ask me) my intuition got the best of me and I decided to take a more relaxed approach to muffin making: combine all ingredients, stretch & fold, and set aside for bulk ferment.
The results I get from this lazy-girl recipe are EXACTLY the same as the more labor-intensive method. In fact, I think they taste better when they’re allowed to rest and develop more gluten undisturbed by the general assault most people put on their bread dough. Just look at those nooks and crannies! And given time to rest, the sour flavor is unbelievably good.
Halved English muffin
Another thing I learned about myself through baking muffins is that I really don’t care what they look like, which translates directly to making square muffins rather than cutting round ones and wasting precious dough from around the edges. Photogenic? No. Still delicious? Absolutely.
I like to fry mine in olive oil in a cast iron skillet over low heat. If you have a lid for your skillet you can cook them to the perfect toastiness and still be thoroughly done on the inside. Just leave the lid on during cooking.
To successfully bake most of these no-knead sourdough recipes you’ll need a nice vigorous starter. I feed mine and leave it on the counter so I know it’s ready for baking. If you’re bringing yours out of hibernation, I suggest feeding it two to three times before baking.
While it’s more of a guide than a recipe I’ve written up my garden bouillon process below. I highly recommend experimenting with the meats and veggies you add to the stock pot for an interesting flavor combination!
This summer I started gathering scraps from every meal I made with fresh meat, herbs and vegetables: chicken carcasses, ham bones, squash butts, basil stems – you name it, I threw it into a plastic bag in the freezer until I had enough to fill my 8-qt Instant Pot to the brim with delicious wholesome ingredients. After a quick pressure cook the resulting stock was absolutely spectacular! What a fabulous use for something that would normally go into the compost. It’s definitely something I’m going to start doing every year with our kitchen scraps.
I had to do quite a bit of research to determine how to name this concoction; while we may not think much of it in our home cooking, there is a big difference between stock, broth, and bouillon. I think I would call this more of a master stock but that can be easily confused with a soy sauce-based product that is used more as a cooking base for many Asian dishes.
This particular batch included a few ham bones, two rotisserie chicken carcasses, lots of tomato, squash, cucumber, fennel, onion, garlic, and other vegetable scraps; and all the stems and leftover bunches of herbs leftover from this year’s dehydrating. Off the top of my head this included basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, rosemary, dill, and sage. To this I added about a tablespoon of dried peppercorns, a couple tablespoons of good quality salt and two bay leaves. I think this addition of the herbs really added to the fullness and depth of flavor this broth has because it’s truly outstanding!
I finished cooking the bouillon two nights before I ended up getting a really nasty stomach bug and it couldn’t have been better timing! The hot, nourishing liquid was so soothing to my tummy after hardly eating for two days. Luckily I was the only one who got sick and we still have some in the freezer which I can’t wait to cook with! I’m thinking it will make a wonderful base for a hearty beef stew.
While it’s more of a guide than a recipe I’ve written up my garden bouillon process below. I highly recommend experimenting with the meats and veggies you add to the stock pot for an interesting flavor combination!
Making your own chicken stock (or any kind of broth, really) is amazingly effortless, especially if you own a pressure cooker! I threw this recipe together after butchering a naughty hen from our egg layers – you can see more about that experience in my Homestead Kitchen Diary – but you can use any whole, raw chicken you pick up locally or from the supermarket.
Making your own chicken stock (or any kind of broth, really) is amazingly effortless, especially if you own a pressure cooker! I threw this recipe together after butchering a naughty hen from our egg layers – you can see more about that experience in my Homestead Kitchen Diary – but you can use any whole, raw chicken you pick up locally or from the supermarket.
The key to making fabulous broth is using the best ingredients. I have never tasted better bouillon than the batch that I made from this summer’s dinner scraps, straight from the garden! Try to use the freshest whole ingredients you can find and the steam will do the rest. It’s that easy!
In this strange day and age there has been a consistent shortage of pantry staples in local supermarkets; but as long as you can find fresh chicken you can always make your own stock at home. Any excess can be frozen or pressure canned for long-term storage.
I finally got the courage to cull my first hen after we adopted a few rescue chickens from a backyard chicken owner. They had been kept indoors pretty much all their lives and came to us with a number of problems, one of which being the dreaded egg-eating. This counterproductive problem got worse and worse until the straw that finally broke the camel’s back: I came into the coop to gather eggs one day and was literally fighting off hens hand-and-claw for the few precious eggs we were getting in the dead of winter. The one in particular that I could clearly identify was a hefty white hen, which I confirmed based on the egg yolk clearly covering her face and comb.
While I’ve been around home-grown meats pretty much all my life the closest I’ve personally come to butchering has been gutting fish. While this is great experience for a kid it didn’t prepare me much for culling my first chicken from our flock of free-range egg-layers! I had been very interested, especially since the onset of the “pandemic,” in butchering a chicken (or a few) just so I could gain the experience. I think for someone who lives the lifestyle that I do – country living, far away from town, fostering our food independence – it’s an important skill to practice even if you’re not trying to pack a freezer full of a year’s worth of poultry.
I finally got the courage to cull my first hen after we adopted a few rescue chickens from a backyard chicken owner. They had been kept indoors pretty much all their lives and came to us with a number of problems, one of which being the dreaded egg-eating. This counterproductive problem got worse and worse until the straw that finally broke the camel’s back: I came into the coop to gather eggs one day and was literally fighting off hens hand-and-claw for the few precious eggs we were getting in the dead of winter. The one in particular that I could clearly identify was a hefty white hen, which I confirmed based on the egg yolk clearly covering her face and comb.
Needless to say my rage overcame my trepidation and I planned to make chicken stock that very night. When I actually hiked down to the chicken pen and swiped her out of the coop that evening, however, I was overcome with a sort of sadness that often accompanies taking a life for food consumption. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have these feelings of remorse when butchering; in fact I think it’s healthy to have a real connection with the animals you raise for your family’s sustenance. I wasn’t dissuaded by these emotions however especially considering these troubling hens are defeating the purpose of keeping them in the first place, which is egg production.
I take great solace in knowing that the animal products I buy or harvest are from creatures who lived a good life and were lovingly cared for. To foster a connection to your food is to understand the modern economy of food production and why it’s important to be personally involved in your own food chain, as our ancestors have been until very recently in human history.
Ultimately I chose to dislocate the neck of this particular hen mostly because of her ample size. I knew after extending her neck with my dominant hand, holding her body with my left hand, that I may not be able to do the job properly if I attempted to do so manually. Given that this was after dark and I was holding her close to my body she was very calm, and so I implemented a technique I had seen a very thoughtful and considerate person carry out in a YouTube video I watched prior to the undertaking: I tilted her forward, slipped her head under a fallen branch, anchored the wood with my foot and pulled on her feet until the head was dislocated from the neck. This may seem like a gruesome description but it was very gentle and minimally invasive; far superior to bleeding out a chicken by the neck, in my opinion. I might feel differently if I had a whole flock to dispatch but this was an isolated case and I also wasn’t interested in making a bloody mess during the winter, a season of peak predator activity in our area.
There was a tremendous amount of flapping (an unconscious, postmortem result of the nervous system discharging any residual energy) and then it was over: I had my first ever farm-fresh product to stuff in the stew pot. This was the easiest part of the job, believe it or not. Dressing a whole chicken by hand is a much bigger undertaking that you’d think!
I have to say that the plucking was probably the worst part of the whole ordeal. It was very tedious to do by hand and even if we did have a chicken plucker I probably wouldn’t have set it up just for one bird. Before I went out to cull the hen I had gotten my canning pot up to 150° on the stove, ready for scalding, which I did immediately upon reentering the house. It took two or three dunks to loosen the flight feathers so I could proceed with the tedious job of disrobing the bird. I found that keeping one side of the sink plugged with a trickle of cold water running worked best for rinsing the feathers from my dominant hand. When I was finished I just scooped them out into the compost.
My #1 tip for first-time hen butchering is YouTube. I watched countless videos detailing the entire act in gory detail, an unpleasant but necessary preparation for the task at hand. There are so many little things to pay attention to from start to finish that it can be quite daunting when you actually have the bird in hand. I periodically referred to a particular video during the process because I wanted to do the best job possible of removing the entrails and avoid contaminating the meat. Overall it went very well and I was quickly chopping vegetables to nest into my Instant Pot along with the chicken.
I’m not sure if this is typical of an older laying hen but I noticed both when I was dressing the carcass and after cooking it down that it was excessively fatty. There was a copious amount of fat underneath the skin as well as surrounding the organs, and this was all floating in a half-inch thick layer after the stock was done. I scooped most of it out to keep for the dogs along with the skin and some of the less desirable pieces of meat. After stripping and shredding all the good meat from the bones I strained the stock, squeezed the remaining juices from the vegetables using cheesecloth, and put everything in the fridge to wait for dinner the next night. To see what I included in the soup base see my recipe Whole Chicken Stock.
Using my Rotisserie Chicken Noodle recipe I prepped the stew just like any other. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the final product especially considering how old and fatty the chicken ended up being. While the meat wasn’t the most tender it had good flavor and thanks to the Instant Pot, it was absolutely as delicious as it was possibly going to get. Overall I’m very happy with the result and the experience I gained in the process.
One thing I found very surprising was how quickly the soup spoiled, but this was to be expected given that the only preservative of any kind was a few teaspoons of salt which was mostly for flavor. After dinner I had immediately packed a thermos of soup and placed it in the fridge for my husband to take to work the next day. He happened to take a working lunch that day and wasn’t able to reheat and enjoy the soup, so nearly 16 hours after he had first removed the thermos from the fridge and tossed it in his lunchbox he opened it back up to finish it for dinner. Unfortunately for him it had literally begun to sour and had a terribly unpleasant odor and taste. Now if this had been a can of Campbell’s Chunky it probably would have been fine, and I wouldn’t have given a second thought to reheating that type of product at the end of the day. This was a valuable demonstration of the perish-ability of whole foods and the quality of the standard American’s diet nowadays.
Unfortunately, as I found out the next day, I was correct in assuming she was not the only hen who was predating our egg supply. We still have at least one hen who is eating eggs that I will need to butcher very soon. Because I was very focused on the task at hand I wasn’t able to get any pictures or video this time but I definitely will be sure to update this post when I find out who the remaining culprits are.
Is there something you’ve wanted to try on the homestead but have been dragging your feet about? I’d love to know what skills you want to practice. Leave me a comment below!
The beauty of this method is that you only need a small amount of the starter to reactivate for each round of baking you do while it’s in the fridge. As long as it’s not moldy it will be safe and ready to use until you only have a small amount left; this remaining starter is used to mix another batch of dry starter to refill your container.
After three weeks of feeding my sourdough starter twice a day I was SO ready to put it in the fridge for a rest! Not only does a wet starter take a lot of time to maintain it also takes a lot of flour, which can get expensive if you’re not baking everyday. While it’s possible to put a wet starter in the fridge for a break it still needs to be fed every week; and after seeing Shaye’s video on making a dry sourdough starter I couldn’t wait to take my mature starter and cake it into a Tupperware for long-term storage.
I had originally tried to make a dry starter from scratch according to the recipe listed on The Elliot Homestead website, but I had problems with mold due to my kitchen being too cool – see my notes on sourdough post for more information on that. After working out the kinks in my sourdough starter maintenance routine I was finally ready to transform this needy, ever-hungry beast back into a hobby (and not a full-time job.)
When you’re taking a starter that’s at 100% hydration – in other words, half water and half flour – you just need to reduce the amount of water until it forms a dough not unlike playdough, or around 50% hydration. This is left to activate a little and is then packed into an airtight container to rest in the fridge for future use.
The beauty of this method is that you only need a small amount of the starter to reactivate for each round of baking you do while it’s in the fridge. As long as it’s not moldy it will be safe and ready to use until you only have a small amount left; this remaining starter is used to mix another batch of dry starter to refill your container.
My tip for this recipe is not to let it sit out too long before storing it int he fridge! It only needs minimal time to activate and it will outgrow the container if left for too long, leading to mess and possible catastrophe. Go ahead, ask me how I know!
