A Heritage Sourdough Method + Answering Your Questions | Anja of Our Gabled Home

welcome back to the simple Farmhouse Life podcast today we're going to be chatting sourdough now just when you think you've heard everything there is to know about sourdough if you follow along with the blog my Instagram I do talk about sourdough a lot because it is something that has brought a lot of joy and deliciousness to our kitchen Anya from our gabled home she has a whole different take on it she grew up in Germany she grew up around sourdough her mom her grandma did it she didn't know there was any different way of doing it than the way that she did it and it's way different than all of us are doing it here in the modern day so if you've had trouble with sourdough you feel like you've never had success with a bubbly starter maybe this will be something completely different that you can try out and see if you can have some success so join me as Anya and I chat all things sourdough my name is Lisa mother of seven and creator of the blog and YouTube channel farmhouse on Boom join me as I share with you my love for creating a handmade home from scratch cooking and a little mom and entrepreneur Life along the way [Music] well thanks Anya for joining me again I know I've had you here on the podcast before at the moment I can't remember I think it was Sour we talked about last time wasn't it oh with more like spring recipes okay A little bit of sourdough yeah yeah I knew it was something pertaining to food okay well welcome back on the podcast I'm super excited to have you on to talk about sourdough now before people are like oh we've heard enough about sourdough Anya has some methods that might help you to make it a little bit more straightforward and if sourdough has confused you because I know at first just the concept alone can be really confusing we're going to clear that up and hopefully make it to where you feel very confident especially in the winter it's a really good time to experiment when you're in the house with sourdough baking so Anya let's start off by you introducing yourself tell us about you your blog your YouTube channel or whatever else you want to share yeah thank you it's always so fun to be here it's uh what we live for at least I do so my name is Anya and I am I like to say I'm the main Peddler behind the blog our Gables home our Gables home sometimes I garble it up a little bit when I say too fast and the YouTube channel with the same name our Gable at home and then social media is all the same and I grew up in Germany and I'll talk about this a little bit because I basically cannot remember ever learning sourdough because it was always around me um and yeah and then since my mid-20s or so I have been in the United States and I have taught a lot of people how to do sourdough and they love it and I love it when they love it so that actually makes my day when I hear people successfully baking Breads and getting bubbles in their solder starter yeah so you've been baking sourdough long before the 2020 craze of sourdough and with that you've probably encountered lots of questions I get lots of questions in my DMs I get pictures of sourdough starters I get emails with people that have questions what are some of the top mistakes that you see new sourdough Bakers make while I get so many questions too all the time and in my comments and emails and blog comments and YouTube comments so I think the first thing I want to tell people is don't ever give up and here's a little secret that most people don't talk about is that if you have never made a sourdough starter in your kitchen or you've never baked with sourdough you may not have a lot of ambient wild yeasts in your kitchen so your first sourdough starter may actually be the hardest it's almost like a little hump you have to come over and because at this point I feel like I can do anything with my sourdough that I want and I've only gotten mold on my sourdough once and I can tell you exactly why because I had an apple that was a little moldy on the underside and that was pretty close to my sourdough starter so that can actually happen okay so when people get mold on their sourdough starters and they ask me about it I will tell them make sure you don't have anything moldy accidentally nearby in a visit okay and saw it I was really robust so there's a lot of other things that can go wrong if you have a very young not very robust soda starter and you're using City water that has been treated with chlorine that can actually inhibit the proliferation of these lactobacillus the good bacteria that we're trying to cultivate same with bleached flowers and I have this progression so white unbleached flower then the next best is organic white flour I'm trying to think that I'm saying it right and then organic whole wheat flour and if you really want to get your sour starter on steroids you use organic whole grain fry flour wow that was a lot and what other mistake yeah just not experimenting enough do you find that the Rye is a more active yeast in that grain you know now you're asking me something that I don't really know the answer to um I it just does that's fine too it's just that there's a few things that I know that work but I can't tell you exactly why they work but Rye flour even white Rye flour is really conducive to a good sourdough starter so if you're trying for the first time and then you can eventually switch over you know that's another thing I often get questions like oh can I you know switch from one grain to another it's like yeah totally you can switch back and forth and there's a transition period yeah do it all the time yeah exactly so and in what way would you say there's a transition period I always I don't know I think it's because I am working with 12 year old sourdough starter that it is so robust that I cannot mess it up there's just been there's just no way like I can put it in the back of the fridge for months I could not that I have because I'm like not one of those people whoever needs a break from starter I always see people that are like well my life was really busy to me it's so easy to maintain that it's definitely one of the last things to go when life is really busy there's a lot of other things that would go first which which do but yeah with with feeding it different grains I just throw in whatever and it always is just fine it just bubbles right up it has the fuel it needs yeah yeah I find the same I mean I can I cannot use my sourdough starter and that's partly because of my method for weeks and weeks and um and I can do whatever I want with it and I never have any problems I feel like you know my sourdough is at this point a well-trained pet yeah like that's whatever I want yeah right yeah yeah that's where you want to be in what ways do you feel that people over complicate sour to starter and In fairness I understand that it's a very it's a simple concept when you're first trying to understand it just understanding the science behind it's really important because otherwise it's like whenever my kids I'm teaching a math you know we homeschool and they're trying to memorize the formulas I'm like no no no stop think about why that is like try to think back to right why if I was logically thinking about this math problem would this totally make sense it's the same way with sourdough starter in a way because a lot of the questions I get it's the questions are because somebody does understand what's happening and they just want all of the rules and the steps but I'm like wait wait if we think about what sourdough starter is what you're trying to cultivate what it does then it actually is very intuitive so that's what yeah what are some of the ways that you feel people over complicated so I mean the first thing to think about is that the way I learned sourdough was um you know I was kind of you know like tall enough to peek over the kitchen counter and watching my mom do it so it was really natural and then when I was older I remember her saying oh I'm gonna have to go here and there if you can put you know the dough from the bread bowl into the loaf pan and or she would ask me you know I'm going to be out for so many hours and when the bread has risen enough can you put it in the oven and start the baking and so I naturally grew up I had an idea of what the sour dough should look like and the sourdough starter and the timeline right and now you have people who don't have that and then you have instructions and the instructions are to me they're super complicated and uh and I never knew there wasn't another sourdough method until maybe five years ago because I always thought everybody does sour the way I do it same um now people go off books and in a book they have to um take out as much guesswork as possible or if you're teaching it on your Channel or on your blog right and so then again if you have a very humid house or depending on whether you use fresh milk flour or store-bought flour your even if you use the exact measurements there is a little bit of needing to feel for the sourdough and looking at what you have and understanding what consistency like you said with the math concept it's like what are you what are you trying to achieve what is the salad or starter consistency supposed to look like instead of like oh I measured 50 grams of this and 75 grams of that and that's the end of it so while there probably isn't a better method other than showing it in the video what it's supposed to look like I feel like people who are new to sourdough they should use whatever recipe they can find a method that they resonate with that seems great to them and then just get started and then just experiment and if it doesn't turn out start over again ask some more questions and feel it but um don't ever give up yeah and I always say French toast casserole bread pudding and croutons there's no reason to ever throw sourdough out for any reason whatsoever and like you said with humidity levels with the type of flour you're using there are so many variables and I run into this a lot on my blog where somebody will give the recipe like a one star review and they'll say this didn't work at all and I'm like you really it's because you don't know how to do this yet I mean I'm just saying I've made this recipe like a hundred times and I understand there's a learning curve but it is like you need to know how to feel the don't it's something I can't go into your house and show you you do just have to keep trying it until you have that feel for yourself another question I get which is I feel like it's not understanding the concept behind starter and you can tell me if if you get this question a lot too people say well why instead of discarding it when they're starting a starter why not take that half and then feed it and make two sourdough starters and that's where I'm like oh we need to go back to square one if that's the question right do you get that question too yeah yeah totally and the reason that Bakers maybe 20 30 maybe 50 years ago um all switched to yeast was because yeast was dependable and sourdough wasn't and with sourdough depending on you know the temperature and you know things you can't control the humidity and maybe your own mood and whatever you know the the kind of approach you take on that day all affect your sourdough starter and your sourdough baking but if you really want a Dependable product that's where yeast comes in and that's when people switch to yeast because you know you could just be completely exact and the recipe would always come out the same and not for sourdough right exactly and with that being said I still find that everything ends up edible I don't think I've ever fully thrown something away even whenever I've had over fermented dough which still happens to me because I'll forget about something that sits on the counter and then you know it turns into that sloppy mask when it over ferments right I will take that and make it into like a flatbread or a fry bread or something you know we don't just throw it away there's always something you can do you could spread that on that over fermented dough on top of like a beef and vegetable thing maybe add some cheese you know yeah or like I said you know dry it and turn it into bread crumbs perfect use for it yeah and then again you know I'm German so we grow up with this very dense whole grain bread so we are not shying away from dense breads that we actually need to use our teeth for and if I experiment with a new recipe because I'm just like okay so let me let me try if I you know I actually did experiment a lot with a 100 Rye uh whole whole grain Rye recipe and my first one came out a little bit on the dense side it was delicious and then I just cut the slices a little thinner and then it's not so bad but yeah like like you I don't think I've ever thrown out a bread that didn't turn out well yeah yeah one of the most common misconceptions with sourdough is that you have to keep discarding and this is sort of the topic of this conversation you were telling me about your method so tell us about your method that doesn't require any discarding well one of the reasons I don't have I can't claim to have a you know 50 year old starter is because even making my starter is so easy that if I don't have it for a while or let's say I moved from Germany to here or you know I moved and then I just like oh you know I can easily make a new starter I you know it's so easy that I just don't have an old starter and I actually use buttermilk and a little bit of water and flour and I don't tell people exactly how much to use of each I said ah just you know I'm the queen of eyeballing right just put a little on a ball and this is the consistency that you want I always tell them you're going for a thick pancake batter and then all you do is keep it in a nice warm spot not hot just warm enough and even in the winter I've tried making it in the winter just to replicate and see what it would do for me I just keep it in the Sandy windowsill or if the kitchen is too cold because we don't have heat in the kitchen I may move it closer to a heat source and then just do it there and then every so often you stir it like maybe every day maybe every other day but I don't discard anything and then in my house I get a good sourdough starter after five or six days I would assume that people who've never made this out of starter in their home and never had one it may actually take up to 10 days and I recently had a lady emailing back and forth on Instagram and she's like I'm so frustrated I'm using your method and she signed up for my course and you know and she just couldn't get it right and then she emailed me she said oh my gosh all of a sudden bubbles so that can happen and then what I do is once I have that starter I bake with it I bake with most of it and even my breads are you know like I grind my grains and then I add whatever I have on hand and then I just watch my bread if the bread doesn't rise enough then I'll just let it rise longer and I've never had I mean I start in the morning and I bake in the evening I've never had to stay up late because my breath hadn't risen enough it's more to the contrary where I'm like oh my gosh it's three o'clock but I'm not actually ready to bake because I need to still do some things and I don't have time to be here for an hour and a half and then take it out so I don't have I mean I on my blog the recipes have measurements and everything but then I take about a golf ball size or so and add a lot of flour to it and when people ask me how much I'm like a lot of flour and then when you think it's too much you pile some more flour on top and you stick it in the refrigerator and then you can keep it there I have easily kept it for six weeks and taken it out the night before I bake and add water to it so essentially the way I'm looking at it is I am separating the feeding into the dry and the water so you're feeding yourself started with water and flour and I'm feeding it with flour and then when I'm ready to bake I'm adding the water and then the night before I add the water I Stir It Up and then in the morning it's ready to bake and then the cycle continues so it's it's pretty much the only way I've ever done sourdough I didn't know that other people would do a different method and when I talked to my mom in Germany these days she and her very German way of talking about it's like people really do that interesting so she's still in this belief that people actually feed in discard or discard yeah so whenever you're starting the sourdough starter how are you giving it consistent fuel are you just doing really tiny amounts that you can still give it more flour without having to discard when you're starting I don't actually feed it for some reason with the buttermilk it doesn't need feedings it just um I guess the cultures in the buttermilk and here's a question that I get a lot because of my method people ask me can I use the buttermilk that I make from lemon juice or vinegar and flour I'm I'm sorry flour milk and that's not the same that is curdled and we need the active cultures that are somehow doing it and then I have another thing that I can't tell you why it works I add caraway seeds to my sourdough starter and caraway seeds will absolutely it's another way to put steroids into your sour or starter it totally gets it going and I've gotten a lot of comments on um especially my one of my sourdough videos where people have actually said oh yeah my my grandmother would take a little ball of sourdough starter and put it in the big bag of flour and just keep it there until the next baking and people say oh yeah I remember my grandparents or you know some ancestors would do it very similar to what you're doing so I guess maybe it's a more of an old world type of method I don't know yeah so what would be the difference between that and just keeping a really small amount of starter in what what purpose does the extra flower serve because I have been exploring this a lot more lately the dry sour to start I'm actually writing a blog post all about dry sourdough starter and doing a extremely non-hydrated so very flower dense starter pulling a little bit out but what in my mind like what's the difference though in just keeping like a really small amount in a jar in the back of the fridge and just pulling a tiny amount out of that whenever you want to bake what's the difference there well I guess my method is perfect for people who don't want to bake when there's outer starter is ready they want to bake whenever they're ready to bake so I guess that's the biggest difference so you add the water and then it's ready to bake with just within minutes but you still have to let it go for like four or five hours right to get it active again oh yeah so when I take it out the night before I bake it wouldn't be ready to bake I need to um get it going and I want to say that my salad or starter is in a semi dormant State when I pull it out of the refrigerator because the cold of the refrigerator slows it down and the lack of a lot of moisture slows it down the lack of the water so I'm adding the water the knife that's the flower purpose there right and so I mean it is it is nutrients but it's not it's not making it Super Active right right and then the night before and people ask me does it have to be at eight o'clock or can it be 11 o'clock I'm like whatever you know I'm mean like overnight yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly and I always get something going the next morning I mean I never have it where I'm looking at my start of the next one I'm thinking I may not get Ace outer starter that like overflows the jars and I think there's a bit of a um you know in another life I um I'm also a yoga teacher and I always and I'm going to come back to this in a second but I want to just do this quick detour um you know you see these uh super flexible women doing all these incredible poses and I think it's almost doing most people a disservice because they're like I could never do that you know I could never do yoga and I'm like it's not about the poses and you know it's so Instagram perfect and these days I feel like there is a lot of focus on getting the perfect starter whatever people think that is and the perfect loaf of bread and interestingly enough I have that book The Perfect Loaf and even though I'm trying to come away from that a little bit and thinking hey don't get so fixated on you know your crust and your crumb and the ear and that right right you know or your sourdough starter that flows out of the you know you measure it and I want to say my sourdough starter is functional it may not always be Instagram perfect but like I said I've been baking with it for decades and so has my mom and so has my grandmother and my great grandmother and whoever else and and it's functional you always get a good bread and yeah that's that's something that that's my little pet peeve and I got that yeah well I'm curious if you do you continue to feed it with buttermilk or just when you're first starting it that jump starts it just just to get that starter going and then I okay I add the water and you know the flower before I put in the refrigerator and then the water when I'm when I'm ready to take it out so when you first start it you do the buttermilk the flour you just leave it on the counter no feedings and just let it wait till it bubbles in like five days and I stirred because the air also helps getting the good bacteria going and if I feel it's a little sluggish or if it's really cold I may throw some caraway seeds in it and I know that Caraway is not everybody's cup of tea I am not a big fan of actually biting on a little Caraway seat and getting that burst of Caraway flavor I have found that when I'm trying to make this outer starter and I put it in at first it actually quells up and um you almost can't taste it but they're pretty visible if you use white flour I mean if you're really against the Koy seed taste you can always you know stir around and take a spoon and try to fish out those old seeds but I've had a lot of people comment to me and say I've tried to get it going and never did and then I added the caraway seeds Miracle all of a sudden it took off yeah yeah I wonder if that works too with like a sluggish starter that isn't started with buttermilk adding the care waste I would I would bet it would yeah because I don't think that the caraway seeds have to have A1 method I think they uh there's something about it that promotes probably the proliferation of the really good bacteria or the lactobacillus yeah I I used to always say for years this was when I first started my starter and I made a YouTube video like five six years ago about it that you're capturing the yeast that's in the environment and I was corrected by a lot of people that it's actually the yeast that's present on the flower is there truth to both I still don't even know exactly on that one because I know it Bubbles and I know it it changes based on environment but is it mostly the flower or is it the air around that's doing that I would say it's both I would say it's both and I've even heard a method that somebody sent to me where people take water and flour put it in a jar Stir It Up and then put a mesh over it so not not really like airtight and they put it under some trees and I have to go back to that method and there's something in those trees that drops down and um so there's definitely ambient wild yeasts in the air and in the flower I'm pretty certain that it's both yeah taking a break to tell you about today's episode sponsor you guessed it I love them and share them all the time tubes and Co organic skin care if you are looking for clean simple ingredients in your skincare which you should be because our skin is our body's largest organ and what goes on the skin actually does make its way 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bronze answers and highlighters I'm still getting better at figuring out how to actually apply makeup because that is not something that I'm not a beauty Guru but I do like to look nice tubes and Co is made in the USA based in USA a small family company if that's something you love to support like I do make sure to go over to Toops and co.com use the code Farmhouse for a discount again tubesandco.com use the code farmhouse okay I have another question that people might be wondering have you ever kept for many many years because you said you can start them just so easily that you don't always keep one but have you kept for many years one that was started with the buttermilk and how do you ensure that the yeasts that are present on the flower are the ones that are more prolific than the ones that were in the buttermilk and does it keep long term when it started that way yeah it does because I've actually had one that was maybe five or six years old and it may get a little bit more pungent so I I do have a few books on sourdough because um when I'm done recording videos about how do I go to bed and I read about that before I go to sleep so I mean I can talk about this stuff all day yeah um but yeah I mean I heard and or read in this one book that certain bakers will actually not proudly keep us out or starter for 150 years because they find that it gets too strong so they actually make a new one every so often because they like them better when they're in when they're mature but but let's say middle aged maybe not super old I've been told this too right people are like you shouldn't be that proud of your old starter and like but it's so robust and it it if I really need to revive it I just make pancakes or pizza crust get it down to like next to nothing feed it fresh and it is the most bubbly active starter again so I'm like I don't see the point in going through like like the five six day process personally right but I've never had any trouble keeping it alive you know right to me you could just reduce it down to this throw it in the back of your fridge and forget it for six months and it's still fine when it's at that robust stage so it's really not that it just doesn't feel like a big burden no and and I feel like that is when you're so comfortable with your sourdough you can do anything with it and you also you know what you're looking for and if you have kept yourself that long you know and then you drain it almost to like next to nothing and uh which is interesting because somebody was telling me Oh my ancestors you know insert whatever they were they kept a jar and they scraped out the jar but then they left a little bit in the jar dry and when they were ready for the next bread they would add flour and water to it and they would just get enough uh of the cultures from the sides of the jar right that that was enough but yeah my other thing is um you know I am in California so you know there's this whole thing about the San Francisco salado's daughter and apparently this one Bakery has a 150 year old starter and they sell it online you can get it on Etsy but they have found that within like four or five feedings the bacterial makeup has nothing to do with the original starter that you bought okay interesting so while it it's old you know it's not it gets you a jump start yeah yeah huh that is some interesting science behind that well then it depends on because there's one guy and I have his book and I forget what his name is but um it's a big Tome and he said he actually took a San Francisco sourdough starter and had it had it analyzed in a lab and then he took it to the east coast and he said because of the flour that I'm using and the water that I'm using and the ambient yeast that I have within like four feedings or so it had nothing to do with the original starter there was nothing left of the original bacterial count or um you know the types of bacteria that were in it in in the lab test which I thought was highly interesting yeah I can see the the biggest biggest benefit of keeping a sourdough starter going long term is just it is very robust you can't mess it up you don't have to worry that it won't make your next loaf of bread rise because it's just so consistent right and one thing you were talking about was not having to wait till the middle of the night to bake your bread and various other timeline problems I get that question a lot what are some tips and I have a few to share myself but what are some tips that you have on sourdough timeline because that really blows people's minds sometimes so I have this super flexible timeline that is it's always the same structure it may not be the same to the minute and that is I get up in the morning that can be seven o'clock sometimes it's as late as nine o'clock because I do something else beforehand I grind my grains and I make the dough and then I'll let it sit for three or four hours depending on when I do it and depending on when I get home or you know if I'm out and about and I get home and then I transfer it into the loaf pan because well I have this is this is my absolutely signature part that I grew up on and it's a whole grain very German style type of bread and so that that you can't really do okay um because it's whole grain and the way it's um the recipe works you bake it on loaf pan because otherwise you would just end up with this flat pancake that would be pretty hard right right um then I let it sit somewhere so I look at it every so often when I walk by and if it's not doing much if it's not doming on top I may move it to another spot um and then if it really isn't doing much I have also you know when I've started cooking dinner I've kept it close to the stove or when I'm baking something I put it on top of the stove because the heat from the oven will come up to the stove top and then I can put it there yes I tell people you know if you have a pilot light in your oven you can put it in there that may put out enough heat or if you have an oven light turn that on or turn your oven to the lowest setting Let It Go for 5 minutes and then turn it off and then put your bread in there close the door really fast people have I don't know put it on a like a hot water bottle or a warming plate I mean once you start thinking about what your outer sort of needs you can get so creative and I've even used a little step stool and put my bread right over we have this forced air heating over heater vent and then I just have to make sure that it doesn't dry out on top but I mean yeah you can get so creative in finding ways how to keep it warm and I will say a wetter dough will rise easier than a dryer don't yeah so what what do you do if say it is like 10 o'clock at night and your dough hasn't risen to your liking that's a tough question because it's never happened to me yeah it never happens to you no this never happened I don't know I mean I probably will I throw it in the fridge yeah that's a great idea um if that ever happens just yeah yeah oh yeah yeah it's never happened to me so I'm just not that methodical as you I start sourdough sometimes I'm like oh I should be my starter and it's noon and then it's like bubbly at nine o'clock or just whatever timeline I'm never thinking about it I always just start it and then wherever it ends up when I'm ready to do the next thing I'll throw it in the fridge or I'll let it do a longer First Rise but like you know it doesn't it's not something I think about too much I don't overly stress about it I kind of just start something and then it always ends up fine yeah yeah yeah and since I have my routine I don't um I mean I'm I'm a routine person yeah and then once I find that I have something in my routine I don't even have to think about it anymore so this whole idea it's like the day before I decide okay so we're alone bread I need to bake more bread and then I just know it's almost like my body knows that I have to take the starter out of this yeah before but then there are days when I'm like oh you know we're doing something tomorrow and I won't be able to bake bread so that has happened and then I just bake on another day a but I have also taken out the sour starter in the morning and then ground my grains at night and then let it rise overnight and then I've baked it like you know midday the next day so I just moved everything up a few hours and I've done that too but for some reason that felt a little bit like you know when you're always using your right hand you're using your left hand it's like it feels weird right yeah very unnatural very unnatural that makes a lot of sense another rule that I break regularly and this is just you're just not allowed to do this I will take my starter out of the refrigerator and just use it in a recipe and it works I I mean not if it's been like hibernating for six months but if it's been in the fridge for say a week or so and I haven't had the chance to feed it yet sometimes I'm like I'll take my chances and it does still rise the bread yeah so yeah it's almost like um you have this relationship with your starter and your starter knows exactly what to do like it's a well-trained pet yeah I I feel the same way like I said we have no heat sores in the kitchen so in the winter it gets really cold in the kitchen it can be like 57 in there at night and I still don't have any trouble with my starter even though ideally it should be between like the next day might not be any bubbles or yeah yeah I I don't have I I never had any issues the only time I ever had an issue is when I actually did and it wasn't it wasn't on a mature starter it was on a nine corn starter and I tried various other methods because people have also come to me and said I can't find buttermilk because people from other countries I guess buttermilk is not that common in stores where they can't buy the cultures online or they have a dairy sensitivity or allergy what can I use so I have experimented with other right active cultures such as yogurt and kefir and then I thought okay so what's a non-dairy and I have used plain kombucha no flavors and plain kombucha works just as well okay um people have asked me if they can use coconut yogurt or cashew yogurt while I have not tried that myself the principle seems to make sense and I said right uh yeah sure try it it should work and if you do try it um Circle back to me let me know what you find and I think a few people have said that at work yeah so it was one of those experiments where I got mold on the starter because like I said I did have a little bit mold on an Apple that I haven't seen and right and then I got mold on the start I'm like oh okay so this can't happen it happened to me too here's my little initiation yeah I know I haven't had it happen it's I get lots of questions and I'm like I none of this has happened to me it's just been very robust and easy I mean on it to be completely honest it just has I've had fruit flies in it and people like well what do you do then I'm like I scoop them out I'm just being completely honest yeah I'm not gonna throw in my starter over a couple of fruit flies oh I know I I mean I hope I'm not freaking people out but you know as long as we're not eating in my kitchen I think everything's fine but I've had so many people comment on stuff that goes on in my kitchen and that's that's only the tip of the iceberg yeah exactly one video in which I'm actually teaching teaching about how to make buttermilk and one of the cats jumps up on the counter and somebody commented and says ooh first she touches the cat because I put the cat back down and then she touches the food and then it was funny because people came and said well she wasn't touching the food it wasn't a jar and um you can't gross me out on you trust me I know I'm just not one to waste stuff that fast like no and I I also don't believe that I mean we are living in such a sanitary environment these days and everything is like germ-free in this and that and I first of all I don't think that people have lived that way you know 100 years and then and then even prior to that and secondly I used to say about my kids because I started them all clean in the morning and then you know midday they were all dirty and sticking sticking their hands in the sandbox and then their mouth and and I was never one of those moms that would run over there and you know clerks wipe their hands and oh and I said oh my kids are dirty but they're happy and they had a very robust immune system so yeah yeah my mom wasn't like that either yeah we we I mean you know you know how kids are if you're gonna get grossed out about like certain like a cat jumping up on the counter just look at like even when you're a very particular mom your kids still the second you turn your oh your head this way they're doing something that's like oh thank you survive I know and I wasn't going to drive myself crazy and you know this one day my my oldest son he's like five or six and he's like Mom Mom look and I look over there and he has his mouth wide open he has a dog licking the inside of his mouth do I need that do I promote it no of course not was I freaked out by it I'm like you know and I I and I think well I know that there's studies that kids that grow up with pets are healthier than fed kids that don't grow up with pets yeah well and just living on a farm too there's so much about it that makes you be like well I guess that's fine like no matter how much you clean a cow before getting the milk out of the cow you are still squeezing the teats of a cow that just pooped I mean you just are and that's the same for everybody whether you're getting your milk from the store or you're not you're getting the the eggs out of the coop in there you know it's just there is you might get them all sanitized but before that it came from a cow so let's let's just remember that there are some things that yeah we'll go on some rants here yeah I I actually these days I'm a little bit more like you know I appreciate a little bit of dirt in my home and I don't need it all sanitary it's not like I'm a surgery room over here where that's necessary right so yeah and I think that um sourdough is is bacteria it's just good bacteria and right I think that bacteria has such a bad rep and just the the word bacteria you know so you have to call it good bacteria so and even in the gut you know you want the good you want to cultivate your good bacteria and make sure that the unbeneficial bad bacteria don't overwhelm the good bacteria but here's an interesting anecdote and some of you listening may have heard this if not it's really fun story and I hope I'm telling it right Michael pollin wrote a book and he talked about this nun on the East Coast that happened to be a biochemist and she was making a certain type of cheese she went to France learned how to make it and made it and then the FDA came and said well you can't make that cheese in these wooden Vats because that's not sanitary and yada yada so she said fine I'm going to run an experiment we're going to do the same cheese everything same recipe and I'm going to do it in wooden baths and I'm going to do another bat in absolutely sanitary stainless steel baths and they found that they actually did grow E coli in the stainless steel bats because what happens is that in the little creases of the wooden bats the good bacteria overwhelmed the bath bacteria and those weren't available and the stainless steel vets so the FDA said okay fine you can do whatever you can do yeah that that just seems just like the milk industry I guess oh my gosh out there that is how we do with milk when we kill every last bit of bacteria there's no line of defense and if you actually do the research I mean I I probably am like going to butcher these statistics I won't share statistics but yes oh that's a whole topic we have been drinking raw milk for years I love it I love the taste and I think you know it's perfect the way it comes out why would I alter it and um there's I mean I I've read all sorts of studies as to um how it has enzymes in it that actually helps digest the milk proteins and the the lactose in it and if you're very sensitive there's a lot of people who actually do fine on raw milk because it hasn't been altered so anyway so that's a whole different topic and um yeah it is but it's an important topic because I do find a lot of people are scared of sourdough they're scared of they're scared of raw milk they're scared of fermenting vegetables because it's so unfamiliar to grow bacteria that they want some kind of metric to know that it's going to be okay when this is a very wild process and there might not be anything giving you that that you know conventional sanitized down type of outcome that's going to make you be like yes this has all the right bacteria in it in a way you have to trust the process and so I think that's that's how this does tie into this conversation right and I mean ultimately I feel like people need to know people need to do whatever they're comfortable with and if they're not if they're just plain not comfortable with drinking let's say raw milk I respect that and I'm like fine right but I also read a lot of research because I'm like well what is it you know and um where does it fall so first of all I think that the whole pasteurization of milk came up because the cows were so far away from the people consuming the milk that they the milk have to be transported and so they had cows in industrial operations where they couldn't guarantee the cleanliness and then they had to transport it and the milk would go bad on the way to the cities because you know people started Living in more urban environments and that's where the pasteurization came in but if you I mean I find that my raw milk stays good in the refrigerator for 10 days and it's been chilled the whole time and we don't cook it and I smell it and I drink it and it's fine we haven't gotten sick so yeah but I know a lot of people who are like but it's not pasteurized it's like how why does it not make you sick it doesn't and yeah no there's just defenses left there there are good bacteria everywhere and in sourdough that they're there and you're cultivating them and they're there in that milk and they're there in vegetables and that is what this whole thing is about everything yeah it makes a lot of sense when you really think about the science behind it taking another quick break to tell you about the school of traditional skills I've told you about this on this podcast before but I have had a chance to dive into some of the classes and they are so well done and so informational they're packed with what you need to preserve food build a garden Dairy homesteading fermenting all of the topics that a lot of you if you listen to this podcast are probably interested in the school of traditional skills is the perfect way to continue to learn those skills because they are constantly adding new classes all very well done they have pressure canning reclaiming pasture pasteurizing meat chickens gardening curing pork a nourishing bone broth class with Sally Fallen Morel you can get all of this by visiting bit.lee forward slash Farmhouse skills again that's bit.ly slash Farmhouse skill sign up for the school of traditional skills and continue to get their classes learn new things that you can Implement in your home that will help you to be more self-sustaining save you money so much good information over there I am looking forward to continuing to watch all of their classes as they put them out again that's bit.ly forward slash Farmhouse skills what are some of your most frequently asked questions that you get when it comes to sourdough we might have covered a few yeah oh my gosh I get so many questions again this is like oh plug this is why I created my sourdough course because I got so many questions and I felt like you know I'm so busy answering them so maybe I need to like bundle them and you know wrap them up all nicely for people so that is all in one spot yeah I get everything from so when you take it out of the refrigerator do you cover it or do you leave it uncovered or when you keep in the refrigerator do you have a tight lid on it or not and so just to answer that in the refrigerator I will actually put a tight lid on it I have one of those what do you call them the Cork and jars from Ikea you know that have a little rubber gasket and then this like flip top so it's it's pretty airtight yes and just because you know I have other ferments in my refrigerator and I don't want any cross contamination right between either one of them but then once I take it out I like I may Loosely cover it so I don't get fruit flies in it or because we have cats and run around and they jump up on the counter and then you know I don't want cat hair in this outer starter so that's why I Loosely cover it but you don't need to cover it very tightly right and then I get all sorts of questions for like how much flour do you put in it and um I don't think I have a one question that people ask we're trying to think I don't think so I mean it just runs the gamut from everything from can you use stainless utensils yes you can you know I wouldn't necessarily keep it in there for a long but I use my actually we have heirloom silver that we use for every day and I use that to stir up my sour to start and hasn't heard it at all yeah um yeah so I I'm still trying to think if there's while I'm talking in the back of my head I'm thinking if there's any one question that stands out or is like more common than any other well the mobile question and I do tell people to make sure that they have a clean jar and by that I don't necessarily mean sterilized like boiled in water for 10 minutes or you know chlorinated but just clean right because apparently soap residue can also hurt your sourdough starter if you're making one that's not right robust yet that makes sense that makes sense okay what are your top five favorite sour recipes I know that your your wheat is that that traditional German bread you're making is that a wheat bread the way my grandmother always made it and the way my mom is still making it it's wheat but these days I'm like oh I'm corn oh dry spelled you know whatever and there were years when I had Millet in there and amaranth and quinoa and all sorts of other interesting grains and I mean this is a recipe I feel like I can do anything with so yeah that's I mean I I play with it all the time and just recently I found um oh yeah because people sometimes ask me both ways either I like this extra sour bread how do I get my sour my bread a little bit more sour or people ask me I want the sourdough but I don't like the sour taste so then I ask them what's your purpose of eating sourdough well for health benefits I'm like well you do need to ferment it but there are ways that you can increase and decrease the sourness and I find that adding right about 25 or so of oat to my whole grain sourdough bread makes it very mild that's a recipe I've been playing with lately yeah coming soon to the blog just another variation well I have the the Rye because that is that is a different recipe in itself and you know Rye behaves a little bit because it doesn't have the gluten that wheat and spelled and einkorn does I mean so yeah I mean in that order different yeah yeah um well I I just feel like you know that this recipe is so flexible you can just throw anything in there you want yeah that makes it very intuitive and easy all right let our listeners know where they can best find you tell us about your sourdough course or any way that we can follow up with you yeah yeah I'd love for people to check me out um on my blog again our gabledhome.com or on YouTube now that's very easy our labeled home I'm on Instagram I'm officially on Twitter but not very active there I'm on Pinterest I'm on Facebook and then I do have the sourdough course and I think you can just go ahead and type in your Google search and type in super simple sourdough online course and you should be able to find it okay it's not a very long course but it has all the little modules and it teaches you how to make the sourdough starter and pitfalls and troubleshooting and you you know I mean even though I have some videos on my YouTube channel I really go in depth in the course and talk about all sorts of things including recipes and then you also get access to my private face I have a private Facebook group for this audio course where people can share and get support and and get more of my attention because sometimes I get people who ask me this and that and you know and I don't know when I get this funny color and it's so difficult for me to remotely assess you know funny color can mean so many things and yeah and the private Facebook group it would be really easy for people or it is really easy for them to share a photo or a video which we can't do on YouTube for example so I can I can look on it and then just yes the back and forth is very helpful yeah and then just recently I've added the coaching because people have actually well chastise me for you know you're teaching all this thing and then you're you know you're leaving people alone like well so I've just recently launched a coaching service where people can get 20 minutes of my attention and we can zoom and they can be in their kitchen they can show me their Source or they can show me their setup they can show me whatever they have and they can ask me all their sourdough related questions so that they don't feel like I leave them hanging yeah I do feel like that's missing sometimes and people people ask for it but there's only so much time in the day to take everybody's individual sourdough questions right right and again and that's why I did the course because I'm like I'm so busy answering all the YouTube comments and so often I will just um steer people towards my course and say Hey you know I think you would get so much out of this course and it answers all your questions so you might want to consider that yeah because you only have so many hours in a day right and even though I wish I I had more and I could respond to every comment that way I I just don't you know yeah no it's fair it's fair all right well thank you so very much I really appreciate it you had a lot of good insight for somebody who maybe has tried sourdough and still hasn't found something that works for them they're discouraged this is a whole new way to look at it and try it so thank you so much for giving us that information yeah and and you know likewise thank you so much for having me here I always love chatting with you whenever we do and um I may actually I think I've made a commitment that I will try one of those sourdough starters and maybe I'll just use your recipe where you know I feed it in that discard and I try one of those methods and see how I like it and if it's any different to find that old way yeah yeah just venture out and try something you know what maybe 90 of the population of this country does and so I I have a better understanding of how that works so thank you so much it's it's hard to want to switch up what you know you know it really is like this works for you it's easy and yeah teaching an old awesome Christmas but but worthwhile to try for your probably for your course student it's a good way to get like more yeah yes both experience yeah and then you know whatever I find I may I may actually if it's worth it I'll always update the course and you know put that in there right awesome awesome well thanks again oh yeah you're welcome thank you Melissa all right well thank you so much for listening to this episode of the simple Farmhouse Life podcast I hope that you did learn something new about sourdough I know I learned some things and I I don't know I don't know if I'll change my method just because it works so well for me but for any of you who maybe have tried and not had the best of luck with it this gives you something else to try so that you can join the sourdough club and bake from scratch with wild yeast I hope that it encouraged you as always thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode of these simple Farmhouse live podcast foreign [Music]

Channel: Simple Farmhouse Life

Views: 130,102

Keywords: simplefarmhouselife

Id: DIwH_b1aOJQ

Length: 53min 56sec (3236 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 05 2023