Ferments Including Sauerkraut

 

Fermented Sauerkraut

 

Yesterday I transferred my sauerkraut to other jars to put in our garage fridge. This past garden cabbage was bagged and put in the bottom of that fridge all this time. I was lazy and just did not get to it till last month.

My favorite fermenting book is The Complete IDIOTS Guide to Fermenting Foods, by Wardeh Harmon. My book is from 2012 and I have so many notes and post-it notes in it. I have other books as well and often consult them, but it all gets put into this book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the years I've tried a lot of ferments and have narrowed down to my favorites. That being sauerkraut from our garden, fermented pickles (which I like way better than vinegar made pickles), and then Cranberry-Orange-Apple Relish. Once cranberries hit the store my mouth waters for this ferment. I like Dilly Green Beans, but don't make them every year. Since I grow turnips and beets I'm going to try that recipe again. I also usually ferment my garlic scapes. And I occasionally make Beet Kvass.

Now that I'm looking at the book, I realize I also often make the fermented Mayonnaise as well as Ketchup and Dijon Mustard. Instead of the Veggie Tomato Juice, this year, I canned my own version of V8 Juice. And too, we occasionally want the Ginger Soda. Sometimes I've added turmeric root with the ginger root.  

I didn't make the sauerkraut earlier because I still had some in the fridge from the previous year. Usually I pressure can whatever is left from the year before. But now that I have a freeze dryer, I often freeze-dry my older sauerkraut on a low setting to keep it's probiotic nutrients - I've reconstituted it and it tastes fresh.

It's funny, cuz at first when I started writing this post, I thought I wasn't fermenting many things, but as I kept listing them ... I guess I do! 

 

Kamut & Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

 

Fresh baked sourdough loaves from fresh milled kamut and whole wheat flour I started two days ago. It was autolyzed (the grain flour soaked in the recipe's water). Then once the sourdough starter was added, it went through the folding process, and then was bulked a bit. Put into the cambro container, it was refrigerated (see that post from 2 days ago for the process). I did fold it a bit yesterday and shaped it into a nice boule, then back into the cambro and fridge. Today, straight from the fridge, it was baked! 

These are the containers I'm baking in. The long one is clay and the closest one is cast iron. They go into the oven to preheat to 500 degrees, so the pans get hot. 

I shape the cold dough on the counter and it sits while the oven and pans are preheating.

I typically do just one slash with a razor blade. 

 

Cambro

Once in the oven with the lids on, I turn the heat down to 450 degrees. Turn the timer on for 20 minutes. When it goes off, I remove the lids and have the timer go for another 20 minutes.  

 Because it is just the two of us I cut the cooled loaves in half and they store in the freezer. I have bread freezer bags I use for freezing the bread without plastic bags.

 I always have bread stored in a beeswax bag in our bread box in the kitchen. A breadboard sits near the bread box along with the sourdough knife. 

 

New Sourdough Book

 

A new to me book

When I was researching the nutrition in fresh ground whole grains, and moreso sourdough, I found this gal, Vanessa Kimbell. She's called the sourdough queen in the UK and started a sourdough school.

When reading Amazon's sample (and I read the samples of all three of her books) I knew I wanted them. Their Kindle versions were so cheap I got them first, but then realized I needed the physical books so I can flip back and forth to differing pages and even mark them up ...

(The mention of owning them and liking to mark them up reminds me of a series I'm reading. At Christmas my granddaughter was reading them and her mom eventually told me she'd give me the first two for my birthday, I am savoring them!!! I'm on book 5 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series, by Beth Brower. I can't show you book number 1 because a friend came today for tea and borrowed it. I've already heard from her, that she loves it and is going to savor it! Anyway, Emma M. Lion LOVES books and likes to own them so she can mark them up. I periodically text my daughter-in-law to tell of a part I'd recently read that kept me chuckling!) 

The sourdough queen Vanessa, has really studied the 'chemistry' of sourdough and our gut. You can read about it in The Sourdough School book. Her first taste of sourdough was when 9 years old in a French bakery. By the time she was 11, she was working there. She moved to the UK and could not find any sourdough bread. She got sick. She ate gluten free for four years and then when visiting France, at her old bakery, she ate half a loaf and knew she'd soon be suffering ... but she did not get sick! At that point the trajectory of her life changed - she had to understand why/what was so different about sourdough. This book is about answering her questions and the knowledge of this magical fermentation process that is integral to making the most nourishing and delicious bread in the world!

I have a large collection of bread making books. I am going to work my way through this book and its recipes. I have friends who have had the experience of being able to eat bread in Europe, and my bread, and not gotten sick. 

The fresh milled Kamut, and Whole Wheat bread I started yesterday, I put in a Cambro overnight, I decided to make a lot of folds and form the dough into a nice boule and put back into the fridge. I'll bake it tomorrow.

 I read in her book that this method of getting the dough autolyzed and fermented, then leaving it overnight to proof (what I've always done), even to 48 hours, is the healthiest. It is more digestible.

And she takes it from the fridge, and puts it to bake in the hot oven. This too, is what I've done for years! She likes the spring of the dough from cold fridge to hot oven.

I bought another sourdough book that adds lots of veggie or fruit pastes into sourdough bread. It's a seasonal book, even adding mashed chestnuts, which I only see at Christmas, into the bread. I'll probably be mentioning it at some point. I have to start baking from it as well.

 This morning I ate not just oatmeal, but a mixture I'd ordered from Azure, that has lots of rolled grains. I mixed it with reconstituted freeze dried strawberries. It was so good. A 7-grain cereal. 

I've really missed, leaving by the wayside for awhile, all the whole grains I used to eat. After reading people's healing stories from eating fresh milled whole grain flour products, I'm starting to look at my health history over the past almost 15 years . . . 

The cereal bag is next to my ancient yogurt maker. It was already used when I bought it almost 40 years ago and is still working. I've made our 1/2 gallon of whole milk homemade yogurt all those years to this day still. 

Tomorrow I'll post about the bread baking. 
 

Fresh Milled Flour (FMF) From Many Grains!

I used to make bread, for almost 30 years with fresh ground flour - primarily hard white wheat. In one day I'd have 6 sandwich loaves, 4 french bread, and four dozen cinnamon rolls made. I'd freeze the majority of it all. That was when our kids were here. They were raised in this house, but now off raising their own families.

 

I started making sourdough bread. My research showed the nutritive value of sourdough, as well as its aid in digestion as a ferment. It's basically predigested.  It's also the way bread has been made forever. Yeast is new as of very late 1800, so from 1900 on our breads in the US have been made quickly and don't go through a ferment time using a starter culture. Anyway, I'm making everything sourdough from my almost 15 year old starter. I keep it in the refrigerator in between baking.

 

Fresh Milled Flours

 In the picture I've ground-

• 600g Kamut
• 200g Hard White Wheat 
• 200g Hard Red Wheat   
   

Sourdough starter proofing in the oven

I've got it soaking in 800g warm water while my sourdough starter, which I added some flour and water to, is proofing in my Breville Smart Oven Pro. It almost always takes 2 hours to proof from the refrigerator to a bubbly state.

 

Soaking (autolyse) grain flour in the water

The soaking of the grain, in my third picture, is an Autolyze step I now do with all fresh ground whole grains. It softens the bran, primarily. I was told in the beginning of my sourdough process that you cannot use whole grain for sourdough bread because the bran would cut the bubbles and you'd end up with flat bread, so I used store bought (or Azure bought) bread flour, which are basically sifted for removing the bran (and probably the germ of the grain, which goes rancid, thus not shelf stable) and adding about 10-30% fresh ground flour. Because I made the Tartine sourdough bread for so many years, I really have the sourdough bread process memorized and great loaves of bread. I kept the freezer stocked for the two of us. 

 

I've got the bowl in above picture sitting on a heating source set at 80 degrees, while the starter is proofing in the oven, which is also set at 80 degrees. Our house is generally cold so a warmer temperature for proofing is good.

 

 Once the leaven is bubbly, I measure 150g of the leaven into the soaking ground grain. Then I let it autolyse some more. I usually wait about 30 minutes before adding another 50g of water and 25g of salt. 

  

 

Ready to mix in extra water and salt

Now, in this picture I'm ready to fold in the water and salt. I often just use my wet hands. I like to work the salt and water into the dough well. So I mix it in with lots of folds, almost like kneading.

 

Then about every 30 minutes with my wet hands I'll do several folds for about 2 hours. Most times I'm really good about this and sometimes very irregular. Then you're supposed to let it bulk rise for awhile. And again, sometimes I'm good at doing this and other times when busy I forget. But in the end, once folded several times and maybe bulked for awhile I put it in a Cambro container overnight in my fridge in the garage.

 

So stay tuned for the formed and baked bread, most likely tomorrow. Sometimes I'll keep it refrigerated for 2 days before baking if it fits my schedule better. I'll show you what I typically bake 2 loaves in, and then other pans I don's use as often. I'll give you a clue tho, I prefer bread easier to slice to eat with our fresh cooked chicken eggs, or sandwiches.

 

 

Should I start writing again?!?

 It's now 2026, March 22. It's been ten years since I wrote on this blog. I still love to write, so should I take up writing on this blog again? I'd like to catch you up on what I'm still doing and not doing. Looking through many of my posts I'm still doing quite a few of all that's here. 

We still live in the same house and I'm still gardening. In fact, I'm soon to start seeds for this year's gardening. The yard sure has changed over the years. The fence has extended (fence needed to keep critters out - we have more deer than elk these days). I have 2 greenhouses.  A bigger one has extended our fenced yard. And we're still needing to finish that greenhouse for this growing season. Trying to replace the plastic with actual old windows.

I'm still cooking from scratch and grinding whole grains to make everything from. My bread making has changed, making everything sourdough - which mainly means a longer fermenting time, beyond one day, using a leaven instead of yeast,  for better body assimilation and health. I still make a lot of the recipes on this existing blog, but of coarse a lot more.

We have been empty nesters for a long time. No one lives close by, so no Grandkids often coming and going. We have great neighbors, community, and church. There's distance between neighbors since the smallest acreage we can own is ten acres. We built this house 42 years ago, and love living here.

 I still have chickens. I love fresh eggs and sell some eggs. I have a local health food store that gives me lots of veggie and fruit scraps to supplement my organic feed. Every two years we get new chicks and butcher the old when the new start laying. We try meat birds every so often, but just prefer keeping laying hens. No other pets. Our cameras around the house show our consistent fox, skunk, coyote, rabbits, bobcats, a lion once in a great while, deer and elk often, and then bear. And we usually see wild turkey each summer. 

Then too, I love our birds. A bluebird couple have taken up residence in their house. Flickers are starting their mating calls. Pygmy nuthatches are starting to show up, and someone saw robins. Then of coarse soon we'll have hummingbirds. We have them big time, with their constant humming on the air everywhere, and very active at the back deck feeder. 

I thought I'd show you a chalkboard drawing I did a couple years ago. I used to make a chart every year for the kids to draw what "Firsts of Spring" they saw (or smelled, as someone added a stink bug). I like the drawing so much I keep it as is. It's in our entryway on your way to the Great Room (or as we call the individual areas: the kitchen, dining room, and the keeping room which has couches).

 I better quit for now. I have an Azure pick up soon. Gotta go meet the truck.