Sourdough, Not Just For Bread

            Sourdough bread has been made for centuries. Six thousand years ago the Egyptians baked sourdough bread in clay pots in their ovens. In more recent times sourdough was often the only leavening agent available to the early pioneers. They relied solely on their precious canisters of sourdough yeast to make bread, biscuits and pancakes.  In those days they mixed potato water, a little sugar and flour and let it sit out for a few days to catch “wild” yeast from the air. This method was a bit unreliable and often produced weak starters, therefore a good yeast starter was highly valued and carefully nurtured.

            In my quest to be ever more self sufficient here at home I found a recipe and got my sourdough starter going and of course the first thing I tried was bread. My sourdough breads turned out quite good but I don’t bake bread very often and I didn’t want to just be feeding the starter for nothing so I began searching for more uses for my starter.

            A friend told me that I could dip steak in a cup of starter then coat it again with flour and fry. I tried this but added a teaspoon of seasoned salt to the flour. My family and I loved it and now I cook both steak and pork chops this way.

            A few days later it occurred to me that if it made a nice coating on the steak and pork chops perhaps I could make fried chicken with my starter. I first coated the chicken in a bowl of plain flour. In a second bowl I dipped them in a mixture of 1 cup starter and 2 eggs (mixed together well). The chicken then gets one more coating of flour to which I add some seasoned salt, Cajun spice and some ground red pepper (you could add any spices you want to flavor the chicken with in this bowl). I then deep fried the chicken like I always do. This turned out to be the best fried chicken I had ever made and is the only way I will make fried chicken from now on.

So, lastly, we tried pizza. My children love store bought pizza but I wanted to make pizza at home that they would love even more. I mixed 2 cups starter, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 Tablespoons lard- melted and approximately 2 cups flour ( you may need slightly more to make the dough workable). I cut the dough into two and kneaded each piece a short time then rolled them out into a circle large enough to cover my pizza pans. I brushed oil onto each pan then placed the dough on and bent under any edges making it a bit raised all around the sides. Paced it in a preheated 350 degrees oven for just 5 minutes. For the toppings I mixed spaghetti sauce with pizza seasoning and spread it on the pizza shells. Mozzarella cheese on top of the sauce then pepperoni slices. I then baked them for another 10 minutes. My daughter pronounce it, “The best pizza ever!” and my son just nodded his head while stuffing more pizza in his mouth.

            I now have several ways of using my sourdough starter and it’s not just sitting around waiting for my next bread baking.

[email protected]