Avocado

A few weeks ago Sisto opened an avocado that was so ripe the pit inside had already split. A little sprout lurked in the middle so I couldn't resist. I planted it.

I had to be patient but now is the time.

My dill though never made it. Not a single plant did grow from the seeds I sowed in my first month here. Another project was more successful. When we had pineapple once, I remembered a project from a gardening book of my childhood. So I saved the top with the greens and I just put it on the ground outside and frequently watered it. You can as well do so in a pot. You can finally see that it must have developed some roots 'cause it got new leaves and the greens brightened up a lot.

Sourdough success

Yes.

Bread is done.

I adjusted the recipe a little bit: my starter had a weight of 660 g, so I increased the total amount of flour and water (proportional to mihl's recipe). And after one hour added a tiny bit of yeast to the dough (you can do that with a new sourdough) cause it hadn't risen at all.

I just tried my first piece of bread and it was so worth the effort. I'm so gonna start sourdoughing as soon as we're settled!

Little Challenges: Sourdough

6 days ago I started my first sour dough experience. Did you ever make sour dough? I didn't even think about it before I read >this<. But for the last half year every once in a while I came back to think about doing it.
The facts that made me try it right now were
 - my need to bake bread myself because I can't just go out and buy a nice loaf of "real bread"
 - the fact that they don't have fresh yeast which I really prefer for baking with yeast
 - the warm climate which should make it so easy peasy for the bacterias to grow.

So after nearly three months I got a big jar. And I got rye flour. In germany you get rye flour in every supermarket. I just saw it in some of the supermarkets in the organic section or at the health food store, so it was kind of expensive and whole grain, too. When I read a little bit more about sourdough yesterday I found out that whole grain flour is not the best one to start your culture with because there are some germs from the skin of the grain that make it harder for the desired bacterias to grow. So if you try it choose another type than whole grain for starting the sourdough if possible.

About my experience.. The first days were fine. The surface was bubbly. And it started to smell a bit sour. But after two days or so I really thought it might not work out. My dough wouldn't rise. There was some excessive fluid on the surface in the mornings. Yesterday was the last day of the process and I wanted to know if my dough was right or not. The internet did answer my question. It's ok if there's water on the surface. It's ok if it doesn't rise a lot. Your dough is ok as long as it doesn't start to mold, if it doesn't smell like you don't want to put your nose close to it again and if it doesn't start to be green or red or black. It is ok. I have a healthy and developing sourdough culture in my jar. And when I fed it for an additional time yesterday morning it would start to bubble nicely and had a gentle sour smell.

YEAH.
Today there's not a bit of water on the surface and I'm going to bake my first sourdough bread when I'm finished here. You wanna see a picture? Here you go:

Check out my bread >here<.