Wednesday 25 January 2017

Okara for a speedy, no-fuss sourdough starter

I very much like sourdough bread and keep a stash of sourdough starter in the freezer.  However, reviving it is a delicate process and I'd love to be able to make sourdough bread without that fuss.

Recently, I've stumbled upon a way to do just that!

In order to reduce our impact on climate change, I've started making soy milk at least once a week: I drink it 'as is' in the summer and make it into pudding in the winter.  Every batch of soy milk generates a cup or so of 'okara' - the depleted soy beans.  It turns out that these ferment really easily.  Other people have taken advantage of this to speed up the fermentation of idli or just to make the okara more palatable.  I've recently realised I can use it to make a speedy sourdough starter!  I haven't found any internet references elsewhere describing how to do it, so here's my method.

Sunday 22 January 2017

Whangarei holiday Christmas/New Year 2016/17

A week or so before Christmas, Martin and I headed up to Whangarei to spend time with his parents.  We broke the journey resting for a few hours in Wellsford Library - the staff their were hugely generous, giving us a meeting room all to ourselves and generally being really helpful.

Dad's vege garden's doing really well

I got my daily 30+ minutes in the sun in the hammock chair straight outside the room we were using.  Martin got through a lot of reading and I made good progress on my current sewing project.