Yeast Culturing

Well, we had a great Thanksgiving.  We spent time with my parents, went to Great Wolf Lodge, ate a great meal, had friends over on Saturday and had no school for almost a week.  My schedule was completely off, but the house does not look half bad and most of the Christmas decorations are up.  I do not yet have the croup post for you.  And I do not have any videos, I got lucky and neither boy was sick the next night.  During the last week the baby got his six month shots, which included rotavirus.  That night he threw up all over me at Olive Garden.  Yuck!  And that is why the diaper bag should have a change of clothes for mom in addition to baby.  He only threw up once on Monday, so I think it was maybe a reaction to the rotavirus vaccine, but there really is no way to tell.  He had had a respiratory virus and little kids especially can vomit with a respiratory virus.  He had no fever and was acting happy the whole week. He even enjoyed sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving.

So now, it’s Monday.  School is back in.  Hubby is at work and I need to get back in the groove.  Saturday I started the San Francisco Sourdough yeast starter from Cultures for Health.  I had gotten it earlier, but I was pretty sure life would be too crazy over Thanksgiving to keep it alive.  Since I barely got on the computer to check on the blog, I think I made the right choice.  In the video on Cultures for Health, they advise to throw away part of your yeast culture with the third feeding so that you don’t have too much.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I was afraid I would mess up what I had left and not have back up.  I thought, I’ll just split it into too, and have an active one, a frozen one, and a fridge one that I feed once a week.  This is still my plan, but I am beginning to understand why I should have thrown some away.  Or why I might need to soon…I may run out of flour.  I took out 1 ¼ cups of the starter to make sourdough focaccia bread from Jeanne’s recipe at SimpleMath Bakery.  We will see how strong the starter is.  If it rises well, then I will make a loaf of sourdough bread.  And then do the whole fridge and freezer thing so I have back up when I kill my starter.