Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Another Baking post while on Covid Stay at Home Order...Not wanting to waste the excess sourdough starter... I came across this recipe at Hope Well Heights Blog and gave it a whirl. I adjusted the recipe a bit to my liking but this recipe turned out fantastic... I will definitely be making these again!

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 1 cup butter, room temp
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup fed starter
• 1/2 t sea salt
• 1 t vanilla
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 2 1/4 C flour 
• Chocolate Chips (I used the mini's and didnt measure)
• 1/2 C Chopped Pecans (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F
2. Cream together butter, and sugars in a big bowl until combined, then add the egg...I use a Kitchen aide mixer ;-)
3. add your fed starter and mix in
4. add vanilla and dry ingredients, mix until cookie dough forms
5. add in chocolate chips, nuts and mix.
6. shape or scoop dough onto a greased cookie sheet
7. bake fro 12-15 minuets at 350F.  These do take just a bit longer than non-sourdough cookies but I’d start watching them at 10 minutes to make sure they don’t burn

Diggin' in the dirt

Being on Stay at home Order  and time on our hands we have had the chance to get out in the garden  and get it ready for 2020.

All the rows have been amended, planned and designated for the season ahead.

Honey wheat sourdough Bread

Making bread and conserving ingredients I have been making a few crazy experiments as to what I can get away with while making bread during our Stay-at home Order. 

I have a bucket of wheat flour that is most likely outdated...It smells fine but is very wheaty tasting when cooked. I am determined to use it up and not waste it. That being said I am mixing it with all purpose flour at a rate of 1/3 of the flour that the recipe calls for. We have found we can live with that!

One of the other things is that if I mix it like my regular bread it ends up DRY!

So I'm pushing the limits with water and making this bread dough  on the runny side to fix the dryness issue.

As you can see it's almost a batter like consistency

I cover with cling wrap that has been brushed with a little olive oil to keep from sticking and let it rest

  when it's nice and bubbly from the active sourdough...I toss in the oven and bake 20 minutes.

 It's ugly and it's not going to win me any baking championships anytime soon, but we are using up that old wheat and it's actually good.

 Anyone else doing crazy experimentations in the kitchen while on stay at home order? Leave me a comment and let me know ;-)

Emerging

The snow has completely melted from the garden and I am able to see whats happening out there.

Granted it's not very pretty and nothing much to look at...unless you really look! 

These Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea's have seeded themselves... They will be moved to a different location in the garden as I have other plans for this bed but I sure was happy to see they had sprouted!

Also found many volunteer Mache' (corn salad) rosettes that can be added to our salads..

Many people overlook these guys and may consider them weeds but did you know according to Wikipedia they are packed with nutrients our bodies need, including three times as much vitamin C as lettuce.....Wow! 

and look at my mighty Rhubarb pushing Winter aside as she prepares for her Spring debut

Something new for me to try this year...Pickling Rhubarb!! 

 Do you plan on canning or planting anything new this year?

Saving Sourdough Starter

This Winter I had a sudden urge to make sourdough bread. I have made homemade bread for the past 25 years off and on for my family but had only tried sourdough once when my boys were still small. 

It didn't go well, I killed the start and created  some sort of weird fuzzy science project.I put out a call to my local Face Book friends to see if anyone had a sourdough start. My sweet friend Marrina had one to share and we had a great visit the day I went over to pick it up. 

I have been happily making sourdough bread for the past month my family really enjoys it and so far I've made many loaves of Artisan Bread, Foccacia Bread, and Pancakes, cookies and was even able to share a start with someone else.

 Since we have been enjoying this start so much I want to make an insurance policy that I wont kill it.

That lead me to find a way to dry the start that can be revived later. There are many reasons one would want to do this...In case you take a little break, go on vacation or you kill your mother start, just to name a few ;-)

The method I found at King Arther Flour was to place a cup of the starter thinly on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and let air dry until completely dry. It will become brittle and can be broken into pieces. This process took a couple of days and I also used a small fan to help with the drying.

I wanted to make the pieces smaller and easier to re hydrate when the time comes. 

I used my little food chopper and found it just wasn't fine enough for what I wanted.

I pulled out the coffee grinder and pulverized the pieces into powder. The coffee bean grinder was the ticket here!

 This made the hard chips into the perfect powder form.

 I spread the powder back out on the parchment with the fan on low for a couple more hours to ensure dryness.

 And now I have a back up sourdough starter!

To re-hydrate I will add the powder with luke-warm water and add unbleached flour and restart the process of feeding my sourdough start. For now my mother start is happily growing along!

2020 opened my eyes!

I've been missing from this blog for far to long....Life has a funny way of keeping us busy and I simply found myself mainly posting and sharing on Instagram ...

I will be posting here for me and if any of you are still around you're welcome to follow along.. I do enjoy the company!

With that being said this is where I am at the moment....The recent worldwide Covid-19 events have brought me to focus on the things that  are really the most important in my life.

• My family
• My little Humble home 
• My families health
• and food security! 

So, I've found that my priorities have led me right back to the heart of my tiny home and back into the garden with gusto and grit.  I've found that my heart and hands really do belong in the dirt!

The world is upside down at the moment, there's no toilet paper to be found anywhere, it's downright stressful to watch the news at any given moment and people have been quarantined to their homes...

It's not a sentence for me, I truly love being at home. I think I am more grateful to have this time to focus on the important things and love the important ones in my life! Toilet paper is low on my priorities. I used cloth diapers on my kids....I'm just saying there is more than one way to wipe our bottoms and it's funny to me that this is where most peoples priorities laid in a time of crisis!

Now we wait and see what's in store for this little world of ours and in the meantime I will be playing in the dirt, cooking and loving my family!!!