If you have been following along in your attempt to make your own sourdough starter, chances are you have succeed in making your own sourdough starter. But now what? You can use the starter to make your bread, or you can put it in the fridge. If you will make the bread leaving your starter out for one more night might be a good idea. The cold temperature slows down the process. If I keep my starter in the fridge, I usually taking in the morning of the day I will make the dough (which I would do before going to bed), I feed it and let it sit outside for about 8-10 hours. Either way, congratulations. And if you come back, the next video will be about making the sourdough bread.
I am sure some of you expected a video yesterday. However, as I explained in the video bellow, the temperature in our kitchen was bellow 70 degrees Fahrenheit and it slowed down the process a little. If your starter began to show some life yesterday, and I hope you did not throw it away, your sourdough starter should be just fine if you follow the step shown in the video bellow. I need to make just a small correction it has been 96 hours since we started the process (not 72). If everything goes as planned, tomorrow night my starter will be ready for the first loaf of bread (and I hope yours will be as well). Here is the step 3 of the recipe I follow. Enjoy!
My husband and I have been making (and drinking) our own Kefir for a couple of months now. It all started with my surgery. Back in September, doctors removed my thyroid (or whatever there was left of it).
I have been dealing with thyroid problems since I was 18 and when I was 28 half of my thyroid was removed. Last summer my doctors began to worry about a goiter that was rapidly increasing in size and they recommended a complete removal of the other half of my thyroid. The surgery was successful. However one of the temporary side effects of such surgery is drop of calcium levels. To remedy that, I was put on the maximum doze of calcium supplement, while my endocrinologist suggested to drink Kefir as well.
Our Homemade Strawberry Flavored Kefir
Kefir is a good source of probiotics, which helped me a great deal since the doze of calcium I was taking always upset my stomach. Kefir is also an excellent source of calcium as well, so it became a regular item on our shopping list, until the time when my husband cam across a website called Cultures For Health and learned that we can make our own Kefir at a 1/3 of what it cost in the store. Our local ShopRite carries Kefir at $2.99 a quart. When using the gallon of milk form the same ShopRite (at $4.19 a gallon) our home made Kefir costs us about $1.05 a quart. Even when we factor in the cost of strawberries or blueberries (our two favorite flavorings for our Kefir), we still beat the store bought Kefir by a huge margin.
Beside the economic factors spelled out above, the home made Kefir has a greater number of probiotics. It sure tastes much better!
So what is kefir you might ask? To put it simply it is a fermented milk drink with tons of probiotics and other goodness your body will appreciate.
How do you make your own Kefir? To make your own Kefir you need to get your own Kefir grains from some or to purchase them on the internet as we did. When conditions are right, Kefir tends to multiply and people generally do not mind sharing their grains.
While there are many places you can purchase Kefir grains from, we bought our from Cultures For Health. But no matter where you get your Kefir grains from, more than likely your grains will come in a dehydrated form. In the video bellow Julie Feickert from Culturse for Health shows you how to activate your grains.
I would also encourage you to try kefir first before getting your own grains. Buy a quart from your store and see if you like it first. There are a few things you need to do to keep your grain healthy. But the best way to take a good care of your kefir grains is to keep making kefir.
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