Daily Check-In

[mecurtin]

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time on Sunday) to midnight (8pm Monday Eastern Time).

Poll #23669 Daily poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 67

How are you doing?

I am OK
57 (85.1%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now
10 (14.9%)

I could use some help
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single
30 (44.8%)

One other person
18 (26.9%)

More than one other person
19 (28.4%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

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Welp, I tried one experiment, and it failed. Try, try again!

Comments

[mecurtin]

Do you bake with yeast a lot in your kitchen? I gather that "primes" the yeast in the atmosphere to be more bread-friendly.

[melannen]

Nope! In fact basically never, and I've never tried sourdough before. But I don't seem to have had any problem catching yeast - the instructions said to expect sourdough tea and significant rising in your starter by maybe the third day, and I had them after barely more than twelve hours. I *do* frequently forget and leave glasses of milk out overnight or longer, though, and I've noticed our house tends to have a fairly healthy microbiome in general (not sarcastic - milk left out turns into beautiful curds and whey, and I can make raisins in the fridge. Which probably also helps with the yeast!) It's three days old as of last night and was trying to rise out of its jar.

The biscuits came out edible and not super-dense, but I was using a recipe that said it was for using up the discard in a wild starter before it is ready to use for bread, and there was no rising time or anything, so honestly I'm impressed they weren't hockey pucks! And they tasted vaguely sourdough and fine. We'll see what happens when I try real bread.

[mecurtin]

Wow, I really wish I could have that kind of microbiome in my house. Do you do anything in particular that might make it like that? Like, make homemade yogurt?

[melannen]

All I can think is that we live in a sixty+ year old suburb near a large unmanaged forested county park with a major stream flowing through so there's a good variety of life around in general. And we don't have A/C so from about late April to early October the windows are open. But maybe we're just lucky! We do still get plenty of moldy bread and all summer we have to watch the humidity for mildew.