Sourdough Starter

Just in case you hadn't picked up on my obsession with food...

So my good friend Shannon (I'd put a shout out to her here, but I won't because I know she has better things to do with her time than read my blog) has taken her own quirky food obsession to the next level by making her own sourdough starter and baking her own bread on a semi-daily basis. When she hosted last month's potluck, the pizza that she made with her whole grain rye sourdough starter blew me out of the water.

Apparently I raved about said pizza one too many times, because two days ago Shannon gave me a piece of her biga (sounds a little racy, but I think that's the fancy name for sourdough starter for those in the know, or maybe I'm just making it up.)

Anyway, Shannon must really hate me, because now I'm obsessed with feeding the beast. Which of course means I need to actually use it to bake, now, too. Steve's comment when he learned of my newest nutty foody thing was to say, "That means you have to make bread and stuff with flour again, right?" He's very excited. So maybe it's not that Shannon hates me, but that she really likes Steve.

The beast needs to be fed twice a day. Samuel is helping me. He thinks it's pretty hilarious to call a bunch of flour and water a "beast" or "monster" and that I must be kidding when I say we have to feed it. I think you can imagine how our conversations go.

So I had the beast for about 36 hours before I came to terms with the fact that it was completely pointless to have a sourdough starter if I wasn't going to use it on a pretty regular basis.

Enter sourdough blueberry muffins for breakfast. These mini muffins were a batch of 20 - see how many are left:And though my camera work sucks, let me tell you, that they were probably the prettiest, most perfectly formed muffin I have ever made.

And the leftovers of dinner's two enormous pizzas. That's homemade pesto with farmer's market basil, feta and sundried tomatoes on one, and fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes and CSA parsley root on the other.And the beast that made it all possible