Cooking Cheap

A few months ago, I got another starter from Mom’s friends in Port Townsend, Washington. It was a little different than mine. While there, I baked a loaf of bread with it. It might be slightly faster acting (not by much). Flavor is a little different. Degrees of subtleness. Purely a matter of opinion, but we both thought my starter is slightly better in flavor. For the baker, it wasn’t more difficult or less difficult or much faster or much slower.

I also scored some Spelt. My sister-in-law got a new grain mill (and the whole grain baking “Jones” needed to grind your own) and she gave me a quart or two of whole grain Spelt flour. I took it home and used my starter for a 50/50 spelt/white loaf. It was OK. A little heavy to work with (it’s whole grain). It tasted OK. Not better enough to trigger my “must explored deeper”. I put the remaining spelt flour in the freezer until inspiration strikes again.

Today, I thought about the other possibility. If it was whole grain, there is going to be yeast in that flour along with all kinds of other microscopic critters that survived the milling. Can I make a sourdough culture? My starter was built out of frozen Rye flour of unknown origins so it’s highly possible.

1 tsp of splet flour. 2 tsp of water. A bit too wet, it’s more a like a slurry. No big deal. The plan is to add a TBL and some amount of water tomorrow. Let that sit, covered, on the counter for another day. Throw half away the next day and replace that with more spelt and water and repeat until it starts to ferment. That might take days or weeks. Then introduce wheat bread flour instead of spelt. If it ferments the wheat flour, then continue to feed the culture with more wheat flour and water.

That’s a lot of ifs. If I get a culture will it be better or worse? I can’t know if I don’t try.

By day two, there was bubbling in the mixture and smelled something awful (I remember my Rye starter at that stage - nasty) On day 3 and 4 it ate a table spoon of spelt, and then later in the day a TBL of AP white wheat, and then another. The replacement of half the previous spelt mix with new wheat helps the smell. Thats normal and encouraging.

Time to get accurate. I removed enough of the mix to leave 2 oz. Added 1 oz of white bread flour and 1 oz of water. A few more days of I tossing half (or more) and replace with equal amounts by weight, then I’ll have, uhm, ah, I’ll have something that’s close to 100% hydration and propagates.

[June 1, 2008[
When I got up this morning, it looked to me that the last feeding might have killed it. It hadn’t swollen liked you expect and no visible bubbles to speak of from looking at the outside. So I left on the counter. Another no show starter. Then I read some stuff that suggested I wasn’t feeding it fast enough. Never to old for some book learning, but dead is dead, I’ll move on. Hours later when it came time to dispose of it in maw of the sink I noticed a thin layer of clear fluid.

Hold on! That’s much different! That’s what starters do when they need feeding. I took a little whiff. Hooch. Yeah! Most of the yucky smell was gone. Consistency of the mix shows that the flour was eaten and broken down. Based on my research I should have used AP instead of bread flour and refreshed it more often. So that’s what I did. I don’t know if it’ll raise bread (CO2), but it eats flour and leaves hooch. That’s a good thing.

I have no idea what “day” it is. I think I fed (not refreshed) the starter with AP flour yesterday. It didn’t look promising and it didn’t smell right enough. I decided feeding was easier than washing it away. Next morning the top of the little jar was laying on the counter like it might have been blown off from CO2 while I was sleeping. Texture was ropy. Smell wasn’t awful. That means there’s yeast in there. They and the lacto-bacillus are finding balance. I removed half of the starter, maybe more - a tsp or two left. I fed it a stiffer mix of AP flour and water (rumor is that makes it more sour). It does smell different from my go-to starter and Captain Ted’s so maybe I really have a new culture from the splet. Too soon to say.

– Nearing the end –
Now it is later by a few days from the above words. I made bread with it. Tastes fine. Sadly, no better than my normal starter and no worse either. Not faster nor slower, nor more sour or different in taste. I wanted a “new” starter with different characteristics. But if you have Spelt flour instead of Rye flour, you can make a sourdough starter. Nothing wrong with learning that.

It’s been a while since I posted here. Mostly because I haven’t done anything new food wise that’s interesting or dangerous or out of my comfort zone. Now it’s spring and hormones are running and “why not” my companion. I dissected a 8.75 lb pork butt into 4, 2, and 2. Six of that for the freezer and 2lb for a cured bacon or ham like product.

Two pounds is not a lot by many standards. There’s not many of me. I’m going to cure that 2lb’s of butt in a spice rub that might be close to Tasso Ham. A week or so from now I’ll put in on the smoker and we shall see. As always this isn’t going to be exact, just my guess on the amounts I added. I’m using some old spices the TV cooks want you to through away after a year. Some of mine are much. much older. I mean like a lot older. I started from another recipe of course but my substitutions are rampant.
2 lb Boneless pork butt, one piece. Or Shoulder or whatever. The cure/rub:

• 1/8 C Mortons Tender Quick — that’s the cure part. 1.5T for me. Seemed like the right amount to me.
• 1/8 C Celery Salt. (Interesting, that’s a lot)
• 1/8 C Packed Brown Sugar (I might have used a bit more)
• 1/8 C freshly ground black pepper (see note below)
• 1 Tbl of Garlic powder.
• 2 Tsp Paprika cause I didn’t have 1 tsp of Cayenne and 1 tsp of Cayenne looked a little heavy for me.
• 2 tsp of old Poultry seasoning. (or 1/2 tsp each of sage and thyme)

Rub it all around the pork, place in a plastic bag and add the rub that didn’t get absorbed. It will. The curing agent will suck in the spice, then weep “liguid” and you turn the bag over every a few days for 6 to 10 days. That’s my plan.

What happens may be something else. The relatively high amount of celery salt is interesting as is the levels of sage and thyme. Much more a sausage recipe than ham or faux bacon.

Black Pepper Notes:
I’m not going to hand grind an 1/8 cup of pepper corns but I do like peppercorn bacon. I smashed up a Tablespoon of pepper corns with a mallet. That’s cracked pepper. Then I ground some pepper in the hand mill and got bored with that so I added some mega mart “cracked” pepper (aka “course grind”.

[5/15/08]
Call it what you like but it’s pretty tasty. I chose to smoke it to 160F. That only took 2 hours on the smoker running at 235 to 250. That’s the nature of a cured meat (the Tender Quick). Since it’s pork butt, it’s a little fattier than ham so it can be used everywhere ham would be. That’s OK. I’m pleased.

[6/11/08]
This is good stuff. I’ve used several slices out of the freezer on recipes where you’d use bacon or a spiced ham. If you fry it up and taste a chunk, you may not stop sampling and then what will you do?