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A Sourdough Story – What to do when your sourdough starter won’t wake up

This is my gluten-free sourdough. I used it often this summer until I started to react to sourdough and other fermented foods due to a histamine intolerance. So into the fridge it went. It’s been there since June. Unpacking after our move, painting, refinishing the floors, and getting COVID means that I haven’t baked with it since. I have a friend though that asked me to make her a loaf of gluten-free sourdough bread so I thought, I’ll take this out and it will wake up, and I’ll bake some beautiful bread.

Well, it’s a week later and I still haven’t made that loaf of bread. Why? I’m still waiting for my sourdough starter to wake up! It had been stored in the fridge unfed for about 2.5 months.

But, I’m not worried. Did you know that it can take more than a week to wake up a sourdough starter that has been in cold storage for a long time.

I took this sourdough out on Wednesday. It’s now the following Wednesday and the starter is just now starting to show signs of life. A loaf of bread will be coming soon. Let me tell you how to wake up your sourdough starter after being stored for months in refrigerator.

How to Wake Up a Sourdough Starter from Long-Term Cold Storage:

1. Day 1: Take your sourdough starter out of the fridge and let it warm up on the counter overnight or for 8-12 hours.

2. Day 1, 12 Hour Mark: Feed your starter some flour and water and let it sit for 12 hours. Exact amounts aren’t super important, but over feeding is a concern here. You don’t want to over dilute your starter. My recommendation is to feed your starter about 1/4 of its total volume. So if you have 1 cup of starter, you would feed it approximately 1/4 cup of flour. If you feed it more than that, it would be like feeding someone who had just come out of a coma a five course meal. When sourdough has been hibernating for a long time, you want to gradually introduce food again or you will over dilute it and it and the microbes won’t be able to catch up and consume the food that you give it fast enough.

3. Day 2: Feed your starter again and let it sit for another 12 hours.

4. Day 2, 12 hour mark: Feed your starter a third time and let it sit for another 12 hours.

5. Day 3 through Day ?: Now you wait. Let your starter sit. You may stir your starter approximately every 12 hours until you start to see tiny bubbles form. Stirring periodically will prevent mold from forming while you wait for your starter to wake back up and ferment all that flour you just fed it. Once you see bubbles forming, don’t feed or stir the starter. Let it sit until you see some rise. The starter should double or almost double in volume. This may take another 12 hours or more to double once you start seeing bubbles. Once it has risen you can resume regular feedings and your starter is ready to use again.

Don’t be surprised if it takes a week or more to wake up your starter. After your three feedings 12 hours apart, just let it sit with occasional stirrings until you start to see bubbles. Once you are seeing some bubbles, don’t touch it. Let it sit until you see some rise. This is my starter one week after taking it out of the fridge. It’s day 8 for me and I’m just now starting to see some activity. See the tiny bubbles in the jar.

This is at the end of the day, about 12 hours after I started seeing some activity on day 8.

So don’t give up on your starter. Just give it time. Almost any starter will wake up again. I’ve known so many people who throw out their mature starter because they think it’s dead. It’s not. It’s just still asleep and hungry. You can nurse it back to being healthy and active again. It just needs some time after that long, cold nap. Even if you take it out and it’s covered with black liquid, it can be revived. That black liquid is called “hooch.” It is alcohol that is given off when the microbes are starving. So, don’t throw it out. It can still be saved.

These steps for waking up your sourdough will work for any sourdough starter made of any type of flour – wheat, spelt, gluten-free, etc. So don’t assume you’ve ruined it by leaving it in the fridge so long. Give these steps a try. It’s definitely worth a try to wake it up rather than starting a new starter from scratch.

Happy baking!

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FREE Live Herbal Medicine Webinar tomorrow!

Want to learn to use the herbs that are growing outside your kitchen door more effectively? Carolyn Thomas with Homesteading Family is hosting a live Herbal Medicine webinar tomorrow 4PM ET. But don’t worry if you can’t make it live. Sign up for the webinar and you can view the replay after.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these cookies up to share with a friend this week. I started mixing and realized that I had added dairy and that they needed to be dairy free. Whoops! So I made two batches. One with diary and one without. So my mistake means you get two recipes out of this one. 😊

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:

Whisk the following in a small to medium mixing bowl:

1/3 cup peanut butter (or almond butter or other nut butter)

1 egg (or 2 egg yolks)

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup honey

1/2 tsp salt

Then add…

1/2 cup water (or mill alternative)

1 tsp vanilla

Whisk until combined.

Switch to a rubber spatula and add…

1/3-2/3 cups arrowroot powder (or tapioca starch)

1/3 cup white rice flour (or brown rice flour)

1/3 cup chickpea flour

1 tsp baking powder

Stir to combine. Add more flour or water as needed to reach a thick cookie batter consistency.

Add chocolate chips of your choice. And stir to combine.

If you need a dairy-free chocolate chip, I recommend the Enjoy Life brand.

Spoon onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Makes 12-18 cookies.

Now, here’s the version with dairy.

Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Recipe:

Whisk the following in a medium mixing bowl:

2/3 cups peanut butter

2/3 cups heavy cream

2/3 cups honey

1/2 tsp salt

1.5 tsp vanilla

Then add…

2/3 cups arrowroot powder (or tapioca starch)

2/3 cups white rice flour (or brown rice flour)

2/3 – 1 cup chickpea flour

2 tsp baking powder

Stir to combine. Add more flour or water as needed to reach a thick cookie batter consistency.

Add chocolate chips of your choice. And stir to combine.

If you need a dairy-free chocolate chip, I recommend the Enjoy Life brand.

Spoon onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Makes approximately 24-30 cookies.

Cookie Comparison:

While both these cookies are good the ones made with the olive oil baked darker.

The cookies made with the heavy cream were softer and lighter.

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Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cookies with Egg-Free and Dairy-Free Substitutions

These are moist and hearty. They make a nice dessert or a high protein snack.

Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe:

Whisk the following in a small mixing bowl until combined and creamy.

3 egg yolks (Sub: 2 tbsp ground psyllium husk and 1/4 cup water for egg-free)

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup peanut butter (or almond, cashew, or sunflower butter)

1/2 cup honey

Then add…

1 cup heavy cream (Sub: water and 1/3 cup oil for dairy-free)

Whisk until smooth.

Now with a rubber spatula stir in the following flours:

1/3 + 1/4 cup tapioca starch (or arrowroot powder)

1/3 cup millet flour (or oat or sorghum)

1/4 cup teff (or quinoa)

1.5 tsp baking powder

Mix until all the flours are combined and there are no lumps.

Let the batter sit for 15 minutes and then re-evaluate its texture. It should be just slightly thicker than a pancake batter.

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes. Cool and store in a plastic bag or airtight container.

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5-Minute Biscuit Bread, Low Histamine Recipe

My youngest is struggling with a restricted diet at the moment due to high histamine levels which means she can’t have yeast or sourdough bread. So, I’ve been scrolling back through my recipes to try to think of what to make for her. This one is just the ticket. I refreshed this old recipe and just pulled a loaf out of the oven for her this morning. My house smells delicious and now my only problem is how to keep the other kids from eating it all before she gets some.

5 Minute Biscuit Bread Recipe for Low Histamine Diets:

In a medium sized mixing bowl combine the following:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups whole wheat or spelt (best if freshly milled)

1 tsp salt

2.5 tsp baking powder

Give it a quick stir and then add…

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp molasses

1/4 cup oil

2 cups water

Stir until all the ingredients are just moistened. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat and bake for 50 minutes or until it tests done in the center with a toothpick.

This recipe mixes up super quick and is a great alternative when you can’t have yeast or sourdough but want a yummy slice of bread.

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The Lost Art of “Puttering”

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄 I hope you all had a joy filled Christmas day! And even if you struggled through the day, which is sometimes our reality with unfulfilled hopes and broken families, I hope that you could focus on the joy of Jesus even if your Christmas was filled with sadness or did not meet your expectations in some way.

Grandma and Grandpa came to our house for Christmas this year and the tree looked like it was going to explode once they added all their presents. The kids had a good day and the day went fairly smoothly for me with meal prep and keeping everyone fed.

What were my best Christmas presents this year? Look in the tree branches and you’ll see one of them. It was such a treat to get Homesteading Family’s new gluten-free book in the mail on Christmas Eve. 📖 Many people put in so much work to bring it about. My contributions of developing the recipes was done over a year ago so seeing it finally come together in print was a such a nice Christmas present!

But as nice as it was to see this book in print, I told my husband that the thing I really wanted for Christmas this year is a week to just be a house wife and putter.

We moved in May and spent most of our summer getting the new house liveable inside. Once the new homeschool year and kids activities were in full swing, I’ve barely been able to keep up with the basics much less getting the house organized the way I want them, or having time just to stop and think for that matter. Most of the unpacking is finally done now but the organization and systems are not in place yet at our new house, particularly in the kitchen, apothecary, and garden areas.

So my husband and I are taking advantage of having grandma and grandpa around and plan to go out to lunch for a planning session between the two of us to set our goals and what we hope to accomplish at the new house for the upcoming year. Then we have planned to delay the start after the first of the year so that I can have a week with no school to just putter! Yay!

The kids will help with some of the meals and I’m on purpose not going to go anywhere so that I can just be at home. I even stocked up on groceries last week so I don’t have to go to the store either. I just want to stay home. I’ve been wanting this for so long and I’m so excited!

I hope some of you have found time to putter a bit over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday as well. I think puttering is becoming a lost art which is sad. Puttering is something that brings the heart of the housewife, her creativity, and beauty into the home.

Merry Christmas 🎄 and Happy New Year 🎉 everyone!

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Three-in-one recipe: Gluten-Free Egg Nog Biscuits, Cinnamon Roll Biscuits, or Gluten-Free English Muffins

This recipe came about by accident. I was experimenting with recipe that I could use for Christmas morning as a gluten-free sweet roll option, and happily my mistake turned out delicious. The nice thing is that this recipe is really a three-in-one recipe. With the same base recipe you can make a delicious gluten-free sweet roll or biscuit either egg nog or cinnamon roll flavored, but one little tweak and it is an excellent whole grain gluten-free English Muffin.

So if you have any leftover egg-nog from Christmas Eve, pull it out of the fridge and give this recipe, or one of its variations a try.

Gluten-free Sweet Egg Nog Biscuit Recipe:

Combine the following into a bowl:

1 egg yolk

2/3 cups egg nog

3 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp lemon juice

Whisk to combine.

In a separate bowl add…

1/2 cup sweet rice flour

1/2 cup tapioca starch

1/3 cup teff

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp frozen or hard butter, grated into flour

After the butter has been stirred into the flour add your liquid ingredients and stir until all the flour is combined and the batter has a light and fluffy texture. It should be the texture of a thick cake batter. Add more flour or liquid as needed. Cover and let the batter rest for 30 minute. Don’t skip the rest period or the final texture will be sub-par.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Pour into greased crumpet rings laid out on a cookie sheet over parchment paper. (I like reusable parchment paper. Have you tried it?)

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Gently remove from rings and cool on a wire cooling rack.

These are delicious served warm with butter and a little sugar sprinkled on top.

Cinnamon Roll Biscuit Recipe:

For this version make the following changes to the above recipe.

Add 1 tsp cinnamon to the dry ingredients.

Use 2 egg yolks rather than one, 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1/4 cup of milk, and 4 tsp of sugar in place of the egg nog.

Gluten-Free English Muffin Recipe:

Follow the base recipe at the beginning of this post adding 2 egg yolks and subbing 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 cup of milk for the egg nog plus 1/2 tsp of sugar.

Whichever variety of these recipes that you choose, they will turn out dark in color due to the teff, so they will have the appearance of whole grain biscuits. If a lighter appearance or flavor is desired substitute millet for the teff flour.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄

If you missed the launch of The Art of Gluten-Free Homemade Bread, this is the gluten-free book that I wrote for Homesteading Family. It was so popular that it sold out in less than a week but you can get the digital copy or sign up for the wait list for a physical copy at the link above.

Other Gluten-Free Recipes You Might Like:

5 Minute Gluten-Free Crumpets

Gluten-Free Popovers or Dutch Baby Pancakes

Gluten-Free While Grain Seedy Bread

Gluten-Free Apple Cinnamon Sourdough Batter Bread

Make Your Own Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter from Scratch!

Note: This Post contains affiliate links.

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Cranberry Orange Cinnamon Christmas Punch

For those of you that have made my fermented lemon cranberry relish, pull out whatever you have left from Thanksgiving and use for it for your Christmas parties. 🎄

I improvised this yummy Christmas punch for my daughter’s Christmas party. It was super easy and delicious too!

Cranberry Orange Cinnamon Christmas Punch Recipe:

1 bottle of apple juice
1 – 2 liter bottle of Sprite
3 heaping spoonfuls of cranberry relish
3-4 cinnamon sticks
Slices of 1 large or 2 small oranges

This punch is delicious! It’s best if you add everything but the sprite and let it chill overnight and then add the Sprite right before serving. It’s also super quick to mix up more when your bowl runs low. Just combine everything together again and you’ve got another bowl ready to go.

And if you need to avoid refined sugar, try this sugar-free modification…

Sugar-Free Cranberry Orange Christmas Punch Recipe:

If you need to omit refined sugar, simply follow the recipe above, but instead double the amount of lemon cranberry honey relish that you add, and use orange flavored seltzer water instead of Sprite and you’ll have a yummy holiday punch with no refined sugar.

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄

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Gluten-Free, Sourdough Whole Grain Seedy Bread

I developed this sourdough bread recipe for a friend who requested a “Seedy Loaf.” I’d never tried this with gluten-free before, but it turned out quite nicely and she requests one every week.

Gluten-Free “Seedy” Loaf Recipe:

Whisk the following in a small mixing bowl:

1 cup of gluten-free sourdough starter

2 tsp salt

2 tbsp oil

2 tbsp honey

2 1/2 tbsp psyllium husk

2 cups water

Whisk together and let the mixture sit for 15 minutes to thicken. While your mixture is resting, collect the rest of your seeds for soaking. In a small bowl measure out…

1/3 cup pumpkin seeds

3 tbsp of hulled sunflower seeds

Cover the seeds in the bowl with water and let them soak until just before your bread is ready to go into the oven the next day.

Now back to your mixing bowl. To the liquid mixture add…

1/4 cup quinoa flour

1/3 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup arrowroot powder (or tapioca starch)

1/3 cup potato starch (or cassava flour)

1/3 cup sorghum flour (or chickpea flour or oat)

1/4 cup millet (or sorghum)

1/4 cup teff (or buckwheat)

1 tsp poppy seeds

Mix together until there are no more lumps. Batter should be the texture of a very thick pancake batter or thick oatmeal. If it is too thin add a little more of one of the flours until the correct texture is achieved.

Cover your bowl with a damp tea towel or lid and refrigerate for 24 hours.

On Bake Day:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Drain the water from your soaked seeds. Remove your bowl from the fridge and add your seeds to the batter. Mix well until they are all distributed. Then pour your batter into a greased loaf pan.

Next, with a rubber spatula, gently press down around all the edges about 1/4” pulling the batter at the top just away from the edge of the pan. This will help with the rise.

Immediately transfer to the hot oven. Bake for 1 hour. Internal temp when done should read 210 degrees on a digital thermometer. If it is not done, bake for 10 more minutes. Cool overnight or for 12 hours before slicing so that the texture of the bread can set.

The Art of Gluten-Free Homemade Bread Book by Homesteading Family:

It’s finally available! I created these recipe for Homesteading Family and the book is available just in time for Christmas. Order your copy from Homesteading Family!

And if you want a wheat based bread class that covers it all – yeast, sourdough, fresh milled flour, sprouting, and ancient grains, check out Homesteading Family’s The Art of Homemade Bread Course. Carolyn taught me how to make bread and sprout my grains. It’s the most comprehensive course I know of.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

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“The Art of Gluten-Free Sourdough Bread” by Homesteading Family – now available!

The book I wrote for Homesteading Family is now available. The Art of Gluten-Free Homemade Bread is available now. The ordering window for the book is only available once a year so get yours early while they are available! The fort run sold out in a week, so grab yours now. They won’t last long.

Note: This page contains affiliate links.

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FREE Pressure Canning Webinar Tomorrow!

Tomorrow Homesteading Family is hosting their last webinar of the year. This time it is on Pressure Canning. I don’t remember them ever covering this topic before, so if it’s something you are curious about or have wanted to try, click the link above to sign up!

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Gluten-Free Popovers or Dutch Baby Pancakes

These are sweet little treats that are light with a slight nutty flavor. They are the perfect treat on their own or with some butter and jam or honey.

Gluten-Free Popover or Dutch Baby Pancake Recipe:

This recipe is quick to mix and bake. Combine the following in a small mixing bowl:

1 cup of heavy cream or half and half

3 egg yolks

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

4 tbsp sugar

Whisk until combined. The egg yolks add softness and some binding properties. The cream adds the liquid and fat. Next add…

1/4 cup millet

1/4 cup tapioca

1/4 cup white rice flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix with a rubber spatula until there are no more lumps. Let the batter sit for 10 minutes and then check the texture. It should be the texture of a smooth, soft icing.

Spoon into a greased mini muffin pan or I used these mini stainless steel ramekins to bake mine. They are the perfect little mini bite size.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes. Remove and cool.

Enjoy these little bites for an afternoon treat, quick breakfast, or dessert. If you want to bake as regular sized muffins, spoon into the greased pan and bake for 25 minutes.

This recipe makes about 9 mini popovers or 4-5 large ones.

Enjoy!