Corn bread

Well, I have another round of sourdough. I have been misting the oven, as suggested by another faculty member in my department, and it has resulted in the nice crispy crust that good sourdough requires. I took a loaf over to the new pastor's house last night (what are the odds that in a 3,000 member church, the pastor is our neighbor???) and then had a ham and cheese sandwich with the other loaf. It continues to rise nicely and has a very hearty taste. Food critics might complain that it's not sour enough but it works for me. I bought some whole wheat flour today and will attempt a whole wheat variety this weekend. We are meeting Christy's aunt for dinner on Saturday and would love to take some for her.

But tonight, I wanted steak -- and for me, nothing goes better with steak than corn bread. I may be alone in this sentiment, but the balance of textures and sweetness is just perfect. Cooking for just myself while Christy is out of town, I saw no need to spend a lot of money on meat and bought the least expensive cut that Publix had in the Greenwise section (see, Hon, even though it's steak, I'm still thinking of the animal...) and then marinated it in a syrah wine and Chicago spice mixture for a couple hours before throwing it on the grill. While it marinated, I mixed up some corn bread using a very basic cornmeal, flour, shortening recipe. Poured it into an iron skillet and baked for 25 minutes. Perfectly crusty and VERY tasty. It will do nicely for breakfast tomorrow as well.

Meanwhile, as I was scouring the web looking for information about sourdough, I was curious about what a starter ought to look like. Here are some pictures in case you are looking for the same.

Here is a picture of my starter in a plastic tub after fermenting in the fridge for a week. The layer of yellow liquid is known as "hooch" or as I prefer to call it, yeast urine. I've seen lots of discussion about yeast urine. Some say pour it off. Others say it's a sign that the starter is not being fed well enough. Still others say to stir it into the starter before baking the bread. As I understand it, hooch is basically hop-less wheat beer, so I do the only responsible thing a beer lover would do. Well, the really responsible thing to do would be to drink it but since it has no hops, I stir it in.

And then it looks like this.

So the last batch, I started with a lump of dough that looked like this. I let it sit overnight and when I woke up, the dough had risen above the lip of the bowl. Sorry I didn't get a picture of it, but it was quite remarkable.