Okay, I’ve got it… sourdough time again!

Figured out the perfect applications – plural! – for the sourdough that has been coming back to life on top of my fridge all week.  Two Maggie Glezer recipes (my mother probably has her book, A Blessing of Bread, if I wanted to hold and caress it in person instead of just steal recipes over the Internet):

But first… here’s the fun part, which I can actually do now that I have a scale:  all of Maggie Glezer’s recipes apparently call for a FIRM starter.  And my starter is pancake-battery; I believe it’s known as 100% hydration, which means that by weight I add about as much flour as water. 

So I must spend a day converting the starter to 50% hydration…

Here’s the technique I plan to follow.

So much bread-geeky, scale-happy fun…

Wait a minute!  That technique (Maggie Glezer’s conversion formula) is apparently WRONG, and according to this site, I am apparently not the biggest, funnest bread-geek on the block.

The author there says the following  formula is more accurate to convert a 100% (pancake-batter) starter to a 50% (thick) starter:

40 g starter (40g of 100% starter = 20g water + 20g flour)

then add

15g water (+ the original 20g = 35g water)

50g flour (+ the original 20g = 70g flour)

And, as everyone knows, 35/70 = 50% hydration.  Whew!

So that’s what I’m doing right now, before I go in to fold the laundry.  If it’s ready, it should quadruple in 8 hours or less.  Here’s hoping!

NOTE TO SELF:  Ambitious but beautiful braiding technique to try, also from Maggie Glezer:  http://www.finecooking.com/videos/braiding-challah.aspx

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