Good morning! Rainy day here, and damp cold! Brrr. DH and I are both sitting down to a sausage and cheese breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. Yum!
So sausage is expensive you say? Well it doesn't have to be. In fact, using this recipe one can get not only a great flavorful sausage inexpensively, but also get a good whollap of protein to boot. Way more than store bought sausage. How? Well no fillers in this sausage. It uses a pound of ground meat; cooks choice : ground pork, turkey, chicken, or beef. The beef will make it pricier. FYI. Todays' sausage was made with 85/15 ground turkey. I've used ground pork before. In fact if you have a grocery store with an independent butcher( Ingles for example). Watch for whole boneless pork loin to go on sale for $1.99-$2.49 lb. Get them to slice the center into chops, but grind the ends. You can also just get them to grind the whole thing, and then freeze it into 1 pound packages. Ground pork is also a great substitution for ground beef if pinching pennies.
Without further ado:
Indiana Farm Sausage
1 pound ground meat
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/3- 1/5 tsp marjoram
1/5 tsp thyme
1/3-1/5 basil
1 tsp salt
1 rounded tsp sage
1 rounded tsp parsley
1 tsp onion powder
Mix all together in a mixing bowl. You can make it ahead the night before to let the flavors mix, but today I simply made it up and cooked it immediately. You cook it just like any other sausage: brown it in a pan. I've used this recipe to make sausage biscuits, breakfast sandwiches, pizza, sausage gravy, and sausage cheese balls.
I can get ground turkey for $1.99 at Aldi, and watch for the pork loin to go on sale. The cheapest I've seen sausage on sale is $3.99. This ends up being half that. Well worth the effort!
My second practical tidbit today is our bread. It's sourdough. I used to think I lacked the sourdough gene. It seemed like every time I tried to make a starter, it would die. I was... a starter killer. Then my sweet niece, Lydia, gave me a starter from her stash. Her starter had been kept alive for about 2 hundred years! NO PRESSURE! So I fed it religiously. I was so afraid I'd kill it. I kept it going for a while. Then I made the mistake of listening to someone on the internet that said you could freeze starter. Yea. You can't. Once again I killed it! So I decided to try once again to make my own. I felt I'd learned a lot from caring for my niece starter; especially not to freeze it. So I gave it a try, and made my own! It is much easier than people think, but it does require attention.
So here are the rules for starter' mainly making and caring for your own.
1. You can buy distilled water, but who needs yet another thing to buy. Fill a jar with water and let it sit out, lightly capped or covered, over night. That will let any chlorine dissipate. I keep a jar filled on my counter, next to my starter.
2. Don't worry about flour and water ratios. Just take a good scoop of flour; say a cup if you need a measurement, and add water to it until it's the consistency of pancake patter.
3. You will need to discard starter and add more flour and water at least daily in the beginning. I don't go by a set time when doing this. I check it periodically during the day and when it's not bubbling very much I'll pour off some starter then add more water and flour. When the starter is strong enough, it won't have to happen as often. It will become more a routine where you're using the starter and feeding it for next time. I fed this starter this morning around 7 am. It's 9:30 and it's bubbling away.
4. DON'T THROW YOUR DISCARD AWAY! The easiest thing to do is pour it into a heated cast iron pan or pizza pan. Sprinkle salt on it and bake for a quick easy pizza crust. I'll make these up and freeze them for easy meals. There are other things to do with your discard. I'll cover those later. When your discard is strong enough, you can use it to make bread like I did today!
5. If you don't have time to deal with the starter or don't have anything to bake anytime soon, you can refrigerate it. You'll want to feed it after about a week. Maybe sooner if your starter is still new. When you do take it out to use, feed it, and let it sit on the counter and get to room temp before you use it.
6. DON"T use stainless steel! Not even for stirring. I have a rubber spatula that I use, but wooden spoons are fine as well. My starter began it's life in a 2 quart mason jar, but now lives in a crock that stays on my counter. The lid to the crock is broken, so my starter has to have plastic wrap to cover it. I want to use it though because it's the pattern of my dishes. I decided on the crock because I can scoop the starter out easier and the lid to the mason jar kept getting crusty with dried starter. I like this better.
7. DON'T FREEZE! I don't care what the internet says.
I will say having sourdough is a plus. Not only do I not have to buy yeast to make our baked goods, but true sourdough breaks down the gluten making it easier to digest. It also is a fermented product, so is good for the gut. Plus the pizza crust and the cracker recipe have become a go to for me.
Sourdough crackers
1 cup flour
1 cup sourdough starter (discard)
1 tsp salt
3 TBS fat( butter, lard, avocado oil, etc.; cooks choice)
Mix flour, salt, and oil/fat together. Add starter and mix well. Let sit, covered, for 30 minutes. Take a third of the dough at a time, and roll out thin ( 1/4 inch)on either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. I cut mine with a pizza cutter, but you can use a knife. Lightly sprinkle with salt. Place parchment or mat on cookie sheet. Bake 12 minutes at 350 until the edges brown. These will taste like saltines, but are much lighter.
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