Tuesday, March 13, 2007

"Rejuvelac Sourdough" Bread






I have been experimenting in the past several weeks to raise homemade wild yeast culture from various things such as apples, yogurt, raisins, and wheat berries (so far, I only tried apples and wheat berries).

I made this bread (see picture) from my own original (experimental) wild yeast culture that I made from an enzyme drink called "rejuvelac" (=rejuvenating water?) in books titled "The Sprouting Book" and "The Recipes for a Longer Life" by Ann Wigmore, the founder of "Raw Food Diet" (raw food diet using a variety of sprouting food is considered to help de-toxing and rejuvenating the body). I am not trying to be a raw food dieter, but I have read her books to grow homemade sprouts (e.g. broccoli sprouts, alfalfa sprouts etc.) and to try some recipes using these sprouts.

The rejuvelac water is made by soaking sprouting wheatberries in spring water for 24-36 hours. And while making it, I thought, hmm... maybe I can use this enzyme drink as a kind of wild yeast culture. For, this enzyme drink, I realized, has many things in common with the apple yeast I was trying to raise, including the processes to make them.

So, with the scientific researcher's determination (which I may have been acquiring from my husband ;-) to prove my hypothesis, I started making a sort of "sourdough" using this rejuvelac and rye flour. Though there were some trials and errors, I proceeded with my experiment, and this bread in the pictures is the 3rd bread I made with this rejuvelac sourdough -- and perhaps the most successful one among the three (although the bread was a tad too overbrowned).


On the next day Amar and I made sandwiches together with this bread, and ate them together in his office. We went to see an art exhibition called "Human Nature II: Future Works", which was an exhibition of collaborative work of art and science being showed in one of the university galleries.






Unfortunately I left my camera at his office, so there's no photos of the exhibition - but I took some pictures of Amar's office and Amar in his office. The big wooden shoes are a souvenir from a conference or workshop in Hope College that he attended last month, and the calligraphy piece above is my work --- the character means "Creative/Creation". I made this for Amar, whose most important motto is to "be creative".

1 comment:

Naveen K said...

Can u give us the recipe please?!