Make your Own Sourdough Bread

If you know about bread making, you may think it takes a lot of different ingrediants to make bread that wouldn’t necessarily be cheaper than just buying yourself a loaf of bread. With sourdough however, the only thing you need to buy is flour (unless you have foraged it yourself of course).

Sourdough does take some looking after however, I tend to fit it in alongside other daily chores such as feeding the animals so it doesn’t get forgotten about. To make sourdough bread, you first need to make a sourdough starter:

How to Make Sourdough Starter

Ingredients

Plain Flour (I prefer “Strong Bread Flour”)
Water

Equipment

Large lidless Jar
Piece of cloth big enough to fit over the jar top
Elastic band or hair bobble

Method

Add 2-3 heaped tablespoons of flour to the jar and enough water to create a thick liquid that is easy to stir. Cover with the cloth and keep it in place with the elastic band.

You do not need to buy yeast for sourdough. The sourdough will activate with the natural yeast already there.

After a day or two, the mixture will begin to form bubbles of the surface and a separate liquid will form at the top. It will smell yeasty/alcoholic. This means it’s working! If you see or smell mould (distinctive and hard to miss), the mixture has not activated or the yeast has died, if this happens you will need to throw it away and start again.

Once the mixture has activated, “feed” every other day with 1-2 tablespoons of flour and a bit of extra water to mix in well.

How to Make Sourdough Bread

Ingredients

Sourdough Starter
Water
Plain Flour

Method

There are a few different methods of creating the perfect sourdough bread. I found I had to undergo a lot of research and experimentation until I found a method that worked for me. This is the method I use currently and has been reliably providing better bread but you may wish to adapt it slightly or improve it if you can!

Step One

When your sourdough starter has filled the jar it’s time to separate off some of the liquid. Pour half of it into a bowl to be made into bread. Always feed the starter after removing some of it to make sure it stays strong and healthy.

You can make the sough as big as you want, so I do not tend to measure out the flour. Mix in as much flour as required to make a rough dough at this stage though, you can add more later if you want it bigger.

Cover with cling film and place in the fridge overnight. This prevents the yeast from exhausting itself too quickly.

Step Two

The next day take out the bowl and flour a work surface to knead the dough. Add more flour and water at this stage before kneading to get the size and consistency you want. The dough should be stretchy and elastic. Knead the dough so that you push and stretch it out without breaking it. Try to do this for at least 10 minutes, I normally watch a program while I’m doing it so I can zone out and not feel like it’s taking forever.

Make a rough loaf shape and place into a loaf tin. It does not have to touch the sides it will spread out as it rises. Leave the dough for a day in a warm location – I keep it on the kitchen counter near to the oven top so it’s nice and warm.

Step Three

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C when the dough has risen well. If in doubt leave the dough longer, it need to have risen enough so that the inside is fluffy and airy. If it spills over the side of your tin do not worry, trim off the excess and chuck it in separately as nibbles. Do not squash or touch the dough when it has risen – you want to keep it intact as it is.

Place the loaf tin in the oven on a tray in the middle of the oven. When the loaf looks ready – it’s not. Place a skewer in it and you will see the middle is still slightly doughy. You should have a good crust at this point though, if you do now is the time to turn it down to 140 degrees to make sure it cooks well throughout. Most sourdough books recommend keeping it on high throughout but every single time I did this the middle did not cook and the outside over cooked, and a low heat also fails to cook it properly. This is just the way I found it works well for me, your oven may be different. When the bread smell starts to leak into the next room it’s ready to come out.

Wrap the bread in greaseproof paper to keep it fresh.

Bladder Wrack or Popweed Seaweed

If you get a chance to visit the coastal region at all then do not let the opportunity to harvest some coastal delights pass you by. The coast is an abundant source of food rich in nutrients and should not be passed over. Seaweeds are all year round but are at their best in April, May and June.

Name: Bladder Wrack, Popweed

Location: Seaside rocks and in the sea

Months: April, May, June

Edible Parts: Leaves

Non-Edible Parts: Stipe (to avoid damaging plant)

Bladder Wrack is easy to identify because it grows with small to large sacks of gas, it’s name comes from the inflated bladders they possess. You may recall stepping on this seaweed as a child and having hours of entertainment from the popping sounds – much like bubble wrap. Bladder Wrack (or popweed) is also abundant in the UK and if you find nothing else, you will find this.

Remember to only cut seaweed that is attached and living on rocks, avoid seaweed that is floating free. Cut at the stipe (the hard stem like part) giving a good distance away from the section that holds the seaweed to the rock, this will allow the seaweed to regrow without too much trouble.

Wash the seaweed thoroughly before use to clean it of contaminants and excess salt. Avoid seaweed that grows near Red Tide (the red algae) and other high pollutant areas.

Experimental Avocado

I am going to try to grow my own avocado tree in the UK. This will be grueling, unrewarding and lengthy so it’s not for the faint of heart!

You can germinate your avocado pip in a few different ways apparently. However, if you can get a seedling this is meant to be easier and more reliable for a tasty crop. I’m just going to turn the Hass Avocado I bought from Sainsbury’s into a tree and see what happens.

Things to note:

You may not get fruit
If you do get fruit it may not be tasty, even if the original avocado was
It WILL be big, easily up to 6 foot if not kept pruned and contained/stunted.
It WILL need to be kept warm and safe from frost
It WILL take at least 3 years before you see any returns at all

Avocados like soil of PH around 6 and a sandy texture soil works best. Make sure it also has great drainage or it will not be happy!

Your Avocado seed will look something like this:

How to Germinate Your Seed

You can do this in two main ways, first of all you can plant it in a large pot of well drained soil with the pointy end upwards. I have also put a plastic bag around the pot to keep it warm and moist while it germinates, remember to remove this bag as soon as germination occurs.

This method works particularly well with most seeds that thrive in warmer climates such as Squash, Tomato and Cucumber.

Or alternatively you can place three toothpicks into the seed around the middle and suspend the pip over a beaker of water using the toothpicks to balance it. This ensure the base of the seed is submerged in fresh water and the point end is again upwards. You will need to change the water every 2-3 days.

Germination takes 3-6 weeks, the larger the seed is the longer germination usually takes so be prepared for it do to a whole lot of nothing for a very long time.

Dandelion and Ginger Cordial

After running out of Dandelion Flower Cordial I decided to adapt the recipe a little to add some extra oomph for my next batch. As such the recipe is very similar.

Due to no preservatives or additional ingredients, this cordial has a high sugar content to prevent it from going bad.
Dandelion flowers can be collected around March to April when the sun is in full swing to ensure the flowers are out and full of goodness.
Can also double as a great hot tea drink to combat colds, enjoy with hot water and a slice of lemon.

Ingredients

100 Dandelion Flower Heads at least – the more the better
1kg Demerara brown sugar estimate
half a lemon
Knob of fresh Ginger Root

Method

Collect at least 100 dandelion flower heads fully opened and trim off the green bases. It’s okay to get a few green bits in with the petals and they usually get in the way.

Give the petals a quick wash/rinse but be careful not to loose all the flavour!

Grate the ginger with a fine tooth grater and squeeze out the ginger juice into a saucepan.

Boil the petals and ginger juice with roughly 1 pint of water and allow to cool and steep overnight in a covered bowl.

Add the juice from a half a lemon and strain out the petals thoroughly.

Weigh the liquid (a bit tricky I know) and for every 1g of liquid you have created add 0.95g of sugar. You can use different sugar types if you prefer but they will affect the flavour, this time I used Demerara Brown sugar for a more caramel flavour.

Stir in the sugar and gently heat until dissolved (do not boil).

Pour contents into bottles and seal.

Japanese Knotweed

Japanese Knotweed is a pest species in the UK. It’s pretty prolific stuff and even the smallest scrap can spread and take over an area very quickly. Therefore, we stick to two points:

Eat the stuff – Anything to hinder it’s growth has to be a good thing.
Always be extremely careful when approaching. Do not tread on it, dispose of all scraps completely. The slightest peel, fibre or speck an spread and it’s actually illegal to do so.

Name: Japanese Knotweed

Location: Anywhere, prolific pest species

Months: March, April (and to a lesser extent throughout the year)

Edible Parts: New stalks or top 10cm of stalks

Non-Edible Parts: Anything else

The stalks of the knotweed are greeny/red in appearance and are hollow thick tubes. You can harvest the top 10 cm of the stalk throughout the year but the best time to harvest is March/April when completely new stalks start to emerge (harvest just like Asparagus).

To eat, peel and cook the stalks like a sweet treat. The flavour is slightly sweeter than rhubarb but has the same flavour. This makes it great in crumbles! Just like rhubarb, you shouldn’t eat it in large amounts so use as a spring time treat only.

Dandelion Flower Cordial

This recipe makes a great light flavoured cordial and makes 1-2 bottles. Enjoyed best over a slice of lemon and ice cubes this is a perfect spring and summer drink. The flavour is very mild and sometimes outweighed by the syrupy nature of the cordial so those who have a sweet tooth may really enjoy this one.

Due to no preservatives or additional ingredients, this cordial has a high sugar content to prevent it from going bad.
Dandelion flowers can be collected around March to April when the sun is in full swing to ensure the flowers are out and full of goodness.

Ingredients

100 Dandelion Flower Heads or more
1kg sugar estimate
half a lemon

Method

Collect at least 100 dandelion flower heads fully opened and trim off the green bases. It’s okay to get a few green bits in with the petals and they usually get in the way.

Give the petals a quick wash/rinse but be careful not to loose all the flavour!

Boil the petals with roughly 1 pint of water and allow to cool and steep overnight in a covered bowl.

Add the juice from a half a lemon and strain out the petals thoroughly.

Weigh the liquid (a bit tricky I know) and for every 1g of liquid you have created add 0.95g of sugar. You can use different sugar types if you prefer but they will affect the flavour, for a clean basic flavour use white granulated.

Stir in the sugar and gently heat until dissolved (do not boil).

Pour contents into bottles and seal.

Dandelion Coffee

This coffee can be made all year round, but to get the best size of dandelion roots harvest them around February & March just before they flower.

Ingredients

Dandelion Roots

Method

Scrub the roots to ensure they are clean from soil.

Dry them or oven roast them at a low temperature until brittle to the touch.

Grind up the roots and store in a clean dry jar.

To enjoy this coffee, boil the powder in a saucepan until the water turns dark brown like espresso and you can smell the “coffee”. Then pour into your cup as per normal instant coffee. The great benefit of this coffee substitute is that not only does it taste almost the same as coffee and have a great robust and smooth savoury flavour but it also has zero caffeine in it. If you are looking to cut back on your caffeine this may be the answer for you.

Convert Gutters to Grow Salad

This project was quick, easy and very effective to do and best of all, it only cost a couple of screws and a glue stick. If you are like us stuck for places to grow your salad food close to home you can take advantage of any spare guttering you have or find in skips. You can find old guttering down the side of houses, at building sites or in skips, just check with the house owner first in case they still want them.

Step One

Collect Guttering from Authorised Source – You don’t need to buy new guttering, it’s expensive and there are lots of gutters laying around going to waste.

Try to find the brackets too. If you can’t find any brackets you can pick them up from your local DIY store for £1.50 each for the cheapest kind.

Step Two

Dig some plastic milk bottles out of the recycling bin, if you don’t have any you may find a few in any of the recycling bins in your street. It’s better to reuse something than to recycle it so don’t worry about it but you can always ask permission from the house owner first just to make sure. In fact, it usually strikes up a fun and interesting conversation! Cut the milk bottles in half vertically and horizontally and take the halves of the base.

Step Three

Using a low watt glue gun (available from most DIY or arts & crafts stores), glue the base and sides of the milk carton quarter to the guttering to seal up the ends like this:

Step Four

Drill holes along the base of the gutter to allow the water to escape and avoid boggy soil.

Step Five

Fill the bottom of the gutter with small pebbles or rock fragments to improve the drainage of the soil. Than top the gutter up with good all purpose compost or general soil fit for planting.

Step Six

Transplant plants of your choice to the soil and ensure you water after planting.

Step Seven

Place gutter brackets on to your chosen area with screws such as a bare fence panel or the side of your garden shed. Make sure the guttering gets plenty of direct sunlight through out the day but also gets the most light for the longest duration of the day. When fixed into place simply slide and snap the guttering into place.

Warning: Acorns as Chicken Feed

Having just got two big healthy chickens my partner and I have been looking at low cost ways to supplement their pellet feed. This means compiling big lists of poisonous foods and foods that are okay. It’s actually quite complicated and lots of foods that are okay for us are actually poisonous for chickens including nettles and parsley! We now make it a habit of researching any spare scraps we have properly before giving them to the chickens to ensure we are not harming them in any way. I will post a growing list of foods that are poisonous to chickens shortly that I will update as I learn more.

Now I am pretty thorough when it comes to my research, I do not do anything by half. Not everyone is as keen on this side of things and tends to jump on ideas as soon as they see them however. My partner Alan saw a long and well established blog called Living the Frugal Life where the author had become quite excited about feeding his chickens Acorns in abundant amounts to cut down feeding costs. The problem was that he mentioned at no point how to remove their TOXINS and actually feeds his chickens raw crushed acorns. This sent alarm bells ringing in my head as I was sure I had seen somewhere previously that Acorns were poisonous to Poultry because of the Tanins in them – the same reason they are toxic to us. Now chickens have delicate and simple digestive systems, if pretty much nearly everything is toxic to them, surely Acorns would not be so good for them either? I found a few lesser blogs that claimed they were okay and a few that also claimed it was poisonous. Who was right?

It was then I came across this blog post: Acorns: Toxic Feed for Poultry which is not only an experienced homesteading blog it also contains the facts and maths behind Acorn Toxicity!

Now which blog post am I going to trust? The one that simply says ” I did it and they haven’t died” or the one that says “scientific studies show not to and here is my source of information”.

If I could, I would quote the entire blog post from Woodridge Homestead. It’s basically a pure block of useful knowledge. But let’s glean the facts we need to know out of this:

Acorns have KNOWN TOXIC and ANTI NUTRITIONAL effects on certain animals including POULTRY.
Studies with poultry and other animals have been conducted and all of these animals show negative side-effects with Acorns used as feed.
Chickens show weight loss, egg production changes, and other adverse effects, including DEATH.
Tannins in Acorns negatively affect FEED INTAKE, DIGESTION and PRODUCTION.
Tannins (<5%) cause DEPRESSED GROWTH RATES, LOW PROTEIN UTILIZATION, DAMAGE to the DIGESTIVE TRACT, alteration to the excretion of certain cations and increased EXCRETION of PROTEINS and essential AMINO ACIDS.
Chickens react to as little as 0.5% tannins causing SLOW GROWTH AND LESS EGG PRODUCTION. Level from as low as 3% can cause DEATH.

“Generally, tannins induce a negative response when consumed. These effects can be instantaneous like astringency or a bitter or unpleasant taste or can have a delayed response related to antinutritional/toxic effects … Tannins negatively affect an animal’s feed intake, feed digestibility, and efficiency of production. These effects vary depending on the content and type of tannin ingested and on the animal’s tolerance, which in turn is dependent on characteristics such as type of digestive tract, feeding behavior, body size, and detoxification mechanisms.

”

Cornell University’s Dept of Animal Science

It was after reading this I also noticed the guy on Living the Frugal Life had even HINTED that his hens were not LAYING as they should:

“I would bet they’re pretty well on their way to a complete laying hen diet.”

The more I looked at his post the more anger I felt. It was basically guesswork and irresponsibility. Not only is he feeding his chickens a toxic substance he is telling other people to do so: and they are listening. His chickens hadn’t died yet so he figures that’s okay, never mind their long term health and wellbeing, his responsibility to his readers or finding out the facts.

What we Recommend

If you want to give your chickens Acorns you can but you MUST remove the Tannins first just like you would for human consumption and do not use them as sole or main feed crop, they are a special treat for your chickens and do not hold nutritional value.

To remove the tannins you can cook the acorns through thoroughly or run them through running water such as in a stream for several weeks. We suggest cooking is easier, faster and more reliable.

It goes to show you how untrustworthy a lot of information online is, always triple check or quadruple check your facts before making any decisions! This goes for anything and everything but especially for food stuffs!

Nest Reminder Eggs for Chickens

A handy little trick I just picked up was to buy fake eggs for your chickens. We have just got two chickens in our yard and after a quick change of things we built a new nest box. The chickens were taking it in turns on just one nest so I wanted to encourage eggs in the new nest box too.

I picked up 9 of these plastic eggs from the supermarket for just 75p all in. It’s easter, so take advantage of this and get some fake eggs for your chickens just in case. You can also get proper chicken eggs that look much more realistic but I found it really doesn’t matter. Pop an egg into each nest and your chickens will get the idea. It also prevents them laying outside of nest boxes with a gentle reminder of where to go.

As you can see compared to the real deal these eggs are much smaller and definitely not chicken like but my chickens are quite happy with their egg reminders and now laying in both nest areas.