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Sourdough Waffles

Mention sourdough and people think San Francisco. While that’s not wrong, the leavening of bread with “yesterday’s” dough is as old as grain cultivation, and with it the inevitable rise of bread making (see what I did there?).

While my bread making has been inconsistent the last few months, there is an active sourdough culture in our fridge. That means this starter is fed every two to three weeks.  It is pulled from the fridge, a portion is removed, and equal amounts of flour and water are added. Then it is allowed to start working before it’s return to the fridge.

The process of feeding a sourdough starter means there is some amount of perfectly good leavening agent that gets washed down the drain, if it’s not used for baking. When there’s no bread to bake, we make waffles. The recipe will work for pancakes if you are so inclined. “A waffle is just a more considerate pancake. It’s like, here, let me hold that syrup for you in these convenient boxes.”

If you are interested in sourdough, there are ways to start from scratch, but it is way easier to either find a baker and ask … they are usually looking for someone to take the cast off. But be ready to feed the beast regularly. That might be motivation to make a loaf of bread, or at least the more considerate breakfast food.

Print Recipe

Sourdough Waffles

Great way to make use of excess starter. 
Servings: 4 round waffles

Ingredients

Overnight sponge

  • 120 grams unfed sourdough starter
  • 120 grams unbleached flour can do 50% Whole Wheat
  • 14 grams sugar
  • 225 grams buttermilk

waffle batter

  • 1 large egg beaten
  • 25 grams butter melted
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions

The night before:

  • To make the overnight sponge, stir down your refrigerated starter, and remove 1 cup. Note: This is a good opportunity to feed the remainder, if necessary.
  • In a large mixing bowl, stir together the 1 cup unfed starter, flour, sugar, and buttermilk. Cover and let rest at cool room temperature (about 65°F to 70°F) for about 12 hours, or overnight. 

The next morning:

  • In a small bowl or mixing cup, beat together the eggs, and oil or butter. Add to the overnight sponge. Add the salt and baking soda, stirring to combine. The batter will bubble.
  • Coat a 6 inch round waffle iron with cooking spray and heat. Pour ⅔ cup measures of batter onto a heated iron and bake until steam stops escaping from sides. Should make about 4 waffles
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Trip to the Museum

This late winter dump of snow put a stop to regular day trips. However, the La Pine Library has passes to local attractions so you don’t have to pay the entrance fee…cool.

Started in the early 80’s, the High Desert Museum serves as an educational center to “… explore the historic and contemporary relationship between people and landscape.”

Burrowing owls

The permanent exhibits are fine (but ‘been there, done that). So, we take a stroll by the Hollen Atrium to see the porcupine and bobcat. Then we head into the Desertarium, where the desert tortoise and burrowing owls reside. Depending on the time of day, there are also wildlife demonstrations, though we seem to keep missing the river otter feeding. That’s a priority for our next visit.

Nevada Bumble Bee by April Coppini

Once we’ve checked in on the critters, we can spend some time with the “changing exhibit.”  This week they just installed ‘The Beauty of Wild Things: Charcoal drawings by April Coppini.” Coppini is a Portland based artist that does exceptional gestural charcoal on paper. We really like the bumble bee series.

It’s called a museum, but they have more than a dozen sites along a meandering system of trails that take you into the environment. The Raptors presentation, Otter exhibit and Birds of Prey center are all really interesting, even encased in a layer of snow.

 

 

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Creating content & not

If you came here to read a new post…thanks, we appreciate that you are taking time to look at our website and hope that you enjoy the content.

Normally, we would have a some new content up on Thursday, but not today. There is a pretty good reason though.

The weather. In this case, tons of snow and ice. It puts a damper on going places, new places. There are still our neighborhood walks,

Tip still gets his outside time and we made it to Sunriver a couple of times these past few weeks. What didn’t happen was any exploring, it’s just too much of a hassle driving.

We’ll be back at this again on Sunday and Thursday, but today we have nothing, sorry.

Checkout the photo essay on Painted hills … thanks for coming by.

 

 

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Geological structures

In Central Oregon you are at the mercy of winter’s weather whims.

Sun-filled days are broken up with snowfall which makes road trips unpleasant. Right now we are in the middle of a February snow-dump and have spent the last week close to home. When the roads, as well as the sky cleared, we were ready for an excursion.

East of La Pine, about 40 miles on the Fremont Highway (State Route 31), is according to our trusty Oregon Roadside Geology book,  a “garden of volcanic oddities.” Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, The Devils Garden and Fort Rock were all formed about 13 thousand years ago in and along an ice-age lake that became Silver and Summer lakes. Basically, at the same time Mt Mazama was making Crater Lake.

Geological spectacles are usually enough to pique our interest, but just a few weeks ago we discovered that Fort Rock State Park was also a destination for birders.  In particular, you’ll find falcons and eagles using the unique structures of Fort Rock to launch hunting missions across the prairie and farm fields to the east.

 

The state park at it’s northwestern edge is the starting point for a series of trails that take you into the ring of volcanic ash and around it’s outer perimeter.

This scouting mission didn’t align with optimal birding times, but we saw a couple of bald eagles and a few falcons soaring in and around the rock faces.

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A record snow fall

In a five day period, La Pine, Oregon received 48 inches of snowfall. 12.5 of those inches fell in one 12 hour period.. This closed schools, shut down airports, blocked roads and generally inconvenienced everyone in Central Oregon for the past five days.

Being retired made a huge difference in how we felt about the current blanket of white.

It’s beautiful.

It did mean shoveling out walks and driveways about three times a day, for three days. However, even that was done at our own pace.

Growing up in Montana shoveling, driving and living with chest high banks of snow was normal. It was also 30 years ago and we’d not seen this much snow since.

 

But this is not to curse the winter weather, quite the opposite. This winter dressing is great. Like most of the other things we enjoy about living in Central Oregon, the snow is on that list.

Shoveling isn’t my favorite thing, but it’s done in bursts. It presents time to chat with neighbors, and as stated, is done on our time with a hot cup of tea waiting on the other end.

The other and perhaps bigger issue with this MUCH snow is that poor Tip can’t really get into the woods to do his duty. But even he seems to love racing through the powdery cover, that is until it comes up to his chest.