Making the Goop

Somewhere half way through a Magic Bullet infomercial when I stopped being amazed at how damn well the things will juice vegetables I don’t own it struck me that maybe I could be doing something more productive with my time. Thus the Bread From Goop idea was born.

I’ve been reading online that people make these magic jars of goop called sourdough starters and thus save themselves the $2.50 that jars of yeast would otherwise cost them. I figured this I must have. Now due to the fact that I was reading about this a few weeks ago when my "Hey I should make bread" urges first struck I didn’t really remember too much about this magic goop but I figured how hard can goop be.

So here we go:

(My method for making sourdough starter may kill you....read somewhere else if you are a hippy....otherwise...you know...carry on)

I remembered that this goop was made by gold farmers or something and it struck me that people in Korea may not know about hygiene so I went with the non sterilized method here myself. For those of you who like life you may want to think about cleaning your equipment up some before you start. I figure some guy 5000 years ago probably didn’t worry about it when he was making bread, so I won’t either.

You're going to need:
• A large mason jar (Get a pickle jar or something if you are addicted to 10 dollar meals.)
• Some water
• Some flour like substance
• A mixy thing
• Some cheese cloth
• The outside lid part of your mason jar (or an elastic if you are a fan of the 10 dollar meals)

To Start:
• My jar was nice and clean from when I washed it a week ago and put it damp into my spice cupboard, but you may want to give yours a spit shine (especially if there is still pickles in it...pickles are bad here).
• Pour in your water (I used the water that was sitting in my tea pot from 2 days ago....). You want to put a cup or so into the jar.
• Pour in your flour.

For the flour I went with:
• 3 Tbs of bleached white flour
• 3 Tbs of whole wheat flour
• 3 Tbs of rye flour
• 3 Tbs of barley flour
• 3 Tbs of 7 grain mix
• 3 Tbs of whole oats
• I'd imagine if you can make bread with it you can throw it in the goop. I got a nice pancakey substance that smelled a lot like a barn.

Now:
• Stir your sourdough starter till its goop (I read someplace that goop doesn’t like metal so I used some wood chop sticks)
• Put your cheese cloth over your jar
• Put your outside lid dealy on to secure the cloth (Or ... elastic...twine...hair....whatever)
• Now this next part is going to take a lot of TV. Stir your goop every 12 hours or whenever you decide "Hey, I wanna stir me some goop". Feed your goop every 24 hours or whenever you decide "Hey, I wanna feed me some goop".

Feeding the goop:
• Throw half of it into your neighbor’s yard.
• Follow original goop recipe again into the same jar.

As I’m writing this I just got done the stir your goop every 12 hours stage so we'll see if I'm alive in a few weeks. I'll keep ya posted. Or maybe this blog will just end here. I guess then you'll know.