Hello and Welcome!

Hello everyone!  My name is Jessica and I am a closet pastry chef.  Well, sort of.  Here's the story:

See, a few years ago, my father was given a batch of sourdough starter and a recipe for "Amish Friendship Bread". The point of it was to bake one loaf, and you're left with 3 extra baggies full of sourdough starter.  No one in my family could come up with anyone who really wanted it, so we kept it. 

"Amish Friendship Bread" (which, by the way, I strongly doubt is related to the Amish in any way) is one thing.  However, there's only so much of it one can tolerate.  Bread baking isn't easy in the Florida humidity, so I went in search of other Sourdough recipes.

It started with a pancake recipe from some pamphlet my mother had.  And then carrot cake from Sourdough Home.  At some point, I got the inspiration to modify my grandmother's red velvet cake recipe using sourdough starter rather than buttermilk.  It turned out okay - just not like my beloved red velvet cake.

Unfortunately for me, times have kind of changed.  I have been on a diet since August that involves limiting wheat products and sugars.  I've lost a lot of weight and I feel wonderful, but because I can't eat as much of the fruits of my labors, and my family isn't nice about letting me have my fair share (I baked a non-sourdough cheesecake, had one slice and woke up to find my mother had eaten five.  I'm not kidding), I don't always have the inspiration.  I was going to bake some sourdough biscuits, a week after making pancakes (thinking the starter would be safe), and found a thick layer of mold on top.  Not good.

So, I need the inspiration to keep it up.  My mother bought a pizzelle press (Pizzelles are these little Italian waffle cookies), and I want to see if I can make sourdough pizzelles.  I want to make sourdough biscuit cups to cook my post-workout eggs in.  And I keep finding other dessert recipes - not necessarily sourdough - that I want to try.

Therefore, once I get a new sourdough starter running, I'm going to broadcast my endeavors to the world.  My quick breads.  My biscuits.  My successes.  My failures.  Maybe a recipe here and there, or at least where I got them from.  It won't be daily - I can't too much of it anymore, but keep pushing me to bake something.  And it won't all be sourdough, for those of you who don't want to have to keep up with a starter.

So read on, eat up, and enjoy!