Random Recipe Monday - Sourdough Bread

I am in a Western state of mind lately. It probably got started with watching 3:10 to Yuma, which was a good movie once the thing got started. I'm also doing a bit of research into my great grandmother and her journey in a covered wagon to San Francisco. Add to that my wish to take a City Slickers-type vacation to a dude ranch, and well, you can see why Western stuff is popping up lately.

For the most part, I'm not a big fan of Western style culture. I don't own cowboy boots, I don't dig rodeos or even country music. Roping and riding aren't my hobbies and I wouldn't know a working end of rifle from the business end of a cow. All that said, however, I still find the lifestyle of the pioneers and those that journeyed out into the west to be fascinating.

I mean, imagine coming to a land with nothing but the provision in your wagon and your own self-reliance. No grocery stores, no mercantiles, no place to restock your food pantry. Hard enough to imagine baking bread on a daily basis, let alone needing to keep a starter going for the yeast. I find it amazing that people not only survived but thrived in this kind of environment.

So, as I just finished making a peanut butter sandwich for NR on grocery store bread, I salute those pioneer cooks who did it the hard way. Here is a recipe for a modernized sourdough bread. I think I'll mix up a mess of pork and beans, a loaf of this and rent a few more Westerns from Netflix. Yeehaw, everybody.