Minty Sourdough

In all of Tokyo, I have never seen a single loaf of sourdough bread. Though it's Jason's favorite, I just couldn't commit myself to the maintenance of a sourdough culture. That all changed when I had to buy a Qt-sized container of yogurt, even though I only needed 1/2 cup for the blueberry banana loaf I was making last weekend because that's the only sugar-free yogurt I could find! (grunt) I have an aversion to yogurt, maybe because I ate too much of it in college, so I was trying to figure out what to do with this almost full container, when I remembered the recipe for sourdough culture, which calls for yogurt.

I rinsed out a big glass jar with hot water and mixed in the milk and yogurt. After leaving it out for a day, the mixture settled in a curd. This is the sign for the next step - mixing in the flour. Anxiously, I opened up the jar to take a sniff. Wait ---- this smells minty!

The only big glass jar I had was used to store mint tea that I bought on our recent trip to Marrakech, so I moved the tea into a ziploc and washed out the jar. But I guess minty smells are hard to get rid of.

My jar of minty sourdough culture is sitting next to the window now, taking in all the sun, hopefully bubbling. In two days, I can use it to make my very first sourdough bread. I can't wait to see what a minty sourdough loaf will taste like. Maybe this is what I could do after I quit my job, selling one of a kind "Sourmint" bread. Heck Japanese people love anything exotic. With a bit of marketing savy, I am sure it'll be a huge hit. Anyone want in?

ps. as for the yogurt, turned out I only needed two tablespoons for the culture. On to making more blueberry loaves to use up the yogurt.