Baking is hard when you're broke.

Fact of the day: life is expensive. If you haven't figured this out by now, you're either a very lucky person who gets all the jobs they can handle or you have rich parents. I have moderately well-off parents, but I'm kind of over asking for money, especially after I drained their funds when I went to England.
So, my grocery budget is shot for a while because I'm trying to pay rent and bills, and I owe my parents about that same amount for my computer. Bundled in with this is me not wanting to turn up the heat in the house because I am paying for 1/6 of it.
I'm baking more than usual because I can't really afford to buy new food. Unfortunately, the heat being on low means that yeast dough isn't really down with rising as fast as one might like.
My pita bread was supposed to double in about an hour, but an hour and a half later, it's still just a mostly cold lump of dough instead of a big puff of warm dough. It's even sitting on the stove.
However, I figured out the problem. I'd wrapped the bowl in a damp towel (instead of my usual dry towel plus plastic wrap because the instructions called for it; that's the last time I try to follow instructions like that) and tucked the ends under to keep in the moisture, then set it on the stove (warm because the oven is on with my housemate's strange experiment). The warm damp towel in the cold room had cooled almost instantly, and the ends of the towel under the bowl had insulated the dough from the warmth of the oven with incredible efficiency.
Next time I try to follow weird instructions about how to rise dough, remind me that saran wrap plus a dry towel works wonders and that other methods are probably less useful, especially given my propensity for screwing things up in little ways.
Update on the dough: it's doing great now that the damp towel is firmly pressed around the bottom of the bowl and keeping the oven heat focused into the bowl. My dough is all big and puffy.
You may be asking yourself, why is she making pita bread if she seems to think that she can't afford heat? That seems kind of fancy for someone who, by her own account, is about to become a vagrant who doesn't even own her computer.
Well, I don't quite have enough flour for regular bread for longer than one week and I'm unwilling to pull too much money from my savings account (really sick of debt), and I do have falafel mix and beans and all manner of pasta and plenty of sauce and some peanut butter and potatoes, so a small, easy-to-store bread as a vehicle for falafel and possibly bean soups is just what I want.
And I've been kind of taken with the idea of pita bread for a long time (it was the first thing I pinned on pintrest when I set up my account this summer) and happen to have all the ingredients AND something to put in it.
I used a recipe from a cookbook, but this is the one that I pinned: DIY pita bread. My recipe required more rising steps (the whole blob of dough rises until doubled, then you split it up, then you let the balls rest, then you roll them out, then you let them rise for 30-40 min), but I feel like this is an equally valid recipe. My recipe also doesn't call for a stand mixer, which I don't have anyway. It works okay, although they're a bit crunchy. Still delicious, though.

We're Making Sourdough! Day 7/Rye Day 3

Day 7 (10:45): No bubbles, no volume change. Strong smell of alcohol, possible thin layer of hooch. Added 100 g tap water and 50 g rye flour, stirring between each addition and scraping the sides down.

I think the volume went down.

The shiny stuff looks suspiciously hoochy.

Drawing lines... I suspect that nothing will happen yet again.

I give Thor until tomorrow morning. If there's still nothing, I'm going to the french bakery down the street and asking if they have sourdough starter I could have.

Day 7 (23:30): A thin layer of bubbles appeared on top and the jar has a yeasty smell (although that turns back to fruity if you stick your nose in it). The volume had risen slightly. Stirred starter mix vigorously but did not add any flour or water. No hooch on top of the starter.

Volume is up!

Bubbles and no hooch!

The bubbles deflated slightly, but the volume is still higher than it was.

 I now give Thor an extra 24 hours of grace. If he can produce a substantial volume change and bubbling action by tomorrow night (including me removing half the starter and adding more flour and water in the morning), I might forgo the bakery down the street alternative.
I'm in the middle (unfortunately, I don't really see an end in sight) of a long and annoying job search (not having a car is a major downer on employability, it seems, as is dropping to zero availability in three months), and it's been raining so I can't go out (I seem to be allergic to rain), and the rain has kept the sun away, which usually puts me in a vitamin deficiency-induced slump, and this has been a bit of a pick me up. Thank you, Thor. Now, just please keep it up.

We're Making Sourdough! Day 5/ Rye Day 1, Or "Starting Over :("

So, there were bubbles this morning. I think that was the rye flour. Then there was a whole bunch of hooch. I take this to mean that Scott is a failure at being alive, so I dumped him down the drain.
Sadface.

Bubbles!

And hooch. The level of the starter itself actually went down.

The new starter's name is Thor. I picked this name with the same logic as I picked my computer's name: if the name belongs to someone awesome, the thing will be as awesome as that person. My computer's name is Bruce Wayne.
So I chucked my old starter and started up my new one, this time following Mihl's instructions.

Clean jar, all ready for fresh starter.

 Day 5 (11:30): Combined 100 g tap water and 50 g rye flour. Placed lid on loosely, drew a line to indicate volume, and placed in lit oven for warmth.

The brown color is so promising.

I think I finally figured out how to take decent pictures of things in this jar.

Day 5 (1:30): No bubbles. No change in volume. There's a yeasty smell underneath a fruity smell. I stirred, scraped the sides, and put back in the oven. Thor's gaining that gloopy texture that Scott had on day 2 in the morning. Hopefully this means that Thor is doing normal starter things.

No volume change.

No bubbles. Still, the yeasty smell was encouraging.

Hopefully, there will be bubbles in the morning. I'll try starting over with whole wheat if there's still nothing two days from now.

We're Making Sourdough! Day 4, Or "Why You Should Always Keep Whole Grain Flours Around"

Day 4 (10:45): A decent amount of hooch was on the starter, but the starter had bubbled through the hooch and could be seen looking down through the mouth of the jar. The smell was basically the same, kind of fruity and off. I decided to remove about 100 g (it ended up being about 125) and took much of the hooch with the discarded starter. Then I added 50 g each of water and flour, with the flour being probably about 7% whole grain stuff in probably bleached white flour. I stirred in between the water and flour additions, and scraped the sides down with the trusty spatula to prevent mold.

I took this last night a few hours after putting it back in the warm oven. Bubbles! They exist!

The first thing I really thought about this morning.

Hooch... The bane of my sourdoughs.

See how in the middle, it's lighter? That's the starter shining through the clouds of hooch.

I put a line on the jar to show where the starter started, and to see if it got above the line.

That whole wheat stuff is good for starters, it seems. It's the only change I make, and it makes a drastic difference.
Also, my camera eats batteries. I thought it was just the ones I got in England being terrible, because it lasted months on batteries before that, but oh, no. It went through duracells from 'MERICA in less than a day.
My camera is all "OMNOMNOM BATTERIES" and the batteries are all "HELP ME! HELP ME! EEEEEE!" and I'm all "GODDAMMIT I WAS TAKING A PICTURE OF A WAFFLE THIS IS IMPORTANT!"
Oh, yes. Waffles. I will tell you about them, I promise.

So, I watched the starter like a hawk, except for when I was grocery shopping. While grocery shopping, I bought rye flour, whole wheat flour, yeast, other real food that I can eat for a few weeks, and the ingredients to make pad thai (according to Emily from Well Fed, Flat Broke's recipe). I also got batteries, as you can see from there being pictures below, although my camera actually accepted the old batteries again. In any case, I have two new kinds of batteries, some "heavy duty" ones and some "high energy" ones. Even if my camera does start the battery-per-day thing, I'll be good for almost five days.
Back to the starter, whose name is Scott. There were no changes in volume all day, which saddened me.

Day 4 (22:10): No change in volume. No bubbles of starter visible through thin layer of hooch. The smell has returned to sickly sweet and unpleasant. I added 25 g tap water and 50 g rye flour, stirring between additions and scraping the sides well. The resulting starter mass has brown flecks and bubbles.

This was sad, especially after the grand success of the morning. By which I mean the small victory.

There were some bubbles, but all on the hooch and none from Scott.

After the addition of about 75 g worth of water and rye flour, I drew a new line.

Scott is so bubbly right after I add flour... I have high hopes for the rye flour.

If this has produced lots of hooch and next to no bubbles, I'm starting over with rye flour. I'll follow Mihl's instructions over Mike's, too.
If that doesn't work, I'll shelve the idea until I wind up at home and then persuade my mom to help me out.

We're Making Sourdough! Day 3, morning

So about not doing twice-a-day posting anymore...
I was kidding, it appears.
In other news, IT'S ALIVE!
I didn't kill my sourdough, there was no hoochy stuff on top, and there were definite bubbles and signs of it having risen a lot during the night. My housemate turned off the oven light this morning, but I'll put up a note or something. It definitely needs the warmth. Especially since it's raining still. I promise, I'll get to the store today. I'm also thinking about baking something interesting, or cooking something other than stir fry and crepes, so be prepared.
Day 3 (10:00): Starter showed signs of having risen after sitting in a slightly warmed oven all night, if not all morning. Bubbles were evident, and the smell had lost much of the sickly sweetness, although it wasn't quite yeasty. It might not be supposed to be yeasty. I'm not too worried. It's brand spanking new, and Mike says that the initial dominant bacteria and fungi might not be the final dominant cultures. So I forgot to discard half, and added a little more than 50 g each of tap water and unbleached white flour. I'll get rid of half if it's growing like crazy today, and I should be able to watch it like a hawk, given that I have nothing better to do except go to the gas station for batteries. I also scraped down the sides really well with the trusty spatula and tried to put lots of air into it by mixing vigorously, as per Mike, although I didn't stir between adding water and flour.

In other other news, I've been reading all of Well Fed, Flat Broke lately, starting whenever I wake up and ending when I get a headache from reading in bed for too long. It makes me want to cook all the food. I really, really miss the presence of a fresh vegetable venue nearby. In England (where I lived for a semester and which has accidentally turned into the "well, it was better there, and also I'm one-upping you" card), we had fruit and veg stands every other street, with three on one particular street. It was great. You could pick up just enough produce for dinner on the way home each day. Here, I have to walk for at least fifteen minutes to get to expensive produce and easily half an hour to forty minutes to get cheap, fairly decent produce. And then it goes bad because I buy too much and don't actually have a use for it, or I do have a use for it and it just never happens because life happens instead and we're just out of luck on that tomato, which was out of season and kind of skeezy looking to begin with.
Hell of a sentence, Raeann. I promise (been making a lot of those lately) that I can write real good, it's just that school's out and I haven't had my tea. Also, writing with excellent grammar has few applications outside of academic and professional writing (like copyrights, instruction manuals, and newspapers). It's stuffy and stifles conversation, and I blog like I talk, which is with extra commas here and not enough there and lots of "ands" that would be quickly squashed and turned into comma series if I wasn't just having a conversation with you all.

We're Making Sourdough! (Day 2)

It's raining today, so no batteries (and no pictures) probably until at least tomorrow. I don't go out in the rain since apparently it makes me impressively ill.
In any case, I started a series on sourdough over at University Is Boring, my main blog.
We're Making Sourdough! (Day 1) can be found there.
Because it could be a pain to have to click a link to read what I did on day one, here's an excerpt from that post:

With all this free time, I've decided that I can make sourdough starter, no problem. It's not like I have anything else to do, and if I can't remember to have a look at it every 12 hours, then I'm stupid and deserve for it to die. I'm following the instructions from Sourdough Home because it seemed fairly comprehensive.
Since I have a balance, I can do it by weight. Yay for being slightly non-american, I guess!

Day 1: Mixed about 50 g each of unbleached safeway brand white flour and tap water at 21:30.
I put it in a clean (large) applesauce jar, covered it gently with the lid (to keep out bugs, dust, and housemates), and put it on top of the refrigerator. I'll be scraping the sides and doing most of my mixing with a trusty red spatula.

I'll put up some pictures when I get batteries, hopefully tomorrow.
Right now, it's just a thick paste of flour and water. Woo hoo.

I'm describing it because I don't have pictures and because pictures can suck anyway.
I'm a little nervous. Because my computer decided to crash, I went and fed the starter before reading Mike's instructions from Sourdough Home:

After mixing up the starter, wait about 12 hours. Take the plastic wrap off the starter so you can get a good look at it and smell it too. At this point there is a very good chance that you'll see bubbles in the starter. If not, stir the starter vigorously, cover the starter again and let it sit for another 12 hours or so. Then check and stir again. If you don't see bubbles in two days, pitch the flour and water and start over. If you go through this twice with no results, you may want to change brands of whole wheat flour. And you may want to switch to bottled spring water. Changes to the smell of the starter will tell you that something is happening. If you looked at the Starting A Starter page, you should know that the first critters to start a starter may or may not be the final ones to rule the starter. So, if it smells bad don't be too surprised or at all discouraged - it's a sign of life, and that's a good thing.

Once you see bubbles, it's time to give the starter a feeding adding another 1/4 cup of water stirring that into the starter, then adding another 1/2 cup of your whole grain flour and stirring that in. (If you are weighing, use another 50 grams each of flour and water.) I like to stir after I add the water and again after I add the flour, it puts more air into the starter, which helps its growth at this phase of its life and it also makes it easier to mix. Even though this is hardly a starter, I think of this as the starter's first feeding. Any time you add flour to your starter, you are feeding it, much as you are feeding your dog when you put dog food in a bowl and put it on the floor for your pooch. You might notice that the feeding was equal parts of flour and water by weight and was enough to double the size of the starter. We're being deliberately loose on the timing at the start of making a starter. (emphasis mine)

The thing is, is that I didn't see bubbles or smell anything, but I added the first feeding anyway. So, here's my morning Day 2 update, which may end up being the "well, I guess we'll make "Day 3" be "Starting Over" because I killed it" turning point.

Day 2: Saw thin layer of water on top of paste; no apparent change in size. Didn't smell starter, but didn't smell anything when I took off lid. Added 50 g each of safeway brand unbleached white flour and tap water. Scraped sides with trusty red spatula to prevent mold. May have doubled volume, but the most obvious thing was the gloopy texture of the "starter", which had changed from the smooth paste the night before.

Hopefully I didn't kill it, but it did have that gloopyness. I have high hopes. Besides, sourdough's been going on for thousands of years, says Mike, so this might not be enough to kill it.
Fingers crossed!

UPDATE: I didn't kill it! 2 hours after I posted the above, I checked it, and it has a yeasty smell and bubbles.
Yay!
The moral of the story, kids, is that you should learn to read in a such a manner that you actually retain information, and also that if your computer freezes on startup after a BSOD, just force restart it before you go and add stuff to your sourdough starter. Either that, or you could get a mac, or you could write down the instructions the night before.