Does Sourdough Offer Hope for the Gluten Intolerant?

...ise quickly. But even before Pasteur, bakers used the yeast remaining from beer making (also a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to make doughs rise. Sourdough cultures are not as powerful and predictable, so it’s understandable that commercial bakers would want a more dependable alternative. What is in a sourdough culture? There are many strains of yeast in sourdough cultures, but the main one is Candida milleri. Candida milleri is tolerant of...

Read…

Happy Holiday Weekend!

...It’s a holiday weekend in the US, meaning that, with the exception of our international readers, few people are checking the blog. You’re either gardening, brewing beer, burning a large effigy in the desert or constructing a giant wall around San Francisco. Down in LA? We’re sleeping with the cats....

Read…

Making It

...ent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to provide really stripped down, simple projects that use only inexpensive, easy to source materials. We also tried to use the same materials and ingredients over and over again, to save you time, money and storage space. The mora...

Read…

Did Kelly follow her 2012 resolutions?

...due for a complete overhaul.) This I did. All of it. Yay me. -Organize the labels or tags on Root Simple so our dear, somewhat abused readers can find information when they want it. This I did as part of our overhaul. -No processed sugar for the month of January. Or beer. (sigh) This I did. I’d forgotten. I probably should do it again, because I’ve been having a torrid affair with the cookie jar. -White flour, crackers, tortillas, pasta & etc. are...

Read…

Straw Bale Garden Part III: Adding Fertilizer

...rea, on philosophical grounds, but blood meal, a byproduct of our industrial food system, doesn’t make me feel much better. Urea would be a lot cheaper. Perhaps the best solution would be human urine. Throw a week-long party, serve a lot of beer and invite your guests to fertilize your bales! Undiluted human urine has an NPK ratio close to that of blood meal. Those of you who have experimented with straw bale gardens please leave a comment on what...

Read…