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Have you heard of Zombie Probiotics?! Crazy thought, right…but they are real. Seriously, there are dead but undead probiotics in many ancestral foods – sourdough bread, sauerkraut in stews, even the sourdough discard soup I posted last week.
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And, so scientists are proving, these zombie probiotics do us good. How damn cool is that?
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The technical term for these compounds isn’t zombie probiotics (shame) it’s actually paraprobiotics and postbiotics. Along with probiotics and prebiotics that’s quite a lot for a non-sciency head to hold. So I had to read about it a lot!! And then, of course, as it’s soooo cool, I wanted to share. Click on the link in my profile to read the short article explaining what these things are and how they do us good.
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If you were to read it whilst eating a slice of sourdough, I’d consider my work done 🙂

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Home-fermented olives gifted by @thelandofmint.
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These are the best olives I have ever tasted. They are soft, giving when you bite into them, bitter and at the same time sweet. There is salt too, and herbs and a delicate tang of orange zest.
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(And not a drop of omega 6 heavy sunflower oil in sight – yes!)
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I am super-excited about fermenting olives. I was too late this year – all the ones around me had gone to the frantoio (olive mill) before I could get to it. Next year they won’t escape me!

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After fermenting a whole cabbage for #sarmale at Christmas, I had some leaves left over. I loved wrapping using them, and also love the Italian ‘fegatelli’, liver parcelled up and cooked with bay and fennel seeds.
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So was born this experiment: Fermented cabbage-wrapped local pig’s liver, to be baked with onions and shredded sauerkraut in sauerkraut juice.
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My 6-year old son made some of the parcels. It was the first time he’d worked with raw liver and he was enamoured (it’s kinda like slime!)
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Check my story today (saved as the nose-to-tail highlight if you’re coming at this later) for photos of the prep and how we ate it.

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I regularly make the glorious Turkish fermented drink ‘Boza’. I mix cooked millet with a home-made starter and golden cane sugar. After 5 days in the warm it has transformed into a lacto-fermented, fizzy-on-the-tongue, sour, sweet-edged, probiotic-rich drink.
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Having got the basics under my belt, I’m starting to experiment. Here’s the latest two batches both using alternative sweeteners – the first with local, raw honey from @thecreatorscastle as the second using seriously dark unrefined cane sugar. My son’s looking forward to trying the results!

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Home-rendered lard from very-close-to-home raised piggies on home-made spelt sourdough. One of the joys of my eating life 🙂

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I am so happy that #jerusalemartichokes (do you know them as #sunchokes?) are still in season here in Italy as I’ve got quite a taste for them fermented. A week of lactic acid magic, with some added flavours (here garlic and black pepper) and they are crunchy and super yum.
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Look good, don’t they? And fermenting them is a great way to get the prebiotic, inulin (which our resident gut bacteria need to do their work) in a less windy way than eating them unfermented.
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Apparently these can be foraged by waterways here. When I find my personal forging and ancestral preserving wise Nonna (I’m looking for one!), I’ll ask her to show me some 🙂

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Malted barley is ‘supposed’ to be for beer-makers, but it’s a wonderful bread-makers’ ingredient too. I got some ‘chocolate’ malt, very dark, very smoky with delicate chocolate flavour.
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Here it is in a spelt sourdough. This bread has two ‘porridges’ added to the dough. One is of the barley, which I baked as inspired by @morgancarsandbread. The other is of sorghum.
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56% wholegrain spelt, 25% white spelt, 12% barley and 7% sorghum. I’m pretty chuffed with the result considering it’s spelt and there were a lot of add ins.
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It tastes great 🙂
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Video and more chocolate loaf gratuitous photographing in my story today.

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Pork scratchings. I remember those from a looong time ago. Salted and flavoured to the hilt and sold in tiny bags in pubs.
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If you look carefully at my lunch today, you’ll see my home-made equivalent. After a day rendering in the slow cooker the local pig fat we use transforms into not only spreadable lard but also small, crunchy, crazy-tasty pig fat nuggets. My son goes mad for them…oh what am I saying, we all do!
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They are so much better than the bagged, pub-sold version and a great-tasting #zerowaste kitchen practise.
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Ancient cultures all over have prized fat. I feel grateful to have such good quality local source that I can honour and enjoy in this way.

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How gorgeous does this dough look?! It’s a spelt sourdough with two ‘porridges’ mixed in – one of sorghum and the other of chocolate malted barley. The barley (which are the little grains you can see) gives it the dark colour and there’s a fab chocolatey/smoky smell too.
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Check out my story today to see the chocolate malt up close 😉
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Thank you @morgancarsandbread for inspiring me to get back to malts in my sourdough. Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out!

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I am really not a winter girl. But I’ve only just discovered the wonders of sourdough soup and I want to have it more…perhaps I’d suffer a few more cold weeks so I could prepare and eat this food, which has been dubbed as, “the soup that makes a man as strong as a wall”!
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I’ve written up my version of it, based on the Polish Żurek. If you’d like to try it, and use up some sourdough discard whilst you are doing it, check the link to the recipe in my profile.
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Thanks @dreamtemplearts for the fabulous Polish handed-down original instructions. Please thank your Mum 😉

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