How to Make Sauerkraut in Gallon-Size Plastic Bags: A Follow-Up

Updated on Saturday, January 15, 2011 by Kim @ Affairs of Living

Back in October, I posted an entry called How to Make Sauerkraut - or - Four Women have a Cabbage-Laden Sausagefest.  I described one method for making sauerkraut, as demonstrated in photos of a party that three friends and I had where we shredded 50 pounds of cabbage and ate lots of sausages. After letting the cabbage ferment away for about 6 weeks, we got together back in December to sample our krauts, pack them into jars, and eat more sausages (and locally-made haggis). I wanted to let you know how it all turned out!

As you may recall from that post (found HERE), we fermented in gallon-size plastic bags, and made 9 different flavors.

• plain with one with Canning Salt (3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
  
• plain with RealSalt (3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
  
• juniper berries (1 Tbsp berries, 3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
• seaweed extravaganza (a half cup each of crushed nori, laver, dulse, and wakame, 3 1/2 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
• caraway (1 Tbsp caraway sees, 3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
• garlic, onions, and red pepper flakes (1-2 garlic cloves, 1 onion, 1/2-1 Tbsp red pepper flakes, 3 1/2 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
• dill seeds (1 Tbsp dill seeds, 3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage)
• "Kim's Mix" - fennel and coriander (1 Tbsp fennel seeds, 1 Tbsp coriander seeds, 3 Tbsp salt, 5 lbs cabbage) - I sliced by thumb open while making this one, so I got to pick the spices. We joked that blood was one of the key secret ingredients.  Although I didn't actually bleed in the kraut, I did get to keep the batch.
• "Terre Vivant" - a mix of juniper, clove, bay leaf, sage, and cumin, inspired by a recipe in the marvelous  book Preserving Food Without Canning or Freezing. I don't recall the exact measurements, nor did we write them down! But it was around 2 Tbsp total spices, 3 Tbsp salt, and 5 lbs cabbage.

Homemade haggis and sausages from the Seward Co-op in Minneapolis, MNSampling three varieties of our kraut with dinner: seaweed, garlic and onion, and Terre Vivant

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a crazy quilt made of flour and stuffed in a jar

 

A while back I started putting the remaining little bits of all my flours into a jar. Leftover freshly ground oat flour or buckwheat flour, the tablespoon or two of flour at the bottom of the bag, whatever I found in my pantry when I moved - I just mixed it all together. Then I added some xanthan gum and a bit of baking powder to make it like those multi-purpose flour blends you buy in packages.   It's like a crazy quilt made of flour and stuffed in a jar, showcasing pretty much every easily-accessible flour and starch on the market.

I believe my mysterious flour mixture contains bits of all of the following...

• freshly ground buckwheat flour
• regular dark buckwheat flour
• amaranth flour
• quinoa flour
• white rice flour
• brown rice flour
• freshly ground brown rice flour
• freshly ground sweet rice flour
• chickpea flour
• coconut flour
• sorghum flour
• millet flour 
• teff flour
• freshly ground oat flour
• tapioca starch
• arrowroot starch
• a bit of xanthan gum

Talk about mulit-grain, right?  Ridiculous.

I have absolutely no idea what the proportion is on any of it. But I used it to make a loaf of bread a couple weeks ago, and it behaved beautifully! I made a pumpkinseed oatmeal bread with this mix as the main flour, and it was lovely, light, and had a wonderful crumb. See?  So good!

But sadly, I have no way of recreating this flour mix, other than relying on the randomness of pantry cleaning, and I have no way of sharing any kind of recipe with you.  Tragic!  I still have half the jar left, and am excited to try using it for something like cookies or muffins. 

Have any of you made similarly crazy quilt flour mixes? How have they worked for you?