#10 – Elly from Elly’s Everday; Sourdough-Baking & Soap-Making
“You can make really, really good bread using simple methods”
We’re so excited to welcome our first guest – Elly from Elly’s Everyday to talk about sourdough-baking and soap-making!
“My bread-making methods were developed when I was working full time in really difficult jobs and I needed it to be a no-brainer…I didn’t want to plan out my whole week around bread-making”
What we cover:
15:26 How we met Elly
18:55 Elly talking about being a bread new-comer
20:35 How Elly got into sourdough
26:00 How to tell if your sourdough starter is healthy
31:00 The problems that stop people baking sourdough
33:10 Feeding a sourdough starter
35:40 Elly’s starter maintenance method
44:20 Elly doesn’t ever make the same bread twice
45:23 The breads Elly regularly makes at home
47:15 Elly’s milling process
49:45 Gluten-free sourdough
1:00:25 Soap-making
1:06:40 How to get started with soap-making
1:08:20 How to find Elly’s recipes, videos and online homes
“There’s always an easier way to do it!”
Links:
The 100% whole wheat video of Elly’s that Alison cooked up.
Elly’s Everyday Whole Grain Sourdough You Tube channel
Elly’s Everyday Soap-Making You Tube Channel
The Natural Tucker Bread Book – John Downes
Chris Stafferton (the gluten-free bread maker, author of Promise and Fulfillment
Mock Mill (Elly’s affiliate link)
Elly’s Split Pea Soup recipe (described 13:49)
11/2-2 cups yellow split peas
1 potato
1 onion
1 carrot
1 large ripe tomato
little bit of salt
Pot with water or stock
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Want to share your thoughts on this episode, or talk about your experience with sourdough or soap?
Let’s continue the conversation. Come find us on Instagram:
Andrea is at Farm and Hearth
Alison is at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is at Ancestral Kitchen Podcast
Original Music, Episode Mixing and Post-Production by Robert Michael Kay
Transcript:
Alison:
Welcome to the Ancestral Kitchen podcast with Alison, a European town dweller in central Italy, and Andrea, living on a newly created family farm in northwest Washington State, USA. Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating, cooking, and living with ancient ancestral food wisdom in a modern world kitchen.
Music:
Music
Andrea:
Hello everybody welcome to i’m so excited for this episode more talking about sourdough and we have an incredible guest here today ellie and i just cannot wait to ask her all the questions so welcome ellie and welcome allison thank
Elly:
You hello thanks for having.
Andrea:
Me so fun we’re on three ways we’re on three continents in three time zones i think just a moment of acknowledging to allison for figuring out what time we all needed to get on in our time zones i did it right i think that i think you had to use calculus didn’t you some advanced
Alison:
Yeah i think so there’s algebra you know everything yeah
Andrea:
Yeah but here we are in three different countries, three different time zones, three different continents, two different hemispheres. So this is going to be really fun talking about sourdough bread. First off, I want to say before we jump into everything, I’m so excited. Allison and I have been working hard on the Patreon, especially Allison has been working on it. You guys, she’s doing so much awesome work on it and setting it up, coming up with some verbiage and things like that. So I’m really excited to be able to share the Patreon with you all soon because you are asking, which I’m so grateful for, when can we do a Patreon? So I’m super stoked about that. And Allison and I just recorded our first Patreon episode for the super special other podcast that y’all get on the Patreon. So that was really fun, Allison. That was a good time for me yeah it
Alison:
Was enjoyed it
Andrea:
All right so how we usually start out ellie is we talk about what what our last meal was and um for allison it’s usually breakfast because it’s morning for her when we record for me it’s usually dinner and i actually don’t know what it is for you i think lunch lunch so we got all the meals here so i’ll i’ll start out um asking allison what did you have or did you have breakfast yeah allison
Alison:
No, I haven’t had breakfast yet. Okay. I got up and I plonked myself on this seat and I’m here. But I can tell you what I’m going to have for breakfast.
Andrea:
Yeah, I want to hear it.
Alison:
Yeah. So we made beer last week. And in the process of filtering the beer, we have two kind of grain sediments. One of them is the quite thick grains, which I use to bake bread. You can kind of, they’re just roughly ground up grain. And I save those and I make bread with them. And then once we filter that, we are still left with kind of like a flour consistency that’s at the bottom of the drink. That is the thinner parts of the grain, like the white bits that are falling off. And those stay in the beer. And then we pour the beer off and leave those at the bottom of the bottle. And then once we finish the beer, I get those bits out of the bottom of the bottle, sometimes with difficulty. And I make porridge out of them. and it is the the most sour most delightful porridge ever really and so when we finished I’m going to go upstairs and I’m going to have a porridge from the spelt bits that are left at the bottom of the beer and I’ll put my usual on it which is miso and linseed and some crunchy nuts probably and olive oil and mix it all around it’s kind of a weird breakfast but it’s one of my favorites i’m sorry
Andrea:
All right you’re having a beer porridge
Alison:
Yeah i’m
Andrea:
Into this i don’t know what it
Alison:
Is but don’t ever call me weird a beer porridge breakfast yeah i wish i could share sounds good me too because it’s quite apt for for our um episode today being you know kind of a bread thing and a grain thing no it is a fermenting thing
Andrea:
Now bread and you you so you talked about this when we did the the patreon recording and you read that passage from the book that i was like basically crying over um but bread and beer have always kind of gone together
Alison:
Yeah which is so fascinating and the recipe that i’m making is made with par baked bread to hold the yeast so it’s it they are yeah just historically have been paired and made together and it feels really good in my bones and my body to be making both and using the leftovers in porridge and bread it’s like a cycle that feels just so whole and real it’s it’s wonderful sounds
Elly:
Good i love how you get all different.
Alison:
How about your dinner oh sorry
Andrea:
Oh no you’re good i’m jumping in already there’s just so
Alison:
Much go go no this we want you to i was
Elly:
Just gonna say allison i love how you get all of the different it’s like your extracting all these layers out of all of the food that you make and eat and i just really appreciate that just different levels and layers it’s really fascinating.
Alison:
Yeah that’s what’s so deep about the this beer because it’s not just beer you know there are these layers there’s the bread before there’s the bread afterwards and then I found this porridge which I don’t know if anyone else is doing or whether it’s just me who likes really sour porridge but it it feels so satisfying to be utilizing everything to the to the nth degree in it and then knowing that it’s local grain and it’s come from around here it feels it feels whole it feels like real and right that’s a nice thing wonderful
Andrea:
Yeah it’s so completely broken down you know the grain at that point it’s just it’s totally accessible and i can’t really imagine the difference between eating that and how little energy in your body needs to go into digesting that versus just getting you know a bag of oats and cooking it in 10 minutes in you know the morning for breakfast um and how much more of your energy would need to be shunted over to that process it’s just crazy okay so
Alison:
What did you have to
Andrea:
Well um so i had dinner um i think it’s so funny that we have all you know like the three meals three meals so i had what let’s see what did i have uh we had some ground beef um from a friend and then the sausage that gary and i made a couple weeks ago. And then I, let’s see, peppers and greens from the freezer from last summer, getting to the bottom of that. Liver. I don’t know if it was sheep or goat because I just had like a cooler of them and I divided them into bags and froze them and wrote on the sheep or goat question mark. I can’t tell them apart. So some liver whacked in and then we made that into burritos or quesadillas or bowls just depends on what everybody wanted so
Alison:
Were the peppers fresh before you put them in
Andrea:
No they were frozen they were frozen we took but
Alison:
Were they frozen fresh or were they frozen cooked
Andrea:
Oh right right right no they were frozen fresh so we all the peppers that we picked last summer just kind of like bells and pimentos and things like that and we just chopped them into big kind of chunky dice and just filled bag after bag of them and froze them do
Alison:
They freeze okay
Andrea:
Oh yeah they freeze fantastic yeah well we it was um i like having peppers to throw into you know stir fries and things like that but um i don’t like it canned so
Alison:
Much so right
Andrea:
Okay um let’s see we had that and then Then I made like a rhubarb and apple pie filling Well, I had some fresh root bread for my friend and then some apple pie filling that I had canned last summer. And I just kind of heated that up on the stove together. And that was like a little dessert. So it was pretty tasty.
Elly:
That was dinner.
Andrea:
It was delicious. And then we sat out at the campfire until way too late.
Alison:
Five minutes ago. Yeah.
Andrea:
I was like, I gotta go.
Alison:
So let’s hear what Ellie had. What was your last meal, Ellie? What did you have for lunch?
Elly:
Well, actually, I really want to tell you about my second last meal. Yeah, well, can I tell you, I’ll be quick, but I’ll tell you about two meals that I had today. I, this morning I had my fermented oats, which I’ve been eating every day now for the last three days since I started. I’ve been starting my batches with leftovers from the day before. I don’t know if that’s okay to do, but it seems to be working. And I’m loving them. I just love it it’s amazing how much I don’t know whether it’s I don’t know it seems to be more creamy than usual I’m just soaking them in water I agree and I’m putting yeah way creamier I’ve never done it before I have fed my sourdough starter with oats before and it loves it you know just for fun I’d put different things in there from time to time but I’ve never actually fermented a bowl of oats like that so I’ve been having those and they were great but for lunch I had And.
Alison:
You told me, Ellie, I want to ask you a question about the oats. You told me that they were kind of effervescent. And I wondered, are you putting a lid on the jar when you’re fermenting them to kind of trap the bubbles in? No, not at all. I can just feel it.
Elly:
I can feel a little bit of effervescence and the texture on my tongue. So, yeah, I’m not pressurizing my oats. That would be interesting, though. Um but i have to find a really big jar with a really good lid for that.
Andrea:
Um i really think once you start fermenting the oats you can’t
Elly:
Go back no no i don’t think i can it’s so good yeah and why would you want to when you discover something like that i’ve fermented lots of things in my life but i just never you know i knew that there was more possibilities um in terms of fermenting grain that i had done but just kind of hadn’t got there yet really and listening to your podcast was has been so inspiring and i thought you know i’m just going to try this so i got half a teaspoon of my sourdough starter out and just mixed it in with some water just with some rolled oats and yeah i left it overnight and the first batch wasn’t super sour but i could taste it and then what was left over from that i left for the rest of that day and I ate it in the afternoon and it was really lovely and I could taste a little bit of the, effervescence as i said and it had a really nice sour zing to it too which was great i think i’ll put a little bit of honey with it i can’t remember now but i’ve since had it with a bit of fruit and different things yeah it was really good combination so yeah but um and what about my lunch i had a really simple lunch but very delicious it’s quite cold here and i really feel are cold i’m really sensitive to cold which is probably a good um thing that i’m living in a subtropical climate but it’s not particularly cold weather by most people’s standards but um yeah.
Andrea:
Okay what’s cold
Elly:
Oh well to me it’s it’s only 23 degrees celsius which is fairly warm you’ll have to convert that to fahrenheit.
Alison:
That’s quite cold in my book as well
Andrea:
Um okay all right i’m laughing i had to look it up because 23 celsius is 73 fahrenheit and i’m laughing because this morning i was talking to one of our hip campers and it was 60 degrees out and we were like oh my word it’s so hot this is ridiculous oh funny yeah we were like oh man take off this jacket
Elly:
Uh it’s so funny you do get used to different climates though i guess no it’s.
Andrea:
True but i got very very acclimatized is the word i think i don’t know how to say that i got acclimatized to the warm warm weather in virginia and it took me a couple years to readjust when we
Elly:
Got back yeah yeah so so i had some soup for lunch i had some split pea and veggie soup that i had something i make all the time and i had that with some, Beautiful spelt, 100% spelt sourdough bread. I had a few pieces of that.
Andrea:
Is that the one you said when I posted Calda Verde on the Ancestral Kitchen podcast and then you said, oh, I have a split pea soup that has five ingredients I make all the time? Was that this one?
Elly:
That’s the one. That’s the one. It’s really simple. What’s your ingredients? It’s literally one and a half to two cups of yellow split peas. You can use green split peas as well. um i use one potato one onion one carrot and one really nice ripe big tomato and i put the whole lot in a pot with a whole heap of water growing up we always had it with bacon bones or ham hocks, basically a pea and ham soup but i’m a plant-based eater these days so i actually put sometimes a little bit of liquid smoke in there to give it that sort of smoky flavor and that’s a really nice version and that’s that’s how i make it and i’ve been eating it my whole life i really love it it’s probably my favorite food ever so we have it all the time yeah absolutely yeah.
Alison:
One of those comfort foods are just wonderful you just can go back and back and back to them and with a bit of like you’re coming
Elly:
Exactly exactly and with a you know a bit of salt at it it’s incredible how just a few ingredients can make you know if the ingredients uh it’s the right combination and the quality of what they are, what they are just shines through, you know, it’s, yeah, simple things can be really, really delicious, so, I mean, the bread is a great example of that too, the spelt bread, it’s just one grain, it’s one humble ancient grain, but the flavour is, outstanding, so, yeah, I just like to find those things that I like, and I tend to eat a lot of similar similar things over and over again but um with a few variations here and there but that was my lunch yeah.
Alison:
That sounds lovely.
Elly:
Beautiful.
Alison:
So let me explain to everyone listening how I first kind of came to know you, Ellie, because we haven’t done any introduction.
Elly:
No, and I don’t think I know this either.
Alison:
Ah, well, there you go. So when I started baking sourdough, it was probably about three and a half years ago, I used a forum, which is called The Fresh Loaf, to kind of do my research and get to know. And I started baking with the intention to be 100% whole grain. I wasn’t interested in baking with white flours at all. And yet I’d never baked sourdough before. So in addition, I wanted to use Yerke flour. So I was kind of going right in at the deep end. And this forum was amazing. And on there, quite a lot of people are playing with your recipes, experimenting with your recipes, making your recipes. And on a post on there I saw someone reference your 100% whole grain loaf recipe so I went and watched your video and it was one where the wheat is soaked with the water overnight and then in the morning you come back and put in the sourdough starter but you come back to the kind of the wheat and the water or the spelt in my case and the water already in some kind of dough consistency and I discovered your YouTube channel through that and saw all your other videos
Alison:
And then I mean I’ve been following you and then when I went back on Instagram last year we found each other on there because you opened your Instagram account yeah and then since then it’s been wonderful to watch all your breads and also your soaps because you have two channels you have your Ellie’s Everyday Whole Grain Sourdough channel on YouTube and your Ellie’s Everyday Soap Making um so I watch all of those go around on my Instagram and get totally inspired and have made several of your breads and the last one i think was your um hot cross buns and i played with that and changed it a bit up and made those yeah wonderful so yeah for those who don’t know ellie go and check out her um two youtube channels she’s been making sourdough for ever and then i think in about five years ago she did her first video put it up on youtube and really it’s become extremely successful and how many followers do you have on your um whole grain sourdough channel now well
Elly:
That’s a really small channel i’ve only just started that because i’m just focusing on the whole grain yeah but my original channel which is now been taken over completely by the making that has all of my original sourdough recipes still on it but it’s got about 130 000 at the moment the last time I looked roughly wow so yeah.
Alison:
A lot of people are watching your videos and baking your breads which must feel amazing look
Elly:
I honestly try not to think about it too much because I can’t quite compute like it’s hard to imagine that number of people but uh yeah it’s it’s very it’s been a very humbling experience and um, Oh, gosh. Yeah, I don’t quite know what to say about that. I get a bit shy about it, actually. But I do love it.
Alison:
I enjoy it.
Elly:
And I’m really just trying to help people out. And I feel like when I first started, I was really, I think a lot of newcomers just get bombarded by all the technicalities and, in my view, overly scientific approach to bread making and this perfectionism that just isn’t achievable for most people. And not everybody wants that either, you know. So I…
Alison:
I totally agree. and that that’s why I was attracted to you because you know you’ve got such a kind of a joyful attitude but you’re not worried about having everything absolutely perfect you you’re you care greatly about the flowers that you’re using I can tell that and you mill your own flower and it’s wonderful to see that and you’re focused on 100% whole grain which is really interesting but it’s it’s done in such a way that you’re kind of open and easygoing which demystifies what’s behind sourdough and focuses on making good wholesome bread in a calm joyful way rather than making everything perfect which is i think which is why i really liked and kind of stuck by what you were doing because that’s that’s some that’s a style i really appreciate yeah
Elly:
That’s that’s really what i’m trying to achieve really i feel like i’m just really sharing my experience I’m just, I do get so many questions and contact behind the scenes, people asking me questions. People really do want to get started and I feel like if there’s one person that I can help to get over that boundary of, you know, I just can’t get my head around sourdough, then, you know, if a video that I’ve got that says, oh, you can do it this way or you can do it that way, it doesn’t really matter, you know, you’ll work it out, if that encourages people to, you know, break down those barriers and and and and get going with it then I’m happy that’s that’s that’s good yep excellent.
Alison:
So how did you get into sourdough first of all what’s your history
Elly:
Yeah it’s interesting I’ve been thinking about this question and I guess the answer is really twofold it started off for me probably like things do for many people firstly as an idea something that I was exposed to a long time ago but didn’t actually start really playing around with until much later but I’ve been baking my own breads for nearly 20 years now since, sometime in the 90s the late 90s showing my age but I the very first bread book I ever bought was a book called The Natural Tucker Bread Book, tucker being an Australian colloquial term for food. It’s a natural tucker bread book by John Downs. And John Downs is really the pioneer of sourdough baking in Australia. He had the first sourdough bakery in Melbourne that was started in the 70s, I think, and really got things going here. But in this book I bought I just the whole book I have to thank for me falling in love with bread making altogether even though I had always had an interest in baking and cooking my whole life, but I found this book and I realized quite quickly that half of the book was.
Elly:
Dedicated to breads made with a leaven and there was no mention of the word sourdough or anything like that but these left you know naturally leavened breads so i kind of learned about you know sourdough starters and um.
Elly:
Uh that kind of wild yeast risen breads through that book but when I first started baking I just thought oh it’s a bit too much for me I don’t know if I if I’m into it and nobody else that I knew of was doing it or had even heard of it um back then here so I just proceeded with making my yeast spreads most mostly with whole grain flours and and then I experimented with using really small amounts of yeast from the Jim Lay kind of tradition that he learned from Italy actually so fermenting his breads over a much longer period of time using just a pinch of yeast so I started as I learned more and more and more I eventually got back into sourdough and it was I think it was around 2009 when I really gave it a serious crack and finally got my starter going I had had some attempts before that but yeah you know my starters languished in the back of the fridge and died of mold sadly because I just didn’t have the confidence you know I didn’t have the I didn’t have an understanding of it that I was happy with so I didn’t really know what I was doing and I really had to do more learning and figure it out for myself but once I did that I was off so it’s been yeah 2009 I think since I started with sourdough but baking bread generally a lot longer than that.
Alison:
That’s really inspiring to hear you say, I didn’t know what I was doing. Because I think that’s true of anyone.
Elly:
I still don’t know what I’m doing.
Alison:
At the beginning, you never know what you’re doing. You never know what you’re doing. But you do.
Elly:
Oh, no.
Alison:
You know, you’re sharing all this wonderful stuff. Yeah. And there was a point where you didn’t know what you were doing. Oh, no. And that’s just a wonderful example of how we learn.
Elly:
Absolutely. And I remember you talking in one of the previous episodes, Alison, and I think it might have been the introductory one where you’re talking about your curiosity. And I really could relate to that because I love the idea of sourdough. I understood that it was a better way to consume bread. It was healthier. You know, it was more digestible for everybody, you know, particularly people who had, you know, gluten sensitivities and things like that, which I didn’t. But that just appealed to me. I thought if I can make a bread that most people can eat and tolerate well then that’s got to be a good thing and it’s better for me too it just appealed to me on so many levels so um yeah I really wanted to understand it and I think if you kind of it is more challenging sourdough bread making I don’t think anyone finds it really easy especially at the beginning there is a bit of a learning curve but um if you decide that you want to do it and you take a little bit of time to have a bit of a dive into it and hopefully stumble across some teachers who can show you some shortcuts and demystify all those myths that are out there then you can get going with it pretty easily yeah.
Alison:
Okay. Andrea, do you have a question for Ellie?
Andrea:
How many can I ask? I have so many questions.
Alison:
We’ve got to kind of share them out because we’re both desperate to ask questions.
Andrea:
Well, I do have one question actually that wasn’t on the list of questions that Alison was coming up with. But I wanted to ask because this is something that I get asked a lot and I get pictures texted to me a lot. And you talked about your starter languishing in the fridge, which probably a lot of us who make sourdough can say, yep, that has happened. Yes. But when you have a healthy sourdough start on your counter, can you tell us what
Elly:
It looks like? Oh, yeah. Yeah um oh my criteria for a healthy sourdough starter is that it smells good you know I think the nose knows if it smells off yeah it probably is off um you know if it smells really funky sometimes they can get funny different aromas to them I’ve had my starter that smelled a bit like bananas at times or different fruits and things like that and that’s totally okay but if it smells bad it’s probably not good so that’s that’s the first thing i would have a bit of a sniff uh if there’s visible mold on the top um and i i do talk about mold a fair bit because it’s very relevant to where i live you know in the subtropics we do have really hot humid summers and you do have to store things differently here so yeah if you’ve got you know uh calm yeast the.
Elly:
Thin kind of layer of white powdery mold that you can get on the top of some ferment sometimes starters will develop that that’s not necessarily an issue you could probably scrape that off and then you know um maybe discard the rest of the starter or use it for crepes or compost it or something um and refeed it and it’ll probably be okay if you’ve got mold you know like black mold or really yucky mould that’s not necessarily something that you can’t recover from, but it’s a sign of neglect really. If your starter is healthy, it’s going to just look like bubbly batter or flour and water, which is what it is.
Andrea:
Right.
Elly:
Yeah, usually they should smell like that combination of sourness, a bit of tartness and acidity in the smell, but also you should be able to smell a yeasty smell as well because it really is a symbiotic the culture is a symbiotic relationship between lactic acid bacterias and some acetic acids as well and yeasts you know wild yeasts off the flower that it’s grown in so you should be able to smell some yeasts as well but um if you’re keeping your sourdough starter on the counter um do you do people store like just keep their starters out in room temperature where you are andrea or is that more common or do they use the fridge everybody.
Andrea:
That i know keeps theirs on the counter
Elly:
Right right yeah and i think that’s i’ve heard a lot about that um and that seems to be a have a really uh it’s a really common way of keeping it in you know the american tradition and and you guys have such a rich history with sourdough um but australia doesn’t have we’re developing it but um i think a lot of that is climate dependent and if you’re using your starter frequently i would say if you live in a reasonably cool climate and you’re using it regularly you can keep it on the bench on the counter we just say the bench here you can just keep it on the bench and it’ll be fine because you’re going to refresh it every couple of days. If you’ve got family and you’re making bread quite frequently I can’t see why anything would go wrong with it. It should be able to last a couple of days but if it’s, if it’s smelling really really super sour or it’s smelling a bit off it’s probably a sign that it needs to be used or refreshed more frequently and if that’s not possible i’d consider storing it in the fridge using a fridge maintenance method which i use i just couldn’t keep my starter on the bench here in summer it’s too hot it would just go off it.
Alison:
Yeah i i keep mine in the fridge i think it’s a similar thing especially in the summer it’s not it’s not possible yeah no
Andrea:
Yeah our house never gets what never gets that warm in the summer so it should be fine
Alison:
Do you think ellie that um sorry do you want to andrea no
Andrea:
Go go i was gonna change the subject so carry on
Alison:
Yeah i wanted to just kind of pull pull on the sourdough starter a little bit and say that I know that a lot of questions that get put to sourdough bakers are about starters because I’ve had loads of them myself I know that you know you’ve helped a lot of people and you have a lot of people baking your breads do you think it’s the starters that stop people from baking their own sourdough or is there something else in your experience that stops people from baking their own sourdough and and how can we solve that because I mean I want the world to be baking sourdough.
Andrea:
Alison is on a mission, Ali.
Elly:
We share this mission. Yes, absolutely. I think it’s two things. I think, yes, it is the starter and maintaining it and managing it and knowing what to do with it.
Elly:
That’s one part of it. But I also think it’s actually baking the bread. There are some really key fairly simple concepts and understandings of important processes that you do need to know to be able to get it to work and I think it’s the same with the starters, obviously it’s a there’s a fermentation process going on here that includes acids as a byproduct of the fermentation which regular commercial yeast risen breads don’t have so you can put a a bowl of dough on the bench that has just got some commercial yeast in it and you can put a bowl of dough that is fermented with sourdough you know exactly the same quantities side by side one the yeast one will ferment and get bubbly and do its thing and get really yeasty but you could come back two days later and still make a loaf of bread out of that dough. The sourdough one you couldn’t because of the acids in sourdough there is a point where it just goes too far and it completely breaks down so it literally.
Elly:
Everything falls apart but it loses its stretch the gluten breaks down so I think um yeah people, like I said before the understanding the sourdough starter and kind of getting that right and knowing what it should look like when it’s ready to bake and all that sort of stuff is hard but actually and.
Alison:
Do you think that just comes from experience or are there things that you would say to people to help them get over those two things
Elly:
Yeah I part of it comes down to experience but part of it just.
Elly:
Is about knowing what to look for too i think um on a really basic level your sourdough starter when you feed it you know you’re mixing in fresh flour and water to feed it up after you’ve used it hopefully i usually just have a small amount left in the bottom of my jar i don’t feed you know i don’t have a great big ton of it that i then add more flour to i usually make sure i’ve only got a little bit left over and feed that with lots more fresh flour and water um and then basically stirring it up and waiting for it to repopulate with that culture so you want to see it getting bubbly if it’s bubbly and active whether it’s thick or thin it doesn’t matter what consistency it is it doesn’t matter how high hydration it has you know there’s different rules about how much water and flour you should feed it it doesn’t matter as long as it’s active really it’s going to raise a loaf of bread but if you uh leave it for too long you got to know like i said before that with a sourdough culture it has acids in it as well as yeasts and acids break down the structures that hold bread up so uh if your sourdough start has gone too far um it’s going make your bread really acidic and if you’re using a lot of sourdough starter in your bread that’s a whole lot of.
Elly:
Piece of your bread then that is fairly broken down so it will change the structure of the bread, does that help does that make sense yeah but really just making sure it’s active and knowing what to look out for um but most people i think once they find their groove with it it’s usually because they found some method that makes sense to them that’s not too much work and once they’ve got that you know they’re fine but there’s this infinitely i think.
Alison:
That’s an important point not too much work because right people yeah kind of you can put it in the fridge and you forget about it and that’s it you get on with your life and it it has to be a rhythm that you can incorporate into your days and not be too much work because otherwise you’re just not going to do it
Elly:
I so it’s finding that yeah i don’t know if you’ve noticed but a lot on a lot of my posts i will actually say I used half a cup of starter straight from the fridge five days old and I put that in there on purpose because there’s all this.
Elly:
So-called rules out there about your starter must be fresh must be fed three hours before you bake bread or whatever it doesn’t need to be as long as the starter was really active and really healthy when you put it in the fridge it’s going to it’s going to maintain the yeast and the culture in that well enough to be able to raise a loaf after five days in the fridge it’s going to do a fine job so i don’t advocate for you know waking your starter up again and going through this whole big process before you make bread you can do that if you want and you might make slightly better bread but for me you know my bread making methods were developed at a time when i was working full time in really you know difficult jobs and i needed it to be a no-brainer i just needed it to be easy and I didn’t want to have to plan out my whole week around my bread making. So my starter just sits in, I’ll tell you briefly my method. I have, say, about two-thirds of a cup of starter that sits in the fridge. When I want to make a loaf of bread, I take it out. I use however much I want in my bread, usually most of what I’ve got in there. I mix up my bread and then the bread ferments and I make the bread. And after i’ve taken the starter out of the jar and put that in with my bread dough what’s left in the jar it’s usually a teaspoon or two not much at all i refeed that i feed that up with.
Elly:
New flour and new water i mix it up i usually let it rise again alongside the bread so i’ll often have my bowl of bread dough sitting on the bench and i’ll have my little starter jar and a few hours later or once i can see that it’s starting to get bubbly again i put it back in the fridge and that’s where it stays till the next time i’m ready to make bread so.
Alison:
Do you never make a separate level no
Elly:
Your recipes at all oh really sometimes yeah sometimes i love the freedom of being able to go oh i just want to mix up a loaf of bread.
Alison:
I want to do it
Elly:
Today yeah so that’s the way and i actually think that that method that really kind of low-key method of managing a sourdough starter i really think that’s how my youtube channel and that very first video that i did i really think that that’s one of the reasons why the whole thing took off because people it was new people going oh you don’t have to make a leaven you.
Elly:
Don’t have to refeed it you don’t have to get it to this it’s liberating yeah yeah it really is um because and it makes sense because really it’s the same with other ferments the same as sauerkraut you know once it’s fermented you put it in the fridge and you could use that to inoculate another batch but those cultures stay alive they just go into hibernation so you can just pull that out and in my especially in summer i think it makes a lot of sense to use cold starter straight from the fridge i don’t even warm it up i literally just take it straight out put it straight in the bread dough and when you’re milling your own grain as well um which i do the flour is often warm from the mill it’s not super hot but it’s a bit warm from the mill so using cold starter and sometimes i even use cold water as well that helps to balance out the temperature of the dough because you don’t want really warm dough uh because the warmer your dough is the more chance you may have of over fermenting it which is probably one of the biggest problems with sourdough um yeah so that that very easy um method allows people get really excited about it unless unless you really are looking for.
Elly:
You know, super pro baker, standard breads with these giant big glossy open crumb. But if you’re an everyday, and that’s the whole thing behind Ellie’s everyday, I guess it’s really just everyday ways of doing things that are easy to do around whatever kind of lifestyle or schedule that you have. Because most of us, you know, we don’t bake bread full time and do it for a living. We do it because we want to eat and we want to feed our children and, or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, I know there’s a lot of moms listening.
Andrea:
I know because they’re all my friends and we talk about the podcast, you know? And so we talk about everything that we’re talking about on here. And really, um, I’ve had a bunch of people message me, Allison, after we did the five cheap things you can make at home, and a lot of people said, oh, the water kefir just sounds so easy. And so I think there’s a lot of things where we would do it if the method were not so daunting. Yes. And I think if somebody wants to do what you said of, you know, a fancy 14-step glossy open crumb,
Elly:
You know, then start with this.
Andrea:
You know, make bread every day. And I think there’s a lot of things that people would do if we didn’t feel like it was so intimidating. Allison and I also talk a lot about how These are things, this is how people, you know, ate to survive. And they weren’t trying to post, you know, the Instagram picture. They were like, I have 12 children and they want food. Exactly. So, yeah, this is fantastic.
Elly:
And I think as well as that too, you can actually make really, really good breads using simple methods too. Oh, you know.
Andrea:
Not even joking. Not even joking. And your simplest recipe, as you’re saying, I say simple in quotes, your simplest recipe is, once again, going to exceed that expensive loaf that you buy at a store just because of the sheer fact of how the quality of the ingredients and the process and the literal freshness. I mean, where else can you get bread that’s five minutes old?
Elly:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Alison:
And it’s kind of this thing’s all about trends you know there’s a trend at the moment for the open crumb yeah yeah yeah yeah you’re right and you know people are chasing that because they’re chasing a kind of a desire and a look but the truth is like you said you can make really good bread in a way that doesn’t look anything like that and it’s easy and if we as a community want people to move towards creating their own food and caring about where their grains come from and eating sourdough not store-bought bread then the way that we can do that is what you’re doing which is share the simplest method that even people like you say who are working nine to five like you were can build it into their life and then that becomes part of them and they’ve moved a step forward towards living the way that they want to which is wonderful
Elly:
Exactly yeah and once you know like I said you know there is that little bit of a learning curve with sourdough but once you know what you’re looking for and you you learn and, basic knowledge and you develop a little bit of skill in some dough handling um stuff and you understand the factors of temperature and time and how to manipulate them to suit your your schedule you can make awesome sourdough any day of the week you know there’s so many different um cheats and tricks and shortcuts um yeah it’s incredible actually i i love it i i’m in i actually never make the same thing with the same method twice because I’m always just trying out new things but there’s always an easier way to do it so um yeah it can be done absolutely amen.
Alison:
To that wow so what’s the bread you make the most Ellie and would you share with us the kind of process and the details around it
Elly:
Yes well I saw this question on the list and I have to say in all honesty there isn’t one there really isn’t I because.
Alison:
You change I don’t
Elly:
Use recipes I never have I use recipes but I make them up as I go and I share recipes I know that I share like all of the recipes that I share with other people is really for the benefit of um people who do want a bit more guidance and they want a recipe because they’re still learning or whatever but i honestly don’t think i ever make the same bread twice it’s never.
Elly:
The same i either change the process because i’m doing something different on that day you know i’m putting my dough in my cooler with an ice brick because it’s really hot and i have to go out or i’m i’m sticking it in a big roaster with a hot of with a mug of boiling water because i’m in a hurry and it’s cold and i want it to hurry up or i’m using different flowers all the time i have the whole um cabinet under my bench where my mill is i’m milling my own grain so i literally just look in there and go what am i going to have so i just make them up but i guess i could say um some of my regulars would be um i i do use um my sort of basic grains that i use um that i mill would be probably organic whole wheat i use a fair amount of mainly because historically that’s all you’ve really been able to get in australia for a long time um and there is some really lovely wheat um grown here in queensland so i do like to try and um use that a bit but lately i’ve been getting some really beautiful spelt so I’ve been using that a lot more so spelt is wonderful so I will often do 100% wheat loaves with either plain with seeds added or I might put in a bit of spelt or I might put in a bit of rye I love um.
Elly:
Sort of scandinavian style rye breads i have made a lot of them over the years i haven’t made one for a little while i’m probably due for another one but they are so easy to make so they’re a really good hands-off recipe to make you just mix it up leave it and then later on in the day put it in a tin raise it and bake it um so you don’t have to worry about gluten development with a rye bread because there isn’t much um they’re really easy so yeah any any kind of combination the the base flowers like i said are usually wheat um spelt or rye but i also have um barley and i play around with a whole lot of um other things in my blends as well which is um while the milling is so handy You can try all sorts of ingredients. I’ve made breads with millet and sorghum and teff and even brown rice and all sorts of things in them. So I just basically make up whatever I feel like on any given day.
Alison:
Tell us a little bit more about the milling, because I know that you do all of your flour as milled. Explain how that works and what you use.
Elly:
How that works, it’s basically I have a benchtop stone mill. Thank you. There’s a whole lot on the market that’s um but the one that i have is um designed by a man called wolfgang mock in um germany and he’s been designing these um stone bench top mills for a long time so i have a little mock mill and basically it’s got a hopper on the top and you pour your turn it on pour the green in the top and it’s got a little lever on the side where you can adjust the grind it’s basically just got two stones inside with a hole in the middle and the the green goes into the hole and then is sort of fed out in between the stones and the coarseness of the flower depends on how far apart the stones are so you just adjust it depending on whether or not you want coarse flower or fine flower and you stick a bowl under it and it comes out, that’s so cool yeah it is very literally stones i think it’s literally yeah well they’re they’re not um no they it’s a it is i think it’s a natural stone material but it’s it’s like a composite that is manufactured stone yeah i.
Andrea:
Mean i can imagine because they’d have to make it the exact shape but yeah
Elly:
Yeah oh wow i think it’s kind of allison we can wait.
Andrea:
Why did you do this Stop grinding it by hand in our little stone grinder.
Alison:
Yeah, with our two stones outside in the backyard.
Andrea:
I’ve got the way we’ve been doing it.
Alison:
I want to know.
Elly:
You totally can.
Alison:
You can buy head stone mills.
Elly:
India, they’re used a lot in Indian households.
Andrea:
No, I don’t. I don’t want to buy one.
Alison:
You’ve got other things you want to do other than grind flour.
Elly:
Get one that you can plug in. They’re great.
Alison:
Can you tell us why you yeah why you don’t buy
Elly:
Flour um it’s a good question i made a decision a few years back that um i really just wanted to eat as much whole foods as i could um including whole whole grain flours in my bread making and at the time i was quite involved with the sourdough baking community in australia and there’s a man called chris stafferton in tasmania i hope he listens to this hi chris um who who is um he only makes gluten-free sourdough but he is a wizard with that stuff and he can make sourdough bread with just about hold on yep, gluten-free gluten-free.
Andrea:
Sourdough and i know i have had a lot of people ask me and i i’d say i know it’s possible can you say his name
Elly:
Again his name is chris stafferton he is in uh devonport in tasmania he has a book that he that he released a couple of years ago called promise and fulfillment real bread real breads made without gluten he’s the guru of whole grain of um gluten-free sourdough but here’s the rub he uses all whole grains so he’s not using these funny gluten-free flour mixes that are all full of gums and god knows what he is a miller as well he was one of the people that influenced me to get into home milling because i saw this man making you these amazing breads with millet and sorghum and teff and brown rice and all these things. And I thought, wow, imagine what kind of breads I could make, even wheat-based breads, but with all these other things added in. And just the freedom and the fun and the flexibility and the creativity that that posed for me was irresistible. So I had to get a meal.
Elly:
Um and even though i don’t have a need to eat gluten-free bread um i love the idea of using a whole variety of grains in my bread making and that yeah and i guess really the other part of the answer to that is freshness um if you have baked uh if you’ve baked bread or anything really with freshly milled flour uh you’ll know that it is a really different thing um i was trying to think of an analogy for it and the only thing i thought of is it’s like if you cut an apple.
Elly:
If you make a fruit salad and you cut up your apples and you cut up your oranges or whatever, and you leave them sitting on a bowl in the bench for a day, they’ll still be edible at the end of the day and they’ll probably still taste pretty good, but they’ll be a little bit wilted and they’ll be a bit oxidised and they’re just, you know.
Elly:
They’re not, you just can’t get them, they’re just not going to be the same as if it was as when you just cut it. So it’s the same thing with flour, I think. um and i certainly uh i have a absolute appreciation that not everybody’s gonna, have access to milling their own grains and it’s not going to be a possibility for loads of people and totally want to support those people in whatever they want to do and whatever they’re able to do as well and any bread or anything that you can make with um make in your own kitchen with whatever flours you can get regardless of what they are is still going to be better than stuff made in a factory um true but if you can uh yeah i i was quite blown away by it um.
Elly:
Freshly milled whole wheat and sort of gluten-y type grains like wheat and spelt and um, you know the ancient wheats they have a real funny kind of gelatinous quality to them when you add the water to it they just i don’t know they smell different they look different they feel different i think um the pre-milled flowers feel to me drier in comparison like some of the moisture has come out of them they feel a bit drier which makes sense um i think they perform similarly as long as your store-bought whole grain flowers are reasonably fresh i know that there are grain growers in australia who sell whole grain but they also sell flour as well and they tell their customers you must store it properly especially in australia yeah and and use it within six weeks because it’s especially if it’s stone milled it has the whole grain in the flour so including the germ and the oily part and if that is if that’s going to get too old it’s going to be prone to rancidity and you know it’s just not going to have the.
Elly:
The life. John Downs, that fellow who wrote the book that I talked about in the beginning, I actually came across him at a conference-y type greens gathering thing I went to down in Victoria a couple of years ago. I know. I don’t know if I was the only one from Brisbane, but you could probably tell by the way I was dressed. I was so excited to be there, but I was so nervous. I didn’t have the guts to go up and introduce myself to him, which I regret, but I’ve since chatted to him online but he i overheard him talking about the life force of freshly milled grain and i thought he knows it it really does have a life force to it just like the apple that is freshly cut compared to the apple that’s been cut up into little bits and sat on the bench all day it’s just got a different energy to it you know it’s fresher it sounds.
Andrea:
So nerdy to say but I totally agree with you. And Allison, I was just commenting something about this on Aaron’s Instagram the other day, that with the food that, you know, comes out of your garden or these fresh grains that you’re talking about, Ellie, they just feel so, I don’t know, like there’s a vibration to them or something really, I don’t know what the right word is to say. But they just feel so alive and yeah um there’s like a current through them and when you yeah when you cook them you just feel so excited and happy and then when you get these packages you know styrofoam and plastic from the store and you’re peeling it apart and your dead food is falling out and you’re like this isn’t the same it’s just not yeah and
Elly:
It it sounds like an esoteric kind of a thing to say but it isn’t it’s it’s well it could be and that’s okay if that’s perspective but it’s pure science too it’s oxidization and all of these processes that take.
Andrea:
Place the frequencies yeah
Elly:
When fresh ingredients aren’t fresh anymore they everything everything degrades and deteriorates over time.
Andrea:
Nutrients so yeah yeah i remember a farmer telling me um in virginia he was saying broccoli I wish I could remember exactly what he said. And I don’t know what his source was, but he was saying, oh, some, you know, a study found that broccoli, after one day, the nutrient values just have plummeted so low. And then after three days, just like, why would you even eat it? And he was saying, you know, rarely is anything in the grocery store. You’re not finding something that was picked 12 hours ago.
Elly:
No, no.
Andrea:
And, um, that my sister and I, when we were working on that farm, we got so stuck up about our produce because just really get used to it. And we would take some kale out of the fridge and we’d say, Ooh, this is from yesterday. Eh, nah, I, we can’t eat it. And then we’d look at each other and just laugh about how picky we had gotten, but you can really tell.
Elly:
Yeah you know we don’t all have the luxury of having everything super fresh and i eat vegetables that have been in my fridge for god knows how long all the time but it’s been winter.
Andrea:
Here everything i have is you know jarred or frozen or something yeah
Elly:
But yeah but i think if you if you love bread and um you develop a real passion for home baking um yeah and and you’re interested in where food comes from and varieties of grains then yeah the home milling is it’s a lot of fun it just takes it to another level i guess yeah my.
Andrea:
Mom had i think um oh carry on
Alison:
No, you go, you go, Andrea.
Andrea:
I was just going to say also, if anybody’s wondering about the fresh milled things, then my mom had a grain mill. Well, she still has it, but she would grind the wheat for our bread when I was a kid. And then she would store it in the freezer, maybe for like, not for a really long time, maybe a week or so. When you have eight kids.
Elly:
That’s a great way to do it.
Andrea:
Pretty fast. Yeah. And, but there, the, the flavor was real, was really good. Of course we were, you know, we were just, it was just what mom did. So we didn’t think it was that unique, but, um, a friend of mine said to me the other day, I can’t remember who were you that said this to me? If you hear this, please tell me, I can’t remember who it was, but they said, oh, we ground, um, some grain for our bread the other day and i thought you all were kind of going on a little bit about how much better it tastes but she said i could not believe that the flavor was completely different it wasn’t even the same thing and she was just so blown away so if anybody’s wondering yes you can really tell the difference
Elly:
Yeah yeah you still make really awesome bread if it’s not freshly milled but it is a bit it is definitely you can notice it it’s my.
Andrea:
Rye is all pre-ground and you know most of my and corn is usually pre-ground so i’m not saying i’m always using the fresh ground
Elly:
Stuff and the other thing too is with fresh ground if you’re doing it yourself you know that you’re getting the whole grain in there because there are you can buy whole grain flowers here in australia that say that they’re the whole grain but they’re actually sifted a bit you know and they do, sometimes they do process them a little bit um i found that out so at least you know what you’re Getting. Yeah. Yeah.
Alison:
Hmm. I’ve got my eye on the clock here, girls, and I think that probably we’re going to have to get you back for another episode because we
Andrea:
Could just talk
Alison:
Forever. There’s one other big kind of topic in your life that I want to touch on before we finish, for sure, because I know, aside from all the bread stuff, you make your own soap, and you’ve got Ellie’s Everyday Soap Making channel as well. And I remember a few weeks ago we were talking about soap, and you were saying you were thinking of it from an ancestral context and what you said to me really inspired me and made me think about soap differently. I wonder if you would share that with everyone.
Elly:
Can you remind me what I said to you?
Alison:
You were saying about how your nan used to use the same soap for everything. She had this one bar and just how I just looked at all the things in the supermarket, all these different soaps we have and thought, hang on, there’s something wrong here.
Elly:
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, gosh, yes. I think about soap making. When I first discovered soap making, I really fell in love with the history of it and I found some videos of Aleppo soap being made in, you know, these basement-level buildings in Aleppo.
Elly:
And sadly, a lot of those soap factories are gone now. but um it’s just incredible there are these really rich traditions of soap making all around the world and they’re usually well then nearly always and this isn’t surprising it certainly won’t be surprising to you too but they’re always you um made soaps in different places in the world are made with fats and oils that are accessible in that locality so in a lot of areas in the middle east and in spain and different um areas in europe uh olive oils and lots of um plant oils particularly olive is is a really um is a really rich tradition of olive oil soap making in lots of places um in america there’s this lots more people using um making really beautiful soaps using animal fats lard and beef tallow and there’s a real i think there’s a real um tradition of that certainly commercially here in australia as well um because you know beef is one of our biggest exports so there must be lots of companies using the um the fat from i don’t know.
Elly:
Hang on. I don’t know what I’m talking about here. I’m mixing up live exports between just export of meat. But anyway, there’s a lot of tallow soap made here. In a lot of South Asian countries, there’s loads of coconut oil soap and palm oil soap and setting aside the issues, ecological issues with palm oil. But there are traditions and histories associated with why certain countries use those oils. So I was thinking about soap making from that perspective and, you know, I’ve always, nearly always based a lot of my soap recipes on olive oil because it just so happens that it makes a very gentle soap and for my skin, it likes it. It’s the fatty acid profile of olive oil soap is really complimentary and it’s a really common base oil for that reason.
Elly:
Um but yeah in other countries I really um I was talking to a friend of mine who’s also a soap maker um saying I’m really not so focused on sharing my recipes I’m really much more focused on helping people to get the understanding and skills to be able to work out their own recipes because my audience is really diverse and quite global and I have actually my number one country, where my audience is at the moment is in India so I have, and I’ve been to India and I have a real connection with India so that kind of makes sense but you know olive oil is really expensive there whereas there are people there who’ve been in contact with me who.
Elly:
Their grandad had a coconut farm so their family make their own coconut oil so coconut oil soap recipe is going to be really suitable for them so I try and do, as much of a diversity as I can of different approaches and show people and I often say in my videos you don’t have to use my recipe this is just I’m showing you this technique with this ingredient but you could use another recipe depending on what oil you can get and I try and encourage people to think about where the oils come from and why you know they all have different properties and some oils like coconut oil so can be really drying but there are tricks that you can use to make it less drying. So, yeah, just trying to work around all those things so that people can have this nice balance between making their own soap and having their own homemade product with no packaging and, you know, just made with their own local ingredients if possible.
Alison:
It’s a whole other world, just like the salad bread is.
Elly:
Yeah, it really is. just.
Alison:
Like there are shelves of fluffed up white bread in
Elly:
Packages absolutely supermarket.
Alison:
Shelves there are all these soaps with ingredients that have really dubious provenance and that our skin soaks up just like we’re eating yeah and with plastic all around and ends up in the ocean and it’s a
Elly:
Whole nother world of making soap yeah and i know we’re running out of time but so if the thing with my grandmother like you know we don’t have to look too far back to see um women and men in our families doing things quite differently you know since the industrial revolution it’s not that long ago uh that things changed really quite dramatically and now we’re in this land of buying stuff off a supermarket shelf i i don’t make everything myself i shop at a supermarket but if there are a couple of really basic everyday type things like for me it’s soap and bread there’s a whole lot of other stuff i do too but i don’t have time to those are just the ones that i focus on um then then that’s a good start you know um yeah yeah great.
Alison:
So if people want to start with the soap, because I know I’d love to give it a go, where would you point them? Where would you point them?
Elly:
Yeah, I would first get them to think about where they are and what oils. So you need oil to make soap, basically, and what oils can they get that are accessible to them in their part of the world and affordable? And if they can’t afford to buy locally produced oils or sourced oils or fats, then even better. And not everybody would want to do this, but I actually think the best way to start making soap is to learn how to calculate your own soap recipe. Soap making is a bit of a serious craft. It does require some pre-learning. You do have to handle caustic soda and it’s quite a dangerous substance so I’ve got videos on nearly all of these subjects on my channel but I would be looking at learning the basic process and understanding how soap is made and then thinking about what kind of oil you want to use and learning it’s not that hard to do but learning how to calculate your own formulator recipe and just finding a simple recipe that fits a mold that you’ve got and fits the type of oil that you can get and and just start simple, yeah wonderful.
Alison:
So that kind of leads us on to um letting us know and let everyone listening know where we can find your videos for the bread and where we can find you where you hang
Elly:
Out great um well it is a little bit confusing i admit but um unfortunately i had to split my youtube channel into two because they are two really different niche subjects and youtube algorithm really likes specificity so i used to have my sour all of my original sourdough bread videos are on the same channel that is now ellie’s everyday soap making on youtube so it’s mostly soap stuff there but there is still some sourdough and i now have for the whole grain only sourdough bread making i have a channel ellie’s everyday whole grain sourdough and it’s it’s a very small little channel but i’m very dedicated to it i’ll just keep adding things there so if you’re into the whole grand sourdough that’s the place to to go to um and.
Alison:
Are you you’re
Elly:
On instagram and facebook as well yeah just ellie’s every day at both of those um places and i’m just wonderful very close to being finishing to being finished um building my website which will be ellie’s everyday.com i’m about a week or two off so very soon people i know yeah that will be really good so soon and and that will be really my home on the internet after that i’m really looking forward to having a bit of freedom from social media platforms and having my own place so that’s really going to be a resource hub and lots and lots of info there so um that.
Alison:
Will probably be up then by the time this episode goes
Elly:
Out okay yeah i’ll certainly be letting everybody know Andrea.
Alison:
Do you have any more questions for Ellie before we let her go?
Andrea:
When are we recording the next one? This was so exciting. It just feels so good. Thank you. I jokingly call it flour kraut.
Elly:
Oh, I love that.
Andrea:
But I love learning about sauerkraut and sourdough and this just feels so freeing and For everybody who just wants more of you, which I know we all do, your YouTube channel is amazing. So everybody can just go indulge. Now that the episode is almost over, you can just go straight over to YouTube and binge on LA videos. Yeah.
Elly:
They’re all the subjects, all the basic subjects on both Soap and Salado. They’re all covered there. Like I’ve really just tried to tick off all those things that people want to know.
Andrea:
So you can go to the playlist. titles are so clear it’s everything is so straightforward it’s that’s why you have hundreds of thousands of views because they’re really good and i can’t wait to do that i’m excited too like allison was saying about the soap i’m so excited about that because i do have quite a lot of tallow and lard being marcan so i’m that exact person you talked about
Elly:
Yeah that’s great i’ve got a good friend who i helped make her first soap using tallow that she rendered herself recently and um she was like oh can you make tallow soap and i went i can teach you and we can do it together and guess what tallow soap is one of the best, soaps in terms of the way like the way that like its qualities it’s lasting it’s lather all that stuff it’s a really good gentle soap too yeah that’s really good i really.
Alison:
Wish we could just get together in the kitchen and make some bread and make some soap and then sit down and eat that would be nice ellie is there anything else that you want to share
Elly:
Oh i don’t think i want to share anything else other than just my huge thanks and appreciation to you too for inviting me on the podcast it’s been really fun and um thanks for what you’re doing too i think it’s really exciting um i’ve been listening to the episodes and really enjoying it um learning a lot and i think it’s just wonderful what you’re doing sharing what you know with other people it takes some dedication to do that but i think it’s it’s so important to present alternatives and uh yeah help people learn these skills so congratulations it’s you’re doing a great job and.
Alison:
You too you’re doing
Elly:
The same thank you yeah we’re.
Alison:
All doing we’re all doing we’re all doing what we believe yeah
Elly:
Thanks thank.
Alison:
You ever so much for being with
Elly:
Us my pleasure our um.
Alison:
My morning haze and andrea’s nightly haze there with your with your birds i did hear this like in the back oh it was beautiful
Elly:
Gosh beautiful i hope they’re not too loud no.
Andrea:
We love it
Alison:
And i hope everyone’s enjoyed um the episode and and yeah hopefully in the future we’ll have you back but for now we we’ll say um
Elly:
Lovely great thank you thank you ellie bye elison bye andrea bye bye.
Alison:
Thank you so much for listening we’d love to continue the conversation come find us on instagram andrea’s at farm and heart
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