(Non)sour bread with appel stroop

Since a proper sour dough rye bread is practically unavailable here, I keep experimenting with all sorts of recipes to achieve something similar, preferably without going through the whole trouble of make-your-own rye starter. I had a recipe using some molasses kind of thing, which we normally do not buy either; and there I came up with an idea to use appel stroop instead, because it is similar consistency thing, just with apple flavor, obviously. I suppose honey or any other honey like substance could work too, especially if it is on a sour side.

Need:

for plikinys (boiling water starter):
100g rye flour
2 table spoons of appel stroop or molasses
1 table spoon of caraway seeds
300 ml water
1 tea spoon of citric acid
2 table spoons of bran (zemelen, sėlenos)

for dough:
300 g of rye flour
100 g of wheat flour
1 table spoon of salt
1 table spoon of brown bastard sugar
2 table spoons of sunflower oil
14 g of dry yeast
250 ml of warm water

Part I: Plikinys
Boil the water with molasses/apple stroop, caraway and citric acid, stir it so it is evenly dissolved. Pour 100 g of rye flour into boiling water and whisk it like hell, so it turns into a smooth mass without lumps. Stir in bran and leave the whole thing to rest for a few hours.

Part II: Bread
To the bread baker add water, boiling water starter (aka Plikinys, kneaded/stirred a little) and the rest of the ingredients, with dry yeast at the end, on top. Set to whole grain program (longest possible). Alternatively, knead, let it rise, knead again, let it rise, bake till done.

Notes:
It is not a bread that rises much, if at all. It is worth exploring a possibility to use 200g rye and 200g of wheat mix for the dough. Also, I did not knead the starter before adding it to the bread baker, which seemingly resulted in some areas with a bit of more appel stroop. Not that it is a very bad thing, but I'd rather have it more evenly spread.

Sweet and Sour Chicken with a Pineapple

An idea of this dish is that of an Asian kitchen, but as usually, there is an European twist to it, to make it easier and faster to make from what is widely available in a local supermarket. We all are familiar with a typical Chicken-tonight or Chicken Sweet&Sour sauce jars. Those usually are great if you want to stock pile the jars themselves, but at some point I really got fed up that usually it is only a few scraps of vegetables swimming in it. Figuring it can't be that hard to make it, I decided to try and do my own. Result actually does not take longer than making it from a jar, and definitely is more filling.

Need:
200g of chicken filet
1 large carrot (it can be small as well, just more annoying to cut)
1 red sweet paprika
1 normal size onion
1 can of pineapples (300 ml one or smaller. As long as you get them swimming in half a cup of juice, it is fine.)
1 mug of basmati rice (aka about 300 mil, roughly)

3 spoons of plain tomato ketchup
2 spoons of soya sauce (ketjap manis or any other darker kind)
1 spoon of corn starch (here in NL it is Maizena)

Spicing: a pinch of pepper, salt, ginger powder. Though, to be honest, there is enough flavor in this to skip on spices entirely.

So, first put a pot with water (about 2 liters) for rice on fire, it will take a while for it to start boiling.

Start with the veggies, clean the carrot and shop it into pieces, more or less what you normally see swimming in pre-made sauce. Put a bit of oil in the pan (bigger and deeper is better), throw a carrot in, put it on medium fire so it does not burn too quickly, etc. Chop paprika into similar size pieces, throw in. Cut the chicken into more or less half bite pieces, add to the pan. Cut the onions into blocks, add to the pan. Open your pineapple can, fish out pineapples (save the liquid you will need that later!), cut the pineapples if they are not in the blocks already, add to the pan. Fry it for 3-5 minutes, while you are making the sauce.

Somewhere in between this process a water for rice started boiling - add rice, stir it with a fork and cook for 8 minutes, occasionally stirring so it does not stick to the bottom. Try to not overcook it.

Now action moves to the pineapple tin can (or a cup if you poured the juice out). To the pineapple juice add 3 spoons of ketchup, 2 spoons of soya sauce and 1 spoon of corn starch. Whisk it, so the starch is not in the lumps (children toy whisk is lovely for that, but simple spoon/fork can do too). Add this liquid to the frying pan and stir, stir, STIR, so everything gets coated well in sauce.

Get the excess water off the cooked rice (aka sift) and serve with the chicken.