New adventures in sourdough

The sourdough starter I, erm, started a few months ago is going really well, and I have spent the last few months working on improving my sourdough bread. I haven't perfected it yet, but I am getting better, with more good outcomes than failures. I use my kenwood to do most of the kneading, which saves some time and elbow grease :-)

Here is my starter bubbling away on baking day.

I have become a big fan of the soft sourdough bread from Gina's blog - in fact it is the bread I make most often at the moment. I love the flavour - not just the sourdough part but also the honey. The honey flavour and aroma really comes through in this bread, so it is interesting to experiment with different types of local honey.

As a soft loaf it is also good for sandwiches (and of course makes great toast). Granted you don't get that artisinal chewy crust, but I have found the recipe to be really reliable, resulting in a tasty bread with a good texture. The version with added oatmeal is also delicious. However it is an all-day exercise due to the long rising periods required (no commercial yeast is used). Here is a recent loaf, and some rolls I made using the same recipe.

I've blogged before about Matron's sourdough english muffins, and I've made them a few times as well - they do freeze well (assuming there are any left!)

Have you tried baking with sourdough? Do you have a favourite recipe?

Getting back to home made

It is well past time for me to get back into making more and buying less. I got out of the habit when overwhelmed with work+work+uni, but as the weather gets cooler and I have time before next semester I need to re-establish some good habits.

Step 1: Bread. I have a new sourdough starter fermenting which should be ready to start baking with it next week. In the meantime I will get back to making bread rather than buying it.

Step 2: I will start making yoghurt using the cultures I bought. I made a batch 2 days ago, and converted about 3/4 into labna (yoghurt cheese). My next experiment will be to infuse the milk with vanilla bean before making the yoghurt to see if I can come close to the flavour of 5am's very delicious (but expensive) vanilla bean yoghurt. I'll let you know how that goes.

Step 3: Get back into make some hard cheese. I think I'll start with caerphilly as it has a short maturing time, and we enjoyed it last time.

Step 4: Eat through the food we have in the pantry. We have loads of dried beans and I still have some ham bones and a hock or two so this excellent soup will be getting a few runs in the next couple of weeks. The presence of dozens of jars of fruit suggests that there will be a lot of crumble made and consumed in winter :-)

Got my bread making mojo back

Hurrah! A loaf of sourdough I'm happy with! I pretty much followed the no knead bread recipe featured in the NY Times a few years ago, but added the starter (my new one) in the first step. It has a fantastic flavour, and the chewy crust we like. The only issue is that it was, I think, still a bit 'damp' so next time I'll reduce the water. It was a bit of a gamble as I didn't know how much water to remove to compensate for the water content of the starter.

In other good news, while we were away our new bidirectional meter was installed (only took a week - what's the story SPAusnet? :-)  ), and on wednesday the electricity company confirmed they'd received our tariff acceptance, so our solar is installed, running and making us money. From signing the order and paying the deposit to now it's been less than 2 months. We'll be eligible for the 60c feed-in tariff until 2024. Gotta be happy with that! In the past week we've fed in around 58kWh. Stay tuned - I'm sure there will be a chart or 2 coming up once I have a few months of meter readings :-)

We also took delivery of an important part of our "let the grass win" veg garden and orchard strategy - a Fiskar's momentum reel mower. Funky looking eh? It's still a bit wet (we've had over 70mm rain in the past 3 days) to give it a really good test, but we had a play with it today and I think it will be great. I really like the fact that the wheels are behind so there's no missed bits of mowing under the wheels, and it gets really close to the edges of things, It's light to push, quiet, and - even better - it throws the clippings forward so it kinda mulches the clippings as it goes and doesn't give you grassy feet. Will certainly be quieter, more fun and more environmentally friendly to use than the strimmer / whipper snipper. But no, we're not planning to mow the "home farm" acre+ with it ... although we probably could, but the ride-on is more fun for Jerry.

 Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

We've been cooped up this weekend

Well, not literally, but we have been working in the coop quite a bit. With the recent rain we realised that the chickens didn't have enough dry area for dust bathing, and 'hanging out' without being ankle deep in mud. So Jerry built a "porch" extension, and added some guttering and a water collection barrel with a shade cloth filter. We just need to put a tap in the blue barrel, and then we'll have a self-watering system for the chickens. I threw in a few bags of leaves we collected in autumn et voila! I also started putting a wire plant protection system along the fenceline so I can plant herbs and other chicken crops in the coop and let the chickens feed on them, but stop the chickens scratching the plants out.

We also got 2 new point of lay chickens from a friend - although they're not point of lay anymore as they both laid an egg yesterday and today. I guess they like their new home. Some other chooks have started laying again so we're getting about 4 eggs a day now which is great.

Jerry also made a new extended chicken shelter for the main run, where the girls can hang out during the day, but feel secure because it's low to the ground and shady (70% shade cloth covered with clear perspex on a leftover cedar decking frame with a metal base we "rescued" from the tip). The piece of tin at the back is to stop the water running though when it rains and making the area muddy.

Then it was time to clean out the greenhouse and wash seed  pots and the potting bench in preparation for  this year's plantings. I also decided the aloe vera needed repotting - and ended up with 12 separate plants! You can see them in the back of the picture. I also heeled in the yacon, oca, and queensland arrowroot tubers I bought from Green Harvest, and planted some nicola potatoes in a nice frost free bed near the water tank we use for the fire protection system.

Then I decided what the heck I'd plant some capsicum, chilli, tomato, eggplant, basil and zaatar and pop them on the heated seed mat inside.I can keep them frost free and warm in the greenhouse until it's time to plant out in mid November.

And finally I made a loaf of rye/wholemeal spelt/white bread.

Now I think I will have the rest of the afternoon off and take a nice long bath and read a book!

Sunday afternoon kitchen frenzy

After working all morning, the afternoon was a whirlwhind of kitchen activity.

First, I made some farmhouse cheddar.

Then I made a tea loaf. Then to make best use of the oven and some of the whey from the cheese I made 3 loaves of english "muffin" bread.

 

Then it was time to clear up the mess, and soak some kidney beans for tomorrow nights chilli.

Finally I made some dinner - Moroccan lamb casserole. Hope it tastes as good as it smells!

Now, where's my glass of wine..........

Monday's harvest

Gosh, Monday again!  That means Phillip Glennister on the tele (Ashes to Ashes) and a big bowl of veges and rice or noodles as Jerry's playing football (the "proper" roundball one!). Today's harvest for dinner was the first of the purple sprouting broccoli (rather late this year), some coriander from the greenhouse, and a lovely pointy spring cabbage - my first for the season. I also retrieved 5 eggs from the girls....who are still annoyed about being locked up in their new coop!

Tonight I've decided to treat myself and include some home made bacon in my meal. I'm soaking it for an hour or so to make it a bit less salty, as I dry-cure my bacon, and this one was a bit salty. Of course, I won't be using all of this bacon! A slice or two will be plenty for flavour.

On the agenda for tomorrow - making a loaf of sourdough, so I've fed 'Harry' and he's bubbling away on the bench in preparation!

Latest harvest and kitchen happenings

I've just taken a heap of photos in and around the garden - head over to our flikr site to see them. Meanwhile.......

Tomatoes in the solar drier, some of the 9kg of potatoes I harvested today, and pears in the electric dehydrator


More sourdough - my first attempt at a fruit/spice sourdough loaf (not bad, but needs more fruit) and a wholemeal/white sourdough mix. YUM!

Bread and potatoes

After a few months of "life" my sourdough starter is producing fantastic tasting sourdough bread...and after much trial and error I can also get bread that won't break your toe if you drop it!!

I confess that I do let the breadmaker do most of the kneading and the initial proofing - but I enjoy the rather therapeutic punching down and final kneading...particularly after a stressful day in the office!!!

Yesterday I also cleared out one of the potato beds and sorted the potatoes into "eat now" and "store". I now have about 7 kg of potatoes in a hessian sack in the utility room, and a couple of kilos for eating in the potato draw. There are probably still about 40 potato plants to harvest in the garden too.........