Category Archives: bread

The fountain is dry, but not I.

bees, bread, my garden, travel, , , , , ,

This morning the fountain-cleaner Bill did his good work scrubbing and flushing out my fountain, and then left it empty and turned off. I am traveling a lot in the next month and don’t want it to become a swamp while I’m gone.

Out my bedroom window.

The garden is looking pretty good right now because it’s entering the flowery time of year, and because I’ve had several days to focus on it, to be out there noticing not just little weeds that are easily pulled out of mulch, but this and that glorious scent and sight.

On my neighborhood walks, too, I’m spying perfection of Japanese maples…

…and at church, just look at the wisteria! I could only fit about half of its span in the frame:

Springtime is downright boggling, to the mind and the heart.

During the few days that were cloudy and gloomy, I washed the dirt from my hands and put them into the sourdough. My recent loaf is very tasty, but it would not rise — well, not much. After several hours I gave up and hoped for oven spring, which did not happen. So I got this stunted result, shown after I had sliced it to store in the freezer, so I can take out one slice (2 1/4 inch tall) at a time.

Soon I was back outside again, planting three butternut squash starts and a Juliet tomato plant in the planter boxes. There is no frost in the forecast, and I will soon be gone to Wisconsin for a while, for the first of the grandchild weddings. My original plan was to just wait until mid-May this year to plant summer vegetables, but it seems worth the risk at this point to get them in sooner.

We Orthodox are entering Holy Week on Sunday. I will be away from my parish for most of it, and through Bright Week, and away from my home and garden, so any real-time reports I might have time for will be field reports, or travelogues. For now, I’m soaking up all the familiar and beloved elements of my world to fortify myself against the asphalt and airports that lie between me and daughter Pearl’s garden. Once I arrive there, I will be well nourished by hugs and kisses from a dozen or more family members, and won’t even think of my lemon tree or coral bells back here.

But not quite yet! When I noticed the bee with its head in the lithodora (picture at top), I was mostly looking at the Blue-eyed Grass nearby. It is so sweet it breaks my heart.

My favorite kind of autumn day.

bread, homemaking, my garden, , , , ,

I am too busy to write here, but I guess the dishes, the laundry, the sweeping and the paperwork will have to wait a little longer, because I am so in love with this November day, I have to write it down. It would take even more time if I were to write a letter to the grandchildren about it, so they will have to wait, too.

The sky and the clouds! It must be that rain in October and November make for a splendid season, and not just because of the lovely damp-but-mild feeling of the air. As I understand, the rain somehow makes the leaf colors brighter. I drove past a vineyard last week that surprised me so — the colors of the leaves were not just the usual red and yellow and orange, but wide-ranging in deep purples and pinks as well. In my garden the pomegranates have not started turning, and the snowball bush barely.

But I have color. My purples are, or should be, my figs. I think this year’s crop is going to be a big loss, because of the relatively cool summer. Yesterday I saw this single fruit ripening. This morning, a meddlesome crow had tasted it and also found it not ready.

A nasturtium is blooming, and the tithonia still going pretty strong. Yesterday I picked more zinnias, again, to replace those that were turning brown in this vase where I’ve been able to just renew the bouquet in part every few days. But this week may truly be the end, unless the rainy weather keeps the frost off. That would be okay with me.

Yesterday evening was when our neighborhood trash cans are set out at the curb to be emptied the next morning. I wanted to cut enough plant material to fill my yard waste bin, so I worked on cutting the asparagus fronds that are turning gold. I had no sooner begun but gentle raindrops began falling on my head, carrying on another autumn tradition.

The milkweed I cut to the ground last month, as it had been wasted by aphids as is its usual late summer fate, has sent up a new and fresh shoot, green and tender and untouched by any hardship. It won’t last long, but in the meantime it cheers my heart and makes food for next summer’s valiant show.

As long as this mild weather continues, I can put off another task of my housework: carrying wood, building fires and dealing with all the mess around the stove. But as soon as that becomes necessary again, I’ll have one more activity that makes me happy. For today, I am happy with my breadmaking, washing dishes, and wandering around the autumn garden.

Rain on zinnias, seeds on crackers.

bread, food and cooking, my garden, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was hard to keep up with myself last week, and with all the friends, projects and tasks that fill my life to overflowing. I guess I was somewhat playing catch-up after my mountain retreat the previous week. The garden got gently rained on three times that last week of September, which is unusual. Combined with fog on other days, the dampness caused mildew in the planter boxes, but mostly the lower leaves of the tall zinnias have been affected.

When I noticed the Japanese anemones looking better than ever, it occurred to me to plant a few more this fall, maybe some pale pink ones — but I corrected my impulsivity in time, and won’t be taking on one more project, what with so many others unfinished. A more reasonable goal would be to try to take better care of the anemones I have, and see if they can be encouraged to be taller and more robust. It’s a sign of their middling health, that they do not ever spread and multiply, and their flowers are few and small.

The sneezeweed I grow in a pot looks as well as it ever has. I bought it a few years ago at a native plant nursery, because I love the mountain versions of the flower. I put it in a pot so I could be sure to water it enough; the irrigation settings for most of my garden are set for drought-tolerant plants, and sneezeweed is not one of those. My type is pretty plain, or at least monochromatic, compared to the mountain ones.

In search of fancier kinds, a few months ago I browsed sneezeweeds online for quite a while, and ordered seeds for this one, Purple-Headed. When I am looking at seed catalogs or even plants in nurseries, all the options seem so do-able and desirable. But once the time comes to get on with the actual work of planting… well, I literally drag my feet. So who knows what will happen with these seeds…

I used my sourdough starter twice last week, first to make a large pan loaf of seeded wheat-and-spelt bread. This is the recipe I have been trying to perfect, but perfection hasn’t happened yet. I may have to pause the sourdough project while I branch out and reach back, to other breads I have made or have wanted to try, like chocolate bread, Indian flatbreads, and applesauce rye.

Buttery Sourdough Crackers was a satisfying recipe that used a bit of starter. This picture shows the dough as it was resting overnight, along with leaves of the lemon verbena that I am drying, after pruning my plant for the first time ever.

I used this recipe for: Rustic Sourdough Butter Crackers as my jumping off place, substituting half dark rye flour, and adding sesame seeds to one half, and poppy seeds to the other. I baked them a lot longer than the recipe called for. The resulting crackers are nice and crispy and easy to eat. The butter ingredient plus the sourdough tang is a great combination.

My friend Lucy and I took another one of our monthly walks, up in the hills again but to a park she hadn’t been to before. It’s mostly very brown up there now, but the poison oak is making red splashes in the landscape. And my old friend tarweed!

The Seek app tells me this is not either of the species I saw on my way up the mountain last month, but Hayfield Tarweed. And it seems to come in white or yellow versions, in one case growing side by side:

The third online Beowulf class was this week, and I spent more than two happy hours in the company of the most delightful teachers, Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau. They both love the subject, and Richard is definitely a Beowulf scholar from way back. I will have to at least quote a couple of lines from the poem here eventually, though it seems that unlike me, most people I’ve talked to got an introduction to Beowulf in school. So you may already be more familiar with the story than I.

Apple orchard where I go.

At the end of the week, I remembered: apples! It’s time to make a trip my favorite apple ranch, and see which of their 30+ varieties is available now. I squeezed it in on Saturday afternoon, and added a stop at a nursery out that way, hoping they would have starts of some kind of leafy greens I could tuck into spaces in the planter boxes after I take out zucchini and tomatoes and eggplant. They did!

So here in the back of my car is a mix of apples Empire, Jonathan and Macintosh; and six packs of Swiss chard and collards. I do have chard growing right now, but I think I need more. And I wasn’t able to get collards started from seed in August.

One more glad sighting of late summer I want to share, is this half wine barrel that was unplanted through last winter:

When I put in some snapdragon plants in late spring, I noticed a couple of tiny mystery plants that didn’t look like weeds, so I left them undisturbed. Now everything has filled out and I find that I have beautiful Thai basil and tropical sage complementing the snaps. Gardens are ever surprising.

Happy October!

Mountain Sourdough

bread, cabin, mountains, ,

When I was getting ready to come up here to my high mountain cabin for several days, I didn’t like the idea of leaving my sourdough starter at home with no one to feed it for most of a week. Then I realized, I could bring it with me. That is what is great about road trips — you have lots of flexibility and options. Every experience of air travel makes me love road-tripping more.

So I did bring my jar of starter, and along with it the likelihood that I would cook something with it, too. Because even if I only fed it every other day, it might outgrow the half-gallon jar I use. I didn’t want to have to throw out, or actually discard, the discard.

I really dislike the thought of throwing away good food such as sourdough starter, which is one reason I keep mine in a big jar, and why I have developed my current bread recipe so that it uses 1 1/2 cups of starter for one loaf. Many people use their discard to make pancakes or biscuits in between bread-bakings, but that is not convenient for me.

I didn’t have a plan for what I would cook, but I knew I could accomplish something like pancakes or even a loaf of bread without reference to a recipe, because I’ve had lots of experience adapting or creating recipes, and nearly all the results were at least edible and nutritious. Last night when I was browsing ideas for sourdough biscuits (which I made a lot of for a big family, but long ago), I ran across a recipe for flatbread, and as I’ve been wanting for a long time to experiment with flatbreads, I went with that.

Last night before bed I mixed the simple dough, of 1 cup starter, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 cup of milk. I covered it to further ferment overnight, and this afternoon made eight flatbreads with it, in a cast iron skillet. There was frost on the deck this morning, and it was 32 degrees when I checked at 7:00, so it was a good day for baking, whether in the stove or on top. And the first day of autumn. ❤

First I cooked them with a little olive oil in the pan. Then I tried each one in half a pat of butter, and the last few lumps dough I sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar as I folded and rolled them out, so that I ended up with a cinnamon sourdough flatbread. If I were to try this again, I might use water instead of milk, and hope to get a chewier bread; the cinnamon-sugar version wasn’t worth repeating. I’m already half-planning, though, that next summer I will bake a simple loaf of sourdough bread in the Dutch oven I saw in the cupboard.

Other than one pie I baked at the cabin, I have little experience baking at high altitudes; my son-in-law made a great pizza here at 8200 feet. Is it mostly cakes that are tricky, up where water turns to steam at 195 degrees? If any of you has personal  experience you’d like to share, I’d be interested.