Tag Archives: sourdough

Plain bread in the dark.

bread, food and cooking, home, ,

This time around I made a rather plain sourdough, which turned out to be even plainer than I wanted. It was all unbleached wheat flour, no seeds or rye or anything exciting. I made a smaller batch that would produce two medium loaves, and originally hoped to get it done in two or three days instead of what’s been happening lately, where my sourdough sponge waits in the cold garage day after day till I can finally be home for a day to finish it.

But it took four days this time. Here’s how it went:

Thursday evening: Mixed the flour, water and starter in a bowl and left it covered on kitchen counter.

Friday: Moved the bowl to the cold garage.

Saturday evening: added yeast, oil, salt and flour.

Sunday: Nothing

Monday morning: Used a little flour to form two loaves, 1# 12 oz. each. Put them in loaf pans into a slightly warmed oven.

Monday morning: The power went out.

Monday all day: The loaves continued to rise slowly and I was assuming we’d have electricity in time to bake them. Nope, that was not to be the case.

Monday evening: I had got a fire going in the wood stove, and began to realize that I’d need to bake the bread using that heat somehow. At first I thought I might put the pans right on the coals, but Mrs. Bread (haha, you would imagine she’d have good advice!) made me realize that it would be too much direct heat for aluminum pans. So I heated the cast iron Dutch oven on the narrow shelf of the stove for a half hour and sort of poured the two proofed loaves into it, and put the lid back on.

I baked it about an hour, which I think was more than necessary. I wasn’t used to a loaf with all white flour, and in the light from the flashlight it looked greenish. Having no heat from above, it didn’t brown much on the top. While the bread baked I fried eggs for my dinner in a cast iron skillet on the other side of the stove.

As soon as the bread was out of the pot, I had to try a slice. Oh, it has the nicest crumb, so “custardy” as they say, and the skin is crispy! Actually, the bottom was burnt, but easily sliced off. The sourness is perfect. But – as soon as I took a bite, I realized that I had not put in the salt!! Aaargh. So, in addition to being baked in an old-fashioned way, it has a rather old-fashioned flavor. I read once that our colonial foremothers who baked bread every day made a plain loaf that would seem terribly bland to our taste, with little to no oil, sugar, or salt. At least mine is tangy. 🙂

Slow food and other good things.

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Sunday was a long and stimulating day for me, with church, the symphony right afterward, and going out to dinner with my goddaughter for her birthday. I was a long time winding down when I finally got home, and stayed up till midnight. That usually bodes ill for the next day, but today has been very satisfying so far. I took a walk, made soup, got my sourdough sponge on to the next stage, wrote a letter, and watched the birds for a while.

In addition to the hummingbird feeder I’ve got two feeders supplied with black oil sunflower seeds. This morning two dozen finches (house and gold), chickadees, sparrows and juncos were flitting back and forth from one to another and to the fountain. When a pair of fat robins landed on the fountain I did a double-take, startled at their size after seeing so many little birds day after day.

On my walk I took a loop through the park where we used to attend the homeschool park days (they continue), and noticed for the first time two species of abutilon, though they are big bushes that have obviously been around for years. All of the plant pictures here are from my walk.

 

This time I didn’t add any regular yeast to the Swedish Sourdough Rye, and I’m baking it all in pans. That’s how I used to do it in yesteryear, and it worked for me back then. I don’t have any patience with my fancy Dutch oven boules right now, and want some tidy slices for the toaster. I divided the sloppy dough into small, medium and large lumps and poured them into greased loaf pans, small, medium and large. At the moment they are rising like the very Slow Food that they are, and I’m counting on them being out of the oven before bedtime — not talking about midnight this time!

Orange and yellow and coziness.

food and cooking, winter, ,

One reason I haven’t baked any Christmas cookies yet is, I have so much other cooking to do! I’m trying to eat vegetables, and they take time. I like to make bread, but I admit that is not a high priority. I must learn to prioritize better. I’m always telling other people that “We can’t do everything all the time,” but I guess I don’t listen to myself. Or more to the point, I’m not willing to say No to myself.

This picture is after the sponge had been sitting on the counter for several days. You can see how it rose up the sides of the bowl and then fell again, before I added the zest and the caraway and anise seeds.

I made such a big batch of dough for my Swedish Sourdough Rye, I hadn’t bought enough oranges from which to get the zest. So I put in some lemon zest as well. This dough had a total of five days to ferment, because it kept being “not a good day” for finishing it. Today when the computer guy was here setting up my new computer, I planned to bake it, but I think I was still trying to do too many things at once, and one of the loaves didn’t work out, shall we say. I don’t want to talk about it.

I got fat yellow carrots in my farm box, and leeks, both of which I cooked. There was a head of Savoy cabbage in there, which I put away for later, after taking out the last head of regular cabbage from a farm box last month and roasting it in the oven with the carrots.

The beautiful loaf of bread baked for 50 minutes in the Dutch oven at 500 degrees, so I’m confident it’s well cooked. I put it in the freezer for a time one of these winter nights when I have someone else at my table, maybe along with a pot of soup. Roasted vegetables are comfort food, but more coziness is coming!

Bright day and shining friend.

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After two cloudy days, one of which was a little drizzly “down here,” we woke this morning to bright blue skies. As I was sitting at the breakfast table I noticed that the mountains in the distance had snow on them, and were transformed. Their changed appearance added contrast and texture to the entire landscape. 🙂 I would go on the deck and take a picture of Pikes Peak as soon as I ate the last bites of scrambled egg.

I forgot to do it, but I did take a picture of my sourdough sponge that I had put to ferment the night before. There isn’t a large enough bowl here for it so I had put it in a casserole and then set the lid on. It was nice and bubbly this morning and I put the lid back on. In a couple of days it will be sour enough for me to want to make some kind of bread with it.

I forgot to take that mountain picture because I was so excited about my trip to the Denver area today to see blogger Pom Pom! She and I have known each other through our blogs for nearly ten years, but this was to be our first in-person encounter.

It took me 45 minutes to make the drive, in Soldier’s little Honda Fit with its stick shift. It makes me feel younger to drive a manual transmission; when my back is not out it is fun. The short trip was pretty nice, watching the sky and few clouds, and the fascinating and varied terrain, which I resolved to read more about. What is this — the high desert, the high prairie, a high mountain valley, or something else? I got more views of the snowy peaks on my drive there, and again late in the afternoon on my return. The topographic high point of the drive was Monument Hill, 7300 ft.

My time with Pom Pom was quite lovely. Of course she is a much fuller and whole person when encountered altogether and not just through words, and I already knew that I loved her. We did talk and talk, and we took a walk around her neighborhood that is very colorful with turning leaves. She gave me a yummy lunch, with the slenderest candles burning like sun rays out of apples decorating our table. I wanted to take pictures of everything in her house, but I didn’t take one picture, because she in her shining self commanded my interest — my very self-centered interest, it appears, because I do believe she got me to talk about me 80% of the time. Well, we will meet again and I hope again, when I visit Soldier and Joy in the future.

Here is something so surprising, that Pom Pom and I found out today. We talked about our book groups, and what we had been reading, etc., and discovered that the current selection for each of them is a collection of Flannery O’Connor’s stories. How unlikely is that? Her group is meeting before mine so she may help me prepare for a challenging discussion.

This evening I interrupted my dinner when I saw the sunset, already fading, and took its picture. Next week we may get some snow, before I return home. And one day maybe I’ll get an image of the snowy mountain view posted here. For now, to you, a Colorado evening turned to “Good-night!”