With Oscar and Cooper, especially Cooper, it’s harder for me to get to spend a whole day in the kitchen because if I’m not sitting in the basement with them, they have to be in their crates. They can be a bit destructive! Since I’ve been canning so much, and all the work is done in the kitchen and only the actually canning (jars in the canner) happens in the basement, the boys have been in the crates way more than I would prefer.
This morning there were several things that HAD to happen so I took Oscar and Cooper outside and played with them (I.e., ran off a lot of their energy), then brown them inside, let them relax a bit with me on the sofa, then got them into their crates and I went upstairs to work in the kitchen.
Vince loves bread with seeds. In the mornings, he will fix himself a couple of pieces of toast, put sunflower butter on them and add chia seeds. I’ve tried several seeded bread recipes and he wasn’t so happy with them but he likes this one from Grains & Grit. My other favorite place for fresh milled flour recipes is Grains in Small Places. Both of these ladies seem to work their recipes and re-work them until they are 100% satisfied with them and both of them seem committed to using fresh milled flour in all their recipes. Once you get used to the fresh milled flour, it’s pretty hard to go back.
Yesterday in my order from Azure Standard, I was able to get 50 pounds of Khorasan. It is a beautiful, thick, plump grain. I guess you have to love milling your own flour to be so excited about a grain! 🙂
This is probably my favorite of all grains. It can be hard to find and it can be a good bit more than other grains but it’s so worth it to me. I think it makes better bread and is easier to work with. Khorasan is currently $1.41/pound and hard white wheat is currently $1.28/pound (both are the prices when purchasing a 50 pound bag at Azure plus the transportation charges) so I’m not going to not get Khorasan because of the price but I do mix the two grains just because Khorasan is sometimes hard to get. I have another 50 pounds bag in my cart for the next delivery. If I get that, I won’t order it again for a while. As much as I like it, I rarely use more than 60% Khorasan in a recipe. In today’s recipe, I used 60% Khorasan, 20% hard white and 20% hard red.
It has cooled and we’ve had our taste test and Vince says he will stop buying seeded bread at the grocery store if I continue to bake this bread. I think I’m going to add a few more seeds to the dough and not put the seeds on top because they fall off when cutting and even though I’ve tried brushing the dough with water, milk or oil before adding the seeds, they just don’t stick well.
It is interesting that I’m still using hard red wheat from 2008. That’s about when I first started milling flour and I had no idea there was another grain for bread making besides hard red wheat. I bought a ton . . maybe literally . . of it. We would go to Kansas City and I would buy it at Whole Foods out of the bins for .60/pound. I had a friend whose husband grew hard red wheat and I got quite a bit from her. It’s all vacuum sealed in half gallon jars. I haven’t purchased hard red wheat since 2008 and still have enough for at least a few years.
The little wall oven was full and I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to bake the bread in there with the roast but it all fit. Those gliding oven racks take up a lot of space and I have never been able to use both racks at the same time. I could raise the top shelf up but the Dutch oven wouldn’t fit then. I didn’t ask for those racks and twice the appliance company told me they would replace them but never did so . . they’re mine forever I suppose.
About every four or five days I make yogurt and sour cream. Yogurt in the quart jar; sour cream in the pint jar. I use sour cream for some of our salad dressings. One of the things on the menu for Sunday is to bake that giant potato and serve it with shredded roast beef, cheese, sour cream and gravy! Yum!
In the summer, the sun room stays HOT so I can leave the sour cream and yogurt sitting in there with the door closed and it’s done in about 8 hours.
I’m fixing to go up, get the roast out of the oven. It has potatoes and carrots cooking with it; then I’ll cook some corn on the cob, clean up my mess and the kitchen will be closed for the rest of today! 🙂
vivoaks says
To get your seeds to stick to the top of your bread, mix one egg white with 1 tablespoon of water. Brush this on and dump your seeds on while it’s still wet. Most of your seeds will stick then. I use this all the time when I add sesame seeds to my bread and it works great! 🙂
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I’ve tried that too. The smaller seeds (sesame,flax, fennel) will stick but the oats, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds don’t stick as well and when I slice the bread, they mostly fall off.
Rosalie says
Judy, how is your finger?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Almost perfect. Thanks for asking. The finger is healed but the nail is still an issue. I feel like, from what I can see, that the nail isn’t cut all the way across but it’s cut completely through about 1/2″ across, from the side next to the ring finger to the bottom of the nail near the other side. I really don’t think I’m going to lose the nail . . maybe I’m just hoping but the nail around the cut is no longer attached to my finger and every day, a bit more of it “lets go”. It feels really weird but isn’t painful at all. The area under the cut nail has now healed over so I think there’s no longer a danger of infection I’m still wearing a rubber glove and the garden gloves when working outside but otherwise,I can do everything else like I used to do, including washing dishes. 🙁
montanaclarks says
Stop saying your two and one? year old pups are destructive–you are scaring me!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 Kaycee isn’t really destructive, except with my knitting if she gets her teeth into it, but she is always into something–the bathroom trash can (which is now in the tub), our shoes, the rugs, etc.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I’ve only ever had dachshund puppies and they’ve all be destructive. For a while I was able to leave Oscar alone while I went 10 steps to the bathroom but lately, he’s gotten back into finding something to tear up. The printer is downstairs, sitting on a desk so there’s no way to “secure” it. In the old printer, printed pages went into a tray with sides. The new printer it lays on an open try and the dogs can see it sticking and the minute I leave the room, they both run to the printer to see if there are papers and, if so, the shredding begins. They love floss too. There’s a tiered tray next to where I sit and if they can find a skein of floss in there, it’s all over the room. I try to be extra careful about not leaving floss in there now that they expect to find some. They will chew on an embroidery hoop. Oscar chewed one of the pegs on my new stitching stand the same day it arrived. I will not leave them alone for one second and am hoping they grow out of that soon.