Sourdough Story

 Making sourdough bread is not a fast thing.  One measures the flours, heats the water, mixes them together and then let's the wheat soak up the moisture and chemical reactions to begin.  This site from King Author - really the King of bread making - tells all about this technique. What the Heck is Autolayse?  I have yet to hone in on how long I let my flour sit.  I need to make a better effort here. 

While this is happening, salt and sourdough starter are measured out.  I use a kitchen scale and I weigh in grams.  The bread made last nigh and pictured below gets 40 grams of salt for 1000 g flour mix.  I add a big gooey 500 grams of  starter to this 4 loaf recipe.   The water added above measures 1500 grams. 

After the initial autolayse phase (hah!  That rhymes!), the salt, starter and other ingredients are added in and mixed by hand.  The loaf below got 4 bunches of scallions chopped up, 2 cups of cheddar cheese, and 8-10 garlic cloves, thinly sliced.  Mixing is the fun part.  And then the dough, once mixed, is folded.  Up and over, around and around.  I do this a couple of times and then cover the giant blob of dough with a plastic cover. 

The living thing sits overnight.  In the morning, it has risen an impressive two-fold.  Bubbles are scattered about.  When they burst, the mass moves like it's alive.  Well, it is!  The giant blob is gently moved from the bowl to my work surface where I divide it into four, round the loaves, and set them in a Banneton Bowl cover with a wet cloth covering, and stuff them in the fridg for another long ferment.  Overnight, all afternoon....kind of depends on the day! 

Having my sense of smell back is extremely enjoyable while baking bread!  This loaf smells of hot scallions, poignant garlic and baked bread.  Cut into the hot loaf and enjoy the flavors which are a perfect match for the sourdough flavor.  

 I have been baking a dozen or more loaves of sourdough bread a week.  Found a great place to sell it - Slow Foods in the Tetons  Sourdough bread fits perfectly with their name and mission statement!  I think my breads have a cult following.  The online market opens at 0900 on Tuesday and by that night, just about all of my breads every week are sold out.  What a great warm and fuzzy feeling!! 

Thanks to the suggestion of dear friend Addie Hare, I bought a pasta roller attachment for my Kitchen Aid.  Stand back!  Homemade kale noodles now fill my lasagna and whole wheat crackers have been added to the que for the Slow Foods product list!  One of their customers recently asked them if they knew of any other place in town that sold these crackers!!  A fan is born!!  I make them plain, with flax seeds, herbs de Provence, rosemary/gourmet pepper, and black and white sesame seeds.  Brushes with a light coat of oil, sprinkled with a few grains of Maldon salt, they are wonderful on an appetizer plate! 

I don't think I'll have any problem keeping busy when I retire! 

Slogging Along

Spring has arrived in the west.  One day warm, blue sky and muddy.  The next - snowing, frozen ground and bone chilling cold.  It's a hard time mentally too.  Like the weather, it is hard to go from the extreme of ecstatic excitement and exclamation to gray sky doldrums.  Up and down; one's emotions tend to follow the weather far too closely this time of the year.  Add continued isolation to the scenario and watch the suicide rates rise.  We see it happen every year in this valley and so far, this year is no different than others.   

Mike is back from his Rochester NY visit.  He needed to go back.  It was a good visit.  Janet, his mom, continues to struggle with health challenges.  There seems to be no way to talk to her and this is so frustrating for everyone.  We hope she will get "dialed in" to her phone soon.

A beautiful shower door got hung this weekend!  After we finished, Mike told me the instructions begin with 'be sure to have a licensed professional hang these doors'!!  The glass panels were really heavy.  The instructions were not well written.  But nothing got broken and the door functions properly.  It's a lovely thing!!!  The new renters moved in yesterday!!  Welcome HOME!!

Here is some very impressive yard art!  I discovered these side by side flowers - fireweed - along a road in a high-end part of our valley.  This is a beautiful rendition of a fireweed.  Unusual, yes, but I appreciated the artist's ability to replicate the giant metal flower - probably 15' tall - in color and form perfectly!  They are one of the first flowers to come in after a fire, hence, their name sake!

I am currently immersed in Victor Frankl's lectures in a book called Yes to Life  Such a great thinker and writer!  Nothing frivolous about this writing, it's heavy reading indeed.  But like eating a hearty beef stew and sourdough bread, it is filling and satisfying.  

Spring!

 We have been spared the blizzard the east side of Wyoming is enduring right now.  There is blue sky and 47 degree temperature outside right now.  The snow is melting and the mud is getting deep!  The dogs and I went for a walk in Freedom.  Here are some pictures from that pretty day. 

I am reading some of Victor Frankl's lectures he gave after he was released from the prison camps.  Much pondering on the "Meaning of Life" in these lectures.  He provides some very good logic of why we must die and how our certain death gives us meaning.  Otherwise what point would there be to anything?  I have learned so much from his writing!  

As Mike's mom struggles with so many health issues now, it is easy, in the quiet moments of being alone, to ponder life's meaning.  Watching young people proclaim their struggles on Facebook, wishing they would spend some time learning from Frankl as well.  

Isn't it just this simple?  You have the choice to make your life whatever you want it to be.  Make it happy and glorious and supreme because with life, there is always something to celebrate.  Or get down and grovel in being miserable.  Many make this choice.  Sometimes it is easy to get sucked down there as things get hard and complicated and challenging.  But I tell you - there will always be something good, wonderful, and miraculous going on for you to find. 

Enough of this serious stuff.  I am off to make more Kraut!!  Find the Wonder of Life!!