Sunday, August 29, 2010

Yeast beast

I accidentally used too much yeast (well for my original recipe. I fixed that quick.). It was awesome.
1 cup water. From the 150 line on up is yeast. 3 minutes in.
5 minutes in. About 30 seconds later yeast foam flopped out onto my counter.
Done kneading and put into the bowl. Picture was taken at 7:54.


7:59. 5 minutes later.

8:20. I punched it down at this point for its 2nd rise. Reached the same size in 5 minutes. The end loaf was HUGE.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Fun in the kitchen

I found a blog the other night that had some awesome recipes. The whole blog itself is rather inspiring but the food. Oh man the food. One such recipe was for butter so I gave it a whirl. This was before I added some oomph to it. Just heavy whipping cream in a jar shook to high hell.
This is after the spice (Mediterranean mix) had been added and the butter shaped. The flavor is ok. I have another container of the cream so I'm going to try the flavoring that was in the recipe (salt, honey, and rosemary). I did make a loaf of bread intended for this but it got gobbled up with a different topping. I have used this in my pans when I make eggs and it works really well (not sure why I thought it wouldn't). You can smell the spice but the actual flavor is really light. Overall I like it. Going to tweak it a bit though.
The new house has red currant bushes (3 of them!) so I set the kiddos to work the other day. Between 2 bushes that have been uncared for we managed to get 2.5 cups worth!
To say they are a pain in the butt to pick is an understatement. After about the first cup I gave up and was pulling off the bunches. I ended up having to pick out lots of twigs but it was worth it.
This was my first jelly! I don't know anything about jelly making really so I'm not sure how good this is but it's tasty. Super sweet and the red currant flavor is light. I was hoping for a stronger one but that's ok. For my first time it's not bad. I only got the one bottle out of it and half of it is gone (ate it on the bread) already.

Not shown is some crackers I made. They were ok. Need to work on getting them thinner. Oh and the bread. I got a new pan not too long ago (a German made one) and it make a 12 inch loaf! The thing was massive. It contained a braided one so well. I expected it to stick to the sides and be moist (in the bad way) on the bottom but it fell right out and was cooked perfectly. Next time I'll have to get a picture. Other than that I don't really have anything. We've moved twice in the last few months so I haven't been too motivated to be in the kitchen and to document it. :)


**Back. I do have a picture of the bread!