Monday, May 28, 2012

Hello Lover --> I Made a Sourdough loaf!!!!

Making a loaf of sourdough bread was the absolute very first food related item on my bucket list. I love sourdough bread, but as you know, I am intimidated by pretty much everything. 


I mentioned this to my mother-in-law a while back, and apparently she shared the same love. She started a sourdough starter about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and has made a loaf a week since the starter was good to go. She actually used part of her starter to start a starter for me as well.  OK, now let's start! Confused yet?


My mother-in-law followed some starter recipe that she had in a bread book for a white sourdough starter. 

This is what the starter looked like when I got my hands on it. It was in a large pasta sauce jar, and it was about 1/2 way full. See how bubbly and active it is?




She has been following this recipe/video ...for No Knead Method sourdough bread. So, with my starter, that is was we decided to make as well. First, let me tell you that IT WAS AMAZINGLY EASY. We followed his fairly nonchalant recipe to the T. My MIL also gave us this Danish Dough Whish/Hook. It was pretty cool. It mixed everything veryyyyy well. 




My pictures below aren't very good step-by-step instructions because the Breadtopia man gives pretty amazing pictures in his video tutorials.

My MIL brought along her Romertopf clay baking dish and we used that to bake the bread in, as breadtopia man suggests. He has you preheat the oven to 500 degrees, WOW is that HOTTTTT. We thought that the clay pot might crumble; but it didn't and the crust on the bread was phenomenal. PHENOMENAL. 
 


I mean seriously, look at his recipe and watch his video. Hands on time for this No Knead bread was about 6 minutes total. 6 MINUTES. However, real serious forethought is required when planning to bake this bread because you have to get it going like 20-something hours before you want to eat it. 
 



There you have it. Another item knocked off of my Bucket List. I will surely be making this amazingly fantastic and delightful bread again SOON, probably this coming weekend. Check out my Finished Projects page for all of the projects/food that I've finished since I started the blog.  Also, check out Flickr for more photos.

HOLLER!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Chive Blossom Vinegar!

As I may have mentioned, Marisa's blog over at Food in Jars is one of my favorite. She posted this Recipe Reminder the other day, and I looked out in our herb garden and saw that the chives were in full bloom. So, I snipped those pretty little blossoms right off and started making some vinegar!

I pretty much followed all of her instructions, just made a smaller batch. I also used champagne vinegar instead of white vinegar. 









I won't knock this one off of the bucket list until I see how it turns out.  According to Marisa's instructions, it should take about 3 weeks to get the gorgeous purple hue.


HOLLER!

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Garden Update

Another Sunday garden update for you!

We planted some nasturtiums in pots near our front door. I am seriously in love with these flowers. Well, I actually haven't seen the blooms yet, but the leaves are just gorgeous. They are like something I've never seen before. They look like miniature lily pads.  Apparently both the leaves and flowers are edible and taste amazing. We'll see/taste!



Clematis is quite active, climbing like a maniac!




 Our Pear Tree is looking amazingggg!



Our Pixie Crunch apple tree.



Our Goldrush apple tree.



Our Macintosh apple tree.



Our Liberty apple tree is a semi-dwarf and a little ahead of the others. It has some nice looking apples on it! 



 

Raspberries are looking better. They still aren't growing as much as I thought they would. They are definitely doing better though. Some of the canes even have some runners.





Our lettuces are doing very well!



Peas!

Broccoli!


Beets!


Radishes!


 Carrots!


Potatoes!



Zucchini!


Zinnias!


Cucumbers!


New England Pie Pumpkin!



Basil!


Rhododendrons!



Red Currants!


Strawberries!


Habanero Peppers!


 Rhubarb!
 


Some pretty tree that we have in the backyard...



Peonies!





Look how many buds there are!



That's the garden update for this week. Hope you enjoyed.

HOLLER!