Saturday, February 4, 2012

What's happening in my kitchen today

It has been snowing all day. By all day, I mean since midnight. Remember this picture?

My bird feeders today.

One of my front trees this fall.

Same tree today.

I keep seeing a black junko flying in and out of my birdhouse gourd. The gourd is hanging on our back deck right in front of our sliding glass doors. I think it's snowing too hard for him to get back to his nest, so he's staying in our hotel today.

I have some soup defrosting in the sink. It's a chicken and alphabet noodle soup that I made back in October and froze for such a blizzard as today.

I'm also trying my hand at making sourdough by catching yeast. I recently read a cookbook, which I'm not going to name here because I HATED it, that stated in so many words a sourdough bread can only be made by catching yeasts in nature. Sourdough starters that are made with yeast from the store do not exist. I'd beg to differ as I've made many a sourdough loaf or pizza crust with sourdough starter I started with store bought yeast, but this got me thinking. So I'm starting some sourdough starter. This is 3/4 cup ap flour and 1 cup of water. The fabric on top is just a left over cotton quilt square that I pierced with a cooking knife in a few places to let the yeasts in. The book (from hell) stated that after 3 days if it doesn't smell yeasty or look frothy and smells or looks moldy instead, throw it out. I have a feeling I'll be throwing this out.


I also have some loaves of bread rising. I made a loaf of sandwich bread with a 1/2 cup extra flour. I mixed the dry ingredients, and then removed 1/2 cup of the mix to a smaller bowl and added lots of garlic powder. I split an egg, some olive oil, and the yeast/ water mixture between the two bowls. Now I have a loaf of sandwich bread and a mini loaf of garlic bread that is going to be wonderful with the soup. Because you need a hearty bread when it's blizzarding outside.

After getting the bread going I went out to shovel the drive. My neighbor came over, told me the snow was too heavy to shovel, and used his snow blower to clear our drive, the street in front of the house, and our patio. I think he enjoys snow blowing. I'm going to bring over the big loaf of bread when it's done.

It's still snowing. In fact it's snowing harder than before. Big, wet, white flakes. And I'm happy to be right here, curled up with my quilt.

2 comments:

  1. Looks like a nice way to spend a blizzard.

    I threw out my sourdough starter from the Daring Bakers challenge. I didn't use it for a while and it smelled nasty and had a grey watery liquid that had collected on top of it. Ew. Good luck with your sourdough from scratch!

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  2. Dana, starter needs stired about once a day to keep it from developing that grey liquid. You want it to be the consistency of pancake batter, so if it gets looser than that, add some flour to "feed" it. I've been able to successfully keep it in the fridge for two weeks without stiring or feeding. I then take it out and use 1/3 to 1/2 of it , feed it and stir it for about 5 days, and then back into the fridge it goes. I hope you're not getting this weather up north!

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