A Tale of Two Breads

 I have been on a mission to make all of our bread from scratch as I get prepared for our grain CSA from White Oak Grains in Belchertown MA (what an unfortunate name that town has) that will be coming at the end of next month or so. This means experimenting with bread recipes so that I am able to actually use the grains that I get from this farm (50lbs!!!).

I have tested out 2 wheat recipes in the last couple of weeks. One from King Arthur Flour called "No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread" and another from a food blog called Tammy's Recipes called simply "Homemade Wheat Bread".

The King Arthur Flour recipe (with my adaptations) is this:

• 1 1/4 cup lukewarm water
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons dry instant yeast
• 1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 cups King Arthur whole wheat flour

Directions:

1) Grease an 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan. This loaf tends to stick, so be sure to grease the pan thoroughly with non-stick vegetable oil spray.

2) Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Beat the mixture vigorously for about 3 minutes.You should have a very sticky dough. It won't be pourable, but neither will it be kneadable. Scoop it into the prepared pan.

3) Cover the pan with lightly greased plastic wrap, and let it rise for 60 to 90 minutes; it should just about rise to the rim of the pan, perhaps just barely cresting over the rim. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350°F.

4) Uncover the bread, and bake it for about 40 to 45 minutes, tenting it with aluminum foil after 20 minutes. The bread is done when it's golden brown on top, and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers between 190°F and 195°F. Remove it from the oven, and after 5 minutes turn it out onto a rack.  It says to wait until it cools to slice it but really, who does that? It smelled so good I couldn't resist and dug in after about 5 minutes. It was super wheaty, really moist and delicious. Problem was, it didn't rise very well in the oven: Not the best picture ever, but it gets the point across; there was little rising going on here.

This, of course, made the bread very dense and not very pliable. But it was tasty.

The next recipe looks like this:

Ingredients: 

1 cup warm water (110-115 degrees F)
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons instant active dry yeast

Instructions: 

1. Combine first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl; stir.

2. Add flours and yeast, and knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10-15 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover with a clean towel and let rise until doubled, about 40 minutes.

rising dough

3. Punch dough down; knead for a few minutes until smooth and then form into a loaf. Place in greased loaf pan and cover.  Let rise in a warm place until almost doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 

5. Remove bread from oven and allow to rest in pan for a few minutes. Remove to a wire rack and cover with a cloth. Slice and enjoy while still warm! Leftover bread can be stored in an airtight bag or frozen until needed.

The finished product

This one had no trouble rising and yielded a lighter, airier, more flexible bread than the KA recipe. Which could very well be due to the fact that it's only half whole wheat.

I still had some of the King Arthur recipe bread left, so I thought a side-by-side comparison would be useful:

Tammy's recipe on the left, King Arthur on the right

 Here's a shot of the tops of the loaves. The KA bread on the right is only smaller because we'd eaten a bunch of it, they were probably the same length coming out of the oven since I used the same bread pan.

The moral of the story is that today I am remaking Tammy's recipe. I would like to work on the KA recipe or try some other 100% whole wheat recipes but I was too lazy to look that up this morning.

Also, I finally made it over to Mead Hall in Cambridge, MA (as of this post their website is STILL not up, but I thought I'd include it anyway). I had heard some really mixed reviews about the place but it seems that it is finding it's footing a bit now. I had 2 really good beers. The first was a porter from Finland called Sinebrychoff Porter. This beer has won numerous awards and is considered one of the best imported beers in America. And I'd never had it before this! Unacceptable!

Sinebrychoff Porter at Mead Hall. Look at all those taps! And that's less than half of them!

I have to say it was pretty darn tasty. Slightly sweet, balanced well with the bitter roasty flavors, chocolate, coffee, this beer has a lot going on. I would definitely get it again.

The next beer I had was pretty different. It was Pretty Things (a local brewer) Jack D'Or mixed with a raspberry lambic (I think Lindeman's framboise?). It was interesting, lots of flavors going on since the Jack D'Or is brewed with plums. It was good, but I'm not sure I would get it again. If you're in the mood for something fruity and slightly sour with a bunch of that Belgian funk going on though, this is it.

The Pretty Things glasses are crazy. I always feel like the stem is just going to snap, it's so thin.

 The bread is calling to be put in the oven...mmmm...warm bread. I don't care how hot it is, homemade bread fresh out of the oven is always irresistible!

Garden Update and some Pickles!

I haven't posted any pictures of the garden lately so I thought I'd change that this morning. The weather has been really great for growing vegetables this year. Lots of sunny warm (and hot) days with plenty of rain mixed in. Our kale has recovered well from the mystery creature and has really taken off lately.

Curly kale. Almost enough to start eating it!

I'll probably end up using some kale this week in something since it is starting to get huge and I didn't buy any cooking greens at the farmer's market this week.

Our rainbow chard is also coming along nicely. It has some brown spots on some of the older leaves but I'm hoping the newer leaves will be spared.

Also, you get a nice view of our creature-proof fencing...

Our zucchini and squash went from grow-as-many-leaves-as-you-possibly-can mode to produce-as-much-fruit-as-you-possibly-can in about a week. I was starting to wonder if they were going to flower at all and all of a sudden BANG:

This happens:

zucchini

 butternut squash and my hand for scale

They're so cute with the flowers still attached and all miniature. 

I wasn't as worried about the tomatoes since they were at least flowering. Now I'm a little worried about what we're going to do with all these tomatoes. I think there is a lot of salsa and pasta sauce in my future.

Mmmm...heirloom tomatoes!

Here's a nice before-and-after shot of our peas/peppers/butternut squash bed:

Before (July 4, 2011):

After (July 23, 2011):

That squash is just going crazy in just 20 days! And my ornamental sweet peas have flowers all over the place and the peppers are much bigger. Pretty amazing really.

My other big achievement this weekend was completing my first attempt at canning! I made plain old dill pickles. I followed the easiest recipe in this book: Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving. I did a little tweaking but not much since I am in unfamiliar territory here. At least I finally used up those pickling cukes I got last week at the farmer's market!

They look nice at least! Hopefully they won't kill anyone.

It wasn't too much work, and doing a small batch let me work out some of the kinks. I definitely need to start simmering my jars (for the pre-fill sterilization) much earlier next time! My next project will be pickling the zucchini. I also got a bunch of summer squash (the yellow kind) at the farmer's market this weekend so I might throw that in with the zucchini if that is doable so I get some nice green and yellow squashes in the jars. I also bought some more raspberries this week. I just can't help myself!

No tomatoes at the market this week...I can't wait to make some salsa and pasta sauce!

Also, I baked some more wheat bread....but more on that later I hope. That's all for now.

Fresh Bread and a Farmer's Market

This morning I finished making a loaf of homemade bread. I tried to beat the heat, but the recipe called for pre-heating a dutch oven to 500 degrees F so it made the kitchen pretty hot anyway. And I set off the fire alarm a couple of times while the boy was still sleeping. Oops. That alarm is so sensitive!

Anyway, we both agreed it was well worth it because it came out amazing!

I've got to work on my camera skills. Anyway, here it is in all its crusty glory:

The dutch oven method allows the bread to cook using a lot of steam which keeps the middle really soft and the outside nice and crusty. This did take me over a day to make though. After mixing the flour, honey, beer, yeast, vinegar, and water it has to sit for 8 to 18 hours. Mine was about 21. It's hard to get the timing right for something that has to sit that long. For the beer it said to use a "mild-flavored lager" (aka Budweiser which will probably never enter this house) so I used this:

Sierra Nevada Glissade. It's a lightly colored bock beer.

I only needed about a quarter of the bottle but don't worry, nothing went to waste ;)

Yesterday was also our local farmer's market so I went and got a bunch of vegetables because I also picked up these babies:

Oh yes, there will be canning. Lots and lots and lots of canning.

After having a deal on Craigslist fall through, I just went over to my local True Value Hardware store and picked these up. They were not expensive at all.

Best part: Made in the U.S.A.

So with thoughts of filling these up soon I picked up the following from the Farmer's Market:

Pickling cucumbers,

 "B" Grade Tomatoes,

Giant zucchinis (50 cents a piece!),

And raspberries. I froze these because I didn't feel like making jam.

I am just waiting on a canning pot that will fit the jars I bought. Once that arrives I'm going to start canning the tomatoes and zucchini and pickling the cucumbers. I got a book full of canning recipes that I've been flagging for ones I want to try. It's going to be exciting!

Now I'm off to look for a good bread recipe that doesn't require me to drink 3/4 of a bottle of beer every time I want to make bread!

Cheeeeese!

I am feeling really accomplished. I have made 2 things from scratch in the last 2 days that I never even thought about making myself before. Yesterday it was tortillas. Today it was mozzarella. That's right, don't act like you aren't impressed. Both turned out super good too, which certainly stacks the odds against me for the next thing I attempt.

The tortillas were easy. I followed a recipe I found on allrecipes.com, with a few tweaks:
4 cups white bread flour (King Arthur strongly recommended)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup shortening (I used vegetable shortening, supposedly lard is even better)
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups boiling water
all-purpose flour as needed for rolling

Ummm...golf ball sized? I don't even know if I've ever even held a golf ball...

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flours and salt. Rub in the shortening by hand until there are no large chunks (this may take a while). Make a well in the center, and pour in the boiling water. Mix with a fork until all of the water is evenly incorporated. Sprinkle with a bit of additional flour, and knead until the dough does not stick to your fingers. The dough should be smooth.
2. Make balls the size of golf balls, about 2 ounces each. Place them on a tray, and cover with a cloth. Let stand for at least 1 hour, or up to 8 hours (mine sat for an hour). 
3. Heat a griddle or large frying pan over high heat. On a lightly floured surface, roll out a tortilla to your preferred thinness. Fry one at a time. Place on the griddle until you see a bubble on the top then flip the tortilla over. Let it cook for about 30 seconds, then flip and cook the other side for another 30 seconds. Roll out the next tortilla while you wait for that one to cook (I had about 4 lined up to go, I can't sit still). Repeat until all of the balls have been cooked. Tortillas can be refrigerated or frozen.

These ended up being kinda small, about the size of my stretched out hand. I will make them larger next time, but they work well for most things. The important thing is that they taste great. I was using some pretty old flour that I had stored in the freezer and it still tasted great!

Oh yeah, and they weren't round at all.

I made burritos out of them for dinner and lunch today. And lunch tomorrow. The recipe said this yielded 18 tortillas and I think I got about double that. I guess my attempt at golf balls was waaaay off. Luckily they freeze well so that's where a bunch of them ended up.


On to the cheese! 
My little packet of cheese supplies came in the mail today. I ordered from New England Cheesemaking Supply the Mozzarella and Riccota starter kit. It comes with a little thermometer, citric acid, rennet tablets (non-animal sources), cheesecloth, and cheese salt, as well as an instruction booklet with lots of great little tips. This is enough to process 30 gallons of milk!

I promptly walked over to my closest convenience store and bought myself a gallon of whole milk. The kit works with all kinds of milks, but they say the more fat in the milk, the better the cheese will taste (duh!). As long as the milk is NOT ultra-pasteurized. I just got some Hood milk. I am going to try to find a local source soon. Anyway, the directions were very clear and I got great results.

The curd after I cut through it with a knife.

The whole process was way easier and quicker than I would ever have thought. About an hour from start to finish, including some heating, pulling, and cooling. And this was my first attempt!

The strained curds, pre-stretching. They don't taste like much yet (I tasted).

The only part that I didn't really enjoy was pulling the curd after heating it up to 135 degrees F. Ouch! I will need to buy some rubber gloves for this part. Not that it wasn't worth the momentary suffering!

A somewhat blurry photo of the balls of mozzarella I made cooling in some ice water.

This was what I choose to do with it next: A homemade tortilla (from yesterday), some homemade pesto (courtesy of my mom who bought the basil at the farmer's market in Vermont), and my homemade cheese! Holy good!

A little slice of homemade heaven :)

 I am feeling really proud of myself right now. I can't wait to do it again!


Also, I kept some of the whey because it is very high in protein. The recipe book came with some recipes that use the whey but I am looking for good ideas, so if you've got some, let me know! I am thinking of using it to soak my overnight oats in...I'll let you know how it goes.

Crazy Week!

Well, I had wanted to post more during this past week but work was just insane. I think I worked 7 or so overtime hours...too bad I'm salaried. :-/ So there was not a lot of cooking going on on my part. I did make a delicious pasta sauce using a 16 ounce can of tomatoes and just about every vegetable we had in the house at the time. Garlic, onion, broccoli (steamed for 2 minutes in the microwave in a bowl with a plastic wrap lid), collard greens (chopped up really fine, they cook in no time. This is my trick to adding greens to just about everything I cook), and eggplant (pan fry it in some olive oil before adding it to the sauce or it will take FOREVER to cook, believe me, I've tried it!). This made a huge amount of sauce, more than enough for an entire pound of pasta. So I ate the extra with some bread for lunch one day. It was so thick and vegetable-y. Mmm...so good.

Also this week, my significant other made the best macaroni and cheese ever. And we've eaten a LOT of mac & cheese. We will only buy Annie's Mac & Cheese (in the purple box) because it is just so tasty anyway. But this was better than usual. For this batch, both butter and olive oil was used to dissolve the cheese powder. However, the secret to making this so good was not the great amount of fatty oils though, it was garlic scapes! I had bought a bunch at the farmer's market a couple weeks ago (these things seem to keep forever) and he chopped up a couple of them and sauteed them in the butter/olive oil mix for a couple minutes. We also added fresh peas (also from the farmers market). Then a little bit of whole milk and voila, the most amazing Mac & Cheese ever!!! The garlic scapes have a more mild flavor and a fresher taste than regular garlic.

Garlic scapes: the secret ingredient for the best Mac & Cheese you'll ever have. Fresh peas also help.

I know, we could have made a cheese sauce from scratch but honestly, we have never had that work out very well for us. Plus we both were working a lot this week and sometimes making something from scratch is just not going to happen.


Also, the mystery creature seems to be deterred by the fencing. Our kale, chard, brussels, and cilantro are growing great!

Yay! Kale leaves, minus the chew marks!

Our tomatoes have flowers:

Our peas are growing like crazy:

And they're so fresh tasting. I've honestly never had better peas in my life.

And I even have my first flower from my purely ornamental dwarf sweet pea plants:

I wasn't sure I was going to get any flowers from these plants at this point!

We fertilized our plants today so they can continue growing well for the rest of the season. Good old poop in a bag!

Chicken poop in a bag!

Simcoe also had a great time this morning at the dog park, followed by the weekly trip to the farmer's market to stock up on veggies while ours are still growing. He didn't have a great trip home from the market home though. Poor guy gets car sick :( I hope that is something he will outgrow.

 Isn't he just the most adorable thing you've ever seen?!

The farmer's market had some amazing squash and zucchini so I stocked up on some of those. Also got a bunch of broccoli (one of my favorite veggies), the best blueberries I've had in a long time, some raspberries (mojitos in our future?), more peas (I can't get enough!), and a cucumber.

I ordered some canning supplies today, I'm REALLY excited to try my hand at that this summer!

Mystery Creature

I had mentioned yesterday the "mystery creature" that is eating our vegetables. Well, here was our solution:

Our makeshift fencing! Deer fence stapled to wood posts. We "rednecked" our way through this one since we didn't have enough posts.

So it's not the best looking thing I've ever seen but hopefully it will keep whatever-it-is that is eating our kale, brussels, and chard from doing so any more! On a side note, check out those awesome looking tomatoes in the far left bed! I can't wait for some fresh tomatoes! I am even thinking of trying out canning this year if we get enough.

Closer look at the tomatoes (back bed). Not too shabby eggplant, zucchini, and cucumber plants there either. The munched on, pathetic looking plants in the front of the first bed are supposed to be Brussels sprouts. :(

To get a better idea of the havoc this creature is doing to our plants here are some close-ups:

Kale and Chinese Cabbage.

 Cilantro (upper left) and Rainbow Chard.

 More shots of the kale. It was looking so good!

Hopefully we will still be able to get plenty of greens from our Kale, Chard, and Cilantro. Pretty sure the Brussels Sprouts are a lost cause at this point, I don't think they'll be able to catch up before our lovely New England summer ends. But hopefully our farmer's market will have some! I LOVE Brussels sprouts. People who say they don't like them just have never had them made right.

On a good note, our peas are crazy tall and we've harvested a few pods from them already. The squash and peppers that share that bed are looking pretty impressive as well.

Those peas are taller than me! Peppers closest to camera, squash further away.

We also have an unexpected surprise:

Tomato plants growing our of our compost pile!

We put our food scraps in a compost pile and apparently some of those tomato seeds were able to take root. I think that's a pretty good sign our compost is good!

Happy 4th of July! Nothing like celebrating Independence Day by growing your own food!

Welcome to Homemade and Hops!

Here goes my first ever blog post! I am hoping to use this to document my adventures in gardening, eating local, drinking great beer, and cooking up some original (vegetarian) recipes. I also recently bought a house with my "partner" (some would say boyfriend, I think buying a house together bumps up the title) so there will be documented adventures in the joys of home ownership as well.

Here's the backyard with our newly made raised beds. Note the gravel "yard".

We had spent the last year participating in a local CSA (community shared agriculture), which rocked our socks, but decided this year to attempt growing our own vegetables. However, we're currently battling a mystery creature that is munching to the roots most things in our garden (not the tomatoes for some reason). We are lucky enough to live close to a wholesale produce shop that sells a lot of local produce so we have been taking advantage of that while we attempt to salvage our crops.

Why did we choose to give up the wide variety of produce from our CSAs again? I mean, just look at this amazing stuff!

 Popcorn!

Wild Walnuts!

Well, we aren't growing our own popcorn or walnuts but we do currently have tomatoes (3 varieties, more on that later), Waltham Butternut Squash, Peas, Jalepeno and Bell Peppers, Eggplant, Brussel Sprouts, Broccolli, Zucchini, Rainbow Chard, Kale, and Cilantro. Whew, sounds like a lot but it isn't too much really. Especially since our mystery guest has eaten most of the Chard, a good amount of the kale, and decimated our Brussel Sprouts. Hopefully we'll get something!

I am looking forward to documenting my successes (and failures) in trying to make as much as possible from scratch using local stuff as well as the work that is ongoing on our home. Now it's time to feed the dog!

Simcoe! Yes, he's named after the hops.