Another Bread Recipe
NOTE TO MYSELF (because this was a delicious loaf of no-recipe bread and I will never remember what went into it if I don't write it down now):
Dry ingredients: (Can mix ahead)
1/2 cup Pioneer Baking Mix
1/4 cup sprouted rye flour
1/4 cup sprouted spelt (and/or quinoa) flour
1 tsp baking soda
A pinch of sea salt
A pinch of brown sugar
Liquid ingredients:
Splash of Braggs Amino Acids
Honey
Buttermilk (or kefir/buttermilk hybrid)
Liquid cornstarch
Coat with avocado oil and knead lightly. This dough should be almost runny, just firm enough to hold its shape.
Baked at 428F for 15 minutes in preheated Gourmia 10 in 1 standard GRILL setting next to bowl of water (in rack or turn halfway to avoid burned bottom... or cook longer on lower heat
Total time: 20 minutes
UPDATE: I made up a few jars filled with the dry ingredients in proportions listed above. On 2/8/17 I mixed the contents of one of these with whey and kneaded lightly with oil before baking on Grill at 365 for about 1/2 hr. The mix made 3 perfect mini loaves which I placed on an upsidedown silicon muffin tray as a rack. They were delicious.
Turmeric Sodabread
This was a sodabread experiment that I fully expected to hate. Wrong!
Here is the recipe:
Part 1: Dry mix (I premix this and store it in mason jars)
3/4 cup sprouted wheat flour
1/4 cup Pioneer Buttermilk Baking Mix
1/2 tsp each baking powder and baking soda
1 T turmeric powder
A pinch of black pepper ( to potentiate the turmeric)
A pinch of salt and a few teaspoons of brown sugar
Part 2: Wet ingredients
1/4 cup cultured buttermilk
1 T apple cider vinegar
Enough milk to make the dough almost runny.
It wants to hold together just enough to pick it up, but not so stiff that it forms a ball. I pour avocado oil into a shallow silicon baking pan, then drop the dough in and very lightly knead it with oil covered hands before pressing it back into the pan.
Important: In the Gourmia, the bottom gets hot fast, so to bake bread it is usually necessary to use a rack. I just invert a silicon muffin pan beneath the bread pan.
Baking time was 30 to 40 minutes at 350°f until the sides sort of pull away from the pan and the whole thing looses its glossiness and looks golden and delicious.
Bread Experiment
I did not think my Bean Bread experiment would turn out, but it did. Sounds gross, but I put some refried black peas and a little curry powder in my last loaf of rye bread. It worked! I used to bake yeast bread a lot, but ever since I discovered how foolproof and quick it is to make soda breads with sprouted grain flours, I seldom bother with the yeast and kneading and all that. The black eyed pea loaf tasted good hot out of the oven and toasted the next day, but I did not care for it cold.
The soda bread that tastes best hot or cold is my sprouted wheat applesauce loaf. The Gourmia 10-in-1 robotic oven allows me to make portion controlled loaves easily. This loaf is about right for 2 people:
I used about 1/2 cup of sprouted wheat flour plus a handful of ground flax seeds, 1/2 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda, and a pinch of salt. Then I stirred in about 1/3 cup of fermented raw applesauce, a splash of avocado oil, and a dollop of buttermilk. The dough wants to be almost but not quite runny, wet enough so it flattens out from its own weight.
The applesauce I use is a by-product from making apple switchel, a refreshing fermented beverage made by soaking sliced or diced apples in diluted vinegar and brown sugar in a mason jar with a fermentation cap. It sits out at room temperature for at least 24 hours and then I strain off the liquid to store in a cooler place in soda bottles until it gets bubbly, but not so long that the bottles burst or it turns into vinegar. When I strain out the chunks, I add cinnamon (and sometimes more brown sugar to replace what the ferment "ate" and blend it into smooth applesauce. This applesauce has just enough vinegar taste to work well in baking, but not enough to overpower it if eaten raw. It is a very useful by-product of switchel making.
I make this beverage from a wide variety of fruits, including cherries, mulberry, grapefruit, etc., but I especially like the apple and strawberry switchel because the chunks of fruit that are left are perfect for baking. I use the "spent" strawberries in pancakes or waffles, and eat the applesauce raw or add it to my bread dough.
Pressed chicken
A shiny stainless steel meat press helps me do versatile make ahead meals. This chopped chicken is came off one of Smart & Final's whole roasted deli chickens. After our first meal from it, I dumped the carcass in seasoned stock with a whole onion and the obligatory Tbsp of apple cidar vinegar to help leach nutrients out of the bones and cooked it 18 minutes in the InstaPot. After boning, I put the meat back in the stock with peeled red, green and yellow sweet peppers and cooked a few minutes. After chopping all of this I pressed it overnight in the Madax and vacuumed packed it the next day.
DIY Knife Block
Can you believe that my favorite knife block took about five minutes to make, cost nothing, and works far better than any I have ever bought?
Soda Bread
Pictured is 1/4 loaf of my sprouted spelt and wheat soda bread. I put a handful of ground cooked and dried pumpkin seed flour in it too. I mix the dry ingredients ahead (in this case the 3 kinds of flour, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, and a little brown sugar) and then add buttermilk and whatever healthy puree I have on hand and if needed a little water to thin the dough. For this loaf I used stewed prune puree and baked the 9" flat round loaf on a silicon rack for 35 minutes in the Gourmia on the Grill setting at 374° and it came out perfect.
It is a little hard to ruin soda bread, so I don't really measure much any more beyond putting about 1/2 cup of each kind of sprouted flour in if I want to end up with about 4 servings, and about 1 tsp each of bs and bp.
The jam was pureed cranberry, orange, and apple fiber left over from making switchel/vinegar drinks, sweetened with brown sugar. Properly, I guess I should call it fermented cran-orange apple butter. It makes good fruit leather if it doesn't get eaten up first.
Gorman
Did you know there is something special about one of the National campgrounds near Gorman, CA where seniors with an America the Beautiful Forest Pass can overnight for free? There is no water and your cellphone won't work, but to get there you have to pass through golden poppy fields in a fee area. However, if you are just crossing over the California State land, they give you a free pass to travel through to the federal land. Potholes in the road? Yes! But it is SO pretty.
3 Post Knitting Nobby
After whittling a spare hook out of wood to use with my spool loom for making i-cord, I decided to make a loom too. Not having a wooden spool handy, I decided to repurpose a plastic water bottle instead. I just taped 3 nails to the bottle rim and drilled holes in the side of the bottle to attach the hook with yard in order not to lose it.
After cutting the bottom half of the bottle off with scissors, I ran a lit match briefly around the cut the smooth the edge.
You may notice that most i-cord looms have 4 or more posts. I had never seen one with three posts before, but it works great. It was a good experiment.
Fruit Leather?
Some fruit that I soak overnight in diluted A/C vinegar and brown sugar are still yummy after the liquid is strained off to drink. Some are less so. But I put the less than appetizing pulp in a quart jar in the freezer and when the jar is full, then I puree it to yield just the right amount to fill a fruit leather tray in the dehydrator. The next day it turns into 3 ounces of fruit leather.
More Repurposed Wood
When I find a piece of scrapped wood I ask it, "What do you want to be?" This one said "I want to be a loom."
Bear Country
I wasn't quite expecting to actually see a bear despite all the signs in the Angeles Forest warning of them. However, a cute cub managed to climb all the way up the steep embankment and pop its head out between the white flowers along the road.
Must stop and sees for me whenever I am in that neck of the woods are the Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge and the Los Angeles Arboretum in Arcadia.
Green Coconuts
I have seen people open a coconut the hard way, but although it can be a little messy, getting the best of a young /green coconut is pitifully easy and requires no special tools.
With the pointy side down, just press in a circle around the top until you find a place that gives a little. Then scoop a plug out with a paring knife, and pour the coconut water out into a bottle, using a funnel.
Then on a hard surface pound in a circle around the center, sort of like tapping the lid that is stuck on a jar in order to loosen it.
The shell will magically crack open horizontally and then if the coconut is fresh, you carn just rinse it off with water and scoop the jelly out with a soft spoon to separate it from the brown skin.
I drill holes around the edges of the shells to make hanging planters. They are easier to drill when wet.
Law of attraction
Having recently (for the first time) stumbled across a description of Perilla, I have been hungrily pursuing all the information I could find about this amazing plant.
After much deliberation, I placed an order for seeds to grow Red and Green Perilla frutescans, presuming from the photo that this is japonica rather than crispa, but who knows? There is much conflicting information about this plant.
The very next day without my having mentioned it, a good friend gave me a live green perilla plant. I was floored by the synchronicity, but should not have been, as we tend to manifest what we strongly believe in.
Micro Rolls
My crab apple jelly tasted SO good on these rolls made with spaghetti squash puree and shaped with meatball tongs.
Farmed, foraged, and Friended
Pictured here are flax seeded pita puffs, and crackers covered in cress seeds, topped with a cream cheese spread consisting of black pepper, grated cheddar, and mixed greens from my AeroGardens, and topped with olives that I picked from the tree on the golf course. I use whatever greens I feel like picking. Today I chose Bok choy, tomato leaves, and Holy Basil. At the moment I also have Genovese and Thai Basil, Shiso (Perilla), Swiss chard, Perpetual Spinach, leeks, oregano, pea shoots, string beans, celery, Kohlrabi, nasturtium, and 3 kinds of lettuce.
Lots of blooms
Guess which flower is not edible!
Right! The pink orchid is toxic and should not be eaten.
