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In Reply to: HOT cookies!... posted by musetap on February 25, 2007 at 13:02:16:
Made chocolate bread from Carol Field's Italian Bread book on Friday. Made pizza dough yesterday, finished it last night...yummy!I'm eating a piece as a late luch right this second.
OH MY GOD! Yeast is definitely one of God's greatest gifts!
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If I had more money I'd soon be broke...but I'd have more LPs!
Follow Ups:
for breakfast this A.M. As usual, mixed into the egg dip some apple butter and a bit extra Mexican cinnamon with the Semifreddi's Cinnamon Twist bread...ummm... tonight Babyback ribs, baked spuds and steamed spinach. Spinach? WAIT! THAT'S healthy...how'd that get in there?Then...maybe a few more cookies... diet, smiet...
The joys of cooking & baking good food, with good fresh ingredients (no processed crap) can't be beat. Especially on these cold lazy winter daze...
Life is good!
"I always play jazz records backwards, they sound better that way"
-Thomas Edison
I go to the store and buy a bunch of crap, because that is usually what I buy when I go to the store. I swipe my credit card, and then sign my usual squiggle.....the same squiggle I've had for years, and the whole system stops. "If the machine can't read your signature, it will not accept it" the cashier tells me. So I write -- very carefully -- MICHAEL PESHKIN. "Thank you Mr. Peshkin!" And away I go.Sorry Mike, I had to charge it all to you today.
I made (although from a commercial mix) double chocolate cookies last night. Haven't baked cookies in a long, long time.
And now we're going out to the big box hardware store and then for a wee snack of sushi for a late lunch.
jac - desperaudio
and it's almost ready to do its thing. Turned from a "culture" to a starter just today. When I fed it, it smelled yeasty instead of like wine for the first time.I have made sourdoughs before but always with store bought yeasts to start the fermentation. This was from the natural yeasts on and within red grapes! I'm excited about playing with it. I love real bread...how can anyone eat that soft crap they call bread everyone buys in the grocery stores?
La Brea breads are available in the grocery stores now and that's where the recipe for the starter came from, but she's a nut-case! Every day, according to her directions, you throw over a quart of culture or starter away, feeding it about 1/3 of its weight (she weighs rather than measures) 3 times daily. At the end of each day you have over 7 quarts of starter and the next morning you start with about 1 1/2 quarts, throwing the rest down the sink.
I think she was figuring for commercial type baking rather than home bakjing even though she claims it IS for home baking. Today I said, after going through 10 lbs. of flour in just a few days, "You're nuts!"
I'm going to treat this starter exactly like I treated every other sourdough starter I ever made...keep it fed but don't go nuts! Make bread, add flour and water to the starter. Make bread, add flour and water to the starter. You have to be one of the most wasteful people on earth, on top of being wealthy enough to throw good starter down the drain every day!
She's nuts! She also never made wine, apparently. She talks about keeping a tight scedule concerning feeding and you have to watch that crucial 10th day and HOPE the culture starts working when new flour is added. I know through wine making that adding sugar will kill off the yeasts, so you have to make simple syrup to "pump up" the alcohol content of your wine. I made some simple syrup, added a teensy bit (less than a tablespoon, and gave the culture a boost when, on the tenth day (this past Saturday), the feeding began.
My culture is healthy and strong and instantly (well, for yeasts, instantly) reacts to new feeding of flour and water. Her recipe calls for 14 days from the first day you start until you bake your first loaf of bread...THAT I'll adhere to!
I'm all sexcited about making bread again. For well over two years I was too lazy and weak to feel like it. Amazing what better blood circulation can help you do!
I'll post the results when I make bread on Wednesday/Thursday. I figure I may as well follow her two day recipe as I love how yeasty a bread is when it raises slowly in the refrigerator. That's how the pizza dough that I made yesterday is made...except for about 12 hours instead of 24...but that's Red Star yeast and not a starter.
YUMMY!
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If I had more money I'd soon be broke...but I'd have more LPs!
I wish I had a clue what you were on about ;-)Seriously, sounds like you're a real bread boffin. Oh heck, yer a real mad scientist is it...
My ex the (now retired) doctor makes great bread - says she originally got into it as a way to beat the stress out on the dough.
Cheers, and happy bread making.
PS: Actually I do know a bit about the concepts of yeast and all that, but you just blew me away, erm, blinded me with science there lol.
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