… the heated water bowl is starting to freeze over.
A few of the outside cats were out, but I didn’t get that morning rush that I usually do, that’s for sure! They were far more interested in the fresh, relatively warm, water than the kibble. No kitties followed me while I switched out the memory cards on the trail cams!
We have been spoiled by a very mild winter, so far. (Yes, I know: winter doesn’t officially start for another week.) We had been hovering around freezing temperatures. Some days, the weather didn’t know if it was raining, snowing or fogging.
Last night, the temperatures dropped significantly. When doing my rounds this morning, we were at -27C/-16F with a humidex of -32C/-25F. That’s about a 15 – 20 degree C drop within half a day!
We’re supposed to warm up to -12C/10F (man, Fahrenheit is weird….) by this afternoon, but I made sure to plug in my mother’s car this morning. We’re supposed to have this one cold day, and then it’ll warm back up to above -10C/14F range again so I didn’t bother plugging in our van as well.
Of course, the one cold day we get is the day I’m taking my mother in for a medical appointment, and to do some much needed grocery shopping. Much needed for her, I mean. She keeps telling me the social workers can pick things up for her, and get paid while doing it, but she doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of this at all. She also has to pick up her prescriptions and hit the post office as well (she told me just last night, that the mail box outside the post office got stolen! I think she meant the incoming package drop off box, not the outgoing mail box). It’s going to be a long day for her. I’ll have to make sure to bring along our folding wagon again, to make bringing her stuff in easier, since her building is still locked down. She even asked me to be sure to meet her at the side door, instead of the main doors by the lobby, because of all the nosy people that might give her grief.
She had talked about moving to another building in town. I do hope she can get into there (or at least get on the waiting list). She really needs to get out of this place. It’s actually ideal for her in many ways, but the people are just toxic!
Oh, look! It’s warmed up to -24C/-11F and the humidex is -28C/-18F. At least that’s what the weather on my desktop says. My phone app says it’s warmed up to -23C/-9F, humidex -21C/-5F.
Either way, it’s trending up. By the time I’m up and about with my mother, it should be a few degrees warmer. That will make things easier on her.
Look what I found on the dining table this morning…
This was after I was awakened by a storage cube falling off the top of the wall shelf above my bed, landing right next to my head. :-( I’m not too worried about the cubes; they’re just filled with small blankets. I am more concerned about my parents’ antique lamp that I’ve got stored up there, specifically to keep it safe from the cats!
Today, we got to use our pasta machine for the first time, while making pasta for the first time. :-)
Granted, I have made pasta-like noodles before, before, but nothing quite like this.
Of course, I did some research first. I wanted something really basic for a recipe. This turned out to be just flour and eggs. Most places I found went with a ratio of 2 eggs per 1 cup of flour. I did find one that used a ratio of 2 eggs per 3/4 cup of flour. As for quantities, it was recommended 1 egg per person.
Based on that, we could have gone with 4 eggs and 2 cups of flour, but I went ahead and did 6 eggs with 3 cups of flour.
I worked the dough in a bowl until the dough was well formed, then turned it onto our kneading mat.
This turned out to be waaaayyy too dry! I would expect relative humidity would affect the dough, like it does with bread, and we are very dry right now. I simply could not knead in the rest of the flour.
The flour had bits of dough in it, though, and I wasn’t about to let that go to waste.
If you are a pasta aficionado, you may want to look away right now… ;-)
I remembered that one resource I found that used the 2 eggs: 3/4 cup flour ratio. It had a recipe calling for 7 eggs to 3 cups of flour.
I decided to add an egg.
Of course, I couldn’t just knead in an egg, so I beat it in a bowl first, then beat in the flour that I couldn’t work into the dough. I even broke off some pieces of the dough and mixed that in, to get it thicker.
I then opened up the dough so I could add the additional egg mixture into the middle, then fold the dough over it.
Kneading that in was pretty messy, anyhow!
Once it was thoroughly worked in, I only needed to add perhaps a tablespoon of flour onto the mat to clean up the stickiness, then I kneaded it for 10 minutes.
I’m sure I broke all sorts of rules or committed some terrible faux pas in doing this, but hey – it worked! The dough was wonderfully smooth and elastic, and just barely sticky.
At this point, I covered it with some plastic wrap and let it sit for 20 minutes.
While I was looking things up, there were a few points I kept seeing repeated. One was that the pasta cooked extremely quickly, so before I even started it, I made a use-watcha-got meat sauce. The other thing I kept seeing was to use extra salt in the water the pasta would be boiled in. Since they cook so quickly, they don’t have the chance to absorb salt from the water, if the usual amount was used.
So while the pasta was resting, I made a few final touches on the meat sauce, then prepped a pot of salted water. No one mentioned how much more salt to add, so I winged it. :-D
The next thing to do was set up the pasta machine.
What’s hilarious is that the first image has the pasta photoshopped onto the machine completely wrong. It shows cut pasta coming out of the flat rollers. :-D
The machine comes with a clamp to attach it to a table, but our table has a different design. It can expand to twice its size. The two halves of the table top slide one over the other when it’s closed, with a support piece running under them at each end. The whole thing is about 6 inches wide – way too much for the clamp to fit around.
It worked out though.
I was able to partially slide out the extension, and still have a stable surface to clamp on to.
When it was time to start rolling the dough, I started with only half of it. The first time I rolled it through the machine, though…
It just tore apart!
I spent some time going through the instruction manual to figure out why. I ended up using a rolling pin to thin it out more, first, and dusted more flour on each side. That seemed to do the trick.
Another thing I kept reading was to make sure to roll the dough thin enough to see through. I kept reading that the pasta will thicken as it cooks, so it’s better to roll it thinner.
In reading the instructions, it said to set the machine at 1, for the widest setting, rolling the dough through, folding it in half, rolling it again, about 5 or 6 times, then working it thinner and thinner until about 3.
There was one problem with that.
The numbers on the machine are backwards from the numbers in the instructions! The widest setting is 7, not 1. :-D Which doesn’t really matter, as long as it works, but I did find that funny.
It took a while to get the hang of it. One problem I encountered was that the crank handle kept falling off! The pasta also tended to go off to one side. After a while, a daughter was able to come give me a hand, too, which made things much easier to handle.
The pasta sheets kept getting longer and longer, and I ended up having to cut them in half. Then do it again! In this photo, we have the 4 sheets draped on the pasta drier, ready for us to put the cutter attachment on and start cutting them.
I have to add that I’m really glad I waited until we found Durum flour for this. We could really feel the difference in how well the pasta held out to all the stretching and handling.
The first ones we cut were still hilariously long, so we cut the remaining sheets in half again.
Their widths might have been consistent, but their lengths certainly weren’t! :-D
After finishing the first batch, they got to dry while the second half of the dough was prepped. This half went much faster, now that we knew what we were doing! Also, we split the second batch of dough in half, right from the start.
Once they were done, it was time to get the water boiling. After a while, I took the longest pasta pieces and broke them in half, to make them a more reasonable length!
Just before the water was boiling, I took them all off the drying rack, to make them easier to handle and carry and break any really long pieces that got missed..
Don’t they look pretty?
And yes. I did cook the whole lot!
Here, I have pretty much just added them to the water. It hasn’t even come back to a boil, yet, and already the pasta is half cooked!
I boiled them for 2 minutes, but that was probably at least half a minute too long! :-D
After draining them, I tossed them in some herbed butter my husband made earlier in the day.
There was have it! Fresh made pasta, with meat sauce.
So, how did it taste?
Many of the sites I found with recipes raved about how good they were, and how you’ll never want to eat store bought pasta again, and so on.
It was good, but I don’t know that I would say it was that good! At least, not when considering the amount of physical labor involved. The family did all really enjoy it, though.
I actually found the pasta a bit thin. I like a toothsome pasta. In rolling it out, I went to the recommended “3” on the knob, based on what I’d read (the instructions with the machine suggested going to 3, but with the numbers reversed on the knob, that actually meant 4). It was certainly thin enough to see through, but I think that, next time, I’ll just bring it down to 4 on the machine.
It does use a lot of eggs, though. We’ll have to buy more, before we can do this again! Or we could make it with just water. The instruction manual has a recipe, too.
We definitely can do some experimenting! :-D
All in all, I’d say this was a success, and I am quite glad we got the machine to make the job easier! Even with the handle falling off so often! :-D
My goodness, I can hardly believe it’s just barely afternoon as I write this.
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, isn’t it??
Things started off pretty routine. I did my rounds and the outside cats were very happy to see me. Well. Happy to see fresh kibble and water!
Potato Beetle joined me, as he often does. I caught this picture just before he jumped straight up me!
Doesn’t that expression look malevolent? :-D
The Potato, however, was not the walking disaster today. Oh, no! It was the cute, little adorable ones that were pure destruction!
I posted a while back about how we had to do an intervention to rescue our remaining avocado plants.
We had started off with 5 plants, and now we’re down to one poor, battered avocado… and a stick that still had live roots on it, so we’ve left it for now.
The cats did try to get in there, but the cage worked. I think the avocado is recovering, but it still looks pretty beat up!
Well, that didn’t stop the cats, unfortunately. They just moved on to other plants.
First, was the umbrella tree. After various barriers were tried and failed, I was able to put some 1/2 inch wire mesh around it that I had left over from some other projects. They still could get over it, though, and every now and then, we find a kitten sitting in the middle of it.
Yes, we have barriers in there, too. I made a spiderweb of cord to support the branches, and they still fit in between. This morning, I heard a strange noise and found Cabbages trying to climb the wire mesh to get at either Nicco or Tissue, half-hidden in the middle.
At least they’re not digging in it anymore.
They just moved on to other pots.
We have since lost a small pot with a jade plant in it – and it was one of the ones that was covered by a cloche to protect it! A while pot full of soil, all over a shag carpet… Fun times! A couple of succulents that were hanging in windows had to be moved, because they were still getting at them, including all my daughter’s orchids. The biggest jade plant got 4 hollow tubes (unused legs from a utility shelf) inserted into the soil, with cord wrapped around, because the cats kept sitting in the middle of it. That seems to be working, plus I found it works well to water it through the tubes. :-D
Then they moved on to another large jade tree. That one even got knocked off the shelf several times. For that one, I tried laying foil over the soil, but that does not deter any of our cats! We have some large plastic containers from Cheese Balls and pork rinds I would get at Costco. The containers make great cloches and I was saving them for spring planting. I ended up cutting one to get the straight middle part of the container, which I was able to fit under the jade plant branches and place around the edge of the pot.
That finally stopped them!
Unfortunately, I just discovered they have moved on again, and started digging in one of the aloe vera pots. This surprised me, because aloe vera is so splayed out, the soil is hidden. They had to actually dig out a couple of aloe babies to get at the soil. It wasn’t much, though, so I moved the plant pot to the dining table and finished my rounds.
Later, while I was on the phone with my mother, my husband popped his head through the door to tell me that cats had been digging in the pot.
*sigh*
When I finally came out, I found Cabbages, innocently sitting on the table next to the pot, and soil all over the table and floor.
*sigh*
The face of destruction!
As I cleaned up, I put a towel on a chair and moved the pot over. While working on the table, I happened to look up to see Fenrir on the chair, her front paws in the soil, starting to dig!
Another face of destruction!
I ended up having to put the pot with my husband, so he could guard it while I finished cleaning up.
So how do I stop the cats from doing this? After many years and many moves, it was a very long time before we lived anywhere long enough to have house plants, so having them is not only something I really enjoy, but it gives a feeling of stability for me. Unfortunately, the cats just can’t seem to resist them! They dig in the dirt like a dog digs for a bone!
What to do? If I protect one pot, they just move on to another.
Well, I did have a few more of those plastic containers left.
My poor, sad, beat up, cat chewed aloe vera!
I ended up using the flat side pieces to protect three aloe pots, including one rather large one. I have no idea how the plants will adjust to this, but it can’t be any worse than the damage the cats were already doing to them, just in going to and from the window ledge. I used the curved top of one of the containers around another jade plant. There is still one more aloe vera left without a shield of any kind, but that thing is so massive, there is simply no way I can do anything around that pot. Hopefully, the sheer size of it is enough to keep the cats from trying.
While I was doing all this, I kept finding kittens on the dining table. Mostly Cabbages! I hate having to chase her off. She still isn’t completely socialized, and this will set her back, but there are some places we just can’t let the cats get onto.
Hopefully, they will stop digging up our plants now. It would be great if we could set up a bin with soil for them to dig in, but they’d just use it as a litter box. I do wish I knew why they all suddenly decided that digging in plant pots was a good idea! We’ve never had this problem before.
Having made an olive server, using my new gouge, I thought it would be good to use some of the remaining wood to make a spreader and olive fork.
After cutting a length off, the first thing I did was split the wood down the middle.
Here, you can clearly see the rotted out core that I had to work around with the olive server.
The utensils I wanted to make would be well away from that core, though, so this was okay. I split off some excess wood from the opposite sides, then debarked the remains.
In sketching out the spreader and fork, I decided not to include the knot at one end. It may have added visual interest, but I just didn’t want to fight with it.
Once rough sketches were made, I rough cut away excess wood. A band saw would make the job easier, but I don’t have one that works, so I made do with a little Japanese pull saw that I got last summer, and a coping saw. The coping saw has been a problem, as it won’t lock at the handle end anymore, so it tries to rotate while I’m using it!
For the spreader, I added another rough sketch on what would become the top. I wanted a slightly wider bit at the start of the spreader blade as a sort of stopper, more for visual interest than anything else. I wasn’t too worried about matching the sketch closely, since it would depend more on how much I had to cut away from the core of the wood.
Next up was using carving blades to do more shaping and trim away excess wood at the core, to take out that rotten strip.
Then I broke out the Dremel.
After trying out different tips, I ended up just using the sanding tips. They are a course grit and did a good job of taking off the excess wood, grinding away the remaining saw cuts, and shaping it more.
Then it was back to the carving knives for more delicate clean up and shaping, then sanding.
Ready for oiling!
That knot in the blade was why I switched to the Dremel. I like how it looks in there, but my goodness, it was brutal to work around!
Next, the olive fork.
For this, I just went straight to the Dremel and used the sanding tips to rough shape it.
I then used carving knives to clean it up and work on the tines end to narrow it down even more. Once it reached the point where I would otherwise have started sanding, I made the tines.
My Dremel set includes tips for carving and engraving, and I used one of them to drill a hole where I wanted the tines to join. Then I used a cutting wheel down the length of it.
There was a knot right in the middle. The Dremel cutter did NOT like going through that knot!! :-D
After that, it was back to doing more detailed shaping until it was ready to sand.
Doing those tines was a real pain in the butt!
It actually worked out much better than I thought it would, though.
For both the spreader and the olive fork, I worked my way through increasingly fine grits of sandpaper, finishing with 220 grit. Because that’s the finest grit sandpaper I have.
There they are, ready for oiling!
You can see the edges of the knot that was cut through to make the tines much more clearly, after oiling!
The slightly wider bit on the spreader turned out to be a perfect thumb rest!
When sanding the blade of the spreader, I actually had to be a careful not to make it too sharp. It’s meant for spreading, not cutting! It’s remarkable how sharp a wooden blade can get.
A closer look at the tines of the olive fork.
Then I wiped off all the sanding dust that got onto the oiled surface! :-D
They fit! I had not actually planned this, but it makes sense, since they’re from the same piece of wood, but I’m really happy to discover they fit so perfectly inside the olive server.
I am quite pleased with these. Not only with how they turned out, but how quickly they worked up, too.
I was very happy to see our first order from Rare Seeds (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) come in. With so many delays in deliveries, I was more hoping than expecting.
Also, I’m a suck.
More on that later. :-D
Here is what came in: (click on the images to see them better)
We’ve got 2 varieties of carrots in. We’ll have 2 more varieties in our Vesey’s order, too. I would love to plant all of them, but that will depend on what we will be able to prepare for garden plots. There is basically just one place where we have soft, deeper soil, and that’s where the hard neck garlic is currently planted. I have room to make one more bed over there.
One thing I really liked was how much information is on the backs of that packages.
Which Tissue decided she needed to investigate.
In fact, ALL the cats came over to investigate!
The Kyoto red is supposed to be a “winter” carrot, but that does not apply to our climate. For our Zone 3, this is a summer carrot! Customer comments on the website included someone who very successfully grew it in another province, but also Zone 3. It was really that review that convinced me to try it.
Unfortunately, the Montana Morado corn’s package has no growing information on it. It is a black corn that is also a good flour corn. I am really glad I ordered it when I did, because it is now out of stock! These are both varieties we will be saving seeds from. We’ll have more corn coming in with our Vesey’s order, but whether or not we plant those ones as well will be decided by how much garden space we can prepare. Particularly since they have to be planted well away from each other, to avoid cross pollination.
I am so excited to have these poppies! I have no idea where we will plant them, but we will find a place! Saving seed with those will also be a priority. The strawberry spinach should be interesting. I’ve tried them before in a balcony garden, with limited success.
I had to laugh when I saw the free seeds they included.
We had decided not to try and grow Kohlrabi again, until we could figure out how to protect them from cabbage beetles and deer. Who knows. We might be able to figure something out by spring. I would really love to grow some! For me, these are a “treat” vegetable. :-)
My husband also got a package and, along with round sharpening stones for serrated knives, he had my Christmas present.
He didn’t bother waiting for Christmas. :-D
Yup. My darling, wonderful, thoughtful husband got me SPORES!!!! Oh, I am so excited!!! My husband is the best!
Both of these are native to the area. I haven’t seen morels since I was a child, and that was on the other quarter section, which is rented out. I’ve never seen them on the home quarter. As for puff balls, I actually saw some growing along the side of our driveway last summer! Not this giant variety, to be sure, but it was good to see them. Large ones like these can be sliced and grilled or fried like steak. Big steaks! They can also be battered and fried.
Growing these outdoors will be touch and go, but I am really looking forward to trying it. The morels package mentions elm as a tree to plant them under (the other trees mentioned don’t grow here), and we have plenty of elms around the yard.
Meanwhile, I’ve gone and placed another order with Rare Seeds!
Because I’m a suck.
I got a promotional email from them saying something along the lines of “hey, we noticed you looking at these, so we took the liberty of adding them to your list” and it included a link.
It wasn’t my wish list they added it to. It was my shopping cart.
Normally, I would have just blown it off, but…
I just couldn’t resist. It was affordable, and I really, really want to try these, even if we can’t plant them this spring. Plus, they are still in stock.
They are all gourds.
There is the Birdhouse gourd (I definitely want to try those again), the lovely Ozark nest egg gourd, the absolutely adorable and prolific Tennessee Dancing of Spinning gourd (in the customer comments, someone said they got about 250 off a single plant!), and finally, the Thai Bottle gourd, which is actually an edible gourd, unlike the others, which I plan to use for crafting purposes.
Plus there’s another package of free seeds. :-)
I do not expect to plant these next spring. The Birdhouse gourds take so long to germinate, they would have to be started much earlier than we did last time. And in bigger starter pots, because of how late our last frost date is.
Mind you, nothing says we have to plant entire packages. We could try growing just a few seeds and see what comes up.
Oh, this is going to be an interesting growing year! :-D
We had a bunch of things waiting for us at the post office today, including a surprise package!
M, you are a sweetheart! These will last us for years. :-) Thank you!
One of the things that was listed as, ‘it might come in or it might be delayed’, was the pasta drying rack. It was in today.
I love how flat it gets. That will make is much easier to store!
Now we’ve got both the pasta machine and the drying rack, as well as well as the durum flour I was able to find in the city. Time to decide what we want to make! :-D
The other packages that came in were our first order from Rare Seeds that I thought might have gotten hung up at the border or something. You can read about all the other stuff we ordered, and why, here.
I also got an early Christmas present from my husband!
All of which I will post about tomorrow, because it’s starting to snow and blow, and our internet keeps cutting in and out. :-D
One thing that did not come in was our UPS delivery. The driver probably couldn’t find us. I’ll have to see what I can find out about that. I really want to get that new trail cam set up! :-)
Okay, so after accidentally killing off our ball of old dough “yeast”, I had to start over. Since I have no idea how my grandmother got her first ball of old dough, this is all a guessing game, anyhow!
This time, I went with another old technique: the sponge.
It’s just 2 cups warm water, 2 cups flour and 2 Tbsp of yeast, mixed together. This is the sort of thing one might put into the fridge overnight, to bake in the morning. Instead, I put it in the oven that was warmed up to its lowest setting, then turned off.
After about an hour or more, the resulting sponge was all soft and fluffy!
I added another half cup of warm water, which also made it easier to transfer it to my big mixing bowl, then added the salt and flour, as usual.
Once I’d kneaded in as much flour as I wanted (I have to catch myself and not add too much!), the dough was set aside to rise in a floured bowl. Once again, it went into a warm oven to rise.
But not before I took out a dough baby! My mother described my grandmother as taking dough out for the next batch after the second rising, when she was shaping the loaves. Since I’m using actual yeast in this, I did only one rising before shaping the loaves. I flattened the ball out this time, to see how that changes things as it sits buried in the flour.
As for the rising dough, it ended up taking about 2 hours, even with using commercial yeast!
This would have been a 2 loaf recipe, but I decided to play around a bit.
I made 4 plain mini loaves, first.
Yes, there are only 3 in the picture. My husband already ate one. :-D
After taking the picture, I ate one, too!
The other half was used to make surprise buns. During our city shop, I’d found a gouda-like cheese (I can’t remember what it was actually called) with truffle in it. There was still some left, so I cut it into small slices and wrapped them inside the dough.
I did try and seal the dough well, but as you can see in the photo, the cheese still made its way out, and started bubbling in the middle!
I can hardly wait to try it out!
With our new dough baby, I will have to make a point of using it every few days again. Since I didn’t start out with an “instant sourdough” yeast, it will take longer to develop that sour flavour. At least, that’s my assumption.
I will also keep taking the dough baby out for the next batch at the start, as the dough it being setting aside to rise. That way, I can do things later on, like knead baking soda in again, or knead in things like herbs or shredded cheese or anything else that catches my fancy.
Before I catch up on things, I just had to share this photo.
This is Little Braveheart, now known as Tissue, cuddling with “grandma”.
That is the protective foam insert that came with the new washing machine. Our old mama cat has claimed it as her favorite bed, but she doesn’t mind a kitten joining her for cuddles!
They do like to chew on it, though. :-D
Meanwhile…
Yesterday, I bit the bullet and headed out to do some bigger shopping. It’s really mostly cat food and litter, where the price difference makes it worth the cost of gas to drive so far to get it. That, and supply. Locally, not only are the prices higher, but they just don’t have the space for much inventory or selection. After hearing about what people have gone though in the city, where we usually go, I wasn’t sure it was safe for me, so I went to the smaller city instead. It’s big enough to have a Walmart. :-D It’s a small store, but it carries what I need, and they don’t bat an eye when I walk in with a shield instead of a mask. I did remember to bring our pulse oximeter, and was glad to have it. It still amazes me that even a shield causes my blood oxygen levels to drop like that. The kitties are now well stocked in kibble again, though. :-)
I had a bit of a surprise later on, when looking up the tracking numbers for various orders that we have numbers for. Our new trail cam is supposed to arrive today, along with some other stuff – maybe. Lots of stuff are now coming up as delayed, as Canada Post is overwhelmed. When checking this time, though, I realized the trail cam wasn’t being sent by mail. It’s being shipped by UPS! So now I’ve got the garage security camera aimed at the gate, with the sound on, to keep an eye out for the delivery. Assuming they even find our place. We don’t exactly show up on GPS. :-/ The first time we tried to have something delivered by UPS, they had the hardest time finding us. The last time, they left the parcel at the general store/post office for us to pick up. So I’m not sure what will happen.
I don’t like ordering things online, and this is another reason why. It’s just that much harder to actually physically get things out here! I’d much rather get things locally, but so many things just aren’t available here.
I look forward to getting to a point of self-sufficiency, where we don’t have to depend on questionable delivery services, supply chains and such. It’ll take quite a few years to accomplish, but with all the stuff going on right now, it’s really been hitting home, how necessary that goal is for us, out here in the boonies. It’s hard enough to get things we need at the best of times, and these are not the best of times!
Ah, I was afraid of this. I managed to kill the dough ball.
My mother describes how her mother would bake only once a week. So after working using the old dough after letting it sit in the flour few a few days, this time, I left it longer. Last night, I took it out and prepped it to soak overnight, as usual. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me.
The dough ball didn’t look any different on the outside from before. The extra time did mean the inside was drier, which I did expect. It was basically a hollow ball. Being drier, it was easier to break up into small pieces. I added 2 cups of water that had been boiled and allowed to cool to the right temperature (because of concerns with our well water), and it was set in a warm oven with the light on, overnight.
This is what it looked like this morning.
Yeah. That yeast is dead.
In stirring it up, the dough was completely dissolved, but no hint of yeast activity.
I can say with confidence that the extra time buried in flour did not kill the yeast. I could have dehydrated it completely, and it should have reconstituted and kept right on going.
One of the things I mention in there was that I “cheated” by using baking soda. If you’ve worked with sourdough recipes that called for baking soda before, you know what happens! There is a lovely chemical reaction that results in a light, fluffy dough or batter.
My mistake was, I didn’t take the dough ball out before I added the soda. That chemical reaction would have continued after I buried the dough ball in the flour, which is why it still developed a hollow center. However, as I thought might happen, the yeast was spent in the process. I didn’t remember to take the dough ball out until too late in the process, but I hoped that maybe it would still work. Alas, it did not.
Well, this IS and experiment!
So I am restarting the process. I don’t have the “instant sourdough yeast” I used before, so I am using regular yeast to make a sponge, which is currently in a warm oven to get all spongy. I’ll post the details later, but it is also a very old technique. It will slow down my bread baking plans for the day by quite a bit. Ah, well. That’s okay. It’s a learning process, and that’s the whole fun of it!
The Re-Farmer 