Daily Bread

This is our basic bread and it comes from the Tassajara Bread Book.
First you need a sourdough starter. I made mine for a different sourdough that needed too much attention. Good tutorial here (although my original starter only had one grain of yeast, not one packet!).

I keep my starter in a glass jar covered with fabric in the fridge. The night before I want to bake bread, I get out my big bread bowl.

Into the bowl:
4.5 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 to 1 c. starter

Add 3 and 3/4 c. lukewarm water while stirring, until a thick pasty batter is formed. Beat well. Cover (I use a platter).

First replenish the starter by removing 1/2 to 1 c. from the sponge (the overnight mixture) and adding it to the starter.
Then dump into the remaining sponge:
1/2 c. oil
1 Tbs. salt
5-6 c. flour (I use 2 cups unbleached, the rest whole wheat)

When dough comes easily away from the bowl but is still a bit sticky, knead for 5 minutes. Dough will be a little softer and stickier than commercial yeast dough. Cut dough into 3 equal lumps and shape into loaves. Place loaves in greased bread pans. Slit tops with a sharp knife. Cover with a damp dishtowel. Allow almost all day for rising (when I see the dough rounding up the towel) and don't expect it to double in volume. Heat oven to 425. Brush or spray loaves with water. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes. Spray/brush with water again and turn oven down to 375. Bake for 15 more minutes. Turn out on rack and cool before slicing.

The night before:


The next day after kneading:


Tucking the loaves of dough in for a long rise:


Risen! Ready for the oven:


Done. The house smells like heaven. Glow of satisfaction.


I love that this bread is made from flour, salt, oil, and water. It is so unfussy, too - give or take a few hours rising and it's fine. Recipes that demand long stretches of attention or care at critical points do not work well with my life at home with children. My yeast bread suffered from this neglect, but hallelujah! sourdough does not. Occasionally I still make yeast breads for special occasions, but I still gravitate towards ones that have a long rise: in the refrigerator or in the manner of No-Knead.

As for the starter, I bake bread about every other week and it thrives just fine. Sometimes I forget to replenish the starter before I add the oil and salt to the sponge, so I just use plain flour and water. Possibly I am grossly mistreating my starter or overlooking a key step in my baking - I still have a lot to learn about sourdough, but for 8 months now, it's been working fine.

The Hearth of my Home: Bread

A hearth was the huge fireplace in the kitchen, place of bountiful cakes, stews, roasted meat, and bread. You could warm up there, dry wet clothes, pull up a chair, and ruminate as you stared into the fire.

I have no fireplace or even wood stove, but in my daily life, my bread is the hearth of our home. I bake our daily bread.

Why I bake my family's bread:

1. The scent of bread baking is beyond compare.

2. It's the only healthy AND cheap AND delicious bread I know ($.97 a loaf for mostly organic, mostly whole wheat sourdough bread).

3. My grandmothers baked bread and I've been doing it for almost 10 years now. I do love me a good tradition.

4. I feel like a goddess-provider, clever and competent.

Now that I've explained why I do it, tomorrow I'll tell you how. And if you're still interested, I'll relate some of my trials and experiments before arriving at my present recipe and method. And I don't think my bread journey is finished - I recently started talking sourdough with two different experienced bakers from my church. I have a lot to learn.

Book Review: Confessions of an Organized Housewife

(first of all, a pretty picture: my Christmas table)

I like reading housekeeping books, so I own some and I'm always interested in ones I don't know. This one was recommended by Leila at Like Mother, Like Daughter. It's titled Confessions of an Organized Housewife by Deniece Schofield, published in 1982, and (hooray!) at my library.

My main thought after reading it was, wow, I am already doing most of what she recommends. Wow, maybe I am a good housekeeper. . . that has sustained me for a few weeks now.

Schofield makes the point that having a clean, organized house frees you up to focus on things you really want to do. Yes, that has been my experience. If the house is at bottom organized and regularly cleaned, you can clean off the surface mess (ahem - TOYS) and surface dirt with a minimum of effort and irritation.

Another good point: if you do it well, you'll like housework.

Some organizational things Schofield does that I realized (joy!) I do already:
1. When I'm considering buying something, I ask myself where I'm going to put it in my house.
2. I store things at or near point of first use. (as opposed to where it "should" be kept or where my mother kept it)
3. I store the children's toys on shelves - not in toyboxes or out of sight.
4. I plan a few menus of varying involvement for a week and then as the week unfolds, I match them up to my schedule for the day.

Overall, I do recommend this book. But then, I told you that I like to read housekeeping books. . .

Dark Days Week 11: Pizza

OK, this is *almost* local pizza. The crust is made of organic whole wheat and unbleached flours. One of my friends and I are determined to use our local whole wheat pastry flour to make more than just quick breads. Back in the day, before trains began hauling hard winter wheat from the Midwest, settlers used the wheat they could grow here on the East Coast: soft wheat which is what pastry flour is milled from. But they certainly baked bread, the staff of life. So I want to figure it out too. Apparently the Smithsonian has colonial recipes; I'll keep you posted.

So, excepting the crust, everything else was local: my own pizza tomato sauce from the freezer, local organic goat milk mozzarella, local mushrooms.



Then we had a classic accompaniment: green salad, made with wonderful local organic lettuces and raw turnips, topped with 1000 Island Dressing. I explained my dressing in this post.




At the last minute, my husband and I had some wine from, um, California. As I write this, I realized there is local beer in the fridge. Beer and pizza - what's my problem? My memory? Apparently I'm still getting the hang of this local thing. . .

Sunday Dinner: Asian Crockpot Beef

Before stomach flu took over our house, I had already put a beef bolar roast in the fridge to thaw for Sunday. That was Thursday.

Fortunately, I had planned an easy Sunday dinner; I was still recovering energy.

Asian Crockpot Beef (recipe from my dear friend Rebecca)

Place in crockpot:
3 lb. beef roast (a little heavier or lighter probably doesn't matter)

Put around/over the roast:
1 sliced onion
6 garlic cloves
2" piece ginger root, peeled and chopped

Mix together and pour over all:
2/3 c. soy sauce
1 c. red wine
2 Tbs. brown sugar

Cook on low for 6 hours (I had 5 hours so I turned my cooker to high for an hour and turned it down when we left). I also sprinkled just a bit of powdered ginger and powdered garlic in at the end - a slow cooker can sometimes destroy nuanced flavors, in my opinion. Shred with 2 forks. Serve on top of rice or Asian noodles.

I put brown rice in the oven (same proportions as white rice, same as stovetop) in a covered casserole. Timed bake for 1 hour, 10 minutes.

The night before I made a winter cabbage salad, adding some chopped scallions and rice vinegar to emphasize the Asian flavors. In the summer, I use Thai basil from my little garden.



If you've never had beef cooked in soy sauce, you should try it; the salt tenderizes the beef and the cooking mellows the whole thing into richness. You must have a crisp, clean tasting accompaniment for it such as pickled ginger, lightly steamed snow peas or broccoli, or an endive salad with oranges.

Community Nurse Macaroni & Cheese

We have all been sick with the stomach flu, my nemesis. I would rather be sick with almost anything else. As I lay on the sofa, I finally reached the last of the Southern Living magazines my friend Andrea had given me (thank you, Andrea!). I had torn out a few recipes and when I considered what to eat as we moved past the B.R.A.T. diet, I recalled the one below. It is named for the public health nurses who once showed young mothers how to make nutritious meals. I was amused that it was "nursing" my family back to health and strength.

Community Nurse Macaroni & Cheese
Cook until very al dente:
1 box (16 oz) macaroni

Mix together in bowl:
1 c. dry milk
1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
2 c. water
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 pound shredded sharp cheese
3-4 Tbs. melted butter
2 beaten eggs

Combine with macaroni and put in well- greased casserole (about 9x13 size - this is a BIG recipe).

Top with:
1/2 c. bread or cracker crumbs

Bake at 375 for 35-45 minutes (until bubbly and edges are turning tan).

It's an easy mac-n-cheese, but I can tell I'm not myself: normally I would have halved this recipe and still had leftovers. And I totally forgot to put the flour in until it was in the oven for 10 minutes, so I called my friend Rebecca for advice. On her recommendation, I whisked the flour with a bit of milk and tried to shove it down into the baking goop without disturbing the crumbs over much.

Overall, we liked it, but I would have liked more creamy stuff clinging to the macaroni. However, I am not fond of making white sauces, so I might fiddle around with this one to get it more to my liking.

Should I Buy a Clothes' Brush?

It's already mud season here, with the temps in the 40s. But I send my children out to play for the fresh air and my mental health. (Some of) the results:





I had just washed this little coat a few days prior, and it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I could brush the mud off instead of wangling a time to wash it when it wasn't needed and then waiting for it to dry. Brushing worked! Maybe I'm the last mother to find this out. . .

I used a hairbrush to brush Ben's coat. Should I invest in a clothes brush? What is that, anyway? I'm eyeing my pale blue wool winter coat and wondering if its faint smudges would brush out too.