Life As I Blog It

I wanted to make my own starter and it wasn’t as hard as I had been led to believe. I started with rye flour, pineapple juice and filtered water. The hardest part was throwing away all but a couple of teaspoons each day when I fed it with new flour and water. After 4 days I began using white unbleached flour and water, discarding and feeding it a couple of times per day.

When I couldn’t bear to throw it away, we kept it and used it in other baked goods. I made fruit and nut sour dough muffins and sourdough pancakes. Finally though, after nearly 2 weeks, I felt the sponge was ready to make bread.  I found a simple recipe that used 2 cups of starter, 3 cups of flour and just a little salt, butter and sugar. I mixed it up and kneaded it until smooth then smoothed olive oil over it and placed it in a bowl. I left it for 8 hours, punched it down then let it raise for 8 more hours before placing it on the stone and baking it. The flavor is light and delicious and the house smells wonderful

Simple Sourdough:

Use starter when it is yeasty smelling and on the rise, preferably a few hours after a feeding.

2 cups starter

4 tsp sugar

2 TBL butter or olive oil

1.5 tsp salt

3 cups flour

Mix starter, sugar, butter and salt then add flour until dough is thick enough to turn out unto flour covered board. Knead lightly 5-10 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. Form into ball, tucking rough edges under. Pour olive oil over dough and place olive oil side down in large bowl. Turn dough over so smooth side is up and all dough is completely covered with olive oil. Let rise until double. This will take from 4-8 hours depending on how active the starter was. Punch down and let rise another 4-8 hours. Move to baking stone or cookie sheet. Place pan of water in oven on bottom rack then place dough on top rack in a 375 degree oven. Bake for 35 minutes. Enjoy!

Start by chaining about 30 or enough length to fit your mop head. After turning, chain four then go into the back loop only, do this across. Turn and half double crochet in the front loop, turn and make another row of loops. Continue until it covers your mop head. Go around the outside edge with half double crochet, adding two at each corner. Continue going around, decreasing in the center of each side by two each time. When the cover fits securely, you are finished! Please recycle and use old bits of yarn. Acrylic works best as it creates static to pick up lint and hair. Turn inside out to damp mop.  Shake off to clean then throw it into the washer. Works great!

These cake truffles are made a little differently than most. We crumbled two baked white cakes with a can of frosting and an 8 oz package of cream cheese.
After mixing it well we rolled the mixture into balls then froze them for about 20 minutes then dipped them into melted white and dark chocolate.  It made over 100 truffles.

A few of my baby projects, blankets and caps that I have made over the last couple of weeks.

Makng Butterfinger-like candy at home with just 3 ingredients…1 cup candy corn, 1 cup peanut butter and melted chocolate chips. Yummy