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OK, so since I got on this bread-baking kick a couple of months ago, I’ve been trying my darnedest to work my way up to making Sourdough Bread.  Wanting to do it the ‘old fashioned way’, I’ve been trying unsuccessfully for weeks now to create a ’starter’, where you add fresh ingredients to a mixture of flour and water each day until it creates its own yeast.  It’s the basis for the entire project, and I just can’t seem to get it right.  From my readings, if it’s “right” then it will bubble up to twice it’s mass between each feeding… and mine just doesn’t do that, but fizzles out after a day or two and then seems to die a slow and painful death.  After 6 weeks of trying each and every day, you get discouraged.

So I’m starting over once again, and trying two slightly different methods simultaneously.  First, I’m using the standard approach, but using Bob’s Red Mill Organic Dark Rye Flour along with bottled water.  Supposedly the more organic style flour may have more natural yeast still alive within it, and bottled water may prevent any problems with chlorine in my tap water.

Side by side with the above, I’m trying to get an ‘established starter’ going.  This is where you buy a bit of starter from somebody like King Arthur Flour and, hopefully, simply nurse it along a bit to good results.  I was intrigued by “Friends of Carl” who will send you, free of charge, a portion of their 150+ year old starter with nothing more than an SASE to them.  So I wrote away for some, received it in the mail, and followed their instructions to begin resaturating the sample back to potency.

This time, I’m really hoping that one of these two methods bears fruit.  I really have a hankering for some Sourdough Bread, but fear I’ll have to continue buying it from HEB as I always have.  Don’t get me wrong, HEB has a wonderful bakery right here in town, but I sorta want to say “yeah, it’s homemade”.

To restock some of Stephanie’s favorite Rombauer Chardonnay, we made a run to Spec’s Liquor Store tonight – something we always enjoy.  While Stephanie browsed the Chardonnay aisle, I cruised the Cabs for anything extraordinary that caught my eye.  A very nice sales-associate offered his help and ended up telling me about his favorite everyday table wine, Sacred Stone from Pietra Santa Winery (Cienega Valley).  At $10/bottle it was certainly worth a try, even if it failed our taste-test.  So amongst our other purchases, we grabbed a single bottle of this table wine and carried it home.

After about an hour in the fridge to bring it down to a better temperature, I unscrewed the cap and tried a glass.  Let me tell you, we finished that bottle and will head back for more real soon.  Now it’s certainly not a Cakebread, Phelps, or Sawyer ‘big Cab’, but believe me when I tell you that I’ll pop one of these bottles most any night.  There are those nights when I want some wine, but just don’t want to open a $40 bottle, and this little gem is the perfect choice.

Yummy at this price-point!

I had some white bread dough just wasting away in the garage refrigerator, so I decided to make something I’d had in mind for a while… a Cinnamon Swirl loaf.  Grabbed the easy recipe and threw it together, let it rise for a couple of hours and threw it in the oven.

When I sliced it up… well, let’s just say I have a lot of work to do to create a pretty swirl pattern, but lemme tell ya, it tastes GOOD!   I asked Stephanie if she wanted the raisins that the recipe called for, and she suggested dried cranberries instead… so that’s what I used, and it’s YUM.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Tres Leches is a sinful dessert.  It’s cake doused in three different kinds of milk; evaporated, sweetened condensed, and heavy cream.  If it’s done right, it almost drips with rich goodness.  Friends exchange information on which restaurants in town have the best offerings and that sometimes sways a person on where to eat.

So I was thrilled yesterday when my sweetie offered to try her hand at a homemade version.  She made the cake from scratch, let it cool, poked holes in it, and drenched it in a 3 milk concoction.  I waited, fork in hand, for my slice… but was told it had to chill appropriately.  A few hours later she tired of my badgering and sliced us off some of that heavenly fare.  OMG but that’s good stuff.  Knowing that SIL loves a good Tres Leches, we even made a quick delivery run.

I wonder if she’ll notice if none is left when she gets home from work… hmmmmmmmmmmm

We had a friend over for dinner last night, and my contribution was a fresh baked loaf of bread. I wanted to try something a bit different, so I made the Semolina recipe from ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day’. Stephanie suggested that I add some herbs since we were having baked Ziti… so I grabbed the Italian Herbs bottle and threw in a tablespoon full.

Not only did the half-semolina mixture turn out great, but the taste of herbs made it a  yummy sidedish to italian food.  Our guest went back for 2nds… or was that thirds?

Well Friday has rolled around and I felt like doing some baking.  Yes, feel free to say ‘Oh Wally, the exciting life you lead!!’.  Go ahead!!  I’m used to it!!

So I’d just begun reading this 2007 bread book named “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” and wanted to try my hand at some simple white bread boules (round loaves).  I had coincidentally run across a short YouTube video that the authors made to demonstrate their basic technique, and it looked SO lazy to me that I had to try it.

So I grabbed my big plastic bucket ($16 from King Arthur or $3 from Surfas) and threw in some salt, yeast, flour, and water… mixed it up, put the lid on, and went back to work.  I have to admit though, instead of using the all-purpose flour that they call for, I used the very end of the only bag of AP that we had, the very end of a bag of bread flour, and just a bit of a brand new bag.  Did a little house-cleaning there, if you know what I mean.  Plus, I didn’t even spend 5 minutes away from my desk.

Quick as a wink, two hours had passed and it was time to check things out.  Man-oh-man but the dough had risen.  So I cut off about a grapefruit sized piece and tried my best to make it nice and round, then plopped it onto a pizza-peel to rise a second time.  Heck, so far it’s taken longer to take the photos than to do the work.  And on my way back to my office, I turned the oven on to preheat our pizza stone… another first for me and my bread.

I let the dough rise about 45 minutes the second time, then slid that bad boy onto the hot pizza stone in the oven and dumped some water into a heated broiler pan to provide some steam.  Apparently steam aids in making a better crust.  Now I just sit back and wait… and hope it turns out even somewhat as it should.  I’d hate for somebody to say “WTF is that anyway??”.

Back to work, and before you know it, the oven timer is screaming CHECK THE BREAD YOU IDIOT!.  So I impale the loaf with my thermometer and it’s a perfect 206.  I use the pizza-peel to scoop it out and put it on a cooling rack.  Geesh, even the scoring I did looks pretty darned good.  Gotta let it cool for a bit before cutting into it to check the crumb… more waiting…

So a couple of hours passed and my sweetie got home… I talked her into cutting the bread and we enjoyed a piece with some softened butter… wow, it’s really really good.  And this is just the plain white boule… I’ve already got plans for a mixed grain one next time.  YUMMIES!