Friday, April 22, 2011

You can bake! And the ultimate pizza dough!

Since last fall, we've been baking all our own bread.  There's always a loaf on the counter or dough in the fridge (and usually there's both!).  Baking bread is so easy, and not at all the time consuming task non-regular bakers think of.  Baking seems to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance these days, and I want to spread the good word!

Bread Basics
Great bread is all about ratios.  Stick to the correct ratios, and you really can't go wrong!  The magic numbers are these: 1.5, 1.5, 3, 6.5.  That's 1.5 Tbsp yeast, 1.5 Tbsp salt, 3 cups water, and 6.5 cups flour.  It's so simple it's crazy!  And you can follow the same numbers for substituting, as long as the total numbers stay the same.  (Don't substitute anything for the yeast or salt, those are key ingredients!)  For example, I like a softer sandwich loaf, so I do 1.5 cups water and 1.5 cups milk.  As long as it's 3 total cups liquid, you're good to go.  Same goes with flour (though I don't recommend using more than half whole wheat, it makes for a very dense loaf).  I also like adding some sweetener (usually honey), but that doesn't follow a set ratio; I usually add a couple tablespoons of honey, I don't really measure (but it's not crucial to measure it).  Same goes for adding a fat (butter, oil).  I usually just add a few tablespoons.  

Mixing Method
In a large bowl (or a large stand mixer with a dough hook), add the liquid (room temp or slightly warmer, not hot but not cold), yeast, and salt, (and fat and/or sweetener if you're using it) and stir to dissolve the salt.  Then add in 6 cups of flour, and mix it all together with a wooden spoon (or on slow speed) (add the last .5 cup flour if it's too wet).  You want it to be fairly wet, but dry enough to feel elastic.  Don't mix with your hands if you can avoid it- this often leads you to add too much flour.  The dough should still be pretty dang sticky.  Cover it with plastic wrap, and let it sit for about 2 hours.  Don't worry about punching it down, or whether the volume doubles or triples.  It doesn't matter! The yeast knows what to do!  If you're not ready to bake after the 2 hours are up, pop it in the fridge.  It is wet enough to last several days to a week!
Elastic enough to form a ball, but the shape shouldn't last long!

Baking Time!
After the 2 hour rising mark, you're ready to shape.  This recipe works best for free form 'artisan' style loaves, rolls, etc.  (See below for sandwich loaf variation)  Flour your hands and your work surface liberally, and flour the top of the dough.  Liberally sprinkle corn meal on a baking sheet.  Grab a good hunk of dough, form it into a ball, and place it on the corn mealed baking sheet.  Allow to rise uncovered for half an hour.  A few minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.  Melt a tablespoon of butter (salted or unsalted, your choice) and gently brush the surface of each loaf.  Bake for at least 30 minutes, but possibly as much as 45, depending on the size of the loaf.  The top should be crisp and browned, not just golden.  Trust me, it's way better to overbake than underbake!  Allow to cool completely before slicing, if you can resist!

The Ultimate Pizza Dough
This recipe follows the same ratio, only on a 2/3rd smaller scale, and will make a beautiful big and fairly thick pizza (after all, delicious dough deserves a thicker crust!).  Follow the above ratio if you would rather make two medium pizzas, or one large and some breadsticks, etc.  

2 cups water
1 tbsp yeast
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cups flour (I think it's best half white flour half whole wheat!)

Combine the first five ingredients as directed above, then add flour and mix and allow rise as directed above.  After the 2 hour rise, you're ready to shape your pizza.  You'll need a LOT of flour on your work surface and hands and rolling pin.  Preheat the oven to 450, and prepare your toppings.  Cover a baking sheet very liberally with corn meal.  Roll out your dough, flipping it over and adding flour to keep from sticking as needed, until it's as large and thick as you'd like it (for me, as big as my baking sheet will allow!).  Spread sauce, cheese, and toppings as desired, and bake for about 20 minutes until the cheese is hot and bubbly and the crust is golden.  Enjoy!!!

My Favorite Sandwich Bread

1.5 cups warm water
1.5 cups milk
1.5 Tbsp yeast
1.5 Tbsp salt
3 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
3.5 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
1 cup rolled oats

Add first 6 ingredients as directed above, then add the flours and oats and mix.  Add either flour or liquid until it is elastic but still sticky.  Allow to rise as directed above.  After 2 hours, grease or spray a loaf pan with a neutral flavored oil.  Flour your hands and the top of the dough, and pull out half of the dough and form into a ball.  Stretch the ball slightly to elongate, and place in the prepared loaf pan.  Allow to rise another 45 minutes, uncovered.  (Do the same for the other half of the dough if you have two loaf pans. If not, you can make rolls, or refrigerate it for another day!)  Preheat oven to 450.  Melt a tablespoon of butter and brush the top of the loaf, and bake for 40 minutes or until deeply golden/browned.  This time, definitely wait until completely cooled before slicing.  

Friday, April 15, 2011

You can grow potatoes!

This post is the first in a series of 'you can do it' type stuff for the garden and whatnot!  We have a number of friends who have become interested in starting to grow their own food, and have asked us for advice on how to get started, so we thought that this would be a great way of helping people learn how to do it!  I would love if you read this post (or any of my posts) and think of someone who would appreciate it, that you pass a link on to them!  Often times starting a food garden for the first year can be a really daunting task, and a lot of gardening books and articles make it seem more complicated than it needs to be.  We hope to be able to spread the knowledge around so more people can learn to grow and enjoy their own food!!!  And so, we start with potatoes!

Though we've been growing food for about 6 years now, we only just did a potato crop for the first time last year, and it was a complete success!  Potatoes are extremely easy to grow, have great yields for very little effort, and are an excellent staple crop that is very easily stored.

Preparing to plant!
Potatoes will grow just about anywhere- in containers, in old tractor tires, in hay, in your compost pile, or any ol' garden bed.  The easiest way (apparently, we haven't tried it yet but want to!) is to just stick them in a mound of hay, let it do its thing, and come harvest time you don't have to work it out of the dirt, you just pull potatoes right out of the hay!  The only rule you really need to follow is making sure none of the potatoes are exposed to light.  Light turns potatoes green, and the green part is slightly toxic.  The way we prefer to plant them is in dirt, in a slight hole (rather than a mound), and cover the dirt with a good bit of hay.  As the tubers grow, if any peek up through the dirt, you can just add more dirt or hay to keep them in the dark.  Anyways, getting ahead of myself here.  All you need is some good, loose soil, and they'd love some compost if you have it (or can buy it).

And of course, you need some potatoes!  You can buy "seed" potatoes at garden stores or online nurseries, which are no different from what you'd buy at the grocery store, except they are probably already sprouting out the eyes.  If you can't find true seed potatoes, you can use potatoes from the grocery store, but you're better off buying organic potatoes (better chance that they are not a hybrid variety; you can't save seed from hybrids to use for next year). (If you buy potatoes from the grocery store, wait until they sprout before you get ready to plant them.  Some store bought potatoes are treated with an anti-sprouting spray.)  Last year we grew organic Russian Banana fingerlings.  This year we are trying Yukon Golds.  Larger potatoes (like Russets) need a longer growing season, so keep that in mind when choosing a variety.

24 hours before you want to plant them in the ground, you will need to cut the potatoes into pieces, with about 3 eyes per piece.  Let them sit overnight in a bowl or paper bag to allow the cut edges to dry, which will protect them from molding in the ground.

Planting day!
The best thing about planting potatoes is that you really can't screw it up.  As long as the ground isn't frozen anymore, you're good to go.  Roots and seeds know when the time is right for them to start growing.  If it's too cold for them, they won't grow until it's warm enough.  Smart, huh?  On planting day, you'll want to dig a hole about 3" deep, and the width of your shovel.  Put one piece of potato in each hole, and make each hole about three feet apart.  The spacing might seem wide, but trust me, the foliage will get huge, and the potatoes need lots of room!  If they cant grow outwards, they'll grow down, which means more digging come harvest time.  Fill the hole back in with the dirt, add some compost if you've got it, and cover with about 2" of hay just over the hole (you can find bales at feed stores, which will have the best certified seed free hay).  If you don't want to use hay, you'll need to plan the potato a few inches deeper in the dirt.  If you want to do them in containers, you'll need a quite wide container, as there needs to be plenty of room for those potatoes to grow!

The Waiting Game...
Different varieties take different lengths of time to get to harvest time, but the time between planting and harvest is really pretty easy.  Keep them watered, don't let the soil get bone dry, and if any tubers start peeking out into the light, cover them up with more dirt and/or hay (Hay is easier cause it's a whole lot easier to remove at harvest time than a whole lot of dirt!).  Potato foliage is beautiful, the flowers are really pretty (not all plants will flower, so don't freak out if yours don't), and some will even form little seed pods that look remarkably like tomatoes.  But BE FOREWARNED!  ALL parts of the potato plant EXCEPT the potatoes themselves are POISONOUS!!!  Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family, so if you have a curious kiddo who happens to like green tomatoes, keep an eye on them that they don't stick a potato seed pod in their mouth (been there, done that with Wyatt!).
Potato blossoms!

Their foliage is so big and beautiful! (That's only about 5 plants!)

Harvest Time!!!
When the summer is waning, the foliage of the plant will start to yellow- that means it's harvest time!!!  You don't have to worry about frost as long as they are in the ground.  You probably want to get them out of the dirt before it snows, but that's more a matter of convenience ;)  When you harvest, it's easiest to cut the foliage down so it's out of your way, and pull away the hay (it's all great for your compost pile!).  Be very careful as you dig, because scraping the skin of the potato will shorten the length of time you can store it.  The easiest way to safely loosen the dirt is to dig in a wide circle around each plant, loosening the dirt with a spade (like you would do to till a garden bed), but be careful when you put the shovel into the ground, push it in slowly so you don't chop a potato in half.  Then, it's a bit like a treasure hunt!  Break up chunks of dirt by hand, and be sure to go through the dirt all around the plants, because stray potatoes might have decided they liked a bit of privacy and gone deeper or further to the side of the plant than you might expect.  Once you think you've gotten them all, dig a little deeper just to be sure.  If you've planted in containers, you might even dump the whole container out on the ground to get every last little tuber.  Discard any potatoes with lots of green on them.  If there are potatoes with just little bits of green on an end, you can still eat those, just cut the green bit off before cooking.

Unfortunately, you probably don't want to cook a potato straight out of the ground.  They will be much better, and will do better in long term storage, if you let them dry in darkness for several days up to several weeks, to dry the skin (don't wash them!!!).  We put ours in cardboard boxes in layers between newspapers, and stuck them in the closet.  After this time, they are ready to eat and store!!!

Storing your harvest
Potatoes do best in darkness and dry coolness, in a very well ventilating container.  Brown paper bags are not ventilated enough, unfortunately... Wood boxes are probably best.  You can also store them in sand, or burlap sacks, though I don't recommend buckets, even with loose lids.  That's what we did, and all the potatoes we saved for seed to plant this spring ended up liquefied.  GROSS!  If you don't have a cool garage or basement, a dark cabinet will do, but if you have a big harvest, you'll need to find a cool space to keep them.  Don't put potatoes in the fridge though!!! Too cold, and the starch will turn to sugar, and while I love sweet potatoes, a sweet regular potato is not so tasty...  Only wash potatoes right before you cook them.

Last year, we planted 10lbs of potatoes in 48 holes, had 46 plants come up (We think the two that didn't grow were dug up by the dog), and got 55lbs of potatoes from those 46 plants.  Pretty freakin awesome!!! This year we are planting 20lbs!  Yay!!!

One of many boxes of our Russian Banana Fingerlings! Yum!!!

This is a case of mistaken identity...

Well, two weeks of chicken ownership has been wonderful! We didn't lose a single chick, no health issues, they grew so fast, and are nice healthy birds! But unfortunately, not all of them were the birds we wanted... We *thought* we had 12 Buff Orpington chicks, and thought the 8 darker ones maybe just had different parents or were just darker birds or something... Well, as they grew, so did their feathers, and as their feathers came in with patterns, we realized something wasn't right... It took until they were very nearly 2 weeks old before we were able to positively identify the 8 darker birds as Rhode Island Reds, a very beautiful breed no doubt, but not the right breed for us.  For one, they aren't as cold hardy and wouldn't do well in the winter here, and for two they are prone to be a more aggressive breed, and probably wouldn't get alone with the 4 Orpingtons we did have once they got older.  But thankfully, thanks to Craigslist we were able to find the Reds a new home, and take the 4 Orpingtons to Red's mom Kayla, and get 8 new Buff Orpington chicks for ourselves, all in one day!  Ca-RAY-zy!  So now we have 8 weeny teeny little yellow puffballs (and yes, this time they ALL are Orpingtons!), they are 4 days old today (or thereabouts, we got them on Wednesday, and are assuming they were day-olds then), and already have grown quite a bit.  It really is remarkable the difference in their behavior even at this tender age compared to how the Reds were, the first batch of chicks were constantly peeping and chirruping, but this batch is quite quiet in comparison!  They aren't as fond of being fed special treats (cracked wheat and oats) by hand by us yet, whereas the Reds weren't too shy of a hand full of treats, but these are much more tolerant of being picked up and held, whereas the Reds were very skiddish even at 2 weeks old of a hand without treats... Anyways, this new batch are healthy and doing well, and we're excited to get our flock right the second time ;)

(On a personal note, today is Wyatt's 3rd Birthday!!! My poor baby boy is so sick with a nasty tummy bug, and we've had to postpone his party, but we still have special stuff to do with him tomorrow even if he can't have friends over :(  Poor kiddo!  I think Red and I are more upset about it than he is though!)