Kamut & Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

 

Fresh baked sourdough loaves from fresh milled kamut and whole wheat flour I started two days ago. It was autolyzed (the grain flour soaked in the recipe's water). Then once the sourdough starter was added, it went through the folding process, and then was bulked a bit. Put into the cambro container, it was refrigerated (see that post from 2 days ago for the process). I did fold it a bit yesterday and shaped it into a nice boule, then back into the cambro and fridge. Today, straight from the fridge, it was baked! 

These are the containers I'm baking in. The long one is clay and the closest one is cast iron. They go into the oven to preheat to 500 degrees, so the pans get hot. 

I shape the cold dough on the counter and it sits while the oven and pans are preheating.

I typically do just one slash with a razor blade. 

 

Cambro

Once in the oven with the lids on, I turn the heat down to 450 degrees. Turn the timer on for 20 minutes. When it goes off, I remove the lids and have the timer go for another 20 minutes.  

 Because it is just the two of us I cut the cooled loaves in half and they store in the freezer. I have bread freezer bags I use for freezing the bread without plastic bags.

 I always have bread stored in a beeswax bag in our bread box in the kitchen. A breadboard sits near the bread box along with the sourdough knife. 

 

New Sourdough Book

 

A new to me book

When I was researching the nutrition in fresh ground whole grains, and moreso sourdough, I found this gal, Vanessa Kimbell. She's called the sourdough queen in the UK and started a sourdough school.

When reading Amazon's sample (and I read the samples of all three of her books) I knew I wanted them. Their Kindle versions were so cheap I got them first, but then realized I needed the physical books so I can flip back and forth to differing pages and even mark them up ...

(The mention of owning them and liking to mark them up reminds me of a series I'm reading. At Christmas my granddaughter was reading them and her mom eventually told me she'd give me the first two for my birthday, I am savoring them!!! I'm on book 5 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series, by Beth Brower. I can't show you book number 1 because a friend came today for tea and borrowed it. I've already heard from her, that she loves it and is going to savor it! Anyway, Emma M. Lion LOVES books and likes to own them so she can mark them up. I periodically text my daughter-in-law to tell of a part I'd recently read that kept me chuckling!) 

The sourdough queen Vanessa, has really studied the 'chemistry' of sourdough and our gut. You can read about it in The Sourdough School book. Her first taste of sourdough was when 9 years old in a French bakery. By the time she was 11, she was working there. She moved to the UK and could not find any sourdough bread. She got sick. She ate gluten free for four years and then when visiting France, at her old bakery, she ate half a loaf and knew she'd soon be suffering ... but she did not get sick! At that point the trajectory of her life changed - she had to understand why/what was so different about sourdough. This book is about answering her questions and the knowledge of this magical fermentation process that is integral to making the most nourishing and delicious bread in the world!

I have a large collection of bread making books. I am going to work my way through this book and its recipes. I have friends who have had the experience of being able to eat bread in Europe, and my bread, and not gotten sick. 

The fresh milled Kamut, and Whole Wheat bread I started yesterday, I put in a Cambro overnight, I decided to make a lot of folds and form the dough into a nice boule and put back into the fridge. I'll bake it tomorrow.

 I read in her book that this method of getting the dough autolyzed and fermented, then leaving it overnight to proof (what I've always done), even to 48 hours, is the healthiest. It is more digestible.

And she takes it from the fridge, and puts it to bake in the hot oven. This too, is what I've done for years! She likes the spring of the dough from cold fridge to hot oven.

I bought another sourdough book that adds lots of veggie or fruit pastes into sourdough bread. It's a seasonal book, even adding mashed chestnuts, which I only see at Christmas, into the bread. I'll probably be mentioning it at some point. I have to start baking from it as well.

 This morning I ate not just oatmeal, but a mixture I'd ordered from Azure, that has lots of rolled grains. I mixed it with reconstituted freeze dried strawberries. It was so good. A 7-grain cereal. 

I've really missed, leaving by the wayside for awhile, all the whole grains I used to eat. After reading people's healing stories from eating fresh milled whole grain flour products, I'm starting to look at my health history over the past almost 15 years . . . 

The cereal bag is next to my ancient yogurt maker. It was already used when I bought it almost 40 years ago and is still working. I've made our 1/2 gallon of whole milk homemade yogurt all those years to this day still. 

Tomorrow I'll post about the bread baking. 
 

Fresh Milled Flour (FMF) From Many Grains!

I used to make bread, for almost 30 years with fresh ground flour - primarily hard white wheat. In one day I'd have 6 sandwich loaves, 4 french bread, and four dozen cinnamon rolls made. I'd freeze the majority of it all. That was when our kids were here. They were raised in this house, but now off raising their own families.

 

I started making sourdough bread. My research showed the nutritive value of sourdough, as well as its aid in digestion as a ferment. It's basically predigested.  It's also the way bread has been made forever. Yeast is new as of very late 1800, so from 1900 on our breads in the US have been made quickly and don't go through a ferment time using a starter culture. Anyway, I'm making everything sourdough from my almost 15 year old starter. I keep it in the refrigerator in between baking.

 

Fresh Milled Flours

 In the picture I've ground-

• 600g Kamut
• 200g Hard White Wheat 
• 200g Hard Red Wheat   
   

Sourdough starter proofing in the oven

I've got it soaking in 800g warm water while my sourdough starter, which I added some flour and water to, is proofing in my Breville Smart Oven Pro. It almost always takes 2 hours to proof from the refrigerator to a bubbly state.

 

Soaking (autolyse) grain flour in the water

The soaking of the grain, in my third picture, is an Autolyze step I now do with all fresh ground whole grains. It softens the bran, primarily. I was told in the beginning of my sourdough process that you cannot use whole grain for sourdough bread because the bran would cut the bubbles and you'd end up with flat bread, so I used store bought (or Azure bought) bread flour, which are basically sifted for removing the bran (and probably the germ of the grain, which goes rancid, thus not shelf stable) and adding about 10-30% fresh ground flour. Because I made the Tartine sourdough bread for so many years, I really have the sourdough bread process memorized and great loaves of bread. I kept the freezer stocked for the two of us. 

 

I've got the bowl in above picture sitting on a heating source set at 80 degrees, while the starter is proofing in the oven, which is also set at 80 degrees. Our house is generally cold so a warmer temperature for proofing is good.

 

 Once the leaven is bubbly, I measure 150g of the leaven into the soaking ground grain. Then I let it autolyse some more. I usually wait about 30 minutes before adding another 50g of water and 25g of salt. 

  

 

Ready to mix in extra water and salt

Now, in this picture I'm ready to fold in the water and salt. I often just use my wet hands. I like to work the salt and water into the dough well. So I mix it in with lots of folds, almost like kneading.

 

Then about every 30 minutes with my wet hands I'll do several folds for about 2 hours. Most times I'm really good about this and sometimes very irregular. Then you're supposed to let it bulk rise for awhile. And again, sometimes I'm good at doing this and other times when busy I forget. But in the end, once folded several times and maybe bulked for awhile I put it in a Cambro container overnight in my fridge in the garage.

 

So stay tuned for the formed and baked bread, most likely tomorrow. Sometimes I'll keep it refrigerated for 2 days before baking if it fits my schedule better. I'll show you what I typically bake 2 loaves in, and then other pans I don's use as often. I'll give you a clue tho, I prefer bread easier to slice to eat with our fresh cooked chicken eggs, or sandwiches.

 

 

Cultured Condiments

Homemade Cultured (fermented) Condiments

I was wanting to make egg salad (recipe under eggs label - thee best!) and realized I needed more mayo. I make mayo. I'll keep some store-bought around ... for some people ... but I prefer homemade.

Since reading Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions (have I read it all? has anyone read it all? what a resource!!!!!!!) I started making my own ketchup and mayo. I'd been making my own mayo occasionally, and mustard for years, but now culture it. By letting them ferment a bit with the addition of liquid whey (draining the liquid from my homemade yogurt or dairy kefir) their nutrients are boosted with more enzymes and vitamins (and dare I say 'organisms'? - like probiotic) and it helps preserve them for a long time.

MAYONNAISE
Have all the ingredients at room temp.

3 egg yolks or 1 whole egg and 1 yolk
Definitely use washed organic eggs, or better yet, pastured eggs.
I use my own chickens eggs which are fed organic non-GMO grains.
1 tsp dijon mustard (my homemade!)
1 1/2 Tb raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
1 Tb whey (not powdered)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Making mayo in a food processor

Combine all but the oil in either a blender or food processor. With it running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil and the mixture will thicken. Jar up and leave the jar with the lid on, on the counter for 7 to 12 hours to culture, and then refrigerate. This keeps for many weeks!

I love the flavor of extra virgin olive oil. If you don't, experiment with other oils. You can find all kinds of suggestions online. Unless you buy organic mayo, you are getting GMO soybean oil, etc.

For ketchup I use tomato paste and the vinegar and whey and spicing. There's lots of recipes out there. I use Sally's. And same goes for mustard. For years I've been using a mixture of dark brown and light golden mustard seeds.

Homemade mustard is fabulous. I'll often take it to gatherings, along with some cheese and homemade sourdough crackers (I've got cracker recipes posted).

I like mixing some mayo and ketchup together, equal proportions, for a quick kind of Thousand Island salad dressing.

New Dehydrator - an Excalibur!

9 Tray Excalibur Dehydrator

Yeah! I got a new dehydrator! I posted a bit ago about soaking nuts overnight and the pictured dehydrator was my very old round white one. It's noise was getting irritating, sounding like it wanted to croak.

The Excalibur is very well rated and gives you so many more options and space. If you wanted to dry very lofty things, like large flowers, you can remove some of the shelves. Some people use it as a warm place to raise bread, or make yogurt, removing all the shelves. And it has more temperature options.

I like how it evenly dries with its fan at the back. I always shifted around my other's drying trays to be closer to the bottom heat source. And round fruit leather with a center hole? Before that one I had the Magic Mill dehydrator (which is now the improved L'Equip) and even tho I shifted around it's shelves too, at least fruit leather was rectangular - easier to wrap and roll up in plastic wrap.

Years ago my dehydrator was running non-stop as summer waned. I stored most stuff in zip-closure bags and had jars in the pantry I'd refill for easy access. Like now I've got the nuts in jars that I keep refilling. I'm telling you ... dried corn, or peas, or broccoli ... are like candy! I like having dried mushrooms and onions and herbs handy.

I stopped canning when I learned about the nutrient loss (I may do tomatoes when have access to a lot). Nutrient loss for canned produce is about 40%; freezing about 15%, and dehydrating, depending on your process is almost nil.

I used to make jerky in the oven. Now I'm anxious to dry it in the dehydrator. And raw foodists have great ideas for dehydrator usage. I am going to be dehydrating my kale chips now. I'll be drying more of my garden produce and herbs next season!

Soaked and dried pumpkin seeds, almonds and pecans

Spice Cake and Caramel Frosting for Birthdays

Will's birthday cake

I've been
asked several times for the Spice Cake recipe I use for my favorite cake
- My favorite birthday cake since I was a kid. I've been making it for
years from The Joy of Cooking cookbook. But, as usual, I don't do the exact recipe...

First
off, I have to say, I am not a cake person. I've never loved cakes for
dessert, preferring pies, cheesecakes, and now Tiramisu. Also, I rarely
eat desserts. I have to choose the types of carbs I consume carefully.
I'm pretty good at avoiding store bought desserts and processed flour
products. Since the only place my body can grow is out, when I take in
foods, they are nutrient rich, phytonutrient rich choices. I even have
to limit my homemade breads.

So
when it comes to foods with flour, I make everything from home-ground
grains. That way I know they are nutrient rich and at their optimal. So
I've made all my pie crusts, cookies, and cakes from ground whole grains.
For this recipe I use either pastry berries or white wheat, not the red winter wheat
berries.

When
I look at cakes, all cakes made from cake mixes have a plasticky sheen
to them. Maybe my baked
goods aren't as light and fluffy, but that's what's been built into our
likes from the era when processed flour was introduced as a 'rich mans'
food, just like processed white sugar was coveted in the same way.

In the Joy of Cooking, it's the Velvet Spice Cake, 

but here's my version:

I start by beating

4 lg egg whites 

1/8 tsp cream of tartar, till soft peaks form and gradually add in

1/4 c sugar, till peaks stiffer, but not dry.

I scrape this mixture into another bowl to add in at the end.

Next I beat 

1
1/2 sticks butter (12 Tb) in my Bosch mixer bowl, with the butter
(usually unsalted if I have it) sliced in pieces so the whips don't get
bent. And add in

1 1/4 c sugar

Beat in 4 lg egg yolks

Adding in the dry ingredients:

2 1/4 c whole grain flour (and I never sift either)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I do have a cute nutmeg grinder)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp grd cloves

1/2 tsp salt

Fold in beaten egg whites.

(The eggs can be done whole, without mixing them separate if you don't mind the cake being denser.)

Pour into greased and floured tube or bundt pan, and it works in a 9x13, or round layered cake pans. Bake
at 350 degrees about 45 minutes (probably less for round cake pans) or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool about 10 minutes to invert the cake out of the pan (or just leave
it in the 9x13 if you want).

I've loved
the flavor of spiced cake with caramel or maple frosting since I was a
kid. My mom always made it for me for my birthday, but from boxes and cans. I carried on that
tradition, making it for me from scratch for my birthday since I got
married.

It's considered a Boiled or Cooked Frosting, and I've been making it from the Joy of Cooking
cookbook all these years. But when we moved to 8000 feet elevation in Colorado from Tucson, Arizona, the recipe did not work and I
had to do a lot of reading and figuring.

Old-Fashioned Caramel Frosting

In a medium saucepan heat and stir until sugar is dissolved:

2 c packed brown sugar

1 c heavy cream (or 1/2 C butter plus 1/2 C milk)

Cover
and cook for 3 minutes. Spoon down any sugar on the sides of the pan
and cook uncovered, hardly stirring, until the syrup reaches 238
degrees. Add:

3 Tb butter

Remove from heat and cool to 110 degrees, then stir in:

1 tsp vanilla.

The
238 degrees is where I had to change the recipe (and it has an optional
addition of rum flavoring which I don't like). It was in the Joy of Cooking's
"Know Your Ingredients" chapter, and maybe under making candy, and
maybe even canning, that I figured it out. Cooking and canning
temperatures and timings are set for sea level. At 8000 ft I had to
lower the temperature 16 degrees (At my elevation, boiling water temp is at 186, which
means 20 minutes of waterbath canning time stretches out to 46 minutes!) When making candy, that soft-ball stage at 238 has
to lower 1 degree per every 500 feet above sea level.

Once
the frosting is cooled and vanilla added you beat it with a hand mixer
in the pan (or transfer it to a mixing bowl) till it gets
thick and creamy. If too thick you can beat in some cream a tablespoon at a time till spreadable.

The
recipe actually makes more frosting than the cake needs, but my kids
always wanted the extra to add to their cake slices or spread on ginger
cookies or graham crackers. Yummm ....

In
Ogema, Wisconsin, Monte's Aunt Ruby makes this cake and frosting. She always brings it to events and I recognize it and we talk about it.
She says it's everybody's favorite. Aunt Ruby is the only other person I
know who makes it. She raised her family on a dairy farm, so you know
her cream had to be the BEST ever! 

 

Just a side note: The Joy of Cooking
has changed over the years and I don't know what's still in the newer
versions. I heard it talked of on a program - mainly editing out some of
the details and maybe ingredients or recipes that people today don't
stock. Hopefully it's still making everything from scratch.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

This is a long video! I watched it (listened to it) while skimming through my RSS Reader, emails, and Facebook. Watch it while knitting or something. It is truth. It's message needs to be known and shared, AND thought about when we're making our food choices everyday, for the rest of our lives - hopefully healthy long-lived lives!

"Cocolate Pudding"

OK . . . This may sound totally weird . . .

But it's actually pretty good! I need to credit Mitra Ray from her Juice Plus email for the recipe. I'm making the recipe smaller for just one or two servings.

"CHOCOLATE PUDDING"

1 avacado

1/8 C unsweet cocoa

1/4 C agave nectar or maple syrup

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

(water, coconut milk, rice milk ... to thin it if needed)

Blend this till creamy.

Garnish with fresh fruit.

Kale and Banana Smoothie

I'm eating this right now! This is the second large batch I've made so to have in the fridge to eat bits of off and on. I just had Splarah and Dawson taste these latest exotic things I've made lately with the kale. They're here for the evening, sitting side-by-side at Dawson's desk - Splarah working on her computer doing homework (she's in nursing school) and Dawson's editing shots he took for some people's school photos. They love the kale chips and wanted me to leave the bowl. This so-called smoothie ... they could eat their spoonful, but didn't want anymore, so I'm finishing it.



I think I put more kale in it then called for - how do you measure ripped kale leaves, or basil leaves for pesto ... other than weighing it?!

KALE AND BANANA SMOOTHIE

1 banana

2 C chopped kale

1/2 C milk

1 tsp maple syrup

1 Tb flax seed



Puree in blender. They pour it over ice cubes and serve. Mine doesn't pour! I think I used 1 Tb maple syrup.



You could use any type of liquid other than the milk, like even water, and more of it. Adding any other fruit you have on hand plus the banana would make it even better.



Splarah and Dawson said it tastes ... nutritious!

Corn Masa/Hominy, etc

You can buy fresh corn masa at a Mexican grocer for making corn tortillas, tamales ... Way better than the corn masa flour from the grocery store (which I usually use for tortillas and thickening a chili or mexican soup). I found a recipe for making my own. I then freeze it in 1lb quantity in freezer bags.

When seeing the recipe you might ask "dried field corn?", "and where would I get that?", "and why do you have that?" I've not looked in a store for it, so don't know if it's in a bin like other grains. I get it in 25 or 50# bags. I have an electric grain grinder - a NutriMill - and have been grinding my own flours for about thirty years. When my kids were little and bread was one thing they'd definitely eat, I wanted it to be the best possible. Most store-bought flours are devoid of nutrients, primarily starch, and if whole grained, rancid. Take wheat. Twenty-six some known nutrients, stripped, and 5 or 6 put back! So in my garage I've got whole wheat, oats, rye, corn, blue corn, barley, quinoa, amaranth ... I can grind beans too if I want. A sweeter corn for cornbreads is actually ground popcorn - a smaller kernel than field corn.

CORN MASA

Wash 10C dried field corn

10C water

2Tb lime powder (in canning section for making crisp pickles)(CaO)



Bring to a full boil and simmer for several hours. Add additional water if needed. You want them tender, but not too soft. You want the water cooked in as much as possible. Drain.



This mixture is put through a meat grinder, as fine as can get it, for making tortillas and tamales. It's got a wholeness to it that differs from using the dried masa flour, so prepare yourself. It's good. My Zucchini Boat post mentioned me making Pozole with it and adding it to Chili.



For tortillas, use 5 cups, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and approximately 1 cup warm water. You don't want the dough too soft. With fresh masa, you might not need much water at all. Chill dough several hours. Form into balls about 1 1/2-2" diameter and press in a tortilla press between plastic wrap or waxed paper for a 6" tortilla. Grill on a hot cast-iron griddle or skillet.



If you get some fresh roasted anaheim or poblano chilies, cut them in strips and cook up with some cream. This is the ultimate on home-made tortillas. I crave fish tacos. Or fry these crisp and make bean tostadas. For about 16-18 tamales you'd use 1lb coarse ground fresh masa, 1 tsp salt, (some use 1tsp baking powder), 1/2C rich-tasting lard, and enough water to make mushy. All tamales use a fat source. Traditionally, the best, is roasted lard, not the white lard sold in stores. Don't freak out, but I use bacon fat. I pour it off my microwave bacon cooking tray into a can and store it for Mexican cooking. You can use butter. I've not tried oil.



What's being used today - and before getting tamales at farmer's markets, I ask - I don't want them made with shortening!!!!! I read labels! I avoid (along with high fructose corn syrup) PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED anything! It's just a step away from plastic! It's poison. Our body does not know what to do with it, or high fructose corn syrup, so it runs about the body looking for something to latch on to and ends up creating weird cells. That's what can bring on heart disease, or cancer, or ...