Sunday, December 13, 2009

challah! I love that word...

Challah bread! Made some for The Boss the other day, and it came out pretty well. Check it:




 

And there is is. I love the weight on the scale.. apparently, this is "The challah of the Beast" I've baked here. Hopefully, I've also baked at least most of the pure evil out of it. It tastes pretty darn good, at least!

A chicken update! Here's a couple shots of the chicks playing outside in the mulch along side the house, taken yesterday.



..crazy buggers, rolling around in the dirt like it's July out there! It was about 22 degrees or so at the time this was taken, near the middle of the day. They don't seem to mind the cold, but they sure have no interest in even touching the snow. In fact, I moved their coop overtop of the pavement in the driveway now for the winter, because if there's snow on the ground, or in their coop, they won't go near it.. effectively cutting their run size in half. At least if they're on the pavement, it'll warm up in the sun during the day and give them some room to move around on.  Plus, after morning egg laying is done, I let them out to roam.. and they go where they please, as long as there's no snow covering it.  ;-)

I also scored a heated watering dish for them, too.. that process of chasing after the iced over water several times during the day was really starting to drag me down.

I also re-started the sourdough project. Apparently, I read the directions wrong.. err, interpreted them wrong, from the start. What I *think* I did, was to effectively tell my yeasts that I was going to underfeed them every time, and that they should eat and then immediately go dormant. What I should have done, from the beginning while building my starter, is to (once the starter shows some activity..) throw half the starter away, and then feed the starter it's own weight in water *and* flour, in essence, tripling the overall weight of the stuff. What I was doing, was throwing away half the starter and then mixing in half it's weight in flour and half it's weight in water, doubling it in weight. When you read the texts online and such, it's a bit misleading, because they want your starter to double in size, but in order to do that, you have to feed the thing adequately to do that. I was basically taking 100 grams of starter and feeding it only enough to support 50 grams of starter beasts.. and then starting that process over the next time, again and again. I selectively bred sissy yeasts! So, I'm starting over. It seems to be going well right now.. we're on day #3.

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