How to Impress Your Friends with an Ancient Technique

My bread was successful! I have now made 2 loaves, one small, the other big. Mumma Bear is next.

First, my starter started life over a month ago. 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of tepid water in a glass jar (or beer glass in my case) and place somewhere in your kitchen where it's not going to get too hot or too cold. Mine is behind the coffee machine.
Everyday, add some more flour & water and mix in. You can discard some starter, and if you're adding to it everyday, you're going to need to, otherwise you'll end up with a motherload of sour flour & water! If you're going to be away from your little 'pet' for a number of days, you can put it to sleep in the fridge. I had to do this when I went on holidays to Qld, and my baby recovered quite well.

When it's ready to be used, it will look a little like this:

See the little bubbles? It'll have a soury, vingary smell. If it smells bad it probably is, so chuck it and start again.

Ready to start your first loaf of bread? Great! Do you have bucketloads of patience? Double great!

Now to prepare the 'sponge'. Take a fair amount of your starter, about a cupful will be fine, put it in a bowl and add another cup of flour and water. Mix, and cover with a cloth and leave for several hours. Depending on how your starter is, it could take all day (or night) to reach the frothy, bubbly stage that you'll want to achieve. When there are bubbles throughout the sponge, and a froth on top, you're ready to start making the actual dough.


In a bowl, put some flour, I started with 1 1/2 cups, a little oil and a little salt (about a teaspoon, but you can adjust this as you progress in your bread making talent). You will probably need some cold water standing by as well. Pour your sponge into the bowl and start mixing and kneading. If the dough is too sticky, add some more flour, if too dry, add a small amount of water. Knead for 5-10 minutes, until you have a nice feeling dough.

Cover with a cloth (tea towel will do) and leave in a warm place to rise. I like to turn the oven on for a little bit, but don't make it too hot, you should be comfortable touching the racks & the oven door with your hands.
Rising can take several hours. My two loaves took totally different times to rise, the smallest took several hours, the bigger took only about 2.

When you poke a finger into the dough and it doesn't heal quickly, your dough is ready for the 2nd kneading.
Punch it down (this part is fun!) and knead for a bit, but not too much.
Flatten into an oval, and fold both sides into the middle. Place on a baking sheet, cover and let rise. The 2nd rising will not be as long as the first. It should double in size. Slice down the middle of the bread with a knife, a little like scouring.
Put your oven on medium, but don't preheat very much. Put a tray with some water in it below where your bread tray is going.
Put your bread in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes. It should be golden brown, and someone suggested that you tap the bottom with a wooden spoon and if it sounds hollow, it's ready.

Leave to cool on a wire rack for about an hour before cutting.

Cut up your delicious, homemade, homegrown bread, and watch it quickly disappear. Lovely with cheese...


A few things to remember...

My first attempt failed because I was not patient enough, and didn't keep the dough in a nice, warm friendly spot. Well, friendly probably doesn't have anything to do with it, but warmth certainly does.

I got a lot of help from my Weezy, but also from this website:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

Humans have Worked a long time on making bread. This may take a lot longer than sticking a few things in a bread maker and turning it on, or sticking your hand in your wallet and paying for it, but it's very satisfying to make, bake and eat your own bread.

The flavour is delicious.

I bet my next attempt flops. Which is a pity, cos I want to make some for my sister, as she's slogging through her last few weeks at Sydney Uni.

Ask me, and I'll give you some of my starter so you don't have to wait a month to grow your own. Every household's starter is different, because of the different bacteria etc. in the air, so in no time at all, my little baby will be completely yours. Sorry if you don't live near me, I don't think it will travel well, so this only goes out to people in the Sydney area...

This wasn't really that coherent. I'll work on the delivery.

I'm enjoying some of my bread, toasted, and a glass of red wine.


Cheers!

Bread

After a week of feeling quite tired and not really sure why - except for the sleep deprivation on the weekend, I developed a sinus infection due to oncoming hayfever. Yay. Happens every year, but sometimes the severity is more.

At the beginning of the week I tried to make some bread using my starter that has been growing & souring for over a month. Didn't exactly work. The sponge did it's bubbly thing. I worked the flour & water & oil in nicely, but according to the instructions I was following, I only kneaded for 10 secs every 15mins 3 times. I was a little concerned at this, it had been my understanding that bread needed to be kneaded (ra hah ah).

The dough failed to rise. Oh well.

Therefore, this morning & afternoon, I am starting again. The sponge is bubbling away nicely. I even put some of the starter in my mouth. ('Twas was a bit of a knee jerk reaction, I was wiping up a spill with my finger.) Pictures and another blog post (I know! GASP) will be up when/if this works. This means it could be a while...

In other news...

It's blessedly raining. It's been a very dry winter and rain is lovely for those recovering from illness that makes you feel all hot and gross. I read a news headline that there are floods expected... All I'm hoping is that it reaches QLD, where it is so very very dry.

I've finished a knitted project for someone for Christmas. As it is a very special someone, it will not be all they receive, but it's done, and It's not even November! Next up is finishing something for my brother, who I'm not sure will even appreciate the gesture, but he's constantly suprising me, because, I just don't spend enough time with him anymore.

The rain is coming down like real rain now. Lovely.

The Y on my laptop computer is acting dodgy, which is really annoying. Lappy will need to be turned off and the key looked at I think.

OO, heavier...

Time for a bath while I await the sponging.

Just some Things

There are a few things on my mind this evening. First of all is, I went to church for the first time in rather a while (little bit of a shame face) and the sermon was pretty good. It was challenging, and I have decided to take up a particular part. In his style, our senior minister had a friend of his up on stage to interject his sermon on Jeremiah, with anecdotes about his own life, his work in Africa (Tanzania) and his comparison of the fat old priests of Jeremiah's time to us - the people who eat chocolate that has come from the hands of child labour. Yes, I thought - What! But all , like Cadbury's, Nestle etc. are using the beans supplied by third world countries that use child labour.
So, I'm making a personal step to irradicate evil chocolate from my life. Big step from me. Fair trade for me.

Second, I'm watching The Devil Wears Prada sideways. But lets face it, Miranda Priestly is faskinating. And I like the clothes, much like Sex & the City.

Kyle and Jackie O have been indefinetely suspended. Why that was not instantaneous is not CLEAR TO ME, but at least a step has been taken. Sexual assault is horrid and very very personal for the victim. And this victim was 14 yrs old. Supposedly still under the protection of her mother, who thought it was a good idea to get her child on national radio. ['scuse my language] WHAT THE FUCK???

I know that millions (I hope, really) of others will discuss this on various medias, but these types of things hurt.

Rant over. For now.

Moonchild

So I've felt the need to start to blog again. Not exactly sure why, but could be because I've made a friend on Twitter & Ravelry whose blogging I like.

My sister & my brother-in-law came down for the weekend, and spent some time with me today. We had brunch at Lee & Me, hotspot of the young & trendy, then we went for a walk down to the beach. Lovely.


Got the guitar hero out a few nights ago, and the drum kit has remained outside of Harry's cupboard... BIL is very into guitar hero & started to rock out with the drums. Eventually he 'let' his wifey have a go.



She did so quite enthusiastically. Until, like me later on, she developed a blister...




Have every intention of starting these tonight, even though I have 2 other things on the needles that I should finish (socks & cardigan).

Nuno Felting - How It Was Done

First of all - meet Melman, my first succulent. He's got stripes. I like him a lot.




Meryl and I had a super productive day, in which we achieved several things...

The purchase of scarf and glove wool. Wool roving for Meryl's wrap for being stylish and lovely in Europe. My stylish and very cool Europe bag. Then, instead of using the colour M had originally chosen, we switched to peacock colours...

Had a sushi lunch, then got down to the business of being crafty and felty, and Sarah arrived home from work to help too.












I have missed out on a few steps with the photos, but I forgot to take them. that, and it's midnight and I can't concentrate enought to write abou it.







And this is what I've been doing while I wait for the pictures to upload...
A rather Fetching pair of gloves on my only bamboo double pointed needles. A slight splurge on my part - but so lovely to work with!

An Addiction

I am addicted to knitting. My hands ache, my fingers will probably resemble the twisted claws of an old crone (sorry old crones, but your hands are generally gnarled) but still I go.

It could possibly have something to do with the fact I have an assignment due on Monday, that I have mostly finished, but have yet to write the evaluative essay. Which I don't want to do! The other part was fine, but this part sucks. Greatly.

Last week I finished a scarf knitted in this lovely wool/silk blend I got from - oh the horror- Spotlight. I had taken to disliking the poor thing by the end though. I like it now, but was worried about it. It was my first outing with cabling, and I think I did pretty well. Unfortuantly, seem to have mis-place my camera and can't photograph.

Working on the socks. Just finished the heel and am about to join in the round again for the instep and toe. Then I suppose I will have to cope with 'finishing other sockitis'. That's the thing about these socks. The stitches are so small that it's taking my a while to knit. I like the pattern the variegated wool is giving, and can't wait to wear the socks, but it's taking my so damn long!

Started, and unraveled three times, a cable beanie from a Knitting Blogger I really like. She named the pattern "Anna of Green Cables" which I thought a little amusing. Finished it about tan hour ago, but realised much much much too late that I had neglected to do 5 rounds of ribbing so the beanie is too little even for my small adult sized head. So one of the kiddie-winks will get it. Only thing, it's in a sort of mottled browny/blue/grey. Probably not that attractive for little girls, as is not pink, purple, yellow, green. Oh well, it still looks pretty.


Got Ethan the coolest little watch a boy could ask for. Fairly simple, just tells the time and has a stopwatch, but also has this cool little animation things at the top, one of a swimmer, one a cycler and one a runner. Hope he likes it. It's like mine (he was very taken with mine - wore it around all night and then asked me for one for his birthday) but a little different (also didn't cost quite as much - but that's my power's of bargain hunting, this one was reduced by at least half) and made for kids.

Anyway, back to evaluating my search process. Yuck.

Stinky Monkey meets Noah and his likely demise

I made a little sock monkey for Noah. He was very cute, with sleepy eyes embroidered on, as 1-year-olds should not have buttons...

Sadly, forgot to take a photo, and have a grainy picture of what Monkey was subjected to this evening. Seems Noah is rather taken with the little guy, but seeems to find flinging in around his head and the coach area really funny. With cuddles in between. Was very cute.

But blogger is very slow at uploading the photo, so may have to try next time.

Started a pair of socks. I am a little nervous about getting to the heel and having to 'turn it' or whatever. It's a challenge I suppose. If these are successful, will set about knitting some great wool ones for my winter holiday in December/January. And possibly knit Mum and Meryl ones as well... but we will see how far I actually get.