Greenstorm's Journal

I think this is the first time I've eaten an entire loaf of bread I made on my own. I have a recipe for a no-knead dutch-oven loaf I made a lot, but it was definitely bigger than I could eat all at once. I got a smaller dutch oven at one point to help shape it. For awhile I experimented with sourdough but couldn't get the intense sour taste withotu accompanying lacto flavours. I made some pretty loaves but just never did eat a whole one (I really don't like stale bread, so after 36 hours or so I usually won't eat it anyhow).

The other day I tossed together a loose pizza dough recipe in the style of no-knead, starting with 2 cups flour instead of the 3 or 4 I used to use. I think I was intending to make a pizza dough but habit took over and I tossed it in the dutch oven and it came out really nicely. I ate the whole thing over the course of 3 days -- I think the 90-ish percent hydration and olive oil I put in it kept it from feeling stale. I did two sets of stretch-and-folds, one before bed and one when I turned on the oven this morning to preheat it, and the loaf seems to have kept a nice shape.

So that's nice. Not sure why I'm baking bread again but I'll take it, bread at the store is between 3 and 5 dollars and it's not always great (though sometimes the airy cake texture of cheap white bread is fun).

I got some of my garlic in the ground last night. Everything is a race in the last sliver of light after work, then I put on my headlamp and feed the animals. I still need to get my daffodils in.

I got 200 gallons (!) of milk from the grocery store for the pigs, since the cooler went down with the power outage. Luckily it's in gallon jugs so it doesn't take me too too long to get it poured out for the day.

Both bulbs and milk is going to be complicated because the cold is here. It finally got real cold last night, -10C, which is more in alignment with the temperatures one would expect for this time of year. Days are still barely above freezing for now, and there's only a skiff of snow so far but that won't last. Hoses are frozen/I disconnected them last night and hung several of them to try draining, so I guess that means I'm bucketing water (and milk) now. I should figure out who I want where in terms of animals.

I do wish we'd had a good rain. I'm planting the garlic into dry dry soil, and I'd probably best put a sprinkler on it if we get a day a couple degrees above freezing. I want to cover it with straw but can't do that until it's watered in, I think.

Canned some goose, want to can some pork in the "beef pot roast" style since I realized it fries up really nicely when canned but the flavours in my al pastor and carnitas are sometimes just too much for me.

Money is a big issue right now too, the juxtaposition of the smithers/butcher trip, the last month's worth of feed for all the pigs, my property taxes, my house insurance, and a couple other bits and bobs makes me realize how much I overextended myself on feed over the summer. I do not like carrying a balance on my credit card but here we are. Time to get digging. There's some stuff about work, not having ratified a new contract, and so having not even the token raise we normally get, but I'll keep that out of here. We're not getting cost of living increase anyhow.

Oh! There's the timer on the bread coming out of the oven. Time to leave this and go see how it turned out.