Dutch Oven Bread

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I first began to make bread when my brother and now sister-in-law gave me a pizza stone for Christmas. Thanks Marsh and Megs, I sure love my pizza stone! I would bake free form loaves of sweet potato bread and crusty white bread on my stone. But, when I saw this beautiful dutch oven bread video on Kinfolk about a year ago, I knew I wanted to branch out in my bread making and try my hand at  sourdough bread baked in a dutch oven.

My first step in my venture into making sourdough bread was making a starter, naturally. A starter is a small batch of your general bread making ingredients, flour, water, yeast, and in my case lebne, a thick middle eastern yogurt-like cheese. (There are many different starter recipes, and you can even order starters online, or take a portion from a generous friend’s starter). The starter ingredients are mixed together and allowed to sit out, loosely covered, to ferment for 3 to 5 days. This process allows the starter to cultivate wild yeast, which is what provides the rich and unique flavors of artisan bread.

After carefully monitoring and feeding my starter for about a week, I rolled up my shirtsleeves and tried making my first loaf of dutch oven sourdough bread. I used this recipe, and it turned out great! The color and the texture of the bread were wonderful, not to mention the flavor. The dutch oven really seemed to help the bread rise to its fullest and cook evenly. I don’t think I’ll be buying bread from the grocery store anytime soon…

Peach Cobbler in Jam Jars

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I love jars. Old glass pop bottles, Adam’s peanut butter jars, mason jars, those massive glass jugs filled with cheap wine, really anything cylindrical and made of glass. I just recently recycled half a dozen old soda pop bottles I had been collecting since high school. I did not however recycle the 10 Dry Soda Bottles I’ve been hoarding since my Seattle days. I can’t give them up just yet, wouldn’t they make perfect little vases?

Needless to say, when I first arrived on the east coast and saw Scop’s “juice glasses” that he’d collected and cleaned from all his consumption of Bonne Maman jam, I was excited about all the delicious culinary promise these jars held. I’ve enjoyed yogurt drizzled in honey, indulged in ice cream topped with cookie crumbles, I’ve sipped wine and savored mojitos, and I’ve dunked cookies in ice cold milk, all from these old jam jars. I have also found them to be the perfect picnic companion for beverages or a  fresh batch of hummus. So when I decided to make cobbler with some NY peaches I got from the farmer’s market this week, I knew there was no better way to enjoy this cobbler than in its own little jam jar!

I used this recipe for the peach filling, which I then topped with a few extra blueberries I had hanging around. I halved the recipe and added a little vanilla, ground cloves and a good pinch extra of cinnamon and nutmeg. I used this recipe for the topping from a fellow lover of cobbler in jars. I cut the recipe by three as I was only  making  4 individual cobblers. Top with a little vanilla bean ice cream and enjoy!

Farm and Goat Sitting

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of goatsitting on Scop’s Dad’s farm while he and his wife were on vacation. They live in a beautiful old, stone farmhouse with the most incredible (and huge) fireplace. I quite enjoyed life on the farm while I was there… Waking up early to feed and water the goats, harvesting and cooking with the fresh vegetables from their garden, watering the plants every evening, and enjoying the sunset and dinner underneath the pergola on their deck. I made homemade bread, pizza and ice cream. We even fired up the grill one Sunday afternoon to make carne asada tortas with refried black beans, jalapenos, fresh garden tomatoes, sour cream, gauco, and cheese, all piled on a kaiser bun.  They were deliciously messy! Unfortunately I did not take any photos of my culinary expeditions, but here are a few of the farm early one foggy morning, and of course I had to snap a few of the goats!

 

Enjoying a Saturday morning breakfast of hay

The light brown kid on the left was my favorite

Backpacking in the Cascades

We almost went on this trip a couple weeks ago, but when the weather forecast called for rain, we were easily persuaded to push it back a couple weeks and stay home instead. This weekend, the forecast was sun, sun, sun…and hot weather for Seattle. So we went for it! Our apartment is very difficult to be in when it’s hot in Seattle anyway (we’re on the top floor with little ventilation and no AC), so it was the perfect solution! Our plan was to head east Friday after work, stay in a campground near Skykomish, WA. Wake up early Saturday, hike 8 (ish) miles to a remote lake, camp at the lake, and hike back out Sunday.

On Friday, we headed east to our campground, which turned out to be full when we arrived (oops). So we drove down quite a few forest roads, looking for a place to pitch our tent and sleep. One turn took us up a steep hill to where the power lines passed through the forest, but no luck for a flat-ish clearing. We went back down the mountain, and we found this place…a rare clearing. The ground was hard as a rock, but it was relatively flat and would work great (and was free). We quickly put the tent up as the sun was setting, and got inside before the bugs could find us.

The next morning, we woke up and headed south of Skykomish on a few more unpaved forest roads to find the trail head. The drive was pretty, and seemed to go on forever! After a little over an hour of searching, we found the starting point.

We hiked along the trail, hoping to end at Marmot Lake (about 8 miles in). The hike was through shaded forest areas, with many streams and creeks to cross over. The hike was full of steep rises and falls in elevation. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an elevation guide for the trail we were attempting to complete…so we didn’t quite know what to expect. We stopped to eat pita, hummus, and trail mix for lunch. Yumm….

We made it about 5 or 6 miles in and decided we were ready for a break (about and our muscles were already very tired. So we set up camp next to a creek/river, and enjoyed the peace and quiet for the rest of the evening. For dinner we made quinoa with peanut sauce.

On Sunday, the hike out was relatively quick until the last half mile being just about straight uphill. Boy were we tired and hot. But we made it! All in all, it was a fun trip. If we did it again, we’d probably take an extra day and try to get all the way to the lake. Also, we’d try to have a better idea of what the trail is like (steep/flat) before starting out.