Heh, even though my wife’s on a diet, I convinced her to make some home made biscuits on Sunday to accompany the fried chicken we were making. It was at least a day and a half of chicken biscuit heaven, but we only have one biscuit left (yes, I ate all the chicken by the end of yesterday), that I plan to have for breakfast if she doesn’t succumb to the pleasures of the bread before that.
We’ve got a little yeast, but rather than try to grow it, I’m thinking about starting a sourdough starter. At least that will give my sweetie a break before I launch another home-baked bread fest on her diet. Maybe by then I’ll have done something magical that will merit home fried chicken again.
We’ve not baked much and we’re not baking much more now, partly because lazy, partly conserving propane, and partly avoiding excess carbs not in liquid form. When weather allows I may be tempted to start a campfire, roll dough onto a green cedar branch, and cook scout bread. And I think I saw an Instant Pot cornbread recipe to try.
I’m baking more because I have the time; I’m baking like it’s summer break. Also, me and my wife and now my fifth-grade daughter are all stress-bakers, so our house is pretty full. Since mid-March, we’ve made 8 loaves of bread, four pizzas, 18 puff pastry samosas, two cakes, a batch of cookies, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. We’ve gone through 15 lbs of flour and have another 15 on the counter.
I got yeast! I scored some yeast at the store today!
I went out to the store today partly to get a few things I was out of, and also to drop off face masks for my coworkers manning the place today. Went during the “first responders and essential workers” hour today hoping the shelves would be stocked. Turns out they had a few jars of yeast in the baking aisle.
Last planned excursion to a store until I go back to work Saturday.
I now have more yeast than flour, but plenty of flour. I’ll pick more up as it becomes available.
I bought a grain mill ages ago when I was baking all my family’s bread. Buying wheat was much cheaper than buying whole wheat flour. I have used it for making cornmeal, as well. Bread from freshly ground wheat is even better than regular fresh baked bread.
And… a loaf of bread and eight rolls this morning. Good thing I got more yeast - this latest batch used up the last of my old stash. Went for plain white using bread flour today.
My stepson-in-law tried making home-made matzoh last year. It tasted fine, but was a lot of trouble. Much easier to buy the boxed stuff. (Nitpick: it’s 18 minutes, not 16.)
Happy Passover is fine, or you can say Chag Sameach (“joyous festival”). Clear your throat where you see “ch”, like loch in Gaelic or achtung in German, and the second word is pronounced sa-MAY-ach.
My husband goes through a lot of flour in normal times, and so we are going through even more now. I am finding that you can get AP flour but bread flour just doesn’t exist. However, you can get vital wheat gluten, and apparently that turns AP flour into bread flour very easily.
