Simple sourdough bread recipe

This is the basic bread I make at least once a week, it's nothing fancy, but it's great for sandwiches, grilled cheese, or just to smear it with butter. You want to your start to be well fed and bubbly for this, not straight out of the fridge, that won't work. Plan ahead because this process takes most day, or do the first long rise over night and bake in the morning.

What you will nee:
1 cup bubbly starter
1.5 cups water
1.5 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp. honey
1/4-1/2 cup flax seed meal
4-5 cups of flour, I usually use about 2 cups wholewheat and the rest white. You can use any of your favorite flours and any combos.

In a large bowl combine your starter, water, honey and salt. Stir it up well and add the flax seed.


If your honey has solidified then first dilute it in the water


all combined


Now start adding your flour, I usually add the whole wheat first, and then start adding the white. If you only do whole wheat your bread will come out pretty dense but still delicious. Once it's too thick to stir dump it out on the counter and knead by hand.


Good project to get the older kids involved, Penni loves it and she is 4.5


I start off kneading in the bowl and then dump out on the counter, total kneading 10-20 mins. You want the dough to be not sticky, but not too dense. The lighter the dough the more fluffy your bread will turn out, but for sandwich bread I prefer it on the denser side. I eye ball it, and also depends if the baby is crying, if I have less time then the bread ends up being lighter fluffier.


Lightly oil the bowl, form the dough into a ball roll it around in the bowl, so that it's oiled on all sides, cover with a towel and let rise until at least doubled in size, more is fine. On a warm day this can go as fast as 6 hours, on colder days it can take up to 10. I told you plan for this to take the whole day. Letting it rise over night is great if you can bake in the morning, keep in mind it'll need a second rise (much shorter one) so it's not something you can do beforee leaving to work, it'll still take some time.


After it's doubled in size, took about 8 hours on this day. Some days it'll be exploding out of the bowl and that's fine too.


I use a plastic wicker looking basket for the last rise, drape it with a towel and sprinkle with wheat bran to prevent sticking. I've also used corn meal and that worked fine too.


Knead the dough for just a minute or 2, you want to make sure that the oil is thoroughly kneaded through or it will make your bread have cracks inside. Sprinkle with wheat bread on top as well.


Let it rise for 2-4 hours, about double in size, you don't really want it to get too big, if it's not quite double in size that's fine.


Preheat your oven with your bread baker, you can use a cast iron pot with a lid. I have a clay chicken baker that I use and it works fabulously. Preheat the oven at 450 degrees for 30 mins, with the bread baker inside. Once it's preheated for at least 30 mins dump the dough in, shake it into place if needed, cover and bake for at least 30 mins, if your loaf is pretty large bake for 40 mins. This one went in for 30 mins.


After 30 mins take off the lid and bake for another 15 mins.


Dump out on the cooling rack and wait at least an hour (or until the crust isn't brick hard and isn't too hot to the touch) and enjoy!

Macaroni and Cheese recipe

Some home made macaroni and cheese here, the kids love this and freezes great! When my first was a toddler I'd freeze it in 2ozs containers for her for quick meals. Now we never have enough left overs to freeze, if for some weird reason we do I freeze it in batches of one meal worth for 2-3 kids. I've also done it with ground beef mixed in (fry it first of course) to "beef" it up, and a few times have mixed in peas and corn which didn't go over as well.  So here is what you'll need.

1lb of elbow macaroni, I've done shells too but they stick too much for my liking. Still came out yummy though.
1lb cheddar cheese grated, use sharp or extra sharp. The mild doesn't give enough flavor and they come out a bit bland.
some grated parmesan for the top, probably about 2Tb worth, never measured this just make sure there is a good layer over the top of the dish.
3Tbs. butter
4-5Tbs. flour
3 Cups whole milk
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg



Cook the pasta to al dente drain and pour into your baking dish. You can butter the dish but I don't bother, figure the sauce is buttery enough.

You can start your sauce while the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a medium size sauce once the butter is bubbly and melted start adding your flour gradually, until you have a pretty dry paste going.  Cook that for a min or 2 stirring constantly, got to get that flour taste cooked out. Basically you are making béchamel sauce (there are more detailed instructions in the lasagna recipe post).
Once the flour paste has cooked for a min or so start adding your milk gradually and either stir or whisk to get all the lumps out. Once all the milk is in salt to taste and add the nutmeg (fresh is best).


Cook the sauce until it thickens just a bit, 3-5 mins. Turn off the heat and start to stir in your cheddar. I do a handful at a time stirring until it's melted in, then add more etc until all the cheese is in. Pour your sauce all over the pasta. The sprinkle the grated parmesan all over the top. I forgot to take a picture of this step until right after it all went int the oven, so you don't really see the parmesan because it already melted.


Cook at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and turning brown, basically looks like this


Enjoy!

Homeschooling!

It's finally decided that we'll be homeschooling. Couldn't make up my mind for the longest time, I liked the idea of home school but didn't know if I can do it. Then I toyed with the idea of unschooling, which I still like.  I'm also a fan of all things Waldorf but the private school here is ridiculously priced and an hour commute each way, not feasible for us.  So when a friend offered a co-op opportunity to join a home school group where we use Waldorf curriculum for almost free I was stoked!  Penni on the other hand isn't so sure, she keeps asking to go to school, poor kid. I keep telling her that we will do school at home and then every once in a while will meet with other friends that do school at home, I think she isn't quite sure what it all means since she's never been to any kind of school. Our first project is making beeswax crayons and that she is super excited about, going to try to do that tomorrow.  I've been trying to get her interested in learning some of the songs and verses but she is not too into it just yet, we'll get there. In preparation I've banned all the battery operated toys to the garage, I love the simplicity of Waldorf toys and how they encourage imaginative play. I might have to allow the obnoxious toys back in to help entertain the littler kiddos that come over for nannying though. I will try to start a routine where those toys along with some others will have to be put away when the kids leave. Also want to change our toy storage system but that might have to wait since it might turn costly. So here goes a new page in our journey, exited what it might bring!

Baklava recipe with pictures

Love baklava? I promise you can make it! it's really not very hard, just very time consuming, and it's one of those things that once you start it you have to finish it in one "sitting". I usually do it after Penni is in bed and Cora has recently nursed and if needed David will take care of her. It takes me probably just under an hour, so plan to be unavailable (for anything but baklava making) for about an hour. Another tip, for the longest time I struggled with filo dough sheets sticking tearing and breaking. I'd end up swearing up and down the avenue and the dough, always would buy and defrost 2 boxes of it knowing that a bunch of it would go to waste.  Turns out I wasn't letting the dough defrost fully! The box said to let it sit at room temperature for 5 hours to thaw, I was giving it that much time but it wasn't enough. Now I usually take it out after breakfast if I know I'll be making the baklava in the evening and let it sit out for a good 10 hours or so. If I'll be making it in the morning for some reason I take it out before bed. When the dough is completely thawed the sheets should come apart nice and easy. Alright here we go...

What you'll need:

1 box of Filo (I started buying the organic whole wheat kind from whole foods)

2.5-3 sticks of butter

1lb of pecans or walnuts, I prefer pecans but most people use walnuts.

1 cup sugar

1tsp. cinnamon

1 1/4-1/2 cup of honey

1/2 lemon's freshly squeezed juice

9x13" glass lasagna pan

a pastry brush

a damp light weight (non-terry) kitchen towel or a cheese cloth

First thing you want to do is run your nuts through the food processor, you want them pretty fine but flour fine, I do them in batches and pulse each batch for about 30 seconds.  To the nuts add the sugar and the cinnamon.

Stir those together and set aside. Put your butter in a pan over low heat to melt. Open your Filo and unroll the sheets, mine are pretty much exactly twice the size of my lasagna pan so I cut them in half and one box of 19 sheets ends up giving me 38 sheets, perfect amount for a baklava. Some sheets are much thinner and you won't need to double your batch, you want close to 40 workable sheets to build a full size baklava. So maybe check the box when you are buying the filo and keep that in mind. So I cut my stack of sheets in half, stack the 2 piles on top of each other and drape a damp cheese cloth over the dough so that it doesn't dry out. Keep it covered! Because the dough is so thin it'll dry out really fast!

So by now your butter should be melted enough to start the baklava building process

Brush the bottom and the sides of your glass pan with a generous layer of melted butter

Then lay one of your filo sheets down and brush it with a pretty generous amount of melted butter. The first sheet is a pain and might slide around on you, so brush the edges against the pan first to keep it in place. and then make sure every inch of that sheet is buttered

For the initial layer if filo you need 8-10 sheets, if math is your thing you can count the amount of sheets you have and then divide them precisely. You'll need  8-10 sheets for first and last layer and 4-5 sheets for each layer in between nut layers, and I usually end up with 4 layers of the nut mixture. 

So get your 8-10 sheets of buttered filo (buttering each sheet as you go) and brush the last one with butter as well

Put about a 1/4 of your nut mixture on top of those 8-10 sheets and spread it out evenly

Cover that with 4-5 sheets of filo, brushing each sheet generously with the melted butter, and remember to keep your pile of non working filo covered with your damp cloth. Yes after every sheet you take, cover it backup. Tedious yes, but that's part of the reason it takes a while to make it. That and the fact that you have to butter each sheet individually. But you've set aside an hour to do this, right? 

So once you put down your 4-5 sheets of filo do another layer of nut mixutre, and keep going like this until the nut mixture is gone. I get 4 layers of nut mixture out of my batch usually. After the last batch of nut mixture is down put 8-10 sheets of filo over that (buttering each one generously). Hear Paula Dean in your head saying "just another stick of butter y'all!" I do haha. Anyways, once you are done your baklava will look like this, more or less. You might have more filo sticking out the sides, maybe less.

Now trim all that extra filo dangling over the sides and overflowing, just cut it all away with a sharp knife. Be gentle, filo is soaked in butter and quite fragile.

Now score your baklava, cut diamond shapes into it, about half way down. If you don't do it know it'll be really hard to cut once it's baked, practically impossible, it'll make the top layer crumble. So score your baklava, please.

Now bake it, at 350 degrees for one hour exactly. When it's done it'll look like this

When there is about 10-15 mins left for baklava to bake start prepping your honey. If you like a sweeter baklava do 1.5 cups of honey, if you like a slightly less sweet one or if your honey is excessively sweet then do 1 and 1/4 cups of honey. Put your honey and the juice of half a lemon in a small/medium pot and heat it over low/medium heat. You don't want to boil it or burn it, so keep stirring it pretty frequently, it should get very runny, almost like water. Side note, it doesn't matter if your honey is runny or solid when you are starting off, either way it'll melt and work just fine.

Once baklava is done baking take it out and let it sit for a few mins while you finish waiting for the honey to melt to almost water type of runny. Once the honey is melted pour it all over the top of baklava making sure it gets into every crack. It'll seem like a lot but it'll be delicious! Get it all on there. I like to let it rest over night, if you HAVE to have it asap then at least let it fully and completely cool. But seriously, let it rest over night, you'll be glad you did. Voila!

Remember that it's just scored and not cut all the way through, so before trying to serve it take a good knife and cut it all the way down along the score lines, and run your knife along the edge. Enjoy!