sarah in nyc

In these days of lock-down the days seem to run into one another. My husband was surprised this morning that it was Sunday rather than Monday. There are days when you wish you could just sleep the days away.Yesterday, I mostly slept. Today thought I decided to be productive. I wrote to some friends.  I made seven masks, This brings my total to about 80. All of the hand-washing we have to do means that we are low on hand cream. I made a batch. Due to the yeast shortage my older son and I have been experimenting with various methods of making sour dough. He has been nursing a classic sour dough. I have been doing our usual method of using bits of old bread and old dough  mixed with flour and water and letting the slurry hang out in the fridge. As I formed today's loaf of bread, I pinched off a bit, a K'zayit, about the size of an olive to add to our bread starter in the fridge. The movement of pinching off the bit of dough was so familiar from taking challah when I bake our chal...

I don't exactly remember when I started baking bread regularly for our family. I had started baking challah a long time ago, I know that by the time my oldest was in high school I was doing at least some of the during the week bread baking. I have always been intrigued by the idea of sourdough bread. However, whenever I read the directions about how to create a sourdough it just seemed so complicated that it seemed beyond my abilities. I have fallen into a practice that may not be exactly sourdough but uses the leftover old dough as the yeast for new bread.  I thought I would share what I do. Let me know if this works for you. At the beginning of the week, I start a new batch of dough using yeast. I put about 2 cups of water in a bowl, add a tsp of yeast and a Tbs of brown sugar and a bit of flour to the bowl and then let it sit. Usually, I start this as I make my morning coffee and then do the next step after breakfast. In my experience, this sit depending on my schedule a...

There are some things I just don't understand. Amazon.com Widgets Why did the Saudi Arabian bug extermination company attempt to post a comment on my blog that is just a link to their company? Aside from the fact that I don't have all that many Saudi Arabian readers, there seems to be no shaichus,  or connection between my blog and bug extermination in desert conditions. Why do so many Russian bots click on this blog? I can't imagine that it is all that useful for them.  As I look through my stats each day I am constantly surprised by the many varieties of kink that choose to link here. I assume that folks looking for odd-ball porn are really disappointed when they click here. When I read instructions about how to make a sourdough starter, my brain immediately goes to sleep. There are just too many steps, too much tossing parts of it out and doing weird things to the parts you keep. But if I leave a little bit of bread dough in a mixing bowl, add some water, ...

As I had mentioned on Friday I have been making lots of lazy sour dough bread. I wanted to just take you through the not very scary process.  Amazon.com Widgets First you start with a regular bread dough.  This is what goes into my regular bread dough. I usually put some water in the bottom of  my green Pyrex bowl.  I inherited two of the set below  (the yellow and the green bowls)from my mother-in-law. I see that it holds 2 1/2 quarts. I used to measure out two cups of water and add them to the bowl to begin my bread baking. Now I just put water in the bowl. It's always the right amount, even if the amount varies. I add a teaspoon of dry yeast to the water and sprinkle a tablespoon flour or some grain like oatmeal or ground barley or  a few shakes of Maypo or Wheatena on the yeasted water. The grain is food for the yeast and will allow it to bloom and do a good job raising your loaf. I like adding a grain with some texture. Go away for a few...

Sandy had asked me to put together a recipe for the sour dough corn bread. So, here it is more or less. This gloppy stuff is my starter. It began life as a loose  bread dough yesterday. I didn’t measure, but I think I may have started with about two cups of water, a teaspoon of yeast, a table spoon of salt and one of brown sugar. Most of it got turned into yesterday’s excellent fennel loaf.   The remainder has been sitting in a small plastic bowl covered by a plastic shower cap in my fridge.You can see that I have added an assortment of grains to this starter. I can’t remember for sure but I think there is wheat germ and bran in there. I then took out a lump of the starter to begin my next loaf. Most of the rest of the starter went back into the fridge after I added a bit more flour and water to the bowl. I then got to work on the new loaf of bread.  I added another tablespoon of brown sugar to starter in the bowl. And then I added a tablespoon of salt. ...