Bread Baking Day

Below you can see one of the "hearths" in Island Hearth and Handicrafts. I took photos last time we fired up our outdoor brick oven so I thought I'd share them. If you have aspirations of brick oven building and baking I highly recommend you go for it. It's extremely rewarding. My husband build our oven out of plans found in The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott. He also aquires and splits all wood, builds all fires and rakes out all hot coals. I've done these things so I know how to do them but it's so nice having him do the dirty/hot work! That way I can concentrate on the bread. It's definitely a team effort around here on baking day...

The oven has only one chamber in which the fire is built and the bread baked. Here's the fire getting started. It will burn for about 4-5 hours or until the oven ceiling is so hot that the black, smoky soot burns clean off clear to the back of the interior of the oven. Here are the whole wheat sourdough loaves that I made the day before and kept in the refrigerator overnight. When the fire is about finished burning I pull the formed loaves out of the fridge and let them finish rising in the warming oven of the wood cookstove in our kitchen. (They rise in floured baskets.)
After the fire has burned down the coals are raked out evenly to distribute the heat over the hearth. They are are then shoveled out and put into the fireplace right next to the oven (below left). The oven chamber is then scraped and mopped out to clear all traces of coals and ash. The door is then put on (held in place by bricks) and the oven is left alone for a little while for the heat to even out in the thick masonry.
I know the oven is ready for the bread when I can stick my hand inside and count to about 7. If I can't make it to 5, it's too hot and I need to wait a bit longer. If I can count to 10 I've waited too long. If I can smell the hair burning off my arm I really need to wait a while! We tried using an oven thermometer a few times but it soon melted. I'm telling you, it's hot in there! The unbaked loaves in the baskets are flipped upside down onto a semolina-dusted wooden peel (again, made by hubby). They are slashed with a razor blade then loaded two at a time into the oven. As I flip, slash and load, my husband is opening and closing the oven door. The last thing I do is spray a bit of water on the inside oven dome. I then close the door, mark the time and hope for the best. I can fit 9 2-pound loaves in our oven (more if they're smaller). The heat radiates from every direction, surrounding the loaves, making them rise and brown beautifully. They're ready in about 25 minutes.
Here's the bread about to come out of the oven and the finished product below. This batch got delivered to friends and family. I still have a loaf in the freezer. The bread is simply made from freshly ground whole wheat, wild yeast sourdough starter, water, salt and the most important ingredient, time. It's nicely sour but still rises well. I loosely follow the Poilane-Style Miche recipe in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. You can see the nice crumb in the top picture. Yum!

Lemon Curd, Unrefined and Organic

For various reasons I have decided to let the white sugar run out in my house and don’t have any immediate plans to replace it. This happed Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm Pacific Time as I was making a pound cake. I substituted Rapadura for about 75% of the sugar called for and it turned out fine. So far so good.
Next the plan was to make lemon curd. I wanted to use agave syrup as that has the most neutral taste of any of the unrefined sweeteners. I couldn’t find a recipe online that I liked so I made one up. For an experiment I used extra virgin coconut oil instead of butter. It gave the curd a hint of coconut flavor which blended well with the lemon (it also made the curd dairy-free). The fabulous deep color of this curd is from the amazing local eggs I’ve been lucky enough to get lately. The ingredients are all organic, too! All these positive factors add up to a lemon curd that is nicely tart and rich and makes me feel a little less guilty to indulge in and to feed my family. It turned out so well I thought I’d share it with you.

Lemon Curd

1 c light agave syrup

1/2 c fresh lemon juice
--pinch of salt--
1 TB cornstarch
1 tsp (generous) fresh lemon zest
3 egg yolks
2 eggs
5 TB (3 oz) extra virgin coconut oil

Whisk eggs well in a bowl. Combine agave, juice, cornstarch and lemon zest in saucepan. Bring to a boil then lower heat and add a bit of this to the eggs to temper them then whisk eggs into juice mixture. Cook gently and stir until mixture thickens. Remove from heat and whisk in coconut oil bit by bit. Force through a fine sieve and cool. Makes about 2 cups. Yum!

Spring Appreciation

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

A.E. Housman

I happened upon this poem the other day and it spoke to me. Spring is certainly here and I feel a need to notice it this year. Maybe it's the artist in me waking up and finally learning how to see, maybe it's because my grey hair seems more prominent this year, I don't know, but I am just loving the blossoming spring outside my door. I never dreamed I'd ever derive such pleasure from watching a simple sparrow flit about under a bush going about her business. I can't wait until the apple trees bloom in the orchard. Does this mean I'm becoming an old lady? Maybe so. So I've decided that television can wait. Celebrity gossip can wait. Even (gasp!) the computer can wait. But spring won't wait. It will march right along and get lost inside summer. And I for one don't want to miss it.

Spring...The Doll

I signed up for a doll swap through Vivian's wonderful blog Viv on a Whim . This was fitting as my decision to enter this swap was truly on a whim! I have never done a swap before. The theme was "Beat the Winter Blues". The doll had to be joyful and springlike. This turned out to be good for me as it forced me to think about making something joyful and happy to represent the change of seasons when my heart really wasn't into it. Just a few days after I signed up for the swap my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and a couple days after that my dear friend Janice died of the same disease (see post below). My mind was swimming with all sorts of dark, one-breasted art dolls representing the helplessness and uncertainty of this awful disease. But I put the cancer dolls on hold for now and started needle felting this gal. I knew I wanted to do a female figure but what I didn't know was how I wanted to pose her. Originally I planned on a nude figure, perhaps representing Mother Nature, lovingly holding baby Spring (a needle felted baby wrapped up in flowered silk) but it just didn't seem right. So though I went through pains to make sure she was anatomically correct, I had to abandon that idea and cover up her lovely body with a dress. I think that was the correct decision though and I'm happy with how she turned out. I only hope my swap partner likes her. So here, holding the first pussy willow of the year, is Spring. I hope you can see plenty of signs of her wherever you are..

Remembering Janice

Janice Gray, the mother of my old friend Dona, recently passed away. She was as glorious a human being and as full of life and love and laughter as anyone I have ever met. I could write pages and pages about her and that still wouldn't do her justice. More importantly nothing I could say could ever properly explain how it felt to be loved by her. When Janice loved you- man, you knew it. I knew it. Even though I won't see her incredibly blue, beautiful, smiling eyes again or watch her throw back her head with a hearty laugh or almost believe her amazingly serious, deadpan face when she was delivering an incredibly witty zinger, I know she lives on. She's in the hearts of all those who were lucky enough to know her.

She and Dona were extremely close. When thinking of an image that would mirror thier relationship this is the one I came up with. It's called "One Heart" and seems appropriate for a Valentine's Day post.

There has been a tribute page set up in Janice's honor. I hope the family posts on the website the picture that was on the flyer at her memorial. There she was, dipping her bare feet in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. She had her jeans rolled up, head back, arms triumphantly extended and a huge smile on her face. She had written in the sand "I WAS HERE!"

Oh yes, Janice, you most certainly were.

Spice Tree

We went up in the mountains to get our Christmas tree this year. Okay, we got three trees -(hey, they were only 5 bucks each!) We have one in the living room, one outside with lights on it and I couldn't resist a little one for the kitchen. My friend Clarice at Storybook Woods always has a wonderful tree in her kitchen and I always love it so thought I would give it a try this year. I fell in love with the wispy, droopy hemlocks I saw up in the mountains and really wanted one. On the long drive home I decided I'd do a tree with just spices on it and I went through the bulk spice section of our grocery store in my head, trying to decide what to make out of whole spices. So this is what happened...

I loved the color and idea of a pink peppercorn garland but found it tedious and near impossible to string those things so I resorted to smearing raffia with hot glue and pressing the mixed peppercorns on as best I could. I drilled holes in whole nutmegs and strung them up with cardamom pods and juniper berries. I couldn't resist painting star anise gold and hanging them here and there along with whole chiles (Hint: When stringing whole chiles with needle and thread, please don't absentmindedly stick the needle in your mouth. Let's just say it's a bad idea.)

Did a small garland of cinnamon sticks, juniper berries and cardamom pods too. Then decided I was spending too much time on this and had to get back to other projects -like baking! (Note the Christmas braids cooling under the spice tree..) I didn't even get into the whole cloves and allspice I purchased. I also had dreams of an angel with bay leaf wings that never materialized. Maybe next year. This was fun and I love my little sweet smelling tree. I'm sure there are a million variations of this sort one could come up with. It was fun to work with natural materials and within the confines of a theme....I highly recommend this project. (ps-the tree is resting in an old enameled pot that's filled with gravel and water)

Holiday Needle Felting

Here are the latest needle felted dolls I recently created for a Christmas sale. These are sculpted with a barbed needle from 100% wool. The eyes and lips are also entirely made with small bits of colored wool felted into place with the needle. To the right is a tree full of holiday characters. You'll see a couple Jack Frosts, a brownie at the bottom, a playful little pixie or two and a jolly old elf in red. (Sorry pics are so small. Please click on photo to enlarge.)

Old Man Winter (below) is blowing up a storm of ice and snow. He's wired onto a wooden base. This is one of my first experiments with wrinkles and baggy eyes and I'm pleased with how he turned out.

And on the bottom left is a little dark haired angel peeking out of a felted sweater stocking. She was created for an annual gift exchange and I'm glad my good friend Mary ended up with her. I like her (the angel and especially Mary) a lot!