Saturday, November 05, 2016

Irish Whole Wheat Flour Sourdough and Insulation


Life keeps on keeping on. One of the things that is going is the sourdough starter. It is still a baby, so needs some help with the heavy lifting when used for bread baking. For Friday dinner I took the 'toss off' from the feeding schedule, added some water and some Irish whole meal flour from King Arthur Flour and about a 1/4 teaspoon of active dry yeast, stirred it all up and let it sit for a couple of hours.
Later in the day I added more flour and did some kneading. I like the texture and taste that the Irish whole wheat gives...it has flecks of bran in it that add to the flavor. It was a slack dough, so I put it in a pan for the final rise. Very tasty with turkey soup for dinner. No recipe, which might be why I forgot to add salt. Ooops. Guess I better start making more bread to get back in the groove. I also need to allow more time for the baking part of bread making. It always seems to come out of the oven about an hour after I need it. Back to the drawing board, right?

Another area of interest is my art studio. We have been working on adding insulation to the ceiling and two of the walls. The other walls were insulated years ago. Then we'll add a door between the studio and the storage area so that the storage will be uninsulated. We never get extremely hot or cold here, so that is not a problem.


Eventually the ceiling will get dry wall and paint added and I can set it up for painting again. It has been a combination second kitchen, art space, gardening space, and storage space for a while, so having it be almost all for art will be wonderful. I have about ten scenes from our trip that I want to paint in either water color or acrylics so I have to keep the enthusiasm for that going until the studio is ready. Right now it is a construction zone with batts of insulation, lots of tools, scrap wood,  levels and screws, tape measures, etc. Hope to be painting by December.


Today Katherine came up and helped with installing the insulation in the ceiling, which was wonderful. She is tall, which helps, plus very focused and hardworking when the job is at hand. Tonight we'll have neighbors over for dinner and card playing. A nice balance of work and play.

Hope your weekend is a good one!

2 comments :

  1. It's always the salt that gets left out, isn't it? The bread still looks lovely, though. Salted butter may be the answer. ;)

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  2. Yes, salted butter does help. This is not the first time, but I hope it will be the last time that the salt goes missing.

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