Bread and butter recipe

Hello friends, today has turned out to be a rainy, messy day. At least it is just rain, not the freezing rain or sleet that has been predicted for the last few days! However it has melted a lot of the snow that was on the ground and what is left is quickly turning into a wet mess of brown snow and mud. If it gets below freezing as usual tonight it will be a rough go for all who are on the roads. I am glad we don’t have to go anywhere.

Today is a bread baking day and as I posted yesterday here is the recipe I use, it is very easy even if you have never made homemade yeast bread, nutritious and very yummy! There is no kneading involved and if you make some those who taste it will surely ask for more!

2 ½ cups of warm water (warm like baby’s milk on your wrist, not hot)

2 tablespoons of dry yeast

3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 tablespoons Honey

5 ½ - 6 cups of flour (I use part whole wheat, part white)

1 ½ teaspoons of sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.

Add the oil and honey

Mix the flour and salt in separate large bowl. Add the liquids. Mix well with hands, adding a little more flour if needed.

Cover and let rise until double (about 1 ½ hours).

Punch down, divide in half and shape into 2 loaves. Place in oiled pans. Allow to rise again until nearly doubled.

Bake at 10 minutes at 400°. Reduce the heat to 350° and bake 20 minutes more. Cool on rack (or remove from pan and set it sideways on pan to cool if you don’t have racks)

As you know from earlier posts about the subject I have been slowly replacing the white flour with whole wheat flour to try to get my son used to the taste and hope to eventually make the switch complete.

Tonight on our fresh bread we will be having fresh butter as well since my son learned how to make butter from heavy whipping cream today, he made the craziest faces while he was shaking the jar but when it was done he tasted both the buttermilk we poured off the butter (we kept it for use later) and the butter and declared both delicious. This is another good project for young kids to do. In case you don’t know all we did was put some heavy whipping cream (the kind in the little milk-like carton in the dairy, not cool whip!!) in a clean, dry jar with a tight lid and shake it until in turns to butter. (depending on how hard you shake it about 10 minutes at most).

My son was fascinated that at first he could feel the cream sloshing around then he couldn’t, I opened the lid since the cream at this point was coating the inside of the jar and he couldn’t see inside, it was almost funny because he thought he did something wrong, then when I returned the lid and encouraged him to keep shaking it, in just a short time the butter formed into a lump in the jar and the buttermilk separated allowing him to again see inside the jar. He thinks it is some kind of magic!

At the bird feeder today we have two of the European Starlings fighting each other over the suet, and they are running all the little birds off so I am planning on putting a couple more suet feeder in the yard so there will be plenty for all.

Well that’s about it for now, I hope all of you are well and finding things to do with your family and friends. Until next time, be safe and be happy!