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Tag Archives: so delicious

I make! Oatmeal bread edition (1)

Normally, I make sourdough bread because Chuck 2.0 is doing quite well.  I haven’t posted about my normal sourdough sandwich loaf, because I’m still changing things around.  It’ll probably be a post in the near future.

But recently, I made an oatmeal sandwich bread instead because I had used the majority of Chuck to make biscuits and English muffins and then didn’t leave enough time to feed him again before I would need him for bread.  And I was out of bread.  And I no longer have a habit of buying bread.  What do?  See what you have in the pantry and make that type of bread instead.  In this case, oatmeal.

I used King Arthur Flour’s recipe for oatmeal bread and in terms of taste and smell, it went quite well.  Bread tastes great.  I like the extra nuttiness oatmeal gives and it holds up well against my ridiculous sandwiches (the main reason why I need bread).  Bread also smells very good.  Maybe…a little too buttery smelling…but overall, I love the smell of baking and fresh baked bread.

HOWEVER.  This was my first time using whole-grain bread improver.  I used it because it’s something I’ve been wanting to try in my sourdough loaf, since Chuck is a whole grain starter, but I hadn’t had the chance.  Since I was making another whole grain bread here, I figured I’d just try it out here.  Um…it works.  Really well.

In case you’re wondering, the whole-grain bread improver adds a bit more gluten into the dough so the dough can hold it’s structure better during proofing.  It’s not necessary, but it helps keep the bread lighter and less dense.  The whole grains get in the way of the gluten network forming as well as it does in a white bread, which is part of the reason why whole grain breads sometimes are very dense.

Anyway, I tried it out and then did my usual for same day proof and bake.  Um…I didn’t account for the fact that I had used the bread improver.  And I also didn’t account for how hot it was in my kitchen.  And so…I ended up with monster bread.  It was totally over proofed.  Oops.  Will have to try again.

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A story about guavas…or maybe peaches

I’m back.  Even if I’m a week late.  We’ll see how long I can make it this time.

The other day I was peering at one of the guava trees, the one that produces the pink fruit.  It’s early in the season for it, but I wanted to see how the tree was doing after I had the tree pruned.  Guava fruits on new growth and pruning often encourages new shoots, so I was wondering if I was going to have a lot of fruit this year (much like any other year when the tree isn’t pruned but the tree was getting out of control).

As it turns out, yes, I think I will be getting plenty of pink guavas this year.  As I was looking at all the branches, I saw numerous unripe guavas developing.  I will have to dig out the fruit picker.  Maybe I’ll make guava ice cream again this year.  Or maybe guava jam or something.  There’s no way I’m going to eat all those guavas.  Especially since I’m not a huge fan of the pink ones.  I like the Thai varietals better.

ANYWAY!  I was looking at all the new fruit on the guava tree when suddenly I see a flash of red pretty high up on the tree.  I thought that was really weird.  Guava trees don’t produce red fruit.   There are a lot of leaves in the way, so I had to move around to try and get a better look.  And…it was a peach!  There’s a ripe peach growing on my guava tree!

Probably not.  A peach tree was never grafted onto the guava tree and more than likely, it’s a peach tree that’s just entangled its branches with the guava tree.  But it’s weird because I don’t think I have any peach trees on that side of the yard.  I just have another guava varietal.

I was going to trace the peach branch back to its tree, but I got called away to do something else and didn’t get the chance.  But soon.  Soon I will follow that branch back to the tree…just to verify that my guava tree did not produce a peach.  Also, that peach looked really nice and ripe.  But unfortunately by the time I got back out there, the peach was gone.  Like it never existed.  But honest, there was a peach on my guava tree!