New House, New Year

In an effort to stick to our normal routine, we have waited approximately two years before posting anything new. You are welcome for sparing you from seeing all the interesting and exciting things we have done with our lives. I'll do a recap post and wrap up those two years for you before getting too far into these new posts, but for now, let's focus on the New Year, 2020!

We have recently moved out of the trailer (gasp! I know, I know) and into a house. Steve's new commute is a few minute walk, which has been nice for all of us! Since moving in and re-acquainting ourselves with all our fantastic kitchen gadgets, I've found a renewed interest in bread making, and Steve has enjoyed getting back into beer brewing. We've also made it a point to try out some new-to-us recipes and spend more time creating all together in the kitchen. 

On a whim the day before Christmas I decided to mix up a sourdough starter. There are so many different websites that tell you so many different ways to get it started, so naturally, I just picked the easiest one and ran with it. 1 cup of unbleached flour and 1/2 cup of water. Each day I poured out half and replenished it with the same 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup of water. It bubbled up by day two and I was pretty pumped about that. 

Around this same time, Steve needed to rack his beer and take the trub off the bottom, and I'll let him elaborate on that process because beer making just isn't my jam. I'll stick with drinking it, thanks! Anyways, when he drained that grainy goodness into a pitcher, we both had the same thoughts....why not use that as a bread starter? Of course, it's cheating a little bit. The trub has some spent yeast, but also some active bubbly yeast, and as soon as we added some flour to that bad boy it bubbled forth vigorously. That very night we cooked a loaf of beer bread and it was pretty tasty. A little bit of bitterness from the hops, but all in all it was good. The crumb was nice, it sliced like a dream, and best of all it was made from the the leftover stuff that you would normally just toss out! (We've actually been making a strong effort to use up the stuff that normally gets tossed out: beef bones and chicken bones get turned to stock, trub gets turned into bread, leftover pork gets turned into enchilada soup, chicken tenders cut from the whole chicken breasts are made into delicious fried chicken strips and so on and so on.) 

Since that loaf I've been feeding and caring for two sourdough starters. Both are pretty mild tasting now, and you can smell that they are different, but the beer starter isn't very beer-like any longer. I'm hoping that in time they will start to develop some more flavor.

This latest attempt was from my original sourdough starter. I found the recipe in the book: Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilee Raffa. It's a beautiful book! I can't wait to make my way through the recipes. 

This first loaf turned out simply beautiful, as you can see by Steve's fancy photos. It crackled and popped and it was so exciting to watch and hear. While it looks beautiful and had all the signs of (amateur) perfection I was hoping for, it turns out I completely forgot to add the salt that the recipe called for. So, while it looks and feels beautiful, it's pretty bland. The sourdough flavor isn't very strong either. Again, I'm hoping that will improve over time. Maybe it would have brought the taste out more if I hadn't neglected one of the very few ingredients in the recipe?? I don't know, but I do know that I will try again and see!

Here are a few photos from the most recent makes: 

She looks so pretty in my lovely new dutch oven!

I love that you can still see the rings from the banneton that it rested in for the final rise. I was worried they wouldn't actually show up after it was baked, but they totally did!

The tortilla soup that I mentioned before was made from leftover pork shoulder that we cooked for tamales, and the stock that we had been brewing from leftover bones. 

Not pictured is the enormous plate of Alton Brown's chicken parm from the reloaded Good Eats season that Steve made the night before that yielded all theses scrumptious little chicken fingers that were left on the bone after cutting all the breasts for the chicken parm. The baked potato fries were also an Alton Brown recipe that we caught a glimpse of on his Good Eats Reloaded show. 

The bubbly beer starter

First beer trub loaf doing it's thang for the final rise.

Steve and Steven were left home alone one day and decided to clear out our rotten banana population. They found a new recipe online and gave it a try. They were so moist and yummy we printed the recipe right away and added it to our recipe collection. In case you want to try it was Sarah's Banana Bread Muffins on Allrecipes.com with some adjustments (extra banana, 50/50 wheat/white flour, 77/33 brown/white sugar, generous splash of vanilla, and unknown quantity/overly generous 'dashes' of cinnamon). 

Stay tuned for more obnoxious pictures of our food and happenings around here at the 

(not-technically-a) Trailerhood.