A few weeks ago I ventured out to try some new things after a doctor visit. I had fasted overnight and before the appointment so I could get some blood pulled. However that left me hungry after my visit. I decided to try one of our local coffee roasters that has cold brew coffee on nitro.
First impression was that it looked like a beer. It had a nice foamy head and was nice and chilled. I must say that when taps use nitro, it certainly makes for a much smoother mouth feel of the liquid. I thoroughly enjoyed my first cold brew coffee on nitro. I got the coffee at Chocolate Fish Coffee Roasters. It’s a quaint little coffee shop that is no frills.
With my coffee in hand, I headed over to the relatively new Paris Baguette. This chain recently moved up here to northern California after I guess it grew big in southern California. This bakery reminds me of a Taiwanese bakery called 85 Degrees. You walk in and grab a tray and all the bread/pastry products are out on trays or in cubbies. You pick what you want and then take your tray to the register to pay and order drinks as well. I ended up getting a buttered croissant, chocolate croissant, and a croissant with an italian sausage in the middle. They were all delicious.
Hello!! It’s definitely been awhile since I last posted. Now that the weather has settled down (aka it is no longer super hot), I have jumped back into bread making. The hot weather of summer discouraged me from turning the oven on. We’ve actually had some good rains the last few weeks of October. This is much appreciated from Mother Nature given that we’re still in a drought. It also benefited the new plantings we put in our front yard.
On with the bread making.
Ingredients
300g 100% whole wheat flour
295g bread flour
145g rice drink (“milk”)
300g water
16g salt
35g honey
8g active dry yeast
1/4 stick of butter cut up – half melted, half in chunks
I had made some bread the week before the above recipe with poor results. I think I rushed the whole process. I didn’t knead the dough long enough and also didn’t let it rise/ferment the proper amount. This was all because I didn’t realize I had to make bread until later in the day and the one thing about bread is you can’t rush the yeast. This bread came out much more to my liking. This time I kneaded the dough for at least 15 minutes and could feel a big difference in how the dough formed up and became much more cohesive (I didn’t feel this with the dough the previous week). I also allowed for more time doing stretch and folds with 45 minute rests (total of 3 of these). As you can tell from the pictures, I was able to get a nice rise on the bread before baking. Overall I was happy with another loaf of sandwich bread for our lunches.
I again hit my 70 mile goal for the month, this time on the very last day of the month. I only needed about 1.5 miles but ended up going 3 because I couldn’t just bring myself to run that short. I managed to get out of the house early and was able to run in comfortable weather (mid to high 60s). I am also happy that I’ve surpassed 500 miles for the year already. So far so good on the running without injury (*knock on wood*). Total miles in July: 71.56. I’m a little apprehensive about August because I won’t have as many days to run since I’m working extra days to cover another person who has taken pretty much the entire month of August off of work. It only means I am working an extra day per week but that is typically my long run day (Friday) so I’ll have to figure something else out.
I felt relatively efficient today. Before lunch I had fit into my run, gone to a nice breakfast, did our grocery shopping, and weeded the front yard all before lunchtime. The afternoon involved making bread and relaxing.
We had planted two different kind of heirloom tomatoes a few months ago. I’m not good at tending to it and after setting up the drip system to auto-water it, I haven’t done much to it. Slowly we have had tomatoes start to develop and only recently have they started to get some color and maybe we’ll be able to harvest them soon. I was happy to see one of the tomatoes starting to turn from green to orange/red.
Starting to color
I decided to make a loaf of bread for our lunches this week. The past several weeks I’ve been doing tortillas because it has been triple digit heat and I didn’t want to turn the oven on. I haven’t been doing much baking or even pizza making because of the heat. We had 8 straight days of 100+ F weather and 3 of consecutive over 105 F. Luckily it cooled off a bit and only hit 95 F.
300g whole wheat flour
295g bread flour
145g rice milk
300g water
18g salt
35g honey
1/4 c. olive oil
8g active dry yeast
I mixed the above ingredients, let it auto-lyse for about an hour then did the slap & fold kneading for 15 minutes. I let it proof for about an hour (it doubled) and did 2 stretch & folds (envelope folds) along with degassing. Then I formed it and placed it in a well-greased (butter) loaf pan (9″ x 5″). I let it rise for about an hour and then baked it at 425 F (using my water sprayer to mist the bread as it went into the oven. After 10 minutes, I dropped the temperature to 375 F and misted again and baked for 27 more minutes. I took the bread out of the pan and let it sit in the oven at 375 F for another 4 minutes then removed it and let it cool. Overall looks good, haven’t tried it yet so can’t comment on its taste.
I am happy with how the crumb looks. Tight enough that it will be able to hold the meat of the sandwiches.
Crumb
-StewsCat
Stews found the little bit of light coming into the kitchen through the skylight
StewsCat 