Friday Fermentation Class

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A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Maja, texted me saying, "Hey, I'm keen to do a fermentation session with you, do you think we could do that one Friday?" I responded with a resounding, "Yes!"

I love fermentation. And I get excited when my favorite people get into it, too. One of Maja's goals was to choose a project with vegetables that her son would enjoy, and this is the kind of challenge I like to tackle.

My gateway ferments were yogurt, kefir, and sourdough. Vegetables came later. It took a friend of mine telling me about her adventures in making sauerkraut, several months of thinking about doing it myself, and a few false starts of my own before fermented vegetables became a regular part of our life. But I have now been fermenting vegetables for the better part of the last three years and they truly are a part of life for all of us, Wyatt included. He happily eats a variety of fermented vegetables at lunch, dinner, and sometimes both if we don't have much time to cook. He started eating my purple sauerkraut when he was just over two years old, and he seemed to enjoy it from the first bite. But some people, adults and kids alike, tend to avoid the the tangy and sometimes sour flavors that are the signature of fermented foods. As the diet of many Americans has changed over the years, the flavors of fermented vegetables have become unfamiliar. As a result, fermented vegetables may take some getting used to.

In our house, we firmly believe that your tastes can, and do, change over time. I learned to like beets, Wyatt learned to like cantaloupe (he doesn't remember it, though), and one day, Marc may hate parsnips less. Wyatt got the best real life example of the phenomenon of changing tastes in preschool last year. One of his classmates disliked avocados. Disliked as in she really, seriously hated avocados. But according to the custom in the preschool, everyone was required to take a (sometimes very tiny) "no thank you" bite of everything offered at a meal, including the things you don't think you like. Wyatt watched his friend take "no thank you" bites of avocado over their shared preschool career. But one day, his friend took her "no thank you" bite, and much to everyone's surprise, including her own, she actually liked the avocado. She liked it so much that she asked for more, and then even more. This event made a huge impression on Wyatt, and he talked about it for days. After all, it's one thing to be told, "Hey, someday you might really like this food you hate with every molecule of your being," and it's quite another to actually witness when that change happens for your friend.

Keeping in mind Maja's request for an approachable vegetable ferment, I suggested that we start with some fermented radishes and dill carrots. I thought of the radishes thanks to Amanda Feifer's interview on the Local Mouthful podcast. Amanda suggested radishes would be a good first ferment because they're ready to eat in about a week or ten days. I think that in addition to their short fermentation period, radishes are a good first ferment because their flavor changes so much during that week or so. I suggested we also do dill carrots because they're really delicious (imagine the flavor of a cucumber dill pickle combined with the sweetness of a carrot), they take about as much time to ferment as the radishes do, and I was almost out of dill carrots myself.

Maja ordered some fermentation weights and picked up a couple of wide-mouth mason jars. She also got some gorgeous red and orange carrots. I got the radishes and some more carrots, dill, celery seed, and I had the salt, pepper corns and garlic. We were ready to ferment. Here's what we did:

We washed and trimmed the vegetables, and then cut them into the shapes we wanted. Maja is a designer and you can tell just by how she cut and stacked the carrots. We mixed a 5% brine, and then we arranged our vegetables in the jars. Maja's were particularly artful. We added the brine to the jars, put a weight on top, and screwed the lids on loosely. 

I advised Maja to taste the radishes and carrots every day after the first few days to start to notice how the flavors change over time. I told her that for me, around ten days, the salty flavor that has been so prevalent on the vegetables goes away and other flavors start to come through. That's when I call them "done," take off the weight, tighten the lids, and store the jars in the refrigerator for eating.

Recipes:

My recipe for dill carrots is the same as for dill beans, which appears in this post. Just substitute carrots and you've got it (today we omitted the chiles de árbol, but you could include them if you like your carrots spicy).

Fermented Dill Carrots

Ingredients:

  • Enough carrots to fill your jars. Trim and cut into spears or rounds, whatever you like. You don't need to peel them.
  • 1 bunch (or more) of fresh dill. (I've used as much as one bunch per quart jar, but have also used less.)
  • 1-2 tablespoons of black peppercorns per jar
  • About 1/4 teaspoon of celery seed per jar
  • 1-3 peeled garlic cloves per jar (I like more garlic, but you may prefer less)
  • Enough salt and water to make a 5% brine for your jars
  • Fermentation weights, one for each jar. I love Sandy Der's weights.

Directions:

Wash the carrots and the dill. Put the dill fronds into the jars along with the peppercorns,  celery seed, and garlic cloves. Fit the carrot pieces in the jars, as many as you can, in as organized a fashion as you can. Leave about two inches of space between the top of the carrots and the top of the jar. You may need to cut some of the carrots.

Measure 1 liter of water (about 4 1/4 cups) and 50 grams of salt (if you don't have a kitchen scale, for the Real Salt I used, 50 grams amounted to approximately 3 tablespoons of salt) and dissolve the salt in the water. When the salt is dissolved, pour the water into the jar of carrots until the carrots are fully submerged under the brine. Leave about an inch of space between the brine and the top of the jar. (If that wasn't enough brine for your jars, make another batch.) Place a fermentation weight on the top of the carrots in each jar so that the carrots stay under the brine. LOOSELY screw the lid on the jar. Write the date you started the carrots on the jar--grease pencil on the lid or a label made from masking tape work well--and put the jar in a cool corner, out of direct sunlight, to ferment. Check and taste every few days to see how the ferment is progressing and to confirm the carrots remain fully under the brine. Top off the jar with more water if the level drops. Our carrots are usually ready to enjoy in 10 days or so, but that timeframe can shift depending on the time of year and how warm it is in the house.

Fermented Radishes

For radishes, the process is the same as for carrots but with fewer ingredients. All you need is radishes, salt, water, and a sprig of thyme (if you want to add one). Get as many radishes as you need to fill your jars. Wash, trim and cut your radishes. Cut the radishes however you like. I enjoy thin cross-sections, but you could easily do quarters or even whole radishes.  Put the radishes in the jar by themselves or with a sprig of thyme. Pour in 5% brine, top the radishes with a weight (and if some radishes float up to the surface, lay a blanket of a washed cabbage leaf under the weight to keep all the radish slices under the brine). Cover the jar with a loose lid, and label the jar with the date you started them. Place the jar out of direct sunlight in a cool area, and check them every few days to see how they're tasting and to confirm they remain fully under the brine. The radishes should be ready to eat in about 7-10 days. 

 

My First Handspun Yarn

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It took me a few weeks to finish the work I needed to do on the yarn I spun in Massachusetts, but now it's done. Isn't it pretty?

The item that kept from from finishing this project sooner was a niddy-noddy. I know. It's a silly sounding name, and as far as I have found, there is no other word for the device.  I looked to buy one locally, but I couldn't find one, so it was Etsy to the rescue. Here is the niddy-noddy I bought. And this is what it looked like with my yarn wound around it. 

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The purpose of a niddy-noddy is to allow you to wind yarn, stretching it out at the same time you're measuring it. For example, I used a two-yard noddy-noddy, and when I was done winding my yarn, I counted the loops (33 loops), so I knew I had 66 yards of yarn.

I let the yarn sit on the niddy-noddy overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, I tied the loops together it in four places with undyed yarn (to avoid any color transfer), and then it was time to wash it. The spinning we did during my class was "in the grease," so the wool had never been washed. Here's what the yarn looked like going into the basin:

I washed the yarn four times, gently, in lukewarm water with a little bit of liquid laundry soap. The first three washes, the water was full, and I mean full, of lanolin. The water turned a deep brown. By the third and fourth washes, the sticks and twigs had started to float out of the yarn and the water was less and less brown. Here is what the third wash looked like:

 

By the fourth wash, the water looked pretty clear, so I knew I was done. I rolled the yarn in a bath towel to get most of the water out, and then I hung the yarn to dry over a doorknob in our laundry area, with the basin under it to catch the drips.

 

Even though the yarn is at best, inconsistently spun, I'm pretty happy with my first effort. I'm not sure what I'll make with it yet, but I'm happy that I have so much to work with.


Whey Ricotta

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"Dad. Guess what? Mom ALMOST let the whey boil over! You should have seen the foam on the top of the pot!"

Before making feta, I did not have a good appreciation of how much of reductive process cheesemaking really is.

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When I ordered our cheesemaking supplies from The Cheese Connection, the incredibly helpful Kallijah informed me that a gallon of milk makes about a pound of cheese. But what this actually meant in real life was that our gallon of goat's milk made just over a pound of feta, and left about 15 cups of whey. If you're not up on your conversion factors, let me help you out. There are 16 cups in a gallon, so the leftover liquid was only a cup less than our original gallon of milk. I suddenly began to understand why good cheese is so expensive.

And I was left with the question of what to do with all that whey. Fortunately, David Asher anticipated this question and included a chapter on "Whey Cheeses" in The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. In the chapter, David provided a variety of sensible suggestions on how to use whey, and there is a picture of him feeding whey to pigs, and a picture of him watering his garden with whey. Wyatt, a child of the California drought, looks for any opportunity to pour liquid anywhere, so he was in favor of finding a pig to feed, or barring that, pouring the whey on our garden. I, on the other hand, a grown-up involved in a Cheese Project, was in favor of trying to make one of the cheeses with it instead. Eventually Wyatt agreed to make whey ricotta.

As David explained in Chapter 22, Whey Cheeses, "Italian, for 'cooked again,' ricotta refers to the second making of cheese from one batch of milk: the milk is first 'cooked' to make Parmigiano Reggiano or pecorino or some other Italian cheese, and the leftover whey is then 'cooked again' to make ricotta." 

We had just over a half-gallon of whey available to play with, because the rest of it had been used for the brine to age the feta, or I had spilled it on the floor. A half-gallon was about half of the amount of whey required for the "Slow Ricotta" recipe, but I figured we could try the recipe anyway and see what happened. If we only got an ounce or two of ricotta, so be it. It's not like we had a pig starving for whey in our back garden.

Here's what we did:

First, we left the whey to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. Monday afternoon, we poured the whey into a pot and brought it to a boil. David specifically warned in his recipe to remove the pot from the burner right as the whey comes to a boil so it doesn't boil over. Unfortunately, I forgot for a few minutes that the pot was even on the stove because Wyatt had begun conducting an imaginary orchestra (with they aid of a tinker-toy stick) in Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" from his San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Concerts for Kids CD. I lost track of the whey, and just as the foam was about to cascade over the rim of the pot, I happened to glance over at the stove, gave a little yelp, and pulled the pot off the burner just in time.

Back on task, we let the whey settle, and sure enough, there were little clouds of ricotta curd that had pulled out of the whey. We strained the ricotta in some cheese cloth and hung it to let it drain and cool.

Once the cheese had drained (and yes, we probably shouldn't have, but we squeezed the hanging cheese just a little bit to move the process along) and cooled, we weighed it, salted it and ate it for dessert with some fruit. I was impressed that we got almost four ounces of ricotta. The cheese was soft, creamy, and thanks to the fermentation step, had a depth of flavor I have never before tasted in ricotta.

 

Feta-tastic!

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"Mom. Can I just please try this? With the salt? PLEASE?"

Originally, I had planned to work through the recipes in David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking in the order that they appear. But as the rest of North America heads into autumn and cooler temperatures, San Francisco is entering summer. I checked the temperature of our normally chilly garage last week, when temperatures were in the 80s and above, and the garage was over 70 degrees. That's way too warm for aging chèvre, which is the next chapter in the book.

But we were on a roll, and the idea that our project could be stymied by warm weather seemed wrong, or at least unacceptable, to me. I skipped ahead to the chapter fifteen, on feta: "Feta is a cheese that is aged by submerging it in a brine made of its whey. Started as basic rennet curds, feta is defined by this brine-aging. Brine-aged cheeses are most popular in warmer climes, where salty brines preserve cheeses well despite high temperatures and without refrigeration." Perfect!

On Saturday, I bought a gallon of raw goat's milk that had just been delivered to Rainbow. Ideally, we would have started the cheese on Saturday, but Saturday was just too busy. Also, I had forgotten to make the active kefir we would need for our cheesemaking. So on Saturday, I started the kefir that would be ready the next day.

We started the feta on Sunday and finished on Monday. Here's what we did:

On Sunday morning, the kefir was ready, and we were eager to get started. But first, we learned what raw goat's milk tastes like. It's has a pretty distinctive taste, Wyatt said it was like hay. I don't know when he has ever eaten hay, but that's a different issue. He also said he liked the bit that he tried, thought that it tasted nothing like cow's milk, and he added that he probably wouldn't want to actually drink a glass of it. After pouring the milk into the pot, we warmed it, and added the strained, active kefir. We covered the pot to keep the milk at 90 degrees for an hour.

Keeping the pot warm was where I made my first mistake. After reading about how hard it can be to keep the milk warm enough, and how your cheese may fail if the temperature drops too low, I wanted to be sure that the milk stayed warm enough. And as you may have already guessed, I overcompensated. I brought out bath towels to swaddle the pot, and I turned the oven on, to keep the top of the stove warm. By the end of the hour, I measured the temperature of the milk, and it had risen to 99 degrees. This was obviously not ideal, but I rationalized (without any science or research, mind you) that it would probably be fine. I told myself that the pot hadn't been that hot for the whole hour, and I also figured that people in hot places drink kefir, so we should just push on. But before we continued with the recipe, we let the milk cook to 90 degrees, and I turned the oven off.

Once the milk had cooled a bit, we added the rennet that we had dissolved in water, and then we covered and swaddled the milk pot again for an hour. The stove had cooled off by that point, but I checked the temperature of the milk after 30 minutes, and it was 3 degrees warmer than it was when we started. So I removed some of the towels and uncovered the pot so it could get back to 90 degrees for the rest of the hour.

Next, we checked for a clean break of the curd, and we had one. At this point I was absolutely overjoyed that we actually had curd--its was the first obvious clue that we were on the right track with the recipe. Then we had to cut the curd, which is tricky in a round pot with a regular knife and a 4-year old who wants to do everything himself. But we managed, and the curds that we missed, we just cut them up later as we found them when we were stirring. We poured off the whey, salted the curds, and we set up our cheese press from last week, this time with cheese cloth in it, so we could flip the whole cheese occasionally. It worked perfectly.

We then prepared our salt brine, and I managed to pour a good amount of whey all over the floor. I also splashed some on Wyatt's socks (he loves to add that part of the story). In my defense, our four-cup glass measuring cup pours terribly for some reason, and I had forgotten how badly it pours until I was standing in a puddle of whey. 

 

After the cheese had been pressed and was cool, we cut the block of cheese (which weighed just over a pound) into four pieces so it would fit in our jar with the brine. We salted the surfaces, and we set the quarters of cheese to dry on the aging mat for 24 hours. We flipped them occasionally so they would keep their shape.

On Monday afternoon, we checked our cheese, and they had lost another tablespoon or so of liquid. We had no idea whether they should dry for longer or not, but we figured they were probably fine to go into the jar of brine. And good news! They sank right to the bottom of the jar, and stayed there. 

We put the jar in the refrigerator, and we now have to wait two weeks before we can try them. As Wyatt said, "Two weeks? That's not so long, right? That's like tomorrow, and then after tomorrow, and then it's two weeks!" He has such a good attitude for making cheese.

 

 

Maintaining Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter

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All three of us have been enjoying our new sourdough bread. We even baked more loaves of bread yesterday! This time, Wyatt got to complete all of the baking steps with me.

I daresay that our bread was even better this time around!

But as it often goes with new pets, the care and feeding of the pet is on the parent. In this case, taking care of the sourdough is on me. It had been so long since I had kept sourdough starter alive that I had forgotten how I used to do it. I went online to jog my memory, and boy did those searches jog it. If you search online for "how to maintain sourdough starter," you will find more exquisitely detailed posts than you would have ever thought imaginable. Amateur bread baking, sourdough in particular, is a thing, and most people who choose to maintain a starter and then write about it tend to have strong opinions about the process.

But here's the problem with strong opinions about maintaining sourdough starter: everyone's kitchen is different. The temperature of the kitchen, the temperature of the water, and the exact composition of the water changes from house to house. What works perfectly for someone else may not work for me, or you. Exactly how much to feed a starter and when to feed it is dependent on a lot of variables that I am not interested in attempting to control. I want to keep my sourdough starter alive, so I feed it regularly. But I figure that since I was able to grow it on my counter over a few days, thanks to a little bit of care and a lot of benign neglect, it will be no big deal to start another one if this one dies.

If you have never maintained a sourdough culture before, you can read about the process in traditional sourdough bread here.  This series of posts on Phickle, Sourdough Starter School, is really informative. The photos are also great, but remember that like all other gluten-free baking projects, gluten-free sourdough starter looks different from traditional sourdough.

Even though traditional and gluten-free sourdough batters look different, the bubbles of happy microbes are the same in both. The more bubbles I see and the more popping I hear, the more active my starter is. If there are almost no bubbles, my starter has either just been fed or may need to be fed again. And after I have fed my starter, I give it a sniff. The smell is always very mild. But by the time of the next feeding, the smell is much stronger and more sour. Sometimes there's even a layer of liquid on top of the starter. A strong sour smell and this liquid are signs that my starter is hungry for fresh flour and water. 

There seems to be no consensus on how often to feed a starter. Sandor Katz recommends daily feeding, and so does David Asher in his cheesemaking book. Amanda Feifer at Phickle is also in the once-a-day camp. But many other people feel strongly that twice a day feedings are necessary. The first few days I had my starter, I fed it once a day, before I went to bed. But I started to notice that by feeding time, it was looking and smelling like it was pretty...hungry. So I started feeding it twice a day: morning and evening. I noticed with twice daily feedings, the starter looked more lively by the end of the day. It's possible, though, that if I had just increased the size of the one feeding, that would have fixed the problem.

But enough discussion. Here's my process so far for maintaining sourdough starter:

At the first feeding to maintain the starter, I took a clean, empty, quart sized mason jar. I measured the weight of it, in grams, and wrote that tare weight on a piece of masking tape, and stuck that on the jar.

I put the jar on the scale, zeroed the scale, and added 20g of sourdough starter to the jar.

I measured 40g of flour (be sure to feed the starter gluten-free flour mix, NOT the grain-free one in American Classics Reinvented), dumped that in the jar with the starter. I measured 40g of non-chlorinated, room-temperature water, and I dumped that in the jar with the starter and the flour. I mixed all of it up vigorously, and screwed the lid on LOOSELY.

In the evening, I weighed the jar and removed all but 20g of the sourdough starter. This was easy to do, because I already knew how much my jar weighs when it is empty. (Pretend your empty jar weighs 420g . Put the jar on the scale and keep removing starter until the scale reads 440g. Now you have 20g of starter in the jar.) I then added 40g of flour and 40g of non-chlorinated, room-temperature water, mixed it all vigorously, and screwed the lid back on LOOSELY.

Then I just repeated this process--keeping 20g of starter, and adding twice that amount of flour and of water at every feeding. I composted the starter I removed. The thing about sourdough is that you have to remove some of the starter at every feeding or else you and your kitchen will quickly become overwhelmed by sourdough starter. Also, removing excess starter helps to keep the microbe population in check and control the level of sour in your baked goods.  

A few feedings in advance of when I would be baking again, I began to build up the size of my starter by increasing the size of the feedings. I kept 20g of starter, but fed it 60g of flour and 60g of water. And at the next feeding, I kept 30g of starter and added 90g of flour and 90g of water. At that point, I had more than enough starter for my recipe plus 20g to maintain in the jar.

This week, I'm experimenting with keeping the starter in the fridge. I fed the starter a couple of days ago, let it hang out on the counter for a couple of hours after the feeding, and then I put the jar in the refrigerator. My plan is to take it out of the refrigerator and revive it with a few feedings before our next baking day. 

Just Plane Fun

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"Mom. Why does everyone keep asking me if my clownfish wheelie bag is called 'Nemo?'"

Wyatt has a terrific little wheelie bag that is shaped like a clownfish, and it always draws remarks at the airport. This year, the first to comment on the bag was a TSA Security Guard, who asked, "Is that Nemo?" Had he instead said, "Hey, buddy! That's a great bag. Is that a clownfish?" Wyatt would probably enthusiastically responded that yes, it was, and he would have shown him the zipper and the retractable handle. Instead, Wyatt looked at him like he was insane. 

Two more people asked "Hey! Is that Nemo?" as we waited for our plane. Wyatt gave them both the same quizzical look, as I explained, "No, it's just a clownfish." They followed-up with an incredulous, "Really?" So I assured them, "Yes, really. It's just a clownfish,"

These are the kind of exchanges that happen to us regularly, because Wyatt doesn't watch television or movies, and he doesn't play video games. Connecting with Wyatt over pop-culture doesn't work at this point in his life.

Our decision to wait to expose Wyatt to media has been a very conscious decision, and it has proven challenging at times. Our decision is based on many of the reasons discussed in this great post and thought-provoking podcast episode, and we're incredibly glad we have taken this approach. But when people find out that we're "those no-media people," we usually get one of three reactions. The first is, "You're crazy!" The second is, "So what are you saying? I'm ruining my kids by letting them watch their favorite programs?" And the third is a sort of sheepish, "Oh. We don't let ours watch THAT much..."

We are not crazy. This approach is working for us, and we feel that we're reaping the benefits of having a child with a rich imagination who enjoys independent play. And our choice has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing with their own kids. The statement, "Wyatt doesn't watch TV or videos," when offered to explain his blank stare at a pop-culture reference, is not a judgment of anyone. But it's no wonder that people sometimes take it negatively. Media in childhood is a hot button issue. At least a few times a year, there's another article telling parents that children should have less media exposure. And infuriatingly, those reports usually offer exactly zero suggestions on how to cut back. (If you're interested in cutting back on media for young children, there is a helpful post from Janet Lansbury that you can check out here.)

Anyway. Long flights are challenging for everyone, but especially young children and the parents traveling with them. And it's easy to assume that entertainment in a confined space like an airplane requires screens. But it didn't for us. The low-tech stuff still works. 

This year, Wyatt was old enough to help decide what to put in his wheelie bag to pass the time on the plane. Here's how we amused ourselves on our flights:

 

Aside from the mandatory safety video, the only thing we watched on a screen was the map showing the plane's progress across the country. On our flight to Boston, a child was seated in front of Wyatt and the poor kid kept dropping his toys. So Wyatt spent a lot of time retrieving the toys for him, trading toys through the crack between the seats, or playing on his own with his cars or other things on the tray table. He also listened to some music on his headphones plugged into my 12-year old iPod, until the device finally died, giving us a terribly sad face on its big grey screen. I built him into a fort with an old swaddle blanket we always travel with. And I tried doing a couple of string figure games with him, but they weren't that fun--maybe in a few more years. On the flight back from Boston, Wyatt did some drawing, reading, resting, and listened to a couple of audio stories from Sparkle Stories (which I managed from my phone, since the old iPod was dead). I didn't get to read a book (or watch anything myself, obviously), but I did end up getting a short nap and I made a lot of progress on a knitting project. I also had some pretty fun conversations with my kid.

We brought and ate healthy, delicious snacks we rarely get at home. Plane snacks!

And we spent lots of time looking out the window, especially on take-off and landing.

 

 

 

 

 

In Praise of Paneer

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"Wyatt. Stop eating the cheese! We have to press it." 

"But it's SO GOOD!"

While we were waiting for the Shankleesh, we decided we had plenty of time to make paneer according to the recipe in David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking (White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2015).

Paneer is a special kind of cheese that is made without animal rennet. Heat and acid are what allows the milk to curdle, and then those curds can be strained and pressed into a block of cheese. Because of the way paneer is made, it doesn't melt when you heat it. As a result, you can cook it in sauces or barbecue it, and it will hold its shape.

The first step in the recipe is to heat the milk to boiling (which would kill most of the beneficial bacteria in raw milk). We therefore opted for pasteurized milk in this recipe. This recipe also requires a cheese press, which of course we don't have. I learned from a little bit of research that cheese presses start around $200, so buying one is not a good option for us. There are also instructions available online so you can build your own, so maybe we can do that in the future.

Fortunately, the author suggested an easy solution to the cheese press problem: two empty plastic yogurt tubs. You punch holes in one of the tubs from the inside out, put your cheese in the tub with holes, and then you pour the warm whey into the intact tub, which you place on top of the cheese. The tub of warm whey helps to press out the rest of the whey from the cheese. As much as I try to avoid plastic, this was our best option for making paneer. Wyatt and I went out and bought the cheapest yogurt we could find, for the containers it came in, and took it from there.

Here's how we made paneer:

The recipe advises using fresh lemon juice, not bottled, which is my preference anyway. So we squeezed lemons, and then heated the milk. After the milk had boiled, we poured in the lemon juice and watched curds magically appear. We then gently transferred the curds from the whey with a slotted spoon into a colander, seasoned the curds, and set up our press on a rack, over a baking dish. The cheese sat in the press for a few hours, and it was easy to remove from the mold when it was time to eat it.

We tasted the paneer with and without salt, and we concluded that salt enhances the flavor dramatically. We added some herbs to fancy it up, and in the spirit of international cheesemaking, we went with herbs de provence. It tastes terrific.

We stopped by Rainbow today to tell Andy all about our cheesemaking and give him some of the paneer. Wyatt bounded over to him to give him his present, and Andy was so gracious. He remarked that he would bring the cheese to his cheese meeting in a few minutes to share with his coworkers. (No pressure there...)

Gluten-Free Wild Sourdough Bread: We did it!

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"Is that MY loaf of bread? It looks so good...THIS BREAD IS SO GOOD! I need two pieces, please. Two pieces with extra butter."

Making yogurt and baking sourdough bread were my first forays into fermentation. When Wyatt was about eight months old or so, I was really into baking sourdough. And I got really good at it. I bought my culture from Cultures for Health. I baked bread all the time, we had sourdough pancakes every Sunday, and I cared for the culture almost like a pet. 

But just after Wyatt turned a year old, we learned that he (and we) were gluten-intolerant. That knowledge sounded the death knell of the sourdough starter and the end of the Bread Extravaganza of 2012. Over the next couple of years, I tried a few recipes here and there for gluten-free sourdough bread, but they mostly produced dense, boozy-smelling bricks. Awful stuff. Since then, we've tried various bakeries' gluten-free breads, and they're great in a pinch, if toasted. But I don't love the texture that xanthan and guar gums give gluten-free baked goods, so we don't eat commercial breads (or any bread) that often.

When I saw that Gluten-Free Girl's American Classics Reinvented included a true sourdough bread recipe, I pre-ordered the book. I figured that if the recipe worked, the entire book would have been worth buying.

We got our book on Tuesday, and we started our sourdough on Wednesday.* We baked on Monday.

Here's what we did:

After mixing teff flour and non-chlorinated water, we let the mix sit for a day, and then began the process of, every day, removing most of the previous mixture and adding more flour and water. After a few days, I made pancakes with some of the "extra" starter. The first time I made pancakes, I used a sourdough pancake recipe I had found. But by the second time, I had read Sandor Katz's more relaxed approach to sourdough in the Art of Fermentation, and I made up my own recipe. I took 2 cups of the starter, added a teaspoon of baking soda (the baking soda binds with some of the lactic acid, making a slightly sweeter pancake), a tablespoon or so of coconut flour and two beaten eggs. The pancakes were terrific.

Making the actual bread was easy. It's gluten-free, so there's no point in kneading it. You could knead all day and you'll never create the gluten network of a traditional bread! After shaping and a final proof, we baked each loaf in a dutch oven, with a little steam of water at the end of baking time.

If you like the idea of gluten-free sourdough bread, I think you'd be smart to pick up a copy of American Classics Reinvented and start your sourdough right away. 

If you want to try building your own wild sourdough starter but don't need it to be gluten-free, check out this post from Wild Fermentation, and maybe consider adding some teff flour to your mix to speed things along.

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Meanwhile, we have a new culture in the house. We are both taking a breather from baking right now as I learn what our new pet needs to stay bubbly. 

 

 

 

 

 

*There was a point this weekend where we had Shankleesh draining, paneer being pressed, sourdough starter bubbling, and pizza dough rising. It was a busy and somewhat messy weekend over here.

 

Waiting for Shankleesh

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"Look, Mom. The cheeseballs are waiting their turn in line to go roll in the dirt."

Making food through fermentation takes awhile. And even though you can ballpark how long the process will take, you can't predict exactly when it will be done when you start. Take, for example, the Shankleesh we have just put up to age. This is the second recipe we undertook from David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking (White River Junction: Chelsea Green, 2015). We started this cheese last Tuesday, and we just put it up to age today, a couple of days later than anticipated.

The recipe for Shankleesh calls for extra firm and dry Dream Cheese, which is explained earlier in the book. Dream cheese is basically cheese made from yogurt that you hang in cheesecloth until the whey has drained out. I actually remember making yogurt cheese as a kid, back when the goal was low-fat everything. Yogurt cheese promised to be a low-fat cream cheese, and we tried making it. The day the yogurt took to drain seemed never-ending, and when it was finally time to taste the cheese, I remember feeling a bit disappointed. After all of that waiting, the cheese tasted okay, but it was pretty tart, and not at all like cream cheese. 

We could have hung homemade yogurt to start our Shankleesh, but David proposed an alternative recipe for Dream Cheese, entitled "You Can't Do That With Pasteurized Milk Cheese." He wrote that it may be the oldest cheese ever made. We made that one, of course.

We started with good raw milk,* which according to the recipe, should take about two days to clabber. "Clabber" is a word that doesn't come up much anymore, likely because most milk is now pasteurized, and you can't make clabber out of pasteurized milk. To make clabber, you leave raw milk out at room temperature, and the beneficial bacteria present in the milk will make the milk sour and thicken it into what's called clabber. Pasteurized milk doesn't work this way--it just rots at room temperature.

Our first step was to pour our raw milk into a jar and let it sit on the counter. Then, we waited. We checked the milk every day, stirring with a spoon to check for thickening and to see what it smelled like. Every day, it started to smell a little bit more tangy. By Day 2, there was no clabber. Not on Day 3, either. By Day 4, I was starting to get impatient, and I wondered if the temperature of our kitchen was too cool. It was a warm day, so I put the jar out in the sun on the deck and in a couple of hours, we had clabber.

 

 

Here's how we made Shankleesh: 

To make the cheese, we pulled out our cheesecloth (real cheesecloth, not the loosely woven stuff from the grocery store) and lined a colander with it. In went the clabber, and we suspended the clabber by a knot on a spoon balanced over a tall pot. After a day, the whey had drained, and we had curds. We salted the curds, and hung them again for another day of draining. Our next task was to form the cheese into balls and then dredge them in za'atar. I have to say, the cheese cloth had gotten pretty stinky by this step. Wyatt almost bailed on the project the smell was so pungent. The balls then went into a jar, and we covered them in olive oil. 

Our jar of cheese is now resting comfortably in the cool temperature of our garage, and it will stay there for a month. We put a sticker on the calendar so we can have a visual countdown to the day when we can eat it. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers got it right: The waiting is the hardest part.

*Raw milk, its history in the United States, and the politics that accompany any discussion of raw milk, are as fascinating as they are polarizing. Many states do not permit the sale of raw milk. Fortunately, California is not one of those states, and I've now got Rainbow Coop's delivery schedules of raw cow and goat's milk (the chapter on chèvre is coming!) so we can purchase the freshest possible milk to make our cheeses. You may heartily disagree with my decision to move forward with a project that requires using raw milk, and in this preparation, will almost certainly age for less than 60 days. Your hearty disagreement is fine with me. But please express it respectfully.

The Art of Natural Cheesemaking: Homemade Crème Fraîche

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"Dad! Guess what? Mom emailed the man who writes the stories about cheese in his book, and you know what? He sent her a knitting pattern to make cheesecloth!"

About six weeks ago, while we were cooking dinner, Wyatt said, "Mom. How do you make blue cheese?" I provided a vague description. He quickly exposed my lack of knowledge by asking me "Why?" and "How?" a couple of times, at which point I admitted we'd have to look up how they make it. Wyatt then said, "Well, I want to learn how to make cheese." I responded that we had already made it, by making cottage cheese and cream cheese. He gave me a somewhat withering look and said, "I want to make cheese like Andy gives us at Rainbow." 

It would be amazing to make cheese like Andy gives us at Rainbow. So I asked around about classes for kids (no luck) and started researching cheesemaking books.

The day before we left for Massachusetts, the book I had chosen for our adventure in cheesemaking, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, by David Asher (published by Chelsea Green) arrived. After reading the introduction, I decided that Wyatt and I are not just going to dabble in cheese from this book. We are instead going to "Julie and Julia" The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. Yesterday, I emailed the author, David Asher, to let him know:

I plan to chronicle [my four-year old son's and my] cheesemaking adventures [on my blog], giving you appropriate credit. I want to support your work, help bring awareness to your approach, and I want you to sell millions of copies of your book. Would you be okay with my writing about what we're doing and how we're doing it...Or what are your thoughts around how you'd prefer I approach this project? 

I was not expecting to hear back from David quickly (or at all, really), but he wrote back within the hour. As it turns out, he has also been to Rainbow several times and thinks that we've totally got this: 

[I] was just [at Rainbow] a couple of weeks ago, perusing the cheese selection.  And, yes, I can tell you and Wyatt that with good milk, kefir and the right touch you can make cheese just as good if not better than what's in their display! I'd love to see a chronicle of your experiences with the book...Just be sure to acknowledge me and Chelsea Green. And also, take very nice photos to show how good your cheeses look! 

We've got access to great milk, we keep and use kefir grains already, and we'll look to cultivate the right touch for cheese. Also, I'm all about giving credit where credit is due, and bad food pictures depress me. So I think we are good to go.

But there's more! David also loves knitting. He sent me his draft pattern for a knitted du-rag he likes to use for hanging cheese. The pattern uses 500 yards or so of sport linen yarn on size 2 needles, so it will take me awhile. Nevertheless, as I told him, knitting cheesecloth seems infinitely more doable to me than sourcing my own rennet from the fourth stomach of a freshly slaughtered calf (a recipe for which is also included in his book). 

Wyatt's and my first project* was to make crème fraîche. Here's how we did it:

First, we poured a pint of cream into a mason jar, and then we added some kefir grains. We covered the jar loosely with the lid and put it out of direct sunlight on the kitchen counter. After about a day, we strained the thickened cream from the grains. Easy! Making the blueberry buckle was actually way more difficult than making crème fraîche.

As is often the case when it comes to food, Wyatt was right. Crème fraîche, especially homemade, is even better than sour cream.

*We make kefir already, and the recipe in David's book is the same as the one we use daily, so we skipped that one.

Drop Spindles and Spinning Wheels

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"Oh, that's great yarn you made! Mom. When are you getting a spinning wheel? Soon, yes!? But I do NOT like the smell of that wool. I know what the problem is: maybe they didn't filter it?"

Wyatt and I are just returning from ten days at my parents' house in Massachusetts. That's a new personal record for all of us. In addition to our crab apple jelly/jam concocting, we enjoyed an amazing day trip to Wingaersheek Beach with friends, blueberry picking, and visits with family. Most days, though, Wyatt stuck himself firmly to his grandparents in the morning and took the day from there. He did some work in the wood shop and garden, emptied the wading pool with water shooters, did construction projects in the sand box, tirelessly assisted in mowing the lawn on the riding lawnmower, helped with errands, and chased the dog around the yard.

My parents' place is pretty terrific, especially when you're four, and it's summertime. As an adult, I recognize I am really fortunate to have grown up there. At the same time, I vividly recall how I couldn't wait get out of my hometown, go somewhere far away, and do something awesome.

More than a month before we were scheduled to leave, I was looking at the ten days blocked-out on our calendar, and I noticed a teenager's scowl beginning to tug at the corners of my mouth. I realized I was having a tough time shaking my view of our destination as "boring." I wondered if I could plan a way to experience or learn something new while I was visiting. I started to think about New England, New Englanders, and the pleasant attributes make the people and area special. During the weeks leading up to our trip, Wyatt began to comment on all the things he was looking forward to seeing, including all of the "forests." To him, there are forests everywhere, including on the side of all the roads. 

I began to think about open space, forests and then farms, and I started to research whether there were any hyper-local farms or yarns I could check-out while I was in town. I didn't find any.* I next considered attending a fiber-related workshop. A few online searches later, I found Sheila Bosworth, who works only minutes away from my parents' house, and the Fiber Loft just down the road in Harvard. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to learn to spin wool in New England.

I contacted Sheila and the Fiber Loft, and both of them had good news: they would teach me to spin! Sheila would lend me a bobbin and teach me the drop spindle technique, and the Fiber Loft had room for me in a day-long beginning wheel spinning workshop. Fortunately, my parents were up for some extended grandchild time, so I was free to make plans.

 

My first lesson was with Sheila. I knew I was in great hands when she looked at my first wonky yarn attempt and told me, "Oh my! Look at that! You've made bouclé! I can't even do that anymore. People pay good money for artistic yarn like that." She gave me wonderfully attentive instruction, as well as little spinning mantras to say to myself to help with bringing the right amount of wool to the spindle. I bought one of her gorgeous spindles, and I left with the intention to follow her admonition to practice for 15 minutes a day.

 

 

My second lesson was just over a week later, at the Fiber Loft, with Ann Corbey. Our class was a group of four women (we all arrived solo), and none of us had ever spun wool before. Ann brought us fleece from her sheep, Lydia. 

We started with Lydia's skirted, unwashed fleece, and we learned to card it.

Once we had carded the fleece into rolags, Ann showed us how to spin it "in the grease." We worked with Lydia's wool from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm. The time flew, we all chatted, learned, messed-up, and fixed our mistakes. I left with a ball of pretty good looking handspun wool and a deep admiration for Ann and her gracious, fun approach to teaching. It was magical to watch my fingers feed fluffy rolags of wool I had just carded into a wheel I was powering with my foot and have yarn come out the other end. Bonus: my hands got a lanolin treatment. 

 

I was hoping I'd have fun with these lessons, but I wasn't expecting I'd love spinning or be any good at it. I certainly wasn't expecting to leave these lessons plotting how I might find a reasonably price, pre-owned, (double treadle?) Louët spinning wheel so I could take up yet another craft. But I do love it, and I am plotting. In the meantime, I have my little drop-spindle to keep me busy.

My next task will be washing and blocking my yarn...

*I'm convinced there are plenty of little local farms to visit, but the farms are not commercial enough to bother with a website.

Crafting the Striped Hoodie

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"No, Mom! You can't take pictures of my sweater for a story without me. It is TOO COZY!"

I love making things. I feel like I'm always asking myself, "Can I make that?" or "Can I make that better?" And because lots of people do work better than I can, I am a big fan of "On second thought, can I have someone make that for me?" But the story of this hooded cardigan sweater springs from the first two questions.

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About four years ago, I picked up the cutest baby cardigan from Kiwi Industries. I liked it so much, that for the next two years whenever the cardigan went on sale, I bought it in a bigger size. But this past year, there weren't any bigger sizes to buy. I thought to myself, "Can I make that?" I wasn't too sure, so I didn't try.

One day last fall, I brought Wyatt with me to Imagiknit for a yarn-related errand, and he wore his Kiwi Industries cardigan. After a short conversation with the saleswoman, in which I sheepishly admitted I hadn't made his sweater but wished I had (or knew how), she stated, with the crisp confidence that only a seasoned knitter brings, "You could totally make that. And I don't think it would be that hard. Just sit down and see if you can figure out what they did."

Of course. I mean, how difficult could it be to just whip out a sweater without a pattern? Especially for someone who had only ever knitted a few sweaters (most of them during high school) and had never created a knitting design? The answer is: Paralyzingly difficult. 

But over the last eight months, I consciously worked to improve my knitting, taking on new projects only if they include at least one skill I've never tried. After knitting a praying mantis, I tried a baby sweater. After that, I felt ready for a basket of knitted vegetables. And after that, I felt confident enough to design my own throw blanket. And when that blanket turned out well, and I had already started a lace scarf, I began to think that the little hooded cardigan might be possible after all.

In a decisive move nine weeks ago, Wyatt and I went to Carolina Homespun to buy some yarn for his sweater. I wanted to grab a handful of Elemental Affects--yarn that is "Homegrown, Hand-dyed, and Spun in the U.S.A."--to see if it would be as good choice as I thought it would be for his sweater. It was a great choice, and we selected sport weight Cormo wool yarn after we found ourselves cuddling the soft, springy skeins right there in the shop. 

Six weeks ago, I made and blocked swatches. I obviously meant business.

Three weeks ago, I started doing the math and sketching a pattern for this sweater. I referred to the sweater construction descriptions in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears (pictured below), as well as the dimensions of the three Kiwi Industries sweaters, and Wyatt's measurements.

I cast on what I had calculated to be the right number of stitches, hoped for the best, and continued to measure obsessively my stitches and rows. After a couple of days, I decided I had better start over. I hated the bottom edge. Because it hurt more than a little bit to rip out my own work, I let Wyatt do it. He gleefully unraveled about five inches of knitting in no time. I started over with a welted hem, and I continued obsessively measuring my gauge. As the body of the cardigan grew, I started to wonder about the sleeves. How would the stripes on the sleeves work? Would they be jagged? I hate when stripes don't match. A few online searches later, I knew what to do to achieve matching sleeve stripes in the round.

Once I was into one sleeve and it was actually working, I started to wonder about how on earth I'd manage to build a rounded hood with colored stripes of equal width. After a few failed attempts, and just as I was about to grumble my way into knitting a solid-color hood, my infinitely creative and ridiculously skilled friend came to the rescue with an idea about how to build the hood I wanted. It worked.  

 

With the end of the sweater in sight, I nearly soured Wyatt on ever wearing it by making him try it on so many times that he started to sprint away from me whenever I approached him with yarn. I also stayed up far too late for several nights, finishing the knitting, and then meticulously weaving in over 60 yarn tails so I could block the sweater and see if it actually fit. It did. And then it was done, except for the buttons.

On Sunday, Wyatt and I headed over to Imagiknit in search of buttons. Choosing the right buttons wasn't easy. We found lots of buttons we liked, but most of the tubes were short of the seven (six, plus one for insurance) buttons we needed. And I insisted that the buttons match the sweater in color and style, requirements Wyatt accepted only reluctantly. We eventually agreed on yellow metal ducks from Italy. And much to my delight, even though I had forgotten to bring the yarn for a color comparison, they match the sweater perfectly.

Unlike the socks I knit for him, which he hates, Wyatt loves his new cardigan so much that he wore it today until sweat was beading on his upper lip and his hair was plastered to his head. After that, he peeled it off, and just hugged it, refusing to let me photograph it for this story without him because it was "too cozy for pictures." 

I'm still surprised at how well this project went. It evolved into exactly what I wanted, and I like it even better than the garments that inspired it. In fact, I'm so pleased with the work I did that it has recently occurred to me that writing a pattern for this hooded cardigan would definitely be beyond me. I am happy to predict that based on my past behavior, there's a really good chance I'll complete my first written pattern within the next few months.

Sending Love

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"Can you believe that your baby girl is nearly eleven weeks old? Congratulations! Enclosed are Goodfood Chocolate Ginger Date cookies to help celebrate." 

I like to think I'm a good friend, but if I'm honest, I'm a lot more unreliable and inconsistent than I was before I became a parent. Fortunately, people seem understanding about these shortcomings (or at least they pretend to be). But the fact remains that I see a lot fewer people a lot less often than I used to, and getting together with dear friends seems unbelievably and unacceptably challenging most of the time.

With one good and very likable post, however, social media can help soothe that "I never see anyone!" feeling and give me the impression that I'm maintaining many relationships. It's a good illusion. And even though I know that status updates and photos of my dinner are no substitute for actual communication with people I care about, I will probably continue to rely on the shortcuts that social media offers because they are so easy and fun.

But what about people who aren't on social media? Two of my best friends aren't. Until they had a baby three months ago, I was terrible about keeping up with them because, as I mentioned, they don't exist on social media (and I have become a less-attentive friend). But sometime over the last 15 years of our friendship, these people became family, and I was so overjoyed when they texted to say their baby had been born. I was also frustrated that most of the length of California separates me from them. I couldn't just show up and bring them food on a whim. And I found myself wondering when I'd see the next photo of that adorable baby.

Obviously, these two issues aren't problems. Lucky for me, I pretty quickly snapped out of that way of thinking and recognized these "problems" as opportunities to become a better friend. By making a giant pest of myself by text and email, I get almost all the photos and funny baby anecdotes I could wish for. And by sending care packages, I have managed to supply my friends with snacks over many weeks. 

When I started sending packages, I had no plan for how long I would continue. I just needed to send them love. And snacks. After all, sometimes snacks are love.

For the first package, I baked and sent granola bars that would arrive for the baby's second week birthday. The text I received from my friend when the box arrived was all the encouragement I needed to send another package: "Thank you so much for the granola bars! I just ate 2. Our biggest miscalculation has been how difficult it is to feed us. These literally came in the nick of time...."

Over the next couple of months, I kept sending one package per week. Some snacks were healthier than others. I chose what to send based on what I felt like baking, what we had in the house (like zucchini, or the ingredients for granola), and what I thought my friends would enjoy. I baked all of the recipes gluten-free, because that's how we bake at our house. 

I can hardly express the expansive joy I've gotten from baking (and waiting in line so I can send the boxes)--activities I normally tolerate or even loathe. I'm not quitting social media anytime soon, but all this real life making, sending and connecting has been a refreshing reminder of what friendship can be.

Here are the snacks I sent, including links and my personal recipe notes or substitutions.

Smitten Kitchen Thick, Chewy Granola Bars -- I use hemp seeds, chocolate chips, dried cherries, and pumpkin seeds. These bars are even better with coconut oil substituted for the butter. I skip the corn syrup and add a bit more maple syrup or honey instead.

Elana's Pantry Blueberry Mini-Muffins -- I use 2 tablespoons of honey instead of 1/4 cup of honey or agave, and 1/4 cup melted butter or coconut oil instead of grapeseed oil.

 

Anytime Cookies -- So good just they way they are.

 

Cacao Nib Cookies -- I add one egg and 2 tablespoons of coconut flour, and I use plain cacao nibs instead of chocolate chips. As Wyatt says, cacao nibs don't taste very yummy on their own, but they are delicious as an ingredient IN something.

 

Chocolate Zucchini Mini-Muffins -- I baked this bread recipe in mini-muffin pans. I use vanilla extract, not vanilla stevia.

Everyday Granola -- I use coconut oil instead of vegetable oil.

 

Real Chocolate Chip Cookies -- I use sweet rice flour instead of oat flour, melted butter, and added 2 tablespoons of milk to the batter. I let the batter rest in the fridge for about 45 minutes to give the gluten-free flour an opportunity to hydrate and lose its graininess.

Bulk Bin Snacks from Rainbow Coop -- I was short on time. Wyatt scooped them some of his faves: cashews, pistachios, and dried organic California apricots

Week 11: Goodfood Chocolate Ginger Date Cookies/Biscuits Get out your cooking scale because this recipe is written mostly in grams, and it's fantastic. I substituted an equal amount of my gluten-free flour blend for the all-purpose flour, added 2 tablespoons of milk, and before baking, I let the dough rest for 45 minutes in the refrigerator to give the gluten-free flours an opportunity to hydrate and lose their graininess.