Puffins, live!

Remember the knitted puffin from the post on June 4th?

Go to this link on the Journey North website and you will see lots of puffins! Puffins on Seal Island in Maine. The babies are hatching and there are lots of video clips of the puffins.

Challah and sourdough - two different kinds of yummy!

Challah bread is yellow, soft and delicious. It makes great french toast and bread pudding. The recipe from Peter Reinhart's book makes 3 large braided loaves and if you put the three parts in separate containers to ferment, you can make the loaves on consecutive days. His recipe is easy to do, just mix everything together, put it in a container to ferment in the refrigerator and shape and bake the loaves within 4 days. It really gives you flexibility in your schedule for baking. His book can probably be found at the public library and is also available on line as a PDF file: Peter Reinhart's artisan breads every day.

The eggs I used for the challah loaves are Marans. They are deep caramel brown on the outside with darker brown spots on the shells. The chickens that produce them originated in Marans, France. There is a local farmer who has the Marans chickens and there are usually several of these eggs in the cartons.

The recipe measures the quantities for the ingredients in grams, so when I separate the eggs to use them, I pour the yolks in a bowl and keep opening eggs until I get to the required amount. This is usually between 8 and 10 yolks. No wonder the bread is so yellow!

A egg wash with a whole egg gives the outer crust a deep golden color when baked. This dough is a dream to work with. The directions in Mr. Reinhart's book are easy to follow and the slow fermentation in the refrigerator makes the scheduling of your baking time easy.









Today I tried Dan Leader's Quintessential French Sourdough, Pain au levain. This bread begins with a stiff dough levain. The directions for making this are in the book. It is an easy sourdough to use because the levain fits in a quart jar thus not taking up much space. This bread is made with the levain, bread flour,  and smaller amounts of whole wheat flour and rye flour and salt. The levain is refreshed overnight with water and flour and the fermenting and proofing happen on the next day. I use a Kitchen Aid mixer for most of the kneading unless the recipe calls for a large amount of flour. This recipe is easy to knead in the mixer. The dough was shaped into two bâtards. The taste is wonderful! The crust is crisp due to the placement of ice cubes in a pan below the baking stone. This creates steam during the first minutes of baking.  This recipe is definitely worth making. Mr. Leader's directions are easy to follow. His book Local Breads is a must have for your baking library. If you buy the 2007 edition like I did, go to this link to find some corrections in a PDF file.

Here you can see the inside of the French Sourdough. Wish you could taste it too!

Like I said in the title of this post:

Two

Kinds

of

Yummy!

Happy Baking!

On boys, bread and a new bird

On a recent evening I had the rare treat of having dinner with my three boys. Ok, one is my husband, still just a boy at heart and the other two boys are my sons Josh, 37, and Jon, 31. Jon had come down from Baltimore to play a concert with his band, The Leeves, and Josh happened to be in town and picked him up at the train. We all settled down for a quick meal at our favorite sandwich shop, First Carolina Deli. 

Now about the bread. Dan Leader has a wonderful book, Local Breads, that I have really enjoyed exploring. He has recipes for a variety of kinds of sourdoughs and the stiff dough levain was used to make this Auvergne Crown. His book was available at the public library and I checked it out several times. Finally bought on on Amazon when I was not sure I could keep the pages clean in the borrowed book!

Another bread baking resource that I love is Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. This entire book is available as a PDF file on this link.

Finally birds. A friend suggested that I make a papagayo, otherwise known as a red macaw. 

Here is a photo of a real papagayo.

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Here is the one I knitted. Chris's basic bird body pattern is easily adapted to a wide variety of animal creations! I used the puffin body from Chris de Longpré's book 52 Timeless Toys to Knit.  The wings are 2x2 rib knit and the tail feathers are i-cord. The gray feet are also i-cord but have pipe cleaners inserted into the i-cord. Facial details are satin stitch and the beak is an experiment in increases, decreases and stuffing!

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Wishing you happy days as summer approaches!

Knit your own zoo!

Knitting animals is a lot of fun especially since I have a new source of inspiration in Chris de Longpré's book, 52 Timeless Toys to Knit. Tina Fier has them at Gate City Yarns in Greensboro. She brought one back from a recent buying trip for the shop and we have been oohing and aahing over the cute animals ever since.

The first animal isn't actually in the book, except as pieces of various other animals. I had searched for a pattern for a pelican only to find crochet patterns and I don't know how to crochet. After collaborating with Tina and Timmie, knitting gurus, we decided on the flamingo body, and wings and feet from the blue footed booby found in the book. The beak was kind of extemporaneous. He landed rather clumsily in the bird bath in the front yard!

Next was the puffin. Following this pattern was easy. His black wings and cap are sewn on after knitting the body. 

The lizard is knit from wonderfully soft EZC Nautika yarn from Gate City Yarns. The collared lizard really does have these beautiful blue and greens colors on his body and gold head. Green scales on his back are done in duplicate stitch.

The turtle is the most recent addition to the zoo. The brown hand-spun wool for his shell is from Rising Meadow Farm in Liberty. Ever year I buy wool there, right off of the sheep! This rich brown is the natural color of the sheep. Tina from Gate City Yarns picked out the green for his head, feet and tail. 

There is also a lighter green for his plastron (that's biologist speak for the bottom shell). On the underside the shell was attached so that openings were left to tuck in the appendages. His head, feet and tail can be pushed back into his shell, protecting him from some predators! 

Three animals from the book plus the pelican have been a source of great amusement and satisfaction. It doesn't take long to complete an animal and they do bring a smile to your face!

Now I have to decide who's next...beluga, frog, platypus?? They are all so cute!