A little advice, just in case you’re letting the cares of this world get you down – she’s got this chillin’ thing down to a science!
We’ll be wiggling our toes a little more next week when our yard sale is over! I can’t tell you how much help Phoebe June has been at sorting through closets!
We’ve had a little excitement around here and I’ll fill you in on that.
The month of June is right around the corner and that always brings to mind the time that Smuffy decided to adjust the brakes on the car and…
Sorry, gotta put that one on hold! He has his own page here at Midwest Storyteller here, if you’d like to catch up. Excerpts from Phoebe June’s diary are right here!
We’ll never be able to say that it doesn’t pay to try, try and try again. Let’s meet (again) the latest winner of my First Friday Freebie –
Donna
from Bunceton, Missouri!
I
would like to start out by saying (“scout’s honor” if I had been any sort of
scout, but I wasn’t, so you’ll have to take me at my word) that this monthly
drawing is not rigged. Perhaps you’ve
noticed that Donna has now won the First Friday Freebie three times. Perhaps you
didn’t notice, and in that case, I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up.
The
other thing that maybe some of you know and many of you don’t is that Donna is
also my sister! There is nothing in the
rules that says that my relatives can’t enter to win, but this is getting
ridiculous! No matter how I adjust my
poker face, or display the backs of the little slips of paper with entries
written on them, Smuffy’s hand just randomly snatches Donna’s name out every so
often as though by some magnetic force.
Anyway,
congratulations, Donna!
I hope you enjoy your set of handcrafted, up-cycled, sparkly gift bags and I hope they bring joy to whomever you bless when you give them away with gifts inside.
The gift bags were an art project of mine. If you’d like to see how I take store merchandizing bags and turn them into beautiful gift bags, click here. To see the original freebie offer, click here.
To all my readers, I’d like you to climb on board the “Stop Donna Express”! I can only think of one way to stop my sister from becoming like one of those Jeopardy contestants who just can’t seem to go home and that is if YOU lower her odds by entering to win and share Midwest Storyteller with all your friends via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest (or be old fashioned about it and tell them to subscribe so they’ll be able do the same. Subscribers receive an email on the first Friday each month reminding them to leave a comment that will enter their name in the drawing.
A freebie offer appears the first Friday of every month. Check out my Freebies pageto see the winner and their free gifts they’ve won here at Midwest Storyteller.
June’s drawing is right around the corner – June 7th, to be exact. Donna is bound to enter, but the question is, will you?
I’m offering you two today with FREE printables! (I always aim to please.)
The journey toward
a good gluten-free pancake has been a frustrating one. When I started my clean eating journey, I
couldn’t help but think that all those poor dears out there in cyber-land who
posted their recipes on the internet for the rest of us were living in a state
of such desperate deprivation they no longer knew what a pancake was! If it held to a disc shape and supported a
pat of butter and a drizzle of syrup, they thought they had something.
In the beginning,
I ate no grains at all for three months to give my system a total rest.
I started with coconut flour pancakes. The best coconut flour version I found after much trial and error were made from a recipe by Dr. Bruce Fife in a wonderful book called, “The Coconut-Ketogenic Diet”. I’ve poured over that book and made many of the recipes and contacted Dr. Fife and received permission to share short quotes and recipes here on the blog. We’ll save that for another day as we are on the subject of sourdough. I mean no disrespect to Dr. Fife when I say (while I linger upon this tangent for a few more seconds) that this is a really bad title for a really great book! It should be called something like, “A Manual for the Human Body and a Bunch of Stuff About Coconuts I Betcha Didn’t Know”. You’ll learn a lot about yourself even if you never follow his weight loss plan . (I didn’t.) You’ll find it right here on Amazon.
Now, let’s take that sourdough starter and make some real pancakes. As always, I tinker with recipes until I feel like they are worthy of passing on to you. This one began with a recipe I found at www.artofgluten-freebaking.com I’ll be going back to that site for more ideas now that these pancakes are such a hit with Smuffy. He says they’re the best pancakes I’ve ever made for him. The original recipe made lots more pancakes, so feel free to double my recipe if you have a large family. I changed a few other things as well as using the Gluten-Free Flour Blend I shared here on the blog.
Another
aggravating situation one finds oneself in when walking away from most grains
is the agony of the unfulfilled pizza craving.
Yes, I know all those people out there are mushing cauliflower together
and calling it pizza crust, but sometimes you just want real pizza – pizza you
can pick up in your hands and bite into its crispy crust instead of forking it.
Again, I found a recipe and started tweaking. This great version of Gluten-free Sourdough Pizza Dough, originally given by Emily at www.fermentingforfoodies.com got me off to a great start. With a few changes to align it with my commitment to clean eating, I’m really pleased to be enjoying pizza again.
Pizza and Pancakes – isn’t life grand? Let’s get that sourdough out of the refrigerator and let it poof up on the counter for a couple of hours and get started!
1 tablespoon refined coconut oil, melted and cooled
1 extra-large egg,
beaten
Instructions:
The night before (or at least 2 hours before)
make a “sponge” by mixing the sourdough starter, ¾ cup milk and half the flour
in a large bowl, stirring until combined.
The mixture may have lumps and that’s fine.
When
you are ready to make pancakes or waffles, preheat the griddle to medium-high
or heat the iron.
Mix
the remaining flour, salt, soda, and baking powder together in a bowl and
stir. Add to the sponge, along with the
remaining ingredients and stir until well blended, adding more milk if needed.
For
pancakes, oil the surface of the griddle with coconut oil and pour 1/3 cup
portions of batter onto the surface, cooking until edges appear dry and bubbles
form over the surface. Flip and cook for
an additional minute.
For
waffles: Grease the iron with oil before
making each waffle. Follow your iron’s
directions, which likely require a cup of batter and five minutes cooking time
for deep pocket waffles.
YIELD: 8 or 9 pancakes.
I’ve actually not made these up into waffles yet, so I can’t testify
as to how they turn out.
Now that we’ve had a fabulous breakfast, let’s move on to pizza!
Mix all ingredients together in a large
bowl. You want a fairly firm dough, so
you may have to add a bit more flour depending on the feel.
Allow
to rest, covered, in a warm place for 2-4 hours.
Divide
into two balls and roll out onto parchment paper. Crusts will be very thin. If you prefer a thicker crust, you may not
want to divide the dough. If you like
thin crust, but don’t want to bake them both at once, wrap one of the dough balls
in parchment paper and then in plastic wrap to freeze until needed. Thaw overnight or for several hours prior to
rolling out for baking.
Pre-bake
the crusts in pre-heated 425° Fahrenheit (or 200° Celsius) oven for ten minutes
by placing the parchment directly on the oven racks or on a preheated pizza
stone, whichever way gives you the crispness you desire.
Remove
crusts from the oven and top with your favorite ingredients. Return the pizza to the oven and take an
additional ten minutes or until the cheese is melted and crust is beginning to
brown.
When it comes to pizza, Smuffy is in love with the pizza sauce I make it with my homemade tomato paste from the tomatoes in our garden. Did I mention that Smuffy is the local Tomato King? At least he was last year! Take at look at his tomato patch. It actually got quite a bit bigger than this!
You must know,
however, that while tomato paste is as easy as putting the little darlings in
the food processor, making a puree and then simmering them on the stove until
they are as thick as the paste you buy in the store, there is a down side. It takes a good long while. San Marzano paste tomatoes are ideal, as they
have little juice and speed things up a bit, but still, you’ll need to do it
when you are going to be around the house for a while. Also, I’ve found that two pounds of tomatoes
yields 1 cup of paste – so there’s that to consider.
Once I’ve
slathered my pre-baked crust with ½ to ¾ cup of pizza sauce, I love to go crazy
with the veggies. I mound the pizza high
with fresh spinach (but only my half as Smuffy doesn’t care for it) and then
follow with thin-sliced onions, green pepper, sliced mushrooms, turkey pepperoni
and six ounces of shredded mozzarella.
We prefer turkey pepperoni as it tastes the same to us, yet doesn’t leave a giant grease puddle under each slice. Use anything you like. Here’s one I made with chicken.
If you’ve been
looking for gluten-free options for pancakes and pizza, I think your family
will really like these recipes. Please
comment and let me know! Happy cooking!
Soon I’ll be
sharing a faux-carb pizza dough along with my recipe for home-made pizza sauce
with no sugar or artificial sweeteners. (Try to find that in the stores!)
What’s all the fuss about eating healthy? We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive! Check out my Thrive! page.
There’s still that
Smuffy story brewing and I think Phoebe June has some thoughts on spring she’d
like to share, so stay with us!
Be sure to
SUBSCRIBE, so you’ll receive an email reminder each time Midwest Storyteller
has something new.
This day and this wish carry so many emotions and not just my own. As I look at social media, I realize, as I do every year, that, good or bad, we are all connected to our mothers by an unbreakable bond.
I hope that each one of you had a mother as wonderful as mine. That would make the world a better place! If your mother was less than perfect in ways that affected you negatively, I pray you have found the strength to forgive her and allow healing to take place.
If you’re glorying in your children today, I take joy with you. My daughter took me for an outing to the city where we ate, shopped, laughed, talked and simply enjoyed one another till we had to come home and I treasure each moment of it.
If you’re missing your mom, as I am mine, I pray that the sweet memories are a comfort and that you’ve come to the certainty that you will be with her again someday.
I know there are some of you who have lost a baby and perhaps no one even knows. Others have lost a young child or an adult child. The unspeakable grief is more than I can imagine. Along with the God who holds them in His loving arms, I cry with you and say, “He loves you.”
To all the adoptive moms, I jump for joy along with you that the day came when you could call that child your own, just as I have done with the several moms in our family who have adopted children into their hearts and homes!
To those who still wait, longing to conceive to adopt, I pray, “Let it be, O Lord! Let it be!”
There are those of us who, though we have not given birth or gone through legal proceedings, have chosen to mother or be mothered by someone other than our birth mother. The bonds shared may as well be ties of blood, for they are just as strong.
Some nurture babies with fur and paws with as much compassion and emotion as if their charge were a human child and this is love.
Let’s reach out today and and wish one another a Happy Mother’s Day! After all, we share in common a child-shaped spot in our heart that is filled only with the love for a mother or the love of a mother.
To meet the special lady who was my mom, click here.
Here we are again
at the first Friday of the month. I hope
you’ve told all your friends about First Friday Freebies so they can enter to
win today’s drawing.
Sometimes, when I’m on a creative binge, I like to give away my latest creations. Remember the sparkly, repurposed gift bags I crafted out of shopping bags?
Today I’m giving
away this set of three gift bags with coordinating tissues. The winner will receive “Congrats”, “Best
Wishes” and “Happy Birthday” bags with die-cut designs and jeweled
embellishments.
I hope you enjoy my handiwork and are encouraged to try some similar rescue/recycle projects of your own. If you have any creative ideas for the “accumulated treasures” we all seem to have around the house, I’d love it if you’d share your ideas in the comments and please feel free to send any photos of your creations you’d like to share with me to barb@midweststoryteller.com
If you’d like to see how I made the bags and get ideas on how you can do similar projects on your own or with the kids (and whether or not you have a die cutting machine), check out my post here.
To enter to win the
gift bag set, all you need to do is “Leave a Comment” on this post,
saying, “Draw my name from the bag!”
You’ll need to do that before midnight TONIGHT, May 3rd, 2019!
First Friday
Freebies are for email SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
You can subscribe by going to the right sidebar or use the menu to
navigate to the “Contact” page and subscribe to Midwest Storyteller
if you haven’t done so already.
Confirming your subscription through the confirmation email you’ll
receive is absolutely necessary, so don’t forget that!
Your friends will
want to enter to win, too. Share this
post with them through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. They won’t know if you don’t tell them!
Subscribers win every single month! See past gifts and their winners on my “Freebies”page.
Remember, a winner
will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight
by leaving a comment which says, “Draw my name from the bag!”
For the complete First Friday Freebie rules, CLICK HERE.
Glitches
happen. If you subscribe and do not
receive a confirmation email for some reason, please email me and let me know
at barb@midweststoryteller.com
Freebies only last
a day! Enter now so you don’t forget!
I’ve figured out why they call it “The Merry, Merry Month of May”. If ever a month came pre-loaded with celebrations, May wins the prize!
There’s the given – graduations. They rarely come in singles. There always seems to be a wedding or two, not to mention showers in anticipation of the weddings in June. Mother’s Day comes along and since a portion of those mothers became one in May, there are birthdays and the parties that go with them.
Do you ever feel like you’re spending
more on gift wrap than gifts? I’m
definitely a rescuer and a saver, but I don’t want to go down in history as the
lady who left this earth having owned the most cottage cheese containers. I want a purpose or a re-purpose for my
stash. I want to do something with my frugal hoard and part of that hoard is
merchandizing bags from stores that I just know
I can turn into beautiful gift bags.
Today, I want to share a money saving idea you can pull off without losing your mind. All you need is store bags (hopefully ones that do not have wrap-around logos printed on them), scissors, ruler, glue and your “stash” – whatever that means to you – and possibly some kids or grandkids if you really want to have some fun and you are one of those people who is at peace with the concept that it’s the process that counts – not the product.
Here’s part of my stash, including the gift bag project in mid-progress. I have a Cricut die-cutting machine. Believe it or not, I even got that at the Goodwill Store! Don’t tuck your tail between your legs if you don’t have a fancy machine. I’ll give you some ideas for working without one.
I find that Dollar Tree and Tuesday Morning are great sources for finding doo-dads on the cheap. A full sheet of sparkly jeweled stickers for around a dollar will last you through many a creative binge. I do some scrapbooking, so I always have leftover snippets and papers to cut up for projects. You can often pick up a book of coordinating papers at Hobby Lobby at half price, but if you don’t want to do that, scrounge around for some cardstock, old wallpaper or wrapping paper that isn’t too thin. Kids love working with thin, colorful sheets of fun foam, available at Hobby Lobbyand they can cut out flowers, leaves, trucks, letters and numbers and anything else they have a notion to draw or trace onto the foam. Dollar stores also have full sheets of themed embellishments for scrap-bookers. All you have to do with those is cover the bag’s logo with a shape you’ve cut from foam or paper and stick the embellishments all over it and your once-a-throw-away bag is redeemed. How about the fronts of those fancy greeting cards you’ve been given? There’s some fabulous artwork you can use to decorate your bags!
If the bag rescue idea appeals to you, but you want to avoid the expense of a Cricut or other machine, there are some fun tools to watch for when you’re out bargain hunting. Decorative scissors are inexpensive and will trim the edges of your papers into scallops, ocean waves or a number of other designs. They are usually around five dollars. Punches are fabulous things. You can align paper along a printed guide, punch the design and slide the paper again to punch long strips or all the way around a shape. They come in geometrics, florals, eyelet and lace designs and more. I’ve found them at Tuesday Morning at prices between three and ten dollars, depending on the size. Martha Stewart makes quality punches in varied styles. Visit the link to see what is available and then watch for sales in stores that carry office and craft items. Metallic pens come in a wide array of colors and can be used to add sparkle to the edges of cut paper. If you have no fancy scissors or tools, why not tear the edges of your paper by hand? Once you’ve given it a jagged edge, use the metallic pens to highlight the torn edges and make them pop against the background. Backgrounds are important. A layered effect always makes an embellishment project look much more professional.
Since I do have a Cricut machine (and they are marvels, to be sure), I used leftover scrapbooking paper to cut designs that I felt would be useful for any upcoming gifting needs. As you can see, I just glued the design onto its contrasting background and then glued the whole thing right over the original business logo.
Next, I used a few cheap stickers from
my sparkly jewel collection to add some pizzazz to the design. You certainly don’t have to do this, but even
just a few tiny embellishments will take your design to the next level and give
it a designer flair rather than just a
look’s-like-she-couldn’t-find-a-gift-bag-but-she-could-find-a-gluestick-project.
Here are the bags, before and after being be-jeweled. Little things mean a lot, don’t they? Zoom in for the thrill of the sparkle.
Speaking of glue, I highly recommend Martha Stewart craft glue as seen here. It dries clear, doesn’t string, gives you thirty seconds or so for wiggling items into place and then the items stay put! If I run out of it, I will put off a project until I can get some because of the frustration it saves me.
Once you’re finished, the bags are ready for colorful tissue and maybe even a cute tag or a ribbon tied onto the handle if you want to get that fancy.
Here are my finished bags. Now for the rest of the stack I have saved up in the closet. Call me cheap, but my mama would be proud!
I do love a rescue project and handmade gifts and this combines the two. Need more ideas? Take a look at the wooden utensil project I did with my friend Kathy here, the falling-off-a-log-easy gifts here, rescued vintage tablecloths here, Sweet Annie wreaths here, and what to do with those pretty leaves you can’t resist picking up here. After all that, you’ll need to treat yourself. Relax with some homemade sugar scrub here.
Any questions? I’d love to hear your comments. Is there anything you’ve repurposed that the
rest of us are throwing away?
I’m excited to meet the latest winner of my First Friday Freebie and to introduce you to –
Margie
from Farmington, West Virginia!
I’ve seen Margie’s name pop up in the entries before and this time her persistence paid off when she won the floral metal art wall hook from Hobby Lobby.
Congratulations,
Margie! I hope it finds a great place in
your home to add a little cheer.
If you’d like to see the original freebie offer, click here.
A freebie offer appears the first Friday of every month. Check out my Freebies pageto see the winner and their free gifts they’ve won here at Midwest Storyteller.
Subscribe now and you’ll be notified via email of May’s drawing. You never know what I might be giving away.
The
next First Friday Freebie drawing will be on Friday, May 3, 2019 and only
SUBSCRIBERS can win!
A
winner will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before
midnight on the day of the drawing by leaving a comment as instructed in
the post. See the recently revised rules
below.
Be sure to take a moment make yourself familiar with the Freebie Rules by clicking HERE.
These
four simple steps will have you ready to enter to win on May 3rd.
“Share”,
“like” and “pin” this post! You’re friends will want to know about First
Friday Freebies, too!
Enjoying
the Freebies? Leave a comment! If you’re on your computer, scroll back up
under the title of this post and let me know what you’re thinking. On various devices, you may find “Leave a
Comment” at the bottom of the post.
I
think I feel a Smuffy story coming on!
One of those might be wonderful with some Gluten-free Sourdough
Pancakes. Now, which one to do first…
April showers, as the old saying goes, bring May flowers, and I’m offering you an early bouquet with this flowery First Friday Freebie!
This metal art wall hook from Hobby Lobby is just the thing to set the tone for warmer weather in your home. Subtle shades of pinks and yellows, along with green leaves give this rustic hook a bit of “happy”. It’ll be the perfect place to hang a fun tote bag, basket, scarf, or serve as a catcher for that jacket you can’t wait to stop wearing. It measures 12 inches tall and 8 ½ inches wide.
I do love a great Hobby Lobby find and this one is cute, cute, cute!
To enter to win the
flowery wall hook, all you need to do is “Leave a Comment” on this
post, saying, “Bring on the spring thing!”
You’ll need to do that before midnight TONIGHT, April 5th,
2019!
First Friday Freebies happen every month for email SUBSCRIBERS ONLY, so hop on over to the right sidebar or use the menu to navigate to the “Contact” page and subscribe to Midwest Storyteller if you haven’t done so already.
Share this post
with all your friends and family through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest
so they can enter to win, too!
Subscribers win every single month! My “Freebies”page has past freebies. Take a look at all the free gifts and the wonderful people who’ve been winning them.
Remember, a winner
will be chosen at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight tonight
by leaving a comment which says, “Bring on the spring thing!”
For the complete First Friday Freebie rules, CLICK HERE.
Subscribing is
simple and FREE, but don’t forget to go immediately to your email to confirm
your subscription or it will not go through.
If you do not receive a confirmation email for some reason, please email
me and let me know at barb@midweststoryteller.com
The clock is
ticking! Enter now so you don’t forget
to do that before midnight tonight!
I hope we all get to enjoy many more glorious spring days! Phoebe June and I spent some time outside working and playing before this last round of rain. Would you care to guess which one of us worked and which one of us played? She’s enjoying spring as much as I am, except for being irritated at her humans for not spending entire days outside with her. She lets us know, loud and clear, what she thinks of our disobedience. Sometimes it’s just a mere glance, but even that is enough to convey the message in her eyes as, “You nitwit!” She shares her opinions on my Phoebe June page.
Thoughts? Questions? I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment.
READERS TAKE NOTE: Although I am a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach, not every recipe on this blog reflects this or fits the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan. This is an earlier post prior to my THM days. I am currently working on adapting some of these recipes to fit the plan.
Is there a bowl of sourdough starter sitting on your counter waiting to be turned into baked yummy-ness?
If you missed my recent post, Authentic Sourdough Just Like Great-Grandma Used to Make, or if you just haven’t had time to start your starter, you’ll want to save this recipe and give this wonderful bread a try. If your starter is ready to go, you can make this bread today.
There’s no
kneading involved and only a short rising time.
It’s all done in the mixer so you can overcome your fears of making
homemade bread.
A friend of mine, after tasting my bread a few times, really wanted to try this herself so I recently walked her through the process via phone and text. The result is this beautiful loaf!
Her husband loved it and now they are enjoying bread while pursuing one of their health goals – getting inflammatory foods out of their diet and enjoying better gut health.
When I touch on the topic of health, I always like to remind you of this: I am not your doctor! While there is no gluten in this bread flour, there is rye flour in the starter offered at the link above. It is my understanding that the sourdough process breaks down the gluten in the rye flour, making it null and void, so to speak. However, if you have celiac disease, you will want to consult your doctor before using the rye starter.
If you’ve tried to
go the gluten-free route at all, I’m sure you identify with the title of this
post. You’d think that restaurants and
the folks who bake things to be sold in stores would be the experts, wouldn’t
you? Yet, every single time, the menu
item or the store-bought loaf always seem to have the same common problem –
utter and complete nasty-ness! Dry as a bone, its tasteless particles, if
they can be broken, shatter into dust upon contact with the teeth or
knife. The result: Repulsion and fear.
Why do I mention
fear? It’s only human nature to think
that if the experts can’t do any better than this, anything we try at home on
our own is bound to end in disaster.
Surely they know all the
secrets to a moist, chewy, tasty slice of bread! We’re afraid of failure.
Fear no more! Let’s bake bread that is so tasty that your
biggest problem will be waiting to slice it till it’s completely cool.
First, let’s mix
up some gluten-free flour blend. I
suppose you can use a premixed type found in most stores, but this is cheaper
and so simple, so why would you do that?
Also, using this mix will ensure that there are no added weird
ingredients and that the recipe turns out just the way I’ve been making it. If you want to veer from the path, do it
later on after you’ve mastered the recipe.
I’ll give tips and tricks as I go, and at the bottom of this post you’ll be directed to FREE printables for the flour blend and the bread.
I like to give credit where credit is due, so I offer a huge thanks to Jill Nystul over at “One Good Thing by Jillie” for getting me started on making my own flour blend. Mine differs from hers in a couple of ways, because I’ve removed white potatoes and corn products from most of my recipes, but I have to admit to trying another blend offered by “experts” who have a highly rated cooking show and Jillie’s beat theirs hands down, even with my changes!
There are three
ingredients, used in equal parts. I make
bread, pancakes, buns, flatbread and pizza dough with this all the time now, so
I stir up a big batch in a large canister.
To have just enough for experimenting with this bread, you’ll need the
following:
Gluten Free Flour Blend
1 cup brown rice
flour
1 cup tapioca
flour (the package may say “tapioca starch”)
1 cup arrowroot
powder
Quinoa is a
complete protein and quinoa flour can be used to substitute for part or all of
the arrowroot powder. I’ve used this
before when I was low on arrowroot and it is really tasty. However, it is
also super expensive, so I usually skip it.
Now let’s make bread! I started with this recipe by Nicole Hunn over at glutenfreeonashoestring.com. I found it to have issues (such as falling in the middle as it cooled) so I experimented for months with rising times, baking times and substituting and adding ingredients until I got past all those bumps in the road. I knew this basic recipe was one I wanted to work with because of one stellar quality – it did not taste like cardboard rolled in sand. Thanks, Nicole, for getting me started. Without you, I might still be toastless!
Here’s my tested
and perfected version:
Gluten-free Sourdough Bread
Ingredients:
3 cups gluten-free
flour blend
2 teaspoons
xanthan gum
¼ teaspoon cream
of tartar
1 ½ teaspoons
kosher salt
2 teaspoons bread-machine
yeast
2 tablespoons raw
honey
3 tablespoons refined coconut oil, melted and cooled
1 cup “fed” rye
sourdough starter
1 ½ cups warm milk (or milk substitute of your choice) at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Instructions:
Generously grease a 9X5” loaf pan. Set aside.
(I use a Pampered Chef stoneware pan)
In
the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the flour,
xanthan gum, cream of tartar and kosher salt.
Stir. Add the bread-machine
yeast. Stir again. Add the honey, coconut oil and sourdough
starter; mix on a low setting to combine.
Reduce
the mixer speed to the lowest setting and add milk, pouring in a slow, steady
stream. Once all the flour mixture has
incorporated into the liquids, beat the ingredients on at least medium speed
for 4-6 minutes (I have a KitchenAid and I set the speed on six for five
minutes). The dough will be sticky and
thicker than cake batter, but not as thick as cookie dough.
Scrape
the dough into the greased loaf pan and smooth the top with a spatula or damp
fingers.
Allow
the dough to rise, covered, in a warm humid place for 30 minutes. It will do most of its rising in the oven, so
don’t expect it to expand as much as wheat breads you might be used to working
with.
While
the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bake
the loaf in a preheated oven for one hour.
Use the convection setting if you have that. It should develop a light golden brown crust
on top.
Remove
the bread from the pan immediately and allow it to cool on a wire cooling rack
until completely cool.
The dough
consistency may seem weird to you if you are used to baking wheat bread. The shorter rising time and longer baking
time, along with a lower baking temperature may seem a little different, too,
but humor me and do it exactly like this the first few times and then you can
play with all these aspects if it is not turning out exactly the way you want. Remember, when it comes to baking, altitude,
humidity and finicky ovens all play a part in the perfect loaf of bread.
Here’s a photo of the dough once my friend got it into the pan and ready to rise. I kept getting nervous little texts and photos asking if everything was coming along all right. She did everything to perfection!
A bit of advice about cooling the bread. This bread is so fabulous when it is fresh that all I want to do is eat it warm and buttered. However, its softness and loftiness is so easily squashed by even a good bread knife that I force myself to leave it alone for a few hours before nipping off a slice. Then, I refrigerate the loaf to firm it up before putting it into the slicer (as shown in the first photo) and slice the whole loaf at once into perfect slices. I put a few in a container in the refrigerator (after I’ve had my little bread feast) and the rest of the loaf goes into a freezer container with pieces of waxed paper between each slice so that I can pull some out for toast or whatever as needed.
I hope you enjoy
this fabulous bread and get into the habit of making it every week or so for
your family.
If you’d like to
switch things up a bit and turn your sourdough into something more akin to buns
for hamburgers or English muffin style rounds, you might try this idea that
popped into my head. It works great and gives
me a change from ordinary sliced bread.
Purchase ten large
stainless steel baking rings. You want
them to be the desired diameter of your finished “bun”. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and
then with the rings that have been sprayed with coconut oil baking spray. Fill the rings with equal amounts of your
sourdough bread dough, let rise 30 minutes and before baking 30-40 minutes at
350 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough is
thick enough not to creep out from under the rings while baking. If the buns give a hollow sound when you tap
them in the middle with your finger, they are ready to come out of the oven.
Here are my buns and the rings I use, which are about 4 inches in diameter.
Happy baking and
don’t forget the butter!
Still have questions
about bread or sourdough starter? Leave
a comment and I’ll try to help you out!
Share the bread
and this post with your friends! They’ll
love it, too! Let’s all get healthier
together!
Pancakes made with this sourdough starter are AWESOME! Smuffy says they’re the best I’ve ever made him! Another recipe for another day.
For more about my health journey and my thoughts on how not to just survive, but thrive, check out my Thrive! page.
The First Friday Freebie for March has found the perfect home!
Ruth
of St. Louis, Missouri!
Ruth was kind enough to email me a photo. She assures me that she is an avid reader and is tickled pink to receive her free autographed copy of “Pathways of the Heart” by Diane Yates. There’s something mysterious in the way Smuffy’s fingers reach out for just the right name. It’s as though, somehow, they just know.
Congratulations,
Ruth! You’re going to want to read the
continuing story, “All That Matters”, too.
Here’s a photo of them both.
If you’re feeling sad that you didn’t win this book by Diane Yates, remember you can visit www.dianeyates.com for access to her books, blog and more. Another thanks to Diane for donating a copy of her book to Midwest Storyteller. For my thoughts on “Pathways of the Heart” and an interview with Diane Yates, click here.
If you’d like to see the original freebie offer, click here.
Of
course, I’m giving away another freebie on the first Friday of every month, so
be sure to subscribe, if you haven’t already, and watch for the email you’ll
receive on Friday, April 5th.
Visit the Freebies page where you can see what subscribers of Midwest Storyteller have been winning.
MORE
ABOUT FREEBIES: A winner will be chosen
at random from those subscribers who enter before midnight on the day of the
drawing by leaving a comment as instructed in the post. See the recently revised rules below.
And now, here are the Freebie Rules.
These four simple steps will have you ready to enter to win on April 5th.
Oh, and Happy Spring! It’s been a long winter and I’m lovin’ this!
“Share”,
“like” and “pin” this post! You’re
friends will want to enter to win, too!
Enjoying
the Freebies? Leave a comment! If you’re on your computer, scroll back up
under the title of this post and let me know what you’re thinking. On various devices, you may find “Leave a
Comment” at the bottom of the post.
