Month: June 2018

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I started the process to make sourdough today but it’s a long business. This involves re-activating the “mother”, the starter, by feeding it some flour and water and leaving it until it froths and bubbles. While that was happening I began making pasties.

To make very easy pasties brown two medium onions then add one kilo (2lb) of grass fed lean mince and break it up and brown that, too. Add a one kilo (2lb)  bag of diced frozen mixed vegetables, thawed and mix the meat and vegetables. When it’s all cooked add vegetable stock or water to just cover the meat and vegetables and let it cook until the vegetables are ready, then thicken it with plain flour and water and let it cook for 5 minutes.  I add some salt and ground pepper and cook it for about 10 minutes longer before  turning off the heat and leaving it to cool. Most of the liquid should be cooked off by now. I forgot to take a photo of this stage and also of cutting bread and butter plate sized circles from bought sheets of pastry, putting filling in the middle and folding the ends and then the top and pinching the top seam. Brush with milk wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake until golden brown. No photos, sorry!

While the filling was cooking for the pasties I made a pasta sauce browning  a chopped onion and then adding and browning 500gm (1 lb) grass fed lean mince, then some more diced vegetables, a chopped tomato, some dried basil and a 500ml jar of passata and let it cook for about 45 minutes on low heat.  Left it to cool before freezing.

Meanwhile I prepared this cinnamon and pear teacake. The pears sank into the mixture but it still tasted wonderful served with icecream and sprinkled with icing sugar.

I also prepared and cooked these Apple Rose Cakes and they look funny but they taste very good! These are my first attempt and I slowly got the hang of placing the apple and rolling the pastry.

I’ll make these again as they were very popular.

These pasties smelt wonderful cooking and we’re really looking forward to eating them.

By now the “mother” was ready and I began the sourdough. It is still doubling in size and I will cook it in the morning.

Freezing the surplus pastie filling as I ran out of pastry and froze the pasta sauce to use later. The freezer is almost full so I transferred the filling and sauce into ziplock bags so I can stack them.

The dough had more than doubled in size by morning so I shaped it and put it to cook in a Dutch Oven. The surface looks funny because it expanded so much during the night it stuck to the cling wrap.

The dough has rested again and it’s time to put it in the oven to cook.

Slashed and ready to bake.

Beautiful sourdough, always worth the effort.

Today is Camera Day. Instead of putting film in your camera, taking your photos, taking them in to be developed and then possibly discarding some of the processed photographs which you don’t like, now you can aim and click, then review and discard or keep. Do you print your photos or just share on social media?

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Every couple of days I make fresh bread and had no good way to store it. I wanted a breathable container which would look attractive on the kitchen bench and be easy to keep clean. I realized a drawstring bag would work well.

Wanting the bag to be 100% cotton I looked online as we have very few fabric shops in Perth but then I remembered a set of tea towels I’d been given as a gift. I washed the black waffle and the patterned black and white tea towels. So glad I did as they both shrank, particularly the black one. Next job, a label.

Printed the word BREAD on paper then carefully glued a blank sheet of A4 paper to a piece of white fabric and trimmed the fabric to be an exact fit and put it through the printer on the COPY setting. I ironed the inkjet print to set the image and trimmed the fabric to the size rectangle to suit the bag. Then I turned the edges under and tacked it onto a larger rectangle of red gingham, ironed the edges under and tacked that, too.

To make the bag I trimmed the hems off each tea towel, which determined the size of the drawstring bag. The black tea towel was noticeably smaller. I pinned, then sewed the bottom and side, leaving the top open.  This is the liner for the bag.

This meant I could estimate the finished size and enabled me to pin and sew the BREAD label on the front.

Next, I sewed the printed fabric slightly bigger than the black liner, leaving 5cm at the top to turn over to make the channel for the drawstring. I turned this the right side out and ironed it. Next, I inserted the liner and turned the patterned edge over the raw edge of the black waffle liner. Then I stitched the edges of the drawstring channel and finally, sewed the channel.

The sewn edges of the channel.

Attached a safety pin to the tape which I cut three times longer than one side of the top then fed the pin through the channel.

Fed each end of the tape through wooden beads then knotted the raw edge of the tape. Ironed the finished bag and put a fresh loaf of bread in it.

Looks good, works well and follows the red, black and white theme on the kitchen bench. Last week I blogged about making the tissue box cover, also in black and white.

The sourdough fresh from the oven and about to go in the drawstring bread bag. I followed the recipe for sourdough from The Clever Carrot blog. It was cooked in a Dutch Oven. The strange hole on the left side of the loaf was made by using the thermometer to test the temperature to ensure it was properly cooked.

When I was feeding the “mother”, the starter for the sourdough, the directions advised to keep a cup and discard the rest. To avoid such waste, I added an egg and some more flour and water, let the batter rest and made a delicious pile of pancakes. They were very good.

Tomorrow is Fresh Veggie Day, so you can plant a winter crop or eat some fresh veggies, raw, steamed, boiled or roasted. Enjoy!

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