Easy, slicable bread

My new favorite bread recipe.

I have been searching for an easy, quick healthy homemade bread recipe that is actually slicable.

I found one.

Nope, this one is not chalk-full of stuff that is supposed to make it slicable and soft.

It just is.

How many ingredients? 4. Bet you can guess them.

3 cups of flour (any type you have on hand!)
1/4 tsp yeast
1 tsp salt
and just enough water to make it wet. I don't measure this, I just splash some in there, and stir, and splash more until it is right.

Let is sit in a bowl covered with a clean tea towel over night, or all day while you are at work. When you come back it will not have risen a lot. Now spread a little flour onto a clean surface and knead the dough into a soft ball (this should take just a min)

Heat the oven to 385 F.  Heat your a oven safe container with a heavy lid, such as a dutch oven,  (I used my stone wear baker) in the oven while it is preheating (I actually skipped this step and it worked just fine). When your oven is heated stick the dough in your cooking vessel of choice , slice an x in the top and put the lid on. Bake for 25-30 mins, then remove the lid and bake another 10ish mins.

This actually has been the easiest, quickest, and most slicable bread recipe I have tried! Its my new go-to bread recipe.

Sure, it has several hours of proofing, but a total of less then 5 minutes prep time! Including clean up!


Try serving it with your home-made farmers cheese (and onions, I love onions).



You can use this dough for other things as well.








Happy Monday!

Why, hello there

I have been gone for a while. I have had you in my thoughts often.

Many, many things have come into my thoughts that I have wanted to share here that I just have not had the energy to post.

I realize now I have been slowly getting sick. Hopefully it'll pass this weekend. I plan on forcing myself to rest,

Ugg..... I like the idea, but then there are soooo many things around the house that I want to get done!!!

This week I discovered little ways to bring nature into my new office! Like....

This really freakin' cool tea!

I am sure many of you have seen this tea before, but to me it is brand new! You place the individual packet in a cup or small pitcher, pour hot water on and watch it bloom! This one was jasmine green tea, which happens to be one of my favorites too :)

I did find time to make some plum jam. I had to do it last weekend. Or else the birds and time would have ruined the beautiful crop of plums I had this year!! 

It still makes me sad that I will have to wait another year to get a batch of home grown plums...

The best way by far, to spend a long time in the kitchen ;)

I will go into more detail on how to make plum Jam later. 

Now I suppose I need to go rest. I have already been running around more then I should ;)

Happy Friday!

What I'm making

Garden fresh southern dinner of pinto beans, squash and zucchini, fresh picked tomatoes and cucumbers, mushrooms and onions. If we were not on a diet a batch of biscuits would be cooking too.... Oh well.....

I am also making healthy home made nutra grain bars. All the recipes I found had a cup of butter, and sugar! Ugh, so I modified

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup of pear sauce from my pear trees ( you could use apple)
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cup oats
1 tsp vanilla

Jam of your choice, I used strawberry jam my mother in law made.

Mix everything but the jam, the dough will be pretty sticky. Add more pear sauce if needed.

Spread half the mix into the bottom of a greased pan, I used a finger spoon combo to get it spread.
Top with jam, then top with the rest of the mix. If this doesn't spread perfect, that's ok.

It will still taste good :-)

Bake at 350 for 20 ish mins! Allow to cool before cutting.

**update**
Darn it! I just thought that I should have added my flax seed meal, that would have been an excellent nutrition addition....

Kombucha Kombucha.....

I finally did it.

I made kombucha. What is kombucha?

Good question. A month ago I had no idea either.

Kombucha is  a fermented sweet tea health drink.

Weird? Yep. Tasty and good for you? Yep.

Kombucha is known for its pro-biotic and detoxifying qualities. There are many other health claims, but as to how accurate they are that is up to you to decide. I personally enjoy it. It keeps you, ehem.... going. You know, regularly....

And it is not sweet. I enjoy a good bubbly beverage but get tired of sweet stuff. This , like my husband said is good if you are a beer drinker.

It is not an alcoholic drink. Even though the process is very similar to that of beer making. (According to wikipedia it has an alcohol content similar to that of a non-alcoholic beer. Which is less then you get from your morning mouthwash).

My quest to make and try kombucha started when I first heard of it here...

Seeing as I prefer to make things myself, and can not see spending 3.50$ for a 16 oz bottle every time I want to drink it I had to go about making my own, which includes growing my own scoby.

S-C-O-B-Y- Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast.

Here is the scoby. Icky looking, huh?

The baby scoby

The scoby is necessary to make kombucha. I did have to buy a bottle of raw, organic commercially produced kombucha to first of all, try it and make sure I would drink it. Then to get the strands of the culture to grow my own scoby.

How to grow a kombucha scoby-


Buy, or inherit a "baby" scoby from someone who just made a batch of kombucha (there is a new one every time)

Or like I did, buy some commercially made kombucha, raw and organic, original flavor. Pour into a jar, add some sweet tea. Cover with a  cloth and leave at room temperature until its grown. Its neat to watch the process.

How to make Kombucha-


Now that you have your scoby, you can begin making kombucha!

Brew a gallon of tea (black tea, or maybe green. Stick with the basics first).

Sweeten with 1 cup sugar. Allow to cool completely.  Put in a food grade container (A very clean, sanitized container). I used my 2 gallon crock. A large thermos could work also. Then add your scoby. Cover with a cloth to keep out dust and other undesirables. Do not cover air tight. The fermentation process produces gas with could cause it to bust if covered air tight.

Let ferment somewhere undisturbed for a week or two.

Gather together some bottles. Glass or plastic, but make sure they previously held a carbonated beverage. Or else..... no explosions of stickiness please :)

Make sure the bottles are clean too,  by the way.

Pour liquid in bottles leaving in about an inch of head space. Move the scoby to a cloth covered jar with some fresh sweet tea in it. That will feed the scoby until you are ready to brew some again.

Add either a teaspoon of sugar (no more) or a tablespoon of your preferred juice (I used grape and much preferred it to the plain. It just turned out better) for a 1 liter bottle. More for larger bottles, less for smaller.

Leave bottles to the secondary fermentation in room temps for a few days. Then stick in the fridge, cool and enjoy! I usually strain mine when pouring it from the bottle through a fine metal strainer to filter out any baby scobys that are floating around. They wont hurt you, but I prefer not to drink them.

It takes a few sips to grow accustomed to the vinegary bite of the drink, but I have come to really enjoy it!

Sunday Funday :)

Poor Handsome Hubby got stuck working today.

So I....

Decorated the little I do for spring

The little girl in me just loves pastels and sparkles, well, and the big girl too....

I made Honey Shampoo

Stored in a clean gallon jug I saved

I baked bread

I wanted to make my first batch of Kombucha, but ended up arguing with this

darn frikkin' lid until I gave up. My sweet father-in-law made me the lid for my 2 gallon crock. So I quickly got it stuck. I am a bit accident prone.

 I am going to wait for HH to come home and see if he has better luck with it. If not I am going to find a small saw and get it out, darn it.

I made a batch of soap and experimented with a cinnamon orange scent :) I'll let you know tomorrow how it comes out.

Here it is cooling ever-so slowly 

Then I went for a run/walk (I have found if I run one lap, then walk one lap I can convince myself while walking that I am not THAT tired, and will run the next lap. Then I can always walk one more to finish up. Its a good way to trick myself into working out :)

Here are some lovely things I encountered on my walk

It is wisteria, and it smells divine

Then I found out that they make seed pods, see, like this

So now I am determined to grow a plant or 5 for myself! Instead of taking a cutting like I had planned.

I took a picture Friday on my run/ (Okey.... okey, its really just a very slow jog. But run sounds better and I am getting there. slowly.) walk around the park. I think it turned out really cool and want to see if anyone can guess what it is!

Here it is:

Any clue what this could be? Take a guess in the comments!


What did you do today?

Scratch that... and this too

Do you make things from scratch?

I have already stated here how I prefer too. I remembered this morning however, that that was not always the case.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine this morning after a meeting, where she mentioned she had to stop by the store on the way home to pick up pancake mix so they could have pancakes for Sunday breakfast. I said she should just make them from scratch so she did not have to stop.

She looked at me like I was crazy. (Maybe I am... Bwhahaahaa.....)

I forget that I used to buy mixes as well. Most of the people I know are not on the natural living, whole food bandwagon with me. Most are still your average convenience driven American. I have not rubbed off on them enough yet, but I am working on that (Though I have never been one to push my ideals onto others. I find that very irritating. I think its best to lead by example).

Cinnamon swirl cake (I failed on the swirl, but it still tastes good!)

Cooking from scratch is healthier, cheaper, and more delicious. But can be intimidating, if you are not used to it.  My idea of scratch cooking when I first started was the bagged instant pasta, a canned veggie and some frozen flavored fish filet for the Hubs. Now I can whip up a batch of biscuits as quick as I could grab the bag of frozen ones I bought and cook them. Also I'll make a double batch and freeze my own for those times I am short on time.

A Mexican slaw I made last minute for taco Friday

I make an effort not to buy anything that I can make on my own anymore. This includes things like crackers, bread, tortillas, cakes and cookies. They are all much cheaper home made and do not contain any mystery ingredients (maybe more butter then I need, but at least I know what is in there! : )

What things are you making from scratch?

Apricot, cashew, banana bars (sorry they look a little funny pictured through the container)

And now for some Weekend niceness......

Why yes, this is just too sweet

Happy Sunday everyone!

No more tortillas today.....

I love Mexican food. I am sure my idea of Mexican food is more Americanized then authentic, but hey, its delicious either way.

Yes, I was a little messy with the flour this time.... Oops.

Tortillas are so easy to make they are worth the small amount of effort that goes into them.

Ingredients:
2 cups of flour
1 cup milk
1 t salt
1 T oil
1 1/2 t baking powder


Mix all together. It should form a smooth not sticky dough. If it is sticky add more flour until you reach this consistency.

Let it sit for 20 or so minutes, then separate into balls, between 8-10 of them. Roll the balls out into flat, thin tortilla shapes (Or if you're like me any shape , since it will be far from perfect) and put on hot, flat surface.

A few minutes each side until they look done. No need to grease the pan. I use my stove top grill pan, turned over to the flat side. But really any large flat pan will work.

I use them for wraps and thin crust pizza too! You can make double or triple batches and freeze them until you need them.


Things I am thinking about doing today:

Fixing this

So I can finish this

Doing some of this

And playing with this guy

Have a great Saturday everyone!