Kitchen Chemistry

Success! I've had mixed results in the past with both bread baking and making yoghurt. But... the kitchen gods appear to be smiling on me lately. I've had successful batches of both in the past week.

We tried out the Bread in 5 Minutes a day thing this weekend and both loaves have been beautiful and yummy.

Essentially, you make a huge batch of really wet

dough, let it rise once and then stick it in the fridge. When you're ready to bake, pull off a chunk of the dough, let it rise and throw it in the oven on an oven stone with a pan of water for steam. The basic dough recipe can be turned into a variety of different types of bread. I tried the basic white bread recipe this time, but next time I'll try one of the whole wheat versions.

The first loaf was a bit misshapen since I didn't put enough cornmeal on the pizza meal and it

stuck, but I googled around found suggestions to start the bread on parchment paper and then slide it off the parchment paper halfway through

baking. It worked perfectly. No stressing about cornmeal and sticking and a great crust. It also has the big, fancy holes in it like real bakery bread.

The second experiment was another try at making yoghurt. The keys: store bought starter,

non-fat milk powder, and cooking the milk over a lower heat. The first few batches were either too thin or too thick a la the Three Bears. The non-fat milk powder helps it thicken up and the

store bought starter made sure it actually cultured. It looks pretty good! Now, I'm working on figuring out how to flavor it for Chuck. We also have a yoghurt incubator that I bought before we got married and I've now moved away and back to Texas. Chuck mocked me about my unused but deeply loved yoghurt maker. So now I'm going to use the darn thing until I can make most of the yoghurt we eat.