Basic Sourdough Loaf

April 19th, 2025

There are a lot of commonalities between sourdough recipes, but everyone has their own take. For a basic loaf, here’s my favorite recipe so far. It’s adapted from Clever Carrot’s Beginner’s Guide. Basically their ingredients with my instructions.

Note that this recipe requires a lot of starter, so making it means I need to double the proportions I use in a typical feeding to 100g starter/100g flour/100g water. It’s ok if you don’t have the full amount of starter for feeding, but you want to end up with at least 200g at the end, so you may need to further increase flour and water if you’re short.

Ingredients

  • 250g water
  • 150g active (bubbly, risen, recently fed) sourdough starter
  • 25g olive oil
  • 500g flour
  • 10g fine salt (I use pink Himalayan, but sea salt also works well)

Instructions

  1. Combine the first three ingredients in a large bowl. Mix it with a fork until completely combined
  2. Add the flour and salt, mixing with clean hands until fully combined into a dry, shaggy dough
  3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and let it sit for at least 30 minutes, preferably 60. This is the autolyse stage, which moisturizes the flour and helps the bread improve its structure. Yes, it’s ok to add the salt before this stage but you can wait to add it if you really want
  4. Stretch and fold. Once the dough has completed the autolyse step, uncover the bowl and pick up the far corner of the dough and fold it over itself. Turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Do two more times. Your dough will be tall and stacked up in layers. This step improves the bread’s structure
  5. Cover with a wet towel and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes. I use my oven set to 100ºF (bread proof mode)
  6. Repeat steps 4-5 until you’ve done three rounds of stretch and folds
  7. Let the dough rise until doubled in size in the warm place covered by a damp towel. I usually do 3 hours including the stretch and fold time in the 100ºF oven. It will take longer in a cooler environment
  8. Lightly flour a counter and dump the dough on the counter. You may need to use your fingers to loosen it from the bowl. Do another stretch and fold (#4) and slightly slide it around on the counter so that it is loosened and any seams on the bottom are sealed
  9. Put the towel on the bottom of the bowl and lightly flour it
  10. Pick the loaf up and put it in the bowl
  11. Cover the bowl and put it in the refrigerator for 8-24 hours. I recommend overnight. I use a plastic trashbag slid over the bowl and sitting on the excess to seal it in
  12. The next day, remove the bread from the fridge and put it on the counter
  13. Put an oven safe pot, like a cast iron Dutch oven with an oven-safe lid in the oven and preheat it to 450ºF for at least 15 minutes past the oven hitting temperature. Many just set the timer for an hour when they put the pot in the oven. Use the convection bake setting, if your oven has one
  14. Prepare a sheet of parchment paper that’s long enough to use the ends to easily place and remove the bread from the pot
  15. For a crispier crust, have 4-6 ice cubes ready
  16. Remove the preheated pot, place the parchment inside, then the bread, and use a very sharp or serrated knife to cut a 1″ deep cut across the loaf. Slightly curve it to be fancy
  17. Tuck half the ice on either side of the loaf under the parchment. Place the lid on and return to oven
  18. Reduce temperature to 400ºF and bake for 20 minutes
  19. Remove the lid and bake for another 40 minutes
  20. If desired, bake the loaf directly on the oven rack for the last 10 minutes to produce a crispier crust
  21. Remove loaf immediately from pan and cool on a wire rack (so the bottom doesn’t get soggy) for at least an hour before serving

This may seem like a lot of steps, but most of them quickly become second nature. You can produce excellent loaf after excellent loaf with this technique.

Busting Sourdough Myths

April 19th, 2025

I have long loved eating sourdough bread. A grilled cheese with sharp cheddar on sourdough is one of the best simple meals you can make. Who doesn’t like a nice loaf of fresh baked, crusty bread? I’ve made many loaves of yeast bread, but had always been too scared to make the jump to making my own sourdough, even though I’ve never been 100% happy with any of the crusty yeast breads I’ve made at home. But many of the things I thought about making sourdough bread just aren’t true.

Myth #1 Maintaining a Sourdough Starter is Hard

Yes, a sourdough starter is a living thing. Yes, it needs to be fed. But no, this thing is not a child or even a pet that requires hours of your time every week. First, the only equipment you need to keep a starter going is a scale that measures in grams, two mason jars with lids, flour, and water.

I keep my starter in the fridge. You can keep it there for weeks, without touching it and it will be fine. I’ve gone about three weeks without feeding, and at refrigerator temperatures, it had barely grown. If I know I’m going to bake the next day, I’ll pull the starter out of the fridge at night and let it sit on the counter, possibly feeding it before going to bed. It only needs an hour or two before it’s ready to be fed. You could also feed it in the morning, but then you’ll need to wait a few hours (depending on temperature) before baking. It’s ready when it’s nice and bubbly and doubled in size, roughly 4 hours at room temperature. After you pull the active starter you need for baking, you use more of the active starter to feed it again, put the rest in your discard container, and put the fed container back on the counter. An hour or two later, it goes back in the fridge until you’re ready to repeat.

Myth #2: Feeding A Starter is Hard

To actually feed the starter, start with a clean mason jar on your kitchen scale. Assuming you’re targeting having 90g or less of ripe starter for your next recipe, I use 50g the number for each of the ingredients (remember you’ll want about 1/3 of it to feed the next batch, if you are targeting the same starter size). So put your 50g of starter into the clean jar, followed by 25g of whole wheat flour, then 25g of white flour, and 50g of water. Mix it up, and you should have something resembling pancake batter. Put the lid on loosely, and I like to put a rubber band around the jar so I can easily tell when it’s doubled in size. One other tip: it’s easy to overdo the water, so I recommend measuring it in another container and then adding it to the starter.

You can use all white flour, but whole wheat has more nutrients and enzymes to help keep your starter healthy. I wouldn’t recommend doing all whole wheat though.

All your extra starter can be kept indefinitely in the fridge. I put it all together in a jar so I can use it for things like sourdough discard waffles (my new favorite waffle recipe). I use a mason jar with a solid lid so I can easily tell it apart.

Myth #3: Baking Sourdough Bread is Hard

I always assumed baking sourdough bread would be like making baguettes. It’s not. On a clock, it takes more time than a yeast bread, but most of the time is inactive. Most of the recipes take minutes to put together and then require only quick interventions over the next hours. Many of my better yeast bread recipes take an hour or more of work. Stay tuned for my favorite recipe to date.

Easy No Knead Bread in Aldi Bread Oven vs Aldi Dutch Oven

April 19th, 2025

One of the Aldi finds that usually shows up about once a year on the aisle of shame is various pieces of enameled cast iron cookware. I bought the 6qt stock pot and then later bought the bread oven. Both of them are late 2024 purchases.

Final result of the bread oven vs the dutch oven. Both were purchased in September 2024 at Aldi stores in the US.
Both bowls are much fuller, but the small one is nearly full after sitting for a bit over 12 hours. Note the bowls are on opposite sides in the previous picture.
Uncovered so you can see all the air bubbles in the bread.
Bread quickly shaped into balls, and covered to rest while the oven preheats for 30 minutes.
I placed a circle of parchment paper in each vessel, quickly dropped the dough on top, and covered it. Both are now covered and ready for the main bake.
They look good but are pale after 30 minutes, so they will now bake for another 7-15 minutes uncovered to get a nice golden crust.
Much nicer crust. Time to take them out of the oven.
Removed from oven. Now time to remove from the vessels so they don’t keep cooking from all the retained heat.
It was much easier to remove the loaf in the bread oven. The crumbs left behind shows it took a few attempts to get the dutch oven loaf out. I probably should have just dumped the pot on the counter.
Final loaves sitting on a cutting board. They ended up basically the same. Dutch oven could have baked a bigger loaf. Bread oven was much easier to remove (and lighter to handle). Since I have both, I’ll probably use the bread oven any time I bake a single loaf. If I had to buy one, I’d go with the dutch oven, which has also been great for deep frying when I don’t want to pull out the electric fryer.

The better shape on the bread oven loaf is probably half the result of filling the container fuller (no space for a gap) and probably half because I got a much neater transfer of that loaf into the vessel.

Recipe I used: https://www.thecomfortofcooking.com/2013/04/no-knead-crusty-artisan-bread.html

Ten Years Later

April 15th, 2017

VT Cross with black ribbonApril 16, 2007. A cold Monday morning in a sleepy town that would change the world. I slept in, waking up to find that the world of the night before was nothing like the world of now. A gunman on campus. People injured and dead. Lots of rumors but no one knew anything for sure. What was supposed to be the uneventful last few weeks of my senior year took our quiet corner of southwest Virginia and made it the focus of the world. In many ways, it feels like yesterday. In other ways, it feels like it was an eternity ago.

What we learned that day is that life is fleeting. Evil is all around us and comes when we least expect it. We are like flowers: here one day and gone the next. But for those who know Christ, we can have hope even in the face of unspeakable evil. How appropriate that the 10th anniversary of such a dark day falls on the day when we celebrate the ultimate victory over evil. Jesus Christ willingly laid his life down on the cross to pay the debt that you and I owed but could never pay. A good man payed the debt of evil people. But the story doesn’t end on the cross. The real story is the empty grave on Easter morning. God raised Jesus to life, forever ending the curse of sin for those who know him, and making it so that we can be right with God, both now and for all eternity. Just like Jesus rose, we too will rise.

I can’t think of a more appropriate thing to celebrate on this anniversary. This song is both a powerful reminder of what Easter is all about – and was the song that became our theme in those dark days where we discovered what the new normal would be for us at Virginia Tech.

The Beginning

December 30th, 2016

Current 1979 kitchen

A homeowner job, 19 years after the house was built that slightly expanded and opened up the kitchen but with poor workmanship

My kitchen needs help. It was a homeowner job in 1979. It was poorly installed – no level, maybe not even a tape measure. The cabinets are wearing out. It’s time for something new. What’s wrong? I have three sets of hanging cabinets, none of which are hung at the same level. One has been repaired several times to keep it from falling off the wall. Most of the hinges are replaced or worn out. The cabinets leave sawdust on the contents inside. I’ve had to repair several of the drawers. The layout isn’t great. The finish on the edges is worn out. The floor is wearing out and there’s a problem with the insulation that makes one of the base cabinets double as extra fridge space in the winter. In short, it’s time for this kitchen to move on and a new one to take its place.

I have been eyeing Ikea kitchens for several years. I did a comparison with some of the brands carried by Home Depot. Even with a 20% off promo there, Ikea is roughly the same price before adding a lighting package and with more expensive cabinet internals. If I’m able to take advantage of Ikea’s next kitchen sale, I should be able to come out far ahead if I do my own cabinet assembly and installation.

Tonight, I signed up for Ikea’s in home measuring service with design consultation for $249, which I will get back if I purchase an Ikea kitchen by August 1. They will be out in a little over a week to measure and review my designs. I have two basic concepts in mind at this point: one to get my first appliance choices to work and one to maximize counter space. All designs will have larger hanging cabinets, so I should end up with more space than I currently have.

I tried to sign up for the Ikea measuring service over the phone. I couldn’t get a phone number for my local Ikea, so I tried to call the “order your kitchen here” line at 7:30pm today (Friday). Their site said they were open until 8pm eastern. I got a recording telling me that I was calling after business hours. Ikea fail #1.

Next, I called the phone number listed for one of my local stores. It was an 800 number, so I wasn’t expecting it to ring the store. I was able to get through to their central kitchen department, who told me I’d need to arrange measuring through a local store. They transferred me “to my store” supposedly by zip code. Erica was incredibly helpful, but it turns out that she’s in the Seattle store. I was expecting to get assigned to the Woodbridge, VA store – a difference of only 2786 miles! Ikea makes it incredibly difficult even for associates to find contact information for another store. Erica was able to get my store on the line by trying to check stock levels. She worked with me for over 30 minutes and got me to the right person – if you need a kitchen and you’re near Seattle, definitely ask for Erica at Ikea. She’s a rock star! Ikea win #1.

My store called me about 10 minutes after Erica passed off my contact information – she didn’t transfer me directly because she’s had issues Ikea’s phone system dropping calls instead of transferring them. I started to go through the information with my store over the phone, but they strongly preferred my signature on the paperwork, so I ended up coming in. I was only 10 minutes away from their store at that point because I jumped in the car when it became clear that it was going to be hard to set up measuring over the phone – we’ll call the whole phone trouble Ikea fail #2.

In the store, the associates that helped me were pretty knowledgeable, but the one who helped me the most wasn’t permitted to work past formal closing, so she had to leave a few minutes before 9 – we’ll call Ikea’s rigid scheduling system that the associates in kitchen all agreed made no sense Ikea fail #3. The next associate to help me sent me to one of their model kitchens and indicated I should poke around for a bit (the store was already closed at this point). Shortly after, I was kicked out for store closing, which was either a failure of telling me I could look when I couldn’t or a failure through kicking me out when I could have had a few more minutes – I was almost done! Ikea fail #4.

The final troubles of the evening weren’t directly related to the kitchen but are still worth noting. I picked up a clearance Christmas wreath on the way out. It was marked $9.99, originally $24.99. I had to wait about 15 minutes to check out with my one item (no express lanes anymore). It rang up as $24.99. It took a manager about 10 minutes to correct the price. I wouldn’t have bought it at either price if I had known it would add 25 minutes to my trip. I was thirsty so intended to buy a frozen drink at their still open snack bar, however the frozen drink machines turn themselves off at “store closing”, which was now 30 minutes ago so they weren’t very frozen. I decided to settle for the water fountain. Unfortunately the bathrooms and the water fountains had already been closed off and secured for the night. Ikea was still quite busy at closing – seems they should be open later or at least have more customer friendly closing policies! I will be nice and not add to Ikea’s score since these issues weren’t directly related to the kitchen.

What did I learn?

  • Be prepared – you will get better help if you have an idea of what you want (success, but even more than I realized)
  • Drawers are more expensive, but much easier to fully utilize and are one of Ikea’s strongest attributes – use as many as you can
  • Avoid Ikea near closing time. Everything kitchen takes longer than you think. Make sure you arrive at least two hours before closing for anything but the most basic pick up

Final score for today’s trip: 4 fails and 1 win. Hopefully Ikea will do better in the future!

Favorite Christmas Songs for 2016

December 24th, 2016

Immanuel God With Us album coverHere’s my 2016 update to the Christmas music post. Christmas music is meant to be sung with other people, so you’ll notice that many of these albums are live recordings.

McLean Worship: Immanuel God with Us
The freshman release from my church’s worship leaders. A combination of new songs and old favorites. I was part of 15 concerts that featured some of the songs from this release during this year’s Christmas Village. I particularly like the original Son of Light.

Chris Tomlin’s Adore: Christmas Songs Of Worship (Live)
The title track He Shall Reign Forevermore is the best one on the album and I think it’s going to be a classic. It’s a reworking of the old carol In the Bleak Midwinter with a little bit of Handel’s Messiah in it. The whole album is great and is a great follow up to his earlier Christmas album.

Hillsong’s We Have a Savior
Another great album that I was a few years late to the party on. Some great new songs and good renditions of old favorites. I like the opening rendition of O Come Let Us Adore Him and the title track of We Have A Savior. Another good new one is Our King Has Come.

Honorable mentions:

Paul Baloche’s Christmas Worship and Christmas Worship [Vol 2]
Good albums that take Christmas carols and blend them with better known worship songs. Check out Angels From the Realms of Glory / Emmanuel.

Chris Tomlin’s Glory In The Highest: Christmas Songs Of Worship
A couple of years old, but still frequently in my playlists. Particular favorites include Joy to the World and O Come All Ye Faithful.

Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration
Handel’s Messiah as it would have been written and performed by an early 90s gospel choir. The whole album is interesting, but especially great is the Hallelujah Chorus.

Point of Grace’s A Christmas Story
Released over 15 years ago, this album is a Christmas classic to me. Great arrangements. Check out O Holy Night and When Love Came Down.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Don’t #FlyPorter

March 27th, 2016

Porter AirlinesPorter Airlines,

I was a passenger scheduled for your Friday, 25 March flight from Mont Tremblant at 9:05am, ultimately landing in Washington, DC at 3:40pm. Our flight from Mont Tremblant didn’t leave until after 3pm. Despite reassurances from the airline at 8am that the flight would leave as scheduled despite light snow, our flight was repeatedly delayed until it was ultimately cancelled. Since Mont Tremblant requires visual landings and snow was forecast for most of the day, Porter should have planned for a delay, alerted passengers, and prepared a contingency plan.

Mont Tremblant airport is about a two hour drive from the Montreal airport. With the forecast, Porter should have dispatched a bus to Mont Tremblant to take us to the better equipped Montreal airport. All the Porter passengers were flying to Montreal, even though many of us were continuing on to other destinations. Even if the nearest available charter bus had to come from Montreal, Porter could have easily had a bus to Montreal by 9:30am if they had begun a contingency plan at 7am. Passengers would have been in Montreal before noon and many would have made their connections. Other passengers were originally supposed to fly out Thursday and had their replacement Friday morning flight cancelled as well. Since there had been Thursday problems resulting in cancelled flights as well, Porter should have been more prepared for Friday problems since the forecast was largely the same as Thursday.

I tried to call the reservation center (an international call for me), but was disconnected after 33 minutes without speaking to anyone. I figured they might know something and couldn’t hide on the other side of security, like the gate agents appeared to be doing. It doesn’t appear to be Porter’s fault I was disconnected, but the call will still cost me about $7 for which I got nothing but hold music.

Had we been passengers during peak ski season when flights were fuller, I’m sure Porter would have sent a bus or added a flight. Instead, we were rebooked on the afternoon flight which was scheduled for 2:20pm and was later delayed (the forecast was for snow and ice most of the afternoon). All passengers could be rebooked to Montreal, but my understanding from talking to other passengers is not everyone headed to Toronto was able to get a Porter flight Friday. Frustrating when the roads were clear and we could have been driven all the way to Toronto in less time than it finally took is to get to Montreal. I got more helpful information from Genevieve, part of the security staff, than anyone from Porter – it seemed the gate staff was hiding from customers!

In my case, Toronto wasn’t our final destination. We were flying to Washington, DC, which has limited service from Porter. We left Tremblant after our flight to Washington had already departed Toronto, so we clearly missed this connection. The next flight to Washington wasn’t until Saturday afternoon. However, of the three of us travelling together, only one was rebooked on that flight. The other two of us were booked on a Sunday flight. We did make it to Toronto Friday night, but we were unable to get any help from the Montreal gate staff, who knew nothing and was also rude to us.

In Toronto, agent Scott did a good job of taking care of us. He had hotel vouchers ready for us shortly after landing at the great Fairmont Royal York hotel. The 1929 hotel is a sight to see by itself with comfortable rooms and a great location. Scott also helped us figure out how to get our dinner and breakfast reimbursed and had transportation to the hotel arranged as well. While not able to solve all our problems, he was able to help us work through several alternate arrangements and got two of us on standby for the Saturday flight.

My alternate plan was to fly to Newark at 8:55am if I was still on the standby list in the morning. From there, I’d rent a car and drive the three hours to Washington-Dulles. I even had made a car reservation. Before turning in Friday night, I checked and saw that our reservations now showed a 26 March departure with no indication of standby status. I went ahead and checked in. The call center was closed, so I set my alarm for 6am when they opened and called to confirm as soon as the call center opened.

Just after 6am, I called the reservation center. I gave my information and talked to a lady who appeared to be very helpful. I explained the situation and asked her for an update on our standby status. She confirmed multiple times that we had tickets and even though we didn’t have seat assignments, we would get them at the airport and definitely had seats. I specifically asked more than once if we were standby and the answer was no. Reassured, I went back to sleep instead of going to the airport. Later we had breakfast and headed back to Billy Bishop airport early to make sure we got our meal reimbursements and seats resolved.

At the airport, we checked in to discover we were still on standby despite our earlier reassurances to the contrary. We worked with Melinda, who is a rock star and did everything in her power to resolve the situation – she should win the customer service representative of the year award hands down. She made some calls and was able to get me on the flight. However, our third traveler was unable to get onboard and had to take a car service to Toronto Pearson airport to catch his alternate arrangements, which he barely made and thankfully hadn’t cancelled. We were prepared with alternatives, although not as good as being on the flight, but the bad information we received from the call center made it hard to use them. The two of us on standby did receive $200 vouchers good for six months, but when one of us didn’t even fly home on Porter, that’s not a great substitute for the contracted service.

Being a holiday weekend where I had family in from out of town that was staying at my house, I was anxious to get home. Planning to be home two days before the holiday should have been plenty of time to get home, but the updated plans Porter provided wouldn’t have had me home until the afternoon on the holiday. Porter could have put me on another airline or covered a one way car rental from a different US city, but the only options we were offered were flights on different days. Not a good solution when I’m the host for the holiday lunch and my sister who I only get to see once or twice a year is visiting for the weekend. After ten days away from home, we were all ready to be back too.

Our Porter experience also included a repeatedly delayed and eventually diverted flight at the start of the trip. Our flight was delayed over two hours, circled waiting to land at Billy Bishop for longer than the scheduled flying time, and eventually diverted to Toronto-Pearson due to rain and fog. We were bussed back to Billy Bishop airport and then put on a flight on to Montreal. For our trouble, we received a $100 voucher good for three months, but it seems like Porter could have had better contingency plans of landing at Pearson sooner, since I believe Billy Bishop requires visual landings and Pearson doesn’t. Also, Porter had five planes on the ground at Pearson so it seems like we could have been rescheduled from there instead of being bussed to Billy Bishop and having to wait for the weather to clear before we could continue on.

We almost drove for this trip instead of flying. Flying was roughly double the price but we decided to go for it to have an extra day at our destinations. Our route would have been 24 hours of round-trip driving in total. Surprisingly, each of the three segments we flew (Washington-Montreal, Montreal-Tremblant, and Tremblant-Washington) would have been faster to drive when including time required to arrive at the airport before the originally scheduled departure. That’s a terrible record for an airline!

Your selling pitch seems to largely be convenience, but on this trip, it was anything but. Your communication needs help. Your operation plans need even more help. You have some great features including the lounge at Billy Bishop, your onboard experience, and your staff at Billy Bishop, but I have never had so much trouble traveling, even as a frequent traveler for both business and pleasure, domestically and internationally. When driving is faster, flying is a tough sell!

I stand by my recommendation: don’t #FlyPorter.

Favorite Christmas Songs for this Year

December 25th, 2015

Adore: Christmas Songs of WorshipEvery few years, I like to post some of my favorite music for a specific occasion. This year, it’s Christmas. Christmas music is meant to be sung with other people, so you’ll notice that many of these albums are live recordings.

Chris Tomlin’s Adore: Christmas Songs Of Worship (Live)
The title track He Shall Reign Forevermore is the best one on the album and I think it’s going to be a classic. It’s a reworking of the old carol In the Bleak Midwinter with a little bit of Handel’s Messiah in it. The whole album is great and is a great follow up to his earlier Christmas album.

Hillsong’s We Have a Savior
Another great album that I was a few years late to the party on. Some great new songs and good renditions of old favorites. I like the opening rendition of O Come Let Us Adore Him and the title track of We Have A Savior. Another good new one is Our King Has Come.

Chris Tomlin’s Glory In The Highest: Christmas Songs Of Worship
A couple of years old, but still frequently in my playlists. Particular favorites include Joy to the World and O Come All Ye Faithful.

 

Honorable mentions:

Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration
Handel’s Messiah as it would have been written and performed by an early 90s gospel choir. The whole album is interesting, but especially great is the Hallelujah Chorus.

Paul Baloche’s Christmas Worship and Christmas Worship [Vol 2]
Good albums that take Christmas carols and blend them with better known worship songs. Check out Angels From the Realms of Glory / Emmanuel.

Point of Grace’s A Christmas Story
Released over 15 years ago, this album is a Christmas classic to me. Great arrangements. Check out O Holy Night and When Love Came Down.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Baguettes

February 21st, 2015

A family snow day tradition is to bake bread. I barely eat bread anymore, but a snow day is a snow day. One of the things I always wanted to try was making baguettes. Well, I came across two baguette recipes this week and then got a snow day. Must be a sign!

I mainly followed Farm Girl Fare’s recipe, but I did the flour more like America’s Test Kitchen. Here’s my recipe:

Four Hour Baguettes
3 cups all-purpose flour (you may need a little more) – I recommend King Arthur Flour
¼ cup whole wheat flour, sifted and anything that stays in the sieve discarded – to better simulate the texture of French flour – I used King Arthur 100% white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast or active dry yeast
1½ cups (12 ounces) tepid water (20°C)
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 cup ice cubes (for making steam in the oven)

Add flour to large mixing bowl. If using active dry yeast, add to water and set aside for 10 minutes. If using instant, mix into flour. Add water, mixing with rubber spatula until the flour is combined and a chunky dough is formed. Cover with a damp dish towel and let rest for 20 minutes.

Sprinkle salt over dough. Knead dough by hand for 10-12 min or use a KitchenAid with the dough hook on speed 2 for 8-10 minutes. Finish with several kneads by hand. Place in a tightly closing large plastic container and set aside for 45 minutes to ferment.

From here on, I followed Farm Girl Fare’s recipe exactly. Took me just about four hours from measuring ingredients to bread on the counter. Perfect with soup or some European butter. I also sliced some thin and made mini open face sandwiches with bread, sharp cheese, chicken, and a drizzle of rosemary olive oil.

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It’s been a while!

February 15th, 2015

A lot has happened since I last posted over two years ago. Even more has happened since January 2009, when I last regularly posted.

In that time I have:

  • Finished up my time as a college minister and transitioned into new ministry roles surrounding discipleship, prayer, and outreach to people in need
  • Relearned Spanish
  • Visited 14 countries for the first time
  • Visited 8 states for at least a day
  • Managed more than $2.1 million of commercial construction
  • Built a closet to turn my 3 bedroom house into a 4 bedroom
  • Reconnected with old friends, made new friends, and seen friends move on
  • Become a dog owner

All I can say is that despite these highlights, it has been a roller coaster of time. I’m more convinced than ever that God is not safe, but He is good. When you let go and let God, you never know where you’ll end up.