Kimberwood Farm

Fresh out of the oven! This is some sourdough rye bread I made today out of a new starter I made a couple of weeks ago. This is actually the second batch of bread I've made out of it but the first batch was just too ugly to photograph. These loaves turned out much better and will hopefully taste as delicious as the "ugly" loaves did.



A good friend and coworker, Denise emailed me not long ago asking me if I knew where she could buy some wool mittens. Well, of course I couldn't resist making them for her! She was quite happy to let me experiment on her too! I've always wanted to try making Thrummed Mittens and here they are (notice the thrums of white roving that have been knitted into the inside of the mitten). I also dyed the yarn using some Gaywool dye in the microwave. I "chained" the skein of yarn tightly into a neat ball and soaked it in some water with a little bit of Dawn dishwashing detergent before placing it in a small bowl and pouring the dye bath over it. I cooked it in the microwave oven for 8 minutes and rinsed it until it ran clear. I think it turned out great!

Labels: Bread, Dyeing, Knitting

Spinning Update:

I've finished up the lamb's fleece I've been working on. I ended up with 1 lb. 7 oz. of beautiful yarn. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. This yarn is now for sale in my Etsy shop!


I've moved on to some nice gray shetland and will post more about it soon.

In the Kitchen:

Lot's of baking today. I started with some delicious cracked wheat bread this morning as well as some white:

And tonight for dinner we had home made pizza using the same bread recipe from above. It turned out wonderful and wasn't at all hard to make. The toughest part I think is planning ahead to get the bread started in time for dinner. Can you tell I'm having fun making bread again!

Labels: Bread, Spinning

Okay, so the crust isn't the prettiest and the shape of the loaves is a bit odd. But it sure tastes good! It's made from the levain I started 4 days ago and have been "feeding" daily. It's made with an organic all purpose flour. I am not quite set up to make loaves like this. When I put it in the oven to bake I placed it on my pizza stone. It was pretty full and I was afraid it would over flow. I have a few more pieces of equipment to buy and then I'll be all set. Definately plan to continue baking this sourdough bread!

Labels: Bread

My new bread bowl arrived today! I decided to give bread baking another try. I used to make lots of our bread but never really looked into what it takes to make really good bread. Then I bought a bread machine, used it quite a bit for a while. But started to notice that I didn't really like the bread it made. It was okay but not really good. It has been sitting on my kitchen counter for quite awhile gathering dust.

Then thanks to Nancy I found Farmgirl Fare's blog. This is an awesome blog! There are wonderful pictures almost on a daily basis of the food she cooks as well as life around the farm. She has some great tips on baking bread too. One of her tips is to find a wooden bowl for making bread in. Each time I use this bowl to make bread, the bread will get better tasting. The yeast will "live" in the bowl and add flavor. It made a lot of sense to me so I found one! Here it is again: Isn't it beautiful?

Another thing she also recommended is this book:

Great book! I've already started my first levain(pronounced, luh-vahn). It's the French word meaning "leaven" and referes to a sourdough culture by wild yeasts. I'll post more as the process continues.







OH! One more thing. This is the stamp on the bottom of the bowl. It came from Holland Bowl Mill in Holland, Michigan. Which is kind of a coincidence. I'm Dutch, my mother grew up there. And, it's practically in my friends Stephen's back yard!

Labels: Bread