It is said that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”.

Well, if it’s not the mother, then at least it’s a good boost or motivation. Not long ago, I broke my ankle – two fractures, plus a “crush wound”. What that really means is a pair of crutches, pain, and a slow recovery. It also means that I’ve been modifying my environment MORE than I usually would.

It’s so easy to take things for granted – even something as common as two working arms and legs. Unfortunately, the use of crutches means both hands are occupied, just to get around. So, it’s not even possible for me to walk from my kitchen, down the hall, to my home office. Of course no coffee is NOT an option, so it’s time for invention!

A simple 99 cent car cup holder is easily modified to become a crutch cup holder. Just cut the “hook” off the cup-holder, drill a hole through it, remove the wing-nut from the crutch handle, put the cup-holder on the crutch, and then put the wing-nut back on. Poof! My travel coffee mug is spill-proof and can now be carried around the house – hands-free!

In other hands-free inventions…..
GOOD beer requires a bottle opener. (I have yet to find good beer that comes in a can or with a twist-off top!) I have a good bottle opener in our kitchen drawer, but that takes two hands (one for the opener, one for the beer.) I also have a mounted bottle opener, but that requires the other hand to catch the removed cap! Letting it fall on the floor isn’t an option, considering how hard it is to bend over and pick something up!

So here’s how I modified my bottle opener. I just stuck on a very small magnet to the bottom of the opener. The cap pops off the bottle, and then sticks to the magnet. I can then set down the bottle, open the garbage can (OK, recycling bin), and throw away the cap.

Small magnet is on the bottom mounting screw.

Cap hangs on, instead of falling on floor.

When things can be just that much more difficult due to some sort of temporary disability, it’s nice to have a few little inventions helping me out!

I ran across this one today through somebody else’s blog and thought I had to share.

I think this one falls under the category of “The Hacked Homestead”. While most folks into chickens, gardening, and home skills usually like to go low-tech, Steve Ghertner upped the ante with his Arduino and Cordless Drill Chicken Coop Door Opener!

It’s pretty straight-forward, but just such a nice execution, and uses pretty much just hardware store parts. Of course the video tells it better than I do.

For more on his project, check out his build blog at: http://sites.google.com/site/egluautomaticdoor/

For a while now, I’ve been playing around with a “No-Knead” bread recipe. Baking your own bread does NOT have to be that much work. In fact, it can be both fun and rewarding. If you are watching what you eat, baking your own bread is one of the few ways to really have control over what goes in it. That way, you can keep out corn syrup, dough conditioners, preservatives, and other things that would be best to go without.

Two tricks are required that make this recipe work so well. One is a long rise time. I usually just mix up the dough the night before, and let it rise overnight. I then bake it the next day. The other requirement is a heavy cooking pot with a lid that seals well. I like using my Lodge enameled cast-iron dutch oven. You could also use a black iron or heavy ceramic pots with good results.

I’m not going in-depth here on the whole recipe and technique, I already cover that in the YouTube video embedded at the top of this post. But I gotta say, this recipe is easy and works everytime! And it’s just GOOD bread, with a great crust! Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of my lovely assistant taste-testing this recipe for the first time.

It’s time for pizza!

For some time, I’ve been trying to find a good DIY pizza crust recipe. I’ve tried several store “boxed” pizza crust mixes as well as home recipes and haven’t really been happy with any of them. The boxed mixes never turn out well, and some of the recipes take TONS of work and prep time. Most of our pizza for the last while has been from a “Take & Bake” chain. Fairly good pizza overall. When I went there the one time, I tried being more eco-friendly by bringing my own baking pan, and asking if they could just make the pizza right on my own pan for me. They were actually happy to do that. They took the plastic wrap off a crust they already had made, put that dough on my pan, then threw away the plastic wrap and paper tray. It was nice of them, but not quite what I was shooting for.

So, I was pretty excited when the latest issue of Mother Earth News had a recipe for a simple pizza crust recipe that you prepare ahead of time. Recently, I’ve experimented with “no-knead” bread in a pot and even got some “Amish Friendship Bread” mix from my sister (the chain letter of the food world!) So, I was ready to give the pizza dough recipe a shot. (If you want to follow along, please get yourself a copy of the Feb/march 2012 M.E.N. magazine, or visit the MOTHER web page.

In a nut-shell, the recipe calls for whipping up a large batch of yeast, salt, and flour in a big bowl. I can handle that. Toughest part is the clean up. It said to mix everything in a large bowl, let rise for 2 hours, and then refrigerate. I have one extra large mixing bowl, but it would take up too much space in the fridge. After I mixed up the dough, I transferred it to a large glass measuring bowl, which I typically use for pancake batter. I covered that loosely with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. The dough came most of the way up, but I figured refrigeration would halt the rising progress, and that bowl fit in the fridge so much better.

The next morning, I opened the door to see this.

The dough had risen over the edge and was trying to escape from the bowl. I quickly had a flashback to the classic Sci-Fi film, THE BLOB. In that movie, Steve McQueen defeats the ooze with salt. (Perhaps the writers had baking experience!?) In my case, I defeated it by simply using some of the dough right away. I preheated the oven to maximum temperature and put my baking stone in on the bottom rack.

Our baking stone hasn’t gotten any use in sometime. Right after we got it, we did a lot of cookies on there and used it for frozen pizzas, but haven’t had much of either lately. Breads and other baked goods have been in other shaped vessels lately. The recipe called for heating the oven to as hot as it goes. What temperature is that? I had no idea. My oven has a digital display where you punch in the temperature you want, sort of like putting in the time on a microwave oven. I just typed in 600 to see what would happen. The oven beeped at me, and then smuggly displayed 550F. OK, guess I now know what the maximum temperature is.

At our local farmers market, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a man who runs a PORTABLE pizza business. He has a custom-built trailer that has an Italian-style, wood-fired, brick pizza oven built right on it. He caters parties and special events, and had been participating at the farm market. It’s pretty amazing. The whole stove is stoked with hardwood until the inside of the oven just radiates heat. You simply tell the guy what you want on your pizza. While chit-chatting with him, he stretches the dough, tops it, and slides it into the oven. At 700-800 degrees, your pizza is done in about 3 minutes. Not only is it the ultimate in fast-food, it’s also the BEST PIZZA I HAVE EVER HAD! That’s right, of every pizza place I have EVER eaten at, the best one I ever had was two miles from my house in a municipal parking lot.

Needless to say, I show up at the farmer’s market. Being interested in pizza in general, I’ve talked with the pizza guy to get his secrets. The big one is of course the oven. It is just so darn hot! The crust cooks fast enough that it’s almost singed on the outside, yet tasty and chewy inside.

So why did I just tell you all about that, when I should be talking about a pizza recipe? Well, it’s because one thing I’ve heard over and over from real pizza folks is that the magic IS in the oven. It’s hard to replicate the pizzaria experience with a simple home oven. Thus the baking stone and high oven temperature. The stone is PREHEATED WITH THE OVEN at maximum temperature to soak up all that heat. When you transfer the pizza onto the stone,  it starts cooking by direct conduction of heat. 4 minutes after putting the pizza in the oven, the crust was already bubbly and smelling fantastic.

The pizza itself was pretty simple. I rolled out the dough. Added a few spoons-full of store-brand jarred sauce, sprinkled with cheese, and added some left-overs from last-nights dinner. That happened to be fajitas, which meant that I had some seasoned peppers, onion, and mushroom to toss right on top my pizza. By the time ten minutes were past, the pizza was ready.

The cheese was bubbly and golden, and the crust looked perfect. I let it cool for a few moments, and then had a look at the bottom for crust quality control. It was crisp, but not overdone. In fact, I think that if I left the baking stone in the oven on full blast a little longer, it would have been even better. After slicing and taste-testing, I was very happy with the finished product. It was tasty, but also filling and wholesome feeling. It left a person satisfied, instead of with that “always need some more” sensation that commercial snack foods give you. If anything, the crust a bit thick. I didn’t roll it out quite as thin as I could.

Oh well, something to fix on pizza #2.

I headed back to the fridge for an “orange-sized” fist of dough, pulled out, then cut off from the rest with a serrated bread knife. I formed it into a ball, then rolled it out about as thin as I could.

Once again, I topped it with sauce and cheese, and then transferred it to a pizza peel. (You have one of those, right? Get one, they’re great!) Really, the hardest part of this whole thing is transferring too and from a pizza peel. Next time, I might try rolling the dough out directly on the peel. That way, I only have to worry about sliding it off to the waiting hot baking stone in the oven.

Pizza #2 turned out great. Thinner crust was a bit more thin, crisp, and well done than pizza #1. Of course I was now full, and #2 would just have to wait for me to eat it at dinner time.

(Pizza #2 – Cheese only. Thinner Crust. I think the baking stone may have been slightly hotter the second time as well.)

Well, that’s it, a pretty successful run at a GOOD pizza crust, using just flour, water, and yeast. I still have most of the dough in the fridge. It supposedly will keep for up to two weeks and makes 8 pizzas this size.

From the attack of THE BLOB, to bubbly and delicious! Try out this recipe and technique, and let me know how it turns out for you!

-Ben

Yeah! The chalk-board is all done! (Skip straight to the bottom of this post if you want to go right to the video.)

Finished, installed chalk board.

It took a bit longer than planned, as I’ve just been busy lately. After cutting the slate, I transported it over to my Dad’s garage workshop. Much warmer there than working at the end of my driveway, and better lit at night. He also has a couple of saws over there, including the table saw we could use to cut grooves to build a frame for the chalk board.

The frame itself is three pieces of cedar we already had. We didn’t have quite enough for all four sides, but figured  we wanted to do something different for the bottom anyways. So, we ended up using a cedar 2×4, turned on edge for the bottom. That was the right size to stick out a bit to allow for a chalk tray at the bottom of the frame.

The challenge in working with recycled or salvaged materials is that they tend to be “non-standard”. In this case, one of the corners of the slate was broken off. That meant I had to design the frame so that the portion of wood that covers the corner was long enough to hide that, yet not waste the rest of the chalk board. While building the frame, I also realized that the slate was NOT SQUARE! We cut the frame with a lot of “slop” so that even though the the slate isn’t square, the frame is. That way, the finished project looks nice on the wall and isn’t slanted or otherwise looks weird.

One thing that was neat about this project is that I could just write everything right on the slate. When I wanted to decide how thick the frame should be, I just eyeballed it, and then DREW that border on the chalk-board! Too big, too skinny? No problem, just redraw it! Both low-tech AND effective, similar to my CAD DESIGNS for electric vehicles. For the chalk tray, I used a simple router bit and practiced on a piece of scrap before trying it on the real piece. I cut the groove and THEN attached it to the frame. Where the groove is, I would never be able to get a router in there after the fact. Once all the pieces were cut, I used Silicon caulk to glue the wood frame to the slate, and wood glue to connect the wooden corners to each other. It wasn’t until the next time I got to work on the project that I found out that Silicon caulk does NOT hold against slate. Slate is almost oily-feeling. The wood frame pulled right off. A little more gluing was required and then the frame was re-attached with “Liquid Nails” type construction adhesive.

When the frame was finally in place, it was time to paint. I did just a little basic sanding before painting. Paint was a plain off-white latex that I already had. I just made sure to stir it up good. I am no master of painting, but any moron can swing a brush and get some of it to go where he wants. I simply masked off the slate with newspaper and tape.

Actual installation of the chalk board went easier than I thought. My brother came over to help carry the board and assist in the installation. I didn’t have a stud finder. We tapped on the wall to hear where the studs were and then tapped a small nail through the drywall (below where the chalk-board would cover the hole) to confirm that we hit a stud. We then leaned the chalk-board against the wall, centered on the available space, and marked on the frame where the studs were. I pre-drilled holes through the wood frame to prevent splintering. The chalkboard was over 48″, so that meant that we should hit 3 studs no matter what. I put three screws through the top of the frame into studs, and one through the bottom of the frame, just to hold it to the wall.

After than, I covered the heads of the screws with wood putty, and painted over them. The only mishap was missing one of the studs when pre-drilling, so I ended up with an extra hole in the frame. That simply got filled in with putty and paint as part of the final step.

So, that’s it! Overall, I’m pretty happy. Lots of room at the bottom for chalk. The frame is also thick enough that adults can set chalk on the TOP of the frame. The entire chalk-board is close to the ground. This both maximizes use of the wall space, and allows easy reach for toddlers and the vertically challenged!

For the fun video version of everything I just told you, check out the CHALKBOARD PART 2 video on YouTube.

The other day, I got to head over to Prairie Dock Farm for Gasifier Therapy – the once-a-week hands-on renewable energy session.

Last week, Greg posted a video of a new little wood-gas stove that he built. It’s a slick little design with an integrated removable chimney and pot skirt. While I was there, we shot some video, just showing how the whole thing works. We packed some snow into a pot and melted it as out little experiment in how long it would take to boil. Yep, sat around watching water boil! Next time we might get to watching paint dry! It’s actually pretty exciting stuff! Being able to build your own small machine that can boil water (very important in some parts of the world, where water is otherwise undrinkable) or co0k your dinner on two handfuls of wood-chips.

What follows are three videos. The first two are ones that Greg shot, showing the construction and theory of the wood-gas stove. The third video is what I shot while we were there test-firing. Enjoy the videos! Questions or comments? Please leave some below. We love to hear from you!

Not long ago, I was visiting my friend Greg (see his great permaculture work HERE) and noticed that he had a nice small hunk of traditional blackboard slate mounted on his office wall. I know that he likes to collect salvaged materials, so I asked if he had any more. He informed me that he did.

Next time I was there, I was dropping off two 275 gallon IBCs (water tanks) for the methane digester project. Greg brushed some snow off a stack of material to reveal a large piece of blackboard he had. We loaded it in the back of my pickup truck.

When I got it home, I decided that I would like the chalk board in my hallway, mounted low down, from above the floor trim, up to below the light switch. This space isn’t otherwise used, and is nice and low for my toddler to “scribble on the wall” there with chalk.

The only “problem” here is that the slate is 48″ x 53″ – too big. It would cover my light switch and hit my furnace thermostat as well. So it was time to learn how to cut slate. I’d never done it before, so I gave a phone call to my friend Mike, who is a tile professional. He told me that it cuts similar to tile, and I should be able to cut it myself just fine, as long as I use a carbide blade and wet the blade and material with a sponge.

I pulled out my 4.5″ angle grinder and looked through my assortment of discs. Sure enough, I had a 40 grit carbide masonry cut-off disc handy. I measured the board, marked it, and clamped down a board as a guide. Then I began grinding with a wet sponge pressed against the side of the blade. Overall, it worked really well. (Other than it being REALLY cold, and me with wet hands!) There was only one small chip out of the main cut, easily cleaned up with the grinder. Slate is also soft enough that regular sandpaper can help clean up any rough edges.

I used a grinder with masonry cut-off disc, tape measure, & square to mark and cut the slate

A wood straight edge was clamped to the material to act as a cutting guide.

Slate after main cut.

Slate cut into three usable pieces.

It is said that “In Nature, there is no waste.” So, I planned my cut to make two smaller chalkboards from the “waste” of the main cut. I mounted one of the cut-offs in my kitchen, using typical bathroom mirror mounting clips. Even though I don’t have a smart phone, I can now leave “text messages”. I just leave a message for my wife in chalk on the side of the kitchen island.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more sustainable this chalkboard sounds. It’s an all-natural material, it’s salvaged, and the chalk itself is a natural material as well. If I had a dry-erase-board, I would have to buy special markers, made from plastic and chemicals. When they dry out, there’s a plastic shell to throw in the landfill. Chalk gets completely used up – there’s nothing to throw away when you are done. On top of that. the slate can be cleaned with a sponge and water, whereas dry erase boards need to be cleaned with icky chemical cleaners every once in a while.

While I really don’t want my toddler eating chalk…. it would be less bad than sucking on markers and getting into chemical cleaners.

The next step is to dig up some wood to build a frame for the large section of slate. The frame will make it easier to handle the board and then use wood screws to permanently mount it to the wall. I’m hoping to find some salvaged material that will work for this. I’m still not sure if I want an unfinished look, or if I want to paint it white to match my country-style woodwork.

Til next time,

Keep recycling!

-Ben

This past week, I had the pleasure of attending the Sustain Jefferson (Jefferson County, Wisconsin, United States) meeting. Our “info-tainment” section of the meeting would be a presentation by Greg David, a founding member of the group, he was recently honored as a Badger Bioneer.

I videotaped his presentation, so that anyone not able to attend would be able to see it.

Greg is a pretty amazing guy. For years, he has been working on converting a small piece of agricultural land to a permaculture heaven. Instead of “farming” in the conventional fashion, he uses plantings that help RESTORE the ecology. For example, while the typical farm is wide open fields, 20 years ago Greg planted a windbreak of evergreen trees on the north and west sides of the property. Other plants and animals on the property are protected from the wind, and a mix of fields, prairies, and trees greatly increases the diversity of habitat.

But that’s just the start. Greg has continued to work in alternative construction methods, run a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and has the biggest asparagus patch of anyone I know.

Greg has also been working on building SOCIAL capitol. Much of his work is not just about ecology, but getting people to work together. From Co-ops to general socialization, we are able to build relationships that make us all more valuable and able to accomplish more than we would on our own. One example is the Community Supported Energy workgroup.

The CSE is roughy based on the CSA – people all put in some work, and everyone gets back out of it. The focus of the CSE is energy-producing projects (all of which fit in well with Peak Oil theory, Transition Towns, etc.) These have included Gasifiers, Rocket Stoves, Solar Hot Water Panel, Methane production, low-tech boilers, and how to design and build them. I can think of one member in particular who has the greatest smile in the world after learning to weld from working on DIY energy projects.

Some days, work on these projects is as simple as standing around and getting a lot of talking done. Other times, you can’t hear yourself over all the angle grinders and metal work. But at all times, the members are building an informal organization of interdependence, learning new skills, and exchanging ideas.

Yesterday, I stopped over for the “Gasifier Work Day”. The current project is the “Bountiful Bowel” – a low-tech methane digester.

If you aren’t familiar with methane digesters, here’s the quick once-over. Put manure in one end. Make sure it’s the right temperature. Jiggle, shake, stir as needed. Methane gas comes out the other end. The gas can then be burned as fuel for cooking, heating, or running an engine (such as to power an electrical generator.) Of course it’s more complicated than that, but that’s where the fun is, figuring out all the details.

To start with, the “Bountiful Bowel” digester is a more or less a large trough, about 4′ high, 4′ across, and 16′ long, insulated, and covered. Inside, a clear plastic tube bag lays in plain water. Manure is added to the bag from the one end. On the opposite is a valve for removing the methane gas. The bag is in the water to keep the manure slurry at the right temperature for the microorganisms to do their work, breaking down the waste, and making it into a useful product.

The entire “Bowel” is set on top of a layer of strawbales, with additional bales surrounding the sides. The insulated cover is foam, but some additional insulation (ideally natural/renewable) would be good to have on top. As part of our discussion, we came up with the idea of creating a large quilt with loose straw as the filler. We would literally blanket the top of the tank.

The next challenge with the “Bowel” is to keep the water in the tank warm enough – especially in Wisconsin winters in an unheated workshop. That means getting heat from somewhere into that water. Our concept is to use some sort of large, liquid, thermal storage, which could be cycled into the Bountiful Bowel as needed. We did have some PEX tubing around, one section of which was 110′ long. Seems like enough for a heat exchanger. The PEX could be stretched out inside the methane digester tank, with hot water cycling through it to transfer heat to the tank.

Again, the details are the fun part. How do you get it to lay flat? How do you keep the temperature from dropping TOO much from one end to the other? We laid out the PEX in a flattened helix – sort of an out-and-back Olympic Rings shape. Both ends of the tubing were on the one end, making it easy to attach the pump, make connections etc. Since the tubing doubles back on itself, the average heat output of the heat exchanger with be the same through the whole length of the tank.

To get the tubing to lay properly, we stretched it out and zip-tied the looks evenly spaced out. The zip-ties were angled so that they would point away from the internal plastic bag, and that’s a fairly thin material. Poking holes in a bag of manure would not be a good thing! (Ick!)

That’s about as far as we got yesterday afternoon. Projects like the “Bountiful Bowel” are continuing. It’s a learn-as-you-go project, combining planning and construction. The next step is to get a large watertight container that we can insulate to hold the heated water.

People like Greg David are leading the way, not just restoring the ecology that we need, but also helping us all come together to learn, create, and motivate. Please enjoy watching the video at the top of this post. I know that you will find it inspiring.

Since last  time I posted about my alchemical adventures, I have continued to experiment with that basic “no-knead” bread.

I’ve baked it in different shapes, in different pots, and with different flour.

The first thing that I played with was trying to make something other than just a standard rustic loaf. The one evening, I realized that we had some left-over pulled pork. I already had a batch of bread dough already, but wouldn’t that pork taste MUCH better on a good crusty roll than it would any other way?

Of course it would! So instead of just baking another loaf of bread, I instead cut the dough in half, and divided what was left into six equal parts. The easiest way to do that was just roll it into a ball, flatten it, and cut it like a pie. I still baked the dough in the dutch oven, so the six wedges still fit nicely in the round bowl.

The other half of the dough was put into a small enameled cast iron pot – sort of a mini-dutch-oven. It also had a lit and was almost the exact right size for the dough. It was also small enough to fit in the oven at the same time as the full-size dutch oven with the rolls in it.

I reduced the baking time just a bit, figuring that dough cut in half is going to cook faster. Part of the magic of bread is that you can tell when it is done just by using your nose. That’s more intuitive than an electronic kitchen timer could ever dare to be.

Once out of the oven, and cooled for a bit, the ring of rolls was easily pulled apart by hand. I sliced the rolls and topped a few with warmed pulled pork, sharp cheddar cheese, and homemade barbeque sauce. Oh man were those good. Wish I had gotten a photo of them…. The rolls most reminded me of something like a really good ciabatta bread.

The bread in the mini-dutch-oven also turned out well. The smaller shape of the vessel gave the loaf more lift and height. It was sort of a “personal size” bread. Good crust and interior.

It was only a week or two later that my wife had some Italian Sausages around that she was planning to use to make spaghetti. Her recipe usually calls for about two sausage links cut up, sauteed, and mixed in with the sauce. Packages from the grocery store usually have 5 or 6 sausages in them. So, I was planning to grill the extras up for lunch – too bad we didn’t have any sausage rolls! But we did have a bowl of bread dough!

I again divided the 1.5lb loaf dough in half, and then cut one half of it into thirds (I only needed 3 sausage rolls.) I shaped the pieces by hand into roughly the size and shape required, then put them in the dutch oven, covered it and baked it. In the mean time, I went outside and got the wood-fired Rocket Grill ready to launch. With the other half of the bread dough, I tried another batch of dinner rolls.

The sausage rolls turned out well. Hearty and wholesome – serve with a pickle. The round shape of the dutch oven doesn’t lend itself well to the long skinny sausage rolls. I don’t think I could have fit more than three in there at a time, even if I wanted to. If I do a half-dozen or more long rolls in the future, I’ll have to find some sort of rectangular covered dish.

In this photo, you can see the pull-apart dinner rolls and another loaf of bread in the background.

I’ve always heard that WHOLE WHEAT is better for you. That most all-purpose flour is bleached and stripped of it’s natural nutrients and that “enriched” means that they just add enough fake nutrients back in to keep you from getting rickets or scurvey. So, I thought I have enough baking experience under my belt for me to give a WHOLE WHEAT LOAF a shot.

The main trick that I have heard is that ALL whole wheat is likely to make any loaf fail, so I thought I would start easy, with a PART whole wheat loaf. I went down to the Natural Goods store and bought several pounds of all natural, whole-wheat flour. It was a bit pricy, but still less than what I would pay for two loaves of bread at a regular grocery store. I had enough flour to make a LOT more than two loaves!

I did up the no-knead bread dough, but instead of using 3 cups of my regular flour, I used two cups of it, along with one cup of the all-natural whole wheat. I noticed that the whole-wheat was a courser grind than the all-purpose flour, just a little darker in color, and had a nice wholesome smell to it. I didn’t bother to use a sifter or anything, I just mixed it up as usual. After the typical long rise time, I baked the loaf.

The main thing that I noticed was that the bread was just plain darker. The whole wheat flour itself didn’t seem so dark, but the finished bread was most noticibly darker than my regular recipe.

After cooling, I sliced off a hunk, and took a bite. ACk! It was HORRIBLE! I called to my wife,”Come here, you have to taste this!”  ”Oh my God, that’s BAD! Ick! What did you do to it? That really is horrible!”

That’s when I realized that I forgot to add salt.

In all my excitement about mixing in a new flour and guessing at the best ratios, I had COMPLETELY missed the salt! The whole recipe only has FOUR ingredients, and one of them is WATER! Leave it to me to forget the salt. The bread really was quite inedible. It was chewy, and had a nice crust, looked great. It was very misleading of the brea to try to get me to eat it like that. I was AMAZED at how big of a difference that bit of salt made. It’s not so much that the bread tasted bad, it’s more like it didn’t taste like anything at all.

When first hitting the mouth – Yum! Chewy! Hearty!…chew chew…wait a minute… yech! It just sort of blahs out on you in the worste possible way. It sort of reminded me of when a friend and and I made a batch of homebrew beer. I don’t care for too much hops, so we tried a batch without any hops at all. The first sip of the beer was good, but the taste never finished, it just pittered out on you. It felt like a film or a play without a third act!

So, my first experimental loaf of whole wheat went to the birds and othe woodland creatures that so love when I make baking mistakes. As I write this, the crumbs are still sitting on my back porch – it tasted so bad that not even the birds will eat it!

But other than the salt mistake, everything else about the bread turned out  well, so I had another go at it. This time, I baked Christmas morning, and took the bread over to my Aunt and Uncle’s home where we were meeting relatives in the afternoon. My uncle sliced up the coarse round loaf and displayed it on a square white ceramic platter. Surrounded by ham and turkey, it had the look of a Norman Rockwell painting or even a Martha Stuart dining table. Now THAT I wish I had grabbed a photo of.

The bread did indeed turn out to be tasty. Perhaps the best compliment of all was from my brother-in-law, who has been a professional baker on and off for years. Rather than any kind of critical opinion, the simply mentioned “Mmm.. That’s quite good…”

High Praise from his lips.

Everything in life is an experiment. Every time I try something, it’s either new, or just trying to be a little better than the last time. I think that’s all any of us can hope for in any realm, whether it’s our careers, our relationships, or a simple mix of yeast, flour, and water.

-Ben

PS: And Salt! Don’t forget the salt!

Now just because I am usually blogging about clean transportation, doesn’t mean that I lack domestic skills.

In fact, just the other day I baked a loaf of bread. SHOCKING, isn’t it!?!?

But all too often, it is. How many folks do you personally know who actually DO bake bread from scratch? Well, with the crowd on this web site, you probably do know a few. But I would say that the percent of typical Americans who actually do make bread from scratch must be amazingly low. After all, it’s SO much work, and takes a long time, and it’s so much easier just to buy from the store, right?

Wrong. But we have been “trained” by our culture to think that it is. Instead, we all work our 9-5 jobs (that we don’t really like) to buy things (that we don’t really care for) in our capitalist/consumer system. Now, I am not saying there is some giant conspiracy of corporations to enslave us into being life-long “consumers”. There’s no conspiracy at all – it’s all right out in the open.

A couple of years ago, I decided to give up corn syrup for Lent. It was one of those things that sounded so simple, yet I knew was going to get complicated fast. And it did. I ended up bringing my own ketchup (organic) to the local restaurant, as it was the only way I could eat my fries without corn syrup. And, most shockingly, even many BREADS are loaded with corn syrup. So, as part of my experiment, I started baking as well…

Like many things, to bake a basic loaf ISN’T THAT DIFFICULT. It just takes a little instruction, and not being afraid to fail! ( I have lots of practice failing. As you as you learn from it, it’s just called EXPERIENCE!)

A couple days ago, I was having sort of a bad day. I was down and frustrated. And, we were out of bread. But, making things makes me feel better. There’s a true sense of satisfaction in being able to do something for oneself. That, and even a bad loaf of homemade bread is still better than something mass-marketed in a bag.

So, in an act of corporate disobedience, and DIY gusto, I baked bread.

Recently, I was at the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania. While there, I picked up a couple magazines and “Mother Earth’s Guide to’s”. In their GUIDE TO FRESH FOOD ALL YEAR, there was a simple bread recipe on page 51. The article was by Roger Doiron, but the recipe was adapted from one that appeared in the New York Times. It was very similar to one that I saw in another newspaper (and was passed all over the web) a while back, which was the type that I made during the No More Corn Syrup experiment.

The key features of both recipes was that it is “no-knead” AND that it was baked INSIDE a cast-iron dutch oven.

Since I had some experience with the other recipe, I was confident that this one would turn out as well.

After mixing together flour, water, salt, and yeast, I had a basic ball of dough.

The dough is set aside for a fair amount of time, to allow it to rise, and build some sour-dough-esque flavor. I just covered it in my mixing bowl, and set it above the fridge for overnight.

Next, flop the dough out onto a floured surface, roll it a bit, and make a ball. (As seen in photo above. First step in process, the dough is very sticky and shapeless, almost a batter.) Set the dough aside again for an hour or two to rise.

The oven is fairly hot for this recipe – 475F. While preheating the oven, put the dutch oven in, so that it gets preheated too.

My dutch oven is a Lodge brand enameled cast iron. It was my Christmas gift to my wife not long ago. Lodge is FAR less expensive than Le Cruset, but the plastic knob that comes with it isn’t rated for the higher oven temperatures. I replaced it with metal knob on the lid. Saved myself about $200 by doing that….

Once the cast iron and oven are to temperature, pull out the dutch oven and use a kitchen towel to transfer the dough to the cast iron. On this particular loaf of bread, I didn’t do a very good job. You can see that once the dough was in the pot, it wasn’t a nice round ball anymore! Oh well, it’s amazing how much of that sort of thing works its way out in the baking process!

Put the lid on and get that pot back in the oven! Bake for 30 minutes, pull the lid off, and bake another 15.

Let cool on a wire rack before eating.

*POOF* – Bread.

I don’t know how exactly it happens. Baking is alchemy. Four simple ingredients, in proportion, plus heat, equals the best loaf of breat you have ever eaten.

I think the pot must know how to bake the bread, because I certainly don’t.

This bread has an AMAZING crust! The only down-side to that is it can actually be TOO hard to cut! I have a pretty nice serrated kitchen knife. I even named it; the BREAD SAW. Trouble is, it can also be the finger saw if you aren’t careful with it. Since I wanted to make sandwiches with this loaf, I also wanted an even, fairly thin, series of slices.

I’m not usually a fan of “Kitchen Appliances”. They take up too much space, and aren’t used nearly often enough. Unless they do something SO WELL, that they are actually worth keeping around. My wife’s parents were fairly thrifty people. They bought in bulk from the Army Base store before Sam’s Club and Costco even existed, and canned peaches when in season. The root cellar was always stocked. That also meant they had some food prep equipment. After my in-laws passed away, we inherited a few things, including an avacodo green meat slicer, I never thought I would use.

Did I say meat slicer? Hmmm. What’s to keep a person from slicing bread with it?

I broke out the near-antique appliance, and gave it a shot. After a test slice or two, to set the thickness, I had the PERFECT sandwich slice!

Besides being an overall great loaf, one thing I have found about this recipe that FAR superceeds any store-bought bread is ITS ABILITY TO TOAST. This bread, when grilled, toasted, or broiled, forms a perfect, crisp outer layer, while still being chewy inside. In other words – the ultimate grilled sandwich bread.

I made up some ham reubens for lunch.

My wife had roasted some beets the night before, which I have taken a liking to since she gets them from the farmers’ market, rather than the canned beets of my youth. Some greens and balsamic vinegar made a quick beet-salad side dish to complement the sandwiches.

So, there you have it. Just as the backyard hamburger will hands-down beat ANY hamburger you will ever find at a fast-food restaurant, a home-baked loaf is a winner over store-bought, any day.

And I’m no pro baker, just a guy trying to learn how to do a few things for himself, instead of letting corporate America do it for him. And, hey, no corn syrup!

Go ahead, learn a new skill, take pride in your work, and add a little butter.

-Ben

PS: There are many “no-knead” bread recipes out there. Here’s a link to one at the NY Times. If you don’t already have a cast iron dutch oven, either a black one for camping, or an enameled for modern kitchen use, I highly recommend you get one. Best value is at thrift stores and rummage sales. If you want to buy new, I recommend the LODGE brand, but upgrade the knob on the lid.