Maggie Hates Hot Cookies

Maggie 4-1/2 months ago

I need to take a new picture of her, but I gotta get a new SD card first. Current one bit the dust and there is no transferring images to the computer without one.

In the interest of healthier treats, and to use up the Skippy peanut butter no one in the house will eat, I started making peanut butter doggie cookies(biscuits) for Maggie. I make them like this recipe but I use 3/4 c. milk and add 2T sugar.

She loves them. Unless they're hot from the oven--then she is terrified of them. I have not yet figured this dog out, she's really the craziest little hound I've ever known, but she's funny so that offsets the confusion I often experience around her.

Anyway, I made a batch last night took one to her while the others cooled. It was hot but not hot enough to burn my fingers--I carried it to her in my unprotected hand--but it was hotter than anything else she eats and she didn't know what to make of it.

At first, she peeled her lips back to try and take it with just her teeth, but she couldn't bring herself to bite it. So she just bit the air around the cookie several times and bounced back and forth.

I put it on the floor in front of her and she RAN AWAY from the evil-hot-cookie and hid across the room, behind the table.

Naturally, I had to milk this. I picked it up and pretended to eat it and she came rushing at me, barking like an insane thing, and I couldn't resist chasing her around the room with the hot cookie. She hid again. I sat again and pretended to eat the cookie--that never fails to bring her out of hiding. She might not want that cookie but she'll be damned if I'm going to eat it!

It was quite cool by this point, but she couldn't risk it. I know she could smell what it was, the whole house smelled of peanut butter, and she wanted it but still couldn't bring herself to eat it. Thus began phase 3 of her attempt to eat the cookie: running back and forth in front of me, biting the air by the cookie once as she zoomed past, and then barking more until she got turned around and ready to take another bite at it on the next lap.

This went on for a good twenty minutes and may be my new favorite game: Chasing Dog with Hot Cookie... Or Chasing Dog with Previously Hot Cookie... She refused to believe it had cooled off until I broke it into several pieces and lay it on the floor again. Once it no longer looked like the cookie, she came and gobbled it up.

I recommend ya'l bake doggie cookies and chase your dog with them. Best. Baking. Ever.

Bread pr0n

I am a big fan of the cinnamon raisin swirl breads, so decided to see how it would go with the sourdough recipe I've been using.

I don't add more sugar to the recipe, just the cinnamon and the raisins. I really should stop making it because every time I'm hungry my little brain says...THERE'S MORE RAISIN BREAD!

 

Now I can't stop wondering wondering what else I can add to the (basic) bread to make other interesting breads. Cheese? Spinach?  Some kind of dried meaty goodness? Whatever it is, I doubt it will be quite this pretty with melty butter.

Maybe I should ditch this writing malarkey and just make bread. Forever! Or till I get bored...like with all non-writing hobbies.

Following the Voices

For most people, writing the first three chapters of a new novel is super-happy fun time. I am not most people. The first three chapters are my hardest. The middle? That's my happy place, where I'm comfortable with the characters and I've thrown out enough plot threads I can relax and happily weave. Wacky hijinx ensue.

I haven't written enough books for me to say this will always be the case, but it is the case right now. Part of the trouble is finding the voices of my main characters. I write romance, so I have two protagonists. One of them has always come with the story idea, fully formed and yapping in my ear. The other voice can be elusive. Makes those first chapters grueling writing.

The past week I've been struggling with this. I knew who the hero was, his goals/motivation/conflict. In fact, Wyatt was that character who materialized with the story idea. But he came without a voice. My heroine, whom I had to root around for, had a voice the instant I settled on her background and personality. But Wyatt's been giving me fits.

A few days of grumbling, watching shows/movies starring the actor I've cast in the part, and I still had nothing. Character questionnaires do nothing for me, so that was out. I went whining to a friend for advice, and that helped. Writing a short background in first person helped, too. Gave me a few more insights, helped me figure out what I didn't like about the scenes I'd written, let me fix them(I think).

But I like having a system for settling problems: Do X, Y, and Z and you can overcome _____ in three easy steps! It's comforting. It helps me keep believing I can do this writing thing. I've vanquished this problem. I found this zombie's off-switch by shooting it in a bunch of places, and when the next one comes groaning and shuffling my way, I can just shoot it in the head and move on. No problem! You know, the kind of delusional thinking that lets you keep writing.

What do you do when a character refuses to talk? Do you slog it out in the manuscript? Don't worry about voice differences until editing? Know any easy solutions? I'm all ears.

Oh, and because I'm still baking(to wean us off store-bought bread), look: slits!-->

4th Time's a Charm

As promised, pictures of attempt #4!

Went with one long loaf instead of two small round, followed the same recipe as #3, but changed the process a bit to give more time to ferment. AP flour and starter.
 
Results:

• I like a medium sourness to my sourdough, so I threw in 1/4 teaspoon of Rapid Rise yeast. I know, that is not pure sourdough, but it makes it rise fast enough to avoid a 12 hour rise/ferment and reduces the sourness without negating it. 
• It also went into the oven about 2 inches tall after about 90 minutes of 2nd rise, and in the first 10 minutes of baking shot up to about 6 inches! This loaf is rather massive. I have no idea why it expanded like that. Was it the tiny bit of Rapid Rise yeast going haywire in the steamy oven, or just the steam? I like the puffiness.
• I bake about 35 minutes and in that time do 4 oven/bread mistings with water bottle. Nice chewy crust came of it. After super hard crust(#2), I greatly prefer soft crust.
• I need to learn how to do those slits on the top of the bread. They're supposed to expand and be all fancy-pantsy, but mine didn't. I think I didn't cut deeply enough. It just looks like I wanted to paint lines on it. Oh well, still considering this loaf a success. Even if the end of it looks like it's got butt cleavage!

Bready Update

As it turns out, sourdough bread is a lot harder to make well than the sourdough starter.

First batch, when I thought I could just wing the measurements: Horrifyingly sour

Second batch: Working from actual recipe, good taste, crust so hard that I couldn't even cut it with one of those zippy electric knives you bust out once a year to carve the turkey. But like a TootsiePop, once I got to the center, what I found inside was tasty.

Third batch: Good crust, but bread didn't taste like sourdough! It very was pretty though. Glossy and stuff. Like someone had varnished it for a photo shoot.

Fourth batch: Coming soon, probably Tuesday. Will take pictures next time, I swear. Just gotta figure out where I stuck my camera. . .

Attempts 1 thru 3 have been with whole wheat starter and the loaves were about half whole wheat and half all-purpose. Making an all-purpose starter now to see if the not-as-good-for-you white sourdough has any flavor at all. It's a mystery!

Note: Working on a new story while being on this bread kick ... well, I think my bread got hard because I kind of forgot I was baking something for a while. I don't know if it's forgetfulness or just being easily distracted. I walked away from the oven, forgot the bread. La la la. Started carrying one of those ridiculous old clangy kitchen timers with me to keep me misting the bread and oven with water! (Something I never knew anyone ever had to do. Had to buy a squirt bottle to make soft crust. I really wish I had gone fun instead and got a squirt gun, but they don't mist, and when they do it takes all the fun out of it. Mists don't go very far. Whoever wanted a mist gun? Well, er, me. Just now. Then I could wear it in a holster when I'm baking, and occasionally rip the oven door open and shoot into it while making whoosh noises. Bang-bang doesn't seem to fit in the mental image I'm gettin...)

I Made Bread!

Out of my starter... and oh my GOD it was sour. The sourest sour to ever sour. I threw it away.  My starter just smells lovely, like baking bread, not sour smelling or acidic. The acid smell didn't come until I was baking it and then I knew something had gone very wrong.

Hey Google! Help, my sourdough is too sour! <-- lots of responses to those keywords.

With Google's help, I've come up with a new plan of attack:

• Maybe I should, I don't know, use a recipe. Genius, you say? Such forward thinking, that. Because last night when I decided the starter was ready to use and whipped up dough? I just went, "Hmm, what goes in bread? I know, water, flour and salt!" TADA, SURE DOES LOOK LIKE DOUGH. La la la...
• And, maybe only let it rise about two hours instead of, say, twelve. I didn't realize it gets more and more sour the longer it rises. Who knew? Not me.
• If those steps fail to tone down the sour, then eat it with some naked salad. Then it will just seem like the veggies have been given a particularly sour vinegrette. Lettuce, bread, chewchewchew... THIS BREAD IS AWESOME.

I will inform again once I have baked again. Looking for recipes that don't call for dutch ovens or other strange oven crockeries I don't have.

I plot my stories like a mad woman, but think I can make homemade sourdough bread without a plan. I used to be sane. I think. Maybe. That one time. Before I devoted my life to being ridiculous :o

Natural yeast experiment #2

So, my starter was growing along, happy as a clam, and people in my house started freaking out. "BOTULISM BOTULISM!" was shouted. A few times.

So, sadly, I killed my little yeasty baby(which had just been flour and water), and started again with a safer method: pineapple juice and whole wheat flour. Something about the acidic nature of the fruit encourages yeast and discourages other little bacterial beasties. We'll see. I was hoping to bake bread today, but that seems to be put off for 5 to 6 days.

Will check it tomorrow to see if anything's going on. Hopefully there will be signs of life after 24 hours rather than 48. My patience is thinning, probably because I was all hopped-up on the idea of baking authentic wild-yeast bread today! Alas. Sad. Sad sad.

Oh well, if it grew once, it will grow again! And it will be even more awesome because of the wait.

Or something like that.

Baking bread

I am a baking enthusiast. I especially like baking bread. Having grown up in a family full of women terrified of yeast, a couple years ago I rebelled by shunning quick breads and purchasing my first packets of yeast. With the rapid-rise yeast, I've baked white breads, and whole wheat breads, dinner rolls, sweet breads and cinnamon rolls. I'm pretty good at it, and there's something about the process of kneading dough that is almost meditative for me. I get my best creative break-thrus in this state. Except, the other day, my kneading made me wonder how people made bread before they could pop down to the supermarket and pick up some yeast.

Since I've been online, I've become utterly incapable of wondering about something without asking Google to enlighten me. How did pioneers make bread? Yeast is in the air, it's all over the place. You can cultivate your own yeast with flour and water, and there are all different kinds of yeast and they all have food preferences. The kind of yeast you cultivate depends on the type of flour you use. The yeast that likes rye flour is different from the yeast that likes wheat flour, and who knows what that stuff in the packets likes... I'm completely amazed by this discovery. So, a few days ago I mixed-up my own bread starter. Today was Day Three, and the first day I had to feed it(equal parts flour and water) since it was born on Saturday. I think it will be ready for the initial batch of bread on Wednesday.

I'm completely blown away by the process and now feel ridiculously empowered. Empowered but somewhat ashamed to admit... my first thought after seeing the process working? Now, in case of a Zombiepocalypse, I can still make bread! Oh yea. Carbs: 1 -- Zombies: 0!