Bread Time

Finally, here's a bread posting. For this recipe I used half hard red and half hard white wheat berries. That's for those of you that make your own flour. Currently, my favorite book on bread is "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Check out their web site HERE to see the recipes and techniques or order the book. For this recipe I used the Challah bread. But of course I made my own variation. For the rolls I rolled them out flat and added some filling.

Filling: Inspired from Arabic Bites

1/4 cup raisens

1/4 cup chopped dates

1/4 cup chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)

1 tsp cooled tea (or rose water)

shake of cinnamon

1/8 tsp cardimom

1 Tablespoon sugar

Sprinkle filling over the dough and then roll up dough into a log. Then I cut the log into a 6 inch rope and twist into bun. This gets brushed with egg wash and then set aside to raise about 20-45 minutes. Then it gets another egg wash then sprinkle sesame or poppy seeds over the rolls and bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes. Yummy! This is quickly becoming one of my husbands most requested breads.

Christmas Trees

Ever wonder where your Christmas tree comes from? These are some Christmas trees that are on my sister's property in Tennessee, or were. They were harvested the week after my picture. Can't you just smell the evergreens? Maybe your tree came from there?

Being from Florida, it was wonderful to see the bright red and yellow leaves up in the mountains. We just had "fall" here in Florida. Yes, the beginning of December and our trees where turning colors. It's amazing to me that 6 hours north and you actually get seasons and really cold weather. It's in the 70's here today and snow in the Carolina mountains. Go figure?!

Baby Chicks' First Outing

It's true, we have 2 baby chicks. The mommy hen took them out of the baby coop today for the first time. They are about 1 week old and tiny little things. She showed them how to dig in the leaves and eat grass and bugs. She is a VERY protective mom and I'm too scared to mess with the babies yet. I'll try later with gloves on so mom doesn't peck me. They were out several hours this morning and then she took them back "home".

Whole Grain Farm

Here's my first blog post...hopefully the first of many. I'm creating this to keep friends and family informed of new recipes, chicken antics and what's up in our life in general. My husband and I have several dogs, numerous chickens, and parrots. I have several container gardens with lettuce plus we have several fruit trees on our property. We are interested in staying fit by cycling and jogging, as well as attempting to eat healthy. I make all of our own flour, and bread. No store bought bread here. Healthy should taste good, that's my motto!