Busy Bears

We have had a house for a while now. What have we been up to? 



1) We made homemade mozzarella. 

We used Robert's brew thermometer to measure the temperature of the milk.

We got the vegetarian rennet from Bob's Homebrew (it is an enzyme produced in calf's stomachs to help them curdle and then digest their mom's milk), this stuff is made in a lab - no calf's needed. We got the syringe to measure the small amount of rennet free at the Safeway pharmacy. 

We are very excited about making cheese!

The curds were very delicate and the whey was still full of non-curdled curds. Uh-oh.

We called off the attempt at this stage because the curds tasted like rubber and didn't look anything like they are supposed to. We continued straining the whey and got a creamy spread cheese out of them, but it didn't have any flavor. Alas. We will try again, this time with milk that we didn't get at the Grocery Outlet! 

2) Robert made us pizza. (The mozzarella was supposed to go on the pizza.)

The dough didn't look like much to start with. We only had whole wheat flour, so we used that.

The dough was so oily when Robert flattened it out. I got a little nervous and this picture sort of grosses me out. 

BUT! When the pizza came out of the oven, it was delicious! It was his best attempt so far. We needed to cook directly on the pizza stone to crisp up the bottom (curse following the recipe), but other than that it was tender and chewy and the toppings cooked well too. 

3) We started a very small container garden. See how much sun we have to work with?

We sifted the compost bins for soil and got two giant trash cans full of beautiful dark humus. We used it and some potting soil to plant: swiss chard, watercress and merlot lettuce. We also inherited a small strawberry plant and a mint plant. We also are trying Thai Basil, but we are very reserved in our expectations.

4) We both made bread. 

Robert made French Country Bread from a recipe he found online. It was amazing save for one tiny detail - he forgot to add the salt. It says a lot that we still ate both loaves in nothing flat. 


I took on a recipe from the Bread Bible cookbook, Heart of Wheat Bread. It was a deconstructed wheat bread - unbleached white flour + wheat germ. 

The dough was really sticky to begin with.

Here the gluten is just beginning to develop and the flour has soaked up more of the liquid.

After a bit more work, it took on actual dough-like properties. It was elastic and squishy, yet firm. I started to get excited during the proofing steps.

Hot out of the oven! We cooked it in the Dutch Oven to crisp up the crust without having to deal with an extra pan and ice cubes and such. I rolled it funny when I tried to get the dough from the cookie sheet into the oven because we didn't have parchment, but it was fine enough.

We saved it in a brown paper sack until the next day, crisped it in the oven and whoo-ee - it was delicious! 

Cookie sheet transfer carnage. 

5) We made salsa. Two big batches for freezing so we will always have some on hand.

What color do you think this batch was?

6) Robert also has started making yogurt for us, but we are still perfecting the recipe. 


We are truly enjoying having a kitchen again!